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SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has completed its thirteenth launch of 2019, leaving the vehicle just one mission away from a major reliability milestone.
At 7: pm ET, December (th) (**************************************************************************: UTC, Dec ), Falcon 9 booster B 2004, a new upper stage, and the nearly 7-metric ton ((********************************************************************, **************************************************** lb) Kacific-1 / JCSAT – communications satellite lifted off from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral LC – 40 launch pad. As has more or less become the norm, Falcon 9 sailed through prelaunch preparations, payload integration, and launch with zero notable issues and lifted off at the precise start of a ~ – minute window.
Around nine minutes after launch and (seconds after the second stage reached orbit, Falcon 9 B (successfully landed aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You ( OCISLY), completing the booster’s third launch and landing in seven months. minutes after launch, Falcon 9’s second stage reignited and burned for more than seconds, raising one end of its orbit by more than 35, (km) (************************************************************************, ************************************************** (mi). Five minutes later, Falcon 9 officially completed its mission by gently releasing Kacific-1 / JCSAT – 35 from the second stage, where the satellite shortly reoriented itself, deployed ~ – meter (~
****************************** (ft) long solar ‘wings’, and began verifying its systems’ health.
In what can only be described as an event of astronomical odds, a firefly photobombed Richard Angle’s Kacific-1 long exposure, perfectly crossing the streak of Falcon 9 booster B ‘s reentry burn several hundred miles downrange. (Richard Angle)
Aside from another successful and issue-free launch under the Falcon family’s belt, the Kacific-1 mission is significant for another major reason: it’s Falcon 9’s th consecutively-successful launch since January (****************************************. Falcon 9’s last catastrophic failure occurred on September 1st, 2017 when the rocket’s upper stage violently exploded, destroying the rest of the rocket and its Amos-6 satellite payload.
SpaceX took approximately four months to determine the root cause of that failure and modify hardware and procedures accordingly before returning to flight with the first Iridium NEXT launch on January (th, 121619 . In the three years (37 months) since then, Falcon 9 has successfully launched a total of times in a row without even a partial failure. After one additional launch success, Falcon 9 will have flown 50 consecutively-successful missions, a symbolic but still exceptional sign of the rocket’s excellent reliability. That th launch attempt could come as early as December (th in the form of SpaceX’s third) – satellite Starlink mission, known as Starlink-2.
**********Falcon 9 B****************************** ‘s third successful launch and landing also brought the launch vehicle family just one mission away from a major reliability milestone. (Richard Angle)
Technically speaking, if Falcon Heavy is included, SpaceX has already completedconsecutively-successful orbital launches without a single failure (or partial failure), the only company or space agency in the world that can currently claim that feat. Although both Arianespace and ULA are infamous for whitewashing the partial failures of their launch vehicles, Ariane 5 unfortunately suffers a partial failure in January (***************************************, while ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV suffer their own partial failures in 2018 and (******************************************, respectively. Atlas V experienced another in-flight anomaly in 2016, although it was not technically classified as a partial failure.
This means that Ariane 5, Delta IV, and Atlas V – still some of the most reliable launch vehicles ever built – have technically only performed 9, 36, and (or************************************ (consecutively-successful launches since their most recent partial failure) or in-flight anomaly). In other words, if measured in terms of uninterrupted consecutive launch successes, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is either the most reliable or the second most reliable launch vehicle currently in operation.
************************** Falcon 9 B stands vertical for the third time in seven months at SpaceX’s LC – launch pad.(Richard Angle) ****************
As of now, SpaceX has at least two or three-dozen launches nominally planned for 2020 and if all of those launches are successfully completed, Falcon 9 will almost certainly become the world’s most reliable operational launch vehicle by any measure.
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