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SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy rocket flight, previously scheduled for this month, has been pushed back to early 2022 after further delays caused by its U.S. military payload, a Space Force spokesperson said.
The launch of the USSF-44 Space Force mission was scheduled for Oct. 9, but officials delayed the mission “to accommodate payload readiness,” a spokesperson for Space Systems Command said in answer to Spaceflight Now questions.
The Space Force has not released a new launch date for the USSF-44 mission, but the spokesperson said the launch is now scheduled for early 2022, nearly three years since Falcon Heavy’s last launch. in June 2019.
The Falcon Heavy will deliver several military payloads to a high altitude geosynchronous orbit during the USSF-44 mission. The top stage of the rocket will fire several times to place the satellites more than 22,000 miles above the equator.
The upper stage flight profile will include a coast lasting more than five hours between burns, making the USSF-44 mission one of SpaceX’s most demanding launches to date.
One of the spacecraft from the launch of the USSF-44 is a microsatellite named TETRA 1 built by Millennium Space Systems, a subsidiary of Boeing headquartered in El Segundo, California. Military officials said in a statement that the TETRA 1 satellite was created to “prototype missions and tactics, techniques and procedures on and around geosynchronous Earth orbit.”
The military did not disclose any information about the other or the other satellites of the USSF-44 mission. Payload delays previously pushed the launch of USSF-44 from July to October.
SpaceX will use three newly manufactured boosters for the USSF-44 mission. All boosters were delivered to the Florida launch base earlier this year.
The difficult launch profile will not leave any propellant left over to retrieve the Falcon Heavy’s central core, according to the Space Force. The main stage will be dedicated to the launch, while the two side boosters of the rocket will be recovered from two SpaceX drones positioned downstream east of Cape Canaveral.
Despite the long gap between Falcon Heavy flights, next year is shaping up to be a busy year for the rocket, with four jumbo launches scheduled from the Florida space coast between January and August.
The Space Systems Command spokesperson said that the USSF-52 mission, the next national security launch on a Falcon Heavy after USSF-44, is scheduled for the second quarter of 2022. The next commercial launch of Falcon Heavy is also scheduled for the second quarter of 2022., carrying a Viasat 3 broadband communications satellite to geostationary orbit.
Next August, NASA’s robotic Psyche spacecraft is expected to be launched aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket as part of a mission to explore a metallic asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
Another mission in late 2022, designated USSF-67, could also use a Falcon Heavy rocket, but Space Force has not confirmed whether it will launch on a Falcon Heavy or SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
All Falcon Heavy flights from Florida depart from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the same complex used by Apollo lunar missions, space shuttles, and SpaceX crew missions.
SpaceX has at least 10 confirmed Falcon Heavy launches in its backlog, including missions to send NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter, and to send the first two pieces of the planned Gateway mini-space station to the moon, both in 2024.
NASA’s VIPER lunar rover is also slated to launch on a Falcon Heavy in late 2023, and a NOAA weather satellite is slated to launch on a Falcon Heavy in 2024.
NASA also contracted SpaceX for two Falcon Heavy flights to boost Dragon XL cargo missions to the Gateway station later in the 2020s.
The Falcon Heavy is made up of three modified Falcon 9 first stage boosters connected together in a three-core configuration. The rocket’s 27 main Merlin engines produce approximately 5.1 million pounds of lift-off thrust, more than any other currently operational rocket.
The Falcon Heavy will secure more military launch contracts in the United States in the years to come.
Last year, the Space Force announced multi-billion dollar contracts to fly the military’s most critical national security payloads on the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rockets and SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers to ‘in 2027.
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