Vulcan has been grounded since February 12, 2026, when a solid rocket booster anomaly occurred during the USSF-87 mission. The rocket reached orbit, but one of its Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL boosters suffered a visible nozzle failure shortly after liftoff, prompting a comprehensive technical review. Because this was the second nozzle-related irregularity in four flights, following a similar observation during the vehicle’s Cert-2 demonstration in late 2024, military officials imposed a temporary suspension on operational defense payloads.<\/p>\n
Space Systems Command Commander Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant disclosed the manifest adjustments during an industry briefing. He confirmed that while the military remains confident in Vulcan’s return to flight, the ongoing technical investigation has yet to establish an official return date. Garrant declined to release interim findings from the joint Air Force-industry investigation board or define a firm launch target.<\/p>\n
Space Systems Command executed the reassignments under its contractual mission trade mechanism. Rather than canceling ULA’s launch contracts, the Space Force reassigned near-term, time-critical military payloads to SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets in exchange for later national security missions that will fly aboard Vulcan Centaur once recertified. The approach builds on precedent set when the Space Force reassigned the final GPS III mission to SpaceX following the Vulcan anomaly, a move intended to prevent critical positioning satellites from lingering in storage. ULA and propulsion contractor Northrop Grumman continue structural analyses and hot-fire validations to verify booster nozzle integrity before Space Systems Command clears Vulcan to resume operational defense launches.<\/p>\n
The trade framework is designed to safeguard national security launch timelines without penalizing contractor revenue. Garrant affirmed his confidence in Vulcan’s eventual recovery while making clear that operational defense launches will not resume until the booster investigation is resolved and the vehicle is recertified.<\/p>\n
What remains to be seen is the outcome of the joint Air Force-industry investigation board, the results of the ongoing structural analyses and hot-fire validations by ULA and Northrop Grumman, and the point at which Space Systems Command clears Vulcan to resume operational defense launches. No official return-to-flight date has been set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vulcan has been grounded since February 12, 2026, when a solid rocket booster anomaly occurred during the USSF-87 mission. The rocket reached orbit, but one of its Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL boosters suffered a visible nozzle failure shortly after liftoff, prompting a comprehensive technical review. Because this was the second nozzle-related irregularity in four flights, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9858,332,316,363,1538],"class_list":["post-91133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-national-security-launch","tag-space-force","tag-spacex","tag-ula","tag-vulcan-centaur"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91133"}],"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=91133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91172,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91133\/revisions\/91172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}