ULA
Last Saturday, United Launch Alliance's (ULA) transport vessel R/S Rocketship arrived at the Port Canaveral in Florida...after completing an 8-day voyage that began at ULA's rocket factory in Decatur, Alabama. And yesterday, workers unloaded the Vulcan's core stage booster, its Centaur V upper stage motor and one of the Vulcan's twin payload fairings from Rocketship and transported them to ULA's launch processing facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station about 6 miles away.
According to a tweet by ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno, Vulcan has ways to go before it launches Astrobotic's Peregrine lander (which has not arrived in Florida yet) to the Moon hopefully a few months from now.
Here is the to-do list:
- Vulcan core stage booster and Centaur V upper stage stacking
- Testing connections between the booster and its upper stage
- A rollout from Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41's Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) to the pad
- Redo the fueling test series that was performed with Vulcan's Pathfinder Tanking Test booster almost two years ago
- A full Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR)
- A WDR that leads to a flight readiness firing on the pad at SLC-41
- A rollback to the VIF
- Installing the Peregrine lander and Amazon's two KuiperSat payloads atop Vulcan Centaur
- Testing the electrical interfaces between the payloads and Vulcan Centaur
- Conduct a pre-launch test of Peregrine and the KuiperSats themselves
- Roll Vulcan Centaur back to the pad at SLC-41, and then...
- LAUNCH!
Exciting times ahead.
ULA / Tory Bruno
ULA
ULA / Tory Bruno
ULA
ULA / Tory Bruno
ULA
ULA / Tory Bruno
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