United Launch Alliance (ULA) will launch its most powerful Vulcan rocket yet today (Aug. 12), and you can watch the liftoff live.
ULA will launch an experimental navigation satellite on behalf of the U.S. military during a one-hour launch window that opens at 7:59 p.m. ET (2359 GMT) on Tuesday (Aug. 12). The mission will see the company’s powerful new Vulcan Centaur rocket take off from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Weather forecasts predict around a 75% chance of favorable conditions at launch time.
Vulcan will launch with four side-mounted solid rocket boosters in order to generate enough thrust to launch its payload directly into geosynchronous orbit on one of ULA’s longest flights ever, a seven-hour journey that will span over 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometers), according to ULA.
The payload launching on today’s mission is the U.S. military’s first experimental navigation satellite to be launched in 48 years. It is what’s known as a position, navigation and timing (PNT) satellite, providing data similar to that of the well-known GPS system.
This satellite will be testing many experimental new technologies that are designed to make it resilient to jamming and spoofing, according to Andrew Builta with L3Harris Technologies, the prime contractor for the PNT payload integrated onto a satellite bus built by Northrop Grumman.
The satellite, identified publicly only as Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), features a phased array antenna that allows it to “focus powerful beams to ground forces and combat jamming environments,” Builta said in a media roundtable on Aug. 11. GPS jamming has become an increasingly worrisome problem for both the U.S. military and commercial satellite operators, which is why this spacecraft will be conducting experiments to test how effective these new technologies are at circumventing jamming attacks.
In addition, the satellite features a software architecture that allows it to be reprogrammed while in orbit. “This is a truly game-changing capability,” Builta added.
The 202-foot (61-meter) Vulcan Centaur has made two successful flights thus far. The rocket’s first flight in January 2024 saw Vulcan launch Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander toward the moon — only for the lander to suffer an anomaly and fall back to Earth through no fault of the rocket.
The second Vulcan Centaur launch took place in October 2024 when the rocket launched a mass simulator meant to prepare it for lofting Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser space plane. That flight was supposed to launch the actual Dream Chaser, but the vehicle wasn’t ready in time.
That second flight also saw an anomaly. About 39 seconds into flight, a burst of flame and material was seen emanating from the rocket. The anomaly was later attributed to a manufacturing defect on a nozzle on one of the rocket’s solid side boosters.
Despite the anomaly during the second flight, the U.S. Space Force certified Vulcan Centaur for national security launches such as today’s mission. That brings the number of launch providers certified to launch military and spy satellites to two, the other being SpaceX.
Vulcan Centaur has already been tapped to launch over two dozen national security missions on behalf of the U.S. Space Force, according to ULA. The rocket can launch from both Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force stations.
