SpaceX conducts 50th Falcon 9 launch with heavy...
- by NASASpaceFlight.com
- Mar 05, 2018
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— Julia Bergeron (@julia_bergeron) March 4, 2018
Following a deterioration in sea conditions, the recovery ships and ASDS have since returned to port and SpaceX have confirmed that Tuesday’s launch was fully expendable. This late decision means that Falcon 9 still flew with full recovery hardware, including landing legs and titanium grid fins and conducted the regular re-entry and landing burns.
In its forty-nine launches to date, Falcon 9 has only failed once: during June 2015’s launch of the CRS-7 Dragon mission a cryogenic overwrap pressure vessel (COPV) broke loose within the second stage oxidizer tank, venting liquid helium which caused the tank to overpressurize and rupture. An early flight suffered a first stage engine failure. However, the eight remaining engines continued to burn and the primary payload – also a Dragon – was able to reach its planned orbit. A second payload, an Orbcomm communications satellite, could not be placed into a usable orbit.
A Falcon 9 was also lost in a testing mishap at Cape Canaveral in September 2016, which claimed the Amos 6 satellite that it was preparing to launch and inflicted damage at SpaceX’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) launch site. The failure was also traced to a second-stage COPV, which had buckled due to the formation of oxygen bubbles between the tank’s outer carbon composite and inner aluminum layers. The rocket exploded during fuelling operations ahead of a static fire a few days ahead of its planned launch date – with the payload already loaded onto the rocket.
Falcon recovered from these setbacks and has ramped up to an impressive flight rate, making eighteen successful launches from eighteen attempts last year – more than any other rocket worldwide. Tuesday’s mission was its fourth of 2018, and the fifth of the year for SpaceX – with the additional launch having been of the Falcon Heavy last month.
Falcon Heavy launch – by Brady Kenniston for NSF
Tuesday’s launch took place from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), which was originally a Titan launch complex at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. SLC-40 was built in the 1960s as part of the Titan III’s Integrate-Transfer-Launch (ITL) complex, which also included nearby Complex 41 – now an Atlas V launch pad – and a shared vertical integration building. After serving Titan IIIC, Titan III(34)D, Commercial Titan III and Titan IV rockets, SLC-40 saw its last Titan launch in April 2005.
After leasing the complex from the US Air Force, SpaceX demolished Titan’s fixed and mobile service towers and made modifications to the pad – including construction of a hangar to facilitate horizontal integration of Falcon 9 vehicles – ahead of the rocket’s maiden flight in 2010.
Ahead of Tuesday’s launch, fuel loading began to be loaded onto the Falcon at about the seventy-minute mark in the countdown, with oxidizer loading beginning thirty-five minutes before liftoff. Both stages of the Falcon 9 rocket use RP-1 propellant – a refined form of kerosene – with liquid oxygen used as its oxidizer. Liquid oxygen loading continued until just before liftoff, with the tanks topped up as oxygen boiled off and was vented from the rocket.
In the final minute of the countdown, the rocket’s onboard computers conducted their final checks before liftoff. The rocket’s propellant tanks were pressurized for flight and the launch director confirmed that Falcon was ready to begin its mission. Three seconds before the countdown reaches zero, the rocket began its ignition sequence and the nine Merlin-1D engines at the base of Falcon’s first stage – B1044 – roared into life. Liftoff occurred at T-0.
Seventy-eight seconds after liftoff, Falcon 9 passed through the area of maximum dynamic pressure, or Max-Q. The first stage powered the rocket away from the ground, burning for the first two minutes and 35 seconds of the mission before reaching main engine cutoff (MECO). At this point, having completed its role in boosting Hispasat 30W-6 towards orbit, B1044 shut down its engines. The stage separated two seconds after MECO, with the second stage igniting after a further two seconds.
Falcon 9 Staging
Following separation, it B1044 made two further burns – an entry burn and a landing burn – to guide itself to a landing aboard SpaceX’s drone ship. As weather conditions at sea have prevented recovery operations from taking place, the core was instead disposed of into the ocean – although SpaceX may use this as an opportunity to test recovery procedures by guiding the booster to a splashdown, rather than a landing.
Falcon’s second stage made two burns to place Hispasat 30W-6 into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The stage’s single Merlin-1D engine is optimized to be more efficient in the vacuum of space and is known as a Merlin Vacuum (MVac). Its first burn lasted six minutes, placing itself and its payload into an initial parking orbit. About a minute into the burn, Falcon 9’s payload fairing separated from around Hispasat 30W-6 at the nose of the rocket, exposing the satellite to space for the first time.
With its first burn completed, the second stage coasted for seventeen minutes and 59 seconds before restarting for its second burn. This was a 55-second firing that injected Hispasat 30W-6 into its transfer orbit. Spacecraft separation took place five minutes and eighteen seconds after the end of the second burn.
Tuesday’s flight of the Falcon 9 followed four successful launches for SpaceX in the first two months of 2018, with Falcon 9s carrying Northrup Grumman’s Zuma payload, the SES-16 communications satellite and Hisdesat’s Paz spacecraft. Falcon Heavy made its successful test flight in early February.
SpaceX’s next launch is currently slated for 29 March, with ten satellites for mobile communications company Iridium. Two further launches are planned in early April: one with a Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station and the other to deliver Bangladesh’s Bangabandhu-1 communications satellite to orbit.
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