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SpaceX plans to tick another important milestone of the reusable rocket soon.
The company, which regularly lands and reviews the first-stage boosters, has recovered the payload fairing for The launch of the Falcon Heavy megarocket yesterday and plans to use it for another mission in 2019, said SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.
"The two fairing halves have been recovered and will be participating in the Starlink mission later this year," Musk said via Twitter yesterday (April 11), where he published photos of the space hardware.
Related: Reusable Rocket Launch Systems: How They Work (Infographic)
Both fairing halves have recovered. Will fly on Starlink mission later this year. pic.twitter.com/ouz1aqW3MmApril 12, 2019
Payload fairings are the nose cones that surround and protect satellites during launch. SpaceX has not seen any refits yet, but this has always been part of the plan. The company equips each half-fairing of an avionics system and thrusters, which it uses to move towards a smooth landing, propelled by parachute.
SpaceX has gone to such a problem because the fairings are expensive and therefore worth reusing. According to Mr. Musk, each of them costs $ 6 million, or about 10% of the cost of launching one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. (The two-story Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy use the same payload fairing. The Heavy is basically made up of three modified Falcon 9 first stages, tied together; the central servomotor is surmounted by a second single-engine stage and the payload.)
The refit of the payload recovered yesterday will be reassigned to a launch for StarlinkMusk added. This program is SpaceX's vast Internet-satellite constellation, which will ultimately include thousands of spacecraft. The first operational launch of Starlink is scheduled for next month. it will take off at the top of a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
It is unclear whether the recovered fairing will exceed this Falcon 9; Musk did not specify which Starlink mission the hardware will steal.
SpaceX has repeatedly tried to catch the falling fairing halves using a boat equipped with net named Mr. Steven. Musk said this approach was motivated by the desire to keep the fairings out of the corrosive clutches of seawater, but none of these attempts to date has been successful.
SpaceX did not use Mr. Steven at yesterday's launch; The salvage boats simply fished the half fairings out of the water. So, it seems that Musk no longer considers corrosion and contamination a serious problem.
The launch of yesterday, which climbed 13,200 pounds. (6,000 kg), the Arabsat-6A communications satellite in orbit, was the first commercial mission of Falcon Heavy and the second flight of the rocket. A Heavy flew for the first time in February 2018, as part of a test mission to launch Musk's red Tesla Roadster, "driven" by a mannequin dressed in a space suit named Starman, orbiting the sun.
Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life, "Over there"(Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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