Rocket's Moon Lander Suffers Setback --- Craft aboard Vulcan Centaur fails after launch, lunar mission threatened

"A powerful rocket developed by Boeing-and-Lockheed Martin-owned United Launch Alliance blasted off for the first time, but the moon lander it was carrying suffered a setback after launch.

Called Vulcan Centaur, the 202-foot rocket lifted off at 2:18 a.m. Eastern time Monday from a Florida launchpad, powering an American moon lander called Peregrine into space.

Peregrine was designed to journey to the lunar surface and become the first American device to land on the moon in decades. However, Astrobotic Technology, the company behind the craft, said Monday it was assessing options after a failure in Peregrine's propulsion system that threatened the lunar mission.

Following the launch, ULA said Vulcan performed its role in the flight successfully. During the first part of the mission the rocket used two huge engines developed by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space company, their debut in flight. The mission was Vulcan's inaugural operation after years of delays.

ULA is among the companies operating larger, more powerful rockets and is a competitor to Elon Musk-led SpaceX. 

Musk's company has emerged in recent years as the dominant global rocket launcher, gaining market share and conducting a growing number of flights with its partly reusable Falcon vehicles.

Both companies launch major national-security missions, a business in which SpaceX has made inroads over the years.

Monday's launch was a so-called certification flight, as ULA seeks to win U.S. military permission to use Vulcan to handle Pentagon and spy-agency flights already under contract. The company needs one more certification launch before it can begin those.

Mark Peller, a vice president at ULA, said at a recent briefing that Vulcan is designed to offer both medium and heavy launch capacities, an indicator of the mass flown, on a single vehicle. Its main rocket uses two engines developed by Blue Origin and can gain additional power for liftoff by strapping additional boosters on its sides.

ULA had sold 70 flights on Vulcan before the first launch, a backlog representing billions of dollars in revenue. Executives at ULA had once hoped to start using Vulcan several years ago, but supplier delays and technical challenges pushed them off that schedule.

For example, Blue Origin didn't deliver the first set of engines for Vulcan until October 2022, later than expected. Almost a year ago, the upper part of the vehicle exploded during a test, prompting the company to push off the possibility of a launch last spring.

The lunar lander Peregrine, deployed from the upper stage of ULA's rocket, ran into problems following the launch. In a statement posted to X, Astrobotic described a failure that occurred within Peregrine's propulsion system that caused propellant loss.

"We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible," the company said.

As many as four other landers developed and operated by private U.S. companies could attempt to land on the moon in 2024, ferrying research equipment for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other payloads. The U.S. hasn't sent any device or person to the surface of the moon since the final Apollo astronaut mission in 1972.

The new moon race has attracted attention and investment from space agencies around the world. India grabbed global attention last year by landing on the moon, and Japan will attempt to land a device there this month.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which formed ULA with the blessing of the Pentagon almost 20 years ago, have been considering selling the company, The Wall Street Journal has reported." [1]

1.  Business News: Rocket's Moon Lander Suffers Setback --- Craft aboard Vulcan Centaur fails after launch, lunar mission threatened. Maidenberg, Micah.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 09 Jan 2024: B.3.