SpaceX launches Falcon 9 with PAZ, Starlink demo...
- by NASASpaceFlight.com
- Feb 22, 2018
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— Michael Baylor (@MichaelBaylor_) February 22, 2018
Although SpaceX’s attempt to recover part of the fairing is another new effort from the company, one thing that was not to be recovered was the rocket’s first stage – or core. Although the payload is not sufficiently heavy to require a fully-expendable rocket, the core would not be suitable for reuse on any future launches so the call was to dispose of by allowing it to fall into the Pacific Ocean.
The core was outfitted with grid fins, but not landing legs, which suggested that SpaceX may still use it to perform a controlled descent into the water. During last month’s GovSat-1 launch from Cape Canaveral an expendable first stage was used to test a new landing burn technique and unexpectedly survived a soft landing in the Atlantic – although it was subsequently scuttled as it could not safely be returned to shore.
However, it appeared this booster was always destined for a destructive return and discarded, per later comments from SpaceX.
The core that powered this mission was B1038.2, a flight-proven – or previously-flown – booster which was also used in last August’s launch of Taiwan’s Formosat-5 satellite. B1038 was the final Falcon 9 first stage to be built to the Block 3 specification, before an upgraded Block 4 version was introduced.
As well as being the last Block 3 core to be built, B1038 was also expected to be the last Block 3 to fly. Following the debut of the improved Block 4 version with last August’s CRS-12 launch, all subsequent new cores have adhered to this standard. In order to ensure reliability SpaceX has opted not to fly block 3 cores more than twice, and B1038 was the last remaining block 3 core yet to make its second flight.
Falcon 9 integrated stack ahead of the PAZ mission – via L2
The primary payload is Paz, a radar imaging satellite that was being carried for Spain’s Hisdesat. Paz carries an X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system, intended to form one half of the Programa Nacional de Observación de la Tierra por Satélite (PNOTS), or National Programme for Earth Observation by Satellite. A second satellite, Ingenio, carries an optical imaging payload. This has not yet been manifested for launch.
Paz – Spanish for “peace” – was originally named SEOSAR. It was built by Airbus Defence and Space (Spain), which absorbed the original prime contractor, EADS CASA Espacio, in 2009. The satellite is built around the AstroBus platform and is based on two earlier radar imaging satellites – TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X – which were built by EADS Astrium for Germany’s national space center. TerraSAR-X has been in orbit since June 2007, while TanDEM-X was launched three years later, and both satellites have now exceeded their five-year design lives but remain in service.
Paz will be co-located with these two spacecraft in a sun-synchronous low Earth orbit, enabling combined observations between the missions. The target orbit for the Paz mission is approximately circular, at an altitude of 514 kilometers (319 miles, 278 nautical miles) and an inclination of 97.44 degrees, with a local time of ascending node (LTAN) of 18:00. This orbit allows the satellite to revisit a point on the planet’s surface every 167 orbits, or 11 days.
PAZ Satellite
The Paz satellite has a mass at launch of 1,341 kilograms (2,956 pounds), and a dry mass (without fuel) of 1,282 kilograms (2,826 lb). Paz is designed to operate for at least seven years, although Hisdesat is hopeful that its mission can be extended to ten years. It has a hexagonal prism shape, measuring five meters in length and 2.4 meters in diameter (16 by 7.9 feet), with a surface-mounted solar panel equipped with triple-junction gallium arsenide cells providing 850 watts of power.
The spacecraft’s imaging payload, PAZ-SAR, incorporates a 4.8-by-0.7-metre (15.7-by-2.3-foot) antenna. The x-band radar imaging payload will operate at a wavelength of 3.1 centimeters (1.2 inches), or a frequency of 9.65 gigahertz. It can operate in strip-mapping, scanning, spotlight and high-resolution spotlight modes. In high-resolution spotlight mode, the satellite can achieve sub-meter resolutions imaging 25-square-kilometer (9.65-square-mile) regions on the surface.
The launch marked the end of a long road to the launch pad for Paz, which was originally to have been launched by Russia’s ISC Kosmotras. Like TerraSAR and TanDEM, the satellite was to have flown aboard a Dnepr rocket, with the launch to have taken place from the Dombarovsky missile base near the Russian town of Yasny. Dnepr launches were stopped after 2015: the rocket was based on decommissioned R-36M missiles, whose manufacturers – the Yuzhnoye design bureau and Yuzhmash manufacturing plant – had been located in Ukraine since the fall of the Soviet Union.
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