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NASA selects Centaur V to replace Exploration Upper Stage on SLS in major Artemis shake-up

NASA has chosen ULA’s Centaur V to replace the Exploration Upper Stage on the Space Launch System, reconfiguring future Artemis missions. Centaur V — currently flown on ULA’s Vulcan — will become the SLS's new upper stage, marking a major change to the rocket's architecture and suppliers.

Discovered 2026-03-10T05:00:21.516124-07:00 | 2026-03-10T05:00:21.516124-07:00

Briefing

What Hype is tracking

Adopts a commercial upper-stage design and shifts hardware responsibility toward ULA, with direct implications for production and supplier workload; see ULA's increased role in building SLS upper stages (source:81b45f2d-1f2e-4b1a-a06e-1be512feb8f2)
Represents a material change to Artemis architecture that follows recent program rewrites and cancellations, with consequences for mission planning and budgets (source:2c1957a9-7ff8-46be-888a-b834c70600ee) and comes amid warnings SLS could face multi‑year launch gaps (source:3ea9f74f-4f40-4524-8ad0-daa016bf2713)
Affects integration and timeline risk for upcoming flights even as NASA advances Orion and reshuffles launch configurations, requiring program-level revalidation (source:95211eae-5a31-452a-8006-4c77b9f6f20d)

Reported By

dailygalaxy.com Aviation Week Space.com space24.pl