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WATCH: SpaceX rocket booster arrives at Port Canaveral after launching Early Monday morning. This was a live recording as it passed by Jetty Park. Gotta love all this space stuff! pic.twitter.com/D67U7iH0y0
– Port Canaveral (@PortCanaveral) September 12, 2018
SpaceX brought another Falcon 9 booster into Port Canaveral on Wednesday, a little more than two days after landing the rocket on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean as the company enters an unusually quiescent period of launch activity in Florida – at least by recent standards.
The rocket arrives at Port Canaveral around 10 am EDT (1400 GMT) Wednesday aboard SpaceX's drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" after a two-day trek from the booster's landing point Atlantic Ocean around 400 miles (650 kilometers) east of Florida's Space Coast.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 12:45 AM EDT (0445 GMT) Monday from Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad, carrying the Telstar 18 VANTAGE satellite communications into orbit. The Telstar 18 VANTAGE spacecraft, also known as APSTAR 5C, was developed in Ottawa, Ontario-based Telesat and APT Satellite of Hong Kong.
The high-power satellite will raise its orbit to geostationary altitude in the coming weeks, parking itself along the equator at 138 degrees east longitude, where it will replace the aging Telstar 18 / APSTAR 5 spacecraft to expand broadband, broadcast television and cellular connectivity across the Asia-Pacific.
The Falcon 9's first stage fired for the first two-and-a-half minutes of Monday's mission with Telstar 18 VANTAGE, then shut down and dropped away from the rocket's second stage, which continues the trip to orbit. The first stage is a propulsive, precision touchdown on SpaceX's rocket recovery barge about eight-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.
That landing marked the 29th time SpaceX has recovered a first stage booster, and the 18th successful landing at sea.
Crews at the port hoisted the 15-story rocket stage off the drone ship at a few hours after it docked Wednesday, moving it to an onshore cradle where technicians will prepare it to be down to the nearest place for inspection and refurbishment.
The launch with Telstar 18 VANTAGE was the fifth time SpaceX has flown the latest generation of the Falcon 9 first stage, known as Block 5.
The Falcon 9 Block 5 debuted in May with the launch of a satellite for Bangladesh, and the first stage of the mission launched again with the Merah Putih communications craft, then landed a second time for a possible third flight.
A previous satellite Telesat launched in July from Cape Canaveral aboard a newly-built Block 5 first stage, and the newest batch of 10 Iridium voice and data relay satellites also flew a new Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket from California the same month. Telstar 18 VANTAGE's launch Monday also used a Block 5 booster fresh from SpaceX's factory.
All of the Block 5 first courses launched to date have successfully landed.
SpaceX says the Block 5 first stage sports upgrades to reduce the time and money required to get the boosters for re-flights. The latest version of the Falcon 9 booster carries a boiled up heat shield, improved landing legs, and titanium grid fins SpaceX says it can be reused, replacing aluminum fins that had to be replaced before launching the same rocket again.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and chief executive, told reporters in May that each Falcon 9 Block 5 first stage could be launched 10 times without any significant refurbishment, and up to 100 times before retirement. He said that SpaceX would re-fly the same Block 5 booster in less than 24 hours as soon as next year.
That goal remains on track for 2019, according to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, who spoke on a panel at Euroconsult's World Satellite Business Week meeting Tuesday in Paris. She said the time needed to refurbish a 5 Block booster is now down to four weeks, according to an account of her statements shared on social media.
Shotwell: Falcon 9 first stages come back in much better shape than anticipated. Have refurbishment time down to four weeks; Goal is still a one-day turnaround next year. #WSBW
– Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) September 11, 2018
SpaceX's first re-flight of a Falcon 9 first stage in March 2017, which used a previous iteration of the rocket, came nearly one year after the booster's first launch. The first reuse of a Block 5 booster Aug. 7 this is the inaugural flight.
Musk also said that SpaceX's cut its prices for a Falcon 9 rocket flight from around $ 60 million to $ 50 million for missions using a recycled first stage booster, launches more reused rockets and recoups its expenditures during development of the Falcon 9's recovery and re-flight capability.
With the Telstar 18 VANTAGE mission in the books, SpaceX's next launch is scheduled no later than Oct. 7 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, with Argentina's SAOCOM 1A Earth satellite observation. This flight is expected to be the first to attempt a return of the booster to SpaceX's landing pad at the California military base.
Rocket landings on missions launched from California so far has occurred on a drone ship downrange in the Pacific Ocean.
That will be followed by an additional two Falcon 9 launches before the end of the year from the Vandenberg spaceport, which is suited for flights heading into orbit around Earth pole-to-pole, by the end of the year.
One of the launches from California will haul up to 71 microsatellites and CubeSats into a polar, sun-synchronous orbit for satellites satellites owners, including NASA, the U.S. military, and U.S. and international research institutions. Spaceflight, a Seattle-based rideshare launch broker, is arranging the launch after a full Falcon 9 mission.
The final planned satellite deployment for Iridium's new-generation mobile telecom fleet is scheduled in November, with a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg.
At SpaceX's launch base in Florida, there are no Falcon missions planned until at least November. The gap in launch activity in SpaceX missions from Cape Canaveral since the Falcon 9 rocket returned to service in early 2017
But the lack of missions in the next few months will not mean SpaceX will be on the sidelines at the Florida launch site. One major project that will continue to be launched at the Kennedy Space Center SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, a human-rated capsule in NASA's development to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
SpaceX says the first orbital test of the Crew Dragon – without any astronauts on-board – is scheduled for no sooner than November from 39A, setting the stage for a mission with a two-man crew next year. An unpiloted resupply launch to the International Space Station with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and a cargo version of the Dragon capsule is scheduled for Nov. 27 from neighboring pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The US Air Force says the first in a new series of GPS navigation satellites is set to ride a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit from Cape Canaveral on Dec. 15. Another commercial communications satellite launch may also fit into SpaceX's schedule from Florida before the end of the year.
So far in 2018, SpaceX has launched 16 missions, including the maiden flight of its Falcon Heavy rocket. Twelve of those flights from Cape Canaveral, at an average rate of one SpaceX launch from Florida every three weeks.
SpaceX logged 18 Falcon 9 flights in 2017, a setting for the busiest year of launches in the company's history that should be broken again this year.
Additional photos of the Falcon 9 first stage at Port Canaveral on Monday are posted below.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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