WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance will fly inert cargo and instruments on its second Vulcan Centaur mission after concluding that Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser will not be ready in time for launch this fall.
At a press conference on June 26, ULA CEO Tory Bruno said that the upcoming Cert-2 mission, now scheduled for September, will carry an inert payload that the company originally built as a backup in case the payload for Vulcan’s first launch, . Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander has been delayed. It will replace the Dream Chaser, a space cargo plane that was supposed to make its first flight to the International Space Station.
“We’ve been informed by Sierra Space that they feel they have a significant risk in terms of meeting the semiannual flight date” previously planned for Cert-2, he said. “They told us they would step back to support our critical national security space missions that come after that.
ULA is impatient with the Cert-2 launch because it is the second of two launches needed for the Space Force to certify the rocket for launching national security payloads. The company says it wants to launch two of those missions, designated USSF-106 and USSF-87, by the end of the year.
The company’s new plan calls for Cert-2 to launch in September with this inert payload into low Earth orbit. The payload will remain attached to the upper stage while ULA conducts “experiments and demonstrations” of technologies the company is considering incorporating into Centaur, details of which Bruno did not disclose.
“Then we’ll do some maneuvers after the base mission to help us better understand the full capabilities of the Centaur V and measure some of its properties,” he said, such as boiling off its cryogenic propellants. Centaur will then go into a final orbit, which he says is consistent with the US government’s standard orbital debris mitigation procedures.
The new plan for Cert-2 echoes what Pentagon officials said in May, when they privately noted that they would consider allowing ULA to launch an inert payload if the Dream Chaser is not ready to fly by the end of the year. Bruno said on the call that there are no other commercial payloads available to replace Dream Chaser and maintain the September launch.
Bruno did not estimate how long he thought the certification would take, but believed it could be done in time for ULA to fly two Space Force missions by the end of the year. This is because the space force had time to review data from the Cert-1 launch in January and preparations were being made ahead of Cert-2.
“It’s kind of prepackaged and ready to go,” he said of the certification documentation. ULA will feed data and analysis from Cert-2 to Space Force to quickly compare actual and expected performance. “It will turn around pretty quickly, in enough time for us to fly two more times this year.”
The Cert-2 launch hardware and the two subsequent Space Force missions are either ready or nearing completion. ULA delivered the Vulcan for Cert-2 at Cape Canaveral aboard Rocketship, which arrived on June 23. The other two will arrive on the Cape in August and “right after that,” Bruno said.
He added that ULA has received all the BE-4 engines from Blue Origin it needs for the Vulcans it plans to launch this year. “Blue used to be a long pole because it took them a little longer to get through the development of this new very large methane rocket engine, but it’s done and they’re expanding their factory right now,” he said. .
That included, he said, personal assurances from Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, that the company would be able to meet ULA’s needs for BE-4 engines while also producing a version of the engine for its own New Glenn rocket. “I have a lot more confidence in Blue’s ability to meet our needs,” he said, compared to “many months or a year ago.”
ULA’s decision will cause indefinite delays for Dream Chaser. Sierra Space delivered the first Dream Chaser vehicle, named Tenacity, to Kennedy Space Center in May for final testing as well as work on the thermal protection system. The vehicle arrived at KSC from NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio after a series of shock, vibration and thermal vacuum tests.
“As a top defense engineer, we understand how important the Cert-2 ULA mission is to the criticality of national security and our launch partner’s schedule. We are working closely with ULA to determine the next available launch date,” Sierra Space said in a statement to SpaceNews. He added that the company has made “excellent progress” on the vehicle, which is “on track to fly by the end of 2024”.
However, launch manifests may push the mission up to 2025. With Vulcan booked for two national security missions by the end of the year, Vulcan’s next launch is scheduled for the end of the first quarter of 2025, although Bruno did not disclose the payloads for those missions.
ULA, which has made three launches so far this year, expects 20 launches in 2025, a combination of Atlas and Vulcan vehicles. All the atlases will be ready by the end of the year, while the Vulcans will be “ahead of need” for missions planned for next year, Bruno said. “All I’ll need, knock on wood, is for the spaceship to show up in time.