In anticipation of its maiden flight scheduled for next month, United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket has been fully constructed at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Wednesday morning at ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility, technicians lifted the payload fairing of the Vulcan rocket, which carried a commercial lunar lander from Astrobotic, onto top of the launch vehicle. This significant event came after the payload fairing was transferred in the early hours of the morning from a nearby facility, where Astrobotic’s lunar lander was fueled in preparation for its lunar voyage.During countdown rehearsals and fuelling testing, ULA’s new rocket has repeatedly rolled between its vertical hangar and the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. However, ULA might have finished those tests with just the upper stage and first stage of the Vulcan rocket. The launch of the payload shroud on Wednesday was the first time a Vulcan rocket from ULA has been entirely stacked. It stands at around 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall and is still encircled by work platforms and scaffolding within the assembly facility.

By doing this, the launch business gets one step closer to the inaugural flight of Vulcan, the rocket that will eventually replace ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV. Ground technicians will move the Vulcan rocket to its launch pad in time for liftoff on January 8 at 2:18 am ET (07:18 UTC), following a few last checkouts and a holiday break.

Originally slated for December 24, ULA postponed the launch until the following launch window in order to fix problems with the ground system that were discovered during a recent Vulcan countdown rehearsal. Peregrine Mission One, Astrobotic’s first robotic lunar lander, can only leave Earth and head toward the Moon for a few days each month. In order for the spacecraft to arrive at its landing place under the right illumination conditions, the launch and trajectory must be coordinated.

first entire stack

Rival SpaceX has been putting pressure on United Launch Alliance, a 50/50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, for the past few years. As the business concludes its Atlas V and Delta IV missions, ULA’s rockets have only flown three times this year, compared to SpaceX’s more than ninety launches.

There is still one Delta IV-Heavy rocket in ULA’s possession. Launched next year, it is intended to carry a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the spy satellite agency of the United States government. There are still 17 Atlas V rockets in operation.

ULA is prepared to accelerate its launch pace with Vulcan. According to the company’s CEO, Tory Bruno, ULA has sold 70 Vulcan launches, with the US military obtaining the remaining half from commercial clients. In order to install satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband network, Amazon has scheduled 38 Vulcan flights. Although Vulcan will be completely disposable at first, ULA intends to implement engine recovery and reuse later this decade.

By the end of 2025, ULA hopes to have launched two Vulcan rockets on average each month. This would be a very rapid launch cadence, coming just two years after Vulcan’s maiden flight. In contrast, it took longer for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and the Atlas V rocket to reach four flights.

The Vulcan rocket was supposed to launch in 2019, but there were several delays, mostly because Jeff Bezos’ space business Blue Origin delivered rocket engines later than expected. May saw ULA forego a launch window due to the detonation of a Vulcan upper stage during a ground test.

In contrast to the majority of rocket premieres, the Vulcan will launch with a payload that functions. Twenty payloads will be delivered to the lunar surface by Astrobotic’s unmanned Peregrine Mission One, five of which are being carried by NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Launched by NASA in 2018, the CLPS effort will be the first to send scientific instruments and experiments to the Moon through commercial transportation.

The Peregrine lander was operational last month after Astrobotic’s engineers finished their hands-on work on it and ULA locked it within Vulcan’s payload shroud. The height of the Peregrine lander is approximately 1.9 meters, or 6.2 feet. The lander appears to be dwarfed by the composite fairings in photos that ULA posted, which show it enclosed inside the payload compartment of the Vulcan rocket.
John Thornton, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, stated, “If you’ve been following the lunar industry, you understand landing on the Moon’s surface is incredibly difficult.” “Having said that, during flight reviews, spacecraft testing, and significant hardware integrations, our team has consistently exceeded expectations and shown amazing inventiveness. We are prepared for both takeoff and landing.”

Astrobotic’s lunar lander is going to have a wild journey thanks to the Vulcan rocket. The core stage of Vulcan will be powered by two BE-4 engines that run on methane and were manufactured by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space firm. Northrop Grumman’s strap-on solid rocket boosters will provide the rocket with an additional push of energy as it leaves the launch pad. And around 40 minutes after liftoff, a Centaur upper stage powered by two Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10 engines will complete the task of releasing the Peregrine lander to start its trip.

On February 23, the Peregrine lander will finally descend to the lunar surface after first entering orbit around the moon. The intended landing site is close to the Gruithuisen Domes, an area on the near side of the Moon in the northern hemisphere.

IM-1 launch postponed

A second commercial Moon lander is also experiencing launch delays as it gets ready for launch at Cape Canaveral. The Intuitive Machines-managed mission is now slated to fly on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in mid-February instead of its original window of mid-January.

The same launch pad used for the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission will be used for the Falcon Heavy’s liftoff. Between the flights of Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9, SpaceX usually needs three weeks to reconfigure Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). This means that there isn’t enough time to prepare the pad for the January 12 launch window for IM-1.

Launching from LC-39A is necessary for the IM-1 mission since SpaceX has equipped this pad to supply liquid oxygen and cryogenic methane to Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander just prior to liftoff.

Intuitive Machines claimed in a statement that their robotic lunar lander “remains ready” to take off. “Since arriving in Florida, the IM-1 lunar lander has completed major system tests, verification, and certification milestones and is prepared for integration with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket,” the business stated.

Topics #Cape Canaveral #SpaceX #ULA #Vulcan rocket