ULA chief on the Vulcan rocket: “The path to flight one is clear”

United Launch Alliance is closing in on the debut flight of the Vulcan rocket, and it stays on monitor to fly the car for the primary time on December 24.

Throughout a media roundtable on Wednesday afternoon, the chief government of United Launch Alliance, Tory Bruno, mentioned, “The trail to flight one is evident” for Vulcan. The final main piece of {hardware} for the rocket, the Centaur V higher stage, arrived at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Monday. The entire qualification testing vital for the primary flight, together with for the higher stage, is full.

Within the coming days, Bruno mentioned the Centaur higher stage can be built-in with the Vulcan first stage. Then, the mixed car might be rolled to the launch website for a fueling check generally known as a moist gown rehearsal in December. Nevertheless, the rocket’s major engines, BE-4s supplied by Blue Origin, won’t be fired. That is as a result of the primary stage already completed this hot fire test successfully in June.

Bruno mentioned United Launch Alliance, or ULA, has some margin in its schedule as it really works towards a launch at 1:49 am ET on Christmas Eve. If the climate is poor, the corporate additionally has launch alternatives on December 25 and 26 earlier than the closure of the launch window this yr. The “Certification 1” mission would then have one other launch alternative throughout the first half of January.

As its major payload, the Certification 1 mission will carry a lunar lander constructed by Astrobotic, which can try and make a mushy landing on the Moon early subsequent yr.

Ready for Vulcan

Vulcan has been a very long time coming. ULA has been creating the rocket for greater than a decade because it sought to construct a heavy raise rocket to switch its fleet of Atlas and Delta rockets. The change was pushed by two main wants. One, the corporate wanted a rocket extra cost-competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters. And two, the US Congress mandated that ULA finish its reliance on the Russia-made engines that energy the Atlas V rocket.

The massive rocket was initially resulting from launch in 2020 however has slipped resulting from a number of points, together with the extended growth strategy of the BE-4 rocket engine in addition to a serious accident with the Centaur V higher stage in March this yr.

Because the delays have mounted, ULA has confronted growing stress from the US Area Pressure to start flying Vulcan, as it’s slated to fly about two dozen nationwide safety missions within the subsequent 5 years. Earlier than it will possibly do this, nonetheless, Vulcan should full two certification flights and supply knowledge to the army. The primary of those is the Astrobotic flight, and the second mission will launch Sierra Area’s Dream Chaser spacecraft. Throughout Wednesday’s teleconference, Bruno declined to set a selected goal for that flight, mentioning solely that it in all probability will happen throughout the first half of subsequent yr.

Going for many missions

Bruno mentioned ULA has bought 70 Vulcan launches, a tally that consists of about one-half army missions and one-half business flights. The first buyer for the business launches is Amazon, which is keen to start placing its Mission Kuiper broadband Web satellites into low-Earth orbit.

In consequence, ULA is searching for to scale up manufacturing of the Vulcan rocket to achieve a cadence of two launches a month by the top of 2025. That appears relatively formidable and may be asking quite a lot of suppliers, together with engine producer Blue Origin. Bruno, nonetheless, mentioned the administration challenges of that scaling are being labored on.

“We predict Blue to maintain up with us, and we’re working very, very arduous to try this,” he mentioned. “To this point, so good.”