A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket deployed South Korea’s first dedicated military satellite into orbit on Monday half an hour after a fiery launch from Cape Canaveral, which helped fulfill an agreement between Lockheed Martin and the South Korean government in exchange for Korea’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets six years ago.
South Korea’s Anasis 2 military communications satellite shot out of Cape Canaveral at 5:30 pm EDT (2130 GMT) Monday on top of a Falcon 9 launcher. Nine main Merlin engines on the Falcon 9 rocket powered the 229-foot (70-meter) above ground launcher, and the Falcon 9 turned east over the Atlantic Ocean, exceeding the speed of sound in approximately one minute.
Powered by the same first-stage booster that launched astronauts on May 30 in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, the Falcon 9 thundered into a sunny sky after a 30-minute delay on Monday that the company attributed to rain. transient.
The first stage closed and parted ways with the second stage of the Falcon 9 approximately two and a half minutes after takeoff, beginning maneuvers to accurately land on SpaceX’s floating landing pad about 400 miles (645 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral. The reusable first stage landed on target aboard the unmanned ship “Just Read The Instructions”, ready to return to the Florida Space Coast for another flight.
The boost used in Monday’s launch set a record for the fastest response time between flights from a 51-day orbital-class rocket stage. The shortest span between launches of the same Falcon 9 booster was previously 62 days, which SpaceX accomplished with a mission on February 17.
NASA achieved a 54-day response time between two launches of the space shuttle Atlantis in late 1985, a record that never coincided during the 30-year shuttle program. The time between the landing of Atlantis and the next launch was 50 days.
SpaceX may eclipse its record for rocket response time again in the coming weeks, with more missions in the company’s packed launch program, all using reused rocket stages. The next new Falcon 9 booster is not expected to fly before the end of September.
SpaceX confirms a successful landing of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket on a drone in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is the same booster that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft launched on May 30 with astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken.
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– Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) July 20, 2020
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s second-stage engine was powered up twice to inject the Anasis 2 spacecraft into an elliptical transfer orbit that stretches thousands of miles above Earth. The satellite will use its on-board engine to circle its orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 km) above the equator, where it will provide services for the South Korean army.
John Insprucker, a SpaceX engineer and manager who co-sponsored the company’s launch webcast on Monday, declared it a “totally successful mission.”
The Anasis 2 spacecraft was manufactured by Airbus Defense and Space in Toulouse, France, and is based on the design of Airbus’ Eurostar E3000 satellite.
Anasis 2 “will provide secure communications over a wide coverage,” Airbus said in a statement.
South Korea acquired the satellite, formerly known as KMilSatCom 1, through a “offset” agreement to offset South Korea’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin. In exchange for South Korea’s purchase of 40 F-35 fighter jets, a deal valued at more than $ 6 billion, Lockheed Martin agreed to provide the Anasis 2 satellite to the South Korean military, among other compensation.
Lockheed Martin finally outsourced the satellite manufacturing agreement to Airbus and reserved Anasis 2 launch services with SpaceX.
“Lockheed Martin is honored to deliver on the promise and commitment made to the government of the Republic of Korea with the successful launch of the Anasis 2 satellite,” Lockheed Martin said in a statement. “This launch and the planned delivery into orbit later this year are the first milestones signifying the completion of a compensation project related to the sale of the F-35 to ROKG (Government of the Republic of Korea) in 2014.”
Before Anasis 2, the South Korean military relied on international and civilian-owned satellites for communications. A dual-use satellite called Anasis 1 was launched in 2006 to provide commercial and military telecommunications services.
More details about the Anasis 2 satellite are secretly shrouded in the wishes of the spacecraft’s owner, the South Korean government. SpaceX did not broadcast live video of the Anasis 2 satellite deployed from the Falcon 9 rocket, citing a request from its client.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, later tweeted on Monday that the company had successfully recovered both halves of the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing using two ships parked on the high seas in the Atlantic Ocean.
The twin fairing recovery ships – named “Ms. Tree” and “Ms. Boss” – were dispatched to positions nearly 500 miles (800 km) east of Cape Canaveral. Both ships are equipped with giant nets to try to catch the fairing halves, which descend under a parachute.
The Falcon 9 launched the shell-shaped payload fairing about three and a half minutes after liftoff on Monday, once the rocket flew over the dense, lower layers of the atmosphere. The cover protected the Anasis 2 satellite during the initial escalation of the rocket away from Florida.
The successful recovery of the fairing marked the first time that SpaceX managed to double capture both halves of the fairing on the same mission. On previous flights, SpaceX either caught only one of the fairing hulls or retrieved them after splashing in the ocean.
Monday’s mission was SpaceX’s twelfth launch of the year, but it was the company’s first launch in 2020 dedicated to a customer other than NASA, the U.S. Army, or SpaceX’s own Internet Starlink project.
Of SpaceX’s previous 11 missions this year, seven launched satellite clusters for the company’s own Starlink broadband network. One such mission carried a payload of three commercial SkySat Earth observation satellites for Planet.
Three of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 missions so far in 2020 have been for NASA.
A Falcon 9 flight on January 19 launched a Crew Dragon capsule for a high-altitude test of the spacecraft’s abort system. A Dragon cargo ship launched on March 6 on a Falcon 9 rocket to refuel the International Space Station, and Crew Dragon’s first flight with astronauts took off on a Falcon 9 rocket on May 30.
SpaceX’s most recent launch before Monday delivered an orbiting GPS navigation satellite to the U.S. Space Force.
The market for large commercial geostationary satellites has slowed in recent years, although there are signs that orders to build and launch geostationary communications spacecraft are on the rise again.
SpaceX has another release planned for an external external client that will launch later this month. Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B radar observation satellite is preparing for launch in Cape Canaveral on a Falcon 9 rocket next week.
SAOCOM 1B was originally scheduled for launch in March, but officials at CONAE, the Argentine space agency, requested a delay in launch due to travel and work restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. Using new physical distance and security protocols, the teams returned to Cape Canaveral from Argentina earlier this month to resume preparations on the SAOCOM 1B satellite.
SpaceX also has several more Falcon 9 launches with Starlink satellites off the Florida space coast in August. In September, SpaceX is gearing up for a launch with the upcoming Crew Dragon spacecraft to bring astronauts to the space station, and another Falcon 9 flight with a GPS navigation satellite for the U.S. Army.
Other missions in the SpaceX manifesto later this year, in addition to regularly scheduled flights to add satellites to the Starlink Internet network, include Falcon 9 launches with a Dragon cargo ship to deliver supplies to the space station, communications satellites commercials for Turksat and SiriusXM, a US-European Oceanography Satellite suite and a ride-sharing mission that transports dozens of small satellites into polar orbit.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will also be launched on the company’s schedule in late 2020. After taking off from the Kennedy Space Center, the heavy-duty rocket will deploy payloads rated in geostationary orbit for the US Space Force.
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