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SpaceX conducted a test firing of a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday afternoon at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, overcoming a major hurdle before launch Saturday night, weather permitting, with a crew. of four people heading to the International Space Station.
The 215-foot-tall (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket fired its nine Merlin 1D main engines at 3:49 p.m. EST (2049 GMT) on Wednesday and accelerated to full power for several seconds. Holding clamps held the launcher firmly on the ground as the engines fired to generate 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
An exhaust burst emerged from the trench of flames on deck 39A, and a thud could be heard for miles around as the Falcon 9 completed a pre-flight test fire before a launch scheduled for 7:49 p.m. EST Saturday (0049 GMT Sunday) with three NASA astronauts and a Japanese space plane bound for the space station.
The mission will be the first rotational flight for SpaceX’s operational crew using the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, following a successful Crew Dragon test flight to the space station earlier this year.
Wednesday’s static fire test was a regular test SpaceX conducts before most of its missions. Parked inside the launch control center firing room near Kennedy’s iconic Vehicle Assembly Building, the SpaceX launch team handled an automated countdown that loaded kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the new two-stage rocket. three miles away on platform 39A.
After the engine fired, the launch team drained the booster rockets and prepared for the next activity: a planned “dry dress rehearsal” for Thursday in which NASA Commander Mike Hopkins Pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi will don their pressure suits and board their Crew Dragon “Resilience” capsule on platform 39A.
Hopkins and his crewmates will use the rehearsal to walk through the steps they will take on the launch pad, from the suit in the NASA crew quarters to the journey to platform 39A inside two Tesla Model X cars. On the platform, astronauts will take an elevator up the service structure and cross the crew access arm to the clean room, where the SpaceX liquidation crew will help them enter the spacecraft.
Thursday’s dress rehearsal will not involve filling the Falcon 9 rocket with propellants.
Officials from SpaceX and NASA plan to convene a Launch Readiness Review on Friday to assess the status of preparations for the Saturday night launch opportunity. They will also discuss the weather forecast.
In a tweet confirming the successful result of the static fire test Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX said officials are monitoring weather conditions for liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center and along the rocket’s flight path to the northeast over the Atlantic Ocean.
Mission managers will track winds, wave conditions, lightning strikes, and rainfall at more than 50 locations in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the U.S., east of the Canadian Maritime provinces, and across the west of Ireland. The Crew Dragon capsule could abort and fall into those areas in the event of a launch failure.
The first official weather forecast for the Falcon 9 launch opportunity Saturday night shows a 60% chance of favorable conditions for liftoff at the Florida spaceport. The top climate concern is cumulus clouds, according to the 45th US Space Force Meteorological Squadron.
The forecast does not take into account wind and wave conditions along the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s ascent corridor across the Atlantic, or the upper-level wind criteria for the Falcon 9 ascent through the atmosphere. .
There is a backup launch opportunity available at 7:27 pm EST Sunday (0027 GMT Monday).
Once launch occurs, Crew Dragon will fly an automated rendezvous profile to connect with the space station, delivering Hopkins, Glover, Walker, and Noguchi to the orbiting outpost for a six-month expedition. They will join three other crew members currently living and working on the space station.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ EstebanClark1.
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