The United Launch Alliance is preparing for its final scheduled test flight of its new Vulcan rocket in the early hours of Friday morning. The mission, called Cert-2, is the second of two missions required before ULA can begin launching U.S. national security payloads on Vulcan.

The Vulcan rocket’s launch from Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled to begin a three-hour window at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 UTC). The weather forecast indicates an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions at launch.

Spaceflight Now’s live broadcast begins about an hour before launch.

Vulcan is intended to replace ULA’s Delta 4 rockets, which were retired earlier this year, and Atlas 5 rockets. There are 15 Atlas 5 flights remaining, split between Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation (eight launches), Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft (six launches) and ViaSat-3 (one launch).

ULA’s newest rocket, first launched in January on Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, already has a sizable order backlog. It was awarded 25 missions under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract worth a total of nearly $4.5 billion, 38 Kuiper missions for Amazon and six flights for the Dream Chaser spaceplane by Sierra Space.

The Cert-2 Vulcan rocket will launch in a VC2S configuration, meaning it will carry two Northrop Grumman solid rocket boosters and a standard payload fairing measuring 15.5 m (51 ft) long and 5. 4 m (17.7 ft) will use.

During a pre-launch press conference on Wednesday, ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno noted that they were following up on a “very, very successful” Cert-1 launch in January and said he and his team were with theirs this time Prospects satisfied as well.

“(The mission) literally has one main goal, which is to fly a second time and have another success,” Bruno said. “So now we have two data points and then after the government reviews the data that confirms all of that, you are certified and then you are ready to fly national security.”

Originally, the Cert-2 mission was intended to be the first launch of Dream Chaser, which would have made its first trip to the International Space Station. However, because the spaceplane was not ready in time for the Cert-2 mission, ULA opted to postpone it later in its manifesto, likely sometime in 2025.

Bruno said they are still “really excited about this mission” and are looking forward to flying Dream Chaser. That is, because they need to move forward and begin launching national security payloads for the US Space Force and eventually the National Reconnaissance Office.

“We waited as long as possible to give them every chance and they just needed a little more time,” Bruno said. “In fact, we had other customers who wanted to be on Cert-2 if we couldn’t fly Dream Chaser, but we waited so long that we couldn’t integrate them in time either. That’s how interested we were in the Dream Chaser mission and how much we believe in their vehicle, which by the way means ULA is paying for this Cert 2 flight.

“There are no paying customers. That’s entirely up to us, which is why we wanted to do a few experiments there and get as much use out of it as possible.”

Bruno declined to specify how much money ULA is spending on the Cert-2 mission, but generally described it as “high double digits…high double digit millions.”

Centaur demonstrations

With no customer on board, ULA flies an inert payload, also known as a mass simulator. Essentially, it is a device that remains attached to the Centaur 5’s 11.7m upper stage after stage separation.

It was originally designed as a backup in case Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic and its lunar lander Peregrine were not ready in time to fly on the Cert-1 mission. During the mission, some instruments connected to the mass simulator will be used to collect data on the Centaur 5’s performance and capabilities.

“They validate analytical models about how these strategies and technologies will actually work,” Bruno said. “In some cases we have already been able to anchor models to the ground with experiments and demonstrations, but this allows us to do so in zero gravity.”

Bruno said some of the data collected on this mission was also related to the upper echelon’s maneuvers.

“These maneuvers help us with the thermal stress that causes our fuel to evaporate. But some of the maneuvers are also aimed at reducing the use of consumables, such as the fuels we talked about, such as hydrazine,” Bruno said. “Their main goal is to extend the life of these things, as long as the fuels, the main fuels.

“In doing so, they are generally more efficient, meaning the stage may weigh less and have greater mass-to-orbit capability. So you have the side effect that not only does the thing last longer, but it can also put a larger payload into any orbit on a nominal duration mission.”

After completing these experiments and maneuvers, Centaur 5 will be sent into a so-called heliocentric orbit and set to a hyperbolic trajectory by a final ignition.

Bruno said another goal of these tests is to expand the outer limits of the upper stage’s operational capability in space. He said their next goal is to achieve a lifespan of 12 hours.

“We’re going to move to days and then weeks, and then we think it’s possible to move this to months, and that’s a game-changer,” Bruno said. “You know, the average high school lasts about an hour. You can add a lot of things to make it five or six hours.”

Develop the business case for Vulcan

There are many interested groups following the progress of the Vulcan rocket. In addition to the Defense Department and NASA, there are also commercial customers like Amazon and its Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation that are looking to Vulcan for a ride into space.

After certifying the rocket, ULA plans to launch two more Vulcan missions in 2024: USSF-106 and USSF-87. Bruno said the rocket for USSF-106 is complete and ready to launch and his team is now finishing work on the upper stage for the USSF-87 mission.

“Everything is built on the Cape and down. “So if the satellites are ready, I’m ready, knock on wood, after my very successful Cert mission on Friday,” Bruno said.

If all goes according to plan, these will be the last missions for ULA in 2024. Amazon previously announced that it plans to launch the first full production batch of Kuiper satellites on an Atlas 5 rocket in the fourth quarter of 2024. However, Bruno said that is now more likely to be early 2025 due to the timing of national security missions.

Looking ahead to 2025, Bruno said they want to launch up to 20 missions, which would be a record for ULA. These would be split “approximately” half between the Vulcan and Atlas missions.

“I’m just giving it to you roughly because I have different commercial clients than the one you may know,” Bruno said. “It’s their responsibility to announce their mission, so I don’t want to give you an exact number, but about half of the 20 are Atlas vs. Vulcan.”

In a social media post Thursday, Bruno noted that the previous high number of starts for ULA was 16. He added that they have launched less frequently in recent years due to a split of government launches between ULA and SpaceX.

Our previous high was 16. The year I arrived it was 14. And all with 1 VIF / 1 trace. In recent years it has been lower because we have divided the USG market in competition with SX. We have almost completed all factory expansions and will have two VIFs. Hard work but not challenging

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) October 3, 2024

The proposed increase in cadence for ULA is supported by a so-called second track at Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The original Vertical Integration Facility will become VIF-G, which will primarily support government missions.

Meanwhile, the new VIF, which is currently being modified and equipped, will become VIF-2 or VIF-C for commercial missions. Bruno said that construction work is progressing well and that commissioning is expected to take place towards the end of the first or beginning of the second quarter of 2025.

Over at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, ULA continues to work on converting Space Launch Complex 3 (SLC-3) from an Atlas to a Vulcan-only launch site, which Bruno described as “a little ahead of schedule.”

“I expect this to happen either towards the end of the first quarter or very early in the second quarter,” Bruno said. “Incidentally, this will involve a comprehensive modernization of the road that leads from the quay at the base to the main facility and will be used by everyone.

“So this infrastructure benefits not just ULA, but all the users down there in Vandenberg.”

All told, Bruno said ULA has spent more than $1 billion on all of its various infrastructure projects to support the transition to Vulcan and the planned increase in launch frequency, which is expected to include about 25 launches per year.

He also gave approximate figures for the cost of developing the Vulcan rocket itself over the last almost decade.

“As a rule of thumb, it will cost you between $5 billion and $7 billion. Vulcan is not outside the rule of thumb,” Bruno said. “So there was private investment of this magnitude in the development of Vulcan.”

The Cert-2 flight also marks the second time Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines have propelled a rocket into space. The company will use seven of them in a slightly different configuration on the first launch of the New Glenn rocket, scheduled for launch in November.

Blue Origin provided ULA with all the BE-4s needed to launch the remaining Vulcan rockets in 2024 before moving to New Glenn. Bruno said that now that the first New Glenn rocket is equipped with its engines, the production line will return to ULA.

“In a few weeks my deliveries will resume and later this year they will start supplying me with engines that I need for next year,” said Bruno.