LAS VEGAS — United Launch Alliance now plans to launch its first Vulcan Centaur rocket on Christmas Eve, carrying a industrial lunar lander.
The corporate announced Oct. 24 that the launch of the Cert-1 mission, the inaugural flight of the Vulcan Centaur, is scheduled for Dec. 24 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The mission will carry Peregrine, a industrial robotic lunar lander developed by Astrobotic, in addition to a payload from space memorial company Celestis that can remain attached to the rocket.
In an interview with CNBC used to announce the launch date, Tony Bruno, chief executive of ULA, said the date is driven by the necessities of Peregrine. “We’re going to a component of the moon where they need very fastidiously controlled lighting conditions and additionally they need to stay in radio communication with the Deep Space Network,” he said. “While you put the 2 together, we get just a couple of days every month.”
Bruno said there are launch opportunities on Dec. 24, 25 and 26. If the launch doesn’t happen on those days, there may be a backup window in January, but Bruno didn’t state when within the month that may be.
Preparations for the launch are on the right track. Bruno said final work on the Centaur is in progress ahead of shipping it to the launch site, while some qualification testing is being accomplished in parallel. “Each of those get done in November,” he said.
The Peregrine lander is already ready, an organization executive said at AIAA’s ASCEND conference here Oct. 24, before the launch date announcement. “We’re waiting for the green light to ship to ULA,” said Dan Hendrickson, vp of business development.
The debut of Vulcan has suffered years of delays, much of it linked to issues with the event of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines utilized in the rocket’s first stage. Earlier this 12 months, a mishap during testing of the Centaur upper stage prompted changes to the stage that delayed the launch from the spring to the fourth quarter.
Bruno said within the CNBC interview that he expects to perform “several” Vulcan launches in 2024, increasing the launch rate to fulfill the needs of consumers like Amazon, whose Project Kuiper broadband constellation will launch partially on Vulcan.
“Once we get halfway through ’25, we’ll be launching every two weeks, so that you’ll see a gradual ramp up,” he said. ULA is build up a stockpile of Vulcan vehicles to assist meet that increased cadence.
Hendrickson said Astrobotic is prepared for the primary launch with Peregrine on board. “It’s time to launch and land,” he said. “We’ve been talking about doing this for 16 years. That is the moment.”