Update: United Launch Alliance has delayed the launch of its Vulcan Centaur rocket to Saturday (Nov. 14) at 12:32 p.m. ET (1732 GMT) due to a power issue in a liquid gaseous nitrogen factory that pumps propellant into the rocket. "The vehicle and spacecraft are healthy," ULA wrote in an update on X.
United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket will fly on Saturday (Nov. 14) for the first time in nine months, and you can watch the action live.
A Vulcan Centaur topped with 40 Amazon Leo internet satellites is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Nov. 14 at 12:32 p.m. ET (1732 GMT).
You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of ULA, or directly via the company. Coverage will start 20 minutes before liftoff.
ULA's second Vulcan Centaur rocket lifts off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 4, 2024. (Image credit: ULA)Vulcan Centaur is the successor to ULA's workhorse Atlas V rocket, which has just a half-dozen launches left on its manifest.
Vulcan debuted in January 2024 and has flown three more times since. On two of those missions — its second, in October 2024, and its fourth, in February of this year — the rocket experienced an issue with one of its solid rocket boosters (SRBs).
In both cases, an SRB nozzle burned through and fell off about 30 seconds after launch. Vulcan Centaur overcame the problem on both launches, successfully delivering its payloads to their designated orbits. But the U.S. Space Force was concerned enough that it decided to pause national security launches on Vulcan until ULA addresses the problem. (Vulcan's third and fourth launches were Space Force missions.)
ULA has been working hard on that front, and the company is confident that Vulcan is ready to return to flight.
"The integrated team has made great strides in improving our understanding of the SRB anomaly that occurred on the previous Vulcan flight and have identified several potential contributors, which have been mitigated through design and process improvements to the nozzle," the company said in an Oct. 28 update.
"To support our customers, this upcoming launch will utilize the improved nozzle design, and additional testing and analysis will continue in parallel with the mission," ULA added. "By flying the improved design, ULA gains valuable flight data that validates these improvements and is the most beneficial path in support of all our customers."
Saturday's launch will help build out Amazon's broadband constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which was previously called Project Kuiper but is now known as Amazon Leo. It will eventually compete with SpaceX's Starlink network, which has been up and running for several years.
Amazon Leo will eventually consist of more than 3,200 satellites. About 400 of them have reached space to date on 15 launches, which have been conducted by three different rockets — the Atlas V, SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Arianespace's Ariane 6. Today's launch will be the first such mission for the Vulcan Centaur, which explains ULA's name for the launch — Vulcan Leo 1.
If all goes according to plan Saturday, Vulcan Centaur will deploy the 40 Amazon Leo satellites over a 25-minute span beginning about 70 minutes after launch. They'll be released roughly 270 miles (435 kilometers) above our planet.
The Amazon Leo launch could be part of a very busy 12-hour stretch. SpaceX plans to launch its Starship megarocket on Friday (Nov. 13), on a test mission that will feature the first-ever catch attempt of the vehicle's Ship upper stage. And Rocket Lab is scheduled to launch its 100th-ever mission at 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT) on Saturday (Nov. 14).
You can watch all of this action live here at Space.com when the time comes.