SpaceX finds a way to extend the launch window for Europa Clipper
The launch window for SpaceX’s launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper to Jupiter has now been extended a full week because the company has revised the launch process and made hardware changes.
The new launch window runs from October 10th to November 6th.
Usually the two side boosters come back to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station so they can be reused and sometimes the core booster is recovered at sea, but not this time. All their fuel will be used to get Europa Clipper on its way to Jupiter. Piloto said SpaceX “made some hardware modifications that enable the launch vehicle to utilize all the fuel in the boosters,” but couldn’t go into detail about what they are because the information is proprietary.
[The NASA official] added that SpaceX has gained experience in flying this configuration — it’s the 11th Falcon Heavy launch — and the company has “come up with a strategy to optimize throttling of the launch vehicle to get more performance out of it.”
NASA and SpaceX have also decided to use NASA’s orbiting communications constellation during the launch instead of ground stations, which increases their flexibility and margins.
I wonder if the FAA has approved these changes. Or even if anyone there even understands them.
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The launch window for SpaceX’s launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper to Jupiter has now been extended a full week because the company has revised the launch process and made hardware changes.
The new launch window runs from October 10th to November 6th.
Usually the two side boosters come back to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station so they can be reused and sometimes the core booster is recovered at sea, but not this time. All their fuel will be used to get Europa Clipper on its way to Jupiter. Piloto said SpaceX “made some hardware modifications that enable the launch vehicle to utilize all the fuel in the boosters,” but couldn’t go into detail about what they are because the information is proprietary.
[The NASA official] added that SpaceX has gained experience in flying this configuration — it’s the 11th Falcon Heavy launch — and the company has “come up with a strategy to optimize throttling of the launch vehicle to get more performance out of it.”
NASA and SpaceX have also decided to use NASA’s orbiting communications constellation during the launch instead of ground stations, which increases their flexibility and margins.
I wonder if the FAA has approved these changes. Or even if anyone there even understands them.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in the past two weeks has the mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Any further developments in the non-radiation-hardened chips? I assume they have just decided to let’er rip! Perhaps there will be some software error-correction tweaks that that can be uploaded during the long voyage?
For this to work, NASA had better be in charge of safety. It will be the only way around the FAA.
Ray,
NASA did tests of some kind that satisfied it that the MOSFETs in question will work suitably given Europa Clipper’s plan of operation. The planned passes through the Jovian radiation belts will be of short duration and the MOSFETs will “anneal” between passes. It was never the plan that Clipper be entirely immunized against radiation effects.
About the extended launch window, the only way to extend it is to get more total delta-V from somewhere. It looks as though the source of the extra ooompf will be the expending of both side boosters as well as the center core. Removing grid fins and landing legs from all three cores also lightens the whole vehicle. I think NASA simply decided to pay SpaceX an extra $50 million to buy a completely expendable FH launch and, thereby, get that extra week of launch window. I would say that’s a good move.