This Week in Launch: Vulcan back for second flight

It will be another quiet week with SpaceX having yet another issue with its second stage. On Friday, SpaceX hopes to return, but the more exciting mission will be Vulcan‘s second flight, also on Friday. This mission will be its second and hopefully final certification flight for NASA and the Space Force.

This Week’s Launches

• October 4 (Friday)
  • SpaceX | Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 10-10 | 4:05 A.M. ET
    • SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
  • ULA | Vulcan | Cert-2 | 5:00 A.M. ET
    • SLC-41, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida

Quick Launch News

ESA shares update on Ariane 6’s first launch investigation and the board says there are no showstoppers for the rocket’s second flight. The new Ariane 6 performed well during its first launch back in July, with multiple successful relights of its second stage engine. One issue that appeared was an overheating trigger from a sensor that stopped the stage from performing its reentry burn. This issue is being fixed for future flights. [ESA]

Eutelsat signs multi-launch deal on Japan’s H3 rocket for its next-generation geostationary satellites. The company already has launch deals for its LEO OneWeb constellation, but it looks to be spreading the love to get contracts with as many providers as possible to ensure they can get a launch slot when needed. [SpaceNews]

FAA Administrator defends SpaceX fines and Starship delays over safety matters during a House subcommittee meeting. The Administrator believes its role is to promote safety and it’s doing that part. In response to questions about the FAA’s process needing to be revised to allow for more innovation, the Administrator pushed back, saying that SpaceX is a very innovative company but also a mature, 20-year-old company at the same time and needs to focus on safety. [Space News]

Starliner Crew’s return flight arrives at the ISS

Sunday afternoon, SpaceX’s Crew-9 inside Dragon Freedom arrived at the ISS after a roughly day-long trip in space. Launching Saturday afternoon, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were the only two crew members, opening up two seats for Starliner’s crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to return with them next spring.

Dragon-wise, there were no issues with the trip up to the station; however, SpaceX did share it ran into issues with its Falcon 9 second stage. “Falcon 9’s second stage was disposed of in the ocean as planned but experienced an off-nominal deorbit burn,” the company said on X.

Because of this issue, SpaceX is halting its launches until it finds a remedy for the problem.

The crew of Crew-9, which now includes Wilmore and Williams, will stay onboard for another six months before being relieved by Crew-10 in the spring. Crew-8, which launched early last spring, now has the ability to return once it gets Crew-9 up to speed.

Second Vulcan certification flight set for Friday

ULA‘s second Vulcan rocket is standing ready for launch from SLC-41 later this week. This mission will fly a dummy payload instead of the expected Sierra Space Dreamchaser due to delays.

The reason for the switch is for ULA to finally get certified by NASA and the U.S. Space Force, so it can fly national defense and science missions on its new rocket. Even with some commercially purchased flights by Amazon, catering to the federal government is still ULA’s bread and butter.

ULA is hoping to launch at least two more Vulcans this year that will carry payloads for the DoD. However, the Space Force is watching closely as Vulcan’s delays are causing concerns whether ULA will even be able to live up to its contract obligations.

Once the launch is complete, the Space Force says it will have a lot of data to go over before certifying the rocket for launch, which means those two NSSL launches that ULA wants to complete by year’s end might not even happen. But this will be faster than waiting on Dream Chaser to get ready for launch.