United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur missile suffered an anomaly during its initiate today (Nov. 15), resulting in the defeat of 40 Amazon net satellites.
The Vulcan Centaur lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 12:40 pm ET (1740 GMT), hauling 40 satellites for the Amazon Leo broadband constellation toward low Earth orbit (LEO). But they never got there.
"Based on data received by our Launch Director, we verify that the Vulcan conveyance launched from Space Launch Complex 41 suffered an anomaly 10 minutes into the escape and unsuccessful to provision the Amazon goal to orbit," ULA stated in an update on X today, 50 minutes following launch. "Since the anomaly fair occurred, we don’t have any particular data yet to comprehend what occurred today."
Today's initiate was expected to be a bounce-back goal for the Vulcan Centaur, the successor to ULA's workhorse Atlas V rocket.
Vulcan debuted in January 2024 and had four total flights under its strap before today. On two of those missions — its second, in October 2024, and its fourth, in February of this year — the missile informed an matter alongside one of its firm missile boosters (SRBs).
In the two cases, an SRB nozzle burned through and cut off concerning 30 seconds following launch. Vulcan Centaur overcame the issue on the two launches, successfully delivering its payloads to their designated orbits. But the U.S. Space Force was concerned adequate that it decided to pause national safety launches on Vulcan until ULA addressed the problem. (Vulcan's third and fourth launches were Space Force missions.)
ULA worked difficult on that forefront and got Vulcan prepared to come back to flight, which eventually occurred today following nine months..
"The unified squad has made awesome strides in improving our understanding of the SRB anomaly that occurred on the former Vulcan escape and have identified multiple possible contributors, which have been mitigated through scheme and procedure improvements to the nozzle," the business stated in an Oct. 28 update.
That nozzle activity apparently paid off: The SRBs appeared to execute as expected during today's launch. But a different, additional grave issue cropped up today, and Vulcan Centaur could not conquer it.
Today's initiate was expected to assistance build out Amazon's broadband constellation in LEO, which was earlier called Project Kuiper but is now known as Amazon Leo. It volition eventually vie alongside SpaceX's Starlink network, which has been up and operating for multiple years.
Amazon Leo volition comprise of additional than 3,200 satellites. Before today, concerning 400 of them had reached area on 15 launches, which were conducted by three distinct rockets — the Atlas V, SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Arianespace's Ariane 6. Today's initiate was the archetypal specified goal for the Vulcan Centaur, which explains ULA's name for the initiate — Vulcan Leo 1.
The Amazon Leo initiate was part of a extremely occupied extend in spaceflight. SpaceX launched its Starship megarocket on Friday (Nov. 13), on a test mission that featured the first-ever catch of the vehicle's Ship high stage. And Rocket Lab launched its 100th-ever mission first Saturday dawn (Nov. 14), sending a personal Japanese Earth-observing moon to orbit.
Editor's note: This narrative was updated at 12:50 pm ET on Nov. 15 alongside news of liftoff, afterward again at 1:45 pm ET alongside news of the anomaly and defeat of the mission.
