KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. – A Vulcan rocket roared to life early Monday for the first time, launching a lunar lander from a private Pittsburgh company carrying NASA science and other payloads to the Moon.
United Launch Alliance achieved its first successful launch of the new Vulcan Centaur rocket at 2:18 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida, kicking off a series of firsts for ULA, NASA and space robotics company Astrobotic.
With the liftoff, the Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon lander began its six-week journey to the Moon’s south pole. If the robot makes a soft landing as planned in late February, it will mark the first commercial company to land on the Moon successfully and the first American landing on the lunar surface since Apollo 17.
Astrobotic CEO John Thornton smiled ear to ear after the launch, saying it was “a dream” to see the launch happen.
“This is the moment we’ve been waiting for 16 years,” Thornton said. “We are on our way to the moon.”
The mission is also a first for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Instead of building and managing its own missions to the Moon, the space agency awarded contracts to American companies to fly NASA lunar science.
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Astrobotic was among the 14 private companies selected under NASA’s CLPS initiative to deliver science to the Moon ahead of the first Artemis astronaut missions to the lunar south pole in late 2025. Next month, another NASA CLPS contractor, Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, will launch its moon lander with SpaceX.
ULA has been working toward Monday’s launch for more than a decade with the development of the Vulcan rocket, designed to replace its workhorse rocket, the Atlas V. While it was the first launch of Vulcan, the liftoff was the 159th for the company.
Monday’s lunar launch was an important milestone for ULA with its first test flight of Vulcan and the first spaceflight for the BE-4 rocket engines developed by Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin. The same engines will power Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which is set to begin launching from Florida later this year.
Peregrine will carry and power over 20 payloads, including five NASA science missions.
Other items launching on Peregrine include half a dozen small Moon rovers, a time capsule shaped like a Japanese sports drink and a token from Pittsburgh amusement park Kennywood.
Astrobotic partnered with global shipping company DHL to sell space on the lander for people to send small items to the Moon.
Space memorial companies Celestis and Elysium Space have also purchased space on the Peregrine lander. Human ashes and hair samples from three former U.S. presidents – George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower — are included in the Celestis memorial payload.
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Astrobotic worked with Carnegie Mellon University staff and students to develop the tiny Iris Lunar Rover flying on Peregrine.
Iris is one of six small rovers headed to the Moon on this mission. The Mexican Space Agency is sending five miniature rovers weighing less than 60 grams each for a demonstration mission on the lunar surface.
Now out of Earth’s orbit, the Peregrine spacecraft will need to continue to communicate through NASA’s Deep Space Network as it navigates toward the lunar surface over the next six weeks.
Astrobotic will track and communicate with the spacecraft at its mission control in Pittsburgh.
If Peregrine completes the 238,000-mile journey, it will use the Doppler LiDAR to guide itself to land on four legs at the Bay of Stickiness near the geologically rich area of the Gruithuisen Domes. NASA scientists are interested in this region near the lunar South Pole because it’s believed to contain volatiles, including water ice.