{"id":12787,"date":"2019-12-09T01:21:20","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T17:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/falcon-9-performs-extended-mission-in-test-for-future-u-s-military-launches\/"},"modified":"2019-12-09T01:21:20","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T17:21:20","slug":"falcon-9-performs-extended-mission-in-test-for-future-u-s-military-launches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/falcon-9-performs-extended-mission-in-test-for-future-u-s-military-launches\/","title":{"rendered":"Falcon 9 performs extended mission in test for future U.S. military launches"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An aft-facing camera on the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s second stage captured this view of the Dragon spacecraft with its solar panels extended shortly after arriving in orbit Thursday. The upper stage continued its mission and performed a long-duration coast experiment after releasing the Dragon cargo ship. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An extended mission for the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s second stage after launch Thursday with a space station cargo ship helped demonstrate SpaceX\u2019s ability to perform long-duration flight sequences to inject U.S. military payloads directly into high-altitude geosynchronous orbit.<\/p>\n

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer, characterized the test as a \u201cbig success\u201d Friday in a meeting with reporters at the company\u2019s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was our third long coast (demonstration),\u201d Shotwell said. \u201cThey\u2019re still looking at the data, but I got a thumbs up this morning that it looked like it went really well.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday\u2019s launch from Cape Canaveral, the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s second stage delivered the mission\u2019s Dragon cargo capsule payload to low Earth orbit less than 10 minutes after liftoff. Instead of performing a short deorbit burn soon after releasing the Dragon supply ship in orbit \u2014 as the Falcon 9 upper stage typically does \u2014 the rocket continued coasting around Earth for several orbits before reigniting its Merlin for a longer disposal firing that lasted 20.1 seconds, according to Shotwell.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a full duration burn,\u201d she said Friday.<\/p>\n

An airspace warning notice, or NOTAM, associated with Thursday\u2019s Falcon 9 launch indicated the rocket\u2019s second stage would deorbit over the far southern Indian Ocean more than five hours after liftoff, following a plane change maneuver into a higher-inclination orbit. Most of the rocket body was expected to burn up during re-entry.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has performed long-duration coast demonstrations before, most recently after a Falcon Heavy flight in June. On that mission, designated STP-2, the Falcon Heavy\u2019s second stage conducted four upper stage engine burns over three-and-a-half hours to deploy two dozen satellites into three different orbits around Earth.<\/p>\n

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SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad Thursday. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Engineers wanted to show on Thursday\u2019s mission that the Falcon 9 upper stage could remain properly thermally balanced during lengthy flights required to place large U.S. Air Force or National Reconnaissance Office payloads into high-energy orbits. The Falcon 9\u2019s second stage consumes super-chilled kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen propellants.<\/p>\n

A SpaceX official said Friday that engineers added baffles to the second stage tanks to help prevent liquid propellant from pooling on the tank walls. The official said SpaceX\u2019s earlier long-duration coast demonstrations, such as the STP-2 mission on the Falcon Heavy, proved the upper stage could perform maneuvers over several hours, but that engineers did not quite see the results they desired.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy share the same upper stage design.<\/p>\n

Long-duration missions often lasting five-to-six hours are required to place satellites on trajectories high above Earth, such as circular geosynchronous orbits, where spacecraft linger over the same geographic region at an altitude of more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.<\/p>\n

Some of the U.S. government\u2019s top secret spy satellites require direct rides to geosynchronous orbits. The Delta 4-Heavy rocket built and flown by United Launch Alliance often delivers those clandestine payloads to space, but ULA is retiring the Delta 4-Heavy. ULA\u2019s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket and SpaceX\u2019s launch vehicles are less expensive than the Delta 4-Heavy, which has launched 11 times since 2004.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Air Force also occasionally flies satellite missions that require multi-hour launch profiles.<\/p>\n

In contrast, SpaceX\u2019s Dragon missions to the International Space Station reach their targeted deployment orbits in less than 10 minutes. A commercial communications satellite is typically released from the Falcon 9 launcher around a half-hour after liftoff.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An aft-facing camera on the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s second stage captured this view of the Dragon spacecraft with its solar panels extended shortly after arriving in orbit Thursday. The upper stage continued its mission and performed a long-duration coast experiment after releasing the Dragon cargo ship. Credit: SpaceX An extended mission for the Falcon 9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[291,1395,479,2024,25,257,316,2402],"class_list":["post-12787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-commercial-space","tag-dragon","tag-falcon-9","tag-gwynne-shotwell","tag-launch","tag-military-space","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-crs-19"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}