United Launch Alliances’s CERT-2 flight launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 7:25 AM EDT this morning. Almost immediately from the point of launch, observers noticed that something didn’t look quite right as Vulcan booster rose from the pad.
Though the dummy payload did achieve orbit, it appears that one of the two solid rocket boosters (SRB’s) experienced a nozzle failure, spewing a plume of fire and gas in a much broader pattern than would normally be expected from an SRB. An SRB failure can potentially prove catastrophic for such a launch, in that once ignited, they can not be “turned off”. It was hot gasses leaking from an SRB toward the external fuel tank that caused the Challenger Space Shuttle to explode just over 70 seconds from liftoff in 1986.
Despite the booster anomaly, ULA hailed the launch as a success in a post on their website this morning, noting “We had an observation on one of our solid rocket boosters (SRB) that we are reviewing but overall, we are pleased with the rocket’s performance and had a bullseye insertion” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO.
