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ULA hasn’t given up on developing a long-lived cryogenic space tug
On Friday’s launch, United Launch Alliance will test the limits of its Centaur upper stage.
The second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, planned for Friday morning, has a primary goal of validating the launcher’s reliability for delivering critical US military satellites to orbit.
Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters Wednesday that he is “supremely confident” the Vulcan rocket will succeed in accomplishing that objective. The Vulcan’s second test flight, known as Cert-2, follows a near-flawless debut launch of ULA’s new rocket on January 8.
“As I come up on Cert-2, I’m pretty darn confident I’m going to have a good day on Friday, knock on wood,” Bruno said. “These are very powerful, complicated machines.”