{"id":13973,"date":"2018-02-22T22:21:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/recycled-spacex-rocket-boosts-paz-radar-satellite-first-starlink-testbeds-into-orbit\/"},"modified":"2018-02-22T22:21:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T14:21:41","slug":"recycled-spacex-rocket-boosts-paz-radar-satellite-first-starlink-testbeds-into-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/recycled-spacex-rocket-boosts-paz-radar-satellite-first-starlink-testbeds-into-orbit\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycled SpaceX rocket boosts Paz radar satellite, first Starlink testbeds into orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Thursday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with three satellites. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Launching with a Spanish radar observation craft and the first two experimental satellites for SpaceX\u2019s planned global broadband network, a Falcon 9 rocket fired away from California\u2019s Central Coast shortly before sunrise Thursday after several days of delays.<\/p>\n

The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 launcher climbed into a clear sky from Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base, riding a column of orange exhaust from nine kerosene-burning Merlin main engines.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 6:17 a.m. PST (9:17 a.m. EST; 1417 GMT) after a 70-minute automated countdown sequence. The first stage\u2019s Merlin engines vectored their thrust to pitch the rocket south-southwest from Vandenberg, and the booster shut down and jettisoned around two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff to fall into the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

A few seconds later, a second stage engine ignited to finish the job of placing the Paz Earth-observing satellite and SpaceX\u2019s first two broadband test probes into orbit.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9\u2019s nose cone separated just prior to the flight\u2019s three-minute point, and the second stage engine burned until around T+plus 9 minutes, setting up for deployment of Paz and the twin SpaceX-developed broadband satellites, nicknamed Tintin A and Tintin B in apparent reference to the main character in the comic series \u201cThe Adventures of Tintin.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX confirmed the on-target release of Paz, the mission\u2019s primary payload, around 11 minutes after liftoff. The company ended its live webcast before announcing deployment of the two broadband testbeds, which are also known as Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b.<\/p>\n

The launch company did not plan to recover the first stage on Thursday\u2019s flight. It was the second launch for a booster that previously lofted the Taiwanese Formosat 5 Earth observation mission toward orbit from California in August.<\/p>\n

But SpaceX attempted to catch at least one of the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s fairing structures with a boat positioned in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.<\/p>\n

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SpaceX\u2019s fairing recovery boat, named Mr. Steven. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The shroud protects the rocket\u2019s sensitive payloads from weather before liftoff, and it shields the satellites from the aerodynamic stress during the Falcon 9\u2019s climb through the lower atmosphere. After soaring into space, the fairing jettisons from the top of the rocket in two pieces that open up like a clamshell and fall away behind the Falcon 9 upper stage.<\/p>\n

Engineers added cold gas control thrusters and parachutes to previous fairings in a bid to get one of the structures back intact, but SpaceX has not yet perfected the concept, and officials suggested previous experiments yielded mixed results.<\/p>\n

A fast-moving vessel set sail from the Port of Los Angeles this week for a destination under the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s flight track. Photos of the boat, named Mr. Steven, show it sporting a net suspended between four metal posts to snare the Falcon 9\u2019s payload fairing.<\/p>\n

The fairing \u201cfalls back from space at about eight times the speed of sound,\u201d SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk wrote on Instagram shortly before Thursday\u2019s launch. \u201cIt has onboard thrusters and a guidance system to bring it through the atmosphere intact, then releases a parafoil and our ship, named Mr. Steven, with basically a giant catcher\u2019s mitt welded on, tries to catch it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk wrote on Twitter that the fairing panel landed a few hundred meters from the retrieval vessel. He shared in an image on social media that showed half of the fairing intact floating in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

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One half of the Falcon 9\u2019s payload fairing is pictured floating in the Pacific Ocean after a recovery attempt Thursday. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cShould be able catch it with slightly bigger chutes to slow down descent,\u201d he wrote, later adding that the next fairing recovery try could come in about one month, likely on the next Falcon 9 launch from California targeted for March 29.<\/p>\n

Musk said Feb. 6 that the company was readying for the debut of an upgraded fairing designed for easier recovery and reuse. SpaceX delayed the launch from last weekend to Wednesday to complete checks on the upgraded shroud flying with Paz.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s launch team aborted a countdown Wednesday due to unfavorable upper level winds.<\/p>\n

The successful recovery and reuse of a Falcon 9 payload fairing would be a first in the rocket industry. If SpaceX can make the concept work, it could shave millions from the cost of a Falcon 9 launch, which currently sells for around $62 million.<\/p>\n

Musk said last year the fairing costs around $5 million to produce for each launch.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s reuse of first stage boosters already cuts the cost of many Falcon 9 launches, eliminating manufacturing expenses and bottlenecks. SpaceX says Falcon 9 customers will eventually see steep price reductions, but payload owners so far have been lured to reused boosters primarily by schedule shortcuts enabled by the practice, not price cuts.<\/p>\n

The 3,200-pound (1,450-kilogram) Paz satellite launched Thursday will capture high-resolution views of cities, landscapes and oceans with an X-band radar instrument.<\/p>\n

Paz measures more than 16 feet (5 meters) long and 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter. It is the largest satellite ever assembled in Spain, according to Alfonso Mart\u00ednez, Paz project manager at the spacecraft\u2019s prime contractor, Airbus Defense and Space, which constructed Paz in Madrid.<\/p>\n

Paz is owned by Hisdesat, which oversees Spain\u2019s governmental satellite programs.<\/p>\n

The $200 million (160 million euro) mission, primarily funded by the Spanish government, will produce radar imagery for the Spanish military and its allies, plus commercial clients.<\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s concept of the Paz satellite in orbit. Credit: Airbus Defense and Space \/ Hisdesat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very flexible mission,\u201d said Miguel Angel Garc\u00eda Primo, Hisdesat\u2019s chief operating officer, in an interview this week. \u201cIt\u2019s useful for a lot of applications, environmental, also for big infrastructure tracking and planning, maritime surveillance and government applications like monitoring and surveillance for any specific items that you\u2019d like to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket aimed to release the Paz satellite into a 319-mile-high (514-kilometer) polar orbit tilted around 97.4 degrees to the equator. SpaceX officials said the Falcon 9\u2019s upper stage achieved an on-target orbit.<\/p>\n

Paz will share the orbit with two German radar satellites \u2014 TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X \u2014 launched in 2007 and 2010. Airbus and Hisdesat will jointly manage the commercial sales and marketing of radar data from the radar satellite constellation, and the European Commission will incorporate Paz into its fleet of Copernicus Earth-observing missions.<\/p>\n

The trio of radar imaging spacecraft will together see almost any part of Earth\u2019s surface in less than three days. On average, the satellites will record an image of the same region within 24 hours, according to DLR, the German space agency.<\/p>\n

Composed of nearly 400 individual transmitters, the Paz radar will beam signals down toward Earth and measure waves bounced off the planet\u2019s surface, revealing fine textures and terrain details that can be translated into an image. The benefit of a radar observation satellite is the ability to see Earth\u2019s surface under any weather conditions, day and night, while optical imagers are hampered by clouds and darkness.<\/p>\n

The radar will operate in several modes, with a high-resolution \u201cspotlight\u201d mode that can see objects on Earth\u2019s surface as small as 10 inches, or 25 centimeters \u2014 a capability Garc\u00eda Primo said will differentiate Paz from other radar satellites not designed exclusively for military users.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have defined a very high-resolution radar mode that would be more government-oriented, but we have also have a medium-resolution and low-resolution (mode) with very wide coverage that could be for maritime surveillance and monitoring, or could be for environmental missions like oil spill detection, things like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The radar imagery \u201cwill be available to any customer,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will have some data policy from the Spanish government that anyone who fulfills that regulation will have access to that kind of high-resolution image. There will be some limitation according to the law, but in principle it\u2019s open to any good customers that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Paz inside the SpaceX satellite processing facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Credit: Hisdesat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paz established contact with a ground control center in southern Germany shortly after arriving in orbit Thursday, according to Airbus. Control of the satellite will be handed over to a facility near Madrid operated by INTA \u2014 the Spanish space agency \u2014 and Hisdesat in about five days.<\/p>\n

Testing of the Paz satellite will be completed in about three months, Airbus said.<\/p>\n

In addition to the radar, Paz carries a receiver to track global maritime traffic. Coupled with the radar imagery, the ship tracker will allow Paz customers to identify vessels at sea.<\/p>\n

The satellite also hosts \u201can instrument that will try to predict heavy precipitation through the radio occultation of the GPS signals through the atmosphere,\u201d Garc\u00eda Primo said. \u201cWe will try to forecast in order to prevent natural disasters, especially disasters specific to very high precipitation \u2014 flooding and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paz was originally assigned to launch on a Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr rocket \u2014 a converted Soviet-era ballistic missile \u2014 but political tensions between the two nations involved in the project has grounded the booster, once a popular choice for small satellite launches.<\/p>\n

Engineers completed assembly and testing of Paz in late 2014 to await a Dnepr launch opportunity. Hisdesat switched the launch of Paz to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in early 2017.<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s launch also marked a turning point for SpaceX\u2019s broadband Internet project, a project described by company founder Elon Musk in 2015 as a revenue source for the company\u2019s broad ambitions to explore the solar system.<\/p>\n

Until Thursday, SpaceX had said little publicly about the broadband network, dubbed Starlink, other than trickles of information disclosed in regulatory filings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf successful, (the) Starlink constellation will serve least served,\u201d Musk wrote on Twitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cTintin A & B will attempt to beam \u2018hello world\u2019 in about 22 hours when they pass near LA,\u201d Musk tweeted.<\/p>\n

SpaceX planned to place the two Starlink prototypes, developed by the company\u2019s division in Redmond, Washington, into the same 317-mile-high orbit as Paz.<\/p>\n

The two test satellites will boost themselves into a higher orbit roughly 700 miles (1,125 kilometers) in altitude once ground controllers finish an initial post-launch checkout of the spacecraft, Patricia Cooper, SpaceX\u2019s vice president of satellite government affairs, wrote in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission dated Feb. 1.<\/p>\n

In a previous FCC filing, SpaceX said Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b are designed for 20-month missions.<\/p>\n

Each satellite measures about the size of a mini-refrigerator and carries computer, power, command and control, propulsion and GPS navigation equipment typical for small spacecraft. A Ku-band broadband phased array antenna and an inter-satellite optical communications link is also included on each spacecraft, according to SpaceX.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are experimental engineering verification vehicles that will enable the company to assess the satellite bus and related subsystems, as well as the space-based and ground-based phased array technologies,\u201d SpaceX officials wrote in a submission to the FCC.<\/p>\n

The first images of the Starlink testbeds were released during SpaceX\u2019s launch webcast, showing the satellites attached to a cylindrical carrier structure. After the launch, Musk tweeted a video showing the satellites deploying from the carrier module.<\/p>\n