Vulcan Centaur rocket arrives at pad ahead of debut launch (photos)

Liftoff is scheduled for early Monday morning (Jan. 8).

The 202-foot-tall (62-meter-tall) Vulcan Centaur will replace ULA's venerable Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, which have sent many prominent payloads skyward over the past few decades.

The new rocket made the 0.3-mile (0.5-kilometer) trek from its hangar this morning "with the help of undercarriage railcars and trackmobile machines that push[ed] the entire 1.7-million-pound (771,000-kg) platform and #VulcanRocket along tracks up the hill to the pad," ULA wrote in a post on X today.

"Now that is a beautiful sight," ULA CEO Tory Bruno wrote in an X post of his own today, which shared a photo of the red-and-white Vulcan Centaur standing atop the pad at the end of the rollout.

Monday's launch will also mark the debut of Peregrine, a robotic moon lander built by Pittsburgh company Astrobotic. Peregrine will target a touchdown next month, and success would be historic; no private craft has ever aced a lunar landing.

Peregrine is flying via NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to pave the way for the agency's Artemis astronaut missions. The private lander is carrying a variety of science payloads provided by NASA and Germany's space agency, known as DLR.

Astrobotic booked some private payloads on this Peregrine flight as well, including memorial capsules organized by the companies Celestis and Elysium Space. This cargo has sparked a some controversy; the Navajo Nation has objected to the capsules' inclusion, saying the deposition of human remains on the moon would violate a sacred space.