ULA prepares for Vulcan Centaur rocket launch in July
Today efforts to further propel humanity into space is taking a big step forward. It comes after a step back from about a month and a half or so ago, back on March 29th, the upper stage of ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket erupted in a ball of fire, all because of a hydrogen leak at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Tonight, News 6's James Barbero gives an update on the rocket's testing. Time lapse video from United Launch Alliance showing its new Vulcan Centaur rocket rolling to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Undergoing tanking testing at the same pad where the Atlas V rocket usually launches, ULA says the heavy lift Vulcan will replace Atlas and Delta rockets. I'm going to reveal to you our next generation launch system. Under development since 2014, back then ULA President Tori Bruno said Vulcan would launch in 2019.
The most recent launch date was to be May 4th, but then in March, during testing in Alabama of the upper stage of the rocket, something blew up. Sharing a video of the explosion, Bruno pointed to a hydrogen leak. As the investigation continues, now ULA hopes Vulcan's first launch will be this summer. They're counting on it to carry them into the future and to be competitive with the rockets' SpaceX's fielding for national security payloads, for example, which is a very big deal. First payloads include a lunar lander from Pittsburgh Aerospace Company Astrobotic and two prototype satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper, a new space-based internet constellation to rival SpaceX's Starlink. And liftoff. America's longest-serving active rocket and with a 100 percent success rate, some of the final Atlas V missions planned include crew flights of Boeing's Starliner capsule to the International Space Station.
If ULA is satisfied with the results of Friday's fueling test, then next week the company says it will test fire the Vulcan Centaur's engines. At NASA's Kennedy Space Center, I'm James Sparbero, Getting Results, News 6.
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