Falcon 9 reentry seattle8/6/2023 ![]() ![]() No issues occurred at any point and the countdown entered its Automated Sequence, all while the tanks were still in the process of being filled, a task most rockets finish with minutes or even hours to spare, but not Falcon 9. Polling of the launch team at T-38 minutes revealed everything was in readiness to load the vehicle with propellants. Given the compressed timeline with fueling only in the last hour of the count, all tests were completed well beforehand and awarded the 70-meter tall rocket a clean bill of health. Heading into a lengthy countdown on Monday, Falcon 9 was powered up 12 hours prior to the opening of the day’s five-minute window to undergo detailed testing while teams cleared the launch complex to get set for propellant loading. To make Monday night’s launch a success, Falcon 9 had to go through a modified countdown procedure that in and of itself already presented a significant challenge as over 500 metric tons of sub-cooled Liquid Oxygen and chilled Rocket Propellant 1 had to be pumped into the two-stage rocket in a period of just 32 minutes – no small feat as shown in the Static Fire Test completed last week which needed three attempts to get the tanking sequence tuned right in order to have both stages at flight mass at the correct T-0 time, not a trivial task when working with sub-cooled propellants. Successful Delivery of 11 Orbcomm Second Generation Satellites to Orbit Photo: Orbcomm Demonstration of a new second stage MVac Engine Modification for multi-burn missions (outcome pending) First successful landing of a rocket stage involved in an orbital mission First Launch of the Full Thrust Version of the Falcon 9 employing uprated engines and densified propellants Successful Return to Flight of the Falcon 9 Family after June’s SpX-7 Launch Failure The following achievements were accomplished by the Falcon 9 / OG2 Mission: Monday night’s Falcon 9 launch and landing checked off an impressive list of accomplishments in just one single mission as SpaceX continues full-speed ahead and already looks at a packed launch manifest to begin the new year. Long Exposure of Monday night’s accomplishments, picturing the ascent of the Falcon 9 rocket from its launch pad, the short re-entry burn and the final landing burn to a safe touchdown in Landing Zone 1 – Credit: SpaceX Initially experimenting with parachutes deployed from first stage boosters for a gentle splashdown in the ocean, SpaceX quickly turned to the much more complex technique of returning rockets under the power of their own engines – enabling them to return to the launch site for rapid refurbishment and re-use, a vision that started taking shape with the inauguration of a gradual series of improvements of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket – giving it the ability to re-start its engines, maneuver around in the rarefied upper atmosphere, guide its way back to a landing site by tilting and rotating four grid fins and coming to rest on four deployable landing legs, ideally without tipping over. Launching a rocket is already an ambitious undertaking, but fabricating a sequence of events to return a booster stage after dispatching a payload on its way to orbit has been unprecedented and required years of work by thousands of SpaceX employees, at the forefront the company’s CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk who expressed ambitions to make access to space affordable through reusability years back when starting out on the Falcon 1 rocket. SpaceX achieved a new milestone in space flight history Monday night when the company’s Falcon 9 booster successfully guided its first stage to a safe onshore landing, returning from the edge of space in a high-speed orbital delivery of 11 Orbcomm second generation satellites. It had been a day where everything had to go just right – with no room for error to accomplish an impressive list of achievements in just over ten minutes time. ![]() The Falcon 9 booster comes in for a bullseye landing after a successful return from the edge of space. ![]()
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