In an announcement today, United Launch Alliance stated that Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is off of the second flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

Statement from United Launch Alliance, June 26, 2024

On the X platform today, ULA said “We have been working closely with our current VulcanRocket Cert2 customer, Sierra Space, and while ULA will be ready to fly, Sierra Space has shared that they are making excellent progress with Dream Chaser but have schedule risk to fly by that time.”

They added, “Based on this delay and urgent national security needs, we are prioritizing the Cert2 mission to enable certification to launch our first National Security Space mission.

“We plan to fly an inert payload, experiments, and demonstrations the #Cert2 mission.

“We are working with Sierra Space to identify the next available launch date.”

ULA concluded that they are “[A]ware of the heightened threat environment the nation is facing in space and takes seriously the critical responsibility of launching essential National Security Space satellite assets to orbit promptly.”

For their part, at the time of this writing, Sierra Space has made no statement regarding the matter.

The move, however, makes a lot of sense for all parties: ULA needs to fly Vulcan a second time successfully to achieve certification from the Department of Defense to fly national security payloads aboard Vulcan. That in turn would allow ULA to fulfill its contracted obligations and to get its backlogged manifest of DoD launches in process.

ULA has received the booster for Vulcan CERT-2, and it is being processed at the company’s facilities in Florida, but it has yet to announce a target launch date for the vehicle.

For Sierra Space, the move relieves schedule pressure to some degree and allows them time to focus on ensuring that no stones are left unturned in the lead-up to Dream Chaser’s maiden spaceflight. Given that the Tenacity spacecraft that will fly the mission is also planned to be re-used, its critical for Sierra to have a successful launch and landing of the spacecraft.