A dramatic day unfolded in the space industry on Monday, January 8th, a few hours after United Launch Alliance successfully launched the maiden flight of its new Vulcan rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The new launcher is powered by Blue Origin's BE-4 engines and marks the first time the Bezos-owned company's hardware has flown an orbital mission.

United Launch Alliance has a proven and uninterrupted record of launching many of NASA's flagship science missions like the Perseverance Mars rover, the Parker Solar Probe, and sample return mission OSIRIS-REx. Just to name a few.

ULA Chief Tory Bruno remarked on the seemingly perfect maiden launch by noting that the only problem that arose was a broken coffee machine in launch control. It was fixed by a nearby rocket scientist before liftoff. Praise came from across the industry, and included was a congratulatory reply on X from Bruno's nemesis SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Many expect the Vulcan to provide some competition in the Falcon-dominated launch market.

ULA's customer for Vulcan's first launch, the Pittsburgh-based private company Astrobotic, did not share in the mission's success. Just hours after launch, Astrobotic reported an anomaly aboard their Peregrine Lunar Lander that prevented it from pointing itself toward the sun, which is needed to charge the spacecraft's batteries. Later, they reported a failure in the propulsion system, jeopardizing the mission's primary objective of landing on the moon.

Updates came throughout the day and while there was a small glimmer of hope when Astrobotic reestablished communication with the lander, they ultimately realized that the failure resulted in a loss of propellant that would have enabled a lunar landing. Astrobotic will now try to get as close to lunar distance as possible while gathering valuable flight data and testing components aboard the spacecraft. The company will try again with its Griffin lander, currently in development.

Peregrine was partially funded by NASA to leverage the private space industry for logistics, planning, and research for the agency's upcoming crewed Artemis missions to the lunar surface. Today, NASA announced that those missions are now delayed by at least a year.

“There are many challenges with spaceflight, and we’re incredibly proud of the Astrobotic and NASA teams that have put us one step closer to a robotic return to the lunar surface as part of Artemis. This delivery service model is a first for the agency and with something new, there is a higher risk,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Supercluster team members Jenny Hautmann and Erik Kuna were on-site for the late-night launch and captured liftoff with remote cameras set at Space Launch Complex 41.