United Launch Alliance could load cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen into its Vulcan rocket test site at Cape Canaveral for the first time in the coming weeks as it plans to launch its next-generation Atlas 5 rocket between flights. A key test of rockets that will use the same rocket launch. complex in the coming years.
Meanwhile, ULA is using its operational Atlas 5 rocket to test elements of the more powerful Vulcan Centaur rocket ahead of the new launch vehicle’s maiden flight. The new BE-4 first stage engine from Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin is ready and moving forward with the first test launch of Vulcan.
ULA Chief Operating Officer John Albon said in early May that the first Vulcan rocket should be ready for launch by the end of the year.
Vulcan’s first launch could take place late this year or early 2022, Col. Robert Bongiovi, director of the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space and Missile Systems Center, said Wednesday. The Space Force will become ULA’s largest customer as the Vulcan rocket conducts two certification flights before launching its first U.S. military mission, USSF-106, in early 2023.
The launch of the US military satellite Atlas 5 on Tuesday tested an upgraded version of the RL10 upper stage engine that will fly on the Vulcan rocket’s Centaur upper stage. The next Atlas 5 launch in June will be the first rocket to use Vulcan. . Like a payload shield made in the USA, not Switzerland.
Construction and testing of the new launch pad system for the Vulcan Centaur rocket is nearly complete, said Ron Fortson, director and general manager of launch operations at ULA.
“This will be a dual-use launch pad,” Fordson said recently as he led reporters on a tour of Launch Pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. “No one had done this before, essentially launching Atlas and a completely different Vulcan product line on the same platform.”
The Russian RD-180 engine of the Atlas 5 rocket runs on kerosene mixed with liquid oxygen. The BE-4 Vulcan’s twin first-stage engines run on either liquefied natural gas or methane fuel, requiring ULA to install new storage tanks on Platform 41.
Three 100,000-gallon methane storage tanks are located on the north side of Launch Pad 41. The company, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, also upgraded the launch pad’s sound-absorbing water system, which dampens the intense sound produced by the launch pad. Rocket launch.
The liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen storage facilities at Launch Pad 41 were also upgraded to accommodate the larger Centaur upper stage, which will fly on the Vulcan rocket.
The Vulcan rocket’s new Centaur 5 upper stage has a diameter of 17.7 feet (5.4 meters), more than twice as wide as the Centaur 3 upper stage on the Atlas 5. Centaur 5 will be powered by two RL10C-1-1 engines, and not the same RL10 engine used on most Atlas 5s, and will carry two and a half times more fuel than the current Centaur.
Fordson said ULA has completed testing of new methane storage tanks and sent cryogenic liquid through ground supply lines to the launch site at Pad 41.
“We filled these tanks to learn about their properties,” Fordson said. “We have fuel flowing through all the lines. We call this the cold flow test. We went through all the lines up to the connection with the VLP, which is the Vulcan launch platform, with the launched Vulcan rocket. vertex.”
The Vulcan Launch Platform is a new mobile launch pad that will carry the Vulcan Centaur rocket from ULA’s vertically integrated facility to Launch Pad 41. Earlier this year, ground crews lifted the Vulcan Pathfinder core stage onto the platform and rolled the rocket onto the launch pad for the first round of ground testing.
ULA stores the VLP and Vulcan Pathfinder stages at the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Operations Center while the company prepares its newest Atlas 5 rocket for liftoff with the military’s SBIRS GEO 5 early warning satellite.
Following the successful launch of Atlas 5 and SBIRS GEO 5 on Tuesday, the Vulcan team will move the rocket back to Launch Pad 41 to continue testing Pathfinder. ULA will begin placing the Atlas 5 rocket inside the VIF, which is scheduled to launch on June 23 for the Space Force’s STP-3 mission.
ULA plans to load fuel onto a Vulcan launch vehicle for the first time, based on early tests of the ground system.
“The next time we release VLPs, we will start doing these through-vehicle tests,” Fortson said.
The Vulcan Pathfinder vehicle arrived at Cape Canaveral in February aboard a ULA rocket from the company’s facility in Decatur, Alabama.
Tuesday’s launch marked the first Atlas 5 mission in more than six months, but ULA expects the pace to quicken this year. Following the June 23 launch of STP-3, the next Atlas 5 launch is scheduled for July 30, which will include a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner crew module.
“We need to complete work on Vulcan between launches,” Fordson said. “We will launch STP-3 very soon after this. They have a small window to work, test and test, and then we’ll put another car in there.”
The Vulcan Pathfinder rocket is powered by Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine ground test facility, and tests of its tank will help engineers determine how to load fuel into the Vulcan on launch day.
“We will understand all the assets and how they operate and develop our CONOPS (concept of operations) from there,” Fordson said.
ULA has extensive experience with ultra-cold liquid hydrogen, another cryogenic rocket fuel used in the company’s Delta 4 family of rockets and Centaur upper stages.
“They were both very cold,” Fordson said. “They have different properties. We just want to understand how it behaves during transmission.
“All the testing we’re doing now is to fully understand the properties of this gas and how it behaves when we put it in a vehicle,” Fordson said. “That’s really what we’re going to be doing over the next few months.”
While Vulcan’s ground systems are overwhelmed, ULA is using its operational rocket launches to test next-generation launch vehicle flight technologies.
A new variant of Aerojet’s Rocketdyne RL10 engine on the Centaur upper stage was unveiled Tuesday. The latest version of the hydrogen engine, called the RL10C-1-1, has improved performance and is easier to manufacture, according to ULA.
The RL10C-1-1 engine has a longer nozzle than the engine used on previous Atlas 5 rockets and features a new 3D-printed injector, which made its first operational flight, said Gary Harry, the company’s vice president of government and government affairs. commercial programs. Gary Wentz said. ULA.
According to the Aerojet Rocketdyne website, the RL10C-1-1 engine produces approximately 1,000 pounds of additional thrust than the previous version of the RL10C-1 engine used on the Atlas 5 rocket.
More than 500 RL10 engines have powered rockets since the 1960s. ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rocket will also use the RL10C-1-1 engine model, as will all future Atlas 5 missions except Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule, which uses the Centaur’s unique twin-engine upper stage.
Last year, a new solid rocket booster built by Northrop Grumman was launched for the first time on an Atlas 5 flight. The large booster, built by Northrop Grumman, will be used on the Vulcan mission and most future Atlas 5 flights.
The new booster replaces the Aerojet Rocketdyne strap-on booster that has been used on Atlas 5 launches since 2003. Aerojet Rocketdyne’s solid rocket motors will continue to fire Atlas 5 rockets to carry manned missions into orbit, but this week’s mission marked the last flight of a military Atlas 5 using an older launch vehicle design. The Aerojet Rocketdyne launch vehicle is certified to launch astronauts.
ULA has integrated the avionics and guidance systems of its Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets into a single design that will also fly on the Vulcan Centaur.
Next month, ULA plans to unveil the last major Vulcan-like system to fly first on Atlas 5: a payload fairing that is easier and cheaper to produce than the previous Atlas 5′s nose canopy.
The 17.7-foot (5.4-meter) diameter payload fairing that will launch next month on the STP-3 mission looks identical to those used on previous Atlas 5 rockets.
But the fairing is the product of a new industrial partnership between ULA and Swiss company RUAG Space, which previously produced all of the Atlas 5′s 5.4-meter fairings at a plant in Switzerland. The smaller Atlas 5 nose cone used on some missions is manufactured at ULA’s facility in Harlingen, Texas.
ULA and RUAG have developed a new payload fairing production line at existing Atlas, Delta and Vulcan facilities in Alabama.
The Alabama production line uses a new process that simplifies the fairing manufacturing steps. According to ULA, the “non-autoclave” manufacturing method can only use an oven to cure the carbon fiber composite fairing, eliminating a high-pressure autoclave, which limits the size of parts that can fit inside.
This change allows the payload fairing to be split into two halves instead of 18 or more smaller pieces. This will reduce the number of fasteners, multipliers and the likelihood of defects, ULA said in a blog post last year.
ULA says the new method makes it faster and cheaper to build a payload fairing.
ULA plans to fly 30 or more additional Atlas 5 missions before the rocket is retired and transferred to the Vulcan Centaur rocket.
In April, Amazon purchased nine Atlas 5 flights to begin launching satellites for the company’s Kuiper Internet network. A spokesman for the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center said last week that six more national security missions will require Atlas 5 rockets in the next few years, not counting the SBIRS GEO 5 mission launched Tuesday.
Last year, the U.S. Space Force announced multibillion-dollar contracts to deliver critical national security payloads on ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rockets and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles through 2027.
On Thursday, Space News reported that the Space Force and ULA have agreed to move the first military mission assigned to the Vulcan Centaur rocket to the Atlas 5 rocket. The mission, called USSF-51, is scheduled to launch in 2022.
Four astronauts preparing to launch into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” capsule boarded their spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday to train for their planned launch to the International Space Station on Saturday evening, while Mission leaders are monitoring weather and sea conditions during the recovery process. territory beyond the Atlantic Ocean.
NASA Kennedy Space Center engineers who will oversee the launch of science satellites and interplanetary probes will be responsible for ensuring six major missions reach space safely in just over six months this year, starting with NOAA’s new GOES launch – March 1, S Weather Observatory board the Atlas 5 rocket.
A Chinese rocket launched three experimental military surveillance satellites into orbit on Friday, the second such three-satellite set launched in less than two months.