The primary of a brand new era of United Launch Alliance rockets has arrived at its Florida spaceport to arrange for a debut flight.
United Launch Alliance (ULA) engineers unloaded the primary Vulcan Centaur rocket on Sunday (Jan. 22), rolling it off the corporate’s RocketShip barge and onto dry land at Port Canaveral close to its launch web site, Cape Canaveral House Pressure station. The brand new rocket will make its first flight within the subsequent few months, if all goes in response to plan, sending a personal lunar lander to the moon alongside two Amazon web satellites.
“The primary flight objects shipped embody the Vulcan booster first stage interstage adapter and Centaur V higher stage,” ULA officers wrote in an announcement. “The {hardware} was transferred from RocketShip to ULA services at Cape Canaveral for post-arrival inspections and the beginning of launch preparations.” The RocketShip barge delivered the Vulcan Centaur elements from ULA’s rocket manufacturing unit in Decatur, Alabama.
#VulcanRocket booster is a beaut! pic.twitter.com/YSdClYutsnJanuary 22, 2023
Vulcan Centaur is a 202-foot-tall (67 meters) booster designed to interchange ULA’s workhorse Atlas V and Delta IV rockets for industrial and authorities missions. The rocket is supplied with a Centaur V higher stage and as much as six stable rocket boosters to energy its method to space. Its first stage is powered by two BE-4 methane-liquid oxygen engines constructed by Blue Origin.
Make method, rocket coming via. #VulcanRocket #CountdowntoVulcan pic.twitter.com/pVCtUHbsRGJanuary 22, 2023
“Make method, rocket coming via,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno wrote on Twitter (opens in new tab) to have fun the Vulcan Centaur’s arrival. He additionally shared a time-lapse video of the booster’s elements rolling off the RocketShip barge.
“I do not learn about you guys, however I simply by no means get bored with seeing this,” he added (opens in new tab).
I don’t learn about you guys, however I simply by no means get bored with seeing this. #Rocketship. #CountdowntoVulcan pic.twitter.com/r0bL2qUghKJanuary 23, 2023
All parts of the primary #VulcanRocket have arrived at Cape Canaveral to start processing in direction of the inaugural check flight of ULA’s subsequent era rocket within the #CountdownToVulcan. Be taught extra in our weblog!https://t.co/jeWP7VtHx4 pic.twitter.com/xg4H78Bw1sJanuary 23, 2023
With its elements in Cape Canaveral, the Vulcan Centaur rocket will bear a sequence of checks and checks, and finally be assembled for flight at ULA’s services at Cape Canaveral House Pressure Station. Its first mission, focused for the primary quarter of this 12 months, will launch two prototype web satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper and the Peregrine moon lander constructed by the corporate Astrobotic.
“The Certification-1 launch will ship two Challenge Kuiper demonstration satellites into low Earth orbit, place the Astrobotic Peregrine commercial lunar lander in a extremely elliptical orbit greater than 225,000 miles (360,000 km) above Earth to intercept the moon, and carry a Celestis Memorial Spaceflight Payload past the Earth-moon system to orbit the sun without end,” ULA officers stated.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander will carry 24 payloads to the moon, together with 11 for NASA as a part of the company’s Business Lunar Payload Companies undertaking.
E mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or comply with him @tariqjmalik (opens in new tab). Observe us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).
