The new Vulcan rocket sends a NASA module to the moon

This time it wasn't Elon Musk's SpaceX company. The American company United Launch Alliance (ULA) launched its new rocket this Monday Volcanic centaur with the module pilgrim loaded with NASA instruments for analyzing the lunar surface.

As planned, the launch took place at approximately 2:20 a.m. local time (8:20 a.m. Spanish peninsular time) from Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Space Force in central Florida (USA). The event was broadcast live.

Peregrine is scheduled to land on the moon on Friday February 23rd in a region on the other side of our satellite known in Latin as “Sinus viscosity', which in Spanish would mean sticky bay.

There she will spend about ten days collecting valuable scientific data, helping pave the way for the first woman and first non-white person to explore our satellite as part of the Artemis program to return humans to the moon .

If it achieves its goal, Peregrine will be the first American module to reach the lunar surface in more than 50 years.

First commercial mission to the moon

This is the U.S. agency's first commercial robotic mission to reach the moon. The ultimate success of this project represents a step in the official certification of these rockets, ULA's new and most powerful series.

The Vulcan carries Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar module. NASA will pay this company $108 million to move there five experimentsunder the program CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services)whose goal is to reduce the cost of sending objects to the lunar surface.

The module carries scientific instruments from seven countries, including an “ambitious” Mexican mission using tiny robots to examine the lunar surface.

The robots were developed by the Space Instrumentation Laboratory of the Institute of Nuclear Sciences (LINX-ICN) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

These are explorers with a diameter of about 12 centimeters and weighing less than 60 grams, which are part of the Colmena project, this country's first lunar mission.

Each of the robots has wheels, sensors and on-board computers that allow them to explore the moon and perform space mining.

According to UNAM, due to their size, these robots will be only a few centimeters from the surface of the lunar regolith, a dust composed of extremely fine, irregular and abrasive grains.

Delay and two key releases

The maiden voyage of ULA's new line of launch vehicles, the Vulcan Centaur, was scheduled for December 24 and had to be postponed due to fuel loading test delays.

Last December saw the market launch dress rehearsal, known in English as wet dress rehearsalwas more time-consuming than expected and could not be completed on time.

Founded in 2006 by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, ULA's primary activity has been launching top-secret military payloads for the United States government.

Its rockets have so far been too expensive for most commercial customers, but have been very reliable.

With Vulcan, ULA is aiming for a larger share of the commercial market. Amazon, for example, has already purchased 38 of the 70 planned launches for Project Kuiper, a constellation of communications satellites designed to provide fast, affordable internet to communities around the world.

The US Space Force wants two successful Vulcan launches before bringing its payloads on board.

This Monday is the first. The second could take place in April and would launch the Dream Chaser, an unmanned space plane built by Sierra Space of Louisville, Colorado, on a cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station.

Ashes and remains of DNA

In addition to cargo for NASA and scientific instruments, Vulcan also transports the ashes and DNA samples of celebrities and prominent figures into “space”, such as hair of former US Presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. accordingly Space flights to the Celestis Memoriala company specializing in space monuments.

Added to this are the remains and DNA samples of Gene Roddenberry and his wife Majel, both inventors of Star Trekalso by actors of this legendary television series such as Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan, as well as Douglas Trumbull, creator of special effects in films such as “2001: A Space Odyssey”.