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[i]In a call with reporters Feb. 23, ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno announced the date for the long-awaited inaugural flight of the rocket as the company gears up for a series of tests of the rocket at Space Launch Complex 41. The launch will carry Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander, two demonstration satellites for Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband constellation and a payload for space memorial company Celestis. "We are now targeting the fourth of May so we plan our manifest around that and be ready to fly that payload when it comes in," Bruno said. ULA will have a window of about four days to conduct the launch. Several factors led ULA to select that date. One is the mission requirements of Peregrine, the primary payload on the launch, which has a window of only a few days each month to fly its trajectory to the moon. A second is a series of tests of the Vulcan Centaur rocket, currently in the vertical integration facility adjacent to the pad. Bruno said the rocket will roll out to the pad "a few days from now" for tanking tests followed by at least one wet dress rehearsal where the vehicle is fully loaded with propellants and goes through a practice countdown, stopping just before engine ignition. That will followed by what ULA calls a flight readiness firing, a wet dress rehearsal that ends with a firing of the BE-4 engines in the booster at about 70% of rated thrust for 3.5 seconds. "That is more than adequate for us to understand all of those systems," he said. After the flight readiness firing, the rocket will return to the integration facility for payload integration, then be rolled back to the pad for launch. In parallel, ULA and Blue Origin are finishing the formal qualification of the BE-4 engine, which Bruno described as the "pacing item" for the launch. "It's taking a little bit longer than anticipated."[/i]
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