Posted on 07/17/2016 7:09:07 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
Forecasters predict mostly clear skies and light winds at the surface and aloft for Monday’s launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a resupply mission to the International Space Station, favorable conditions for the booster’s liftoff and landing at Cape Canaveral.
The official launch weather forecast released Friday by the U.S. Air Force’s 45th Weather Squadron calls for a 90 percent of acceptable conditions for liftoff at 12:45:29 a.m. EDT (0445:29 GMT) Monday.
A weather axis draped over Central Florida will lift north over the weekend, setting up generally good weather Monday.
“This will result in moderate temperatures and morning showers over the spaceport, but mostly clear afternoons as sea breeze storms move inland,” Air Force forecasters wrote. “The main weather threat on launch day will be cumulus clouds and flight through precipitation with these showers. Maximum winds will be from the northeast at 30 knots at 36,000 feet.”
The predicted conditions also look good for a landing attempt by the Falcon 9’s 15-story first stage booster about 10 minutes after liftoff. Using engine power and aerodynamic grid fins, the first stage will head for a vertical rocket-assisted touchdown at Landing Zone 1, a former Atlas launch pad leased from the Air Force by SpaceX.
The landing target sits just north of the eastern tip of Cape Canaveral, a few miles south of the Falcon 9’s Complex 40 launch pad near the northern perimeter of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The Falcon 9 booster’s return to landing at Cape Canaveral will mark the second time SpaceX has tried recovering a first stage onshore. All other first stage landing attempts have occurred on a barge positioned several miles offshore in the Atlantic or Pacific.
A Falcon 9 rocket returned to Cape Canaveral for the first time Dec. 21 a few minutes after blastoff with 11 Orbcomm communications satellites, putting on a first-of-its-kind display of light and sound that played out like a launch in reverse, with the brilliant exhaust from the booster’s center Merlin engine appearing as a bright ball of orange falling toward the beachfront landing zone.
Thundering sonic booms heralded the rocket’s descent, rattling windows for miles around.
A similar nighttime spectacle is expected early Monday.
SpaceX released a statement Friday warning residents on Florida’s Space Coast of the landing.
“As with the return of the first stage from the Orbcomm-2 mission, there is the possibility that residents of northern and central Brevard County, Fla. may hear one or more sonic booms during landing,” the statement said. “A sonic boom is a brief thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other vehicle flies overhead faster than the speed of sound.”
The rocket will soar toward the northeast from Cape Canaveral, the trajectory necessary to reach the International Space Station, and return to the Florida coast from the same direction, heading northeast-to-southwest.
“Residents of the communities of Cape Canaveral, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Courtenay, Merritt Island, Mims, Port Canaveral, Port St. John, Rockledge, Scottsmoor, Sharpes, and Titusville in Brevard County, Fla. are most likely to hear a sonic boom, although what residents experience will depend on weather conditions and other factors,” SpaceX said.
The rocket recovery attempt at Cape Canaveral early Monday comes nearly seven months after the last touchdown on land. In the meantime, SpaceX has launched six Falcon 9 rockets and tried landing all the boosters at sea.
After two crash landings in January and March, the Falcon 9 boosters nailed three touchdowns in a row following a string of launches April 8, May 6 and May 27. The rocket used on the last Falcon 9 launch June 15 suffered another faulty landing at sea.
SpaceX hopes to fly a used Falcon 9 first stage again later this year. Engineers planned to subject a separate flown Falcon 9 booster stage — one that will not launch again — through a battery of intense testing to confirm the structure can withstand a second mission.
Monday’s launch will be the 27th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and the 32nd space launch attempt by SpaceX in its history. It is also the seventh launch of the latest upgraded version of the Falcon 9 with higher-performance Merlin engines, larger fuel tanks, and super-chilled cryogenic propellants.
The Dragon spacecraft mounted atop the 213-foot-tall (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket is packed with nearly 5,000 pounds of cargo, crew provisions and experiments for the space station’s six residents. The upcoming Dragon mission will be the ninth of 20 commercial resupply missions through 2019 NASA has awarded to SpaceX under a nearly $3 billion contract first signed in 2008.
NASA originally signed SpaceX to 12 missions for $1.6 billion, but in a rare move under NASA contracting, neither the space agency nor SpaceX will disclose the value of several contract extensions that added eight more Falcon 9/Dragon flights to the contract.
SpaceX is also guaranteed at least six additional cargo deliveries, and possibly more, under a separate follow-on resupply contract signed earlier this year, which covers the space station’s logistics needs from 2019 through 2024.
The Hawthorne, California-based space transportation provider is also working on a Crew Dragon capsule to ferry astronauts to and from the space station. Boeing won a similar contract for its CST-100 Starliner crew carrier.
Live launch coverage:
http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/07/17/spacex-9-mission-status-center/
http://original.livestream.com/spaceflightnow
CRS-9 hosted webcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThIdCuSsJh8
CRS-9 technical webcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCCyVCvN2bo
Follow on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/spaceflightnow/
Latest update:
21:43 p.m. EST
SpaceX installed time-sensitive cargo into the pressurized cabin of a Dragon resupply capsule Sunday in the final hours before liftoff with nearly 2.5 tons of experiments and a critical docking system to welcome piloted commercial spaceships to the International Space Station.
Using a pristine, climate-controlled access port, SpaceX technicians added the “late load” cargo into the Dragon spacecraft while the Falcon 9 rocket sat horizontally at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad.
The ground crew then erected the 213-foot-tall (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket vertical at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad just after 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) for final preflight checks and fueling.
The Dragon spacecraft perched on top of the slender, two-stage rocket is crammed with nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies. The spaceship will take a two-day trip to the space station, and the research lab’s robotic arm will grapple the approaching Dragon capsule around 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) Wednesday.
The equipment loaded inside the Dragon’s internal compartment includes experiments aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of DNA sequencing in orbit, studying the heart’s response to microgravity, and investigating how to better protect computers from radiation in space.
Mission press kit:
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/spacex_crs9_press_kit.pdf
CRS-9 Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-9
Among other cargo, an International Docking Adapter (IDA-2) will be carried to the ISS; IDA-1 was lost with CRS-7 and will be replaced by IDA-3 on CRS-12. This mission will attempt a first-stage landing at Cape Canaveral.
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch schedule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches
Great post..!
Praying!!
Wow! That Mars Colonial Transport is a monster. Think it’ll ever get built?
Bookmark
Oh yeah. They have already started development of the Raptor engines that will power it. Each engine is expected to develop one million pounds of thrust. That’s 27 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_(rocket_engine)
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/03/spacex-advances-drive-mars-rocket-raptor-power/
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/01/18/spacex-air-force-funding-infusion-raptor-engine/
SpaceX CRS9 At Pad 40 - 4K - 07-17-2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUfTx-RSOxU
Thanks for all the information. I am now listening to Cunningham on the radio and staying up for the launch...the sky was pretty clear at sundown...might be very pretty and not get lost in clouds for visibility...
Love living here and seeing all this activity.
Small-lift launch vehicle, capable of lifting up to 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) to low-Earth orbit
Medium-lift launch vehicle, capable of lifting 2,000 to 20,000 kg (4,400 to 44,000 lb) of payload into low-Earth orbit
Heavy-lift launch vehicle, capable of lifting 20,000 to 50,000 kg (44,000 to 110,000 lb) of payload into low-Earth orbit
Super heavy-lift launch vehicle, capable of lifting more than 50,000 kg (110,000 lb) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO)
That’s pretty kewl seeing it live in your own backyard!
Brevard County, Florida nite owl launch ping.
This flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket seeks to deliver the Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station with its payload of 1.7 tons of supplies as well as an International Docking Adapter. This adapter will allow crewed versions of the Dragon Spacecraft and Boeing's Starliner to perform automated rendezvous and docking maneuvers with the station beginning in late 2017 or early 2018.
Impressively, the company appears to be increasing its launch rate while also making two substantial improvements to its Falcon 9 launch system. The first, recoverability, has gotten the most attention. SpaceX has now landed three of its Falcon 9 boosters on an autonomous drone ship and one on land. Another land-based try is forthcoming—about eight or nine minutes after Monday morning's launch, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will fly back to a landing zone near Cape Canaveral.
The second improvement, using super-cooled liquid rocket fuel, also represents a significant advance. In December 2015, the company debuted its Falcon 9 Full Thrust vehicle, an upgrade from the Falcon 9 v1.1 that included a number of improvements. Perhaps most notable was its use of supercooled liquid oxygen and kerosene fuels. Because colder liquids can be compressed, more of these fuels can be loaded into the Falcon 9's tank. Although it initially led to some difficulties during the fueling process and launch aborts, SpaceX appears to have mastered loading these colder fuels onto the rocket.
The result is a 30-percent gain in power and the ability to launch considerably more mass to low-Earth orbit—22.8 tons now compared to 13.2 with the older version of the rocket. This also means that if you're launching a payload that weighs less than that into space, you've got plenty of fuel left over to stick a first stage landing back on Earth.
SpaceX in 2016: Launching more with a better rocket that it can land [Updated]
I just made a pot of hot tea and assembled my favorite chocolates...ready to go sit by the pool and wait for the show! 12:45? still on schedule...we’ll see.
Staying up tonight to watch? I am ready to go outside and sit and wait!
Yep. I have enough time to watch liftoff on the computer and then go outside to see it clear the trees.
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