On January 5, United Launch Alliance (ULA) delivered its Vulcan Centaur rocket to Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, reports Space.com.
The rocket is scheduled to launch on January 8 and will carry the first private lunar lander into space.
Takeoff is scheduled for 2:18 a.m. Monday morning local time (09:18 a.m. Kyiv time). The 62-meter-high Vulcan Centaur rocket will replace the ULA Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, which have sent many payloads into the sky over the past few decades.
The cargo of this mission is Peregrine, a robotic lander built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic. Its landing is scheduled for February, and the success of the mission will be historic – no private vessel has ever landed on the Moon.
Peregrine will fly through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to pave the way for Artemis astronaut missions. The private lander carries a variety of scientific payloads provided by NASA and the German space agency DLR.
