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A towering new rocket has lifted off, carrying what could be the first commercial lander to land on the moon — and the first lunar landing mission launched from the United States since 1972.
The Vulcan Centaur rocket, a never-before-flown model developed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, roared to life at 2:18 a.m. ET on Monday at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch vehicle drifted through space for nearly an hour, using up its fuel as it pulled away from Earth’s gravity and sent the lunar lander, called Peregrine, on its way to the moon.
Just after 3 a.m. ET, the Peregrine spacecraft separated from the rocket and began its slow journey to the moon’s surface. If all goes according to plan, the lander could land on the moon on February 23.
What’s on board?
Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic Technology developed the Peregrine lander — named after the falcon that is the world’s fastest-flying bird — under contract with NASA.
“It’s a dream… We’ve been chasing this moment for 16 years,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said during a webcast of the launch. “And along the way we had a lot of tough challenges to overcome and a lot of people doubted us along the way. But our team and the people who supported us believed in the mission and they created this beautiful moment we see today.”
The space agency paid Astrobotic $108 million to develop Peregrine and fly NASA’s science experiments to the moon’s surface.
But the space agency is just one of many customers for this mission.
Of the 20 payloads Peregrine will deliver to the moon, five will be NASA scientific instruments. The other fifteen come from various customers.
Some are additional science cargoes from countries such as Mexico, while others include a robotics experiment from a private company in Britain and trinkets or souvenirs that German shipping company DHL has put together.
Peregrine also transports human remains on behalf of two commercial space burial companies – Elysium Space and Celestis – a move that has sparked opposition from the Navajo Nation, the largest group of Native Americans in the United States. The group claims that landing the remains on the moon’s surface would be an insult to many indigenous cultures, which consider the moon sacred. Celestis offers to transport ash to the moon for prices starting at more than $10,000, according to the company’s website.
The five NASA-sponsored experiments include two instruments to monitor the radiation environment, “which will help us better prepare for returning crewed missions to the moon,” said Paul Niles, NASA’s project scientist for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, the branch of NASA that provided funding for Peregrine, during a news briefing on Thursday. Other instruments will analyze the composition of the lunar soil, looking for water and hydroxyl molecules. NASA will also study the moon’s super-thin atmosphere.
Once on the lunar surface, Peregrine is expected to remain active for another ten days before the landing site is plunged into darkness, making it too cold to continue.
Also on board the Vulcan Centaur rocket, packaged separately from the Peregrine lander, was another payload from the space funeral company Celestis.
The object, on a mission called the Enterprise Flight, contains 265 capsules containing human remains and DNA samples from former US presidents John F. Kennedy, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.
The remains also include “the creator and several cast members of the original Star Trek television series, as well as an Apollo-era astronaut, along with people from all walks of life, interests and professions,” according to the company’s website.
The Apollo astronaut whose remains are aboard the Enterprise Flight is Philip Chapman, who was selected for the astronaut corps in 1967 but never flew to space. He died in 2021.
The Enterprise Flight’s payload is headed to deep space, where it will orbit the sun forever.
A new rocket
Aside from the excitement of an impending moon landing attempt, the launch of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket was an event in itself.
The rocket is one of the most anticipated new vehicles in years. If the rocket’s mission is successful, it could be a game-changer for ULA and the broader launch industry.
ULA was founded in 2006 in response to the U.S. military’s need to keep both Boeing’s Delta missiles and Lockheed Martin’s Atlas missiles operational. But the launch industry looks very different today than it did almost two decades ago, and in the meantime, SpaceX has emerged as a dominant force undercutting ULA on price.
ULA and its CEO, Tory Bruno, anticipate that Vulcan Centaur will replace its Atlas and Delta rockets. According to Bruno, Vulcan Centaur already has about 70 missions planned.
ULA has an impeccable launch record with virtually no mission failures. Vulcan Centaur builds on the success of ULA’s Atlas rockets by using essentially the same upper stage: the part of the rocket that boosts a spacecraft to orbital speeds after initial launch.
But a major change was made to the rocket’s first stage, the lower part that gives it the first burst of power from the launch pad.
Vulcan Centaur was propelled by two side boosters and two US-made rocket engines – which the Jeff Bezos-funded company Blue Origin developed – at the base of its first stage booster, replacing Russian engines that powered the Atlas rockets. ULA’s dependence on Russian engines became politically unpopular as tensions between the United States and Russia have increased in recent years.
Vulcan Centaur’s debut is long overdue, although it is common in the aerospace industry for companies to miss their deadlines.
ULA experienced lengthy delays while waiting for Blue Origin’s new engines. And a Vulcan Centaur upper stage was accidentally destroyed on a test stand last year.
Despite these setbacks, Bruno said in November that Vulcan Centaur development has been one of the “more orderly and well-executed development programs I have worked on in my very long career in the aerospace industry.”
In the moments after launch, the rocket appeared to work as intended.
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