United Launch Alliance (ULA) is celebrating the successful first flight of its new Vulcan rocket. The rocket lifted off early this morning powered by a pair of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, carrying Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander to the moon - the first U.S.-built lunar lander since the Apollo era.
The "Vulcan" rocket is a two-stage heavy-duty launch vehicle that burns liquid fuel mixed with oxygen and methane. It inherits the tradition of the "Atlas" and "Delta" series of launch vehicles. The rocket, which is 202 feet tall and 18 feet in diameter, is designed to compete with SpaceX and other launch providers. Its payload capacity is 60,000 pounds in low Earth orbit or 15,000 pounds in geostationary orbit.
You can watch a replay of the Vulcan Cert-1 flight on ULA's YouTube channel:
This rocket has been in the works for a long time and was originally scheduled to fly for the first time in 2019. The reason for the delay is not only ULA's problems and longer than expected development time, but also the BE-4 engine.
The pair of BE-4 engines are Blue Origin's first space technology to enter orbit. The private space launch company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been operating a smaller New Shepard rocket since 2015, but it was a suborbital launch vehicle. Its larger sibling rocket, New Glenn, is still under development and awaiting its first flight, which is currently planned for the end of 2024.
What needs to be known is that both New Glenn and Vulcan rely on the BE-4 engine, and both engines are extremely important to Bezos. The reason is Amazon and its planned satellite megaconstellation Kuiper, a future competitor to Elon Musk's Starlink. Vulcan and New Glenn are both contracted to launch these spacecraft into space.
The Vulcan rocket, which is behind schedule, has a large backlog of tasks. Among them, Amazon has booked 38 flights to launch more than a thousand Kuiper satellites. All new rockets contracted to launch Kuiper satellites have yet to be launched. Jeff Bezos doesn't have time to idle, because under the Federal Trade Commission license, he must build at least half of the constellation - 1,618 satellites - by the summer of 2026. Otherwise, he risks losing his license or facing other serious consequences.
So not only is Vulcan's trouble-free first flight good news for Bezos, he's also railing against rival launch providers this morning - and probably not for the last time, as he needs a long-delayed European Ariane 6 rocket to repeat Vulcan's feat in 2024.
Ariane 6 is the third and final new rocket ordered by Amazon for its Kuiper project. Bezos also purchased nine flights of ULA's soon-to-be-retired main rocket Atlas V, but its payload capacity is far from meeting the needs of the Kuiper program.
All in all, Jeff Bezos will remain the number one fan of ULA and European Aerospace for quite some time. However, as long as things go in the right direction - the direction he wants, he doesn't mind...