United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Friday. It was the vehicle's first flight since a solid rocket booster anomaly grounded it earlier this year. The company said the payload was deployed into its planned orbit and the redesigned boosters performed as expected.

The launch closed a months-long stand-down for the Colorado-based joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Vulcan suffered a nozzle failure on one of its Northrop Grumman GEM 63XL strap-on boosters during an October 2024 certification flight. A further booster anomaly during a national security mission in early 2026 prompted a fresh investigation and grounded the rocket.

Engineers at ULA and Northrop Grumman spent the intervening months on changes to the booster nozzle and on additional ground testing in Utah, according to the companies. ULA said telemetry from Friday's flight showed all four boosters burned nominally before separating. The rocket's two Blue Origin BE-4 first-stage engines and its Centaur V upper stage also performed as planned, the company said.

A clean flight matters well beyond ULA. The US Space Force had moved several GPS and other national security missions to SpaceX's Falcon 9 during Vulcan's grounding, leaving the Pentagon reliant on a single provider for much of its critical launch work. Amazon, which has booked dozens of Vulcan launches for its Amazon Leo broadband constellation, had needed a dependable cadence to meet a Federal Communications Commission deadline to deploy half its satellites, but the agency waived that deadline in June.

ULA has said it aims to fly Vulcan far more frequently in 2027, though it has repeatedly fallen short of past cadence targets. The Space Force is expected to review data from Friday's flight before clearing the rocket to resume assigned national security missions. Analysts at firms including Quilty Space have said that review will determine how quickly ULA can work through its backlog of more than 70 contracted launches.