{"id":16244,"date":"2015-06-26T21:20:55","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T13:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/falcon-9-rocket-passes-last-major-preflight-test\/"},"modified":"2015-06-26T21:20:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T13:20:55","slug":"falcon-9-rocket-passes-last-major-preflight-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/falcon-9-rocket-passes-last-major-preflight-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Falcon 9 rocket passes last major preflight test"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"SpaceX's
SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ground crews plan to load the final cargo into SpaceX\u2019s Dragon supply ship Saturday after the capsule\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket booster briefly fired up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for a flight readiness check.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket ignited its nine Merlin 1D first stage engines at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) Friday as hold-down clamps kept the the 208-foot-tall booster firmly on the ground at Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad.<\/p>\n

The engines throttled up to full power, then shut down a few seconds later. The prelaunch engine firing \u2014 called a static fire by SpaceX \u2014 is the company\u2019s last major test before clearing the rocket for final countdown preparations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI heard it was very successful \u2014 full-duration \u2014 and that clears the next coming days up to launch on Sunday morning,\u201d said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX\u2019s vice president of mission assurance and launch chief engineer.<\/p>\n

Fresh food and time-sensitive experiments will go into the capsule Saturday.<\/p>\n

Liftoff is timed for Sunday at 10:21:12 a.m. EDT (1421:12 GMT), approximately the moment the Earth\u2019s rotation carries Cape Canaveral into the path of the International Space Station\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a one-second launch window to catch the ISS in its plane and make sure that we are in the right orbit under it,\u201d Koenigsmann said.<\/p>\n

After flying northeast from Florida\u2019s Space Coast, the Falcon 9\u2019s second stage will deploy the logistics-laden Dragon spacecraft into orbit about 10 minutes later, beginning a two-day pursuit of the space station.<\/p>\n

More than 4,000 pounds of provisions, experiments and spare parts will be packed inside the Dragon spacecraft for Sunday\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

The materials include nearly 1.5 tons of care packages, food and provisions for the space station crew, a ton of spare parts and other items to maintain the orbiting research lab, and 1,166 pounds of hardware for science experiments.<\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka will monitor the Dragon capsule\u2019s approach Tuesday and extend the space station\u2019s 58-foot robot arm to grab the spacecraft as it floats 30 feet beneath the complex. The arm will maneuver the Dragon to a berthing port on the space station\u2019s Harmony module, where the crew will open hatches and begin unloading the supplies inside.<\/p>\n

The mission is the first cargo flight to the space station since a Russian Progress resupply and refueling freighter spun out of control minutes after liftoff in April. Russian ground controllers were unable to stabilize the unmanned supply ship, which re-entered the atmosphere in May, destroying its contents.<\/p>\n

Mike Suffredini, NASA\u2019s space station program manager, said technicians added extra food and clothes to the cargo complement for Sunday\u2019s mission, which is called SpaceX-7, or CRS-7.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with that (Progress) loss, we have very good logistics on-board for the entire crew,\u201d Suffredini said Friday. \u201cWe\u2019re good until the October timeframe if no other vehicles show up, and with SpaceX-7, we get ourselves pretty much to the end of the year with most of the supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a remarkable streak of successful launches \u2014 with just one launch failure from 1998 to 2014 \u2014 two resupply flights to the complex went down in six months. An Antares rocket crashed moments after liftoff from Virginia on the \u201cOrb-3\u201d mission in October, followed by the Progress mishap in April.<\/p>\n

According to Suffredini, space station officials kept a reserve of food, spare parts and other crucial items aboard the complex to keep operations going in case of a launch failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see why we do that,\u201d Suffredini said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had really no impact to research at all given both the Orb-3 anomaly and this recent Progress anomaly\u2026 We expect occasionally that things won\u2019t go quite right. In general, that can happen, so we try to protect ourselves for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cargo delivery will do more than restock the space station with essentials.<\/p>\n

A new docking adapter to receive future commercial crew spaceships in development by SpaceX and Boeing is inside the Dragon spacecraft\u2019s unpressurized trunk.<\/p>\n

\"NASA
NASA and Microsoft engineers test the HoloLens on a zero-gravity research flight. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two virtual reality headsets developed by Microsoft and NASA will go up to help the space station crew work on experiments and repair broken parts. The devices use Microsoft\u2019s HoloLens holographic technology, allowing experts on the ground to see what an astronaut sees and draw annotations to help crew members through a task, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

Part of a joint project between Microsoft and NASA named Sidekick, the space-rated HoloLens can also display animated holographic illustrations over objects to give astronauts instructions.<\/p>\n

NASA says the test will help prepare for future deep space expeditions, where astronauts will need to be more independent of help from Earth.<\/p>\n

Also aboard Dragon: Experiments to study combustion fuels in microgravity, observe meteors streaking through Earth\u2019s atmosphere, monitor plant growth in special habitats on the space station, and track the human body\u2019s response to spaceflight.<\/p>\n

The Dragon spacecraft also carries small CubeSats to be deployed from the space station\u2019s Japanese laboratory module.<\/p>\n

The capsule is scheduled to leave the space station Aug. 5 for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean with 1,400 pounds of research specimens and hardware requiring analysis and repairs.<\/p>\n

The launch will kick off SpaceX\u2019s seventh operational cargo delivery to the outpost since October 2012. Headquartered in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX has a contract worth approximately $2 billion for 15 resupply missions to the space station.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the seventh flight,\u201d Koenigsmann told reporters Friday. \u201cDragon has been super reliable and so has Falcon 9. The primary mission on this one is obviously getting Dragon and its payload up into orbit, and then phase it into an orbit where it can dock with the space station.\u201d<\/p>\n

But outsiders \u2014 and many industry insiders \u2014 will pay much attention to the descent of the Falcon 9 booster stage to a targeted landing on a barge positioned in the Atlantic Ocean downrange from Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

\"Diagram
Diagram of the flyback sequence for the Falcon 9\u2019s first stage. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sunday\u2019s launch will be the third time SpaceX has tried to recover an intact first stage on the landing vessel. Previous attempts were thwarted when the rocket\u2019s steering fins ran out of hydraulic fluid, and when an engine valve got stuck in the wrong position.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look at the data, you evaluate this, and then you make corrections,\u201d Koenigsmann said. \u201cThat\u2019s ultimately how you succeed, in my opinion, and make a safe landing in the end. The fact that we had two (landing attempts) so far gives me confidence that we had two problems that we solved.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil we\u2019ve solved this problem end-to-end, there\u2019s always going to be some uncertainty about the outcome, but I feel a little bit better (this time),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

SpaceX says the rocket flyback demos will help make the Falcon 9 rocket partially reusable, an objective long sought by the company since its founding by high-tech mogul Elon Musk in 2002.<\/p>\n

If the Falcon 9 first stage nails the landing, the SpaceX recovery team will bring the 14-story booster back to port in Jacksonville, Florida. It would eventually be trucked to SpaceX\u2019s rocket development site in Central Texas for thorough inspections and tests before the company considers a second launch of the vehicle, Koenigsmann said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vehicle is designed to fly multiple times \u2014 to be reusable \u2014 and we\u2019re going to test that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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

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

SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad. Credit: SpaceX Ground crews plan to load the final cargo into SpaceX\u2019s Dragon supply ship Saturday after the capsule\u2019s Falcon 9 rocket booster briefly fired up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for a flight readiness check. The Falcon 9 rocket ignited its […]<\/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":[1395,479,717,1602,4017,311,1542,316],"class_list":["post-16244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dragon","tag-falcon-9","tag-international-space-station","tag-iss-cargo","tag-microsoft","tag-reusability","tag-space-launch-complex-40","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16244"}],"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=16244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}