SpaceX Three Falcon 9 rockets were launched in succession over the weekend, bringing the total to 67. Starlink The satellite will be put into orbit within three days of receiving government approval. Federal Aviation Administration The launch will be resumed following a rare in-flight malfunction on July 11.
SpaceX kicked off its flight resume with the launch of 23 Starlink internet satellites from Kennedy Space Center early Saturday, followed by a second Starlink launch early Sunday from Cape Canaveral, putting 23 more broadband stations into orbit. A third Falcon 9 blasted off a few hours later from Vandenberg Space Center in California.
All three flights appear to have been successful without any issues.
NASA will use the Falcon 9 to launch the Northrop Grumman Cygnus supply ship. International Space Station It will launch on Aug. 3, after which SpaceX’s Crew Dragon will transport three astronauts from the space agency and one Russian cosmonaut to the lab around Aug. 18.
The second stage rocket, Crew-9, which will be used for crewed flights, is scheduled to be test-fired in the coming days from a SpaceX facility near McGregor, Texas, to ensure the company’s corrective measures do not have any unforeseen consequences.
SpaceX
“A second stage hot burn will occur around July 30th, which will be to check out some of the new modifications that will be made to the spacecraft as a result of this anomaly,” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, said Friday.
“We have been following the FAA’s investigation step by step. SpaceX has been very transparent, committed our teams to the investigation and tracked all changes to its booster.”
The space agency has not yet formally approved the launch of these flights, but the success of SpaceX’s resumption of flights this weekend will no doubt influence any final decision.
Boeing engineers also had a busy weekend, with the company The Starliner capsule is currently docked at the International Space Station.
The tests verified good performance of the previously problematic Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters and confirmed that a known helium leak in the capsule’s propulsion system remains stable and has not worsened.
Test results suggested that the thrusters would function properly as the spacecraft returned to Earth.
“Single pulse firings were designed to verify the performance of each thruster,” Boeing said in an update. “During each firing, teams reviewed real-time data to ensure all thrusters were operating at their maximum thrust ratings.”
“The helium system also remains stable,” the company said. “In addition, the RCS oxidizer shut-off valve, which was previously not fully secured and tripped several times during (Saturday’s) testing, is now operating normally.”
The Starliner crew, commander Barry “Batch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, who launched on June 5 on the spacecraft’s first manned test flight, had originally planned to spend about eight days in space.
The mission has now been ongoing for nearly two months due to thruster issues and troubleshooting efforts for five helium leaks, one detected before launch and four that occurred while the capsule was rendezvous with the space station.
NASA will conduct an extensive review this weekend to evaluate the test data and determine the spacecraft’s readiness to return Wilmore and Williams safely to Earth.
William Harwood/CBS News
As for SpaceX and the Falcon 9, the company claimed the July 11 failure was caused by a loose bracket and metal fatigue that caused a crack in a sensor line on the upper stage, which led to a liquid oxygen leak.
The leak caused extreme drops in temperatures in the engine’s pipes, slowing the flow of fluid needed to restart the engine for a planned second “burn.”
However, the engines suffered a “hard start,” damaging several components and preventing the rocket from reaching its intended orbit. The stage remained intact, but the Starlink satellites it carried into space were ejected at a much lower orbit than planned and then burned up in the atmosphere.
SpaceX senior manager Sarah Walker said Friday that the “sensing line” is not needed and will simply be removed from the rocket downstream. She said data from the sensing line can be obtained from other telemetry sources on the rocket.
As for the crewed Crew Dragon missions, the second stage engines will only fire once, so the leak that botched the Starlink launch wouldn’t be an issue for crewed missions, she added. In any case, the leaking part would likely be removed.
“I have great confidence in the team and the integrated approach NASA has taken to the response,” said Nick Hague, Crew 9’s co-pilot and a veteran of Russia’s aborted Soyuz launches, “and I look forward to being aboard the rocket when the team decides it’s time to go.”
He said the crew was training at SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California headquarters the day after the Starlink launch incident, and “they invited us into the conversation from the beginning and told us everything they knew.”
The Federal Aviation Administration, which is responsible for authorizing US launches, agreed with SpaceX’s analysis of the failure, concluding that “there were no public safety issues.”
“This public safety decision means that Falcon 9 aircraft can return to flight operations while the full investigation continues, provided all other licensing requirements are met,” the FAA said in a statement.
Walker provided an update on SpaceX’s upcoming Falcon 9 mission, and also addressed an unexpected issue with a section of the Crew Dragon’s fuselage that survived the heat of re-entry and fell to the ground.
The trunk section, equipped with solar panels, will power Crew Dragon in space and help launch the space station’s external payloads into orbit in an unpressurized environment.
Before re-entry, the trunk would be detached, and the heat-shielded crew capsule would use braking rockets to de-orbit and land on a precisely targeted ocean surface, while the trunk would continue in low orbit until it finally made an uncontrolled re-entry.
Early in the planning process, engineers had concluded that the entire trunk would burn up completely during re-entry, but on several occasions, relatively large charred pieces of the trunk survived re-entry and fell to the ground.
Both the returning Crew Dragon astronauts and the recently launched Cargo Dragon resupply ship landed in the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida.
Walker said SpaceX now plans to move all cargo and Crew Dragon splashdown to the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast. The fuselage will detach after the deorbit rocket launch and fall back into the atmosphere in roughly the same place as the crew and cargo capsules — offshore.
