Oops - Talked too Soon About Vulcan

In last night's piece where I bemoaned the lack of updates on the ULA's Vulcan Centaur Cert-1 mission, I was a bit early.  The vehicle was rolled out to the launch pad on SLC-41 today.  There's a video of the rollout that's just a bit under one hour, twenty minutes long - and the rollout is 0.3 miles from the hanger to the pad.  YouTube allows you to double the playback speed, but nothing faster than that 2x.  I recommend just moving the cursor manually and stopping when you like the view. 

This view of the vehicle was posted to X by Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA.  He simply captioned the photo "Now that is a beautiful sight. #VulcanRocket"

The launch will be streamed live early Monday morning by ULA - here.  At the moment, it says coverage will start at 1:30 AM EST with launch just over 45 minutes later.  I've not seen any mention of a launch window but I also haven't seen anything saying it's an instantaneous window.  

As those following this mission will know, the primary payload on this mission is the Peregrine lander from Astrobotic in a mission partially funded by NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.  CLPS is intended to help pave the way for the agency's crewed return to the moon. NASA intends to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around Earth's nearest neighbor by the end of the 2020s.  The other payload, human remains and DNA on a mission from Celestis and Elysium Space have created a stir in the last few weeks.  The Navajo Nation has complained to NASA about the mission, saying:

In a Dec. 21 letter to NASA and the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), Nygren expressed his thoughts on the matter. "It is crucial to emphasize that the moon holds a sacred position in many Indigenous cultures, including ours," Nygren wrote. "We view it as a part of our spiritual heritage, an object of reverence and respect. The act of depositing human remains and other materials, which could be perceived as discards in any other location, on the moon is tantamount to desecration of this sacred space."

It seems like a fundamental miscommunication; I don't think people paying to place loved ones' remains on the moon thinks of it as discarding them; it's "an act of reverence and respect."  Still, there was supposedly an agreement between NASA and an organization representing the tribes that doesn't seem to have been followed.  A complication is that this isn't actually a NASA mission; it's the private company United Launch Alliance testing out a new vehicle and private companies Celestis and Elysium Space providing the interface to the vehicle so that the human remains and DNA samples can be handled in a way that doesn't damage the Peregrine lander or any part of the upper stage.  It's possible NASA has very little say over details like what's in the payload.