SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from California, lands in Pacific
Falcon rockets are launching — and landing — again.
More than four months after one exploded on a Cape Canaveral launch pad, a SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off at 12:54 p.m. EST from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and delivered 10 commercial satellites to orbit.
About eight minutes after liftoff, the rocket’s first-stage booster flew down from the edge of space to an unpiloted ship floating in the Pacific Ocean. Four landing legs touched down softly on an “X” at the center of the "drone ship" deck.
The booster was the first that SpaceX has recovered during a West Coast launch, and the seventh overall since late 2015. The company hopes to launch a satellite soon on a used booster, a capability CEO Elon Musk believes will cut launch costs and eventually make missions to Mars affordable.
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Meanwhile, the rocket’s upper-stage continued flying in a north-south orbit with 10 Iridium Communications satellites, the first of 70 SpaceX is contracted to launch by early next year.
After some suspense when a ground station failed to relay telemetry from the rocket, SpaceX confirmed all 10 Iridium NEXT satellites had been deployed about 90 minutes after liftoff.
The spacecraft, each weighing about a ton and the size of a Mini Cooper, started a $3 billion replacement of Iridium’s aging low Earth orbit constellation, whose first satellites are nearly two decades old.
The upgraded network will improve mobile voice and data connections around the globe, and enable new services including real-time tracking of aircraft and ships from space that are important to the company's growth prospects.
"Today Iridium launches a new era in the history of our company and a new era in space as we start to deliver the next generation of satellite communications," CEO Matt Desch, said in a statement.
With its successful return to flight, SpaceX could be ready to launch a commercial satellite from Florida as soon as Jan. 26. That launch will be the company’s first from historic pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the launching point for Apollo moon shots and dozens of space shuttle missions.
SpaceX’s other Space Coast pad, Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, awaits repairs after the Sept. 1 blast.
Saturday’s successful mission also was good news for NASA. The space agency hopes to see SpaceX launch supplies to the International Space Station next month, and is overseeing the company’s preparations to launch astronauts to the outpost next year.
The September explosion was the SpaceX's second major failure in 14 months, after a Falcon 9 disintegrated minutes into an ISS supply flight in June 2015.
This time, investigators determined there was a breach in the system that pressurizes super-cold liquid oxygen in the rocket’s upper stage.
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SpaceX reconfigured gaseous helium tanks situated inside the rocket's liquid oxygen tanks, and loaded the helium at a warmer temperature during fueling.
That change was expected to prevent solid oxygen from rubbing against carbon wraps covering the helium tanks, the likely source of friction that sparked the September blaze. In addition to the Falcon 9, the explosion destroyed a $200 million satellite that Facebook had planned to used to expand Internet access in Africa.
The revised fueling process appeared to work flawlessly on Saturday.
“What an awesome way to start the New Year,” SpaceX engineer Lauren Lyons said during at the conclusion of the company's launch broadcast.
Now SpaceX’s challenge is to sustain a full year of launches, including several more for Iridium.
“I really think they’ve demonstrated the ability to launch multiple satellites in a single month, and they could pull it off,” Desch before the launch. “They’re very close to being the high-rate supplier they have envisioned to be. And we need them to do that this year just to meet our requirements.”
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.