SpaceX successfully launches Italian civilian/military radar satellite
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch an Italian civilian/military radar satellite.
This was the fifth attempt to launch in five days, with the first three attempts canceled due to weather and fourth canceled because a cruise ship had violated the no-go zone in the Atlantic.
The first stage completed its third flight, landing at Cape Canaveral after sunset. I highlight this last fact because it shows how completely routine these 1st stage landing have become. No one even notices that the first stage has come back to Florida, and did in the dark. Also, this 1st stage had originally been configured for Falcon Heavy as one of its side boosters. This was its first flight after being reconfigured.
As I write this the satellite and upper stage are still linked together, coasting to the orbital point where the upper stage can boost the satellite into a transfer orbit and then deploy it. UPDATE: Satellite has successfully deployed.
The 2022 launch race:
4 SpaceX
2 China
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch an Italian civilian/military radar satellite.
This was the fifth attempt to launch in five days, with the first three attempts canceled due to weather and fourth canceled because a cruise ship had violated the no-go zone in the Atlantic.
The first stage completed its third flight, landing at Cape Canaveral after sunset. I highlight this last fact because it shows how completely routine these 1st stage landing have become. No one even notices that the first stage has come back to Florida, and did in the dark. Also, this 1st stage had originally been configured for Falcon Heavy as one of its side boosters. This was its first flight after being reconfigured.
As I write this the satellite and upper stage are still linked together, coasting to the orbital point where the upper stage can boost the satellite into a transfer orbit and then deploy it. UPDATE: Satellite has successfully deployed.
The 2022 launch race:
4 SpaceX
2 China
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Thanks to the southern trajectory, a lot of the ground cameras were able to get some AMAZING shots, including the stage separation and boostback burn.
The very first F9 “land” landing was done in the dark, way back in 2015.
Beautiful footage, can’t wait to get home and watch it on something larger than my phone!
Scott M: You reminded me that I did not link to the live stream, which is still available to see that incredible footage during launch. I have added it to the post.
You guys were right, the ground camera footage was awesome! Also, the landing of the first stage with the sun set dim in the background was absolutely beautiful. Watching SpaceX doing this never gets old for me.
I’ve never been able to find a good answer on what, if any, penalty there is for violating the range exclusion like this. Apparently if they are outside the 12 mile limit on US territorial waters it’s basically none, but I’d think in this case, even if the ship was that far out, for a known major entity like Carribean Cruise lines to either screw up that large or just say “screw it, our schedule is more important than yours”, there’s got to be some pushback..
With the unprecedented launch cadence on the Eastern Range and the presence of a number of cruise ships at Port Canaveral now, this was bound to happen sometime. I think that folks need to sit down, the Range and the Cruise lines and work this out. The Range has always felt they had carte-blanc on the offshore waters. I am sure that the situation can be improved with dialogue between the parties, I just hope the Range doesn’t climb on their customary high horse and decides to work with the other concerns.
Caribbean Cruise lines schedule is very important. Unexpected delays wreck havoc on not only the passengers but a huge amount of port infrastructure and support personnel. This costs money and hurts the companies bottom line. The Range has never had the ability to make or to take into account these impacts before, ever.
Since there are a number of cruise lines that use the Port maybe they could form a users group together so that there was only one entity the Range had to negotiate with.
Orbital mechanics and weather delay dictated the launch date, time and azimuth. I suspect the cruise ship could have avoided the exclusion are by heading East initially instead of south. In fact, they may have headed south thinking they WERE avoiding it!
Interestingly, Coast Guard is investigating the cruise ship…
https://news.yahoo.com/coast-guard-starts-investigation-royal-191328475.html