SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has conducted its third flight of the year on Thursday, following a scrub due to high winds on Tuesday. The launch carried a commercial communications satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The launch took place from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.



Falcon 9 Launch:

The launch carried the EchoStar XXIII satellite into orbit for EchoStar Corporation.

With a mass of around 5,500 kilograms (12,000 lb), EchoStar XXIII was the heaviest geosynchronous payload yet launched by the Falcon 9, requiring the rocket to fly in a fully-expendable configuration.

By eliminating the attempt to recover the rocket’s first stage, which has been a feature of SpaceX’s recent launches, the rocket does not need to conserve fuel for first stage landing maneuvers and also saves weight through the elimination of hardware carried to support the landing – including the landing gear and grid fins.

EchoStar XXIII was constructed by Space Systems Loral (SSL), based on the SSL-1300 bus. The satellite was originally constructed as EchoStar XIII, or CMBStar, which was intended to be used under a partnership between EchoStar and the Chinese government to provide s-band mobile video broadcasting during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The program was abandoned in April 2008, after construction was complete, when it became clear the satellite would not launch in time for the Olympics – although the reason stated for the cancellation was that performance specifications had not been met.

The EchoStar XXIII satellite was ordered in 2014, to reuse the spacecraft which had been constructed for the earlier mission. The large antenna which would have served mobile users of the EchoStar XIII satellite has been replaced with four Ku-band antennae with thirty-two transponders, while the satellite is also able to offer S-band and Ka-band communications.

The satellite has a design life of fifteen years and will begin its service life in an orbital slot at a longitude of 45 degrees West. However, it is able to operate in any of EchoStar’s eight geosynchronous slots allotted to Ku-band broadcasting satellites.

The launch took place from the historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Built in the 1960s for the Apollo program, LC-39A served as the prime launch pad for manned Lunar missions. Every Apollo mission to visit the moon, except for Apollo 10, lifted off from LC-39A atop a Saturn V rocket – the pad was also used for the Saturn V’s first two unmanned launches, Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, the Earth-orbit Apollo 9 mission, and to launch the Skylab space station aboard a modified two-stage version of the Saturn V.

Following the Skylab launch, LC-39A was converted to serve the Space Shuttle, which made its maiden flight from the pad on 12 April 1981. The Space Shuttle flew eighty-two of its 135 missions from Launch Complex 39A, with its other flights being made from Complex 39’s other pad, LC-39B.

Since the end of the Space Shuttle program a third pad has been added to the launch complex; LC-39C is located within the perimeter of pad 39B, and is designed to accommodate smaller rockets. It has not yet been used for a launch.

The final Space Shuttle launch, STS-135, occurred from LC-39A on 8 June 2011. NASA announced in 2014 that it had agreed to lease pad 39A to SpaceX for twenty years, with SpaceX converting the facility to service its Falcon 9 rocket as well as the future Falcon Heavy.

A new hangar was constructed at the base of the pad’s ramp, replacing the role of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) in integrating rockets.

In contrast to Saturn and the Space Shuttle, which were stacked vertically atop a mobile platform and then rolled to the pad atop a crawler transporter vehicle, Falcon is assembled horizontally and then erected on the launch pad.

The launch of EchoStar XXIII is the second for SpaceX from the Kennedy Space Center, following the Falcon 9’s inaugural mission from the site last month.

EchoStar XXIII was the first commercial geosynchronous satellite to be launched from Kennedy since January 1986 – when Space Shuttle Columbia deployed the Satcom K1 spacecraft, with the aid of a PAM-D2 upper stage, during the last successful Shuttle mission before the loss of Challenger.

Before Challenger, commercial satellites – along with other payloads for NASA and the US military – were frequently deployed during Space Shuttle missions.

Beginning with Columbia’s STS-5 mission in 1982, a total of twenty commercial communications satellites were deployed. The Shuttle would carry the satellites into low Earth orbit, with perigee kick motors such as the Payload Assist Module (PAM) boosting them into geosynchronous transfer orbit.

Although commercial satellite deployments were halted after Challenger, NASA and the military continued to fly satellites aboard the Shuttle into the 1990s.

The Space Shuttle’s final geostationary payload was NASA’s TDRS-G – later TDRS-7 – communications satellite, which Discovery deployed with the aid of an Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) in July 1995’s STS-70 mission.

The final Shuttle mission dedicated to satellite deployment was STS-93, conducted by Columbia in July 1999, which placed the Chandra X-Ray Observatory into a highly elliptic orbit – again using an IUS.

The EchoStar launch was the first from LC-39A not in support of the International Space Station since Space Shuttle Atlantis flew the final Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, STS-125, in May 2009.

The launch was the ninety-sixth from Launch Complex 39A, the 155th from Launch Complex 39 and the 156th overall from the Kennedy Space Center.

The mission was the thirty-first flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, which made its debut with a test launch in June 2010.

The first five launches used a configuration which has retrospectively been known as Falcon 9 v1.0, with the sixth launch onwards introducing the v1.1 configuration which stretched both the first and second stages of the rocket, rearranged the first stage engines from a square to octagonal formation and upgraded the vehicle’s engines.

The current configuration, known informally as the Falcon 9 Full Thrust or Falcon 9 v1.2, further stretched the vehicle’s second stage, introduced supercold liquid oxygen – which is denser than the liquid oxygen used previously, allowing a greater mass of oxidizer to be carried within the same tank volume – and uprated engines.

The Falcon 9 was designed with reusability in mind; where mission requirements allow, the first stage is equipped with landing gear and makes a series of engine burns to guide itself back to Earth after separation.

A major goal of the Full Thrust configuration was to increase the rocket’s performance so that an attempt to recover the first stage could be made on nearly all missions, either aboard an Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) downrange, or where the mission’s performance margin is sufficient by returning to the launch site.

SpaceX has achieved in increasing level of success with recovery attempts; recovering eight first stages from thirteen attempts.

The mission did not include a landing attempt, as delivering EchoStar XXIII into geosynchronous transfer orbit required too much of the rocket’s performance. The rocket flew without the legs and grid fins used in landing attempts, with the spent first stage falling into the Atlantic Ocean once it completed its burn.

Fuelling of the Falcon 9 for the launch began seventy minutes before liftoff with loading of RP-1 propellant. A poll eight minutes beforehand verified that controllers were happy to proceed into this stage of the countdown. Oxidizer loading began forty-five minutes in advance of launch.

Most of the countdown’s visible activity occurred in the final ten minutes. At the seven-minute mark chilldown of the vehicle’s engines began. Shortly afterwards the strongback – the structure used to transport the rocket to the launch pad, erect it and to provide umbilical connections, retracted by a degree and a half as a test ahead of its full retraction as the rocket lifts off.

Final approval to launch was given by the US Air Force’s Range Control Officer (RCO) and SpaceX’s launch director at the 120-second and 90-second marks in the countdown respectively.

Three seconds before launch, the first stage’s nine Merlin 1D engines ignited, with the rocket lifting off as the countdown reached zero. As Falcon began its climb away from the pad, the strongback fell away from the vehicle to its retracted position.

Falcon 9 passed through the area of maximum dynamic pressure – or Max-Q – where the vehicle experiences peak aerodynamic stress, seventy-six seconds after liftoff. The first stage burned for two minutes and forty-three seconds before cutoff, or MECO.

Four seconds after MECO the spent stage was jettisoned, with second stage ignition taking place eight seconds after stage separation. The payload fairing separated from the nose of the vehicle forty-eight seconds into the second stage burn.

To deploy EchoStar XXIII, the Falcon 9’s second stage was called upon to make two burns. The first of these lasted five minutes and 36 seconds, establishing an initial parking orbit.

Following a 17-minute, 48-second coast phase the second stage restarted its vacuum-optimised Merlin-1D engine for a sixty-second second burn. The end of this burn, at 27 minutes and 19 seconds mission elapsed time, concluded powered flight.

Spacecraft separation occurred six minutes and 41 seconds later, thirty-four minutes after liftoff.

The third mission for SpaceX in 2017, the launch followed last month’s CRS-10 Dragon mission to the International Space Station and January’s deployment of ten Iridium communications satellites.

The Iridium launch, conducted from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, marked Falcon’s return to flight after a Falcon 9 exploded on its launch pad last September during fuelling for a test firing ahead of the planned launch of the Amos 6 satellite, which was destroyed in the explosion.

*Click here for 100s of SpaceX News Articles*

The launch marks the start of a busy two weeks on Florida’s Space Coast, with a Delta IV launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station scheduled to deploy the WGS-9 communications satellite and an Atlas V slated to carry Orbital ATK’s next Cygnus spacecraft, the SS John Glenn, to the International Space Station.

The next mission for SpaceX is currently scheduled for 27 March, with another Falcon 9 from LC-39A deploying the SES-10 satellite. That launch is expected to be the first to re-fly a first stage recovered from a previous mission.

EchoStar’s next launch is expected to be conducted by International Launch Services at the end of April; a Proton-M rocket with a Briz-M upper stage will carry the EchoStar XXI satellite into orbit.

(Images via SpaceX and L2 Historical. To join L2, click here: //www.nasaspaceflight.com/l2/)</s>KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Under stellar Florida skies, a private SpaceX Falcon 9 took flight overnight and flawlessly delivered the commercial EchoStar 23 television satellite to geosynchronous orbit after high winds delayed the rockets roar to orbit by two days from Tuesday. Breaking News: Check back for updates

The post midnight spectacle thrilled spectators who braved the wee hours this morning and were richly rewarded with a rousing rush as the 229 foot tall Falcon 9 rocket thundered to life at 2:00 a.m. EDT Thursday, March 16 from historic Launch Complex 39A on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and sped to orbit.

The two stage Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered the commercial EchoStar 23 telecommunications satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) for EchoStar Corporation.

The satellite was deployed approximately 34 minutes after launch.

 EchoStar 23 will be stationed over Brazil for direct to home television broadcasts and high speed voice, video and data communications to millions of customers for EchoStar.

The entire launch sequence was broadcast live on a SpaceX hosted webcast that began about 20 minutes before the revised liftoff time of 2:00 a.m. from the prelaunch countdown, blastoff and continued through the dramatic separation of the EchoStar 23 private payload from the second stage.

The EchoStar 23 launch counts as only the second Falcon 9 ever to blast off from pad 39A.

SpaceX’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk leased historic pad 39A from NASA back in April 2014 for launches of the firms Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy carrying both robotic vehicles as well as humans on missions to low Earth orbit, the Moon and ultimately the Red Planet.

The inaugural Falcon 9 blastoff successfully took place last month on Feb. 19, as I reported here.

However unlike most recent SpaceX missions, the legless Falcon 9 first stage will not be recovered via a pinpoint propulsive landing either on land or on a barge at sea

 .

 Because of the satellite delivery to GTO, there are insufficient fuel reserves to carry out the booster landing.

“SpaceX will not attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage after launch due to mission requirements,” officials said.

Therefore the first stage is not outfitted with either landing legs or grid fins to maneuver it back to a touchdown.

SpaceX announced that this was the last launch of an expendable Falcon 9.

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.

By Ken Kremer - 

 Dr. Ken Kremer is a speaker, research scientist, freelance science journalist (Princeton, NJ) and photographer whose articles, space exploration images and Mars mosaics have appeared in magazines, books, websites and calendars including Astronomy Picture of the Day, NBC, FOX, BBC, SPACE.com, Spaceflight Now, Science and the covers of Aviation Week & Space Technology, Spaceflight and the Explorers Club magazines. Ken has presented at numerous educational institutions, civic & religious organizations, museums and astronomy clubs. Ken has reported first hand from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, NASA Wallops, NASA Michoud/Stennis/Langley and on over 70 launches including 8 shuttle launches. He lectures on both Human and Robotic spaceflight - www.kenkremer.com. Follow Ken on Facebook and Twitter</s>A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket brought the new EchoStar XXIII satellite to space. The satellite will provide its service to Brazil for up to 15 years. (Photo : Roberto Gonzalez/Getty Images)

SpaceX is definitely back. After a mishap that prevented Elon Musk's commercial space flight company from launching rockets since September of 2016, the company now has two rocket launches under their belt this year.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from NASA's historic Complex 39A launch pad inside the Kennedy Space Center. The rocket will bring an EchoStar XXIII communications satellite into the geostationary transfer orbit.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 EchoStar XXIII launch was originally scheduled for March 14, but was rescheduled to March 16 due to bad weather. Although there were delays, the launch was completed early Thursday.

The heavyweight payload (estimated at six tons) demanded more effort from the Falcon 9 rocket, therefore no return trip was initiated. The rocket's own weight was trimmed down to make way for its heavy payload by eliminating landing gears and reserve fuel for the trip back that took up space and weight during launches.

This is the first Falcon 9 to be used without landing gears in almost two years, according to Space.com. The successful launch was to fulfill pending SpaceX contracts that were affected by the company's suspension in late 2016. The company is expected to perform more launches in the coming months in order to catch up with its pending obligations to its clients.

SpaceX hosted a comprehensive webcast with the video being supported by experts input during the duration of the launch. Narrators explain the stages of the EchoStar XXII launch as it happens to make it easier to watch and understand.

The live webcast followed the rocket until stage 2, where Falcon 9 brought EchoStar XXIII to space. Once the rocket becomes operational in the geostationary transfer orbit, it will provide its service to Brazil in approximately 15 years.

Later that day, SpaceX confirmed via Twitter that the EchoStar satellite had been delivered to the geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).</s>SpaceX on Thursday launched the EchoStar 23 communications satellite after high winds delayed a previous attempt.

The launch took place at the historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket deployed the EchoStar 23 -- a commercial communications satellite for EchoStar Corporation -- to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).

"Successful deployment of @EchoStar XXIII to a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit confirmed," the Hawthorne, California-headquartered company headed by Elon Musk, said in a tweet.

Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, and conducting business around the globe, EchoStar Corporation is global provider of satellite communication solutions.

EchoStar 23 is a highly flexible, Ku-band broadcast satellite services (BSS) satellite with four main reflectors and multiple sub-reflectors supporting mission profiles.

High winds forced SpaceX to postpone an earlier attempt to launch the communications satellite on Tuesday.</s>DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL - A SpaceX rocket launched a satellite into orbit overnight for Douglas County-based EchoStar Corp. from a launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The spectacular nighttime launch, shortly before midnight Mountain Time, successfully placed the EchoStar 23 satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit after several months of delays caused by the Hawthorne, California-based rocket company’s launchpad explosion last year.

The spacecraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, will move into position to provide satellite-based communications services across Brazil.

EchoStar (Nasdaq: SATS), founded by Colorado billionaire Charlie Ergen, is the fourth-largest commercial satellite fleet operator worldwide.</s>"Liftoff," the corporation said on its Twitter account two days after the launch was aborted due to high winds.

The fully expendable Falcon 9 will carry the EchoStar Corporation's communication satellite, the heaviest geosynchronous payload yet launched by the carrier rocket, into geosynchronous transfer orbit.

SpaceX later confirmed main engine cutoff and stage separation, saying that the second stage engine burn was underway.

Never miss a story again — sign up to our Telegram channel and we'll keep you up to speed!</s>SpaceX on Thursday successfully launched a communications satellite into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The company's Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 2am (11:30pm IST) carrying the EchoStar XXIII, a commercial communications satellite for EchoStar Corporation.

The satellite will be place in orbit more that 35,000 kilometers above the earth and provide telecommunications service to Brazil, SpaceX said.

However SpaceX said it will not attempt to land Falcon 9's first stage after launch "due to mission requirements."

The mission took off from NASA's historic launchpad 39A, the origin of the pioneering US spaceflights that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the space shuttle missions that ran from 1981 to 2011.

SpaceX, founded and led by billionaire Elon Musk, is emerging as leader of the modern commercial space industry after becoming the first to send a private cargo carrier to the International Space Station in 2010.

The California-based company has endured two costly disasters in the past two years - a launchpad blast that destroyed a rocket and its satellite payload in September, and a June 2015 explosion after liftoff that obliterated a Dragon cargo ship packed with provisions bound for the space station.</s>SpaceX launched an EchoStar communications satellite into orbit on Wednesday, completing a mission for its client on a second try, after the original launch on Tuesday was scrubbed due to weather conditions on the ground. The SpaceX mission put EchoStar’s XXIII satellite into orbit 22,000 miles up, after launching 2 AM ET on Thursday.

The EchoStar XXIII payload was a remarkably heavy satellite compared to many of SpaceX’s cargo passengers for a Falcon 9 rocket, and that means that SpaceX did not attempt to recover the first stage of its rocket for this particular launch, as with its previous two since returning to flight earlier this year following last September’s pre-flight rocket explosion mishap.

SpaceX launched the EchoStar mission from its LC 39A site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is the second launch at the site since SpaceX began operations there, its first being the ISS resupply mission from last month. EchoStar is the first commercial client SpaceX has serviced at LC 39A, which has a storied history at NASA, having previously been used for the Apollo 11 launch, the first that brought astronauts to the Moon.</s>The EchoStar XXIII successfully launched into geostationary transfer orbit from the historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

 



EchoStar XXIII is a highly flexible Ku-band satellite based on Space Systems Loral's 1300 platform with four main reflectors and multiple sub-reflectors supporting multiple mission profiles. Initial commercial deployment of EchoStar XXIII will be at 45° West, and the Satellite End of Life (EOL) Power is 20 kilowatts (kW).“This is the third satellite built for EchoStar by SSL to be placed on orbit since last June,” said John Celli, president of SSL. I would like to thank EchoStar, SpaceX and our own engineers and technicians who all worked as a team to make this launch a success.”</s>WASHINGTON-SpaceX on Thursday successfully launched a communications satellite into space from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 2 am (0600 GMT) carrying the EchoStar XXIII, a commercial communications satellite for EchoStar Corporation. The satellite will be place in orbit more that 35,000 kilometers above the earth and provide telecommunications service to Brazil, SpaceX said. However SpaceX said it will not attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage after launch “due to mission requirements.” The mission took off from NASA’s historic launchpad 39A, the origin of the pioneering US spaceflights that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the space shuttle missions that ran from 1981 to 2011.
SpaceX successfully launches the EchoStar 23 satellite, a Direct-to-home television broadcast services for Brazil, into a geosynchronous transfer orbit, using the fully expendable version of their Falcon 9 launch vehicle.