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A gigantic 15,600-pound Canadian communications satellite, the heaviest ever launched, is mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket for takeoff from Cape Canaveral on Sunday morning SpaceX had to abandon the launcher's first-stage booster.
The Telstar 19 VANTAGE spacecraft is expected to kick off a 15-year mission across the Americas and connect air pbadengers to WiFi on the North Atlantic. Ocean.
The takeoff of the satellite at the top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the launch pad of Cape Canaveral Complex 40 is scheduled for a four-hour opening at 1:50 am EDT (0550 GMT) Sunday.
There is 60 percent chance of favorable weather during the launch window. The main concern is that afternoon and evening thunderstorms could extend late into the night, violating the rules of the thick cloud and cumulus
Sunday's mission will be the second flight using the Falcon 9 Block 5 a series of step-by-step improvements designed to improve launcher performance, while introducing modifications to facilitate the recovery and reuse of the booster.
SpaceX launched the first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket on May 11 with Bangladesh's first communications satellite. Officials hailed the success of SpaceX, which allowed SpaceX to reduce the time and money required for the resumption of another mission.
Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of SpaceX, told reporters in May that a first leg of Block 5 could be flown 10 times with few changes other than refueling and up to 10 times. To 100 times with larger renovations. At the time, Musk said that SpaceX plans to resume a first leg of the Falcon 9 as quickly as 24 hours after its previous mission as early as next year.
Improvements include a reinforced thermal protection system to better protect the rocket. against reheating heating. SpaceX has introduced new black liners on the intermediate and landing legs, and the Falcon 9's first-stage engine section, or octaweb, is bolted to the vehicle in the new configuration, rather than welded to the first stage .
The Merlin engines of the Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket can generate 8% additional thrust at sea level, up to about 190,000 pounds of thrust each. The Merlin engine on the second leg of the Falcon 9 has also been upgraded.
Since the first Falcon 9 Block 5 mission in May, SpaceX has launched three Falcon 9 flights using a mix of new top floors of Block 5 and reused blocks. steps. Sunday's mission will be the second to use the material from Block 5.
The additional lifting capacity of the Falcon 9 block will allow the rocket to send the Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite of nearly 15,600 pounds (7,075 pounds). kilograms) to its operational perch In geostationary orbit, more than 36,000 kilometers above the equator
According to the flight plan, the second stage of the Falcon 9 must fire the engine twice, then deploy the load Telstar 19 VANTAGE in an elliptical transfer shaped egg. orbit with a low point a few hundred miles above the Earth and a peak of several tens of thousands of kilometers
In accordance with the company's standard policy, SpaceX did not published the precise parameters of the orbit scheduled for Sunday's mission. Other commercial launchers usually publish such data before their mission.
Falcon 9 Block 5 will give Telesat's telecommunications satellite in Ottawa a high-altitude lift while its first phase retains enough propellant to return to a SpaceX spacecraft parked in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral
The transportation of such a heavy satellite to a high-altitude geostationary transfer orbit would have forced earlier versions of the Falcon 9 to Falcon's first floor 9 re-ignites a subset of its engines to target land or sea landings, then extends its four landing legs while using its central engine to brake maneuvers. landing. Additional engine restarts require extra fuel, eating in the mbad that the Falcon 9 can send into orbit.
The launch of Sunday will be SpaceX's 13th SpaceX mission, and the 58th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket since the first launch of the launcher began in 2010. SpaceX will attempt its 26th rocket landing Sunday.
Manufactured by SSL, formerly known as Space Systems / Loral, in Palo Alto, California, the Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite is the first of two telesat-built telecoms built by SSL to be launched on Falcon rockets 9 this summer. The Telstar 18 VANTAGE satellite is scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral on another Falcon 9 flight no later than August 17.
Telstar 19 VANTAGE will become the heaviest commercial communications satellite ever launched, eclipsing a record set by the EarthStar 1 telecommunications satellite, which weighed 15,934 pounds (6,910 kilograms) when it went into orbit. an Ariane 5 rocket in July 2009.
It should also be the heaviest satellite ever launched by SpaceX into geostationary transfer orbit.
Telstar 19 VANTAGE will use its own hydrazine-powered engine to circularize its orbit after it separates from the Falcon 9 rocket, climbing into a circular geostationary roost of nearly 22,300 miles above sea level. equator at 63 degrees west longitude. In this position, Telstar 19 VANTAGE's orbital velocity will correspond to the rotation speed of the Earth, allowing it to hover over a fixed geographical point
Once the satellite deploys its solar antennas and its communication antennas, Telstar Telstar 19 VANTAGE will operate in the same geostationary niche as the Telstar 14R satellite deployed in 2011, which experienced a breakdown in one of its solar panels shortly after the launch, a company spokesman said. decreasing its capacity.
Telstar 19 VANTAGE carries Ku-band and Ka-band payloads, with coverage from northern Canada to South America for broadband connectivity. The new satellite will also provide airborne Internet services to aircraft traveling on transatlantic routes between North America and Europe.
"Telstar 19 VANTAGE is a state-of-the-art broadband satellite that will be co-implanted our Telstar 14R satellite to extend our services to the Americas, the Caribbean and the North Atlantic," said Dan Goldberg, President and CEO of Telesat "The Satellite Has Ka and Ku Band Combination Capability."
"Ka-Band Capacity for South America Is Already Under Contract with Hughes Network Systems for 15 years and our long-time customer, Bell Canada, has entered into a 15-year contract for substantially all of the satellite's Ka-band capacity in northern Canada, which means that all band capacity Ka of the satellite serving this area is already under contract. "
Ku-band communication capability of the new satellite was pre-sold
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