{"id":45272,"date":"2024-01-06T18:14:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-06T10:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/heres-a-first-look-at-united-launch-alliances-new-vulcan-rocket\/"},"modified":"2024-01-06T18:14:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T10:14:46","slug":"heres-a-first-look-at-united-launch-alliances-new-vulcan-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/heres-a-first-look-at-united-launch-alliances-new-vulcan-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s a first look at United Launch Alliance\u2019s new Vulcan rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance\u2019s first Vulcan rocket prepares to emerge from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.<\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n

<\/path><\/clipPath><\/defs><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance\u2019s first Vulcan rocket prepares to emerge from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.<\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

ULA\u2019s fully stacked Vulcan rocket is clearly visible for the first time during rollout from its vertical hangar.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

<\/path><\/clipPath><\/defs><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/p>\n

ULA\u2019s fully stacked Vulcan rocket is clearly visible for the first time during rollout from its vertical hangar.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This version of ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

<\/path><\/clipPath><\/defs><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/p>\n

This version of ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

<\/path><\/clipPath><\/defs><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/p>\n

ULA\u2019s fully stacked Vulcan rocket is clearly visible for the first time during rollout from its vertical hangar.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

<\/path><\/clipPath><\/defs><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/p>\n

This version of ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Vulcan rocket was positioned on top of a mobile launch platform for the third-of-a-mile trek to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For its first flight, the Vulcan rocket is emblazoned with a red flame-like insignia, a US flag, and the logos of United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic, which owns the lunar lander nestled inside the rocket\u2019s payload fairing.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Vulcan rocket passes the halfway point on its journey to the launch pad Friday.<\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n

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Technicians gather as ULA\u2019s Vulcan rocket nears the launch pad.<\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n

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Two \u201ctrackmobile\u201d locomotives propelled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to the launch pad, riding along dual rail tracks. <\/p>\n

United Launch Alliance<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It took about a half-hour for the Vulcan rocket to complete its rollout to the launch pad.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Liftoff is scheduled for 2:18 am EST (07:18 UTC) Monday.<\/p>\n

Stephen Clark\/Ars Technica<\/p>\n

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.\u2014United Launch Alliance\u2019s first Vulcan rocket emerged from its hangar Friday for a 30-minute trek to its launch pad in Florida, finally moving into the starting blocks after a decade of development and testing.<\/p>\n

This was the first time anyone had seen the full-size 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket in its full form. Since ULA finished assembling the rocket last month, it has been cocooned inside the scaffolding of the company\u2019s vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.<\/p>\n

On Friday, ULA\u2019s ground crew rolled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to its seaside launch pad. It was one of the last steps before the Vulcan rocket is cleared for liftoff Monday at 2:18 am EST (07:18 UTC). On Sunday afternoon, ULA engineers will gather inside a control center at Cape Canaveral to oversee an 11-hour countdown, when the Vulcan rocket will be loaded with methane, liquid hydrogen, and liquid oxygen propellants.<\/p>\n

ULA has a 45-minute launch window to get the mission off the ground on Monday, and there is an 85 percent chance of good weather.<\/p>\n

If the rocket doesn\u2019t take off Monday, ULA has backup launch opportunities Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Then, the company would have to stand down until January 23, a gap in launch availability constrained by the trajectory of the Vulcan rocket\u2019s payload. A commercial robotic Moon lander, developed by a Pennsylvania company named Astrobotic, is the primary passenger on the inaugural flight of Vulcan.<\/p>\n

In the wild<\/h2>\n

This is a big moment for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture formed in 2006 by the merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin\u2019s launch divisions. The Vulcan rocket, quite literally, is the embodiment of the company\u2019s future, said Mark Peller, ULA\u2019s vice president of Vulcan development. It will replace ULA\u2019s fleet of Atlas and Delta rockets, with lineages dating back to the early years of the Space Age.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an opportunity to develop a new rocket that can do everything Atlas and Delta could do, but do it with even greater performance, and taking advantage of the latest technology,\u201d Peller said Friday. \u201cThe system that we\u2019ve developed, and we\u2019re about to fly, is really positioning us for a very bright, prosperous future for many, many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facing stiff competition from SpaceX, still an upstart in the launch business a decade ago, ULA officials decided they needed a new rocket that was cheaper to build and fly than the Atlas V and Delta IV. Ars has traced the history of Vulcan, a timeline that includes lawsuits, a change in corporate leadership, delays and setbacks, and, most recently, reports that Boeing and Lockheed Martin have put ULA up for sale.<\/p>\n

ULA has sold dozens of Vulcan missions to the US military and Amazon for its Project Kuiper broadband network. In the military\u2019s case, the Pentagon wants to have at least two independent launch providers capable of hauling national security satellites into orbit, so ULA has been able to count on a steady diet of government contracts.<\/p>\n

Amazon booked launches with almost every major Western launch company besides SpaceX, its competitor in the broadband satellite business. This also ensured ULA a hefty cut of work for Amazon\u2019s $10 billion Kuiper satellite constellation.<\/p>\n

The Vulcan rocket \u201chas proven to already be an extremely competitive product in the marketplace, having an order book of over 70 missions before first flight, which is really unheard of,\u201d Peller said. \u201cSo it is the future of our company, and we\u2019re off to a great start on a really solid trajectory with Vulcan.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

But it still needs to fly, and ULA is putting its record of 100 percent mission success on the line with the Vulcan test flight slated for Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have very rigorously gone through a qualification of Vulcan,\u201d Peller said. \u201cThat stretched over several years, involved rigorous testing of the components, the subsystems, and the major elements of the rocket as well as testing here at the launch site, extensive simulation using the latest tools to do everything we can to fly the rocket in simulation before we actually fly it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the new systems that are flying on Vulcan had the benefit of being introduced on Atlas and Delta in recent years. So many of the systems that we\u2019re flying here actually have a fair amount of flight experience under their belts,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut \u2026 this is still the first time the vehicle has flown, and we will watch this very carefully and see what we learn from this. We\u2019re going into this very high confidence. If there are any observations with the first flight, we\u2019re prepared to respond and address those, and turn around quickly to fly again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new rocket\u2019s first stage is powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines from Blue Origin. While they\u2019ve been tested on the ground countless times, these engines have never flown before.<\/p>\n

Vulcan\u2019s upper stage, called the Centaur V, is an upgraded twin-engine version of the single-engine upper stage that flies on the Atlas V rocket. The hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines on the Centaur upper stage are similar in design to the ones flown on every Atlas V and Delta IV rocket, but the Centaur V is much larger. One of the upgraded upper stages for Vulcan exploded during a ground test last year, forcing ULA to push back the rocket\u2019s debut flight for months while engineers strengthened the Centaur\u2019s stainless steel hydrogen tank.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

This version of the Vulcan rocket is fitted with two strap-on solid-fueled boosters from Northrop Grumman. These are higher-thrust boosters than the strap-on rockets used on ULA\u2019s previous rockets. In the future, Vulcan rockets will come in variants with zero, two, four, or six solid rocket boosters, allowing ULA to match the vehicle\u2019s lift capability with each mission\u2019s requirements.<\/p>\n

The most powerful version of Vulcan will outlift the largest rocket in ULA\u2019s current fleet, the Delta IV Heavy. SpaceX\u2019s Falcon Heavy rocket can handle heavier payloads flying to low-Earth orbit and has a similar lift capability to higher-altitude orbits.<\/p>\n

ULA\u2019s Vulcan, though, will enter service as a fully expendable rocket. The company plans to gradually introduce an upgrade to recover and reuse the two BE-4 engines, although Peller said Friday that it will take a \u201cfew years\u201d to begin reusing engines.<\/p>\n

According to ULA, the initial focus is to fully certify the Vulcan rocket to launch US military satellites later this year. The first Vulcan flight, which ULA calls \u201cCert-1,\u201d will be followed by a \u201cCert-2\u201d mission as soon as April to launch Sierra Space\u2019s commercial Dream Chaser spaceplane on a resupply mission to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

If those two launches go flawlessly, the Space Force could sign off on launching national security payloads on Vulcan in the second half of this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United Launch Alliance\u2019s first Vulcan rocket prepares to emerge from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance\u2019s first Vulcan rocket prepares to emerge from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. United Launch Alliance ULA\u2019s fully stacked Vulcan rocket […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[670,25,472,750,4518],"class_list":["post-45272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-boeing","tag-launch","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-united-launch-alliance","tag-vulcan-rocket"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}