The Falcon 9 is being lifted to the vertical position at launch pad 39A.
Mission preview
A
Falcon 9 booster that flew into space last year is set to launch again
Thursday from Florida’s Space Coast with an SES communications
satellite, a historic mission that could make major strides in
validating SpaceX’s audacious goal of recovering and reusing launchers,
and an achievement the company says will revolutionize the rocket
business.
Like all launches, the flight is risky, but SES
officials and insurers are comfortable enough to put an operational
satellite on-board.
Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer of
Luxembourg-based SES, said this week that he believes the risk has been
blunted by months of inspections, refurbishment and engineering reviews.
“We’ve
been through this thing with a fine-toothed comb,” Halliwell said
Tuesday. “SpaceX has been through this with a fine-toothed comb. This
booster is a really good booster, and we’re confident in this one.”
The
Falcon 9 rocket has rolled out to launch pad 39A with the SES 10
satellite on-board, completing the trip to the pad surface just before
midnight local time.
The next step will be to hoist the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket vertical.
Launch
preparations are still on track for liftoff Thursday after the Falcon 9
rocket returned to its hangar yesterday. The rocket has been mated with
the SES 10 communications satellite with no issues, officials said.
Once
the satellite and rocket completed a series of integrated tests today,
the Falcon 9 will be rolled back out to pad 39A and lifted vertical some
time this evening or overnight to kick off final testing and the
software upload to the spacecraft.
The
weather forecast for tomorrow evening's launch window has improved, now
predicting an 80 percent chance of acceptable conditions.
The
launch window opens at 6:27 p.m. EDT (2227 GMT) and extends
two-and-a-half hours. That enables SpaceX at least two opportunities to
launch if a problem forces an abort late in the countdown, allowing
sufficient time to recycle and reload super-chilled propellants,
officials said.
The primary concerns Thursday will be the cumulus
cloud and thick cloud weather rules, according to the official U.S. Air
Force weather forecast released this morning.
The outlook
calls for a few clouds at 3,000 feet and scattered clouds at 28,000
feet, southeast winds of 10 to 15 mph, and a temperature of 75 degrees
Fahrenheit at launch time.
If the launch is delayed to Friday,
the weather will worsen with showers, isolated thunderstorms and gusty
winds in the forecast. The forecast for Friday predicts a 40 percent
chance of good weather for a launch.
SpaceX tweeted this image of the Falcon 9 rocket conducting its static fire test at pad 39A on Monday afternoon. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX has set the first launch of a “flight-proven” Falcon 9 rocket
for Thursday evening after running the booster through a hold-down
engine firing Monday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Nearly ready for its second trip into space, the Falcon 9’s first
stage booster ignited at launch pad 39A at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) and
throttled up to full power — roughly 1.7 million pounds of thrust — for a
few seconds as clamps held the rocket on the ground.
The brief ignition of the rocket’s nine Merlin 1D main engines
occurred after SpaceX’s launch team, overseeing a computer-controlled
sequencer, prepped the launcher by filling with its supplies of
super-chilled, densified RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants.
SpaceX tweeted that the static fire test was completed successfully.
Engineers will review data from the launch rehearsal before convening a
launch readiness review later this week to formally clear the rocket for
liftoff.
The launch window opens at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) Thursday and extends for two-and-a-half hours.
The static fire test was set for Sunday, followed by a launch attempt
Wednesday, but preparations ran behind schedule over the weekend.
The launch is critical for SpaceX, which intends to re-fly its
rockets many times in a cost-cutting measure meant to reduce launch
prices and open more opportunities for space transportation and
exploration.
The engine firing as seen from the Kennedy Space Center press site. Image: Bill Harwood/CBS News.
SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk has a vision to send
large transport ships to Mars with human passengers and cargo to
eventually set up a self-sustaining civilization on the red planet.
Those lofty ambitions require spaceflight to become less expensive, and
reusability is a cornerstone to that objective.
While the company hopes to field future rockets that are rapidly
reusable, SpaceX engineers spent around four months refurbishing the
first stage booster set to launch this week. The core of the Falcon 9
first flew on April 8, 2016, with a Dragon supply ship on a cargo
mission to the International Space Station, then landed with the
assistance of rocket thrust on a mobile platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket was returned to Cape Canaveral, then trucked back to
SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, for thorough inspections
and refurbishment. The booster then traveled to SpaceX’s test site in
McGregor, Texas, for hold-down firings and returned to the Florida
launch a few weeks ago.
The rocket’s second stage, powered by a single Merlin 1D engine with a
nozzle extension, and payload fairing were manufactured new for this
week’s flight. SpaceX is working on retrieving and reusing the Falcon 9
fairing, which comes in two clamshell-like halves, while the second
stage will remain single-use for the foreseeable future.
With the static fire completed Monday, ground crews will roll back
the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket to its hangar at the southern perimeter of
pad 39A, where the SES 10 communications satellite awaits attachment to
the launcher.
The SES 10 spacecraft, tipping the scales at around 11,700 pounds
(5,300 kilograms), is already encapsulated inside the Falcon 9’s nose
fairing after being prepared for liftoff in a separate payload
processing facility a few miles to the south of pad 39A.
SES, a Luxembourg-based international telecom satellite operator,
announced its agreement with SpaceX in August 2016 to send the SES 10
satellite to orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket with a reused first stage.
While SpaceX and SES did not disclose terms of their contract for the
SES 10 launch, SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne
Shotwell said last year the launch provider was offering a 10 percent
discount for customers willing to fly their payloads on reused boosters.
That discount should become steeper on future flights, according to
SpaceX officials. The company lists a regular commercial Falcon 9 flight
at $62 million.
SES is designed to broadcast video and television services across
Latin America. It was built by Airbus Defense and Space and assembled in
Toulouse, France.
Shotwell said earlier this month that the company intends to fly up
to six reused boosters this year. The maiden launch of SpaceX’s Falcon
Heavy rocket, driven by three Falcon 9 rocket cores strapped together,
is expected to utilize one or two previously-flown boosters, but SpaceX
has not publicly identified other missions that will reuse rocket
stages.
The weather outlook for Thursday evening’s launch window calls for a 70 percent chance of acceptable conditions.
The U.S. Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron will watch for violations
of the cumulus cloud and thick cloud layer rules during the countdown.
“On Wednesday, a weak surface boundary will drape across the
Mid-Atlantic states and trail back into a developing storm system over
Texas,” the Air Force weather team wrote in a forecast issued Monday.
“On Thursday, the strengthening Texas storm system begins to track
northeasterly into the Tennessee Valley. Although the system and its
associated frontal boundary will not directly impact the spaceport until
late Friday and Saturday, upper-level cloudiness and added instability
ahead of the system is possible.”
The outlook calls for scattered clouds at 3,000 feet and broken
clouds at 28,000 feet, southeast winds at 10 to 15 mph, and a launch
time temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
If the launch is delayed to the backup day Friday, the weather is
forecast to worsen with a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions.
SpaceX’s landing platform is on the way to the landing zone a few
hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral to receive the Falcon 9 first
stage, which will again attempt a landing at sea after completing its
two-and-a-half minute firing to push SES 10 toward space.
A new robot is expected to debut after the booster touches down to
remotely safe and secure the rocket on the deck of the barge, or drone
ship, for the trip back to Port Canaveral.
The
Falcon 9 rocket's static fire test planned for today has been delayed
until Monday, likely pushing back the launch until Thursday evening.
SpaceX typically needs around three days to prepare for a launch after a
static fire test, a series of steps that include the attachment of a
satellite payload atop the rocket.
Launch preparations are running
behind schedule, and the launch window Wednesday and Thursday opens
around 4:59 p.m. EDT (2059 GMT).
The launch will send the SES 10
communications satellite into orbit aboard the first reused Falcon 9
rocket booster from launch pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in
Florida.
Launch window: 2059-2329 GMT (4:59-7:29 p.m. EDT)
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the SES 10
communications satellite. Owned by SES of Luxembourg, the spacecraft
will provide direct-to-home TV broadcasting and other telecommunication
services for Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
It will also cover Brazil and support offshore oil and gas exploration.
Notícia de hoje, 20/Março/2017: "Friday's @nasa OA-7 launch on
a @ulalaunch Atlas V got rescheduled to the 27th, which will likely
move @spacex 's SES-10 back a few days" fonte: twitter
Esse será um momento histórico em que, pela primeira vez, um foguete orbital (Falcon 9, da SpaceX) será re-utilizado. Ou seja, o foguete foi lançado, despachou uma carga em órbita (uma cápsula de suprimentos para a Estação Espacial Internacional), voltou para a Terra e pousou e vai agora voar uma segunda vez levando uma outra carga (um satélite de telecomunicação).
Sessão no Garoa. O streaming costuma começar uns 20 minutos antes do lançamento.
Farei uma apresentação sobre o tema um pouco antes do horário do lançamento. (A partir das 17h.) --Juca
Data: 27 de Março de 2017 (fiquem atentos, pois data e horário podem mudar!)
Foguete: SpaceX Falcon 9 Full-Thrust
Cliente: SES - Luxemburgo
Carga: Satélite de comunicações SES-10
Horário do lançamento: Janela de oportunidade aprovada entre 17h 58min e 21h 58min (horário de brasília) https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/842482961907892224Local do lançamento: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
Descrição do lançamento: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the SES 10 communications satellite. Owned by SES of Luxembourg, the spacecraft will provide direct-to-home TV broadcasting and other telecommunication services for Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. It will also cover Brazil and support offshore oil and gas exploration. Delayed from 3rd Quarter, October and February. Streaming: Haverá transmissão oficial da SpaceX pelo Youtube, também acessível por meio do site http://www.spacex.com/webcast
The Falcon 9 rocket is again standing vertical at pad 39A after being raised upright around 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT) this morning.
Next
up will be a series of checkouts and software uploads on the SES 10
communications satellite, followed by the start of Falcon 9 countdown
procedures this afternoon.
Final launch preps this afternoon will
include the evacuation of the launch pad prior to fueling, activation of
the Falcon 9's computer and navigation system, and a prelaunch poll by
the SpaceX launch conductor at 5:09 p.m. EDT (2109 GMT) to verify all
consoles are "go" for the terminal countdown.
Super-chilled RP-1
kerosene fuel will be loaded first into the two-stage booster, beginning
around 5:17 p.m. EDT (2117 GMT). Liquid oxygen, chilled and densified
near its freezing point, will follow starting at around 5:42 p.m. EDT
(2142 GMT).
The computer-controlled countdown will prep the
rocket’s nine Merlin 1D main engines for ignition, transition the Falcon
9 to internal battery power, and pressurize the booster’s propellant
tanks in the last 10 minutes of the countdown.
The launch window
opens at 6:27 p.m. EDT (2227 GMT) and runs until 8:57 p.m. EDT (0057
GMT). That is long enough to permit a recycle and a second launch
attempt should the first try be aborted in the final minutes or seconds.
Felipe Sanches
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Mar 30, 2017, 11:36:36 AM3/30/17
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Sources
say satellite checkouts are going ahead of schedule this morning after
the Falcon 9 rocket went vertical at pad 39A. Airbus Defense and Space,
SES 10's manufacturer, expected to need about 13 hours to test and prep
the spacecaft once the rocket was vertical at the pad.
Liftoff remains scheduled for 6:27 p.m. EDT (2227 GMT), the opening of this evening's launch window.
Felipe Sanches
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Mar 30, 2017, 12:24:02 PM3/30/17
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Walter Scriptunas II of Scriptunas Images took these photos
of the Falcon 9 rocket vertical at pad 39A this morning. Check out the
full-resolution versions to see the reused booster's tail number -- No.
21 -- visible between its four landing legs.
Felipe Sanches
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Mar 30, 2017, 4:28:22 PM3/30/17
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There
continues to be an 80 percent chance of favorable weather during this
evening's launch window, according to the official forecast released
today by the U.S. Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron.
The primary weather threat will be thick clouds.
A
front will pass through Central Florida on Friday, bringing gusty winds
and rain showers to the area. Conditions will again improve for the
backup launch opportunity Saturday, which also has an 80 percent chance
of good weather.
Felipe Sanches
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Mar 30, 2017, 4:33:16 PM3/30/17
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Good
afternoon from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where a SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket is two hours away from liftoff with the SES 10
communications satellite.
There have been no problems reported in
preparations today, and sources reported earlier that checkouts of the
SES 10 satellite were proceeding ahead of schedule.
The SpaceX
launch conductor is due to conduct a poll of his team at T-minus 78
minutes to verify their readiness to begin tanking the rocket with RP-1
kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants.
Felipe Sanches
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Mar 30, 2017, 5:35:27 PM3/30/17
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T-minus
70 minutes. The launch autosequence has started, kicking off the first
steps to begin pumping propellants into the 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 at
launch pad 39A.
RP-1 kerosene will be pumped into the two-stage
Falcon 9 rocket first, followed by liquid oxygen chilled to near minus
340 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 206 degrees Celsius) at T-minus 45
minutes.
The SpaceX launch conductor just gave the go to start propellant loading on-time.
The propellant load poll is expected in one minute.
Checkouts of the Falcon 9's flight termination system are reported complete.
There
are several changes to the Falcon 9 countdown that were first
introduced Jan. 14 on a launch from California, the first SpaceX mission
after a rocket exploded on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station in September.
Engineers changed the filling sequence to
avoid the problem of liquid oxygen becoming trapped in voids between
helium pressurant tanks and their composite overwraps, which SpaceX says
most likely caused the explosion last year.
When it debuted a
more capable Falcon 9 configuration burning super-chilled densified
propellants in 2015, SpaceX shortened its launch countdowns to begin
pumping fuel and oxidizer into the rocket just 35 minutes before
blastoff. SpaceX’s previous Falcon 9 countdowns followed a practice
employed universally on cryogenically-fueled rockets worldwide, in which
propellants are loaded aboard several hours ahead of launch.
The
“load and go” countdowns caused headaches at first, leading to several
aborts and delays before SpaceX gained experience with the practice
early last year. The late fueling plan has also drawn questions from
NASA safety advisors, who worry the procedure will endanger astronauts
strapped into to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceships, which the company is
developing to ferry people to and from the space station.
The
timeline for today’s countdown calls for RP-1 kerosene, chilled to
around 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 6 degrees Celsius), to begin flowing
into the two-stage rocket at T-minus 70 minutes. Liquid oxygen loading
will follow at T-minus 45 minutes.
A poll of the SpaceX launch team is expected at T-minus 78 minutes to give a "go" for fueling operations.
The danger area around the Falcon 9's launch pad is reported clear for the start of propellant loading operations.
Flight timeline
SpaceX’s
Falcon 9 rocket is set for liftoff from Cape Canaveral tonight, heading
due east over the Atlantic Ocean to deliver the SES 10 communications
satellite into orbit 32 minutes later.
Elon Musk speaks with reporters after Thursday’s launch of SES 10. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Spaceflight Now
There’s a lot on SpaceX’s agenda this year if the company can
maintain its pace, including refinements of the Falcon 9 rocket to
hasten refurbishment between flights and the debut of the long-delayed
Falcon Heavy launch vehicle with two side boosters recycled from
previous missions, according to company founder Elon Musk.
The Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight is expected in late summer, Musk
said Thursday after the launch of SpaceX’s first reused Falcon 9 rocket
booster. It will be a “high-risk” mission, he said, and SpaceX plans to
launch it on a pure demonstration flight.
Musk unveiled plans for the Falcon Heavy rocket in April 2011 in a
press conference at the National Press Club in Washington. SpaceX said
then that the triple-body rocket, powered by three rocket stages derived
from the Falcon 9, would fly beginning in 2013.
SpaceX starting signing customers for Falcon Heavy missions in 2012,
and the development delays forced at least two clients — Inmarsat and
ViaSat — to switch their satellites to the rival Ariane 5 rocket, while
retaining bookings for future launches.
“Falcon Heavy is one of those things that. at first, sounded easy,”
Musk said Thursday. “We’ll just take two first stages and use them as
strap-on boosters. Actually, no, this is crazy hard, and it required the
redesign of the center core and a ton of different hardware.
“It was actually shockingly difficult to go from a single-core to a triple-core vehicle,” Musk said.
SpaceX says the Falcon Heavy is a secondary priority behind
maintaining the launch tempo for the smaller Falcon 9. Officials blamed
some of the Falcon Heavy delays on Falcon 9 failures in June 2015 and
September 2016 that grounded the SpaceX rocket fleet several months each
time.
Musk said SpaceX has around 20 more missions on its manifest this
year, and only two will likely be with the Falcon Heavy, assuming it
debuts by late summer.
Musk said major testing of the Falcon Heavy is complete, and engineers are now finishing fabrication of flight hardware.
“I think they finish in about two or three months,” he said.
The inaugural Falcon Heavy will lift off from launch pad 39A at
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a facility first built for the
Apollo program’s Saturn 5 moon rocket, then modified for space shuttle
missions. SpaceX leased the pad from NASA in 2014, and rushed its
upgrades to completion after a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on nearby pad 40
in September, leaving that launch complex with significant damage.
SpaceX will need several months to repair pad 40, then the company
will relocate Falcon 9 launch operations there to fully outfit pad 39A
for the Falcon Heavy. Managers also want to have pad 40 available in
case a Falcon Heavy damages pad 39A, Musk said.
Artist’s illustration of a Falcon Heavy rocket on the launch pad. Credit: SpaceX
“Falcon Heavy, I really want to emphasize, that’s a high-risk flight —
27 engines are lighting simultaneously,” Musk said. “That’s a lot of
engines.
“Technically, it should have been called the Falcon 27,” he joked.
“Maybe that sounded too scary, so we called it the Falcon Heavy.”
SpaceX has not disclosed the orbital destination targeted on the
first Falcon Heavy mission, but Musk said the company will likely fly
“the silliest thing we can imagine” on the maiden flight.
SpaceX placed a wheel of cheese inside the Dragon spacecraft on its
first orbital flight in an ode to the Monty Python comedy group.
“That will be exciting mission, one way or another,” Musk said. “Hopefully in a good direction.”
The two reused side boosters will detach from the central core a few
minutes into the flight and return to Cape Canaveral for landing. The
core booster will continue downrange and land on SpaceX’s ocean-going
platform in the Atlantic.
“The two side boosters will come back and do sort of a synchronized
aerial ballet and land,” Musk said. “Two of the side boosters will land
back the Cape. That’ll be pretty exciting to see two come in
simultaneously, and the center core will land downrange on the drone
ship.”
File
photo of four of SpaceX’s recovered Falcon 9 rocket boosters inside a
hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center last year. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX may try to recover the second stage on the first Falcon Heavy
flight in a maneuver never before attempted. The upper stage, which
enters orbit at a velocity of more than five miles per second would need
a beefier heat shield than the first stage, which comes down at lower
speeds.
“Considering trying to bring upper stage back on Falcon Heavy demo
flight for full reusability,” Musk tweeted. “Odds of success low, but
maybe worth a shot.”
If the first Falcon Heavy flight goes well, the U.S. Air Force has
booked the second launch to haul up multiple research satellites for the
military, NASA and universities. The Space Test Program-2, or STP-2
flight will place the payloads in multiple orbits at different
altitudes.
Thursday’s reflight of a previously-used Falcon 9 first stage booster
went a long way toward SpaceX’s goal of recovering and rapidly
relaunching rockets, an achievement Musk said could, theoretically,
reduce launch costs by a factor of 100.
“The design intent is that the rocket can be reflown with zero
hardware changes,” Musk said. “In other words, the only thing you change
is you reload the propellant.”
SpaceX’s goal is to launch each Falcon 9 first stage 10 times with only inspections.
“Then, with moderate refurbishment that doesn’t have a significant
effect on the cost, it can be reflown at least 100 times,” Musk said.
He said SpaceX’s engineers were “incredibly paranoid” preparing the
previously-flown rocket for launch last week with the SES 10
communications satellite. The booster first flew in April 2016 carrying a
Dragon supply ship toward the International Space Station, then landed
on SpaceX’s offshore platform.
The rocket repeated that feat Thursday, again returning to Earth on SpaceX’s drone ship.
“The core airframe remained the same,” Musk said. “The engines
remained the same, but any auxiliary components that we thought might be
slightly questionable, we changed out.”
SpaceX plans up to six more reflights of Falcon 9 first stage
boosters this year, including the two side boosters on the first Falcon
Heavy. Officials have not identified customers for the other reuse
launches, but SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell told
reporters that the SES 14 and SES 16 communications satellites scheduled
to launch on Falcon 9 rockets in the fall are candidates to ride on a
previously-flown launch vehicle.
The company recently leased a disused former Spacehab processing
facility near the southern gate of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to
refurbish rocket hardware. SpaceX has retrieved eight first stage
boosters to date — including landing one vehicle twice — but at least
three of those first stages are not intended to fly again.
The first booster that landed at Cape Canaveral in December 2015 is
on display outside SpaceX’s headquarters building in Hawthorne,
California, and the first stage that launched last week with SES 10 will
be put on public display somewhere at the Florida spaceport. Engineers
ran through a series of extensive ground testing with a rocket that
lifted off with a Japanese communications satellite last year, leaving
it unsuitable for a second launch.
Another upgrade to the Falcon 9 family is due later this year to ease
the work needed between flights of the same first stage booster, raise
the power of the rocket’s Merlin engines, and test out safety features
for future launches with astronauts.
The so-called Block 5 configuration of the Falcon 9 will fly at least
seven times with a “frozen” design before NASA puts astronauts on the
rocket, according to space agency officials.
SpaceX is one of two companies — along with Boeing — working on
commercial spaceships to ferry crews to and from the space station. The
Crew Dragon capsule will launch on Falcon 9 rockets from pad 39A, and
SpaceX has finished construction of a new access arm for astronauts to
board the spacecraft before liftoff.
The access arm will be installed at pad 39A some time later this year during a lull in launch operations.
A test flight of the Crew Dragon spaceship without astronauts aboard
is penciled in on SpaceX’s manifest for November, followed by a
demonstration with two crew members no sooner than May 2018.
NASA considers those target launch dates optimistic, and they assume
everything goes according to plan, said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s
commercial crew program, in a presentation last week to the NASA
Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee.
“The most important part of Block 5 will be operating the engines at
their full thrust capability, which is about 7 or 8 percent — almost 10
percent — more than what they currently run at,” Musk said. “And a
number of other important (things) to have reusability go smoothly as
well, like the forged titanium grid fins. It’ll bring in a bunch of
other factors.”
One
of the four grid fins on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage heats up from
the booster’s re-entry March 30 after launching the SES 10
communications satellite. Credit: SpaceX
The new grid fins will replace the first stage’s current aluminum
winglets, four of which help stabilize and steer the rocket during
descent. SpaceX added the grid fins to the first stage after crashing
for the first attempt to land a rocket on the drone ship, incorporating
the deployable fins to improve steering.
On a typical launch, the first stage jettisons from the upper segment
of the Falcon 9 around two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, then
activates cold gas nitrogen thrusters to to flip around to fly tail
first. Soaring above 60 miles (100 kilometers) in altitude, the
internationally recognized boundary of space, a subset of the booster’s
nine Merlin engines then reignite multiple times to slow down for a
vertical landing.
“Some of the technical elements that are the most tricky, I think,
for reuse are the base heat shield of the rocket (and) the grid fins,”
Musk said. “If you saw the webcast (of SES 10’s launch), you may have
noticed the grid fins were lighting on fire.”
The aluminum grid fins currently flying on the Falcon 9 are covered in heat shield material.
“But it gets so hot that it lights on fire a little bit, which is not
great for reuse,” Musk said. “The new grid fins should be capable of
taking a scorching and being fine.”
The upgraded rocket will have more control authority on descent, Musk added.
“It will actually improve the payload to orbit by being able to fly
at a higher angle of attack, and use the aerodynamic elements to
effectively glide,” Musk said. “It actually does have a lift-over-drag
(ratio) of roughly one if flown at the right angle of attack, but you
need control authority, particularly pitch control authority.”
Engineers want to add a thermal barrier coating to replace the paint
currently used on the first stage, which can melt and bubble from the
extreme heating of re-entry.
The heat shield at the base of the rocket protects the engines and
the plumbing of the booster’s propulsion system. It currently has to be
replaced between each launch of the same rocket.
“I think we’ve got the base heat shield thing addressed,” Musk said.
“We’ve got a good plan for the grid fins, and there are a bunch of
little things that need to be ironed out.”
But Musk said he is optimistic SpaceX can achieve his goal of landing
and reflying a first stage booster within 24 hours as soon as next
year.
“It does seem as though we may do maybe half a dozen more flights of a
reflown booster this year, and then next year probably double that,”
Musk said. “Then I would suspect that, for the Falcon architecture over
time, probably three-quarters of our missions, or more, are with a
reflown booster.”
Engineers also are experimenting with recovering the Falcon 9 payload
fairing, a composite structure that covers satellites during the first
few minutes of launch, then splits open in two halves to fall into the
sea.
Musk confirmed one half of the fairing from the SES 10 launch
Thursday landed intact, using tiny thrusters and a steerable parachute
to soften its splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Block 5 upgrade — Musk said he prefers to call it Version 2.5 —
will include around 100 changes to the vehicle, according to Gwynne
Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer.
Shotwell said in February that the changes include a fix to a turbine
wheel cracking issue in the Falcon 9’s Merlin engines publicly
disclosed in a government watchdog report.
Musk’s long-term objective for SpaceX is to dispatch huge transport
ships to Mars, eventually carrying hundreds or thousands of people to
settle on the red planet.
Rocket reusability “is a critical part of the Mars plan, if you
consider the goal … is not to be a single mission, but one where we
establish a self-sustaining city on Mars,” Musk said.
