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A Falcon 9 rocket launching an Argentinean Earth observation satellite crossed the southern California sky on Sunday night, and then its recall phase returned to Vandenberg Air Force Base for a targeted landing, the first of SpaceX's Western coast.
The commercial launcher took off from Vandenberg, a military base approximately 225 km northwest of Los Angeles, at 1921: 28. PDT Sunday (10:21:28 pm EDT; 2:21:28 GMT Monday).
Climbing in a clear evening sky, the Falcon 9 sank south of Vandenberg, exceeded the speed of sound in about a minute, then stopped its nine main Merlin engines at T + 2 plus minutes 20 seconds.
Four seconds later, the first leg moved away from the second leg of the Falcon 9 to an altitude of over 250,000 feet – about 77 km – then pulsed cold gas thrusters to overturn three of its Merlin engines to reverse heading back to Vandenberg. Base of the air force.
The appearance of the comet in the sky over southern California has spawned innumerable publications on social networks, with viewers sharing the image of a bulbous exhaust cloud created by the engines of the first and of the second stage of Falcon 9. The engines of each stage were firing at the same time as part of the launcher was heading to orbit over the Pacific Ocean, and the first floor was heading to the coast.
Three of the first stage engines restarted again after braking recall, and then the thruster central engine was launched just before landing in landing zone 4, located a quarter of a mile away ( 400 meters) from the Falcon 9 launch pad at Vandenberg.
The Falcon 9 sits on its concrete landing platform, adorned with a stylized "X" in the center, less than eight minutes after take-off.
"Vandenberg, LZ 4, the Falcon has landed," announced a member of the SpaceX launch team when returning from the amplifier on Earth.
At the same time, the Falcon 9's second stage went into orbit thanks to the thrust of its unique Merlin engine. The nose of the rocket was dropped once the rocket passed over the space boundary, and SpaceX did not attempt to recover the cap during the Sunday night mission.
The rocket released the SAOCOM 1A satellite radar observation satellite just under 13 minutes after the start of the mission. US Army tracking data indicated that SAOCOM 1A was in orbit about 385 miles above the Earth, following a polar orbiting trajectory tilted at 97.9 degrees from the Earth. equator, near targets before flight.
The successful launch on Sunday was SpaceX 's 17th SpaceX mission and the fifth SpaceX launch since Vandenberg in 2018.
With the mission Sunday night, SpaceX has found 30 of its first stage boosters, 18 landings in drone at sea, 11 returns to Cape Canaveral and a landing at Vandenberg Air Base.
The launch of SAOCOM 1A also marked the 16th time that SpaceX was reusing a Falcon 9 booster. The first leg that started and landed on Sunday flew on July 25 on a previous Vandenberg flight with 10 Iridium communication satellites.
The objective of the satellite is to scan the Earth with a synthetic radar aperture L-band direction, allowing images any time of the planet, day and night. Radar imagers can see through clouds and operate 24 hours a day, but optical cameras are hindered by clouds and darkness.
SAOCOM 1A is the first of two identical radar observation satellites developed by CONAE, the Argentine National Space Agency.
The final phase of construction of the SAOCOM 1B satellite began at the INVAP plant in Bariloche, Argentina. Its launch is planned on a Falcon 9 rocket of the Vandenberg air base between October and December 2019, according to Laura Frulla, lead investigator of the SAOCOM mission at CONAE.
The new radar satellites will help measure soil moisture and monitor oil spills, floods, forest fires and other natural and man-made disasters. Soil moisture data will provide scientists and agricultural planners with information on soil moisture to a depth of more than 2 meters, which will help predict crop yields, floods and soil moisture. droughts.
"The SAOCOM mission is mainly devoted to soil moisture, but you can also identify features in urban areas," Frulla said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "The sensitivity of the instrument is pretty good. We can have applications in agriculture, fishing, forestry, climatology, oceanography, natural resources, urban planning and geology.
"In the case of the environment, you can estimate biomass," said Frulla. "It's a good thing to use the L-band. You can also have snow maps and water maps, which will give you some knowledge of water management, mainly for areas that do not have not. "
SAOCOM 1A is the first radar imaging satellite built in Argentina. It will be part of a joint Argentine-Italian project to share complementary radar surveillance data between the SAOCOM satellites and the Italian constellation Cosmo-SkyMed.
Frulla said the entire SAOCOM project, consisting of two satellites, two launches and a ground station, would cost about $ 600 million.
"SAOCOM will be a partially commercial mission, that is, if you want to use the data for commercial purposes, you have to pay," Frulla said. "We will give this data free of charge to all institutions that help the government and that are used for academic purposes around the world."
The SAOCOM satellites are manufactured by a consortium of Argentine companies led by INVAP. Parts of SAOCOM radars were produced in Italy, according to Frulla.
The SAOCOM 1A radar has a better resolution of about 10 meters.
The double satellite SAOCOM will form a constellation of six satellites with the Italian satellites Cosmo-Skymed. The SAOCOM satellites will fly roughly in the same orbit as the four Cosmo-Skymed satellites, which will allow Cosmo-Skymed X-band radars and SAOCOM L-band radars to observe the same location on Earth at approximately 10 mph. minutes apart, Frulla said.
X-band and L-band radar bands solve different characteristics of the Earth's surface, with the L-band able to penetrate the ground to detect moisture content.
"When SAOCOM acquires, 10 minutes later, Cosmo-Skymed acquires," said Frulla. "So you have almost simultaneous images of the same area and you can see different aspects of the surface."
Frulla said that one of the first tasks of SAOCOM's ground crew was to deploy the satellite's new radar instrument, which was folded during launch to fit into the Falcon 9 stay.
The radar imagery network will extend for approximately 33 feet, or 10 meters, and over 11 feet, or 3.5 meters. The first images of SAOCOM 1A should be captured and cured about 20 days after launch, Frulla said.
After a series of calibrations and tests, SAOCOM 1A should be ready for operational service by March 2019, she said.
Frulla said SAOCOM satellites are designed to operate for five and a half to six years.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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