SpaceX’s two fast-maneuver payload fairing recovery vessels were in the right place at the right time on Monday to catch the two halves of the nose deck launched by a Falcon 9 rocket that went into orbit with the communications satellite Military Anasis 2 of South Korea.
The California-based launch company released a couple of videos on Twitter on Tuesday, showing views of each of the fairing recovery boats as the ships sailed under deck decks that drop below parachute about 40 minutes after the Falcon 9 takeoff from Cape Canaveral.
pic.twitter.com/4VHZr8gK6D
– SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 21, 2020
The twin recovery ships, called “Ms. Tree” and “Ms. Boss,” were located about 480 miles (775 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean for Monday’s mission.
The Falcon 9 rocket took off from Cape Canaveral at 5:30 pm EDT (2130 GMT) Monday with Anasis 2, South Korea’s first dedicated military communications satellite. On the way to orbit, the launcher dropped its first-stage booster, which descended back to Earth for a precise landing on SpaceX’s unmanned spacecraft in the Atlantic Ocean.
Moments later, the Falcon 9’s upper stage lit up, then released the two-piece, shell-shaped nose cone that protected the Anasis 2 satellite from aerodynamic forces and airflow for the first few minutes of flight. At that time, the rocket was flying at an altitude of approximately 68 miles, or 110 kilometers, over the densest layers of the atmosphere.
The first stage maneuvered back to Earth using a series of jet burns from its main engines, allowing it to target land on the SpaceX landing pad. The booster was making its second launch after its first use helped launch NASA astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on May 30.
The new first-stage flight on Monday, 51 days after its May 30 mission, marked the shortest change between flights of a Falcon 9 booster.
The Falcon 9’s fairing hulls return to Earth in a more unguided manner, using cold gas thrusters to orient themselves for the deployment of a steerable parachute, or parafoil, to slow down before reaching the ocean.
The fairing recovery boats are equipped with a giant net to catch the falling fairing halves. SpaceX has caught a fairing shell in previous missions, and has pulled the other half out of the ocean, but Monday’s achievement was the first time the company has captured both pieces of the fairing in the same launch.
Catching the fairing with the net helps reduce seawater contamination, facilitating restoration of the nose cone for reuse on future flights.
The company wants to reuse the fairing more regularly, seeing it as the next step to reduce launch costs after testing landing and reuse of Falcon booster stages. The fairing helmets flown on Monday’s mission were brand new.
The Falcon 9’s fairing is about 43 feet (13.1 meters) high and is about 17 feet (5.2 meters) in diameter.
SpaceX first reused a fairing in a Falcon 9 launch last November, bringing 60 of the company’s broadband Starlink satellites into orbit. Since then, the company has repeated the feat.
Other launch providers scrap the fairing, but SpaceX began using a fast-moving dinghy to navigate under a fairing after launches from California in early 2018. The efforts attributed a series of near-misses, prompting engineers to evaluate the reuse of the fairings that fell into the sea.
Since then, SpaceX has added a second fairing recovery vessel to its fleet and has moved fairing capture vessels to Florida, where the company has a higher launch rate.
The first fairing that SpaceX reused last November was recovered from the ocean after a Falcon Heavy launch in April 2019.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, told reporters in 2018 that each new fairing costs around $ 6 million.
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