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Falcon 9 B1058.2 is erected on SLC-40, ready to launch the South Korean Army’s Anasis 2 communications satellite.
Trevor Mahlmann
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This 1058.2 booster is the Falcon 9, supposedly with the NASA worm logo on the other side, but that side of the rocket was far from where the media installed cameras.
Trevor Mahlmann
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The Korean flag adorns the Falcon 9 payload fairing, which contains a South Korean military communications satellite.
Trevor Mahlmann
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Close-up of the illustrations of the Korean fairing.
Trevor Mahlmann
SpaceX will attempt to launch a South Korean military communications satellite on Monday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The Anasis 2 mission has a launch window of almost four hours, from 5 p.m. ET (21:00 UTC) until 8:55 p.m. (00:55 UTC Tuesday).
This effort follows a delay from last week, when SpaceX canceled a launch attempt to investigate a second-stage problem. The company has not said whether it replaced the second stage of this release or fixed an issue with existing hardware.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of Monday’s launch is that, if successful, it would break the company’s record for response time for a first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. This booster was first used on May 30 with the launch of the Demo-2 mission for NASA, successfully sending astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station. A launch on Monday means the company will have reused this booster in just 51 days.
This time period would not only break SpaceX’s previous response record in a couple of weeks, but would also break the response record for any orbital rocket. In 1985, before the space shuttle Challenger accident caused NASA to reduce its efforts to restore the shuttle between flights, Atlantis It returned to space just 54 days after landing, marking the shortest time between orbiter reuse.
Ultimately, SpaceX hopes to reduce the response time between releases from weeks to days, but since it is still learning from the process, special care is being taken between releases. After a reinforcement is returned to the company’s hangar in Florida, the first stage is inspected for leaks and good welds, then the rocket’s avionics are tested, plus some additional tests. This investigation takes almost a month before a booster is put back into the processing stream for a new mission.
After today’s launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage of the Falcon 9 on its Just read the instructions unmanned ship, which will be parked in the Atlantic Ocean. The satellite is slated to deploy 32 minutes after launch, after a second burn from the rocket’s second-stage Merlin engine.
There is a 70 percent chance of favorable conditions this afternoon in Florida. The webcast below should start about 15 minutes before the start window opens.
Launch of Anasis 2.
Listing image by Trevor Mahlmann
