Three days at Christmastime would be the closing probability for United Launch Alliance to get its new Vulcan rocket off the bottom this yr, the corporate’s chief government introduced Tuesday.

Nonetheless ready for supply of an higher stage and a closing spherical of qualification testing following a take a look at mishap earlier this yr, Tory Bruno, ULA’s CEO, informed CNBC on Tuesday that the Vulcan rocket’s first demonstration flight is scheduled for launch December 24. There are two backup launch dates accessible December 25 and 26, or else the launch must wait till January.

There are threats to this schedule, however ULA officers have been assured sufficient within the timeline to publicly disclose the launch date Tuesday. They’ve additionally informed Astrobotic, which is flying its first industrial Moon cargo lander on the inaugural Vulcan rocket, to ship its spacecraft from the corporate’s Pittsburgh headquarters to Florida in anticipation of a December launch.

“We have to end constructing our higher stage and ship it down there (to Cape Canaveral),” Bruno informed CNBC. “There’s some qualification testing in parallel. Each of these get completed in November. The booster is already there able to go, and the explanation it is Christmas Eve is due to science, orbital mechanics.

“If for some cause something occurs, unhealthy climate, there’s some delay in transport the stage, we are able to transfer into January, the place there’s one other comparable window,” Bruno stated.

Tight launch home windows

There are only some days every month that the Vulcan rocket can take off. That is not the fault of ULA, however a constraint imposed by its payload. Astrobotic’s robotic Peregrine lander will intention for touchdown at a area on the close to aspect of the Moon generally known as the Gruithuisen Domes, the situation of an historical eruption of thick lava that solidified into steep rocky mounds.

Astrobotic desires to have good lighting on the touchdown website when it arrives, permitting the corporate’s solar-powered Peregrine lander to return scientific knowledge from a collection of NASA devices.

In February, United Launch Alliance—a 50-50 three way partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin—introduced Could 4 because the goal launch date for the primary Vulcan rocket.

However ULA quickly scrapped that schedule after a take a look at unit of the Vulcan rocket’s Centaur higher stage exploded throughout a stress take a look at in Alabama in late March. ULA’s launch crew at Cape Canaveral, Florida, continued testing the Vulcan’s first stage, with a short however flawless firing of its two Blue Origin-built predominant engines on the launch pad in June. Since then, the Vulcan launch marketing campaign in Florida has been just about at a standstill.

Engineers traced the reason for the Centaur explosion to a mixture of higher-than-anticipated stress close to the highest of the liquid hydrogen propellant tank and barely weaker welding. The higher stage designed for the Vulcan rocket is known as the Centaur V. It is a wider, twin-engine model of the Centaur higher stage that is been reliably flying on a number of varieties of rockets for the reason that Sixties.

ULA despatched the Centaur V higher stage that was already at Cape Canaveral for the primary Vulcan launch again to the corporate’s manufacturing unit in Decatur, Alabama, for modifications to make sure it will not succumb to excessive pressures. It’s going to fly on a future Vulcan mission, whereas the manufacturing unit crew introduced ahead one other Centaur V, with extra chrome steel reinforcers on its ahead dome, on the manufacturing line to fly on the primary Vulcan rocket.