Vulcan rocket with moon lander aims for launch in May
The first launch of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket is now targeting early May to send a private moon lander, some Jeff Bezos satellites and the mortal remains of Lt. Uhura, Bones and Scotty into space.
In an update Thursday, ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno said qualification testing of the rocket for the mission dubbed Cert-1 was taking longer than expected, so the first opportunity to launch and meet the trajectory requirements of the primary payload of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander would be no earlier than May 4 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41.
“We’re being careful and we’re being thoughtful to make sure we have a successful mission,” Bruno said. “We have plenty of time to do this. We’re going to do this the right way.”
Bruno said the window for launch is about four days, and the earlier April opportunity was pushing constraints among continued Vulcan engine qualification tests, the arrival and processing time of Peregrine as well as competing launch pad time with an ULA Atlas V that aims to send the Boeing CST-100 Starliner with two NASA astronauts on board to the International Space Station in mid- to late-April.
Vulcan Centaur is the next generation of rocket to replace both ULA’s Atlas and Delta IV rockets. It uses two BE-4 engines from Bezos’ Blue Origin and this will be their first launch.
Most of the parts of Vulcan are flight-proven having been used during iterations of Atlas V rocket launches with the BE-4 engines the last big untested component. Making sure they’re flight-ready has been part of the delay for this mission, which had been aiming to launch before the end of March.
“It’s taking a little bit longer than anticipated,” he said.
Blue Origin and ULA teams noted one of the two engines showed an unexpected performance shift, actually producing 5% higher output, so for safety, they took the engine off, disassembled it and determined the engine was working fine.
More testing is needed, though, and the core stage remains in ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility near the pad, but will roll out to SLC 41 as soon as next week for tanking tests.
Also upcoming is a wet dress rehearsal for loading and unloading of fuel, then a test fire.
The delivery of the Blue Origin-built engines had been one of the main factors in the continuing delays behind the inaugural Vulcan launch with ULA only getting their hands on them last fall. Vulcan has been in the works since 2014 and had been touting a summer 2022 launch early last year.
Blue Origin needs to supply at least eight more to ULA for more flights planned this year including three in the fall potentially for the Department of Defense. Bruno said the company wants to get to a twice-a-month flight cadence by the end of 2025.
But Vulcan’s Cert-1 flight comes first, although all three of the customer payloads need to be delivered to Cape Canaveral for processing.
The Peregrine lander is shipping from Astrobotic’s Pittsburgh headquarters. It’s one of two moon missions awarded under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to invigorate privately funded missions to the moon. Astrobotic is responsible for building the lander, getting it to the moon (with ULA’s assist), and operating it there.
In addition to Peregrine, the Cert-1 will carry the first two experimental satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper. Bezos’ planned internet satellite constellation looks to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, and Amazon has already booked 47 more launches on both ULA’s Vulcan and remaining Atlas V rockets in the next five years. Vulcan alone has more than 70 launches booked including the first mission of Sierra Space’s new cargo Dream Chaser spacecraft later this year.
Also flying on Cert-1 will be the partial remains and DNA of more than 150 people as part of Celestis Inc.’s Enterprise Flight.
They include “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and actors James Doohan who played “Scotty,” Nichelle Nichols who played “Lt. Uhura” and DeForest Kelley who played “Dr. McCoy.”
Once Peregrine is sent on its trans-lunar injection, the Centaur upper stage carrying the remains will continue to deep space to achieve an orbit around the sun.
“I believe that we will have all three of our payloads there and ready to go,” Bruno said.