United Launch Alliance (ULA) will use the high-energy capabilities of the Space Force certified Vulcan rocket to carry two U.S. national security satellite missions directly into geosynchronous orbit.

The USSF-106 launch for the Space Force's Space System Command (SSC) is planned from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. It will be one of the longest launches ever for ULA, a marathon extending more than 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above Earth and lasting over seven hours to complete. 

ULA has a proud legacy of successfully placing 100 national security missions into space using our Atlas and Delta rocket families, launching reconnaissance, communications, navigation, missile-warning and other assets into a wide range of orbits. Now, a new era begins with Vulcan’s higher performance and extreme precision while offering the world's only high-energy architecture rocket to deliver to our country's most challenging and exotic orbits. 

Vulcan flew two bullseye certification launches in 2024, both multi-burn profiles of the Centaur V upper stage that escaped Earth orbit to enter interplanetary space. The Space Force, which has been a close partner throughout Vulcan’s design and development, reviewed dozens of certification criteria and vast reems of telemetry data to certify the Vulcan launch system to carry the nation’s payloads. 

USSF-106 will use the most powerful Vulcan yet, with four side-mounted solid rocket boosters (SRBs), for a liftoff thrust of nearly three million pounds (13.3 megaNewtons). The flight-ready silver and red Vulcan stands 202 feet tall (61m) and will weigh 1.7 million pounds (790,000 kg) once fueled with cryogenic propellants for launch. 

Nearly five minutes into flight, the Centaur V begins the first of three burns over the course of several hours to achieve the complex orbit. Vulcan was designed from its inception to meet the challenging requirements demanded by the expanding spectrum of missions for national security launches.  

Vulcan’s versatility is derived from its variable number of SRBs and payload fairing accommodations to carry any Space Force National Security Space payload to any orbit, no matter the size or mass of the payload. 

The Space Force has assigned more than two dozen national security launches to Vulcan under its Phase 2 and Phase 3 launch programs to date. The missions will occur from both Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. 

Preparations for this Vulcan launch, designated V-003, began July 3 by placing the methane-fueled first stage aboard the Vulcan Launch Platform (VLP) at the Government Vertical Integration Facility-G (VIF-G). That was followed by attaching the four GEM 63XL SRBs, interstage and dual-engine Centaur V. 

The payload, encapsulated in a 51-foot-long (15.5m) Vulcan composite fairing, was hoisted into VIF-G on July 24. The fairing is adorned with the USSF-106 mission logo and Space Force emblem. 

The payloads feature demonstrations and experiments from Department of Defense customers, including the Navigation Technology Satelllite-3 (NTS-3). The Air Force Research Laboratory's NTS-3 satellite will test critical technologies designed to defeat the 21st century threats that contested, degraded and denied position, navigation and timing (PNT) poses to our national security. 

NTS-3 will be the Department of Defense’s first experimental navigation satellite system in nearly 50 years. It builds on the legacy of NTS-1 and NTS-2, which were launched by ULA-heritage Atlas rockets in the 1970s and paved the way for today's space-based PNT technology through the Global Positioning System (GPS). 


Learn more about the Vulcan USSF-106 launch
See our USSF-106 photo album