The inaugural launch of the large ULA rocket was again delayed

yet annoying The explosion that engulfed NASA Exam facility in Alabama, United Launch Alliance (ULA) doesn’t expect its Vulcan rocket to fly until the summer.

The heavy missile was being prepared The highly anticipated opening flight, which was scheduled for May 4. On March 29, ULA was squeezing the upper stage of a Vulcan rocket when a spark caused a fireball on the test stand at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The company’s CEO, Tory Bruno, recently shared a dossier A closer look at the explosion on Twitter. While back and forth with his followers on the social networking site, Bruno subscriber The earliest estimated release date for Vulcan would be “June/July”.

Bruno suggested that a buildup of hydrogen inside the test stand was the cause of the explosion, and that the fuel was likely from an ignition source that set it on fire. The company seemed unsure of the amount of damage caused by the fireball. “I don’t know yet if the leak is in the test article or the test device,” he said books on Twitter. The “test article” is the missile itself.

The 202-foot (62-meter) expendable missile has been in development since 2014 and was supposed to launch first in 2020 and then again in 2022. ULA was awaiting delivery of two BE-4 engines built by Blue Origin for Jeff Bezos, And who It came more than four years late.

The Vulcan Centaur ULA is a two-stage rocket Lifting 27.2 metric tons (60,000 lb) to LEO and 6.5 metric tons (14,300 lb) to geosynchronous orbit (for comparison, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 can carry 22.8 metric tons to LEO). IV missiles, which have been in use for the past two decades.

On its inaugural flight, Vulcan is set to deliver Lunar lander from Astrobotics, which, on behalf of NASA, will attempt to deliver 11 payloads to the lunar surface. The missile will also attempt to deliver The first two Amazon Kuiper Internet satellites into low Earth orbit, owned by Bezos subsidiary Blue Origin.

The rocket, which has already suffered several delays, will have to wait a little longer before it can take off, with an initial summer launch date still apparently uncertain.

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