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Unlike last weekend\u2019s launches, which both saw Falcon\u2019s first stage make successful landings aboard SpaceX\u2019s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships (ASDS), this launch used the expendable version of the rocket.<\/p>\nSpaceX successfully conducted the launch of an expendable Falcon 9 on Wednesday. In what was the third attempt to launch, the mission lofted the Intelsat 35e communications satellite from Florida\u2019s 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 19:38 Eastern. As pre-planned, the booster wasn\u2019t recovered.\n<\/p>\n
SpaceX Launch:<\/p>\n
The launch was the tenth Falcon 9 mission of 2017 and the fourth to be flown in the last month \u2013 three of which have come in a two week period.<\/p>\n
Unlike last weekend\u2019s launches, which both saw Falcon\u2019s first stage make successful landings aboard SpaceX\u2019s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships (ASDS), this launch used the expendable version of the rocket.<\/p>\n
This foregoes recovering the first stage in order to maximize the rocket\u2019s performance for payload delivery. The removal of landing hardware \u2013 such as legs and grid fins \u2013 reduces the overall mass of the rocket, while the first stage can use up all of its fuel boosting Intelsat 35e towards orbit.<\/p>\n
Intelsat 35e is a 6,761-kilogram (14,906 lb) communications satellite bound for geostationary orbit. Built by Boeing, Intelsat 35e is based on the BSS-702MP satellite bus, with an expected service life of at least fifteen years. A replacement for Intelsat 903, Intelsat 35e will be stationed over the Atlantic Ocean at a longitude of 34.5 degrees west.<\/p>\n
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The satellite carries high-bandwidth C- and Ku-band communications payloads, with equivalent capacity to 124 thirty-six-megahertz C-band transponders and 39 thirty-six-megahertz Ku-band transponders.<\/p>\n
The C-band payload will provide telecommunications services to Europe, Central and Southern Africa, South America, the Caribbean and parts of North America, while the Ku-band transponders will be used for direct-to-home broadcasting to the Caribbean and support for mobile communications and government services in Europe and North Africa.<\/p>\n
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The spacecraft which Intelsat 35e will replace, Intelsat 903, was launched in February 2002 aboard a Proton-K rocket with a Blok DM3 upper stage \u2013 a commercial version of the Blok DM-2M. Intelsat 903 was the fourth of seven Intelsat-9 satellites. These spacecraft were manufactured by Space Systems\/Loral, with a design life of thirteen years. Following its replacement by Intelsat 35e, the fifteen-year-old Intelsat 903 will be redeployed to a less critical slot in Intelsat\u2019s constellation.<\/p>\n
Intelsat was formed in 1964 as the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, an intergovernmental organization tasked with operating a fleet of satellites to provide worldwide broadcasting and telecommunications services.<\/p>\n
The organization\u2019s first satellite, Intelsat I F-1, or Early Bird, was a 68-kilogram (150 lb) spacecraft built by Hughes for a design life of eighteen months. It was launched in April 1965 atop a Delta-D rocket from Cape Canaveral. Intelsat remained an intergovernmental organization until it was privatized in 2001.<\/p>\n
Intelsat 35e is the fourth satellite to be launched as part of Intelsat\u2019s next-generation EpicNG fleet, utilizing high-performance satellites to increase capacity. The first EpicNG satellite \u2013 Intelsat 29e \u2013 was launched in January 2016, Intelsat 33e launched in August 2016 and Intelsat 32e this February.<\/p>\n
All three previous launches were conducted by Arianespace, using Ariane 5 ECA vehicles. Intelsat 32e is operated by Intelsat on behalf of DirecTV as SKY Brasil 1. The launch is the first that SpaceX has conducted for Intelsat.<\/p>\n
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The Intelsat launch marked the thirty-eighth flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, and the forty-third launch overall for SpaceX. A two-stage rocket, Falcon 9 first flew in June 2010 with a mockup of SpaceX\u2019s Dragon spacecraft, the Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit.<\/p>\n
The first five Falcon 9 launches used a configuration known retrospectively as the Falcon 9 v1.0. From the sixth flight \u2013 September 2013\u2019s launch of Canada\u2019s CASSIOPE satellite \u2013 an improved Falcon 9 v1.1 was used. A further enhanced version, the Falcon 9 v1.2, debuted in December 2015. SpaceX continues to make incremental upgrades to the rocket, progressing towards Block 4 and Block 5 versions of the rocket that will further improve performance and reduce the amount of work needed before a stage can be reflown.<\/p>\n
The ability to recover and reuse the first stage is a unique feature of many of the Falcon 9\u2019s missions. The rocket was designed to be partially reusable, with early flights attempting to achieve this by parachuting the first stage into the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
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When this proved unworkable, with no stages surviving descent, SpaceX switched instead to a propulsive recovery either via a floating platform \u2013 the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) \u2013 at sea, or by flying the first stage back to a landing pad at the launch site. To date, SpaceX has successfully recovered the first stage on thirteen Falcon 9 missions \u2013 five on land and eight at sea \u2013 including seven successful landings from seven attempts in 2017.<\/p>\n
This mission, however, did not attempt to recover the first stage. The performance requirement to deliver the 6,761-kilogram (14,906 lb) Intelsat 35e spacecraft to geosynchronous transfer orbit meant that the first stage had to burn all of its propellant to push the satellite towards orbit, without reserving fuel to attempt a landing. Intelsat 35e is the heaviest satellite Falcon 9 to be carried on a geosynchronous mission to date.<\/p>\n
Falcon 9 flew without landing gear or grid fins, with the spent first stage falling into the Atlantic at the end of her mission. The first stage used on this mission was Core 1037.<\/p>\n
The launch used the new fast fuelling process that SpaceXhase devised. Following a poll around the sixty-three-minute mark in the countdown, loading of RP-1 propellant aboard the rocket began an hour before launch.<\/p>\n
The oxidiser, liquid oxygen, was loaded from the thirty-five minute mark onwards. Since the introduction of the v1.2 configuration, Falcon 9 uses supercold liquid oxygen. This is denser than the liquid oxygen previously used, allowing a greater mass to be loaded relative to the size of the vehicle\u2019s tanks.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the launch was held via a launch abort called by an issue with the GNC criteria. The attempt on Monday suffered a hold at the same point in the countdown. However, the second issue was not with the rocket but with ground computers.<\/p>\n
There were no such issues on the next attempt, which proceeded to engine start up.<\/p>\n
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Three seconds before liftoff, Falcon\u2019s nine first-stage Merlin-1D engines ignited. With no problems detected at startup, the rocket lifted off once the countdown reached zero. After clearing the launch pad, Falcon maneuvered to an easterly trajectory taking it out over the Atlantic Ocean. Seventy-eight seconds after liftoff the vehicle passed through Max-Q, the area of maximum dynamic pressure.<\/p>\n
The first stage burned for the first two minutes and forty-two seconds of the flight, after which it reached main engine cutoff, or MECO. Shutting down its engines, the spent first stage was jettisoned four seconds later with second stage ignition occurring seven seconds after separation.<\/p>\n
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Falcon 9\u2019s second stage is powered by a single Merlin-1D engine, optimised to operate in a vacuum. The second stage conducted two burns to deliver Intelsat 35e into geosynchronous transfer orbit \u2013 the first of which lasted five minutes and 44 seconds, placing the stage and its payload into an initial parking orbit.<\/p>\n
Forty-six seconds into the first burn, the payload fairing separated from around Intelsat 35e at the nose of the rocket.<\/p>\n
Following the end of the second stage\u2019s first burn \u2013 an event designated SECO-1 \u2013 Falcon 9 coasted for seventeen minutes and 41 seconds. A second burn of fifty-two seconds\u2019 duration then injected the payload into its planned transfer orbit. Spacecraft separation occurred four minutes and 51 seconds later. Intelsat 35e will use its own propulsion system \u2013 an IHI Corporation BT-4 apogee motor \u2013 to circularise its orbit before performing on-orbit testing and preparing for entry into service.<\/p>\n
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The tenth Falcon 9 launch of 2017, the launch comes just over a week after the rocket\u2019s previous launch, a successful mission flown from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to deliver ten Iridium communications satellites into low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n
That launch was two days after a partially-reused Falcon 9 launched BulgariaSat-1 from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The initial launch window \u2013 based on the first attempt on Sunday \u2013 opened nine days, four hours and 26 minutes after the BulgariaSat launch \u2013 flying from the same launch pad at KSC\u2019s Launch Complex 39A.<\/p>\n
This would have been the shortest time between two launches from the Kennedy Space Center, surpassing the ten days and 19 and a half hours between the May 1973 launches of Skylab atop the last Saturn V from LC-39A and its first crew, aboard Skylab 2 atop a Saturn IB, from LC-39B. At the time of Skylab\u2019s launch, Skylab 2 was scheduled to lift off the following day, however this was delayed after the space station sustained damage during its ascent to orbit.<\/p>\n
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The previous fastest turnaround for a single pad at KSC was a little over twenty-seven days, between the STS-51-D and STS-51-B missions flown by Space Shuttles Discovery and Challenger, from LC-39A in April 1985.<\/p>\n
Pad 39A was built in the 1960s for the Apollo program, supporting the Saturn V rocket for twelve of its thirteen flights. It was the launch pad from which Apollo 8 launched to become the first manned mission to orbit the moon, and from where all six missions that landed men on the moon lifted off. The launch pad was later reused by the Space Shuttle, which flew eighty-two missions from the pad including its first and last launches.<\/p>\n
The launch was the last before the US Air Force\u2019s Eastern Range enters a three-week downtime period to conduct maintenance, during which time no rockets will be able to launch from either the Kennedy Space Center, nor the adjacent Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.<\/p>\n
The range will return to operations in time to support a United Launch Alliance Atlas V mission, scheduled for 3 August, which will deploy NASA\u2019s TDRS-M communications satellite. SpaceX has its next launch scheduled for 10 August, with a Falcon 9 carrying the CRS-12 Dragon spacecraft, a resupply flight to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n
Intelsat 35e was the second satellite to be launched this year for Intelsat, following February\u2019s launch of Intelsat 32e aboard an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. Another Ariane 5 will be used to launch Intelsat 37e at the end of August.<\/p>\n
(Images: SpaceX, Intelsat and L2 SpaceX \u2013 including a large collection of photos from this launch campaign via Sam Sun and Brady Kennison for NASASpaceFlight.com)<\/p>\n
(To join L2, click here: \/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SpaceX successfully conducted the launch of an expendable Falcon 9 on Wednesday. In what was the third attempt to launch, the mission lofted the Intelsat 35e communications satellite from Florida\u2019s 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 19:38 Eastern. As pre-planned, the booster wasn\u2019t recovered. SpaceX Launch: The launch was the tenth Falcon 9 mission […]<\/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":[7841,479,316],"class_list":["post-38769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-39a","tag-falcon-9","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38769"}],"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=38769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}