ULA announces fixes needed before 1st Vulcan Centaur launch
There’s still work to be done, but United Launch Alliance announced a path forward to finally get its new Vulcan Centaur rocket to its first launch.
The company sent an update Saturday announcing it had figured out what went wrong, and what needs fixing at its Alabama test facility this spring that resulted in a fireball that damaged a test article of the Centaur V upper stage.
“Centaur’s thin-walled pressure stabilized tanks require minor reinforcement at the top of the forward dome prior to flight,” the company stated in a press release.
That means the Centaur currently mated to the Vulcan first stage at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that is tapped to fly on that rocket’s first mission has to head back to Alabama to get that reinforcement.
The first and second stages recently completed a Flight Readiness Firing test at Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41, and ULA said results of that hot fire hit all of the test objectives.
But now teams will de-stack the combined rocket and send Centaur V to ULA’s Decatur, Alabama facility for the fix while the first-stage booster will be stored at ULA’s Horizontal Integration Facility at Canaveral waiting for its return.