ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket, carrying a U.S. lunar lander that could become the first private spacecraft to successfully land on the Moon, arrived Friday at its launch pad in Florida, ahead of its scheduled liftoff on Monday.
The nearly 62-meter-tall rocket was lifted out of its hangar and traveled the few hundred meters to the launch pad, ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, announced. The first liftoff of Vulcan Centaur is scheduled for 02:18 local time (07:18 GMT) on Monday from Cape Canaveral.
Vulcan Centaur is intended to enable ULA to offer more affordable take-offs by replacing its Atlas V and Delta IV launchers. The new rocket will be able to carry up to 27.2 tons into low Earth orbit, a payload comparable to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission, ambitious for a maiden flight, carries the ashes of personalities from the Star Trek series, and a lunar lander from the American start-up Astrobotic, which also contains NASA scientific experiments. The attempt to land on the Moon is scheduled for February 23.
Lunar Economy
If the mission is successful, Astrobotic could become the first U.S. lunar lander to land on the moon since the end of the Apollo program more than 50 years ago. And the first private company to achieve this feat. Israeli and Japanese companies have tried to land on the moon in recent years, but these missions have ended in crashes.
Japan is also due to attempt to land on the moon in two weeks, but this is a mission by the country's space agency (JAXA). Russia, for its part, spectacularly missed a moon landing this summer. To date, only the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India have successfully landed a plane on the Moon.
The U.S. space agency plans to send astronauts back to the Moon with its Artemis program. It is thus seeking to develop a lunar economy, in order to be able to rely on private companies, for example, to send equipment. It provided crucial funding to Astrobotic by contracting with the company to transport scientific technologies and experiments.
As part of the same program, called CLPS, another American company, Intuitive Machines, has also been commissioned by NASA to provide such a service. His aircraft will be launched by a SpaceX rocket, with take-off currently scheduled for mid-February.