Hello Friends, hope you all are doing great
and we are here again with some very interesting
updates for you.
Today we will mainly cover two topics, SpaceX's
first polar launch from Florida and ULA's
aborted Delta IV heavy mission.
On Sunday evening, SpaceX successfully launched
another Falcon 9 rocket with a payload of
three satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
However, the surprising news is that, after
the launch, the SpaceX rocket took an exceptional
path to South, rather headed towards eastward.
This mission originally planned to head for
the polar orbit, which is a path from Earth’s
North Pole to South Pole.
Now, this is very unusual to see a rocket
lift off from East Coast, Florida and head
towards South, but SpaceX’s Falcon 9 made
it possible.
Since 1969, most of the rockets normally launched
from East Coast, Florida, head eastward towards
the equator.
That way, rockets covers most of the ocean
areas to get to the space.
US polar rockets also have taken lift off
from the Southern coast of California to fly
over Open Ocean while heading towards southward.
The main reason is to keep rockets away from
populated area.
On November 30, 1960, a Thor DM-21 rocket
exploded before getting into the Stratosphere
and a part of its fuselage killed a Cuban
cow.
Because of that the rockets fly over ocean,
far away from the land, until SpaceX’s Falcon
9, carrying an Argentinean Satellite headed
south after crossing over Florida’s Southeast
Coast and Cuba.
In 2016, wildfires got close to the Vandenberg
Air Force Base, in California, which was US’s
main polar launch site at that time to launch
all Polar rockets.
The fire caused severe damage around the launch
pad resulted delaying a launch for two months.
After that US Air Force started planning to
shift their polar launches to Cape Canaveral
in Florida.
The 45th Space Wing of Cape Canaveral then
decided to cut down the number of launches
and allow minimum number of rockets to fly
polar missions with some restrictions.
Officials of Cape Canaveral Space Wing permitted
those polar launches, which has an in-built
automated flight terminating system (AFTS)
that allows a rocket to terminate itself depending
on the situation.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 offers this special AFTS
feature as per that requirement Falcon 9 is
the only rocket that can fly from Florida,
to southward coast.
SpaceX said, Falcon 9 has designed with this
self-destructing feature for safety purposes,
if the rocket move away from its path for
some reason or something goes wrong then the
rocket could self-destruct itself without
any contact from the ground.
After a successful launch, the rocket will
be flying close to populated land, keeping
that in mind; any issues from the rocket must
be handled immediately.
“It will overfly Cuba, but it’ll be at
an altitude that we’re safe, just like when
we’re going north,” Brig.
Gen. Douglas Schiess, commander of the 45th
Space Wing, said in a press call.
“As we get up into the northern part of
North America, we start to overfly some islands
as well, but we’re at a safer altitude at
that point.”
The commander of the 45th Space Wing assures
people’s safety as he stated that, Falcon
9 followed the right path that will keep everyone
safe.
“I know that we’re meeting all the safety
requirements now, and it really comes down
to being at the right altitude [and] speed
at that time — to make sure that any debris
that were to fall would be small enough, or
not even impact any land, which makes this
ability to launch that from a safe perspective.”
There is a possibility that gasses coming
from rocket’s engine could interfere with
signals that are sent to self-destruct the
rocket, in that case, Falcon 9 must blow itself.
It is the feature that allows SpaceX to take
polar launches from Florida’s ground.
The community assures SpaceX’s future flights
will also have this Autonomous flight terminating
system.
SpaceX planned a double Falcon 9 launch last
weekend, one with polar mission and another
one carrying 60 SpaceX starling satellite
broadband.
SpaceX starling launch originally scheduled
to Sunday morning from NASA’s 39A, Kennedy
Space Center.
After finishing all the launch preparations,
SpaceX’s team finally shut down the launch
because of incompatible weather conditions.
According to the latest updates, the community
decided to reschedule the launch for Thursday, September 3
In Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, weather
conditions were also poor with medium rainfall
and lightning.
After cancelling the previous SpaceX Starlink
launch, SpaceX was focused for its Falcon
9 polar launch.
At 7:18 p.m. weather showed slight improvements,
which was enough to launch SpaceX’s Falcon
9.
The rocket took its final countdown and at
the exact moment, it lifted off from Florida’s
ground.
Falcon 9 was carrying SAOCOM-1B, an Argentinean
satellite as the main payload along with two
other satellites, GNOMES-1 and TYVAK-0172.
SAOCOM-1B satellite deployed 14 minutes after
the rocket has launched, while exactly one
hour for other two satellites after the launch.
The SAOCOM (Satellites for Observation and
Communications) is a two-satellite program
worth of $600 million including launches.
This mission previously scheduled to March
2020, had been delayed due to the global pandemic.
Two years ago, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 also launched
previous SAOCOM satellite (SAOCOM-1A), from
Vandenberg Air force Station (SLC-4E).
Both of the satellites launched into a polar
orbital trajectory to fly over the Earth’s
poles but SAOCOM-1B is the only satellite
that launched into the polar orbital trajectory
from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex while
first stage of Falcon 9 landed safely on ground.
SpaceX completed its 15 launch of 2020 as
the two-staged reusable rocket took off the
ground.
After successfully deploying all three satellites,
first stage of the rocket touched the Landing
Zone-1 in Cape Canaveral.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 previously completed two
dragon cargo missions.
These two missions launched the Dragon 1 resupply
capsule for International Space Station.
Including this mission, B1059, the first stage
rocket booster completes a second trip as
this booster previously landed to the same
place after delivering CRS-20 mission into
orbit.
For landing on the firm ground, the booster
detached from its upper stage, managing its
position while floating on the sky.
Finally, a series of three engine burns gently
landed it on the ground.
SpaceX uses two drone ships named “Of Course
I Still love You” and “Just Read The Instructions”,
to recover most of its rocket boosters.
When the boosters are back in Florida’s
Port, SpaceX send to the main facility for
inspection and reuse again.
Now let's have look at some updates regarding
ULA's Delta IV heavy launch getting scrubbed
for the second time.
An unexpected reason caused The United Launch
alliance to abort its two-staged beast.
According to the timeline, the rocket has
previously scheduled to lift off on 30th August,
Saturday at 2:04 a.m. but a high temperature
reading from the rocket delayed the countdown
to 3:28 a.m. unfortunately, the community
had to abort the lift off just three seconds
before the final countdown reaches zero.
This would have been a fascinating scene if
the rocket had lift off for Cape Canaveral’s
ground.
Usually just before the launch the three orange
boosters of Delta IV heavy gets covered by
fire, though the same happened this time but
without noticing the engine never started,
the crew announced "lift off".
Later ULA director announced that the launch
has been called off.
The Delta IV heavy rocket is one of the powerful
rockets in ULA that has completed number of
most expensive missions for National Reconnaissance
Office (NRO), and NASA.
Previously, the rocket successfully launched
NASA’s Parker Sola Probe from Cape Canaveral
launch site.
According to ULA, this would have been 8th
Delta heavy launch for NRO missions.
ULA’s Delta 4 heavy did not lift off as
the reason for launch failure later came out
as “hot fire abort”.
According to the ULA, officials.
Before of this launch, ULA presented first
ever 3D projection for its Delta 4 heavy rocket
and to celebrate United Launches Allience’s
legacy of 140 successful mission.
The presentation started followed by a countdown
of Delta 4 Heavy rocket.
Later, the projection showed, Delta 4 heavy
virtually lifted off from ground while the
background keeps changing according to the
current scenario.
It is the first time an actual rocket used
as a background; this idea came from the CEO
of United Launch Alliance, Torry Bruno himself.
Though it was unclear what the exact problem
was, but it would take at least a week to
get prepared for the re-launch.
As mentioned earlier, it should not collide
with any SpaceX’s launch plan from Cape
Canaveral.
SpaceX also had a plan to launch a Starlink
mission earlier in the day, but due to bad
weather it was rescheduled.
The way that ULA abort the launch was very
dramatic as well as rare.
This type of failures often illustrates the
reason behind why rocket manufacturer companies
organized so many tests, why they take test
flights before the actual launch.
That's all from our side my friends; we will
soon come back with more updates.
So be with us to catch the latest updates..till
then..Stay safe, take care & Good bye.
