ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur blasts off for 1st time in Space Coast launch
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — A new era for United Launch Alliance began as the first Vulcan Centaur rocket made its much-delayed debut blasting off on an overnight launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The replacement for ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets that was originally aiming to launch by 2021 finally took flight three years later on the Certification-1 mission from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41 at 2:18 a.m. Monday.
Vulcan carved a bright streak of light over the clear Space Coast sky amid cheers from the crowds gathered at KSC’s press site that were drowned out by the soundwave of the rocket’s 1.7 million pounds of thrust, which in turn set off a symphony of car alarms.
“Tremendous excitement and anticipation,” said ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno ahead of launch. “I’ve got to tell you, I’ve done over 400 launches. All of them I always get butterflies. This one’s really special because of what it means to our country, to our customers, to the team that has worked so hard.”
An hour into the mission, Bruno was back with a giddy smile.
“Yeehaw. I am so thrilled I can tell you how much,” he said. “I am so proud of this team. Oh my gosh, this has been years of hard work. So far this has been an absolutely beautiful mission.”
A lot is riding on Astrobotic moon lander set for launch Monday on new Vulcan Centaur
The rocket’s main payload is commercial company Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lunar lander headed for a potential moon landing in February that could be the first under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
“It’s a dream. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for for 16 years and I’m standing in mission control and we just had a beautiful launch,” said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton. “Thank you ULA. So so so excited. We are on our way.”
The Peregrine spacecraft separated from the Centaur upper stage about 50 minutes after liftoff, after which it successfully made a space-to-ground communications connection, but then later Monday morning, Astrobotic ran into problems that could thwart efforts for its planned landing attempt on Feb. 23. What the company called “unstable sun-pointing” meant it was relying on a dying battery to remain operational.
Astrobotic moon landing threatened despite successful Space Coast launch on ULA Vulcan
“The team believes that the likely cause of the unstable sun-pointing is a propulsion anomaly that, if proven true, threatens the ability of the spacecraft to soft land on the moon,” the company stated.
The company said it was able to perform “an improvised maneuver to reorient the solar panels toward the sun” just before it entered a planned period without communication.
Just before 1 p.m. the company said it was able to re-establish communications with Peregrine with potentially good news, but the followed up with a more dire mission warning.
“The team’s improvised maneuver was successful in reorienting Peregrine’s solar array towards the sun,” the company posted. “We are now charging the battery. The Mission Anomaly Board continues to evaluate the data we’re receiving and is assessing the status of what we believe to be the root of the anomaly: a failure within the propulsion system.”
About 15 minutes after, though, the company posted, “Unfortunately, it appears the failure within the propulsion system is causing a critical loss of propellant. The team is working to try and stabilize this loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture. We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time.”
Also flying and attached to the Centaur upper stage and headed for a permanent deep space orbit is a half-pound memorial with the partial remains and DNA of more than 200 people including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and actors James “Scotty” Doohan, Nichelle “Lt. Uhura” Nichols and DeForest “Dr. McCoy” Kelly, as part of Celestis Inc.’s Enterprise Flight. Among the DNA are hair samples from presidents George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D Eisenhower and Ronald Regan. Once at its final destination, the stage will be Enterprise Station.
The countdown for launch began at 3:58 p.m. Sunday and progressed without any issues and clear weather, getting the go for launch seven minutes before liftoff.
“We’ve very rigorously gone through the qualification of Vulcan … that stretched over several years, involved rigorous testing of the component and subsystem and major elements of the rocket as well as testing here at the launch site,” said Mark Peller, ULA’s vice president of Vulcan development during a pre-launch press conference on Friday. “Extensive simulation using the latest tools to do everything we can to fly the rocket in simulation before we actually fly it.”
The successful launch could open the door for at least 70 missions for Vulcan already in the books including five more on the manifest for 2024. The second launch would be no earlier than April following at least 60 days of review after Cert-1’s launch. That’s Certification-2 carrying Sierra Space’s new Dream Chaser, an uncrewed cargo spacecraft, for its first mission to the International Space Station. If it can clear both certification flights, it can begin its lineup of planned missions for the Department of Defense.
It has only 17 more Atlas V rockets and one lone Delta IV Heavy left in its stable, all sold to customers.
Nine of the 17 Atlas V’s and the single Delta IV Heavy are also slated to launch in 2024 meaning up to 16 ULA launches could fly this year, a feat the company that was formed in 2006 as a joint effort of Boeing and Lockheed Martin has only accomplished once, back in 2009.
ULA only managed three flights in 2023 while competitor SpaceX managed 96 orbital missions. To date, though, ULA has flown 158 times with 100% mission success.
SpaceX knocks out Sunday launch before ULA Vulcan’s 1st flight overnight
This became the Space Coast’s third launch of the year following a pair of SpaceX Falcon 9 missions from neighboring Space Launch Complex 40, including the latest Starlink mission that lifted off on Sunday evening nine hours earlier.
SpaceX’s plans call for as many as 144 launches across its Florida and California facilities. Those paired with ULA’s planned launches and possibly NASA’s Space Launch System rocket on the Artemis II mission mean the Space Coast could blow past the record 72 launches it ticked off in 2023.
With so many Vulcan launches planned beyond 2024, though, ULA is constructing a second vertical integration facility at SLC 41 to support up to two launches per month while also utilizing a pad at California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.
The majority of the new rocket features parts already flight tested on previous Atlas V and Delta IV launches.
“So many of the systems that we’re flying here actually have a fair amount of flight experience under their belts,” Peller said.
The big question mark, though, were the new American-made BE-4 engines from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had yet to make it to orbit.
While plans for Vulcan began in 2014, delays in delivery of the first engines were among several hurdles ULA had to tackle coming to the launch pad. Switching to American-made engines was part of the new U.S. requirements to steer off of Russian-made rocket engines. Blue Origin’s in-the-works New Glenn rocket will also be using the BE-4. The two engines needed for the Certificaiton-2 flight are near completion, though, and will soon be sent to ULA.
“After Blue Origin delivered the engines for this flight vehicle early last year, the real focus of test activity was getting through qualifications, qualify BE-4 for flight,” Peller said. “They’ve switched back now to production engines to support our production activities. … They’re on track.”
Northrop Grumman also provided new larger versions of its solid rocket boosters, with Certification-1 using just a pair of GEM 63XL engines. Future Vulcan flights can use up to six of the engines for a maximum thrust of 3.3 million pounds at liftoff.
In comparison, a Falcon 9 rocket also generates 1.7 million pounds of thrust while Falcon Heavy generates 5.1 million pounds of thrust. Atlas V in its most powerful configuration hits 2.3 million pounds of thrust while the Delta IV Heavy generates 2.1 million pounds. NASA’s SLS manages 8.8 million pounds of thrust while SpaceX’s new Starship and Super Heavy produces around 17 million pounds of thrust.
“Vulcan does provide extremely good value and is very competitive in the marketplace,” Peller said. “What’s unique about Vulcan and what we originally set out to do was to provide a rocket that had all the capabilities of Atlas and Delta in one single system and we achieved that — actually a vehicle that has performance that’s even greater than the three-body Delta IV Heavy.”
Peller said the system can hit all of the targets that its commercial, civil and national security space customers demand including low-Earth orbit, geostationary orbit and interplanetary, such as the Cert-1 flight.
“We’ve been able to achieve as a vehicle that goes from medium to heavy lift in a single core configuration,” he said. “We do that by the flexibility to add solid rocket boosters so that provides heavy lift capability with the single core rocket and providing extreme value for our customers … so a very flexible rocket that is very competitive in the marketplace.”
ULA outlines path for retargeted 1st launch of Vulcan Centaur
Despite delays in engine delivery as well as the pandemic that saw the original 2021 target keep slipping, all seemed well for a launch attempt back in May 2023, but an incident in March at a test facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, forced an even longer wait. That incident left both a test version of the Centaur upper stage and the test stand it was on damaged when a hydrogen leak caused a massive fireball.
Figuring out why that leak happened and implementing a fix meant switching out the Centaur stage that was already awaiting launch at Cape Canaveral. With all the new parts in place, ULA then had targeted a Christmas Eve launch, but delayed that as well after issues completing a full wet dress rehearsal in early December.
“This is still the first time the vehicle has flown and we will watch this very carefully and see what we learn from this,” Peller said. “We’re going into this with very high confidence. If there is any observations with the first fight, we’re prepared to respond and address those, and turn around quickly to fly again.”
