Vulcan CentaurThe successor to ULA’s “workhorse Atlas V” launched today (October 4) at 7:25 a.m. (11:25 GMT) from the Florida Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, following a series of stopovers, and a landmark launch called “The Guardian” launched a test flight. Certificate-2.

ULA declared the flight a success, apparently keeping the new rocket on track for certification for use in national security missions; This area will be available to check in the coming weeks after ULA and the US Space Force have a chance to review the flight data. .

“I think we’re all very excited to see this be such an important launch in terms of our certification and where we’re going with Vulcan,” Space Force program manager Megan Lepien said during ULA’s livestream of the launch. “This was a huge success for the team.”

Vulcan Centaur made its first flight last January. This mission, called Cert-1, was successful and placed the dedicated Peregrine lunar probe into a highly elliptical anti-lunar orbit as planned.

But Peregrine did not go to the Moon’s surface; Shortly after separating from the top of the Centaur V rocket, it suffered a fuel leak and was sent back to Earth before being destroyed in our atmosphere.

Cert-2 would be the first flight of the Dream Chaser robotic spaceplane built by Colorado-based Sierra Space. But the private vehicle wasn’t ready in time for liftoff, so ULA changed course and installed an immobile “mass simulator” and the company’s suite of rocket tracking devices on Vulcan Centaur instead of the customer’s payload.

This change means ULA will have to foot the entire bill for Cert-2, with the cost “in the region of tens of millions of dollars,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno told reporters at a pre-launch briefing on Wednesday (October 2).

This goal was clearly achieved, as the Vulcan Centaur appeared to perform well throughout the flight. The rocket met all key requirements on schedule, including launching the two solid-state rocket boosters approximately two minutes after liftoff and stage separation approximately three minutes after that. Approximately 39 seconds after liftoff, the rocket still experienced an unexplained material ejection, as seen in the launch video, but Vulcan Centaur was still able to complete its planned flight profile.

The Centaur V boost stage performed two long engine starts as planned; the second ended approximately 35 minutes after takeoff. This milestone completed the main task of Cert-2, but ULA also planned to do some more work after this.

“We will be doing some maneuvers with the upper echelon to better understand how it behaves during such maneuvers and to buy us more time. [бортові] Experiments,” Bruno said at a briefing on Wednesday.

These maneuvers and experiments could form the basis for the development of a future version of the Centaur V capable of operating for much longer than an hour in the final stage; Bruno says this is the current norm for the upper stage.

“We think it is possible to extend the period by a few months and that would make a difference,” he said. “What this will give us is having space payload capacity for space mobility and maintenance, etc.”

If all goes as planned, Centaur V will enter a destruction orbit around the Sun after completing these additional maneuvers and experiments, Bruno said via X on Wednesday. The scene will be “pacified”; It will be drained of fuel and battery power until it becomes an inert piece of metal.

Bruno said ULA will analyze the data from the Cert-2 flight and then forward that information to the Space Force, which will conduct its own review. Certification can happen relatively quickly thereafter.

“If the mission is very clean, like a Cert-1 mission, it happens pretty quickly,” Bruno said on Wednesday. “So, this will be done in weeks, not months.”

ULA is preparing for this tight deadline. The company hopes to launch two national security missions, known as USSF-106 and USSF-87, from Vulcan Centaur before the end of the year. And if all goes as planned, the new rocket will be a key part of a busy 2025 for ULA. According to Bruno, the company plans to launch 20 missions next year; half of these will be carried out by Vulcan Centaur and half by the still active Atlas V.

One of these Vulcan Centaur flights will likely lift the spaceplane, which was originally scheduled to fly today.

“We have a place for Dream Chaser in the 2025 manifesto,” Bruno said on Wednesday. “You know, it’s just a matter of when they’re ready to go, and then we’ll work with the inventory and other customers and find them a place and get them there.”