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A new, taller rocket has taken flight, carrying what could be the first commercial lunar lander and the first lunar landing mission launched from the United States since 1972.
The Vulcan Centaur rocket, a never-before-flown model developed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, came to life at 2:18 a.m. Monday at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch vehicle floated through space for about an hour, exhausting its fuel as it moved away from Earth’s gravity and sending the lunar lander, called Peregrine, on its way to the moon.
Just after 3 a.m., the Peregrine spacecraft separated from the rocket and began its slow journey toward the lunar surface. If everything goes as planned, the vehicle will be able to land on the moon on February 23.
what’s on board
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology company developed the Peregrine lander, named after the hawk, the world’s fastest flying bird, within the scope of a contract with NASA.
“This is a dream… We’ve been striving for this moment today for 16 years,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said during a webcast about the launch. “And along the way, we had a lot of tough challenges to overcome, and a lot of people doubted us along the way. But our team and the people who supported us believed in this mission and created this beautiful moment we see today.”
The space agency paid Astrobotic $108 million to develop Peregrine and fly NASA’s science experiments to the lunar surface.
But the space agency is just one of the mission’s many customers.
Five of the 20 payloads that Peregrine will carry to the moon are NASA science instruments. The other 15 come from various customers.
Some of these are additional science burdens from countries such as Mexico; others include robotic experiments by a private company based in the United Kingdom and trinkets or mementos put together by German shipping company DHL.
Peregrine also transports human remains on behalf of two commercial space burial companies (Elysium Space and Celestis). This move sparked opposition from the Navajo Nation, the largest group of Native Americans in the United States. The group argues that allowing the remains to land on the lunar surface would be an insult to many indigenous cultures that view the moon as sacred. Celestis offers to deliver ash to the moon starting at $10,000, according to the company’s website.
The five NASA-sponsored experiments include two instruments to monitor the radiation environment and “help us better prepare to send crewed missions back to the moon,” said Paul Niles, NASA’s project scientist for NASA’s arm, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. He provided funding to Peregrine at a news briefing on Thursday. Other devices will analyze the structure of the lunar soil, looking for water and hydroxyl molecules. NASA will also study the moon’s super-thin atmosphere.
On the lunar surface, Peregrine is expected to operate for up to 10 days until the landing site is plunged into darkness; This makes it too cold to continue.
Also on board the Vulcan Centaur rocket, packaged separately from the Peregrine lander, was another payload from space graveyard company Celestis.
The object on a mission called Enterprise Flight contains 265 capsules containing human remains as well as DNA samples of former US presidents John F. Kennedy, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.
The remains also include the original film’s creator and several cast members. Star wars a television series, as well as an Apollo-era astronaut, with people from all walks of life, interests and professions, according to the company’s website.
The Apollo astronaut whose remains are on Enterprise Flight is Philip Chapman, who was drafted into the astronaut corps in 1967 but never flew into space. He died in 2021.
The Enterprise Flight payload is heading into deep space, where it will spend eternity orbiting the sun.
a new rocket
Aside from the excitement of the approaching moon landing attempt, the launch of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket was an event in itself.
The rocket is one of the most anticipated new vehicles to take flight in years. If the rocket’s mission is successful, it could be a game-changer for ULA and the broader launch industry.
ULA was founded in 2006 in response to the U.S. military’s need to keep both Boeing’s Delta and Lockheed Martin’s Atlas rockets operational. But the launch industry looks very different today than it did almost two decades ago, and in the meantime SpaceX has emerged as a dominant force, undercutting ULA.
ULA and its CEO Tory Bruno predict that the Vulcan Centaur will replace the Atlas and Delta rockets. Vulcan Centaur currently has around 70 missions lined up, according to Bruno.
ULA has a spotless launch history with almost no failed missions. Vulcan Centaur builds on the success of ULA’s Atlas rockets by essentially using the same upper stage (the part of the rocket that accelerates a spacecraft to orbital speeds after initial liftoff).
But a major change has been made to the rocket’s first stage, the lower part that provides the first burst of power on the launch pad.
Vulcan Centaur was propelled by two US-made rocket engines developed by the Jeff Bezos-funded Blue Origin company, as well as two side boosters at the base of the first stage booster, which replaced the Russian-made engines that powered the Atlas rockets. ULA’s dependence on Russian engines has become politically unpopular as tensions between the United States and Russia have increased in recent years.
Even though it’s been years since the Vulcan Centaur debuted, it’s common in the aerospace industry for companies to exceed deadlines.
ULA faced long delays while waiting for Blue Origin’s new engines. And last year, the upper stage of a Vulcan Centaur was accidentally destroyed on a test stand.
Despite these setbacks, Bruno said in November that development of the Vulcan Centaur was one of “the more orderly and well-executed development programs I have worked on in my very long career in the aerospace industry.”
In the moments after liftoff, the rocket appeared to be working as intended.
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