EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated at 2:15 pm EDT (1815 GMT) with the SpaceX statement.
The planned launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral from a South Korean military communications satellite has been delayed to address a problem with the launcher’s second stage and potentially replace hardware if necessary, the companies said Monday. authorities.
“Since the release of Anasis 2 tomorrow to take a closer look at the second stage, (and) swap hardware if necessary,” SpaceX tweeted on Monday. “It will announce the new target launch date once confirmed in range.”
It is SpaceX’s second mission to be postponed indefinitely in recent days as the company attempts to reduce response times for reused rockets and produce superior new stages at a rapid pace to meet an accelerated launch schedule in the coming weeks. .
SpaceX fired the Falcon 9 rocket assigned to launch South Korea’s Anasis 2 communications satellite on Saturday, and the company confirmed that the mission was on its way to take off Tuesday from platform 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. . Tuesday’s launch window was due to open at 5pm EDT (2100 GMT) and close at 8:55 pm EDT (0055 GMT).
But sources said Monday morning that the mission would be delayed, and SpaceX confirmed the delay in a tweet on Monday afternoon.
And Eastern Range, which oversees launch operations from Cape Canaveral, on Monday canceled launch danger area notices for offshore shipping and airline traffic that were associated with Tuesday’s launch opportunity.
The Anasis 2 spacecraft was manufactured by Airbus Defense and Space in Toulouse, France, and transported to Cape Canaveral last month in an Antonov An-124 cargo plane. Based on the design of Airbus’ Eurostar E3000 satellite, Anasis 2 “will provide secure communications over a wide coverage,” Airbus said in a statement.
The launch of Anasis 2 is one of five missions that SpaceX has planned until early August. A launch of the Falcon 9 from platform 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles north of platform 40, would take off Saturday with a group of commercial satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband fleet and the constellation of images of Earth from BlackSky, but SpaceX canceled the countdown “To allow more time to pay”.
The Falcon 9 launch with the Starlink and BlackSky satellites was initially launched on June 26, but SpaceX rejected the launch attempt that day and was equally vague about the reason, again citing the need for “additional time for pre-purchase.” launching”.
Two more SpaceX missions were scheduled to launch later in July from launch pads on the Florida Space Coast.
Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite was slated to launch on July 25 on a Falcon 9 rocket, and another batch of Starlink satellites was expected to launch, flying in conjunction with three Earth-observation satellites from the Planet. , in late July.
Another Starlink release was planned on a Falcon 9 in early August. Times have not been announced for subsequent Starlink missions, but SpaceX is reserved to launch the next Crew Dragon spacecraft with astronauts to the International Space Station and a GPS navigation satellite as early as September.
The release dates for those missions could be delayed as a ripple effect of the consecutive postponements of the Starlink / BlackSky mission and the Anasis 2 flight.
The Anasis 2 mission will use a Falcon 9 first stage that previously flew on May 30 to transport NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. The propeller, designated B1058, landed on SpaceX’s drone “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Atlantic Ocean, and then returned to Port Canaveral for renewal before its second flight.
In order to achieve the planned fast launch launch cadence in the coming weeks, SpaceX aims to reduce its response time for reused rockets. The shortest span between launches of the same Falcon 9 booster to date has been 62 days, which SpaceX accomplished with a mission on February 17.
If the Anasis 2 launch had taken place on Tuesday, the booster for that mission would have been launched on its second flight just 45 days after its first flight on May 30.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, previously said that he wants to launch, regain and relaunch Falcon 9 Booster twice in a 24-hour period. But Musk hasn’t recently echoed those comments, instead focusing on SpaceX’s largest next-generation Starship launch vehicle to take the next leap in reusable rocket technology.
SpaceX currently has five Falcon 9 thrusters in its inventory, and the company has flown two new early stages on its 11 missions so far this year. At least two other new first first stages of the Falcon 9 are slated to enter service in the coming months, with the next launch of SpaceX astronauts and the upcoming launch of a U.S. military GPS navigation satellite, both currently not planned before September.
A planned Falcon Heavy launch in late 2020 with a clandestine US military cargo will fly with three new Falcon rocket thrusters. SpaceX officials said in December that the company planned to build around 10 new Falcon first stages in 2020.
With its success in reusing Falcon 9’s booster stages, the company has increased production of Falcon 9’s second stages, which are new to each mission.
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