Moline grad worked on latest Moon launch

The last time an American spacecraft landed on the Moon was more than 50 years ago. A Moline native was part of the team that made possible the latest launch Monday, to return to the Moon.

Tucker Gritton, a 2010 Moline High graduate, is a Propulsion Systems Design Engineer at United Launch Alliance (ULA), and he worked on the new Vulcan Launch Platform. He oversaw component development for the Vulcan Propellant Utilization System and contributed to several other systems including Stage Separation, according to the company.

Gritton is currently on the Vulcan Reuse Propulsion Design team and has been working on Vulcan development since 2015.

ULA marked the beginning of a new era of space capabilities with the successful launch of its next-generation unmanned Vulcan rocket on Jan. 8 at 2:18 a.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, witnessed by Gritton and his Moline parents, Tom and Luanne.

“I decided to pursue a role in aerospace engineering and rocket propulsion because it allows me to solve big problems and really make a difference in the world every day,” Tucker Gritton said Tuesday by email.

“I love what I do because every day I get to work with great people to make complex design decisions, and then I can see my decisions become a physical reality,” he said. “Having the opportunity to participate in such a vital program and see it come to fruition has been incredible.”

“From our perspective, we had a dozen friends and family viewing the early morning launch from four different locales around the space coast,” Tom Gritton said Monday by text. “It was an awesome event and thrilling to see success on the first mission.”

Tucker — who earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois in 2015 — said he could not comment on his work with ULA. Gritton has a master’s of science in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and just last year earned an MBA from the Indiana University business school.

NASA’s Apollo 17 capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 19, 1972, after the last manned mission to the Moon. NASA’s uncrewed Artemis 3 mission launched in November 2022 as an initial step to landing two astronauts on the moon’s south pole in 2025.

NASA is kicking off 2024 by sending five payloads to the Moon aboard Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, Astrobotic Peregrine Mission One. The inaugural launch under the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative blasted off Monday in the United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket.

The suite of NASA payloads aboard Peregrine One will aim to locate water molecules on the Moon, measure radiation and gases around the lander, and evaluate the lunar exosphere (the thin layer of gases on the Moon’s surface), according to a NASA release. These measurements will improve understanding of how solar radiation interacts with the lunar surface. The payloads will also provide data to NASA’s Lunar-VISE (Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer) instrument suite, slated to land on the Gruithuisen Domes in 2026.

“We are so excited to see this vision become a reality. CLPS is an innovative way of leveraging American companies to send important science and technology payloads to the Moon,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “The Moon is a rich destination for scientific discovery. Studying and sampling the lunar environment will help NASA unravel some of the greatest mysteries of our solar system for the benefit of all.”

The Peregrine lander is targeted to land Feb. 23 at Sinus Viscositatis, a lunar feature outside of the hardened lava Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon. Similar natural structures on Earth require large volumes of water to form, leading scientists to believe that this landing site may contain evidence of water on the Moon.

“Vulcan’s inaugural launch ushers in a new, innovative capability to meet the ever-growing requirements of space launch,” Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, said in a United Launch Alliance release. “Vulcan will provide high performance and affordability while continuing to deliver our superior reliability and orbital precision for all our customers across the national security, civil and commercial markets. Vulcan continues the legacy of Atlas as the world’s only high-energy architecture rocket.”

Vulcan will leverage the world’s highest-performing upper stage to deliver on ULA’s industry-leading legacy of reliability and precision.

“The successful development and flight of this evolutionary rocket is a true testament to the unrivaled dedication and ingenuity of our workforce,” said Mark Peller, vice president of Vulcan Development. “Vulcan’s purpose-built design leverages the best of what we’ve learned from more than 120 combined years of launch experience with Atlas and Delta, ultimately advancing our nation’s space capability and providing unprecedented mission flexibility.”

The first certification flight (Cert-1) mission included two payloads: Astrobotic’s first Peregrine Lunar Lander, Peregrine Mission One (PM1), as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface, and the Celestis Memorial Spaceflights deep space Voyager mission, the Enterprise Flight.

For more information on ULA and to see more photos of Monday’s spectacular launch, visit the company website HERE (photo album at bottom of the page).