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For the second time in seven weeks, SpaceX, Telesat and SSL have partnered to launch a commercial satellite from Cape Canaveral early Monday, successfully deploying a high-power telecommunications orbit developed in partnership with a Hong Kong-based company. . .
The Telstar 18 VANTAGE communications satellite, also known as APSTAR 5C, was put into orbit by the Falcon 9's second leg about 32 minutes after take-off on Monday at 12:45 EDT (0445 GMT).
The spectacular departure of Cape Canaveral's Falcon 9 took place more than an hour later than expected, enough time to allow thunderstorms to illuminate the spaceport.
Once the storms moved off, the launch team of the Falcon 9 launched an automated sequencer with countdown and the very cooled RP-1 and cryogenic liquid oxygen began to sink to minus 35 minutes. .
After conducting a preflight check, the Falcon 9 went into internal power and pressurized its fuel tanks before pulling its nine Merlin main engines three seconds before take-off.
A few seconds later, restraining clips opened to release the rocket and the 70-meter (229-foot) high took off towards the Atlantic Ocean to direct its payload towards the equator.
The slender rocket fired through scattered clouds with 1.7 million pounds of jolt thrust, bow before launching its first leg to return to Earth.
While the Falcon 9 propulsion stage was targeting a SpaceX salvage barge in the Atlantic, the upper stage put its unique engine into orbit to propel the mission's payload, estimated at over 200 million. dollars.
The upper stage engine stopped just over eight minutes after takeoff, after placing the Telstar 18 VANTAGE / APSTAR 5C communication satellite in a preliminary parking orbit. Moments later, the first leg of the Falcon 9 fell into darkness – with a motor in flames – and she fell on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" parked about 650 km away. is Cape Canaveral.
The first leg of Monday's mission will be inspected and probably reused in a future launch of SpaceX. The landing was the 29th time SpaceX had recovered one of its Falcon boosters intact since the company completed the feat in December 2015.
But the work of the Falcon 9 was not complete, and the engine from the upper stage restarted for a second critical combustion to raise the height of its orbit closer to the possible satellite operating station.
SpaceX stated that the second firing phase had resulted in a target orbit and that the live video via a ground station showed that the Telstar 18 VANTAGE / APSTAR 5C spacecraft was moving away from the rocket for a 32-minute flight at above Africa.
A spokesman for Telesat, the owner and operator of the spacecraft in Ottawa, Ontario, said the ground controllers had received early signals from the new satellite shortly after the Falcon 9 was deployed, confirming that it had survived the launch.
Monitoring data released by the US military showed that the satellite was orbited from 260 kilometers to 11,266 kilometers, with an inclination of 27 degrees to the equator.
The heavy vehicle weighed more than 15,560 pounds (about 7,060 kilograms) at launch. Much of this weight is a heavy load of liquid propellant to consume, placing the satellite on its operational orbit.
The next satellite stage, built by SSL in Palo Alto, Calif., Is a sequence of in-orbit maneuvers combining a liquid fuel rocket engine and electric thrusters.
The satellite will circularize its orbit over more than 36,000 kilometers above the equator, extend its solar panels generating energy and deploy a series of antennas before starting a campaign. # 39; test. Once the tests are completed, Telstar 18 VANTAGE / APSTAR 5C should enter commercial service next month.
The satellite will be stationed in geostationary orbit at 138 degrees east longitude, where it will correspond to the Earth's rotation and replace the aging Telstar 18 / APSTAR 5 satellite launched in 2004.
"We have an embedded base on Telstar 18 that will switch to Telstar 18 VANTAGE," Tom Eaton, Telesat's vice president of international sales, said in a pre-launch interview. "So there is an element of continuity of the service involved by replacing the existing satellite, but Telstar 18 VANTAGE, being the third of our high-speed satellites, offers much more flexibility and the possibility of switching throughput capacity as well. "
Combining large regional beams and high-bandwidth spot beams, the satellite coverage area will extend from India and Pakistan west to Hawaii in the east.
APT – also known as APSTAR – from Hong Kong will use 57.5% of the satellite's communications capacity, in exchange for 57.5% of the total cost of the mission.
"With the APSTAR 5C satellite, we will be able to maintain reliable services for our existing APSTAR 5 customers and ensure the continuity of their business," said Cheng Guangren, APT Satellite's General Manager and President, a statement at the time of the acquisition of the satellite in 2015. "Meanwhile, the APSTAR 5C satellite will carry more repeaters, expand to wider service areas and include regional high-speed capabilities for meet the growing demand of the Asia-Pacific market. Region."
The Telstar 18 VANTAGE / APSTAR 5C satellite hosts two payloads – one C-band and one Ku-band – to provide services ranging from direct television broadcasting to Internet connectivity to cell phone bandwidth.
"With this newly designed satellite, the markets we are looking at … would be the rapidly growing Asian mobility market," said Eaton. "We generally think of Maritime, but also aeronautical connectivity."
In-flight WiFi for air passengers traveling across Asia and neighboring oceans, as well as Internet services for tourists aboard cruise ships, will be Telesat's main markets with the new satellite.
"These are markets with which we will be able to provide solutions to our customers, with which we could not use Telstar 18," said Eaton.
"The Asia-Pacific region is a region that needs connectivity for remote communities, especially when it comes to a country like Indonesia, where the government has put in place an initiative to connect the whole country. Eaton said, "Another area of the telecom space is the backhaul for mobile and mobile towers, and there is a fair amount of oil, gas and mineral exploration that satellites are taking over. So we're interested in this market, home-based TV shows, "said Eaton.
Monday's launch was delayed compared to last month to allow SpaceX to complete the work to ensure the rocket was ready to take off.
The mission was a meeting between SpaceX, Telesat and SSL after the successful launch of the Telstar 19 VANTAGE communications satellite on July 22, which also used a Falcon 9 rocket with an SSL spacecraft.
Telesat announced that the Telstar 19 VANTAGE satellite, which provides telecommunications services in the Americas, became operational at the end of August.
"The timing was just established that these were going to be close, so we anticipated that," Eaton said before Monday's launch. "When it comes to Telesat's mood and attitude, that's exactly what we do. Everyone has been on pins and needles to launch Telstar 18 VANTAGE. Telstar 19 VANTAGE was just an outstanding performance of SpaceX, and I would also say by Maxar (SSL) because everything works fine.
Launched on Monday, APSTAR has operated five geostationary communications satellites, while Telesat has 16 geostationary telecommunications equipment in its fleet, as well as an antenna search satellite for a low-Earth orbit planned broadband network.
Monday's mission was the 16th SpaceX launch of the year, and the 34th consecutive successful flight of the SpaceX Falcon rocket family since an explosion in 2016.
The launch company's next flight is scheduled for October 7, when a Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with the SAOCOM 1A satellite space observation satellite. This mission should include the first return of a Falcon 9 booster to land in California.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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