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Payload stacked for NROL-44; ULA, SpaceX win NSSL awards
[NASA Spaceflight.com] United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) Delta IV Heavy rocket has received its clandestine payload for the upcoming NROL-44 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office as teams continue launch preparations on SLC-37B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL.The mission is set to launch at the end of August and comes as ULA wins 60% of the National Security Space Launch award from the U.S. Space Force with SpaceX winning the remaining 40% of the missions. NROL-44 progress: The first Delta IV Heavy mission from Florida since August 2018 is in the final stages of preparation for launch, with ULA and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) personnel transferring and mating the classified NROL-44 payload on top of the heavy-lift rocket — the final integration activity prior to launch. The Delta IV Heavy is the only remaining Delta family rocket variant currently in active status for ULA following the retirement of the Delta II line in 2018 and the Delta IV Medium line in August 2019. Launch site preparations for the mission began in earnest in July 2019 when the two side boosters arrived at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard the Delta Mariner (now named Rocketship). Over the rest of 2019, the remaining flight hardware arrived at the Cape and was moved to the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at SLC-37. The Delta IV Heavy is built in Decatur, AL, like the Atlas V and Vulcan, ULA’s two other rockets. Vulcan will serve as the Delta IV’s replacement but will begin flying as the Delta IV fleet is phased out over the next four years. Only five Delta IV Heavy missions remain — three from Cape Canaveral and two from Vandenberg Air Force Base. All are NRO missions. The final Delta IV mission is NROL-70, scheduled for a 2024 launch from Cape Canaveral. Vulcan, in its Heavy configuration (with six solid rocket motors and a stretched Centaur upper stage) will have 20-30% greater payload capacity than the Delta IV Heavy and will be far cheaper. ULA confirms that a Delta IV Heavy costs about $350 million whereas Vulcan Centaur — of of 2015 — was targeting a $100 million per launch cost with the vehicle’s heavy-lift variant understood to have debut cost of $200 million per launch. In response to a NASASpaceflight inquiry, ULA said that "due to competition sensitive information, ... no update [is] available on Vulcan Centaur pricing " as per the costs listed above. Posted by: M. Murcek 2020-08-14 |
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