CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida. SpaceX It successfully launched South Korea’s first military satellite on Monday (July 20) and also accelerated the launch of a rocket, to commemorate its twelfth launch of the year.
A soot Falcon 9 rocket It took to the skies today (July 20) at 5:30 pm EDT (2130 GMT), outside of Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here, after a 30-minute delay.
“It’s been a great day,” said John Innsprucker, lead integration engineer for Falcon 9 SpaceX, during a live commentary. “It took a while to get here, but it was worth it, with a totally successful mission today.”
The mission was originally scheduled to launch on July 14. but it was postponed by SpaceX to allow additional rocket checks before the flight.
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in Florida when the rocket soared into the blue skies. After takeoff, noise from the Falcon 9’s first-stage engines triggered car alarms at the observation site. Spectators could hear the engine rumble even after the rocket climbed into the clouds.
Video: Watch SpaceX nail its Anasis-II Falcon 9 rocket landing at sea
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For today’s mission, the California-based rocket builder was launched South Korea’s first military communications satellite, called Anasis-II. Built by Airbus Space and Defense, the spacecraft is based on the design of the Eurostar E3000 satellite and “will provide secure communications over wide coverage.” Airbus said in a statement.
Previously, the South Korean army relied on both international and civilian satellites for its communications. The company will now rely on Anasis-II, a satellite formerly known as KMilSatCom1. Purchased through a deal negotiated by Lockheed Martin, the company commissioned Airbus to build the satellite.
“Anasis-II will play a critical role in maintaining peace on the Korean peninsula, and I hope that the Republic of Korea can advance not only in its IT capabilities, but also in its space R&D efforts through this technological wonder, “said Sae Kyu Nam, president of the South Korean Defense Development Agency, in a recorded statement. The launch coincides with the agency’s 50th anniversary, but South Korean officials were unable to attend due to the current coronavirus pandemic, he added.
Today’s flight starred a veteran Falcon 9, who had previously taken two NASA astronauts to orbit on May 30 for the Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission.
Still sporty NASA retro worm logo, the second flight of the booster sets another record for SpaceX: the fastest response time so far between launches. Designated B1058 by SpaceX, this booster brought Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station less than 60 days ago. To date, SpaceX’s fastest response time between launches was 62 days. With today’s successful launch, only 51 days have passed between the two flights of this booster, a record for SpaceX.
It also breaks a record set by NASA in 1985, when the shortest change between flights for the space shuttle Atlantis was just 54 days.
When a booster returns, SpaceX engineers spend about a month inspecting the rocket (checking avionics, welds, leaks, etc.) to make sure it’s safe for flight before putting it back into the launch rotation schedule. The company finally wants to reduce that downtime from weeks to days. Then we could see more records set in the near future.
Currently, the company currently has only five active Falcon 9 reinforcements in its inventory, and of the 12 missions completed this year, two have been in new reinforcements. Therefore SpaceX relies heavily on its fleet of veteran rockets.
That means that most flights have and will be on used rockets. SpaceX has two new thrusters scheduled to enter service later this year: one will launch its next manned mission for NASA, called Crew-1, and the other will launch another improved GPS satellite.
SpaceX’s success in reusing the early stages of Falcon 9 has allowed the company to increase production of Falcon 9’s second stages, which are always new, non-reusable pieces of hardware added for each mission.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, has said he wants to launch, retrieve and relaunch a Falcon 9 booster twice in a 24-hour period. But SpaceX is not yet close to that achievement. The company has successfully launched and recovered a booster five times. (He launched another propeller on five flights, but an engine failure caused that propeller to lose its drone landing.)
SpaceX’s next Starlink mission will feature the company’s third booster to fly five times. Hidden within the nose cone of that rocket is a stack of 57 Starlink satellites, as well as two BlackSky Global Earth imaging microsatellites.
That mission which has been delayed twice due to hardware problems and Florida storms are expected to launch in late July from nearby Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
But that is just the beginning of SpaceX. After a series of delays, SpaceX has several releases on deck.
After Starlink’s next mission, SpaceX plans to launch the first polar-orbiting mission to take off from Florida in 60 years. That mission will raise an Argentine satellite called SAOCOMM 1B (its launch has been delayed since March due to the COVID-19 outbreak), followed by another batch of Starlink satellites.
After that, SpaceX will prepare to launch its next crew of astronauts to the International Space Station.
Eight minutes after today’s successful takeoff, the Falcon 9’s first-stage thruster returned to Earth, landing on SpaceX’s drone, Just Read the Instructions, which was placed in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 400 miles (645 kilometers) to the east of Cape Canaveral.
The company also deployed two ships to retrieve the Falcon 9’s payload fairing. The shell-shaped nose cone hardware protects the payload of a rocket as it travels through the atmosphere.
Historically, this hardware was discarded in the ocean, but SpaceX has worked to recycle the payload fairings along with the rocket’s first stage.
To that end, SpaceX has outfitted two ships, GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief, with giant nets so they can hook the fairing as they fall back to Earth or lift them out of the ocean. (The fairings return to Earth in two parts). To date, SpaceX has salvaged multiple fairings on multiple flights, and according to Musk this could add potential savings of $ 6 million per flight.
The effort paid off today: The ships caught the two halves of the fairing, Musk announced via Twitter about an hour after takeoff.
SpaceX successfully deployed the Anasis-II satellite approximately 32 minutes after launch, after a burnout of the upper stage of Falcon 9.
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