ULA Vulcan rockets fully stacked at Cape Canaveral for first time

United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket has been fully assembled in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in preparation for its first flight next month.

On Wednesday morning, technicians lifted the Vulcan rocket’s payload fairing from the top of a launch vehicle at ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility, which includes Astrobotic’s commercial lunar lander. The milestone follows an early morning transfer of the payload fairing from a nearby facility where Astrobotic’s lunar lander will fuel the flight to the moon.

ULA’s new rocket has been rolled several times between its vertical hangar and the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for countdown rehearsals and refueling tests. But ULA only needs the first and upper stages of the Vulcan rocket to complete these tests. Wednesday’s addition of the payload shroud marks the first time ULA has fully stacked the Vulcan rocket, which is about 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall and remains surrounded by scaffolding and work platforms in its assembly building.

That brings the launch company one step closer to the first flight of Vulcan, which will replace ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. After final inspections and a holiday break, ground crews will transport the Vulcan rocket to the launch pad in preparation for liftoff at 2:18 a.m. ET (07:18 UTC) on January 8.

The launch was originally scheduled for December 24, but ULA postponed the launch to the next launch window to resolve ground system issues discovered during a recent Vulcan countdown rehearsal. Astrobotic’s first robotic lunar lander, called Peregrine Mission One, will leave Earth and head to the moon only a few days a month. The launch and orbit must be timed so that the spacecraft reaches the landing site with the proper lighting conditions.

First full end

United Launch Alliance, a 50:50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has faced pressure from rival SpaceX in the past few years. While SpaceX has launched more than 90 times this year, ULA’s rockets have only launched three times because the company has ended its Atlas V and Delta IV projects.

ULA also maintains a Delta IV Heavy rocket in its inventory. It is expected to launch next year and carry classified payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency. There are currently 17 Atlas V rockets yet to fly.

With Vulcan, ULA is poised to increase its emissivity. Tory Bruno, CEO of the company, said that ULA has sold 70 Vulcan transmitters, more than half of which were sold to commercial customers and the remainder to the U.S. military. Amazon has booked 38 Vulcan missions to deploy satellites for its Project Kuiper broadband network. Vulcan will initially be fully expendable, but ULA plans to introduce engine recycling and reuse later this decade.

ULA aims to launch an average of two Vulcan rockets per month by the end of 2025. Coming just two years after the Vulcan’s first flight, this will be a very fast launch cadence. In comparison, the Atlas V rocket and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket take longer to complete four flights.

The Vulcan rocket was originally scheduled to launch in 2019, but has been repeatedly delayed, mainly due to delays in the delivery of rocket engines from Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin. In May, ULA missed a launch opportunity when the Vulcan upper stage exploded during a ground test.

Unlike most rocket debuts, Vulcan will launch carrying a payload. Astrobotic’s unmanned Peregrine Mission One will carry 20 payloads to the lunar surface, including five payloads delivered by NASA through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. This will be the first mission launched under the CLPS program, which NASA established in 2018 to purchase commercial transportation services to the moon for scientific instruments and experiments.