{"id":16604,"date":"2015-02-03T22:42:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T14:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/noaa-space-weather-sentinel-joined-with-falcon-9-rocket\/"},"modified":"2015-02-03T22:42:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T14:42:16","slug":"noaa-space-weather-sentinel-joined-with-falcon-9-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/noaa-space-weather-sentinel-joined-with-falcon-9-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"NOAA space weather sentinel joined with Falcon 9 rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The Deep Space Climate Observatory is pictured inside the Astrotech satellite processing facility in Titusville, Florida. One half of the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s payload fairing is seen behind the spacecraft. Credit: NASA\/Kim Shiflett<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new space weather observatory to be stationed a million miles from Earth has been enclosed inside the nose cone of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for liftoff Sunday from Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

The Deep Space Climate Observatory was filled with maneuvering fuel, tested and verified ready for launch, then encapsulated inside the Falcon 9 launcher\u2019s 5.2-meter (17.1-foot) diameter payload fairing at the Astrotech spacecraft processing facility near Kennedy Space Center.<\/p>\n

The satellite rolled out of Astrotech on Saturday night for a short road trip to SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 hangar at Cape Canaveral\u2019s Complex 40 launch pad. Once it arrived, the payload housing was tilted on its side and hooked up to the Falcon 9\u2019s second stage.<\/p>\n

Final testing is underway this week to ensure the refrigerator-sized spacecraft and the rocket work together. The booster should be rolled out of the hangar and erected on the launch pad this weekend.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket has completed a brief on-pad firing of its nine Merlin 1D first stage engines in a customary preflight test after a practice countdown.<\/p>\n

Liftoff of the 22-story rocket is set for 6:10 p.m. EST (2310 GMT) Sunday, about two minutes after sunset on Florida\u2019s Space Coast.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9\u2019s 15th flight will send DSCOVR on a high-speed trajectory to escape the grip of Earth\u2019s gravity.<\/p>\n

DSCOVR is a joint project between NOAA, NASA and the U.S. Air Force. The satellite will be positioned at the L1 libration point a million miles away from Earth, where its instruments will monitor space weather and the solar wind for a planned five-year mission.<\/p>\n

\"16334875992_150e381aae_o\"<\/p>\n

The Air Force arranged the DSCOVR mission\u2019s liftoff with SpaceX, paying the California-based space transportation company $97 million under a launch services contract signed in December 2012.<\/p>\n

NOAA is the overall manager of the DSCOVR program, with NASA assisting with satellite preparation and prelaunch processing.<\/p>\n

The Air Force signed the DSCOVR launch order \u2014 plus a Falcon Heavy launch reserved for multiple defense-related experimental satellites \u2014 under the service\u2019s Orbital\/Suborbital Program 3 (OSP 3) contract, which allows contractors to compete to launch the military\u2019s smaller spacecraft.<\/p>\n

SpaceX and the Air Force expect to complete certification of the Falcon 9 rocket to launch more critical Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle-class (EELV-class) national security satellites later this year. The certification will allow SpaceX to compete directly against United Launch Alliance for the military\u2019s most expensive communications, navigation and spy satellites.<\/p>\n

ULA is not part of the OSP 3 contract, and the incumbent EELV contractor did not bid to launch the DSCOVR mission.<\/p>\n

SpaceX plans a second try to recover the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s first stage booster during Sunday\u2019s launch. An untried rocket-assisted flyback maneuver on SpaceX\u2019s last launch Jan. 10 guided the 14-story booster to a football field-sized barge in the Atlantic Ocean, but the company said the rocket\u2019s stabilizing winglets ran out of hydraulic fluid on final descent to a vertical propulsive landing.<\/p>\n

The booster crashed on the landing platform, but SpaceX recovered wreckage and returned the debris to port aboard the barge.<\/p>\n

The Falcon 9 rocket with DSCOVR carries additional hydraulic fluid to avoid a recurrence of the problem.<\/p>\n

Engineers will inspect the Falcon 9 booster if the flyback experiment works as designed on Sunday\u2019s flight, determining what work is required to refurbish the rocket for another mission.<\/p>\n

SpaceX hopes to make the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s first stage reusable in the future in a bid to cut the cost of space launches.<\/p>\n

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

The Deep Space Climate Observatory is pictured inside the Astrotech satellite processing facility in Titusville, Florida. One half of the Falcon 9 rocket\u2019s payload fairing is seen behind the spacecraft. Credit: NASA\/Kim Shiflett A new space weather observatory to be stationed a million miles from Earth has been enclosed inside the nose cone of a […]<\/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":[2190,2308,479,975,1542,316],"class_list":["post-16604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astrotech","tag-dscovr","tag-falcon-9","tag-noaa","tag-space-launch-complex-40","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16604"}],"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=16604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}