CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — United Launch Alliance successfully launched its first Vulcan rocket to orbit overnight Monday, sending a NASA-funded commercial probe on a journey to the moon.
The Centennial-based rocket company capped nearly a decade of Vulcan rocket development with an on-time and smooth flight that blasted off from a Cape Canaveral Space Force Base launch pad just after 12:18 a.m. Denver time.
The 202-foot-tall Vulcan released the Peregrine lunar probe, made by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, at its planned separation point 220,000 miles above the Earth just over 50 minutes after liftoff.
“Yee-haa!” exclaimed Tory Bruno, CEO and president of ULA, just after spacecraft separation during a telecast of Monday’s launch. “Oh my gosh. This has been years of hard work.”
The Vulcan launch was the first mission of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Service program, which hires commercial spacecraft businesses to build spacecraft, manage the mission and act as a for-hire delivery service getting payloads to the surface of the moon affordably.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, carrying 20 scientific and research payloads from seven countries, is expected to try to land on the moon’s surface autonomously as soon as Feb. 23.
> Read the full story at the Denver Business Journal.
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