Overview

• Vulcan Centaur, certified for NSSL missions in March, is scheduled to lift U.S. Space Force’s USSF-106 payloads from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-41 this evening.
• The VC4S configuration will employ four Northrop Grumman solid rocket boosters to inject the declared and classified satellites directly into geosynchronous orbit.
• The primary payload, NTS-3, will run over 100 experiments to test advanced PNT technologies including electronically steerable arrays, anti-spoofing signals and reprogrammable on-orbit software.
• Space Systems Command has labeled NTS-3 as the “primary payload,” and officials have neither confirmed nor detailed additional classified companion payloads.
• ULA faces a backlog of 25 Vulcan NSSL missions and aims to boost its launch cadence above 30 flights per year by 2027 to meet national-security and commercial demands.