A towering new rocket has taken flight, carrying what could be the first commercial lander to touch down on the moon \u2014 and the first lunar landing mission to launch from the United States since 1972. <\/p>\n
The Vulcan Centaur rocket, a never-before-flown model developed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, roared to life at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:18 a.m. ET Monday. The launch vehicle soared through space for nearly an hour, expending its fuel as it ripped away from Earth\u2019s gravity and sent the lunar lander, called Peregrine, on its way to the moon. <\/p>\n
Just after 3 a.m. ET, the Peregrine spacecraft separated from the rocket and began its slow journey to the lunar surface. If all goes according to plan, the lander could touch down on the moon on February 23. <\/p>\n
Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic Technology developed the Peregrine lander \u2014 named after the falcon that is the fastest-flying bird in the world \u2014 under a contract with NASA. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a dream \u2026 For 16 years we\u2019ve been pushing for this moment today,\u201d Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said during a webcast of the launch. \u201cAnd along the way, we had a lot of hard challenges that we had to overcome and a lot of people doubted us along the way. But our team and the people that supported us believed in the mission, and they created this beautiful moment that we\u2019re seeing today.\u201d <\/p>\n
The space agency paid Astrobotic $108 million to develop Peregrine and fly NASA\u2019s science experiments to the lunar surface. <\/p>\n
But the space agency is just one customer among many for this mission. <\/p>\n
Of the 20 payloads that Peregrine will carry to the moon, five are NASA science instruments. The other 15 come from a range of customers. <\/p>\n
Some are additional science payloads from nations such as Mexico, while others include a robotics experiment from a private UK-based company and trinkets or mementos that the German shipping company DHL put together. <\/p>\n
Peregrine is also carrying human remains on behalf of two commercial space burial companies \u2014 Elysium Space and Celestis \u2014 a move that\u2019s sparked opposition from Navajo Nation, the largest group of Native Americans in the United States. The group contends that allowing the remains to touch down on the lunar surface would be an affront to many Indigenous cultures, which regard the moon as sacred. Celestis offers to carry ashes to the moon for prices starting at more than $10,000, according to the company\u2019s website. <\/p>\n
The five NASA-sponsored experiments include two instruments to monitor the radiation environment, \u201chelping us better prepare to send crewed missions back to the moon,\u201d said Paul Niles, NASA\u2019s project scientist for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, the arm of NASA that provided funding for Peregrine, during a Thursday news briefing. Other instruments will analyze the makeup of the lunar soil, looking for water and hydroxyl molecules. NASA will also study the moon\u2019s super-thin atmosphere. <\/p>\n
Once on the moon\u2019s surface, Peregrine is expected to operate for up to 10 days before its landing site is plunged into darkness \u2014 making it too cold to go on. <\/p>\n
Also on board the Vulcan Centaur rocket, packed separately from the Peregrine lander, was another payload from the space burial company Celestis. <\/p>\n
The object, on a mission dubbed the Enterprise Flight, contains 265 capsules with human remains as well as DNA samples from former US presidents John F. Kennedy, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower. <\/p>\n
The remains also include \u201cthe creator and several cast members of the original\u00a0Star Trek<\/em>\u00a0television series, as well as an Apollo-era astronaut, together with people from all walks of life, interests, and vocations,\u201d according to the company\u2019s website. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n The Enterprise Flight payload is headed for deep space where it will spend eternity orbiting the sun. <\/p>\n The excitement of an impending lunar landing attempt aside, the launch of ULA\u2019s Vulcan Centaur rocket was an event in its own right. <\/p>\n The rocket is one of the most highly anticipated new vehicles to take flight in years. If the rocket\u2019s mission is successful, it could be a game-changer for ULA and the broader launch industry. <\/p>\n ULA was formed in 2006 in response to the US military\u2019s need to keep both Boeing\u2019s Delta and Lockheed Martin\u2019s Atlas rockets operational. But the launch industry looks far different today than it did nearly two decades ago, and in the meantime SpaceX has emerged as a dominant force that undercuts ULA on price. <\/p>\n ULA and its CEO, Tory Bruno, envision Vulcan Centaur will replace its Atlas and Delta rockets. Vulcan Centaur already has about 70 missions lined up, according to Bruno. <\/p>\n ULA has a pristine launch record with practically no failed missions. Vulcan Centaur builds on the success of ULA\u2019s Atlas rockets by using essentially the same upper stage \u2014 the portion of the rocket that powers a spacecraft to orbital speeds after the initial liftoff. <\/p>\n But a major change was made to the rocket\u2019s first stage, the bottom portion that gives it the initial burst of power off the launchpad. <\/p>\n Vulcan Centaur was propelled by two side boosters as well as two US-made rocket engines \u2014 which the Jeff Bezos-funded company Blue Origin developed \u2014 at the base of its first-stage booster, replacing Russian-made engines that powered the Atlas rockets. ULA\u2019s reliance on Russian engines became politically unpopular as tensions between the United States and Russia have grown in recent years. <\/p>\n Vulcan Centaur\u2019s debut was already years overdue, though it\u2019s common in the aerospace industry for companies to blow past deadlines. <\/p>\n ULA encountered\u00a0lengthy delays awaiting Blue Origin\u2019s new engines. And a Vulcan Centaur upper stage was inadvertently destroyed on a test stand last year. <\/p>\n Despite those setbacks, Bruno said in November that development of Vulcan Centaur has been one of the \u201cmore orderly and well-executed development programs that I\u2019ve worked on in my very long career in the aerospace industry.\u201d <\/p>\n In the moments after liftoff, the rocket appeared to be operating as intended. <\/p>\n\n A towering new rocket has taken flight, carrying what could be the first commercial lander to touch down on the moon \u2014 and the first lunar landing mission to launch from the United States since 1972. The Vulcan Centaur rocket, a never-before-flown model developed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture by Boeing and Lockheed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} A new rocket<\/h3>\n