[Centraal] SpaceX #10 - Starlink

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Op vrijdag 14 februari 2020 17:05 schreef xzaz het volgende:
Mooie tijd

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SpaceX twitterde op zaterdag 15-02-2020 om 23:41:12 Standing down from tomorrow’s Starlink launch; team is taking a closer look at a second stage valve component. Now targeting Monday, February 17. reageer retweet

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ChrisG_NSF twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 14:35:48 #Falcon9 is counting down for launch at 10:05:55 EST (15:05:55 UTC). Latest weather forecast indicates at 90%+ chance of good ground weather and a “moderate” risk for Upper Level Wind sheer. #SpaceX #StarlinkARTICLE: https://t.co/We6wuZJD5C reageer retweet

Starlink Mission

Watch SpaceX launch 60 Starlink Satellites from only 4KM away!

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ChrisG_NSF twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 15:32:17 Fueling has begun! #SpaceX #Starlink #Falcon9 reageer retweet

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Op maandag 17 februari 2020 16:15 schreef InTrePidIvity het volgende:
Dat leek niet helemaal goed te gaan met de landing-burn?

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ChrisG_NSF twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 16:25:14 And apparently the booster is intact.... https://t.co/HfAOg4DmQb reageer retweet

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SpaceXFleet twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 16:29:55 A soft water landing! Recovering a booster that far offshore may be impossible. The same happened during the GovSat-1 mission and the booster had to be destroyed at sea. https://t.co/u9WevMWf7G reageer retweet

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SpaceXFleet twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 16:35:15 By the way.... double fairing half catch coming up in about 20 minutes! reageer retweet

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DJSnM twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 16:33:17 It looks to me like the initial white cloud on the left had the characteristic pulsing seen when the engines are operating, but it's no on target. So engines relit, but booster didn't choose to divert to barge, possibly because it didn't have thrust to do so. https://t.co/XPto4NQOAT reageer retweet

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DJSnM twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 16:34:06 So I'm guessing one of the 3 engines failed to light and it wasn't able to slow down in time. reageer retweet

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DJSnM twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 16:42:52 To be clear, this is all speculation, I have no insider information and I only play a rocket scientist on the internet.Another option, is the engine worked fine but the navigation gear failed to put the booster on the barge. It's possible this was a soft landing next to barge. reageer retweet

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SpaceXFleet twitterde op maandag 17-02-2020 om 18:51:46 Currently tracking two tugboats, 'Bobbie Ann' and 'Challenger'. Both ships deployed from Morehead City within 30 minutes of the landing failure and are on a direct trajectory towards OCISLY and B1056.Possibly a coincidence, but worthy of further investigation... https://t.co/FUaeb4QWtD reageer retweet

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SpaceXFleet twitterde op dinsdag 18-02-2020 om 08:35:23 Ms. Tree, Ms. Chief and GO Quest are slowly moving north, presumably following the drifting booster.Tug Hawk and OCISLY are well underway. They are completely clear of the area and en-route to Port Canaveral. https://t.co/QhZOqFvBYo reageer retweet

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SpaceAdventures twitterde op dinsdag 18-02-2020 om 15:04:18 Space Adventures announces agreement with @SpaceX to launch private citizens on Dragon spacecraft https://t.co/yjAsZULZ9s https://t.co/J6d3wEWomb reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 18 februari 2020 20:13 schreef Digi2 het volgende:

[..]

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thejackbeyer twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 17:13:46 Another grey day here in Boca Chica as progress continues on Starship SN1. Two more large cranes have arrived so far this morning plus an Argon gas delivery. Also saw what was maybe a test run for the nosecone tip? @NASASpaceflight https://t.co/wTRHtHpFew reageer retweet

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GregScott_photo twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 20:21:51 Tug Hawk, Tug Eagle & an empty OCISLY just pulled into port this afternoon with an empty deck. Sad sight to see & the first time in a long time for @OCISLY to come in empty handed. #SpaceX #Starlink #NASA #Space #SpaceXFleet https://t.co/KPSWu744yf reageer retweet

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SpaceXFleet twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 20:39:35 Coming up in the next two hours!The arrival of GO Quest, Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief at Port Canaveral. We know the fairing halves were not caught but they may have been able to recover them from the water.We may also get to see some hints about what became of the booster. reageer retweet

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SpaceXFleet twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 21:32:33 Here they come! The fairing catchers are under 45 minutes from Port Canaveral. GO Quest is about 60 minutes away. https://t.co/Qe8tk89NjF reageer retweet

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julia_bergeron twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 22:06:57 Go Ms. Chief and GO Ms. Tree are majestic to watch come into port.I can't even express how beautiful this was to see. #SpaceXFleet https://t.co/91yGoblp4K reageer retweet

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julia_bergeron twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 22:13:17 That is a fairing half on GO Ms. Chief and it is kinda broken ? But welcome home happy crew! #SpaceXFleet https://t.co/78G1i9OoUs https://t.co/kX86AFbSmW reageer retweet

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julia_bergeron twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 22:15:31 GO Ms. Tree did not get much better of a catch. Broken fairing half for them as well. Welcome home happy crew! #SpaceXFleet https://t.co/ZVtYgYBgX8 reageer retweet

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julia_bergeron twitterde op donderdag 20-02-2020 om 22:23:23 This appears to have been a rough mission all around. Fairing hauls from GO Ms. Chief and GO Ms. Tree respectively. #SpaceXFleet #Starlink https://t.co/EBs5XCxZ4O reageer retweet

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SpaceX sets date for first Florida launch of its kind in more than half a century

Argentinian space agency CONAE says that both its SAOCOM 1B satellite and SpaceX are on track for a type of launch that the United States’ East Coast hasn’t supported in more than half a century.

CONAE has revealed that SpaceX aims to launch the ~2800 kg (6200 lb) radar Earth observation satellite into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket as early as March 30th, 2020 – late next month. With such a light payload, the Falcon 9 booster – presumably reused – will be able to perform a Return to Launch Site (RTLS) recovery, touching down at one of SpaceX’s two Landing Zone (LZ) pads located at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS). While Landing Zone rocket recoveries have become increasingly rare for SpaceX, that’s not actually why the SAOCOM 1B mission is so unique.

Instead, it’s exceptional because it will be the United States’ first East Coast polar launch in nearly six decades. The mission’s “polar” launch profile refers to the fact that the Argentinian radar satellite will ultimately orbit Earth’s poles, effectively perpendicular to more common equatorial orbits. If successful and repeatable, the mission could ultimately spark a new era for CCAFS and Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and raises big questions about the future of California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) — or at least SpaceX’s presence there.

Previously discussed on Teslarati late last year, the story behind why Cape Canaveral stopped polar launches is quite a weird one. A 2008 article in the Naval History Magazine sums up the events nicely.

“In what somewhat inaccurately became known as “the herd shot around the world,” some..falling rocket debris apparently splattered on a Cuban farm and killed a cow. “This is a Yankee provocation,” accused Revolucion, an official Cuban publication, insisting that the rocket was deliberately exploded over the country. Government radio stations cited the incident as further proof that the United States was trying to destroy the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro. One cow was even paraded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Havana wearing a placard reading “Eisenhower, you murdered one of my sisters.”

Castro filed a complaint at the United Nations, and Washington sheepishly conceded the possibility that “fragments from the rocket booster” could have landed in Cuba. CIA Director George Tenet later quipped somewhat tastelessly that it was “the first, and last, time that a satellite had been used in the production of ground beef.” Further launches overflying Cuba were postponed, and improvements were made to the Cape Canaveral range-safety system. In any case, it was a dejected NRL group that returned to Washington.”

That November 1960 launch thus shut down East Coast polar launches to avoid overflying Cuba and raising the country’s ire near the height of Cold War tensions. It’s believed that the Cape actually launched two more semi-polar missions in the mid-1960s, some five years later, but the fact remains that SpaceX’s prospective March 30th, 2020 launch will mark the United States’ first East Coast launch in more than half a century.



Back in October 2019, while SpaceX had effectively confirmed that it would try to move SAOCOM 1B’s launch from California to Cape Canaveral, CCAFS hadn’t fully approved the change or literally reopened the East Coast’s polar launch corridor. Now, given that CONAE has officially announced a specific launch date (March 30th), it seems safe to say that CCAFS has fully given SpaceX the go-ahead for the launch.

While Falcon 9’s upper stage will still technically overfly Cuba over the course of the launch, the combination of a rare ‘dogleg’ maneuver shortly after launch and the fact that said upper stage will be far above the Earth’s surface have effectively mitigated any technical or legal showstoppers. Around eight minutes after liftoff, the mission’s Falcon 9 booster will also attempt to return to Florida and land at SpaceX’s LZ-1 or 2 landing pad. SpaceX’s October 2018 Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) SAOCOM 1A launch coincidentally marked the first-ever use of Landing Zone-4 (LZ-4), a dedicated landing pad built for SpaceX’s West Coast launch site.

If successful, a polar Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral also raises the question: if SpaceX can potentially perform all conceivable launch profiles from its two Florida pads, why go the effort and expense of maintaining a third pad – entirely dedicated to polar launches – in California? Aside from one lone launch six months later, SpaceX’s last California launch occurred in January 2019 and the next one is expected no earlier than November 2020 – and could very well never happen at all. The only plausible reasons to continue launching from SpaceX’s Vandenberg pad would be if Florida’s polar capabilities were somehow limited or if conservative, bureaucratic customers like NASA and the US military were dead-set on their polar missions only launching from semi-arbitrarily selected launch pads.

Without any modifications whatsoever, Falcon Heavy could also immediately begin performing polar launches from Cape Canaveral, whereas SpaceX would likely need tens of millions of dollars and 6-12 months to modify its California pad to support the massive rocket. Perhaps keeping that pad quietly mothballed and flying launch staff in from Florida and Texas for occasional missions is a much smaller ordeal than it seems. Still, the allure (and efficiency) of a one-stop-launch-shop at Cape Canaveral is almost certainly hard to ignore for a company like SpaceX.

For the SAOCOM 1B launch, the next milestone will be the Argentinian satellite’s arrival at SpaceX’s Florida payload processing facilities, likely to occur within the next week. Already, March is lining up to be an exceptionally busy month for SpaceX, with two separate Falcon 9 launches currently scheduled on March 2nd and March 4th and another Starlink mission likely later in the month. With a little luck, SpaceX might be able to end Q1 2020 with its first four-launch month ever.

https://www.teslarati.com(...)unch-half-a-century/

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TGMetsFan98 twitterde op donderdag 27-02-2020 om 15:09:03 Falcon 9 and Heavy with 5.2 meter payload fairings? A mobile service tower at LC-39A?SpaceX's NSSL Phase 2 proposal gets some renders in this FAA Environmental Assessment: https://t.co/x5P5dhqnyf https://t.co/Si3f4ihRur reageer retweet

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Op donderdag 27 februari 2020 18:25 schreef Jonmen het volgende:
Heb jij heel die pdf gelezen?

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Op zaterdag 29 februari 2020 10:45 schreef Tourniquet het volgende:
RIP SN1

SpaceX Latest Starship Implodes! Full Time laspe

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SpaceX twitterde op zondag 01-03-2020 om 17:20:55 Falcon 9 static fire test complete — targeting March 6 launch from Pad 40 in Florida for Dragon’s twentieth resupply mission to the @Space_Station, the final flight of the first version of Dragon reageer retweet

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SpaceX twitterde op zondag 01-03-2020 om 17:20:55 The Dragon spacecraft supporting this mission previously flew in support of our tenth and sixteenth commercial resupply missions – this will be the third Dragon to fly on three missions https://t.co/AvqACtjoAo reageer retweet

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SpaceX twitterde op zondag 01-03-2020 om 17:20:56 The Falcon 9 booster supporting this mission previously flew in support of our most recent launch to the @space_station, CRS-19 https://t.co/BaVqaZmWWx reageer retweet

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Falcon Heavy to launch NASA Psyche asteroid mission



WASHINGTON — NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX Feb. 28 for the launch of a mission to a large metallic asteroid on the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket.

NASA said that it will use a Falcon Heavy to launch its Psyche mission in July 2022 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The contract is valued at $117 million, which includes the launch itself and other mission-related costs.

Psyche is one of two missions NASA selected in January 2017 for its Discovery program of relatively low-cost planetary science missions. Psyche will use a Mars flyby in 2023 to arrive at its destination, an asteroid also called Psyche, in January 2026. The spacecraft will go into orbit around the asteroid, one of the largest in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The asteroid is primarily made of iron and nickel, and could be the remnant of a core of a protoplanet that attempted to form there before high-speed collisions with other planetesimals broke it apart. Planetary scientists believe that studies of the asteroid Psyche could help them better understand the formation of the solar system.

The Psyche mission is led by Arizona State University, with Maxar the prime contractor for the spacecraft. The launch will also carry two smallsat secondary payloads: Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE), which will study the Martian atmosphere, and Janus, which will study binary asteroids.

The other mission selected for the Discovery program in 2017, Lucy, will visit Trojan asteroids in the same orbit around the sun as Jupiter. NASA awarded a launch contract to United Launch Alliance in January 2019 for the launch of that mission on an Atlas 5 in October 2021.

SpaceX subsequently filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office over that award, arguing that it could have launched the mission for significantly less than the $148.3 million value of the ULA contract. ULA argued that it provided schedule assurance needed for a mission that must launch in a 20-day window. SpaceX dropped the protest in April 2019, nearly two months after it was filed.

Since them, though, SpaceX has enjoyed success winning NASA launch contracts. Within a week of dropping the GAO protest, SpaceX won a contract for the launch of the Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft on a Falcon 9. That mission, launching in June 2021, will send a spacecraft to the near Earth asteroid Didymos, deliberately colliding with a small moon orbiting that asteroid to test deflection techniques for planetary defense.

In July 2019, NASA won a contract for the launch of NASA’s Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) astrophysics mission, scheduled for launch on a Falcon 9 in April 2021. That spacecraft was baselined for launch on a much smaller Pegasus rocket from Northrop Grumman, but SpaceX won the contract at a price lower than previous Pegasus missions.

NASA awarded SpaceX a contract Feb. 4 for the launch of its Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Earth science mission on a Falcon 9 in December 2022. NASA awarded that contract despite, less than a week later, stating in its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal it would seek to cancel the mission. PACE had been proposed for cancellation in the previous three years’ budget requests, and each time Congress rejected the cancellation and funded the mission.

Psyche is NASA’s first mission to use SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket as the primary customer, although some NASA payloads flew on the Falcon Heavy STP-2 mission for the Defense Department’s Space Test Program in June 2019. SpaceX’s current manifest for the heavy-lift rocket includes two classified missions for the U.S. Air Force in late 2020 and early 2021 and a ViaSat-3 broadband communications satellite for Viasat in mid-2021.

https://spacenews.com/fal(...)he-asteroid-mission/