The US Area Power on Wednesday introduced that it has licensed United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to conduct nationwide safety missions.
“Assured entry to house is a core operate of the Area Power and a essential aspect of nationwide safety,” stated Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, program govt officer for Assured Entry to Area, in a news release. “Vulcan certification provides launch capability, resiliency, and adaptability wanted by our nation’s most important space-based techniques.”
The formal announcement closes a yearslong course of that has seen a number of delays within the growth of the Vulcan rocket, in addition to two anomalies in recent times that have been an additional setback to certification.
The primary of those, an explosion on a test stand in northern Alabama in the course of the spring of 2023, delayed the primary check flight of Vulcan by a number of months. Then, in October 2024, in the course of the second check flight of the rocket, a nozzle on one of many Vulcan’s two side-mounted boosters failed.
A cumbersome course of
This nozzle difficulty, greater than 5 months in the past, compounded the in depth paperwork wanted to certify Vulcan for the US Division of Protection’s most delicate missions. The army has a number of choices for corporations to certify their rockets relying on the variety of flights accomplished, which might be two, three, or extra. The less the flights, the extra paperwork and assessment that have to be executed. For Vulcan, this course of entailed:
- 52 certification standards
- greater than 180 discrete duties
- 2 certification flight demonstrations
- 60 payload interface requirement verifications
- 18 subsystem design and check evaluations
- 114 {hardware} and software program audits
That appears like lots of work, however a minimum of the army’s guidelines and laws are simple and easy to navigate, proper? Anyway, the certification course of is full, elevating United Launch Alliance to fly nationwide safety missions alongside SpaceX with its fleet of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.