United Launch Alliance announced today that they have concluded their Launch Readiness Review for the maiden launch of their Vulcan rocket and that the mission has been cleared to proceed to its planned liftoff at 2:18 am EST on Monday, January 8th. They also added that the weather at liftoff time currently has only a 15% Probability of Violation at launch time, meaning that forecasters are calling for an 85% chance of acceptable launch conditions. The new rocket will carry the Astrobiotics Peregrine lunar lander built under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program and a secondary payload of memorials for Celestis.
ULA leadership, the mission’s customers and US Space Force officials examined the flight-readiness of the rocket as well as the payload, other mission assets and the status of pre-flight processing work prior to making their decision. ULA said, “after the meeting, senior leaders were polled and gave a ready status for launch, then signed the Launch Readiness Certificate.”
Vulcan is the first rocket designed wholly by United Launch Alliance. The Delta and Atlas family of rockets were legacy designs created by Boeing and Lockheed Martin respectively prior to the founding of the company in 2006. ULA is a joint venture between the two aerospace giants, and has successfully launched more than 155 missions since its inception.
Vulcan will feature several novel technologies, primarily, two Blue Origin BE-4 core engines that utilize liquid-methane and liquid oxygen (methalox) as its core propellants. No American company has successfully orbited a methalox rocket, despite at least three other attempts: Relativity’s Terran 1 and SpaceX’s two Starship test flights all failed on ascent. Chinese company LandSpace successfully orbited the payload with its Zuque-2 rocket in July of 2023. The Relativity and SpaceX attempts were test flights, with no customer payloads aboard, while Vulcan will have at least two customers with assets on the first flight of Vulcan.
