WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance (ULA) tonight is slated to launch its first Vulcan mission under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, carrying an experimental satellite to demonstration new technologies for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).
The Vulcan heavy-lifter will carry two military payloads directly to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) at about 36,000 kilometers (22,369.36 miles) from the Earth’s surface, said ULA CEO Tory Bruno.
Speaking to reporters on Aug. 7, he explained that Vulcan was specifically designed for the Space Force to take on this “tough mission” of direct-inject into GEO — rather than the more common method of launching satellites into a lower transfer orbit and then maneuvering them into place using small thrusters.
Bruno did not elaborate on the payloads to be lofted on the USSF-1006 mission.
Despite ULA’s assertion, a senior Space Force official speaking at a media briefing Monday would not even confirm the fact of a second payload alongside the officially announced Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NST-3).
“I’ll just say that any further details beyond NTS-3 are not releasable to the public,” said Col. Jim Horne, Space Systems Command mission director.
That said, a Space Systems Command press release issued Monday evening called NST-3 the launch’s “primary payload,” suggesting that a secondary payload or payloads also were aboard. In addition, it would be unusual — if not questionable from a cost perspective — for a lifter with the payload capacity of Vulcan configuration to be used (some 4,900 kilograms, or 10,800 pounds) to carry only a satellite weighing slightly more than 1,200 kilograms (2,645 pounds).
NTS-3 was built by L3Harris for the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), with a total cost of about $250 million. It was originally slated to launch in 2022, but was delayed due to Vulcan’s own teething troubles and long-delayed flight certification for the NSSL program.
NTS-3 “is the DoD’s first experimental navigation satellite in 48 years. The last one was NT-2 launched in 1977 so at the lab, we think that we are overdue for the experiment in this area,” Joanna Hicks, senior research aerospace engineer for AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate, said during the briefing.
The satellite will undertake about 100 different experiments over the next year, she said.
New technologies being assessed include an electronically steered phased-array antenna, that Hicks said would enable the Space Force to “deliver higher power to get through interference to the location where it’s needed.”
The NST-3 also will be testing out “advanced signals,” she said, including a new signal for non-military users called CHIMERA that “protects civil users from spoofing.”
Andrew Builta, vice president for strategy and business development and program management excellence at L3Harris Space and Airborne Systems, said that NTS-3 also is “the first satellite to support simultaneous GPS broadcast and receipt.
“One of the things that this enables is extended autonomous operation without ground contact,” he added.
Hicks explained that while NTS-3 will be stationed in GEO and current GPS satellites are in medium Earth orbit (MEO), all the experiments are applicable to PNT birds in any orbit.
The Space Force is already considering whether satellites in other orbits might work for PNT and thus provide backup or even alternatives to GPS when those relatively low-power signals are being unavailable due to terrain, unintentional interference, or deliberate jamming and spoofing. For example, the Space Development Agency intends to test PNT solutions on its planned constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO).
“One of the things that NTS-3 is testing is … the multi-orbit constellation concept,” Hicks said. “So can we receive signals from NTS-3 at GEO as well as GPS at MEO, and take advantage of all of them? Maybe in the future, we’ll be able to put some of these technologies in LEO, for example. We don’t currently have that as a planned mission, but that’s something that that could conceivably happen in the future.”
The Vulcan Centaur V upper stage is powered by four solid rocket boosters to achieve the direct GEO inject, explained Gary Wentz, ULA vice president for government and commercial programs. This is in contrast to the two boosters used by the Centaur during Vulcan’s two NSSL certification missions, he told reporters during the briefing.
“This will be the most powerful Vulcan yet. So as you’re aware, we’ve flown two Vulcans up to today, both with two solid motors. This will have four side-mounted solid motors,” Wentz said.
The Centaur was designed to be able to use up to six of the GEM 63XL solid rocket boosters built by Northrop Grumman, alongside the two main BE-4 engines provided by Blue Origin. According to ULA, a fully-powered Vulcan Centaur can carry up to 6,500 kilograms to GEO.
However, Wentz said ULA has yet to get full Space Force certification to use that heaviest variant.
The Space Force has ordered 25 Vulcan NSSL Phase 2 missions from ULA, Horne said.
The service orders launches two years in advance, so NSSL Phase 2 covers launches between fiscal 2022 and 2026. Wentz said that ULA also has two Space Force orders for Vulcan launches under NSSL Phase 3, which covers launches between FY27 and 2031.
Carley Welch contributed to this story.
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Author: Theresa Hitchens
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