United Launch Alliance's newest rocket, Vulcan, arrives at Cape Canaveral launch site
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Cape Canaveral Space Force Station got a special delivery over the weekend in the form of a new rocket. The final pieces of flight-ready hardware of United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan Centaur rocket were delivered by barge after a 2,000-mile voyage from the company's rocket factory in Decatur, Alabama.
Sunday, ULA teams offloaded the core booster section and transported it to a processing facility at the Cape. Alongside it was the Vulcan's Centaur V upper stage and a protective payload fairing half.
Other pieces for the inaugural launch, including the Northrop Grumann twin solid rocket boosters, were delivered to the Cape late last year.
Prior to the inaugural launch, according to ULA, there are still many inspections and tests left to get through. This includes multiple core booster and upper-stage tanking tests and a wet dress rehearsal which entails fully fueling the rocket and running through a mock countdown. Testing will culminate with a flight readiness firing test of Vulcan's main engines.
Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, said in a statement, “We could not be more excited to be this close to seeing Vulcan lift off on its inaugural flight.”
Liftoff is slated for sometime in the first half of this year.
Vulcan's first flight
Vulcan’s first mission, known as Certification-1, is a test flight to meet certification requirements to launch U.S. Space Force national security missions in the future.
In a release, Mark Peller, ULA vice president of Vulcan Development, said, “The ULA team has worked tirelessly to complete the rocket for the first certification flight.”
“Now that production is complete, our launch team will begin processing and testing this innovative new rocket in preparation for the first mission, which will deliver a payload to the moon,” he said.
Although a test flight, ULA will use the opportunity to send multiple payloads to orbit and beyond.
Scheduled to fly on Vulcan's Certification-1 mission are two prototype broadband satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper, a proposed constellation of over 3,000 satellites that will provide internet services to customers around the globe.
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Also on board is a payload destined for the moon, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic's Peregrine commercial lunar lander. According to NASA, the lander, a part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, will study the lunar exosphere, regolith, magnetic fields, and radiation and test advanced solar arrays.
The lunar lander will also carry a secondary payload to the surface of the moon for the Celestis Memorial Spaceflight company. It features 150 capsules carrying ashes, DNA samples, and messages from clients from around the world, including that of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry, and Star Trek actor James “Scotty” Doohan.
Next-generation rocket
“Vulcan is a powerful rocket with a single core booster that is scalable for all missions, including heavy class performance normally requiring a Delta IV Heavy configuration,” said Bruno.
It’s powered by two massive BE-4 main engines, purchased from Blue Origin, and can be outfitted with up to six solid rocket boosters to provide extra thrust. It's designed to take over the launching responsibilities of the company’s aging Atlas V rocket and the soon-to-be-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket.
“Vulcan provides higher performance and greater affordability while continuing to deliver our unmatched reliability and orbital precision for all our customers across the national security, civil and commercial markets,” said Bruno.
Standing 202 feet tall, Vulcan will liftoff from the Cape’s Pad 41, the same pad currently used to launch Atlas V rockets from Florida. It's designed to be discarded into the ocean after every launch, but ULA is working on plans to recover the valuable engine sections.
Future of Vulcan
According to ULA, Vulcan has already been commissioned to launch more than 70 missions, 38 of which are dedicated to launching a majority of Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite constellation.
Of those flights, at least one will launch the Dream Chaser, Sierra Nevada Corp.'s uncrewed reusable space plane. The spacecraft is contracted by NASA to carry out at least one cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.
ULA estimates anywhere between 20 to 30 national security missions for the Space Force could launch on the Vulcan over the course of its lifetime. Should all go as planned, ULA could fly the first of those Space Force national security missions on Vulcan toward the end of this year.
For the latest, visit floridatoday.com/launchschedule.
Jamie Groh is a space reporter for Florida Today. You can contact her at JGroh@floridatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @AlteredJamie.