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A ULA Vulcan Centaur lifts off February 12 on the USSF-87 mission. The launch was a success but one of the rocket\u2019s four solid boosters suffered a \u201csignificant performance anomaly\u201d in flight. (credit: United Launch Alliance)<\/p>\n
by Jeff Foust
Monday, March 9, 2026<\/p>\n
\nThe Ariane 6 and Vulcan Centaur have remarkably intertwined launch records. On August 12, an Ariane 6 lifted off from French Guiana less than 20 minutes before a Vulcan lifted off from Cape Canaveral. The launches were the third for each vehicle, each of which had suffered years of development delays before making their first launches in 2024.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a couple of anomalies that we’ve worked through,\u201d Elbon said before the launch. \u201cThose are behind us now, and so the Vulcan rocket is ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nExactly six months later, on February 12, their trajectories crossed again. This time the Vulcan launched from the Cape about seven and a half hours before the Ariane 6 lifted off from French Guiana. This was the fourth Vulcan launch and the first since August, but the sixth for the Ariane 6, which also launched missions in November and December.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn a call with reporters in January, Arianespace CEO David Cavaillol\u00e8s said the company expected to perform seven to eight Ariane 6 launches in 2026, roughly double the four completed in 2025, working towards a peak launch rate of nine to ten missions a year by 2027.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThis is incredibly ambitious, and it will be incredibly difficult,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we achieved last year gives us quite a lot of confidence.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nUnited Launch Alliance executives were similarly confident in a briefing two days before the Vulcan launch. They said they expected to perform 18 to 22 launches in 2026: two to four of the Atlas 5 and 16 to 18 of Vulcan.\n<\/p>\n
\nHowever, the company made similar projections for 2025, announcing in 2024 it expected to perform 20 launches in 2025. That was scaled back to a dozen launches by March and nine by August. It ended the year with just six launches, five of the Atlas 5 and that sole Vulcan launch in August.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis year, though, would be different. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a couple of anomalies that we’ve worked through,\u201d John Elbon, acting CEO of ULA, said at the briefing. \u201cThose are behind us now, and so the Vulcan rocket is ready to go.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nThat was a reference primarily to the second Vulcan launch in October 2024, known as Cert-2. About half a minute after liftoff, the nozzle of one of the solid rocket boosters came off, reducing thrust from that booster. An investigation found that a manufacturing defect in one of the internal parts of the nozzle caused it to come off. ULA, working with booster manufacturer Northrop Grumman, made \u201cappropriate corrective actions\u201d to the booster, successfully demonstrated during a static-fire test last February at a Northrop site in Utah.\n<\/p>\n
\nElbon added the other issue involved design changes to the rocket\u2019s payload fairing. \u201cThose have been completed and actually incorporated in missions that flew near the end of last year,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat we need to do is execute our launch activities at the Cape and at Vandenberg,\u201d he concluded. \u201cIt’s very achievable for us to get up to the rate that we need to get up to through this year.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nTwo days later, it became clear that ULA would not be able to get up to that launch rate executives projected in the briefing. The Vulcan lifted off normally but about 65 seconds after liftoff, shortly after passing through max-Q or maximum dynamic pressure, there was a sudden shower of sparks\u2014debris of some kind, presumably\u2014that appeared to come from one of the solid rocket boosters. The booster intermittently emitted fainter flecks of material until it burned out as scheduled nearly 40 seconds later.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe incident did not appear to affect the rocket\u2019s flight. \u201cSo far in the ascent phase of this mission, everything has been nominal,\u201d one of the commentators on ULA\u2019s launch webcast said a couple minutes later.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will conduct a thorough investigation, identify root cause, and implement any corrective action necessary before the next Vulcan mission,\u201d Wentz said.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe had an observation early during flight on one of the four solid rocket motors, the team is currently reviewing the data,\u201d the company said in a social media post about an hour after liftoff. ULA also initially termed the loss of the nozzle on the Cert-2 launch as an \u201cobservation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nSeveral hours later, after the Centaur upper stage successfully deployed its Space Force payload into geostationary orbit, the company acknowledged the seriousness of that observation.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cEarly during flight, the team observed a significant performance anomaly on one of the four solid rocket motors,\u201d Gary Wentz, vice president of Atlas and Vulcan program at ULA, said in a statement. \u201cWe will conduct a thorough investigation, identify root cause, and implement any corrective action necessary before the next Vulcan mission.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nThe company has not provided any updates since the launch into that investigation, including any commonality with the incident on Cert-2. The Space Force said separately in late February it would not launch national security payloads on Vulcan until the investigation was complete and the cause of the anomaly corrected.\n<\/p>\n
\nNeither ULA nor the Space Force have offered an estimate for how long the investigation will take. Ten months elapsed between Cert-2 and the next Vulcan launch, that August 2025 mission.\n<\/p>\n
![\"Vulcan\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/5175b.jpg\")
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A shower of debris is seen in the plme of the Vulcan shortly after passing max-Q on its February 12 launch, linked to an issue with one of the four solid boosters. (credit: ULA webcast)<\/p>\n
Leadership changes<\/p>\n
\nThe latest issue with Vulcan comes amid the first change in leadership at United Launch Alliance in more than a decade.\n<\/p>\n
\nOn December 22, ULA announced that its president and CEO, Tory Bruno, had resigned from the company for another, unnamed opportunity. The announcement took the industry by surprise, and perhaps even ULA itself: earlier that day the company had published the latest episode of its podcast \u201cThe Burn Sequence\u201d hosted by Bruno; the episode gave no indication that Bruno planned to leave the company he had led since 2014.\n<\/p>\n
\nFour days later, Blue Origin announced it hired Bruno as its new president of national security, leading a new National Security Group at the company.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe share a deep belief in supporting our nation with the best technology we can build,\u201d Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, said about hiring Bruno. \u201cTory brings unmatched experience, and I\u2019m confident he\u2019ll accelerate our ability to deliver on that mission.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nBruno said at the time of the announcement that he felt he had accomplished all his goals at ULA and was looking for new opportunities. \u201cI came to ULA to save it from closing back in 2017, field Vulcan, and put it on a solid path. Did that. My duty was complete,\u201d he wrote in one social media post. \u201cThere is a new set of national security capabilities that need to be created ASAP. Blue is the best place for me to serve that mission.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nSince joining Blue Origin, Bruno has kept a relatively low profile, but did participate in a webinar last month by the National Space Society that discussed his time at ULA and his decision to move to Blue Origin.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe recalled he was \u201cvery happy\u201d in a prior job at Lockheed Martin managing its missile work when he was asked to take over ULA. \u201cI\u2019ll be honest, I was a little reluctant at first,\u201d he said of the ULA opportunity.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cULA has Vulcan in service,\u201d Bruno said. \u201cThat meant I could go back and do these other things I\u2019ve been worrying about almost the entire time I was there: the missile defense problem and dynamic space operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHe said he took a \u201cgood hard look\u201d at ULA and concluded the company, a Boeing-Lockheed joint venture, was in jeopardy. \u201cThey were not prepared for the environment that had just changed around them,\u201d such as the rise of SpaceX and prohibitions on purchases of RD-180 rocket engines from Russia used by the Atlas 5.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI decided that I could help, and there probably weren\u2019t a lot of people who could or would be willing to take that on, so I felt obligated to do it,\u201d he concluded.\n<\/p>\n
\nULA\u2019s staff, he said, were in \u201ca state of denial\u201d when he joined about the state of the company. With the loss of access to the RD-180 and another vehicle, the Delta 4, \u201cnot in any way competitive,\u201d he said the company was in danger of closing. \u201cWhat that meant was that ULA would close at the end of 2017,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\nHe described efforts to simplify the company\u2019s product structure as well as its corporate structure, the latter involving laying off half its executives and, later, 30% of the company\u2019s overall workforce. He also pushed the company to develop a new launch vehicle, which would become Vulcan and finally make its debut in 2024.\n<\/p>\n
\nThat, he said, gave him the freedom to think about a future beyond the company. \u201cULA has Vulcan in service,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a great and robust technology improvement roadmap in front of them.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThat meant I could go back and do these other things I\u2019ve been worrying about almost the entire time I was there: the missile defense problem and dynamic space operations,\u201d he said. Joining Blue Origin, he said, allows him to tackle those \u201curgent\u201d issues, such as through the company\u2019s Blue Ring spacecraft under development.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cFor a long time, I\u2019ve been very concerned about that particular mission and wanted to do something about it,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is one of the reasons why I came to Blue Origin once I felt I was free to take a different path.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nWith Bruno\u2019s sudden departure, ULA turned to Elbon, its chief operating officer for the last eight years, to take over as acting CEO. But ULA had announced earlier in December that Elbon was retiring, and had named Mark Peller, who had been senior vice president for Vulcan and advanced programs, as the new COO.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI was actually planning on retiring in April. Mark and I had worked a transition, and we were on track,\u201d Elbon said at the briefing. The ULA board, he said, asked him to stay on as acting CEO while they look for a permanent successor.\n<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI agreed that I would do that as they go through the selection process for a new CEO and some period of transition, and then I plan to continue on with retiring,\u201d he said. The company hasn\u2019t given any indication of how long that selection process will take.\n<\/p>\n