SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket appears to have wiped out rival United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) next-generation Vulcan Centaur launcher to send a NASA rover and commercial lander to the Moon in 2023.
Back in August 2019, not long after NASA first announced significant contracts under its commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, Astrobotic announced that it had contracted with ULA to launch its first small “Peregrine” lander and launch a dozen attached NASA payloads. to the moon in 2021. Instead of the extremely expensive but operational Atlas V rocket, the launch site chose instead to manifest Peregrine during the first launch of Vulcan Centaur, a new ULA rocket intended to launch Atlas V and Replace Delta IV Heavy.
Less than two years later, Astrobotic decided to acquire a dedicated launch from SpaceX – not ULA – for an even larger “Griffin” lander aimed at delivering NASA’s VIPER rover to the moon and exploring of craters that are permanently in the shade. at its south pole.
In August 2019, Astrobotic announced that ‘the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket has been selected in a [highly competitive commercial process]. It later became clear that the lander in Peregrine, although still planned to be sent directly to the moon on a trans-moon injection (TLI) orbit, would not be the only payload on the mission. None of the other payloads from Vulcan Flight 1 are known, but the presence of other paying customers helps explain how Vulcan beat SpaceX for the contract.
More importantly, companies willing to risk their payload (s) on new rockets have historically been tempted to overlook some of the first flight risk with big discounts. In other words, in the often unlikely event that a company manages to sell a commercial rocket’s first launch, it’s incredibly unlikely that the same rocket will ever sell so cheaply again.
This seems to be exactly the case for ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which won a lunar lander contract for its launch debut, only to lose a similar lunar lander contract from the same company – within the range of Vulcan’s alleged capabilities – less than two years later. If SpaceX is relatively expensive Falcon Heavy managed to beat early Vulcan launch prices, there is virtually no chance that Vulcan Centaur will ever be able to compete commercially with Falcon 9.
In 2015, when Astrobotic started making noise about its plans to build commercial lunar landers, the larger Griffin was expected to weigh about 2,220 kg (~ 4,900 lb), and in combination with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 workhorse – be able to carry payloads to land 270 kg (~ 600 lb) on the Moon. It is unclear whether the figure adopted a usable Falcon 9 launch, or whether it used numbers from the most powerful variant of the rocket, which was still a few years away at the time.
Either way, NASA’s VIPER lander – which is expected to have a launch mass of ~ 430 kg (~ 950 lb), is a bit too heavy for a single-stick Falcon 9 flight to TLI. It is also reasonable to assume that Griffin’s dry and fired mass has grown significantly after more than half a decade of design maturity and the first Peregrine lander to reach the hardware production and assembly phase. Although Falcon 9 barely falls short of the performance required by Griffin / VIPER, a fully recoverable Falcon Heavy can introduce more than 6.5 tons to TLI, offering a safety margin of almost 100%.
Astrobotic says it has bought a dedicated Falcon Heavy launch for Griffin-1 and VIPER, but it would be far from surprising to see one or more secondary loads find their way to a multiplayer mission ton of extra capacity. Assuming its Q4 2021 or early 2022 Peregrine Moon landing debut is successful, Astrobotic and SpaceX are aiming to land Griffin-1 and NASA’s VIPA Rover as early as 2023.