United Launch Alliance is preparing for its final planned test flight of its new Vulcan rocket in the early dawn hours of Friday. The mission, called Cert-2, is the second of two missions needed before ULA can begin launching U.S. national security payloads at Vulcan.
Liftoff of the Vulcan rocket from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled to begin in a three-hour period at 6 a.m. EDT (1000 UTC). The weather forecast suggests an 80 percent chance that conditions will be favorable during takeoff.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage approximately one hour before takeoff.
Vulcan is designed to replace ULA's Delta 4 rockets, which were retired earlier this year, and Atlas 5 rockets. There are 15 Atlas 5 flights remaining, split between Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite internet constellation (eight launches), the Boeing's Starliner spacecraft (six launches) and Viasat's ViaSat-3 (one launch).
ULA's newest rocket, which first launched in January with Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander, is already significantly behind schedule. It was awarded 25 missions as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract, with a total value of nearly $4.5 billion, 38 Kuiper missions for Amazon and six flights for Sierra's Dream Chaser spaceplane. Space.
The Cert-2 Vulcan rocket will launch in a VC2S configuration, meaning it will use two Northrop Grumman solid rocket boosters and a standard payload fairing, which measures 15.5 m (51 ft) long and 5.4 m (17.7 ft) diameter. .
During a pre-launch press conference Wednesday, ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno noted that they are following up on a “very, very successful” Cert-1 launch in January and said he and his team are They feel good about their prospects this time. also.
“(The mission) literally has one main goal, which is to fly a second time and have another success,” Bruno said. “So now we have two data points and then upon government review of the data confirming all of that, you're certified and then you're ready to fly for national security.”
Originally, the Cert-2 mission was to be the inaugural launch of Dream Chaser, which would have made its first trip to the International Space Station. However, because the spaceplane was not ready in time for the Cert-2 mission, ULA opted to move it later in its manifest, likely sometime in 2025.
Bruno said they are still “very excited about that mission” and look forward to flying the Dream Chaser. That said, because they need to move forward and start launching national security payloads for the US Space Force and eventually the National Reconnaissance Office.
“We waited as long as we could to give them every opportunity and they just needed a little more time,” Bruno said. “In fact, we had other customers who wanted to be in Cert-2, if we couldn't fly Dream Chaser, but we waited so long that we couldn't integrate them in time either. That's how interested we were in the Dream Chaser mission and how much we believe in its vehicle, which, by the way, means ULA is paying for this Cert-2 flight.
“There are no paying customers. “This is all up to us, so we also wanted to run some experiments there and get as much use out of them as possible.”
Bruno declined to specify exactly how much money ULA is spending on the Cert-2 mission, but described it broadly as “high double digits… high tens of millions of dollars.”
Centaur manifestations
Without any customers on board, ULA flies an inert payload, also described as a mass simulator. In essence, it is a device that will remain attached to the 38.5-foot-long (11.7 m) Centaur 5 upper stage after separation from the stage.
It was originally created as a backup in case Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic and its Peregrine lunar lander were not ready in time to fly on the Cert-1 mission. During the mission, some instruments connected to the mass simulator will be used to collect data on the performance and capabilities of Centaur 5.
“They are confirming analytical models about how these strategies and technologies will actually work,” Bruno said. “In some cases, we've already been able to anchor models with experiments and demonstrations on the ground, but this allows us to do it in microgravity.”
Bruno said some of the data being collected on this mission is also related to the maneuvers performed by the upper stage.
“These maneuvers are helping us with the thermal load that arrives and tries to evaporate our propellants. But some of the maneuvers are also aimed at reducing the use of consumables, like the propellants we talked about, like hydrazine,” Bruno said. “Their main goal is to make those things last longer, to make them last as long as the thrusters, the main thrusters, would last.
“By doing so, they are generally more efficient, meaning the stage can weigh less and have more mass capacity in orbit. So you get kind of a side effect of not only the thing lasting longer, but on a mission of nominal duration, being able to carry a larger payload to any given orbit.”
Following the conclusion of these experiments and maneuvers, Centaur 5 will be sent into what is called a heliocentric elimination orbit with a final burn that will place it on a hyperbolic trajectory.
Bruno said another goal of these tests is to begin pushing the limits of how long the upper stage will be able to operate in space. He said his closest goal so far is to achieve a 12-hour lifespan.
“We're going to go to days and then weeks and then we think it's possible to take this to months and that's a game changer,” Bruno said. “You know, the average upper stage lasts about an hour. You can add a lot of things to it to get five or six hours out of it.”
Business arguments for Vulcan
There are many interested groups that are following the progress of the Vulcan rocket. In addition to the Department of Defense and NASA, there are also commercial customers, such as Amazon and its Project Kuiper satellite Internet constellation, looking to Vulcan for a trip to space.
Following certification of the rocket, ULA intends to launch two more Vulcan missions in 2024: USSF-106 and USSF-87. Bruno said the rocket for USSF-106 is complete and ready to go and that his team is finishing work on the upper stage for the USSF-87 mission.
“Everything is built up and down on the Cape. So if the satellites are ready, I'm ready, knock on wood, after my successful Cert mission on Friday, Bruno said.
Those will be ULA's final missions in 2024, if all goes as planned. Previously, Amazon said it was aiming to launch its first full production batch of Kuiper satellites on an Atlas 5 rocket in the fourth quarter of 2024, but Bruno said it now looks more like early 2025, due to the timing of Amazon's missions. national security.
Looking ahead to 2025, Bruno said his goal is to launch up to 20 missions, which would be a record for ULA. These would be split “approximately” 50-50 between the Vulcan and Atlas missions.
“I'm only giving it to you roughly because I have other business clients besides the one you may know,” Bruno said. “It's your province to announce your mission, so I don't want to give you a precise count, but about half and half of the 20 are Atlas versus Vulcan.”
In a social media post Thursday, Bruno noted that the previous high number of launches for ULA was 16. He added that fewer times were launched in recent years due to a government launch split between ULA and SpaceX.
Our previous peak was 16. I made 14 the year I arrived. All this with 1 VIF / 1 Track. It has been lower in recent years because we split the USG market competitively with SX. We have almost finished all the factory expansions and we will have 2 VIFs. Hard work, but not excessive.
-Tory Bruno (@torybruno) October 3, 2024
The proposed cadence increase for ULA will be supported by what they call a second lane at Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The original Vertical Integration Fund will become VIF-G, which will primarily support government missions.
Meanwhile, the new VIF, which is currently being modified and equipped, will become VIF-2 or VIF-C for commercial missions. Bruno said construction is going well and he hopes to have it operational by the end of the first quarter or beginning of the second quarter of 2025.
At Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, ULA continues work to convert Space Launch Complex 3 (SLC-3) from an Atlas to a Vulcan-only platform, which Bruno described as “a little ahead of schedule.” .
“I hope to do it at the end of the first quarter or very early in the second,” Bruno said. “By the way, this includes major improvements to the road leading from the dock at the base to the main facility, which will be used by everyone.
“So that infrastructure not only benefits ULA, but it benefits all Vandenberg users.”
In total, Bruno said ULA spent more than $1 billion across all of its various infrastructure projects to support the transition to Vulcan and the planned increase in launch cadence, which is projected to be about 25 launches a year.
He also gave a rough figure of what it cost to develop the Vulcan rocket over the last decade.
“The general rule of thumb is that it costs between $5 billion and $7 billion. Vulcan is not outside the general rule,” Bruno said. “So there was private investment in the development of Vulcan of that order of magnitude.”
The Cert-2 flight will also mark the second time that Blue Origin's BE-4 engines will power a rocket into space. The company will use seven of them in a slightly different configuration during the maiden launch of the New Glenn rocket, scheduled for launch in November.
Blue Origin supplied ULA with all the BE-4s needed to launch the remaining Vulcan rockets in 2024 before moving to New Glenn. Bruno said now that the first New Glenn rocket is equipped with its engines, the production line will return to ULA.
“In a few weeks, my deliveries will resume again and this year they will start delivering the engines I need for next year,” Bruno said.
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