The new Vulcan Centaur rocket from the ULA group, carrying an American moon lander which could become the first private spacecraft to successfully land on the Moon, arrived on its launch pad in Florida on Friday, before its takeoff scheduled for Monday.
The nearly 62 meter high rocket was taken out of its hangar and traveled the few hundred meters separating it from the launch area, announced ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The first takeoff of Vulcan Centaur is scheduled for 2:18 a.m. local time (07:18 GMT) Monday from Cape Canaveral.
Vulcan Centaur should allow ULA to offer more affordable takeoffs, by replacing its Atlas V and Delta IV launchers. The new rocket will be able to carry up to 27.2 tonnes into low Earth orbit, a load comparable to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission, ambitious for an inaugural flight, notably carries the ashes of personalities from the series Star Trekand a moon lander from the American start-up Astrobotic, which also contains scientific experiments from NASA.
The Moon landing attempt is scheduled for February 23.
If the mission is successful, Astrobotic could become the first American 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 attempted to land on the moon in recent years, but those missions ended in crashes.
Japan is also due to attempt to land on the moon in two weeks, but this is a mission of 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 device on the Moon.
The American 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, was also tasked by NASA with such a service. His device will be launched by a SpaceX rocket, with takeoff currently scheduled for mid-February.
