{"id":43835,"date":"2025-08-14T00:30:51","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T16:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/space-force-officials-take-secrecy-to-new-heights-ahead-of-key-rocket-launch\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T00:30:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T16:30:51","slug":"space-force-officials-take-secrecy-to-new-heights-ahead-of-key-rocket-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/space-force-officials-take-secrecy-to-new-heights-ahead-of-key-rocket-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Space Force officials take secrecy to new heights ahead of key rocket launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After more than a decade of development and testing, US military officials are finally ready to entrust United Launch Alliance\u2019s Vulcan rocket to haul a batch of national security satellites into space.<\/p>\n<p style=\"\">An experimental military navigation satellite, also more than 10 years in the making, will ride ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. There are additional payloads buttoned up inside the Vulcan rocket\u2019s nose cone, but officials from the US Space Force are mum on the details.<\/p>\n<p>The Vulcan rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 7:59 pm EDT (23:59 UTC) Tuesday. There\u2019s an 80 percent chance of favorable weather during the one-hour launch window. It will take several hours for the Vulcan rocket\u2019s Centaur upper stage to reach its destination in geosynchronous orbit. You can watch ULA\u2019s live launch webcast below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7rftsSmvefY?si=tUV1h0pnGOekNii3\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Vulcan rocket flew two demonstration missions in 2024, capping a lengthy campaign to design, build, and test ULA\u2019s new launch vehicle before the Space Force could declare it ready for operational service.<\/p>\n<p>Now, ULA is poised to begin ticking off a backlog of more than 70 Vulcan launches the company has sold to commercial and government customers. The new rocket\u2019s largest users, by far, will be Amazon and the US Space Force.<\/p>\n<h2>New and improved<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cWe\u2019re excited to see this mission launch,\u201d said Gary Wentz, ULA\u2019s vice president of government and commercial programs. \u201cThis will be the most powerful Vulcan yet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first two Vulcan test flights last year used a configuration of the rocket with two strap-on boosters to add an extra burst of speed off the launch pad. For this flight, which the Space Force has named USSF-106, the launcher will fly with four solid rocket boosters made by Northrop Grumman.<\/p>\n<p>These boosters are larger versions of the solid rocket motors ULA and its predecessors have flown on their previous rockets for 35 years. Despite their long history of successful flights, the boosters came under the microscope after a nozzle failure on the second Vulcan test flight last October. The nozzle at the bottom of one of the solid rocket boosters fell off the launcher moments after liftoff, but the motor continued firing, and Vulcan still made it to its intended orbit.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<p>The setback contributed to the delay of the Space Force\u2019s first operational flight with the Vulcan rocket from the end of last year until now. Engineers determined that a carbon composite insulator, or heat shield, inside the nozzle failed to protect the nozzle\u2019s metallic structure from the superheated exhaust coming from the booster. Investigators traced the cause of the failure to a \u201cmanufacturing defect\u201d in one of the insulators, which led to the melting and burn-through of the booster nozzle.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the Vulcan rocket performed close to perfection on the two test flights last year, including the vehicle\u2019s BE-4 main engines supplied by Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Two BE-4s fly on each Vulcan rocket, consuming cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen for the first five minutes of flight.<\/p>\n<p>Space Force officials formally certified the Vulcan rocket for national security launches in March, setting the stage for Tuesday\u2019s launch of the USSF-106 mission.<\/p>\n<p>United Launch Alliance, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is one of two companies approved to launch the Pentagon\u2019s most expensive and sensitive satellites. SpaceX is the other one, and that company\u2019s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets have overtaken ULA\u2019s launch vehicles, thanks largely to booster reuse. Vulcan, like ULA\u2019s legacy Atlas and Delta rockets, is currently designed for a single use. Eventually, ULA aims to recover and reuse the BE-4 engines themselves, but not the entire Vulcan core stage.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ars-wp-img-shortcode id-2111551 align-fullwidth\">\n<p>              <img width=\"2047\" height=\"1365\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k.jpg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k.jpg 2047w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k-640x427.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k-980x653.jpg 980w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/54644800877_bfa48322d8_k-1440x960.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2047px) 100vw, 2047px\"><\/p>\n<p>              This will be the third flight of ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket, but the first to fly in a configuration with four solid-fueled boosters.<\/p>\n<p>                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Despite its higher cost and unproven capability, the Vulcan rocket won the lion\u2019s share of US military launch contracts from 2020 through 2024, while SpaceX received a bit less than half of the launch orders the Pentagon put up for competition between the two providers. The balance shifted with a new round of launch contracts awarded in April, with SpaceX becoming the military\u2019s leading launch provider and ULA taking second place. Blue Origin also won the right to receive a handful of military launch contracts with its New Glenn rocket, which debuted in January.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<p>The Vulcan rocket checks off several important boxes for the Space Force. First, it relies entirely on US-made rocket engines. The Atlas V rocket it is replacing uses Russian-built main engines, and given the chilled relations between the two powers, US officials have long desired to stop using Russian engines to power the Pentagon\u2019s satellites into orbit. Second, ULA says the Vulcan rocket will eventually provide a heavy-lift launch capability at a lower cost than the company\u2019s now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket.<\/p>\n<p>Third, Vulcan provides the Space Force with an alternative to SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which have been the only rockets in their class available to the military since the last national security mission was launched on an Atlas V rocket one year ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Col. Jim Horne, mission director for the USSF-106 launch, said this flight marks a \u201cpretty historic point in our program\u2019s history. We officially end our reliance on Russian-made main engines with this launch, and we continue to maintain our assured access to space with at least two independent rocket service companies that we can leverage to get our capabilities on orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>What\u2019s onboard?<\/h2>\n<p>The Space Force has only acknowledged one of the satellites aboard the USSF-106 mission, but there are more payloads cocooned inside the Vulcan rocket\u2019s fairing.<\/p>\n<p>The $250 million mission that officials are willing to talk about is named Navigation Technology Satellite-3, or NTS-3. This experimental spacecraft will test new satellite navigation technologies that may eventually find their way on next-generation GPS satellites. A key focus for engineers who designed and will operate the NTS-3 satellite is to look at ways of overcoming GPS jamming and spoofing, which can degrade satellite navigation signals used by military forces, commercial airliners, and civilian drivers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to be doing, we anticipate, over 100 different experiments,\u201d said Joanna Hinks, senior research aerospace engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory\u2019s space vehicles directorate, which manages the NTS-3 mission. \u201cSome of the major areas we\u2019re looking at\u2014we have an electronically steerable phased array antenna so that we can deliver higher power to get through interference to the location that it\u2019s needed.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ars-wp-img-shortcode id-2111552 align-fullwidth\">\n<p>              <img width=\"1800\" height=\"1200\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033.jpg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033.jpg 1800w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033-640x427.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033-980x653.jpg 980w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/220623-F-F3963-1033-1440x960.jpg 1440w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1800px) 100vw, 1800px\"><\/p>\n<p>              Arlen Biersgreen, then-program manager for the NTS-3 satellite mission at the Air Force Research Laboratory, presents a one-third scale model of the NTS-3 spacecraft to an audience in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      US Air Force\/Andrea Rael<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>GPS jamming is especially a problem in and near war zones. Investigators probing the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 last December determined GPS jamming, likely by Russian military forces attempting to counter a Ukrainian drone strike, interfered with the aircraft\u2019s navigation as it approached its destination in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Azerbaijani government officials blamed a Russian surface-to-air missile for damaging the aircraft, ultimately leading to a crash in nearby Kazakhstan that killed 38 people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a number of different advanced signals that we\u2019ve designed,\u201d Hinks said. \u201cOne of those is the Chimera anti-spoofing signal\u2026 to protect civil users from spoofing that\u2019s affecting so many aircraft worldwide today, as well as ships.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The NTS-3 spacecraft, developed by L3Harris and Northrop Grumman, only takes up a fraction of the Vulcan rocket\u2019s capacity. The satellite weighs less than 3,000 pounds (about 1,250 kilograms), about a quarter of what this version of the Vulcan rocket can deliver to geosynchronous orbit.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<p>Horne demurred when asked about what else the Vulcan rocket will deploy in orbit: \u201cI\u2019ll just say that any other further details beyond NTS-3 are not releasable to the public, and leave it at that\u2026 We\u2019re not going to make any further comments on anything beyond NTS-3 in the mission stack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Space Force\u2019s refusal to disclose any information about additional payloads on the USSF-106 mission, even the total number of satellites aboard Vulcan, is somewhat of an outlier compared to the way military officials have historically handled these questions. While the Space Force has consistently kept secret details about specific maneuvers and instruments (or in some cases, potential weapons), officials have named and numbered the payloads carried aboard nearly all recent national security launches.<\/p>\n<p>This is in contrast to the National Reconnaissance Office, which owns the US government\u2019s fleet of spy satellites. The NRO has nearly always followed a stricter protocol of secrecy than the Air Force or Space Force.<\/p>\n<p>That changed last year, when a classified Space Force mission named USSF-51 launched on an Atlas V rocket. Military leaders didn\u2019t disclose the mission\u2019s purpose or how many satellites it was carrying until the Space Force officially cataloged three payloads from the launch in its publicly accessible list of all human-made objects in orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the Space Force\u2019s most secret satellites have the ability to release smaller spacecraft themselves, adding to the uncertainty for potential adversaries. Some information about the payloads on Tuesday\u2019s launch might become public as the Space Force adds them to the public catalog, and a network of amateur skywatchers on Earth stands ready to observe their movements thousands of miles overhead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After more than a decade of development and testing, US military officials are finally ready to entrust United Launch Alliance\u2019s Vulcan rocket to haul a batch of national security satellites into space. An experimental military navigation satellite, also more than 10 years in the making, will ride ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket into geosynchronous orbit more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}