ULA offloads first Vulcan rocket at Vandenberg at it preps its next Cape launch

United Launch Alliance is staging rockets at launch complexes on both the West Coast and the East Coast for the first time since November 2022.

On Tuesday, the company announced the arrival of its transport barge, called the R/S Rocket Ship, at a port at Vandenberg Space Force Base. There it offloaded the booster and upper stages for the first Vulcan rocket that will fly from California. 

After loading up with flight hardware from ULA’s rocket manufacturing plant in Decatur, Alabama, in December, the vessel made its way down to Port Canaveral in Florida. After that, it then set sail for California in early January.

In a statement to Spaceflight Now, the U.S. Space Force’s System Delta 80 (SYD 80) said the first planned Vulcan mission from Space Launch Complex 3 (SLC-3) is the Space Development Agency’s T1TR-B (Tranche 1 Tracking Layer B) mission. A spokesperson notes thought that “the manifest is continually evolving,” so that may change.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, the company hoisted the payload for the USSF-87 mission onto a different Vulcan rocket inside its Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41).

“Launching atop the rocket, as the forward spacecraft, is the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman, launching to GEO with an ascending node injection to improve our ability to rapidly detect, warn, characterize and attribute disturbances to space systems in the geosynchronous environment,” ULA wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

“The Aft [space vehicle], provided by Northrop Grumman, is a propulsed ESPA (EELV Secondary Payload Adapter) flying multiple payloads launching into a direct inject GEO orbit.”

A SYD 80 spokesperson described the secondary payloads on the mission as “research, development, and training systems that USSF Guardians are using to refine tactics, techniques and procedures for precision on-orbit maneuvers.”

“They will also enhance and validate resiliency and protection in geosynchronous orbit,” a SYD 80 spokesperson said.

ULA is targeting a launch of the USSF-87 mission no earlier than Feb. 12. As is typical for a mission with payloads concerning national security, a launch time won’t be announced until closer to liftoff.

The company has been working towards reestablishing its West Coast launch capabilities since its final Atlas 5 rocket took off from SLC-3 on Nov. 10, 2022. It carried the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS)-2 satellite for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) along with a technology demonstration for NASA and ULA called the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID).

After that final flight, ULA began converting that pad from an Atlas 5 configuration to one dedicated to its Vulcan rocket. Former ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno previously said that work out west faced challenges due to supply chain constraints, but those were worked out over time.

Part of the work needed at Vandenberg was dredging the harbor to allow for the RocketShip barge to safely offload flight hardware. Also, unlike launches at SLC-41 in Florida where the rocket rolls out to the pad from the VIF, at SLC-3 ULA is using a Mobile Service Tower (MST) that will roll back away from the rocket ahead of flight.