A privately owned lunar lander slated to fly aboard the first United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket arrived in Florida on Oct. 30 for launch preparations.
Liftoff from Cape Canaveral SFS’s Space Launch Complex 41 is targeted for Dec. 24. Based on lighting and other conditions for the attempted lunar landing, ULA will have only until Dec. 26 to launch the first Vulcan-Centaur V rocket before the mission would have to be delayed into January 2024.
ULA and Astrobotic declined to disclose the January launch window. ULA declined to disclose the targeted launch time on Dec. 24.
The mission’s primary goal is to send Astrobotic’s Peregrine commercial lunar lander on a trajectory to the Moon, where it will attempt an autonomous, soft landing near the Gruithuisen Domes.
The targeted landing site is located north of the Gruithuisen crater at the western edge of the Mare Imbrium. Scientists suspect the domes, which rise to a height of some 5,000 ft., were formed by ancient eruptions of silica-rich lava, though how silica magma could form on the Moon is a mystery.
NASA, the mission’s primary sponsor, provided six of the 21 payloads aboard Peregrine, which will attempt to operate for about 10 days on the lunar surface. Astrobotic, based in Pittsburgh, was selected to be part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) vendor pool in 2018.
Peregrine was to originally carry 11 NASA payloads. Astrobotic filled the rest of Peregrine’s manifest with experiments and payloads from universities, research organizations, companies and other space agencies, including the German Aerospace Center (DLR). In all, Peregrine will host 21 payloads from seven countries.
“It’s incredible to realize that we are just a few short weeks away from our Peregrine spacecraft beginning its journey to the Moon,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said in a statement.
For ULA, launching Peregrine is only part of the mission. Vulcan’s debut flight, known as Certification-1 (Cert-1), is the first of two missions required for ULA to demonstrate the rocket’s performance for high-priority National Space Security Launch spacecraft. Cert-2, targeted for the first half of 2024, will be used to send Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane on a cargo run to the International Space Station for NASA.