POT
On Tuesday, SpaceX will attempt to launch a 3.7-ton Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite for the US Air Force. This GPS III launch is scheduled to occur on a Falcon 9 rocket between 3:55 pm ET and 4:10 p.m. ET (19: 56-20: 10 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The launch marks the first time that SpaceX will seek to recover a reinforcement used to launch a satellite for the US military. Although the launch was originally contracted to fly in an expendable reinforcement, Space News reports that the US Space Force Missile and Space Systems Center agreed to review some mission requirements so that SpaceX could return the reinforcement. In return, the company withdrew “several million dollars” from the launch price, which was originally awarded to SpaceX in 2017 for $ 96.5 million.
SpaceX needs this first stage to help balance a busy second half of the year.
On May 11, 2018, the company released the first of its new “Block 5” version of its Falcon 9 rocket. This new first-stage version incorporated all of the company’s previous performance updates to the Falcon 9 rocket while maximized its reuse. It worked: SpaceX has now flown two different Falcon 9 cores five times, and can fly a first stage a sixth time later this summer.
The success of the Block 5 rocket means that SpaceX has had to spend less time and resources building the early stages of Falcon 9. Since May 2018, it has been launched 31 times on a Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 rocket, while using solo. 10 cores. Put another way, reuse has saved SpaceX the cost of 189 Merlin rocket engines, dozens of fuel tanks, and many complex avionics systems.
But only four of these first ten stages remain. In the past two years, SpaceX has lost a couple of the early stages, for example, in December 2018, a flaw in the network’s fin pump caused a first stage to land on the Florida coast, and it has spent some intentionally during the launch of particularly heavy payloads. . So, from its fleet of 10 early stages of the Falcon 9 rocket (based on information from readers and this resource on the r / SpaceX subreddit), SpaceX currently only has these cores in service for Falcon 9 launches:
Booster 1049
- Five missions flown (September, 2018-present)
- Days since last flight: 27
- Next flight: Unknown
Booster 1051
- Four missions flown (March, 2019-present)
- Days since last flight: 69 days
- Next flight: Starlink-9 (early July)
Booster 1058
- A mission flown (May, 2020-present)
- Days since last flight: 31
- Next flight: Unknown (possibly Anasis-2 in July)
Booster 1059
- Three missions flown (December, 2019-present)
- Days since last flight: 17
- Next flight: Unknown
Tuesday’s launch of the Lockheed Martin-built GPS III satellite will therefore add a new boost to SpaceX’s first-stage rocket fleet. The company also has two more new Falcon 9 first-stage thrusters on the way, with another GPS III mission in August and then the Crew-1 mission that takes four NASA astronauts to the International Space Station probably sometime in September.
However, SpaceX will have to be careful when managing its fleet. The company has a busy second half of 2020 planned, with approximately six additional Starlink Internet satellite launches, several trade missions, a couple of NASA launches, and a couple of US military launches in its manifesto.
Completing all of these missions will require the company to continue to successfully return to its early stages, exceed five flights per booster, and possibly further reduce response time between missions. So far, the company’s record for the time required to verify and re-certify a Falcon 9 first flight stage is 63 days.
The bottom line is that today’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket is an essential mission for the US Air Force, but for SpaceX, retrieving the new core in the Just read the instructions drones will be just as important for flying a long manifesto in 2020. Reuse is no longer experimental; It is on the critical path.
The webcast below should start about 15 minutes before the start window opens.
GPS launch III.
