ULA is expecting to fly its first modified Vulcan this summer, interim CEO John Elbon told Payload.
The upgrades will improve the performance of the nozzle and solid rocket boosters. The company was already planning the modifications before ULA suffered an anomaly with its Vulcan booster during a February mission for the Space Force.
“There were some changes that we actually had in the works before the anomaly, just to improve margins in the nozzle and solid rocket booster,” Elbon said. “So we’re accelerating those, and focusing on getting those into place sooner.”
Next steps: ULA is planning a static fire of the modified hardware at the end of April. The company, however, isn’t waiting for the results of that test to get started—Elbon said the first flight set of nozzles is already in production.
To the Moon: Elbon also discussed how recent changes to the Artemis program timeline are impacting ULA. NASA also announced last week that it would use ULA’s Centaur V upper stage (which also powers Vulcan) for lunar missions, starting with Artemis IV.
Elbon said ULA is studying how Centaur will need to be modified for SLS integration. Depending on the findings, it “could be relatively straightforward,” he said.
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Not many space companies want to reduce the world’s reliance on satellite infrastructure, but that’s the pitch that landed Australia-based Advanced Navigation a $110M Series C.
The company builds autonomous systems to maintain navigation in denied environments, such as when satellite GPS systems become unreliable—or in far out places like the Moon.
“The world’s reliance on any single navigation technology has evolved from a technical limitation into a systemic vulnerability,” CEO Chris Shaw said in a statement. “The future belongs to intelligent systems that can sense, adapt, and navigate independently.”
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