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SpaceX wants to take over a Florida launch pad from rival ULA

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First step —

SpaceX now plans at least four Starship launch pads, two in Texas and two in Florida.

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SpaceX's fully-stacked Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on a launch pad in South Texas.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s fully-stacked Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on a launch pad in South Texas.

One of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will become vacant later this year after the final flight of United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket. SpaceX is looking to make the sprawling facility a new home for the Starship launch vehicle.

The environmental review for SpaceX’s proposal to take over Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral is getting underway now, with three in-person public meetings and one virtual meeting scheduled for March to collect comments from local residents, according to a new website describing the plan.

Then federal agencies, led by the Department of the Air Force, will develop an environmental impact statement to evaluate how Starship launch and landing operations will affect the land, air, and water around SLC-37, which sits on Space Force property on the Atlantic coastline.

Environmental studies for rocket launch facilities typically take more than a year, so it will be a while before any major construction begins to convert SLC-37 for Starship launches. In this case, federal officials anticipate publishing a draft environmental impact statement by December, then a final report by October 2025.

More immediately, ULA still has one more Delta IV Heavy rocket to launch from SLC-37 in March with a classified spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. Once that launch is complete, ULA will wind down operations at SLC-37, and eventually turn over the facility back to the Space Force, which will look for a new tenant. For several months, industry sources have pointed to SpaceX as the leading contender to take over SLC-37 after ULA is finished with the launch pad.

But that’s not quite a done deal yet. Last year, a senior official at ULA told Ars on background that the company was also interested in maintaining a presence at SLC-37.

ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, which debuted last month and will replace the Delta IV and Atlas V launch vehicles, uses a different launch pad a few miles up the coast from SLC-37. ULA is upgrading and expanding its ground facilities at Cape Canaveral to ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence, and the ULA official told Ars the company may want to continue using a rocket processing hangar just south of the Delta IV launch pad for storage and horizontal processing of Vulcan rockets.

Details are scarce about everything SpaceX wants to do with SLC-37, but officials wrote on the environmental review website that SpaceX would “modify, reuse, or demolish the existing SLC-37 infrastructure to support Starship-Super Heavy launch and landing operations.”

This aerial view shows a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket awaiting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Enlarge / This aerial view shows a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket awaiting liftoff from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The history of SLC-37 dates back to the 1960s, when NASA used the site for eight flights of the Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets to prepare for the Apollo program. The facility sat dormant for 30 years until Boeing moved in to ready SLC-37 for the Delta IV rocket, which has now flown 34 times from SLC-37. The launch pad currently includes a 330-foot-tall (100-meter) mobile gantry, a fixed erector, a fixed umbilical tower, and a flame trench for Delta IV missions.

Starship, the world’s largest rocket, would not need any of that that infrastructure, so if SpaceX takes over the pad, the facility will likely undergo extensive demolition and construction.

If SpaceX isn’t cleared to use SLC-37, the company could build a brand new launch pad designated Space Launch Complex 50. If this is the path SpaceX takes, SLC-50 would be built on undeveloped land north of SLC-37 and south of SpaceX’s primary launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40.

Goodbye to LC-49, hello to SLC-37

SpaceX’s interest in setting up shop at SLC-37 shows the company is getting serious about developing a second base for Starship on Florida’s Space Coast. In 2022, SpaceX constructed a launch tower and launch mount for Starship at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. But the company made little progress there last year as teams focused on Starship test flights from South Texas.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, says Starship is the rocket that will make possible his dream of building a settlement on Mars. He has also touted Starship as a vehicle for point-to-point travel on Earth. Both stages of Starship are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, with the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage returning to Earth for propulsive landings. Starship launch pads will double as landing pads.

Before any of those dreams are realized, Starship needs to get into orbit. The first two full-scale Starship test flights last year didn’t make it that far, but SpaceX got close on the second launch in November. SpaceX hopes to achieve a near-orbital mission with the third Starship test launch, perhaps as soon as early March.

Eventually, Musk envisions Starship launching multiple times per day on a variety of missions, carrying people, satellites, cargo, or refueling tankers into orbit. In order to do this, SpaceX will need a lot of launch and landing pads. SpaceX has toyed with the idea of floating offshore launch and landing platforms, but those plans are on hold.

In the near-term, SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch tower at the company’s Starbase test site in Cameron County, Texas. There’s also the partially-built launch tower at LC-39A, and now SpaceX has set its sights on SLC-37.

SpaceX was previously looking at building another Starship launch pad from scratch on NASA property at the Kennedy Space Center. NASA environmental studies for this location, known as Launch Complex 49, kicked off in 2021. Patti Bielling, a NASA spokesperson, told Ars on Friday the agency is no longer working on Launch Complex 49.

“At this time, there are no activities involving LC-49 on Kennedy,” Bielling said. “Any previous activities regarding LC-49 were suspended, and no actions were taken.”

One of the first operational applications for Starship will be to serve as a human-rated lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program. SpaceX is developing a version of Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the Moon’s surface, but in order for Starship to reach the Moon, it has to be refueled in low-Earth orbit. This will require perhaps 10 or more refueling flights using a version of Starship called a tanker, all launching in a matter of weeks. Those tanker flights will launch on Super Heavy boosters from pads in Texas and Florida.

In parallel with continued Starship test flights and demonstrating in-space refueling technology, SpaceX needs to build more launch pads to make all this possible. Although SpaceX has backpedaled on several of its Starship launch pad ideas, the company’s interest in SLC-37 suggests it still has big plans for Starship in Florida.

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ULA’s Vulcan rocket shot for the Moon on debut launch—and hit a bullseye

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The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida.

Enlarge / The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida.

United Launch Alliance

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—Right out of the gate, United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket chased perfection.

The Vulcan launcher hit its marks after lifting off from Florida’s Space Coast for the first time early Monday, successfully deploying a commercial robotic lander on a journey to the Moon and keeping ULA’s unblemished success record intact.

“Yeehaw! I am so thrilled, I can’t tell you how much!” exclaimed Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, shortly after Vulcan’s departure from Cape Canaveral. “I am so proud of this team. Oh my gosh, this has been years of hard work. So far, this has been an absolutely beautiful mission.”

This was a pivotal moment for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Vulcan rocket will replace ULA’s mainstay rockets, the Atlas V and Delta IV, with lineages dating back to the dawn of the Space Age. ULA has contracts for more than 70 Vulcan missions in its backlog, primarily for the US military and Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network.

The Vulcan rocket lived up to the moment Monday. It took nearly a decade for ULA to develop it, some four years longer than anticipated, but the first flight took off at the opening of the launch window on the first launch attempt.

Standing 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall, the Vulcan rocket ignited its two BE-4 main engines in the final seconds of a smooth countdown. A few moments later, two strap-on solid rocket boosters flashed to life to propel the Vulcan rocket off its launch pad at 2: 18 am EST (07: 18 UTC).

On the money

The BE-4 engines and solid-fueled boosters combined to generate more than 2 million pounds of thrust, vaulting Vulcan off the launch pad and through a thin cloud layer. A little over a minute after launch, Vulcan accelerated faster than the speed of sound, then jettisoned its strap-on boosters to fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

Then it was all BE-4. Each of these engines can produce more than a half-million pounds of thrust, consuming a mixture of liquified natural gas—essentially methane—and liquid oxygen. They are built by Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. This was the first time BE-4s have flown on a rocket.

Rob Gagnon, ULA’s telemetry commentator, calmly called out mission milestones. “BE-4s continue to operate nominally… Vehicle is continuing to fly down the center of the range track, everything looking good… Nice and smooth operation of the booster.”

The BE-4s fired for five minutes, then shut down to allow Vulcan’s first stage booster to fall away from the rocket’s hydrogen-fueled Centaur upper stage. Two RL10 engines ignited to continue the push into orbit, then switched off as the upper stage coasted over the Atlantic and Africa. A restart of the Centaur upper stage 43 minutes into the flight gave the rocket enough velocity to send Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander toward the Moon.

The nearly 1.5-ton spacecraft separated from Vulcan’s Centaur upper stage around 50 minutes after liftoff. “We have spacecraft separation, right on time,” Gagnon announced.

With Astrobotic’s lander deployed, a third engine firing on the Centaur upper stage moved the rocket off its Moon-bound trajectory and onto a course into heliocentric orbit. “We have now achieved Earth escape,” Gagnon said.

The spent rocket stage will become a human-made artificial satellite of the Sun. A plate on the side of the Centaur upper stage contains small capsules holding the cremated remains of more than 200 people, a “memorial spaceflight” arranged by a Houston-based private company named Celestis.

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Navajo objection to flying human ashes to the Moon won’t delay launch

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The Moon sets over sandstone formations on the Navajo Nation.

Enlarge / The Moon sets over sandstone formations on the Navajo Nation.

Science instruments aren’t the only things hitching a ride to the Moon on a commercial lunar lander ready for launch Monday. Two companies specializing in “space burials” are sending cremated human remains to the Moon, and this doesn’t sit well with the Navajo Nation.

The Navajo people, one of the nation’s largest Indigenous groups, hold the Moon sacred, and putting human remains on the lunar surface amounts to desecration, according to Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren.

“The sacredness of the Moon is deeply embedded in the spirituality and heritage of many Indigenous cultures, including our own,” Nygren said in a statement. “The placement of human remains on the Moon is a profound desecration of this celestial body revered by our people.”

Last month, Nygren wrote a letter to NASA and the Department of Transportation, which licenses commercial space launches, requesting a postponement of the flight to the Moon. The human remains in question are mounted to the robotic Peregrine lander, built and owned by a Pittsburgh-based company named Astrobotic, poised for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on top of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.

This is the second time a US spacecraft has gone to the Moon with human remains aboard. In 1998, NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission launched with a small capsule containing the ashes of Eugene Shoemaker, a pioneer in planetary geology. NASA intentionally crashed spacecraft into the Moon in 1999, leaving Shoemaker’s ashes permanently on the surface.

At that time, officials from the Navajo Nation objected to the scattering of Shoemaker’s ashes on the Moon. NASA promised to consult with tribal officials before another spacecraft flew to the Moon with human remains. A big part of Nygren’s recent complaint was the lack of dialogue on the matter before this mission.

“This act disregards past agreements and promises of respect and consultation between NASA and the Navajo Nation, notably following the Lunar Prospector mission in 1998,” Nygren said in a statement. He added that the request for consultation is “rooted in a desire to ensure that our cultural practices, especially those related to the Moon and the treatment of the deceased, are respected.”

An oversight

Officials from the White House and NASA met with Nygren on Friday to discuss his concerns. Speaking with reporters after the meeting, Nygren said he believes it was an oversight that federal officials didn’t meet with the Navajo Nation at an earlier stage.

“I think being able to consult into the future is one of the things that they’re going to try to work on,” he told reporters Friday. While Nygren said that was good to hear, “we were given no reassurance that the human remains were not going to be transported to the Moon on Monday.”

Removing the human remains would delay the launch at least several weeks. It would require removing Astrobotic’s lunar lander from the top of the Vulcan rocket, taking it back to a clean room facility, and opening the payload fairing to provide access to the spacecraft.

“They’re not going to remove the human remains and keep them here on Earth where they were created, but instead, we were just told that a mistake has happened, we’re sorry, into the future we’re going to try to consult with you,” Nygren said.

“We take concerns expressed from the Navajo Nation very, very seriously,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s science directorate. “And we think we’re going to be continuing this conversation.”

Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation.

Enlarge / Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation.

Astrobotic’s mission is different from Lunar Prospector in one important sense. The Peregrine lander is privately owned, while Lunar Prospector was a government spacecraft. NASA has a $108 million contract with Astrobotic to deliver the agency’s science payloads to the Moon as a commercial service. Astrobotic’s mission is the first time a US company will attempt to land a commercial spacecraft on the Moon.

While Nygren argues that NASA’s role as Astrobotic’s anchor customer should give the agency some influence over decision-making, the government’s only legal authority in overseeing the mission is through the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA is responsible for ensuring commercial launches, like the Vulcan rocket flight Monday, don’t put public safety at risk. The launch licensing process also includes an FAA review to ensure a launch would not jeopardize US national security, foreign policy interests, or international obligations.

“For our own missions … NASA works to be very mindful of potential concerns for any work that we’ll do on the Moon,” Kearns said. “In this particular case … NASA really doesn’t have involvement or oversight.”

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Here’s a first look at United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket

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Slow ride —

ULA’s first flight-ready Vulcan rocket is finally on the launch pad.

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  • United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket prepares to emerge from the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

    United Launch Alliance

  • ULA’s fully stacked Vulcan rocket is clearly visible for the first time during rollout from its vertical hangar.

    Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

  • This version of ULA’s Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall.

    Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

  • The Vulcan rocket was positioned on top of a mobile launch platform for the third-of-a-mile trek to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral.

  • For its first flight, the Vulcan rocket is emblazoned with a red flame-like insignia, a US flag, and the logos of United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic, which owns the lunar lander nestled inside the rocket’s payload fairing.

    Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

  • The Vulcan rocket passes the halfway point on its journey to the launch pad Friday.

    United Launch Alliance

  • Technicians gather as ULA’s Vulcan rocket nears the launch pad.

    United Launch Alliance

  • Two “trackmobile” locomotives propelled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to the launch pad, riding along dual rail tracks.

    United Launch Alliance

  • It took about a half-hour for the Vulcan rocket to complete its rollout to the launch pad.

    Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

  • Liftoff is scheduled for 2: 18 am EST (07: 18 UTC) Monday.

    Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket emerged from its hangar Friday for a 30-minute trek to its launch pad in Florida, finally moving into the starting blocks after a decade of development and testing.

This was the first time anyone had seen the full-size 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan rocket in its full form. Since ULA finished assembling the rocket last month, it has been cocooned inside the scaffolding of the company’s vertical hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

On Friday, ULA’s ground crew rolled the Vulcan rocket and its mobile launch platform to its seaside launch pad. It was one of the last steps before the Vulcan rocket is cleared for liftoff Monday at 2: 18 am EST (07: 18 UTC). On Sunday afternoon, ULA engineers will gather inside a control center at Cape Canaveral to oversee an 11-hour countdown, when the Vulcan rocket will be loaded with methane, liquid hydrogen, and liquid oxygen propellants.

ULA has a 45-minute launch window to get the mission off the ground on Monday, and there is an 85 percent chance of good weather.

If the rocket doesn’t take off Monday, ULA has backup launch opportunities Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Then, the company would have to stand down until January 23, a gap in launch availability constrained by the trajectory of the Vulcan rocket’s payload. A commercial robotic Moon lander, developed by a Pennsylvania company named Astrobotic, is the primary passenger on the inaugural flight of Vulcan.

In the wild

This is a big moment for ULA, a 50-50 joint venture formed in 2006 by the merger of Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s launch divisions. The Vulcan rocket, quite literally, is the embodiment of the company’s future, said Mark Peller, ULA’s vice president of Vulcan development. It will replace ULA’s fleet of Atlas and Delta rockets, with lineages dating back to the early years of the Space Age.

“There was an opportunity to develop a new rocket that can do everything Atlas and Delta could do, but do it with even greater performance, and taking advantage of the latest technology,” Peller said Friday. “The system that we’ve developed, and we’re about to fly, is really positioning us for a very bright, prosperous future for many, many years to come.”

Facing stiff competition from SpaceX, still an upstart in the launch business a decade ago, ULA officials decided they needed a new rocket that was cheaper to build and fly than the Atlas V and Delta IV. Ars has traced the history of Vulcan, a timeline that includes lawsuits, a change in corporate leadership, delays and setbacks, and, most recently, reports that Boeing and Lockheed Martin have put ULA up for sale.

ULA has sold dozens of Vulcan missions to the US military and Amazon for its Project Kuiper broadband network. In the military’s case, the Pentagon wants to have at least two independent launch providers capable of hauling national security satellites into orbit, so ULA has been able to count on a steady diet of government contracts.

Amazon booked launches with almost every major Western launch company besides SpaceX, its competitor in the broadband satellite business. This also ensured ULA a hefty cut of work for Amazon’s $10 billion Kuiper satellite constellation.

The Vulcan rocket “has proven to already be an extremely competitive product in the marketplace, having an order book of over 70 missions before first flight, which is really unheard of,” Peller said. “So it is the future of our company, and we’re off to a great start on a really solid trajectory with Vulcan.”

But it still needs to fly, and ULA is putting its record of 100 percent mission success on the line with the Vulcan test flight slated for Monday.

“We have very rigorously gone through a qualification of Vulcan,” Peller said. “That stretched over several years, involved rigorous testing of the components, the subsystems, and the major elements of the rocket as well as testing here at the launch site, extensive simulation using the latest tools to do everything we can to fly the rocket in simulation before we actually fly it.

“Many of the new systems that are flying on Vulcan had the benefit of being introduced on Atlas and Delta in recent years. So many of the systems that we’re flying here actually have a fair amount of flight experience under their belts,” he continued. “But … this is still the first time the vehicle has flown, and we will watch this very carefully and see what we learn from this. We’re going into this very high confidence. If there are any observations with the first flight, we’re prepared to respond and address those, and turn around quickly to fly again.”

The new rocket’s first stage is powered by two methane-fueled BE-4 engines from Blue Origin. While they’ve been tested on the ground countless times, these engines have never flown before.

Vulcan’s upper stage, called the Centaur V, is an upgraded twin-engine version of the single-engine upper stage that flies on the Atlas V rocket. The hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines on the Centaur upper stage are similar in design to the ones flown on every Atlas V and Delta IV rocket, but the Centaur V is much larger. One of the upgraded upper stages for Vulcan exploded during a ground test last year, forcing ULA to push back the rocket’s debut flight for months while engineers strengthened the Centaur’s stainless steel hydrogen tank.

This version of the Vulcan rocket is fitted with two strap-on solid-fueled boosters from Northrop Grumman. These are higher-thrust boosters than the strap-on rockets used on ULA’s previous rockets. In the future, Vulcan rockets will come in variants with zero, two, four, or six solid rocket boosters, allowing ULA to match the vehicle’s lift capability with each mission’s requirements.

The most powerful version of Vulcan will outlift the largest rocket in ULA’s current fleet, the Delta IV Heavy. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket can handle heavier payloads flying to low-Earth orbit and has a similar lift capability to higher-altitude orbits.

ULA’s Vulcan, though, will enter service as a fully expendable rocket. The company plans to gradually introduce an upgrade to recover and reuse the two BE-4 engines, although Peller said Friday that it will take a “few years” to begin reusing engines.

According to ULA, the initial focus is to fully certify the Vulcan rocket to launch US military satellites later this year. The first Vulcan flight, which ULA calls “Cert-1,” will be followed by a “Cert-2” mission as soon as April to launch Sierra Space’s commercial Dream Chaser spaceplane on a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

If those two launches go flawlessly, the Space Force could sign off on launching national security payloads on Vulcan in the second half of this year.

Listing image by Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Here’s a first look at United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket Read More »

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For the first time, ULA’s Vulcan rocket is fully stacked at Cape Canaveral

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United Launch Alliance's first Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall with the addition of its payload fairing.

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance’s first Vulcan rocket stands 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall with the addition of its payload fairing.

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

Technicians hoisted the Vulcan rocket’s payload fairing, containing a commercial lunar lander from Astrobotic, on top of the launch vehicle Wednesday morning at ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility. This milestone followed the early morning transfer of the payload fairing from a nearby facility where Astrobotic’s lunar lander was fueled for its flight to the Moon.

ULA’s new rocket has rolled between its vertical hangar and the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station several times for countdown rehearsals and fueling tests. But ULA only needed the Vulcan rocket’s first stage and upper stage to complete those tests. The addition of the payload shroud Wednesday marked the first time ULA has fully stacked a Vulcan rocket, standing some 202 feet (61.6 meters) tall, still surrounded by scaffolding and work platforms inside its assembly building.

This moves the launch company closer to the first flight of Vulcan, the vehicle slated to replace ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. After some final checkouts and a holiday break, ground crews will transport the Vulcan rocket to its launch pad in preparation for liftoff at 2: 18 am ET (07: 18 UTC) on January 8.

The launch was previously scheduled for December 24, but ULA delayed the flight until the next launch window to resolve ground system issues uncovered during one of the recent Vulcan countdown rehearsals. Astrobotic’s first robotic lunar lander, named Peregrine Mission One, only has a few days per month when it can depart Earth and take a course toward the Moon. The launch and trajectory must be timed to allow the spacecraft to reach its landing site with the proper lighting conditions.

First full stack

United Launch Alliance, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, has been under pressure from rival SpaceX for the last few years. While SpaceX has launched more than 90 times this year, ULA’s rockets have only flown three times as the company winds down its Atlas V and Delta IV programs.

One Delta IV-Heavy rocket remains in ULA’s inventory. It’s supposed to launch next year with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency. There are 17 Atlas V rockets left to fly.

With Vulcan, ULA is poised to ramp up its launch rate. Tory Bruno, the company’s chief executive, says ULA has sold 70 Vulcan launches—more than half to commercial customers and the rest to the US 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 recovery and reuse later this decade.

ULA’s goal is to launch an average of two Vulcan rockets per month by the end of 2025. This would be a remarkably fast launch cadence just two years after the first flight of Vulcan. For comparison, it took longer for the Atlas V rocket and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 to get to four flights.

Astrobotic's Peregrine lander was recently encapsulated inside the Vulcan rocket's payload fairing.

Enlarge / Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander was recently encapsulated inside the Vulcan rocket’s payload fairing.

The Vulcan rocket was originally slated to launch in 2019 but faced repeated delays, primarily due to late deliveries of rocket engines from Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company. ULA bypassed a launch opportunity in May after a Vulcan upper stage exploded during a ground test.

Unlike the debuts of most rockets, the Vulcan will launch with a functioning payload. Astrobotic’s uncrewed Peregrine Mission One will carry 20 payloads to the lunar surface, including five for NASA through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. This will be the first mission to launch under the CLPS initiative, which NASA set up in 2018 to purchase commercial transportation services to the Moon for scientific instruments and experiments.

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