SpaceX Falcon 9 launches with Intelsat 35e broadband satellite
SpaceX launched its third rocket in 12 days on Wednesday — just 48 hours after two successive dramatic last-second aborts on the launch pad.
The twin postponements added a little unexpected drama to the world of CEO Elon Musk’s upstart aerospace firm, which found itself with a backlog of customers after enduring stunning rocket explosions in 2015 and 2016.
The Hawthorne rocketbuilder is working to swiftly increase its number of orbital deliveries to keep pace with strong customer demand amid growing competition in the reborn aerospace industry.
“Our priority is to reliably launch our customers,” SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said in a written statement issued immediately after the payload — a 7-ton communications satellite — was delivered into orbit.
“SpaceX is able to attempt three launches for three customers in 12 days not only because we have the rockets, launch pads and droneships at the ready, but because we have the teams on the ground to get the job done,” she said. “We are pleased with the progress we are making this year to launch and recover our rockets, which is key towards achieving full and rapid rocket reusability.”
The Falcon 9 rocket, manufactured at the company’s Hawthorne headquarters, blasted off from Kennedy Space Center at 4:38 p.m. PDT Wednesday carrying the mammoth Intelsat satellite on its nose.
The mission was dramatically postponed on Sunday and Monday less than 10 seconds before launch on both days.
As usual, the company broadcast the launch live on its website at SpaceX.com/webcast.
Wednesday’s orbital delivery was, by contrast, smooth. Webcast viewers, anxious after the two earlier aborts, cheered the launch on social media sites.
“Wow! Now we can relax and breathe! Amazing job!!! My congrats!!!,” Denis Lysenko tweeted. Another viewer, Sven2157, tweeted: “Well done! Worth the wait!”
Minutes after launch, the bottom, first stage of the rocket was jettisoned at the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. Rather than flying back to Earth to land on an at-sea robotic barge, it was left to burn up in the atmosphere because it used all its energy lifting the massive satellite off the ground.
The upper-stage engine then carried the payload to its address in geostationary transfer orbit — an elliptical orbit where satellites can move at the same rotation as the Earth — with two engine burns directing it.
The second burn increased the rocket’s velocity from nearly 5 miles per second to more than six miles per second using a single 210,000-pound thrust Merlin engine, SpaceX officials said.
The satellite was deployed 32 minutes after liftoff. It was the 38th successful Falcon 9 mission.
Shortly after the second failed launch, on Monday afternoon, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the company would work through the July Fourth holiday to ensure a smooth liftoff.
“We’re going to spend the 4th doing a full review of rocket & pad systems. Launch no earlier than 5th/6th,” Musk wrote. “Only one chance to get it right ...”
He added on Wednesday: “SpaceX team reviewed all systems again late last night. Done our best to ensure all is good.”
SpaceX, which delivered Bulgaria Sat and Iridium NEXT satellites on June 23 and 25, is trying to launch weekly. This year, it achieved twice-monthly launches for the first time since the first Falcon 9 test flight in 2010.
This marks the fastest launch cadence yet for the company, which is trying to keep up with intense customer demand for its low-cost launches. But it came with a few road blocks.
“On Monday, during the second launch attempt, the first-stage measurement in the avionics system did not match the pre-program limit in the ground database. So the ground software halted the launch. The rocket was good and there were no changes required to the flight hardware,” senior SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said, during Wednesday’s pre-launch webcast.
“We have modified the limit for today’s countdown to avoid a possible repeat of the aborts,” he said. “The SpaceX teams spent Fourth of July conducting an additional review of both the rocket and ground systems.”
This was SpaceX’s first launch for Intelsat, which has a West Coast sales office in Long Beach. The satellite was built by The Boeing Co. in El Segundo.
The Intelsat 35e satellite, part of Intelsat’s Epic next-generation technology, is designed to beam larger, faster data streams to mobile and government customers across the Caribbean, Europe and Asia.
Launching rockets in quick succession is a priority for SpaceX, as it’s working to complete dozens of delayed orders.
Rocket explosions on June 28, 2015, and Sept. 1, 2016, pushed back dozens of scheduled customer deliveries worth more than $10 billion, SpaceX officials said late last year.
The company has not said whether any customers have canceled orders as a result of the delays. But SpaceX offers highly competitive orbital-delivery rates that are a fraction of their U.S. competitors, officials say.
Meanwhile, a SpaceX Dragon craft returned to San Pedro on Tuesday carrying the first mice ever brought back to Earth by the U.S. They will be studied for UCLA research into a promising therapy to regrow lost bone density.
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