SpaceX sets new rocket reuse records with successful Starlink launch – Spaceflight Now

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Platform 39A at 8:02 a.m. EST (1:02 p.m. GMT) Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX launched another 60 Starlink satellites into sunny skies over Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday, adding more capacity and coverage to the company’s commercial broadband network while setting new records for the rate of thruster reuse Falcon 9 rocket.

The two-stage launcher fired its nine Merlin 1D main engines and pulled away from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 8:02 a.m. EST (1:02 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday. The rocket guidance system oriented the 229-foot-high (70-meter) launcher northeast over the Atlantic Ocean on a path to place the 60 Starlink relay stations in an orbit between 53 degrees of north and south latitude.

The first-stage thruster – designated B1051 – made its eighth space trip and returned to Wednesday’s mission, making it the leader of SpaceX’s fleet. The first stage stopped and separated from the second stage of the Falcon 9 approximately two and a half minutes after the start of flight, extended the aerodynamic grille fins and briefly arced through space before reentering into the atmosphere and nail a propellant landing on SpaceX’s floating recovery ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Braving strong winds, the 15-story rocket descended to the landing pad, or drone, deployed its four-legged landing gear, and pulled its mid-engine in a final braking maneuver just before the touchdown. The landing winds were stronger than on previous rocket landings, but SpaceX chose to continue the mission in hopes of collecting data on the thruster’s ability to land in less than ideal conditions, according to Jessica. Anderson, a SpaceX engineer who hosted the company’s launch webcast on Wednesday.

Video from the drone dropped as the rocket landed about eight minutes after takeoff, but live video quickly resumed, showing the propellant burned and covered in soot safely on the landing pad.

“We have landed the Falcon 9 for the eighth time,” said Anderson. “He’s our life leader. What a beautiful morning!

The thruster from Wednesday’s launch first flew during SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission in March 2019, when the human-classified spacecraft took off for an unmanned test flight to the International Space Station, paving the way for astronaut missions in 2020.

The first stage was launched again from California in June 2019, carrying the three remote sensing satellites of Canada’s Radarsat Constellation mission, then flown four Starlink missions from Cape Canaveral. Most recently, the booster launched on December 13 with the SXM 7 broadcast satellite for SiriusXM.

The SXM 7 launched 38 days before Wednesday’s mission, marking the fastest turnaround time between flights since SpaceX began reusing Falcon 9 boosters in 2017.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, said the latest version of the Falcon 9 booster – called Block 5 – could fly 10 times without major renovations, and maybe 100 times with periodic revisions. With up to 48 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flights slated for 2021, SpaceX looks set to have at least one Falcon booster, and possibly more, hitting the 10-flight milestone this year.

The two halves of the Falcon 9 rocket payload fairing were also recycled from previous missions on Wednesday. Two SpaceX fairing salvage ships, each equipped with giant nets to catch the fairing shells as they fall under the parachutes, were stationed in the Atlantic on Wednesday to retrieve the components.

The payload shroud jettisoned moments after the Falcon 9’s second-stage engine ignited as the rocket rose above the atmosphere, revealing the stack of 60 Starlink satellites mounted at the end front of the rocket.

A Falcon 9 rocket, flying with a first stage performed on seven previous missions, climbs into the atmosphere on Wednesday over the Florida space coast. Credit: SpaceX

After reaching a preliminary parking orbit, the upper stage of the Falcon 9 traveled halfway around the world, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and the Middle East before briefly re-igniting its engine over the ocean. Indian to place the Starlink payloads in the orbit appropriate for deployment.

The 60 satellites left the rocket a little over an hour after the start of the mission. An onboard camera showed the flat-screen satellites, built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, taking off from the second stage of the Falcon 9.

With the 60 new satellites, SpaceX has so far put 1,015 Starlink satellites into orbit, including prototypes not intended for commercial service. The new satellites will give SpaceX a fleet of around 950 Starlinks currently in orbit, after subtracting the satellites that have been de-orbited, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks global space activity.

This is more satellites than owned by any other business or government entity.

The new satellites will deploy solar panels, perform automated checks and activate krypton ion thrusters to begin elevating their orbits to join the rest of the Starlink constellation at an altitude of 550 kilometers (341 miles).

SpaceX plans to operate an initial block of around 1,500 Starlink satellites. The company, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has obtained regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission to eventually bring into service a fleet of 12,000 small Starlink broadband stations operating on Ku-band, Ka-band and V-band frequencies. .

SpaceX says the Starlink network – designed for low-latency internet service – has entered a beta test phase in several U.S. states and Canada using its already launched satellites. Testing was recently extended to the UK, SpaceX said on Wednesday, and the US military has also tried the Starlink internet service.

There are also preliminary plans for an even larger fleet of an additional 30,000 Starlink satellites, but a network of this size has not been cleared by the FCC.

Wednesday’s mission was SpaceX’s second launch of the year. Two more Falcon 9 flights are scheduled before the end of January.

A Falcon 9 rocket is expected to take off from Station 40 on the Cape Canaveral Space Station during an hour-long window opening at 9:24 a.m. EST (2:24 p.m. GMT) on Friday, carrying more than 100 small satellites for the government American, commercial operators, and foreign customers.

The carpooling mission will deliver the satellites to a polar sun-synchronous orbit more than 300 miles, or 500 kilometers, above Earth. This will be SpaceX’s second launch from Cape Canaveral to aim for a polar orbit, using a southward launch corridor opened by a Falcon 9 flight in August with Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite.

Another Falcon 9 mission is tentatively scheduled to take off from the Florida Spaceport on the morning of January 27 with another batch of about 60 Starlink satellites, according to a publicly available danger zone advisory outlining the at-sea protection zones for the launch.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.



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