United Launch Alliance is nearing the debut flight of its Vulcan rocket and is on track for its first flight on December 24th.
At a media roundtable Wednesday afternoon, United Launch Alliance CEO Tori Bruno said Vulcan was “clearly on a path to its first flight.” The rocket’s last major hardware, the Centaur V upper stage, has arrived. All qualification tests necessary for the first flight, including the upper stage, were completed on Monday at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Bruno said the Centaur’s upper stage will be integrated with the Vulcan’s first stage in the coming days. The combined vehicles will then be taken to the launch site for a refueling test, known as a wet dress rehearsal, in December. However, the rocket’s main engine, the BE-4 provided by Blue Origin, will not ignite. This is because the first stage has already successfully completed this high-temperature combustion test in June.
Bruno said United Launch Alliance (ULA) is working toward a 1:49 a.m. Eastern Christmas Eve launch, giving it some flexibility in its schedule. If the weather is bad, there will be another launch opportunity on December 25th and 26th, before this year’s launch window closes. The “Certification 1” mission will have another chance to launch in the first half of January.
The Certification 1 mission will carry a lunar lander built by Astrobotic as its primary payload and attempt a soft touchdown on the lunar surface early next year.
waiting for vulcan
It’s been a while since I’ve been to Vulcan. ULA has been developing the rocket for more than a decade, aiming to build a heavy-lift rocket to replace the company’s Atlas and Delta rockets. This change was driven by his two major needs. For one, the company needed a rocket that was more cost-competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. And second, the U.S. Congress ordered his ULA to stop relying on Russian engines to power the Atlas V rocket.
The large rocket was originally scheduled to launch in 2020, but was postponed due to several issues, including the lengthy development process for the BE-4 rocket engine and a serious accident with the Centaur V upper stage in March of this year. .
As delays mount, ULA faces increasing pressure from the U.S. Space Command to begin flying Vulcan, which is scheduled to fly about two dozen national security missions over the next five years. However, before that, Vulcan must complete her two certification flights and provide data to the military. The first mission will be an astrobot flight, and the second will launch Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spacecraft. In a conference call Wednesday, Bruno declined to set a specific goal for the flight, saying only that it would likely take place in the first half of next year.
Take on many missions
Bruno said ULA has sold 70 Vulcan launches to date, with the total consisting of about half for military missions and half for commercial flights. A major commercial launch customer is Amazon, which is keen to send its broadband internet satellite Project Kuiper into low Earth orbit.
As a result, ULA aims to scale up Vulcan rocket production and reach a twice-monthly launch rate by the end of 2025. It’s quite ambitious and could involve a number of suppliers, including engine maker Blue Origin. But Bruno said the company is grappling with the operational challenges that come with scaling up.
“We’re hoping that the blues will catch up with us and we’re working very hard to do that,” he said. “So far, so good.”