NASA will return its moon rocket to the hangar
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Moments after liftoff from Florida’s Space Coast early Thursday morning, a shower of sparks emerged in the exhaust plume of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. Seconds later, the rocket twisted on its axis before recovering and continuing the climb into orbit with a batch of US military satellites.
SpaceX launches from the Cape may have to wait, as a Monday SpaceX launch out of California experienced a second stage malfunction.
The booster anomaly resulted in months of delays before the Space Force finally gave ULA the green light to begin launching its missions. Vulcan launched its first military payload in August 2025, carrying an experimental navigation satellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, called NTS-3, to geostationary orbit.