United Launch Alliance’s rocket plant in Decatur will be developing the upper stage for future Artemis missions to the Moon, the company announced Friday.
The Centaur for Artemis will be built at the 2.4-million square foot factory – the world’s largest rocket factory – in collaboration with NASA.
The stage will be shipped by ULA’s specially designed ship called RocketShip down the Tennessee River on its way to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It will then be offloaded and delivered to Kennedy Space Center to be stacked to the SLS booster before the Orion capsule is added on top prior to launch.
“We could not be more honored to be involved in America’s return to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program and thank you to NASA for its confidence in ULA,” said Mark Peller, ULA’s president and CEO. “In a full-circle moment, Centaur was developed for the Series D Atlas rocket and later helped the first U.S. spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon with the Surveyor 1 mission and now will support NASA’s newest lunar landing plans with a new, innovative and evolved Centaur stage designed for exploration.”
NASA has prioritized the development of the 180K Centaur V upper stage, which would include a qualification test unit in addition to a flight unit required to support a 2028 Artemis launch. ULA provided the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) for the successful Artemis I and II launches and has the third and final ICPS stage ready at the Cape in preparation for delivery to NASA.
“The flight-proven, high-performance Centaur upper stage has flown on more than 280 missions, and its innovative technology has delivered missions to every planet in the solar system,” Peller said. “Its success stems from its ultra-lightweight structure and high-performance liquid hydrogen fueled propulsion system.”
The larger 180K+ Centaur will feature a longer tank length increasing propellant capacity by approximately 50 percent for higher performance during trans-lunar injection.
Additional modifications from the current Centaur flying today include changing the material of the tank from stainless steel to alloy 718, larger hydrazine tanks, and an update to avionics and software from the current Centaur V’s baseline. In addition, the team will work through human rating the Centaur Exploration stage.
NASA has relied on Centaur to launch multiple payloads into lunar orbit including LRO/LCROSS, Explorer Program (35, 49), Surveyor Program (6), Lunar Orbiter Program (5), and the Ranger Moon Probes (4), as well as delivering several critical payloads to the Martian surface including the Mars Science Lab/Curiosity, Mars 2020/Perseverance and Insight missions.
