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Pittsburgh - basedAstrobotic ’s first lunar lander is set to take off on United Launch Alliance ’s new Vulcan Centaur skyrocket on Christmas Eve , ULA CEO Tory Bruno said .
Bruno told the hearing at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit that the rocket company is point between December 24 and December 26 for the first - ever Vulcan launching . “ The reason it ’s Christmas Eve is because of science — orbital machinist , ” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said .
The rocket will carry Astrobotic ’s mobile robotic lander and a host payload from Celestis , a ship’s company that partner with launching society to send small portions of cremated remains to space as a memorial service . ULA , a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin , has a backup window in January should the projectile fail to take off in December .
Astrobotic ’s Peregrine is launching as part of a $ 79.5 million NASA contract present in 2019 under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative . The lander , which is a little over six feet tall and eight feet wide-eyed , with a 120 - kilo loading electrical capacity , will extradite scientific consignment to the northerly part of the moonshine on behalf of the space agency .
While the mission date seems festal , its due in part to Astrobotic ’s mission requirements , Bruno say . “ We ’re go bad to a part of the lunation where they postulate very carefully controlled kindling conditions and they also have to stay in radio communication with the Deep Space internet , ” he explicate . “ When you put the two together , we get just a few day every calendar month . ”
The charge is a long metre coming : Astrobotic first announced that it had chosen ULA to launchthe lander in 2019 ; at the time , the two companies said the launch would take spot in 2021 .
But legion proficient time lag to Vulcan — include an incident this March where an upper point exploded during testing at NASA ’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama — have pushed the timeline back . The flight of stairs was further check when another detonation go on during rocket engine examination of the BE-4 engine , which are being develop by Blue Origin . Even before December , ULA still has oeuvre to do : Bruno recount CNBC that the company is presently modify the Vulcan upper stage , work that should be accomplished in November .
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This first mission , called Certification-1 , is one of two certification flights ULA will need to nail in order of magnitude to reach out to the Space Force ’s requirement .
The mission will take off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida . ULA is hoping to rapidly up the launch cadence of Vulcan , with the company place one launching every two week by mid-2025 . Part of that demand will come from government , but ULA is also see demand from commercial-grade customers : ULA won a huge declaration from Amazon in 2022 to launch a portion of its massive Kuiper orbiter cyberspace mega - configuration , though the price of the launch contract bridge has not been divulge .
