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It ’s hard to understate just how much was at stake in Monday ’s early morning launch ofUnited Launch Alliance ’s Vulcan Centaur rocket : multiple major reputations , billions of dollars , a new moon lander , the country ’s dreams for lunar geographic expedition , brand new rocket engine flying for the first prison term and what is quite literally ULA ’s future .
And ULA draw out it off . The company ’s next - generation rocket engine Vulcan Centaur successfully lifted off in the early hours of Monday , and its chief payload , a lunar lander fromAstrobotic , is now on its room to the moonshine .
The toilsome - lift rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Center at 2:18 a.m. EST Monday . The first stage , which is power by two methane - fuel BE-4 engines from Blue Origin , separated from the Centaur V upper stage at around 2:24 .
principal - locomotive engine cut - off on the Centaur took place around T+15 minutes . The Centaur executed two more burns to get Astrobotic ’s Peregrine lander on the correct flight to the Sun Myung Moon . With those complete , the lander , call Peregrine , will now enter on a one - and - a - one-half month journeying to the moonshine . Peregrine is take a slightly longsighted route to the lunar month , and so will have to execute a handful of complicated burns to maneuver into progressively lower lunar orbits . Eventually , the spacecraft will undertake to land autonomously near a area cry Gruithuisen Domes on February 23 .
The launching and subsequent journeying to the lunation are a watershed moment for both United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic . The former company , a 50 - 50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin , is envisioned as the future tense of ULA . The rocket is designed to supersede the Atlas V and Delta IV Heavy , both of which are due to retire .
The rocket is also designed to contend against other launch supplier , like SpaceX , by proffer a heavy payload fairing and an adjustable contour depend on the mission profile . So customers will be able-bodied to prefer between two shipment fairing sizes ( 51 or 70 foot long ) and four standard configurations with zero , two , four or six solid skyrocket boosters , depending on the military mission visibility and client requirements .
ULA has already sold a number of missions for the 202 - foot - improbable Vulcan , including 38 launching to Amazon to deploy part of its ambitious Project Kuiper satellite broadband configuration . The launch company also win over two dozen contract with the U.S. Space Force ( USSF ) , though it must complete one more authentication launching before it can start meet those launches .
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If all hold up to plan , ULA could perform that second enfranchisement launching , called Cert-2 , as too soon as April . That mission will aviate another high - profile , high - stakes payload : Sierra Space ’s Dream Chaser spaceplane , which would take a journey to the International Space Station . The remaining four missions on Vulcan ’s manifest this year would all be for USSF .
ULA and Astrobotic are not the only single with something to fete : This is also the first time that Blue Origin ’s BE-4 engines have seen flight , a triumph that comes after about a decade of development . While Vulcan will initially be fully spendable , the eventual aim is to recover the two engines mid - airwave and reprocess them to further drive down monetary value .
Astrobotic ’s Peregrine is also the first lander to vanish under NASA ’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS ) political program , an go-ahead to kickstart the ontogenesis of lunar delivery services from commercial-grade supplier . Pittsburgh - base Astrobotic was awarded $ 79.5 million for this mission in 2019 , a cost that was later increase to $ 108 million ; even if it does n’t manage to adhere the moon landing place , it ’s still a major proof - of - concept for NASA ’s ambitious efforts to further advance blank services from private industriousness .
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