SpaceX has efficiently wrapped up its fiftieth Falcon 9 launch contained in the opening half of 2024’s fifth month. Eighteen-times-flown B1063—the present West Coast record-holding frequent flyer, having launched out of Vandenberg Area Drive Base, Calif., on 17 events since November 2020—took flight from mountain-ringed Area Launch Advanced (SLC)-4E at 11:39 a.m. PDT Tuesday, laden with 20 flat-packed Starlink satellites in help of SpaceX’s low-orbiting web communications community.
In the meantime, on the East Coast, groups at Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station’s storied Area Launch Advanced (SLC)-41 are monitoring a No Earlier Than (NET) of 4:43 p.m. EDT Tuesday, 21 Could, to launch Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on the long-awaited Crew Flight Check (CFT) to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS). Veteran NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams will spend a minimum of eight “docked” days aboard the sprawling orbital advanced executing a fancy program of flight take a look at goals earlier than returning to a parachute-and-airbag-aided touchdown within the Western United States.
Fifty launches throughout a complete calendar yr was unknown to SpaceX till as lately as 2022 and was first achieved in November of that yr, with the magical half-century of flights not attained final yr till the second week in August. Reaching No. 50 inside a yr’s first half is an astonishing accomplishment, accelerating the typical tempo of flights from one mission each 5.9 days in 2022 to at least one each 3.8 days final yr to at least one each 2.7 days so far in 2024.
This spring’s cadence of missions from the West and East Coasts has been made potential utilizing 16 reusable Falcon 9 boosters, together with two brand-new cores which got here on-line as lately as January in March. SpaceX accomplished the fleet’s first ten-launch month in January then handed 11 and 12 flights in a single calendar month for the primary time in March, in addition to flying 4 occasions from Vandenberg for the primary time in January and securing a brand new report of lower than two hours between a pair of missions in early March.
Added to that listing, the fleet swept neatly by its three hundredth Falcon 9 flight in February and its three hundredth secure touchdown of a booster final month. And three life-leading rockets triumphantly wrapped up their record-breaking twentieth launches for the primary time in April.
Together with at the moment’s Vandenberg mission, 2024’s half-century of Falcon 9 flights emplaced greater than 780 Starlink web communications satellites into low-Earth orbit in 35 flat-packed batches. And though the growth of the ever-growing Starlink constellation has consumed the lion’s share of Falcon 9 exercise within the yr’s opening half, different missions included three massive geostationary communications satellites for Sweden, Indonesia and Paris, France-headquartered Eutelsat, two crewed and two uncrewed voyages to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) and spacecraft designed to discover Earth’s oceans and atmospheric well being and the potential habitability of the Moon.
Different achievements included SpaceX’s first “Leap Day Launch” on 29 February, the flight of the primary nationwide spacefarer from Türkiye and the preliminary member of the U.S. Area Drive’s Climate System Observe-on Microwave (WSF-M) meteorology satellite tv for pc community. Sixteen of the 50 Falcon 9 flights originated from Vandenberg, which has seen within the opening half of 2024 its highest cadence of missions to date, with 13 Starlink batches totaling over 250 satellites emplaced in orbit from the West Coast, plus the 53-payload Transporter-10 “rideshare” stack and the inaugural pair of Maxar-built WorldView Legion geospatial imaging satellites earlier this month.
Flying the yr’s half-century Falcon 9 mission was B1063, which was embarking on the 18th launch of her profession and her seventeenth out of Vandenberg. She entered service in November 2020 and logged two launches in 2021, 5 in 2022 and 7 final yr.
Key payloads included NASA’s Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and Double Asteroid Redirection Check (DART), the second Tranche 0 batch of Transport and Monitoring Layer (TTL) satellites for the Area Growth Company (SDA), 5 Iridium NEXT international cell communications satellites, 16 superior broadband satellites for London, England-based OneWeb, greater than 500 Starlinks and April 2023’s 51-payload Transporter-7 “rideshare” mission.
Eight and a half minutes after launch, B1063 pirouetted to a clean touchdown on the deck of the West Coast-based Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS), “Of Course I Nonetheless Love You”, located offshore within the Pacific Ocean. And the 20 Starlinks—together with 13 with “Direct-to-Cell” performance, able to allowing cell community suppliers to supply “seamless international entry to texting, calling and searching”, whether or not “on land, lakes or coastal waters”, with out the necessity to change {hardware} or firmware—had been set to be deployed somewhat over an hour into the flight, as this story was being ready.
Consideration additionally returned at the moment to the long-awaited CFT mission, which was scrubbed lower than two hours earlier than its scheduled 10:34:14 p.m. EDT launch on 6 Could following observations of a defective oxygen aid valve on the Twin-Engine Centaur (DEC), which types the second stage of the 172-foot-tall (52.4-meter) Atlas V booster. Wilmore and Williams had simply boarded Starliner and commenced communications checks and strain checks of their “Boeing Blue” launch and entry fits when the scrub was declared by ULA Launch Director Tom Heter III.
“The oscillating habits of the valve throughout pre-launch operations in the end resulted in mission groups calling a launch scrub,” ULA reported. “After the bottom and flight crew safely egressed from SLC-41…the ULA group efficiently commanded the valve closed and the oscillations had been quickly dampened.
“The oscillations then reoccurred twice throughout gas removing operations,” the ULA abstract continued. “After evaluating the valve historical past, knowledge signatures from the launch try, and assessing the dangers relative to continued use, the ULA group decided the valve exceeded its {qualifications} and mission managers agreed to take away and exchange the valve.”
The Atlas V was duly rolled again from SLC-41 to the 30-story Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) on 8 Could and a revised NET launch goal of 6:16 p.m. EDT on Friday, 17 Could was established. However on Tuesday, NASA introduced a further postponement till no earlier than 4:43 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, 21 Could, “to finish further testing”.
It was reported that the oxygen aid valve was efficiently modified out on 11 Could, after which ULA groups carried out repressurization and system purge work and satisfactorily examined the substitute unit. Nonetheless, a small helium leak in Starliner’s service module has been traced to a flange on a single response management system thruster, which necessitates further work from NASA and Boeing personnel.
“As a part of the testing, Boeing will convey the propulsion system as much as flight pressurization simply because it does previous to launch after which permit the helium system to vent naturally to validate current knowledge and strengthen flight rationale,” NASA defined. “Mission groups additionally accomplished a radical evaluate of the info from the 6 Could launch try and usually are not monitoring every other points.”
