{"id":15588,"date":"2016-04-13T00:41:37","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T16:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-returns-to-port\/"},"modified":"2016-04-13T00:41:37","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T16:41:37","slug":"spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-returns-to-port","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-returns-to-port\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket returns to port"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Riding into port aboard a floating platform before dawn, SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket booster arrived back at Cape Canaveral early Tuesday after sticking a historic landing at sea last week, kicking off a series of inspections and tests before engineers ready it for launch again.<\/p>\n

A small crowd of SpaceX employees, news photographers and space enthusiasts welcomed the 15-story rocket booster to Port Canaveral around 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) aboard a landing ship dubbed \u201cOf Course I Still Love You,\u201d a reference to giant planet-sized starships in science fiction novels by Iain Banks.<\/p>\n

The rocket returned to Earth less than nine minutes after a successful launch from Cape Canaveral on Friday with a Dragon supply ship ferrying 3.5 tons of cargo to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

A tugboat towed the rocket and its landing platform, or \u201cdrone ship,\u201d through the channel leading to a dock where SpaceX technicians will hoist the first stage booster off the ship and on to a stand on the north side of the inlet to Port Canaveral.<\/p>\n

The SpaceX recovery crew planned to weld steel shoes over the rocket\u2019s four aluminum-carbon fiber landing legs for the journey from the touchdown zone 185 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral back to Florida. Jacks and cables were also installed around the base of the rocket for added stability.<\/p>\n

Once the first stage is off the drone ship, the ground team will retract or remove the rocket\u2019s landing legs, then rotate it horizontal for transport to a nearby hangar.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9\u2019s destination is unconfirmed, but SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said Friday the rocket\u2019s first stage will likely go to launch pad 39A \u2014 a former shuttle launch facility now leased by SpaceX \u2014 for a series of engine firings to verify its flight readiness.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The objective: Fly the first stage booster again, perhaps as soon as June.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to do a series of test fires,\u201d Musk told reporters after Friday\u2019s launch. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping to do that at the Cape, rather than transport it to Texas (SpaceX\u2019s rocket test facility), and then bring it back. Our plan is to basically fire it 10 times in a row on the ground. If things look good at that point, then it\u2019s qualified for reuse and launch. We\u2019re hoping to re-launch on an orbital mission in \u2026 June.\u201d<\/p>\n

SpaceX has not identified what spacecraft will fly on the used booster, but Musk said he hopes a paying customer will agree to sign up for the mission.<\/p>\n

Officials from SES, a Luxembourg-based communications satellite operator, have repeatedly said they are interested in flying a payload on a reused Falcon 9 rocket. But their next satellite will not be ready for launch until late this year.<\/p>\n

Missions on the Falcon 9 manifest in June include a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with Taiwan\u2019s Formosat 5 Earth observation platform and a package of microsatellites aboard a Sherpa carrier developed by Spaceflight Industries.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SpaceX\u2019s next cargo delivery mission to the space station is scheduled for late June, carrying several tons of supplies and experiments, plus a critical docking adapter for future arrivals of U.S. commercial crew capsules.<\/p>\n

The Thaicom 8 communications satellite is finishing up tests at Orbital ATK\u2019s spacecraft factory in Virginia for a launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in mid-2016.<\/p>\n

Demonstrating the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage can be recovered and reused is a major leap in SpaceX\u2019s goal of slashing the cost of spaceflight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s another step towards the stars,\u201d Musk said. \u201cIn order for us to really open up access to space, we\u2019ve got to achieve full and rapid reusability, and being able to do that for the primary rocket booster is going to be a huge impact on cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9\u2019s upper stage, which goes into orbit on each launch, and the rocket\u2019s clamshell-like payload enclosure are still thrown away after every flight. Musk said SpaceX is working on retrieving the payload fairing, which costs several million dollars.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, SpaceX hopes to improve its success rate at recovering first stage boosters.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Falcon 9\u2019s first stage typically shuts down about two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, and its landing aimpoint depends on the weight of the mission\u2019s passenger and the type of orbit targeted. For Falcon 9 rockets delivering heavy satellites to high-altitude orbits \u2014 like most large telecommunications satellites \u2014 a landing at sea is required.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s floating landing targets measure 300 feet by 170 feet, and four underwater engines keep the ships in exact position. The drone ship was located about 185 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral for Friday\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

Launches into lower orbits several hundred miles up need less fuel and travel slower at stage separation, leaving enough reserve propellant to turn around and come back to land at facilities at Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg.<\/p>\n

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX\u2019s president and chief operating officer, said last month the company wants to initially offer a 30 percent discount to clients willing to sign up to launch with previously-flown Falcon 9 first stage.<\/p>\n

A commercial Falcon 9 launch sells for about $61 million, according to SpaceX\u2019s website, and a 30 percent reduction is equivalent to about $43 million.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The latest upgrade to the Falcon 9 rocket, which burns super-chilled densified liquid propellant and operates at a higher throttle setting, gives the launcher the ability to lift heavier satellites into orbit. The performance boost also allows more missions to retain enough leftover fuel to come back and land.<\/p>\n

Cold gas nitrogen thrusters re-orient the Falcon 9 booster after staging, and three of the first stage\u2019s nine Merlin engines re-ignite as the booster coasts up to 100 miles above Earth to set up for landing. The three engines fire again a few minutes later for a \u201cre-entry\u201d burn, followed by a last-minute burn of the rocket\u2019s center engine to slow down for final descent.<\/p>\n

The inaugural flight of the Falcon 9\u2019s current configuration in December put 11 Orbcomm communications satellites into low Earth orbit, and the first stage returned to Cape Canaveral for a dramatic nighttime touchdown a few miles from where it took off.<\/p>\n

SpaceX does not plan to re-launch that vehicle, which Musk said will go on display outside the company\u2019s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.<\/p>\n

The landing attempts at sea had a lesser record before Friday\u2019s touchdown.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four previous landing tries aboard SpaceX\u2019s fleet of drone ships were unsuccessful, with the rockets hitting the barge too hard or tipping over after touchdown.<\/p>\n

SpaceX engineers tweaked the rocket\u2019s descent system in the wake of the landing failures, adding extra fluid to the booster\u2019s hydraulically-actuated grid fins for better descent steering and correcting an engine throttle valve glitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will still take us a few years to make that smooth and make it efficient, but I think it\u2019s proven that it can work,\u201d Musk said. \u201cThere probably will be some failure in the future, but we\u2019ll iron those out and get to the point where it\u2019s routine to bring it back, and where the only changes to the rocket are to maybe hose it down and clean it, give it a wash, and add the propellant and fly again.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

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

  Photo credit: Stephen Clark\/Spaceflight Now Riding into port aboard a floating platform before dawn, SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket booster arrived back at Cape Canaveral early Tuesday after sticking a historic landing at sea last week, kicking off a series of inspections and tests before engineers ready it for launch again. A small crowd of […]<\/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":[1045,479,1880,311,316,3426],"class_list":["post-15588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-elon-musk","tag-falcon-9","tag-port-canaveral","tag-reusability","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15588"}],"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=15588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}