The United Launch Alliance’s eagerly awaited return-to-flight of the Vulcan rocket today did not go as planned. An anomaly 10 minutes after launch meant the 40 Amazon Leo satellites did not reach orbit. ULA is investigating what went wrong. It is the first total failure in ULA’s history.
This was just the fifth launch of Vulcan since the first in January 2024 . That was a great success, but since then only one other launch, the third , went as planned.
On flights two and four , in 2024 and 2026 respectively, nozzles on the Northrop Grumman Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) malfunctioned. Although Vulcan’s core stage compensated for the underperformance and delivered the payloads to their intended destinations, the U.S. Space Force has been hesitant to use Vulcan for its most precious satellites. Several launches have been shifted to SpaceX, although the intent is to reassign some SpaceX missions back to ULA to keep the number of launches per company the same.
ULA has a large backlog of commercial satellite orders including many for Amazon’s satellite internet constellation Amazon Leo. Today was intended to demonstrate Vulcan is ready for both commercial and government payloads. Vulcan is replacing ULA’s Delta and Atlas V rockets. The final Delta IV launched in 2024 . Six Atlas Vs remain, but are under contract to Boeing for Starliner.
Today’s launch was originally scheduled for Friday, but scrubbed by a pump failure at Air Liquide’s gaseous nitrogen (GN2) plant. Rescheduled for yesterday, that was postponed due to a network communication issue between ground equipment and the launch vehicle. Today’s liftoff at 12:11 pm ET slipped to the end of the 29-minute window because of oscillations in a liquid hydrogen pressure relief valve.
Vulcan finally launched at 12:40:30 pm ET and everything appeared nominal at first. All six SRBs seemed to perform as planned and separated from the core stage as expected.
And LIFTOFF of the first Vulcan Amazon Leo mission, carrying 40 broadband satellites to low Earth orbit! https://t.co/dv1MSjJUMF
— ULA (@ulalaunch) November 15, 2026
But 10 minutes into flight, something went wrong. ULA posted this statement on X (@ulalaunch) at 1:30 pm ET.
Based on data received by our Launch Director, we confirm that the Vulcan vehicle launched from Space Launch Complex 41 suffered an anomaly 10 minutes into the flight and failed to deliver the Amazon mission to orbit.
Every flight generates data, and every flight teaches us something. Since the anomaly just occurred, we don’t have any specific data yet to understand what occurred today.
ULA exists to provide assured access to space for our nation and for the customers who depend on us. That purpose is why we take on some of the hardest missions in spaceflight, and why we hold ourselves to the standard of mission success. Today, we did not meet that standard.
We will work closely with our customer and other appropriate organizations to find the cause, determine the appropriate corrective action, and return to flight as quickly as possible.
ULA is committed to full transparency with our customers, and they will have visibility into the investigation process, which utilizes rigorous methodology and corrective action.
We will provide further updates when new information becomes available.
ULA’s Atlas V rockets have an enviable 100 percent mission success record so far. The Delta IV series had a 100 percent success rate for Delta IV Medium across 29 launches, and Delta IV Heavy experienced one failure in 16 launches. That was its first flight in 2004 and counts as a partial failure since the payloads were delivered into orbit, but lower than planned.
That makes this the first ULA total failure since the company was formed in 2006 as a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
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