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WASHINGTON — Northrop Grumman said April 21 it took a $71 million charge in its fiscal first quarter linked to an anomaly with a solid rocket booster that has grounded the Vulcan Centaur rocket.
In a statement about its first-quarter financial results, the company said its Space Systems division recorded a $71 million “unfavorable adjustment” to earnings at completion on its GEM 63XL booster “associated with a launch anomaly that occurred during the first quarter.”
The GEM 63XL solid-fuel booster is used on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. On a Feb. 12 launch, one of four boosters shed debris about 65 seconds after liftoff. The “observation,” as ULA termed it initially, did not affect the success of the USSF-87 mission, placing its payload into its planned geosynchronous orbit.
ULA later called the incident a “significant performance anomaly” with the booster that it would investigate before returning Vulcan to flight. The vehicle has not launched since then.
Northrop’s earnings statement did not provide any additional information about the issue with the GEM 63XL, and company executives mentioned it only in passing during an earnings call. In its 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission April 21, Northrop said the charge was for “the evaluation and implementation of corrective actions for a solid rocket motor anomaly that occurred during a Q1 2026 launch.”
Space Force officials said at the recent 41st Space Symposium that there was no timeline for returning Vulcan to flight. The service was working with both Northrop and ULA to determine the root cause of the anomaly seen in the February launch, with some “test activities” planned in the near future.
The Space Force added it was considering returning Vulcan to flight in a configuration where it does not use any GEM 63XL boosters. In that configuration, it could launch some low-energy missions that do not require the additional thrust the boosters provide, such as payloads for the Space Development Agency’s constellations of missile-tracking and communications satellites.
“If it doesn’t rely on solids, there’s no reason why we can’t launch,” said Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Systems Command.
The February launch was the second time in four missions that a GEM 63XL booster suffered an issue. On Vulcan’s second flight, Cert-2 in October 2024, the nozzle of one of two boosters detached about 35 seconds into the flight. An investigation blamed the incident on a manufacturing defect in an insulator within the nozzle.
That led to changes to the nozzle design implemented before Vulcan’s next launch in August 2025. “Those are complete and behind us,” John Elbon, acting chief executive of ULA, said in a call with reporters just before the USSF-87 launch.