What Is ULA’s SMART Reuse?

The Reusability Question in Modern Spaceflight

For the first six decades of the space age, rockets were magnificent, single-use machines. They were the products of a government-driven market where cost was secondary to assured access and national capability. A launch vehicle, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in design and manufacturing, would thunder to life, perform its task for a few minutes, and then be discarded, its components falling back to Earth to be destroyed in the atmosphere or sink to the ocean floor. It was an industry model akin to building a new Boeing 747 for every single flight from New York to London and then pushing it into the Atlantic upon arrival.

This model was sustained by a stable, predictable manifest of large government satellites for defense and exploration. Launch providers like United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of aerospace titans Boeing and Lockheed Martin, built an unparalleled record of reliability with its workhorse Atlas V and Delta IV rockets.

But in the 2010s, the market fundamentally changed. The rise of new, private competitors, most notably SpaceX, introduced a new and disruptive variable: aggressive, commercial-style price competition. These new entrants didn’t just want to launch rockets; they wanted to fundamentally change the economics of spaceflight. Their entire business model was predicated on dramatically lowering the cost-per-kilogram to orbit.

Suddenly, expendability – once the standard cost of doing business – became a liability. The entire launch industry was forced to confront a new reality. Reliability was no longer enough; cost was now a primary driver. The central theme of this new space race became reusability.

This shift ignited a “lively debate” within the aerospace community, not just over the technical feasibility of reuse, but over its economic viability. The lessons of the Space Shuttle loomed large. The Shuttle was a reusable system, but its extensive refurbishment needs – including individually inspecting thermal tiles and overhauling its main engines after every flight – made it phenomenally expensive to operate. The Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) were recovered from the ocean, but the saltwater contamination required them to be completely disassembled, cleaned, and refurbished, a costly and labor-intensive process.

The new reusability debate centered on a core question: do the savings from reusing hardware outweigh the combined costs of research and development, the recovery operations themselves, the extensive refurbishment, and, most importantly, any negative impact on the rocket’s performance?

It was in this high-pressure environment that ULA, the industry’s established leader, had to devise its own answer. To compete in this new market, it was developing a next-generation rocket called the Vulcan Centaur. And to make that rocket economically competitive, it would need its own unique, and characteristically methodical, approach to reuse.

ULA’s Strategic Answer: Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology

ULA’s answer to the reusability challenge is a system named SMART: Sensible, Modular, Autonomous Return Technology. First announced in 2015, this system is a core part of the long-term plan for ULA’s Vulcan rocket. It’s not just a piece of hardware; it’s a completely different philosophy, a non-propulsive approach designed from the ground up to be an economic alternative to the propulsive-landing methods used by its competitors.

The name itself is a declaration of the system’s core logic.

“Sensible” is the most important word in the acronym. It represents ULA’s entire strategic argument. When the market shifted, ULA’s engineers performed a systems analysis, asking a simple, pragmatic question: what parts of the rocket are actually valuable? The single most expensive components of any rocket are its main engines. These are incredibly complex, high-performance turbomachines that represent the pinnacle of modern manufacturing. The sophisticated avionics package, the rocket’s “brain,” is also extremely valuable. ULA’s analysis concluded that this engine and avionics module accounts for approximately 65% of the entirebooster’s cost.

The rest of the booster stage – the long, relatively simple aluminum propellant tanks – is, by comparison, “relatively inexpensive.” The “sensible” approach, ULA concluded, was to recover only the high-value components and discard the cheap, bulky tanks. This philosophy was a direct, public counter-argument to the competitor’s approach of recovering the entire first stage. ULA’s leadership was openly skeptical of that method, pointing to the “complex, expensive, heavy and performance-killing subsystems” it required, such as heavy landing legs, grid fins, and large reserves of fuel.

The choice of the word “Sensible” was a deliberate and calculated piece of strategic messaging. In the midst of a public debate about the best path forward, ULA was implicitly framing the alternative as less sensible. It was a clear statement of their engineering trade-off: recovering 65% of the booster’s cost for a minimal performance hit was, in their view, a smarter business decision than recovering 100% of the stage for a massive performance penalty.

“Modular” describes the system’s architecture. SMART is not just the engines; it’s a self-contained unit. The entire aft section of the Vulcan booster – which includes its two Blue Origin BE-4 main engines, the avionics, and the thrust structure that bears the force of launch – is designed as a single module. This “booster module” is engineered to be detached cleanly from the main propellant tanks after its job is done. This entire, car-sized module is the piece that will be returned to Earth.

“Autonomous” defines how the system operates. The “Autonomous Return Technology” means that from the moment of separation, the module is on its own. It’s a robotic vehicle. It manages its own fiery re-entry and subsequent descent. This autonomy is most critical during the final phase, when a “guided parafoil” system takes over. This is not a simple parachute; it’s a steerable wing that will use its own onboard navigation to actively fly the module to a precise, pre-determined rendezvous point in the sky.

“Return Technology” is the hardware package that makes it all possible. It’s a suite of advanced systems that includes an inflatable hypersonic heat shield to survive re-entry, the autonomous guided parafoil to slow down and steer, and, in the final and most dramatic step, a mid-air capture system.

Together, these four elements define ULA’s unique path: a “sensible,” non-propulsive recovery of a high-value “module,” which uses “autonomous” guidance to enable its “return” to Earth, not by landing, but by being caught in mid-air.

The Economic Case for Engine-Only Recovery

The decision to pursue engine-only recovery is rooted entirely in a complex set of economic and performance calculations. It’s a business case built on three main pillars: maximizing the value recovered, minimizing the performance lost, and radically reducing the downstream costs of refurbishment.

First is the focus on “targeting the true value.” The main engines are the rocket’s crown jewels. On the Vulcan rocket, this means the two BE-4 engines developed by Blue Origin. These are powerful, reusable-by-design engines. They are fueled by liquefied natural gas (LNG), or methane, which is a major advantage for reuse. Unlike older kerosene-based propellants that can “coke,” or leave behind sooty, hard-to-clean residue, methane burns very cleanly. This property simplifies the decontamination and inspection process, making it easier and cheaper to prepare the engines for their next flight.

By recovering the module containing these engines and the avionics, ULA believes it can save up to 90% of the booster propulsion cost. Since that module accounts for 65% of the total booster cost, this single maneuver captures the vast majority of the economic benefit of reuse. ULA is, in effect, throwing away the 35% of the booster cost (the “cheap” tanks) to make the recovery of the 65% (the “valuable” engines) as simple and efficient as possible.

The second and most important pillar of the economic case is the “payload penalty debate.” In rocketry, mass is everything. A rocket’s entire purpose is to lift a payload (a satellite) to orbit. Any mass it must carry that isn’t payload is a “penalty.” This includes the rocket’s own structure, fuel, and, in the case of reusability, any hardware needed for recovery. This “lost performance” is a direct hit to the rocket’s bottom line, as it dictates how much weight it can carry, or how far it can carry it.

A propulsive landing, the method used by competitors, incurs a very heavy payload penalty. To return to Earth, a booster must reserve a large portion of its propellant load. This fuel isn’t used for the mission; it’s saved for three separate, performance-killing rocket burns: a “boostback” burn to reverse its trajectory, a “re-entry” burn to slow its arrival in the atmosphere, and a final “landing” burn to touch down softly. In addition to this fuel, the booster must also carry heavy landing legs, steering grid fins, and a strengthened structure to withstand landing. This combination of dead weight and reserved fuel can reduce a rocket’s maximum payload capacity by 30% to 40%.

ULA’s SMART system is a “non-propulsive approach,” which is its single greatest advantage. The Vulcan booster is designed to burn all of its propellant to maximize mission performance. It doesn’t save a single drop for landing. The recovery hardware – the packed inflatable heat shield, the parachutes, the GNC system – still adds some mass, but it is a fraction of what propulsive landing requires. One analysis estimated that a full-scale HIAD (Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator) system might weigh around 2.5 tonnes. For a rocket of Vulcan’s size, this translates to a payload-to-LEO reduction of only about 0.35 tonnes. This is a minimal, almost negligible impact on the rocket’s total performance, allowing ULA to sell nearly all of the rocket’s lift capacity to its customers.

This argument – recovering most of the cost for almost no performance hit – is the entire “sensible” proposition.

It’s also a solution that was, in many ways, predetermined by ULA’s existing design philosophy. ULA’s rockets, like the Atlas V and its successor Vulcan, were optimized for an expendable world. They use a smaller, lighter, and very high-performance core booster, which is then augmented by strap-on solid rocket boosters (SRBs) for heavier missions. This design philosophy creates two major problems for propulsive landing. First, this lighter core “stages higher and faster,” meaning it separates from the upper stage at a much higher altitude and velocity. This makes a propulsive re-entry far more difficult and would require an even larger fuel reserve, inflicting a greater payload penalty.

Second, the Vulcan first stage uses just two very powerful BE-4 engines. This is a very different design from a rocket like the Falcon 9, which uses nine smaller engines and can land on just one or three of them, a small fraction of its total thrust. Vulcan cannot “deep throttle” its two massive engines low enough to gently land a nearly-empty stage. To implement propulsive landing, ULA would have had to “start a brand new design from the ground up.” SMART, on the other hand, is an evolutionary solution. It’s a module that can be added to their existing, expendable-optimized design. It was the most pragmatic, path-dependent, and “sensible” choice available.

The third pillar of the economic case is minimizing downstream costs: refurbishment and logistics. Recovery is only the first step; the rocket must then be prepared to fly again, and this is where hidden costs can destroy the business case. ULA’s plan is designed to avoid two primary cost drivers: saltwater and impact.

Saltwater immersion is the enemy of complex machinery. The corrosive effects of saltwater on the high-speed turbopumps, electronics, and plumbing of a rocket engine are a refurbishment nightmare. The Space Shuttle SRB recovery program proved this. SMART’s primary recovery method, mid-air capture, is specifically designed to “avoid salt water immersion.”

A parachute-to-ocean “splashdown” is better than nothing, but it’s still a “high-impact G loading” event. This violent impact can damage the “impact-susceptible” engine nozzles and delicate turbopump bearings. A mid-air recovery, by contrast, provides a “precision landing” with “virtually no impact acceleration.” The helicopter gently takes the load, protecting the high-value hardware.

Finally, the logistics are simpler. Recovering, securing, and transporting a 15-story booster stage from a moving droneship in the middle of the ocean is a massive, complex, and expensive operation. ULA’s plan involves a helicopter flying a much smaller, more manageable module directly to a waiting ship or back to the factory. This simplified logistical chain is expected to be faster and cheaper.

This three-pronged economic argument – capturing high-value engines, paying a minimal performance penalty, and ensuring a low-cost, gentle recovery – is the foundation of the entire SMART reuse program.

The Complete SMART Recovery Sequence: A Step-by-Step Journey

The SMART recovery process is a complex and precisely choreographed ballet of autonomous systems. It begins at the edge of space and, if all goes well, ends with a gentle hand-off to a helicopter crew. Here is a step-by-step journey of the engine module’s return.

Launch and Booster Engine Cutoff (BECO): The Vulcan Centaur rocket launches from Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg. For several minutes, its two BE-4 engines burn with millions of pounds of thrust, pushing the vehicle through the thick lower atmosphere. Once the first stage has burned all of its propellant, the engines shut down. This is Booster Engine Cutoff, or BECO.

Staging: The vehicle is now high above the atmosphere, coasting. The Centaur V upper stage, carrying the customer’s payload, separates from the now-empty first stage. The Centaur’s own engine ignites, and it continues its journey to orbit.

Engine Module Detachment: This is the first critical step of the SMART sequence. Moments after staging, the “Modular” part of the plan begins. The engine section – the entire “boat tail” of the rocket containing the engines, avionics, and thrust structure – is commanded to detach. Using a clean separation system, it “cuts off” from the massive, empty propellant tanks. The tanks are now discarded, left to tumble on a suborbital path and burn up harmlessly on re-entry.

Re-orientation and HIAD Deployment: The engine module is now a free-flying, autonomous vehicle. It uses its own thrusters to re-orient itself, turning to face its direction of travel with its nose assembly, which houses the recovery hardware. While still in the vacuum of space, the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) is deployed. This device, which was densely packed into the annular volume behind the nose, inflates outside the atmosphere, blooming from a compact package into a massive, multi-meter-wide, cone-shaped heat shield.

Atmospheric Re-entry (The Fiery Plunge): The module, now shielded by the fully-inflated HIAD, plunges back into the Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds – faster than Mach 5, and likely much faster. The HIAD, with its enormous surface area, acts as a giant brake. It slams into the thin air of the upper atmosphere, creating a massive shockwave and absorbing extreme temperatures that can reach 3,000°F. It uses this aerodynamic drag to rapidly decelerate the module, slowing it from hypersonic to subsonic speeds while it is still high above the Earth.

Subsonic Descent and HIAD Jettison: The HIAD’s fiery, high-speed job is done. Once the module has slowed to speeds below the speed of sound and is descending into the thicker, lower atmosphere, the entire HIAD assembly is ejected.

Parafoil Deployment: The module is now in a stable, subsonic fall. At a predetermined altitude, the next phase of the recovery begins. A mortar is fired, which forcibly ejects a small pilot parachute. This pilot chute, in turn, is used to pull the main parachute system from its bag. This is not a traditional, round parachute. It is a very large, steerable, “guided parafoil.” This is a ram-air canopy, an inflatable wing that allows the module to glide and be steered, rather than just fall.

Autonomous Guided Flight: This is where the “Autonomous” aspect of SMART takes over. The module isn’t just a falling object; it’s an unpowered glider. Its onboard flight computer, part of a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system, uses GPS and inertial navigation data to know its exact position, altitude, and velocity. The computer actively pulls on the parafoil’s control lines, steering the module. It guides the vehicle toward a precise, pre-determined rendezvous point in the sky, compensating for wind and ensuring it arrives at the recovery zone at the right time.

Mid-Air Recovery (MAR): In the air, inside the designated recovery box, a heavy-lift helicopter (or multiple helicopters) is waiting. The helicopter pilot, in communication with the recovery team, visually acquires the module descending slowly and predictably under its large, stable parafoil. The helicopter is equipped with a long, trailing line and a specialized grapple. The pilot maneuvers the aircraft to fly just behind and above the descending module, matching its speed. They “snag” a capture line that trails from the parafoil.

Return to Base: Once the grapple is secure, the helicopter gently takes the full weight of the engine module from the parafoil. At this point, cutters may sever the parafoil, which is now no longer needed. The helicopter crew, with their multi-million-dollar prize suspended safely on a line beneath them, begins the flight home. Depending on the launch trajectory and recovery location, they will fly the module to a waiting ship or all the way back to the launch site.

Refurbishment and Reuse: Back at the ULA factory, the engines and avionics are inspected. Because they were recovered gently and without saltwater contamination, the recertification process is designed to be quick. The module is then “plopped right under the next booster in line,” ready for another flight.

This entire sequence is a cascade of distinct, complex, and high-risk events. The technical challenge is immense. The detachment, HIAD inflation, re-entry survival, HIAD jettison, mortar fire, parafoil deployment, autonomous guidance, helicopter intercept, and load transfer must all work perfectly, in sequence. A single failure at any point in this “domino chain” – the HIAD fails to inflate, the parafoil gets tangled, the GNC system fails – results in the total loss of the hardware. This is the fundamental engineering trade-off ULA has accepted. They have traded the high mass and performance penalty of propulsive landing for the high sequential event risk of a non-propulsive, multi-stage recovery.

Key Technology Deep Dive: The Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD)

The single most futuristic and enabling piece of technology in the SMART system is the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator, or HIAD. It’s the component that makes a non-propulsive re-entry possible, and its development is a story of a powerful collaboration between ULA and NASA.

The fundamental problem with returning from space is energy. An object in orbit is moving at over 17,000 mph. To return, it has to get rid of all that kinetic energy, which it does by converting it into heat via atmospheric friction. This requires a heat shield. For decades, these heat shields have been rigid, like the blunt-body capsules of the Apollo era or the silica tiles of the Space Shuttle.

The problem with these rigid heat shields is that their size is limited by the rocket’s payload fairing, or nose cone. You can’t launch a heat shield that’s wider than your rocket. But to slow down a heavy object like the Vulcan engine module, you want the largest, highest-drag “brake” possible. A larger drag device can start slowing the object much higher in the atmosphere, where the air is thinner. This results in a gentler, more distributed deceleration and lower peak heating, making the entire re-entry more benign.

The HIAD is the solution to this paradox. It’s an inflatable heat shield that is launched in a densely packed, compact state. It fits neatly inside the rocket. Once in space, it inflates like a high-tech, multi-layered air mattress, expanding to a large, conical shape with a diameter of 10 to 12 meters (33 to 39 feet) or more. This massive, lightweight structure creates enormous aerodynamic drag, allowing the engine module to decelerate efficiently in the upper atmosphere.

This technology is not something ULA invented from scratch. It’s a “cross-cutting” technology that NASA’s Langley Research Center has been developing for decades. NASA’s interest in HIADs is for landing large, heavy payloads on planets with atmospheres, especially Mars. The Martian atmosphere is very thin, so landing heavy cargo (like a human habitat) requires a massive, high-drag decelerator to slow it down enough for parachutes to work. NASA is also developing the technology to return large payloads from the International Space Station or deep space back to Earth.

This mutual interest created a perfect public-private partnership. ULA and NASA have been working together to mature HIAD technology. NASA gets to leverage ULA’s launch vehicles for flight testing and gains an industrial partner to help mature the manufacturing, while ULA gets to leverage decades of NASA-funded research, saving enormous development costs and gaining access to the one technology that makes the “sensible” reuse plan work. The success of NASA’s deep-space exploration goals and ULA’s commercial reuse program are, for now, symbiotically linked.

The most important demonstration of this partnership was the LOFTID (Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator) mission in November 2022. This was the technology’s all-important flight test. A 6-meter (20-foot) diameter HIAD demonstrator was launched as a secondary payload on a ULA Atlas V rocket. It wasn’t a simple suborbital hop; it was placed on a re-entry trajectory from low-Earth orbit, meaning it would hit the atmosphere at orbital velocity – nearly 8 km/s, or Mach 30.

The test was a spectacular success. The LOFTID vehicle successfully inflated, survived the fiery plunge through the atmosphere where it endured temperatures up to 3,000°F, deployed its parachutes, and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. It was recovered intact by a waiting ship. The mission “confirmed the HIAD technology structural and thermal performance.” It provided ULA and NASA with a priceless stream of real-world flight data, validating their computer models and giving them the engineering confidence to design the full-scale version required for Vulcan’s engine recovery.

A common question is how an “inflatable” device can possibly survive 3,000°F temperatures. The answer is that the HIAD is a highly complex “system of systems,” composed of two main parts: the Inflatable Structure (IS) and the Flexible Thermal Protection System (F-TPS) that covers it.

The Inflatable Structure is the “airbag” part, but it’s not made of rubber. It’s a stack of donut-shaped rings (called “tori”) made of high-strength, lightweight, braided fibers. This structure is pressurized to become rigid, giving the HIAD its conical shape and the strength to withstand the immense aerodynamic forces of re-entry.

The Flexible Thermal Protection System is the “heat shield” itself. It’s a multi-layer, flexible blanket that is wrapped around the inflatable structure. The outermost layer, the part that faces the fire, is a woven ceramic fabric. This advanced material is made from silicon carbide (SiC) fibers, which have an extremely high temperature limit. These tiny fibers are spun into a yarn, and that yarn is then woven on industrial looms into a tough, black cloth, much like denim. This ceramic “denim” is what gets superheated, glowing white-hot as it plows through the atmosphere. Behind this ceramic outer layer are multiple layers of high-tech, lightweight insulation that stop the heat from ever reaching the inflatable structure, keeping it at a safe temperature.

The success of LOFTID was a giant leap, but the final challenge remains: scaling. The LOFTID test vehicle was 6 meters in diameter. The operational HIAD for Vulcan needs to be 10, 12, or perhaps even 15 meters across. This is not a simple matter of doubling the recipe. A 12-meter HIAD has four times the surface area and will face four times the aerodynamic load as the 6-meter version. This creates enormous new structural and manufacturing challenges. Engineers must figure out how to design the internal structural webbing to handle these immense loads, how to manufacture and handle such a large, flexible textile object, and how to pack and deploy it reliably. This scaling challenge is what ULA’s and NASA’s engineers are working to solve right now.

Key Technology Deep Dive: Mid-Air Recovery (MAR)

The final and most dramatic step in the SMART recovery sequence is the Mid-Air Recovery, or MAR. This is the plan to have a helicopter pluck the multi-ton engine module out of the sky as it descends under its parafoil. This may sound like a scene from a Hollywood movie, but it is a proven technology, chosen for very specific and pragmatic reasons.

The first question is: why not just let it splash down in the ocean? The HIAD itself was successfully recovered from the water during the LOFTID test. The answer comes down to the two great enemies of rocket engine reuse: saltwater and impact.

Saltwater is the primary driver. Rocket engines are not simple objects; they are a maze of plumbing, high-speed turbopumps with microscopic tolerances, and sensitive electronics. Saltwater is extremely corrosive and “contaminating.” The cost and time required to completely disassemble an engine, meticulously clean every part of salt residue, inspect it for corrosion, and reassemble it would be enormous. This process could be so expensive that it would negate the economic benefit of reuse.

The second problem is impact. A parachute-to-ocean “splashdown” is not a soft landing. It’s a “high-impact G loading” event. The engine module, weighing thousands of pounds, would hit the water with considerable force. This impact can damage “impact-susceptible” components like the delicate, paper-thin engine nozzles or the high-precision bearings in the turbopumps.

Mid-Air Recovery is the innovative solution to both problems. It provides a “precision landing” with “virtually no impact acceleration” and, most importantly, it completely “avoids salt water immersion.” It allows ULA to retrieve its high-value engines in a pristine, “benign environment,” making the refurbishment process as fast and cheap as possible.

While it seems futuristic, MAR is actually an old-school technique. It was developed and used extensively by the U.S. government in the 1960s for the “Corona” reconnaissance satellite program. These early spy satellites returned their photographs to Earth in small film canisters, about the size of a garbage can. To prevent these canisters from being lost at sea or falling into the wrong hands, the U.S. Air Force used specially-modified C-119 and C-130 aircraft to snag their parachutes in mid-air. This technique, while risky, was proven effective over decades of operational use.

ULA’s plan is a modern update of this concept, with one key difference: it uses helicopters, not fixed-wing aircraft. The Corona program’s fixed-wing aircraft had to maintain a high forward speed, making the “snag” a high-speed, high-energy maneuver. A helicopter is a much better tool for this job. A helicopter can fly slowly, or even match the vertical descent rate (sink rate) of the falling parafoil. This allows the pilot to make a very slow, stable, and gentle capture, with a gradual transfer of the payload’s weight from the parafoil to the helicopter’s hoist.

This is a job for a specialized “aerial crane.” The Vulcan engine module, with two BE-4s and its thrust structure, is a heavy lift. Early studies for a similar system on the Atlas V rocket estimated a recovery weight of 25,000 pounds. This requires a heavy-lift helicopter like the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane (with a 25,000-pound external load capacity) or the even more powerful Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion (with a 36,000-pound capacity). These are flying cranes, and this “ultra-precision long-line” work is what they were designed to do.

The capture sequence itself is a matter of precise aerial mechanics. The helicopter trails a long line with a special grapple or hook. The descending engine module, under its parafoil, streams a “retrieval line,” possibly with a small drogue parachute at the end to keep it stable and make it an easy target. The helicopter pilot approaches the parafoil from behind, matches its descent speed, and maneuvers to capture the retrieval line with the hook. Once the grapple is secure, the helicopter gently pulls up, taking the load. A “slider” assembly on the parafoil’s lines may be used to help collapse the canopy as the load is transferred. Once the module is flying securely on the helicopter’s line, the parafoil is cut away.

But the hidden genius of the MAR system is not the helicopter; it’s the parafoil. The helicopter pilot is not “hunting” for a dumb object being tossed about by the wind. That would be nearly impossible and far too risky.

The parafoil is a smart, autonomous vehicle. This is where the “Autonomous” in SMART is most clearly demonstrated. The engine module has its own advanced Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system. This is an onboard flight computer, connected to a GPS receiver and an inertial navigation system, that knows its precise location, altitude, and velocity. This GNC system flies the parafoil. It has actuators that pull the parafoil’s control lines, steering it just like a human skydiver would.

This autonomous system will fly a pre-programmed trajectory, compensating for winds and guiding the module to the exact rendezvous point in the sky. It can even be programmed to fly a stable, circular “holding pattern” to wait for the helicopter. This “autonomous engagement” turns the falling, multi-ton engine module into a stable, predictable, and cooperative target. The pilot is, in effect, intercepting another autonomous aircraft, not just a piece of falling debris. This robotic precision is what makes the entire mid-air capture concept feasible and reliable at this scale.

Development, Status, and Future of SMART Reuse

As of late 2025, the SMART reuse program is not just a collection of presentation slides; it is in “full-scale engineering development.” The initial paper studies and concept phases are long over. Following the massive success of the 2022 LOFTID flight test, ULA’s teams have been focused on maturing the system for its debut on the Vulcan rocket.

ULA’s leadership has confirmed that the “critical design review for key components is complete.” This is a major engineering milestone that signifies the design is locked and found to be sound. The company is now in the process of building “flight-like hardware for certification.” This is the final stage before the hardware is integrated onto an operational rocket for its first flight test.

The company has stated that it plans to begin flight testing the SMART recovery system sometime in 2026. This would likely be an experimental flight that attempts the full re-entry and recovery sequence. The engines on Vulcan will also need to be upgraded with the hardware and software for reuse, which will likely be introduced as part of a new “block” design of the rocket.

While the engineering work is proceeding, the program’s timeline is being dictated by a clear and conservative business strategy: cadence first, reuse second.

ULA’s immediate, number-one priority is scaling up the production and launch rate (or cadence) of the expendable version of the Vulcan rocket. This is a pragmatic decision driven by ULA’s robust customer manifest. The company is in a very different business position than its competitors. It already holds a massive backlog of over 70 sold launches, including the foundational, high-value National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions for the U.S. Space Force and a 38-launch contract for Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite constellation.

The company’s primary duty is to service these contracts reliably. Rushing to implement a highly complex, brand-new reusability system at the same time as ramping up a new rocket would be an unacceptable risk to that core business. Therefore, ULA’s leadership has been clear that SMART implementation will “take a backseat for now.” They are focused on proving the expendable rocket, building out the production line, and hitting their target launch tempo of “twice-a-month.”

SMART reuse is being treated as an economic upgrade, not as the enabler of the business. Once the high-volume launch cadence is established, ULA will introduce SMART as a planned, evolutionary upgrade to improve the profit margins on that high flight rate. This is a classic, conservative, and “sensible” business approach for an established industry leader managing risk.

There are also strong indications that the recovery plan itself is evolutionary. While the ultimate goal has always been the ambitious, saltwater-free mid-air capture, several sources, including more recent ones, mention an ocean splashdown. They describe the HIAD as being designed to “double as a raft,” allowing the engine module to float for recovery. The successful LOFTID test was, itself, a water recovery.

This suggests a phased approach. The first SMART test flights in 2026 will likely be water-landing attempts. ULA would focus on proving the most difficult and unknown parts of the sequence first: the module detachment, the high-speed re-entry, the HIAD’s performance at full scale, and the parafoil’s autonomous guidance. They would accept the higher refurbishment cost of a saltwater landing in the short term, just to prove the system works. Once that entire sequence is perfected and reliable, they will introduce the final, most complex step: the mid-air capture.

SMART is not the end of ULA’s reusability plans; it’s the beginning. Company leadership is already discussing a “new initiative” related to reuse. This includes an evolution of SMART to recover more and more of the booster, relocating valuable components to the aft module until “pretty much the only thing being discarded from the booster will be the fuel tanks.” There has also been discussion of applying SMART principles to recover the Vulcan’s high-energy Centaur V upper stage, or a separate plan for “in-space reuse,” which would keep the Centaur in orbit for weeks or months to serve as an orbital tug for other missions.

Summary

United Launch Alliance’s SMART reuse is a deliberate and fundamentally different answer to the reusability challenge. It is a “non-propulsive” strategy born from a pragmatic “systems engineering approach” to the new economics of spaceflight.

The entire program is a specific economic bet: that it is more “sensible” to recover the high-value module (the engines and avionics, which account for ~65% of the booster’s cost) while incurring a minimal performancepenalty, rather than recovering the entire rocket stage for a significant performance hit.

This plan is made possible by the integration of two distinct, highly advanced technologies. The first is the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD), an inflatable, woven-ceramic heat shield developed in partnership with NASA. This device uses aerodynamic drag to survive the fiery, high-speed re-entry. The second is Mid-Air Recovery (MAR), a modern, helicopter-based version of a 1960s-era capture technique. This system is enabled by an autonomous, GPS-guided parafoil that flies the engine module to a precise rendezvous, allowing for a gentle capture that avoids the damaging and costly effects of a saltwater landing.

Following the highly successful LOFTID technology demonstration in 2022, the SMART program is now in full-scale engineering development, with flight tests expected to begin in 2026. Its implementation is being carefully paced. It is secondary to ULA’s primary business goal: first establishing a high and reliable launch cadence for its cornerstone Vulcan customers. SMART reuse is the planned second step, an evolutionary upgrade to make that high-cadence future more profitable and secure ULA’s “sensible” path in the new era of commercial space.