A new U.S. rocket reached orbit early Monday, and the launch was a big one — not just in scale of the vehicle, but also in significance for a market that has become dominated by a single player in recent years.
United Launch Alliance, or ULA, successfully launched its long-awaited inaugural Vulcan rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral. The 202-foot-tall rocket successfully deployed its main payload, the Peregrine lunar cargo lander, for Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic about an hour later.
Astrobotic's Peregrine is bound for the moon, where it will attempt a landing on Feb. 23, potentially becoming the first American spacecraft to soft land on the moon since Apollo 17 more than 50 years ago.
Under a NASA-funded program known as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, Astrobotic's mission represents one of six lunar launches of landers from three different companies slated for this year.
Taking on SpaceX
Years delayed, the debut of ULA's Vulcan represents the latest challenger to the launch business of Elon Musk's SpaceX, with the companies fiercely competing for lucrative national security rocket contracts.
SpaceX is coming off another record year with 96 successful missions of its Falcon rockets in 2023.
ULA CEO Tory Bruno told CNBC late last year that his company plans to launch several times in 2024 before ramping up Vulcan's launch rate to every other week by the second half of 2025. ULA says it has sold more than 70 Vulcan missions to date, a backlog largely made up of Space Force contracts and launches for Amazon's Project Kuiper internet satellites.
Vulcan's success also represents a major milestone for Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which supplies the main engines of the rocket. A pair of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines are the centerpiece to getting Vulcan off the ground, after years of delivery delays on the first flight engines.
"Big kudos and congrats to the whole team!" Bezos wrote in a social media post after Monday's launch.
Blue Origin's own rocket, New Glenn, will also be powered by BE-4 engines.
Finally, Vulcan's first launch may also be key in discussions reportedly underway to sell the rocket company.
ULA is a joint venture, equally owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, created in a 2006 merger of the companies' rocket businesses.
Blue Origin, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management and industrials conglomerate Textron have each expressed interest in buying ULA, according to a Wall Street Journal report last month.
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