{"id":47496,"date":"2026-02-26T20:30:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/booster-resurfaces-as-vulcan-centaur-issue-space-force-halts-use-for-nssl-amid-investigation\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T20:30:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T12:30:22","slug":"booster-resurfaces-as-vulcan-centaur-issue-space-force-halts-use-for-nssl-amid-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/booster-resurfaces-as-vulcan-centaur-issue-space-force-halts-use-for-nssl-amid-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Booster Resurfaces as Vulcan Centaur Issue; Space Force Halts Use for NSSL Amid Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><em>AURORA, Colo. <\/em>\u2013 The <strong>U.S. Space Force<\/strong> has suspended launches of the <strong>United Launch Alliance<\/strong>\u2018s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program while the service investigates and fixes an \u201canomaly\u201d related to the&nbsp;<strong>Northrop Grumman<\/strong> GEM-63XL solid rocket motor (SRM), a service official told reporters here on Wednesday at the Air &amp; Space Forces Association\u2019s warfare symposium.<\/p>\n<p>ULA is a&nbsp;<strong>Boeing<\/strong><strong>-Lockheed Martin<\/strong>&nbsp;joint venture.<\/p>\n<p>That anomaly surfaced on Feb. 27 before Vulcan Centaur, in its&nbsp;second NSSL launch, foisted two Northrop Grumman-built Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites \u2013 GSSAP 7 and 8, also known as Hornet 7 and 8 \u2013 into orbit during the USSF-87 mission. On Feb. 12, Space Force noted the anomaly early in the flight when an irregular plume emerged from one of the rocket\u2019s four SRMs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are going to work through this anomaly until we launch again on Vulcan,\u201d Space Force Col. Eric Zarybnisky, the service\u2019s portfolio acquisition executive for assured access to space, told reporters. \u201cUntil this anomaly is solved we will not be launching Vulcan missions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In October 2024, in Vulcan\u2019s&nbsp;second certification test flight, the rocket had a similar GEM-63XL anomaly which set back ULA\u2019s plans to launch USSF-106 and USSF-87 before the end of that year.<\/p>\n<p>The new investigation will likely mean that SpaceX will displace ULA as the launch provider for the imminent launch of the 10th and final Lockheed Martin-built GPS III satellite.<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was first published by Defense Daily<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AURORA, Colo. \u2013 The U.S. Space Force has suspended launches of the United Launch Alliance\u2018s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program while the service investigates and fixes an \u201canomaly\u201d related to the&nbsp;Northrop Grumman GEM-63XL solid rocket motor (SRM), a service official told reporters here on Wednesday at the Air [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47497,"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-47496","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\/47496"}],"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=47496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}