Updated 6 p.m. Eastern with additional details on nozzle anomaly.
WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance’s second Vulcan Centaur lifted off Oct. 4 on a test flight needed to certify the vehicle for carrying national security payloads, but may have suffered a problem with one of its solid rocket boosters.
The Vulcan Centaur lifted off at 7:25 a.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The liftoff took place near the middle of a three-hour launch window after an initial half-hour delay to provide additional time for pre-launch checks.
The first countdown attempt was halted 1 minute and 51 seconds before liftoff. Tory Bruno, chief executive of ULA, said on social media that a “transient on a redundant data system” triggered the hold, and controllers resolved the issue and reset the countdown for the second attempt, which resulted in liftoff.
ULA said that the vehicle’s performance was nominal in the early stages of flight. However, the separation of the two GEM 63XL solid rocket boosters (SRB) took place nearly 30 seconds later than the timeline the company provided before launch. About 35 seconds after liftoff, there appeared to be material coming off one of the boosters, whose plume changed appearance, suggesting damage to the SRB’s nozzle.
ULA did not mention the incident during the ascent, but the timing of subsequent events, including separation of the booster and the shutdown of the Centaur upper stage’s engines after an initial burn, were behind the timeline by up to 20 seconds.
The Centaur completed its second burn about 35 minutes after liftoff, which concluded the main phase of the flight. ULA planned to continue operations of the stage for some time after that to perform experiments with the Centaur.
“We did have an observation on SRB number one, and…
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