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Lighting up the deep night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral early Sunday, putting into orbit a heavy communications satellite while its first enhanced amplifier flew to an accurate landing on a droneship off -shore.
Early versions of the first leg of the Falcon 9 would have been unable to attempt a landing given the orbit and record weight of the Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite – 15,600 pounds – but the "block 5" version of the booster, with more powerful engines, structural improvements and other improvements had no obvious problems.
Block 5 debuted in June, with an upgraded version of the second stage rocket. Sunday's flight was the second for a first leg of Block 5 and the fourth for the upgraded upper stage.
SpaceX rocket now, with another quick launch on Wednesday with a different Falcon 9 to boost 10 Iridium NEXT satellite phone relay stations in orbit at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California [19659002] Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, estimates that block 5 boosters should be able to fly 50 to 60 times with minimal refit between flights. But as spectacular as the reminder is, the main focus of Sunday's flight was to place Telesat's Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite based in Ottawa in a highly elliptical orbit. A highlight of more than 20,000 miles and one point less than 200 miles.
To get there, the 229-foot-high Falcon 9 took off at 1:50 am EDT (GMT-4) and quickly climbed to launch c accelerating rapidly by consuming its thrusters load and losing weight, the rocket it moved further east over the Atlantic Ocean, trailing a long jet of fiery exhaust.
The nine Merlin engines fueling the first stage out of the low, dense atmosphere closed two and a half minutes after take-off. The second stage took over at this moment, pulling its only engine to continue the climb to the space.
The first step, meanwhile, began its landing sequence, pulling three of its engines to slow down before entering the atmosphere. , ballistic trajectory to the drone ship "Of course I still love you" parked several hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral.
Using so-called grid fins at the top of the booster to maintain its orientation, the rocket restarts A single engine as it approached the drone's ship, deployed four landing legs and stabilized on the deck d & # 39; landing.
This was the 26th recovery of Falcon 9, 14 on drones and 12 on land in Cape Town. Canaveral Air Force Station
Touchdown occurred a few seconds after the Falcon 9's second-stage engine was stopped by reaching a preliminary orbit. After a second burn about 18 minutes later, the Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite was released as planned in its geostationary transfer orbit.
Onboard thrusters will be used to circularize the orbit at an altitude of 22,300 miles above sea level. above the equator. 24 hours to complete an orbit and appear so stationary in the sky. The relay station is expected to enter service at 63 degrees west longitude at the end of August.
"Telstar 19 VANTAGE is a state-of-the-art broadband satellite that will be co-implanted with our Telstar 14R satellite service on the Americas, the Caribbean and the North Atlantic," Dan said. Goldberg, President and CEO of Telesat, at Spaceflight Now "The satellite has Ka and Ku band capacity.
"The 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 almost all of the Ka-band capacity of the satellite in northern Canada, which means that all the Ka-band capacity of the satellite serving that area is already under contract. "
Telesat a second Falcon 9 flight in August to bring the satellite into orbit Telstar 18V relay station.
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