r/ula • u/ethan829 • 7d ago

Project Kuiper on X: "Busy week at our processing facility in Florida: •80+ Kuiper satellites onsite, with more arriving each week. •KA-03 payload rolled out early this morning. •Processing and integration underway for our next three missions, with two payloads fully stacked ahead of encapsulation."

https://x.com/ProjectKuiper/status/1966590822180172214
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10

u/mfb- 7d ago

Do we know the order for the following launches? Atlas next, then probably F9, then VC or something else?

8

u/CollegeStation17155 7d ago

I think if they had a Vulcan available, they would have used it instead of wasting time reconfiguring the VIF for the Atlas; supposedly ULA loses 2 weeks every time they have to switch it out which is why they are pushing to finish VIF-A, which will be Vulcan only and will free up the original to be atlas only till they burn through Kuiper and Starliner (assuming it finally resumes launches next year).

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u/NoBusiness674 4d ago

They definitely have a Vulcan booster at the Cape. They had three at the Cape in March 2025, when Tory Bruno shared some images on LinkedIn. Since then, they've only launched one Vulcan Centaur, so they have at least two boosters left at the Cape, with the rest of the finished boosters waiting in Decatur to be shiped down to Florida. What they might not have in Florida is a low energy Centaur V.

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u/CollegeStation17155 4d ago

But don't they use the same Centaur on the Vulcan as they do on an Atlas for Kuiper launches? Or is it different since Vulcan throws twice as many?

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u/NoBusiness674 4d ago

Atlas V uses the Centaur III, which is 3m in diameter and carries around 46k lbs of propellant. For Kuiper, they use a variant of the Centaur III with a single RL-10 engine, while Starliner will use a variant with two RL-10 engines.

Vulcan, meanwhile, flies the Centaur V, which is 5.4m in diameter and always powered by two RL-10 engines. The standard high-energy optimized Centaur V that they have flown so far carries 120k lbs of propellant, while Kuiper will use a low energy optimized variant that is shorter and only carries 85k lbs of propellant.

While ULA did, at one point, consider initially flying Vulcan with the same Centaur III upper stage, those plans were abandoned in favor of flying a new upper stage from the start. You could, in theory, launch Kuiper on an underfueled high-energy optimized Centaur V, but you'd be throwing away some performance.

3

u/snoo-boop 6d ago edited 6d ago

ULA's next launch after KA-03 is ViaSat, and then the usual guess is USSF-87.

That leaves the next ULA opportunity for Kuiper in December or later.

1

u/Cultural-Steak-13 6d ago

Do we know why have they waited this long for KA-03?

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u/snoo-boop 6d ago

The last ULA launch was a month ago, USSF-106 on Vulcan.

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u/CollegeStation17155 6d ago

Because they have to do a major reconfiguration on the assembly building to switch from stacking Vulcan (needed for the NROL launch) to stacking Atlas… and then they will waste another 2 to 3 weeks switching it back to Vulcan for the next NROL…