United Launch Alliance said it intends to return its Vulcan rocket to service on November 13, roughly nine months after a solid rocket booster anomaly disrupted the company's 2026 launch plans. The company announced the target date on Wednesday, and the launch is still pending range approval.
The comeback mission will carry 40 satellites for Amazon's Leo broadband constellation. It is the first of 38 Vulcan flights that Amazon has booked to put the bulk of its network in orbit. The rocket will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The flight carries high stakes for ULA. Vulcan, the company's new flagship rocket, has suffered nozzle failures on its solid rocket boosters on two of its first four missions, the latest during a flight in February. In both cases the rocket overcame the problem and completed its mission. Even so, officials at the US Space Force, ULA's main customer, lost confidence in the vehicle.
Those officials are expected to watch the return-to-flight mission closely. The Pentagon has relied on Vulcan for roughly half of its major launches through the early 2030s. The Space Force certified the rocket for national security missions in 2025 and flew two missions on it before the February booster incident led to a grounding.
In a statement, ULA said its engineers have "made great strides" in understanding what went wrong with the booster in February. The company said they "have identified several potential contributors, which have been mitigated through design and process improvements to the nozzle."
ULA also said the upcoming launch will use the improved nozzle design, while additional testing and analysis continue in parallel with the mission. "By flying the improved design, ULA gains valuable flight data that validates these improvements and is the most beneficial path in support of all our customers," the company said.
If the launch proceeds as planned, it will mark Vulcan's first flight since the February anomaly and a key test of whether the nozzle fixes can restore confidence among both government and commercial customers.
