SpaceX's rifle catch boat heads for the sea, this time with a larger net – Spaceflight Now

After several attempts to recover refit of explosive charges dropped in space, a high speed boat loaded to recover the fairings so that SpaceX can reuse them was modernized and sent to the airport. Pacific Ocean. from a Wednesday launch of Vandenberg Air Force in California.

The fairing salvage ship, named "Mr. Steven" left the port of Los Angeles Monday night to position itself in the Pacific Ocean several hundred kilometers south of Vandenberg, where the two halves of the Falcon 9 fairing will fall after launch with 10 voice satellites and Iridium data relay. 19659003] The fairing will open as a flapper around three minutes after takeoff, set for 4:39:30 PDT (7:39:30 EDT, 1139: 30 GMT) from the Space Launch Complex 4-East to Vandenberg, a military installation about 225 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles

Each half of the fairing is equipped with a guidance system, tiny propellers and a parafoil to control its descent to the Earth. Instead of diving the components of the fairing into the sea, as is the case with other rockets, SpaceX wants to recover the reuse of the fairing, following the footsteps of the company's successes in the Falcon 9's first-stage booster recycling.

Steven will attempt to maneuver under one of the fairing halves, aiming to catch the composite structure with a net. A little closer to the California coast, another ship, a drone named "Just Read the Instructions", will be in the landing position of the Falcon 9's first-stage propeller.

This will be the first time that SpaceX will use the ocean vessels to recover both the first floor of the Falcon 9 and part of the payload fairing on the same mission. If SpaceX can hang both sides of the rocket on Wednesday, it will be the first time the company will recover some of the fairing with Mr. Steven, and the 26th first-floor propeller will land successfully.

SpaceX tried to catch fairings before, but none of them fell into Mr. Steven 's net, which the engineers dubbed the "catcher' s glove".

Payload fairing protects satellites in space aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, guarding immaculate satellites and protecting satellites from weather conditions during pre-launch preparations and the aerodynamic forces during the ascent of the launcher.

Once in the rarefied environment, almost without air space, the Falcon 9 is programmed to dump the fairing.

Up to now, SpaceX has only been trying to use a boat to catch the fairing during missions launched from Vandenberg. , which is used for launches of satellites heading towards orbits flying over the Earth's poles. The company should eventually deploy several ships to recover refits after launches from California and Florida.

Cape Canaveral's Falcon 9 fairings also carried salvage equipment, but SpaceX has not yet attempted salvage with a SpaceX equipped net has recognized the existence of Mr. Steven more earlier this year, and the ship made its first known attempt to catch a shell bomb on a February 22 launch of Vandenberg with the Spanish radar observation satellite Paz and two test benches for the Internet planned broadband of SpaceX

At the last SpaceX launch by Vandenberg on May 22, Steven arrived about 50 meters (160 feet) from half of the Falcon 9's payload, the company reported on Twitter

]. The new net on Mr. Steven is four times larger than the previous one

"Catching rocket fairings falling from space turned out to be difficult, so we made the net really big," he said. writes Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX. In the end, the reuse fairing initiative is expected to significantly reduce launch costs, according to Musk.

With the latest updates introduced in the "Block 5" version of the Falcon 9, the Falcon 9's fairing is designed for "Musk told reporters during a conference call on May 10.

But the engineers want to recover the fairing with a ship, rather than drop the shroud into the sea, where salt water can damage or contaminate the sensitive parts. "196590 03]" In future flights, we are confident that the reuse of the fairing will be effective, which is a big problem because each of these fairings costs about $ 6 million to build, and represents a significant percentage of the rocket "Musk said.

Falcon 9 satellites launched on Wednesday will propel the next generation of Iridium "Iridium Next" and the data relay constellation to an end.

The Falcon 9 rocket completed its launch of Vandenberg on Saturday, and the ground crews brought the launcher back into its hangar for the fixation of the 10 Iridium Next satellites and their custom designed multi-load distributor.

The fully badembled rocket was raised vertically at SLC-4E on Tuesday, and the launch team plans to arrive at the station in their control center overnight, as the countdown goes off towards take-off before dawn at 4:39 am local time

Rocket launcher planned for Wednesday will be the third Falcon 9 rocket The first stage of Block 5, the latest version of the SpaceX launcher, and the first California mission of the block 5.

Wednesday's mission will take place just over three days after the latest Falcon 9 mission, also a block 5 flight, from Cape Canaveral. A Falcon 9 rocket took off from Florida's space coast early Sunday with the Telstar 19 VANTAGE telecommunications satellite, a powerful broadband station heading towards a perch in geostationary orbit over 36,000 kilometers overhead. 39; equator. Alenia Space and Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems – formerly ATK Orbital – Iridium relay satellites fly in lower orbits, and Falcon 9 rocket will head south from the Central Coast of California to a polar orbit

The flight plan provides for the engine stop of the second floor of the Falcon 9 at T + plus 8 minutes, 33 seconds, followed by a 43-minute coastal phase before restarting the Merlin engine. a nine-second combustion starting at T + plus 51 minutes, 33 seconds

Next, the 10 Iridium Next satellites, each weighing approximately 860 kilograms, will deploy from the upper stage every 90 seconds. All 10 spacecraft should be separated from the rocket by T + plus 71 minutes, 38 seconds, according to a mission timeline published by SpaceX.

Wednesday's flight is the seventh launch of SpaceX to carry the Iridium Next payloads, which one hour at the top of the Falcon 9 rockets. The latest Iridium satellite launched in May carried five of the company's spacecraft, the rest of the rocket's capacity going to a pair of US-German climate research probes in a carpool mission.

Ten more Iridium Next satellites are expected later this year, bringing to 75 the total number of new-generation gear launched. Six additional spacecraft are being built by Northrop Grumman and Thales Alenia Space in an Arizona plant that will be kept in reserve as ground spares.

Satellites provide enhanced global voice and messaging services for the one million business subscribers, replacing an aging fleet of spacecraft launched in the late 1990s and at the end of the 1990s. early 2000s.

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