Astrobotic Selects United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur Rocket to Launch its First Mission to the Moon
Pittsburgh, Penn., and Centennial, Colo., Aug. 19, 2019 (Astrobotic/ULA PR)– Astrobotic announced today that it selected United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in a competitive commercial procurement to launch its Peregrine lunar lander to the moon in 2021.
“We are so excited to sign with ULA and fly Peregrine on Vulcan Centaur. This contract with ULA was the result of a highly competitive commercial process, and we are grateful to everyone involved in helping us make low-cost lunar transportation possible. When we launch the first lunar lander from American soil since Apollo, onboard the first Vulcan Centaur rocket, it will be a historic day for the country and commercial enterprise,” said Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton.
Astrobotic, the world leader in commercial delivery to the moon, was selected by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to deliver up to 14 NASA payloads to the moon on its Peregrine lunar lander in 2021. With this $79.5 million CLPS award, Astrobotic has now signed 16 customers for lunar delivery on its first mission.
“Our rockets have carried exploration missions to the moon, the sun, and every planet in the solar system so it is only fitting that Vulcan Centaur’s inaugural flight will lead the return of Americans to the lunar surface,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO. “We could not be more excited to fly this mission for Astrobotic.”
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander will launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch of this mission will serve as the first of two certification flights required for ULA’s U.S. Air Force certification process.
“This partnership represents a true ‘whole-of-government’ approach to how our nation is leading the world in space: NASA contracted with a commercial company to land on the moon, who then went on to contract with a commercial company for a rocket built to serve the national security space market,” said Bruno. “This highlights the power of our American system of partnership between government and industry to solve the toughest problems and the greatest of our human aspirations.”
About Astrobotic
Astrobotic Technology, Inc. is a space robotics company that seeks to make space accessible to the world. The company’s lunar lander, Peregrine, delivers payloads to the moon for companies, governments, universities, non-profits, and individuals for $1.2 million per kilogram. Astrobotic was selected by NASA in May 2019 for a $79.5 million contract to deliver payloads to the moon in 2021. The company also has more than 30 prior and ongoing NASA and commercial technology contracts, a commercial partnership with Airbus DS, and a corporate sponsorship with DHL. The company is also an official partner with NASA through the Lunar CATALYST Program. Astrobotic was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.
About ULA
With more than a century of combined heritage, ULA is the world’s most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 130 satellites to orbit that provide Earth observation capabilities, enable global communications, unlock the mysteries of our solar system, and support life-saving technology. For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at www.ulalaunch.com, or call the ULA Launch Hotline at 1-877-ULA-4321 (852-4321). Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/ulalaunch, twitter.com/ulalaunch and instagram.com/ulalaunch.
20 responses to “Astrobotic Selects United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur Rocket to Launch its First Mission to the Moon”
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They certainly got a great deal on this flight from ULA. If Astrobotic is only getting 79 mil from NASA, then this Vulcan flight costs significantly less than that number, since Astrobotic still needs to build their lander, and take some small profit out of the mission. Of course, it’s not everyday a rocket company gets to say their first mission sent a payload to the moon, so that has some value to ULA, rather than some vanilla comsat.
You miss the 16 payloads that the Astrobotics is carrying for paying customers.
Astrobotics is going be the Guinea Pig payload on the inaugural flight of the Vulcan Centaur. A launch vehicle with new airframes, new main engines, new upper stage engines and new solid rocket boosters along with new vehicle avionics & software. Astrobotics is not getting a big enough discount to help make the Vulcan Centaur flightworthy.
The “Centaur” portion of Vulcan Centaur is extremely flight proven. There probably aren’t any solids for this mission, but everything other than the first stage will have already flown on a previous Atlas mission. I assume even the avionics are moving over from Atlas Centaur. ULA needed 2 early commercial flights in order to get qualified for DOD missions, and it seems they didn’t have much trouble booking them.
No the new Centaur V upper stage of the Vulcan Centaur is not the one in the Atlas V, it is much more similar to the DCSS with DEC. Amusing the new Dual Engine Centaur will be introduced into service with the inaugural Starliner flight with the old Centaur III airframe.
The Vulcan according to Tory Bruno will fly with either 2, 4 or 6 new GEM-63XL solid boosters from NGIS (ex-Orbital-ATK). Even the RL-10 engines in the Vulcan Centaur upper stage are re-manufactured conversions from surplus Delta IV DCSS engines.
Avionic are unlikely to be from the Atlas Centaur since the other hardware on the vehicle are not the same.
The dual engine Centaur will fly this fall, with the first Starliner flight. Those GEM boosters will also make an appearance on a Atlas flight when required. They decided to stop using the Aerojet solids independent of the Vulcan design. And they have been converting the Delta version of the RL-10 into a common / shared RL10-C version for a while now. Everything not related to those BE-4 engines and methane fuel will be tested on Atlas before the first Vulcan flight. ULA does have a new second stage in mind for the Vulcan, but ACES doesn’t get rolled in until later.
Actually the dual RL-10 engines flying on the Starliner flight will be mated to the old Centaur III airframe. Which have very little in common with the Vulcan Centaur upper stage airframe.
AIUI ULA is using the GEM-63 boosters on the Atlas V and the elongated GEM-63XL boosters on the Vulcan Centaur.
The ACES upper stage for the Vulcan ACES is the Centaur V with IVF technology added.
Everything on the Vulcan Centaur will be tested on its first flight as integrated unit. Partial testing doesn’t tell you everything.
The Lunar CATALYST partners need to show something that can fly. Although self propelling down a rail track would be a useful analogue.
Ooh, a win for ULA. On top of the DreamChaser win (even though that was hardly unexpected), that’s two successes for Vulcan
Their sales dept seems to be doing quite well! We love to talk rocket science, but getting the ‘business’ part of a business right is just as important.
yes. I am curious to see how the thing plays out…ULA has been very good about at least negotiating with some groups that have hardware but little or no cash for ride sharing…like amateur radio groups
Well, if you want to use hydrogen–that puts the boot to SpaceX.
Falcon Heavy can give you more margin. Dream Chaser would have looked nice atop Falcon
When one has to fly two vehicles, come what may, the sales dept. has an atypically wide price margin within which to operate – pretty much anywhere from a single buck on up. For those first two launches, any money would be better than none.
SNC, one trusts, got better-than-will-likely-be-routinely-possible-in-future prices for the half-dozen launches it bought not only because ULA needed something to put on that second launch for certification but also because the additional launches in the pipe add materially to ULA’s ability to at least cover its overhead in an era when the annual billion bucks for “readiness” will no longer be forthcoming.
If a third actual commercial contract for Vulcan materializes, that will be truly newsworthy.
Given that ULA has to fly Vulcan at least twice to get USAF-certified for NatSec launches, the first two Vulcans could either fly without paid payloads or with. ULA, not unreasonably, preferred with. I’m sure both Astrobotic and SNC got extremely good – and likely never to be repeated – deals on their launches.
ULA seems to be doing the old ‘move near term customers to the new system’ trick – and quite successfully at that. SX did a similar one with Orbcomm and moved the F1 payloads to F9. It helps pad the order book and builds confidence in commercial and gov’t circles. It’s a good strategy whenever you can pull it off. F9 is a successful example, DIII – less successful example.
Good luck!
I’ll give this 50-50 chance of working. As in launcher will work, the spacecraft most likely not, if it ever makes to the pad.
Astrobotic only has a few dozen employees and has never built a spacecraft. So yeah, I’d say their chance of a successful moon landing is a long shot. Nevertheless I wish them luck.
sadly but I am hopeful 🙂
I think Vulcan will work
I think the first flight of Vulcan should work, but there is always a chance it won’t. Something like the cause of the first Ariane 5 flight failure could always bite them. Using the software from Ariane 4 turned out to be a problem, despite being “flight proven”.
good fortune
I’m guessing since they’re on the first test flight they got a significant discount.