The United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rocket is scheduled to fly its first military space launch next week, pending range approval. The mission, USSF-106, will lift off on August 12 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and carry Space Force satellites destined for geosynchronous orbit.
The milestone marks a significant development for ULA, which has been working on the Vulcan rocket since 2014 to replace its legacy Atlas V vehicle. The company has already completed two demonstration missions last year and achieved military certification from the Space Force in March.
ULA shares this launch opportunity with SpaceX, another certified provider of National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions. However, SpaceX’s share of these contracts decreased from 40% to around 25% after ULA maintained its share.
Recently, the Space Force awarded contracts worth $13.5 billion to ULA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin for missions between fiscal years 2027 and 2032. The Vulcan mission will carry an experimental spacecraft called Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), which aims to demonstrate new capabilities for augmenting the Space Force’s GPS constellation or supporting a future program.
The NTS-3 spacecraft will test technologies like steerable beams, reprogrammable payloads, and protections against signal jamming. After launch, the Air Force Research Laboratory will conduct a one-year experiment on board NTS-3 to explore new satellite configurations that could strengthen the Space Force’s positioning, navigation, and timing capabilities.
This mission marks a significant milestone for the Air Force Research Laboratory, which has not conducted a major PNT demonstration since 1977.
Source: https://www.defensenews.com/space/2025/08/06/new-vulcan-rocket-to-fly-first-military-mission-next-week