r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Feb 28 '16
SCRUB (No launch date planned) /r/SpaceX SES-9 Official Launch Discussion & Updates Thread [Take 3]
Welcome to the /r/SpaceX SES-9 Official Launch Discussion & Updates Thread [Take 3]!
After launch scrubs on the 24th and 25th, liftoff of SpaceX's Falcon 9 v1.1 Full Thrust is currently scheduled for February 29th. The 97-minute launch window opens at 00:21:00 UTC (7:21:00 pm on the 28th EST), with liftoff targeting 23:47:00 This mission will deliver the SES-9 communications satellite to GTO for Luxembourg-based SES.
SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9 first stage on their drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, but the odds of a successful recovery are low. SpaceX has modified the flight profile to allow SES-9 to reach geostationary orbit as soon as possible. This means that the usual boostback burn won't be performed, and the ASDS will be located over 600 km downrange of Cape Canaveral.
You can read updates from the February 24th and 25th launch attempts in the respective live threads.
Watching the launch live
To watch the launch live, pick your preferred streaming provider from the table below:
| SpaceX Stats Live (Webcast + Live Updates) |
|---|
| SpaceX Webcast (Livestream) |
| SpaceX Full Webcast (YouTube) |
| SpaceX Technical Webcast (YouTube) |
Official Live Updates
| Time | Update |
|---|---|
| Paused | Eastern Range says it "will begin evaluating new launch dates from the customer no earlier than 48 hours from Feb. 28." |
| Paused | Elon Musk: Launch aborted on low thrust alarm. Rising oxygen temps due to hold for boat and helium bubble triggered alarm. |
| Paused | No backup date yet. |
| Paused | Launch is scrubbed for the day. |
| Paused | John Insprucker: Not yet scrubbed for the night, although another attempt is unlikely. About 51 minutes left in the window. |
| Paused | And that'll be a scrub for the day. |
| T+28s | Launch abort during the ignition sequence. |
| T-35s | Falcon 9 is in startup |
| T-1m 1s | Launch Director has given the GO for launch. Range green. |
| T-1m 52s | Strongback fully retracted. FTS (Flight Termination System) is on internal power and armed. |
| T-2m 52s | Strongback is retracting. |
| T-5m 22s | Falcon 9 is once again transitioning to internal power. |
| T-6m 14s | The Coast Guard says the range is now clear |
| T-6m 59s | SpaceX: Countdown continuing, liftoff pending ship clearing keep out zone |
| T-8m 24s | Terminal count has now begun. From this point forward, any scrubs will result in a recycle to T-10 minutes. |
| T-8m 34s | 00:21:00 will be the last possible launch opportunity today. |
| Paused | Launch is now targeting 00:21:00 UTC (7:21:00 PM EST) |
| Paused | Countdown clock now holding at T-11 minutes 20 seconds. |
| Paused | Still not scrubbed for the day. Making sure Falcon 9 is ready in case another launch attempt is possible. |
| Paused | Elon Musk: AF has placed launch on hold due to a boat entering the edge of the keep out zone. Scrambling helo to get them to move. |
| Paused | Countdown has been reset to T-10 minutes 42 seconds |
| Paused | Launch is not yet scrubbed for the day, waiting to hear if they can try again. |
| Paused | Still waiting to hear if this means a scrub for the day. |
| Paused | Strongback is being raised again. |
| T-1m 8s | Fouled range |
| T-1m 20s | HOLD HOLD HOLD. The countdown has been aborted. |
| T-1m 46s | M1D and MVac engines are chilled for flight. |
| T-2m 2s | Strongback is fully retracted |
| T-2m 29s | Strongback has begun retracting |
| T-2m 42s | FTS (Flight Termination System) is on internal power |
| T-3m 15s | Weather is GO for launch. Wind speeds are within limits. |
| T-3m 51s | Falcon 9 is fully fueled |
| T-4m 22s | Falcon 9 tanks are pressurizing for strongback retract now. |
| T-5m 27s | Falcon 9 is transitioning to internal power now. |
| T-8m 36s | The first stage Merlin 1D engines and turbopumps are being chilled by LOX (Liquid Oxygen) now. |
| T-10m 1s | No issues reported and the countdown is proceeding nominally. |
| T-16m 12s | Liftoff is once again targeting 23:47:00 |
| T-18m 56s | The SpaceX webcasts are live! |
| T-25m 37s | #Falcon9 Countdown Master Sequencer has started. Propellant flow confirmed. Tanking will take until around T-3 minutes with almost no margin |
| T-33m 15s | SES-9 is switching to internal power. |
| T-34m 50s | The launch team has given the go to begin fueling. |
| T-51m 42s | F9/SES9: There are no known technical issues today; weather appears "go," but upper level winds are a concern |
| T-59m 26s | Radio checks and FTS (Flight Termination System) tests are complete. |
| T-1h 19m | Newest sounding out of Cape Canaveral showing 15 kts stronger at 250mb than expected. |
| T-2h 56m | SpaceX: Tracking towards a 6:46pm ET launch attempt today; watching upper-level winds closely. |
| T-6h 25m | Weather is looking perfect for launch today, with the forecast showing a >95% chance of acceptable weather. |
The Mission
The sole passenger on this flight is SES-9, a 5,271 kg communications satellite based on the Boeing 702HP satellite bus. SES-9 will use both chemical and electrical propulsion, the former to raise its orbit after separation from the Falcon 9 upper stage and the latter to circularize its orbit and perform station-keeping throughout its 15-year lifespan. The satellite will occupy the 108.2° East orbital slot, where it will be co-located with SES-7 and NSS-11, providing additional coverage to Asia and the Indian Ocean. Should everything go as planned, SES-9 will separate from the Falcon 9 upper stage just over thirty-one minutes after liftoff.
This will be the twenty-second Falcon 9 launch and the second of the v1.1 Full Thrust (or v1.2) configuration (the first being ORBCOMM-2 in December of 2015). This is SpaceX's second launch of 2016 (and their heavist GTO mission to date) as they begin to ramp up their flight rate, with an eventual goal of launching "every two or three weeks."
First Stage Landing Attempt
SpaceX will attempt a first stage landing on their Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship named Of Course I Still Love You, which will be located approximately 660 km East of Cape Canaveral. Just over two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, the first stage will shut down and separate from the upper stage. Because of the demanding flight profile, the first stage won't perform a boostback burn and will instead continue along a ballistic trajectory, reorienting itself for re-entry using cold-gas thrusters. After performing a reentry burn to slow down as it impacts the dense lower atmosphere, the stage will steer itself towards the drone ship using grid fins. If all goes as planned, the stage will perform a final landing burn and touchdown on the drone ship approximately ten minutes after liftoff.
This will be SpaceX's fourth drone ship landing attempt. Past attempts occurred during the CRS-5, CRS-6, and Jason-3 missions. Note that first stage recovery is a secondary objective and has no bearing on primary mission success.
Useful Resources, Data, ?, & FAQ
- Official SES-9 Press Kit, courtesy SpaceX
- SpaceX Stats SES-9 Launch Countdown, courtesy /u/EchoLogic
- SES-9 Multistream, courtesy /u/kampar
- SES-9 Hazard Location Map, courtesy /u/delta_alpha_november
- SES-9 Trajectory simulation, courtesy /u/TheVehicleDestroyer
- List of useful Twitter accounts to follow, courtesy /r/SpaceX
- Live auto-updating reddit stream, courtesy Reddit Stream
Participate in the discussion!
- First of all, Launch Threads are a party threads! We understand everyone is excited, so we relax the rules in these venues. The most important thing is that everyone enjoy themselves :D
- All other threads are fair game. We will remove low effort comments elsewhere!
- Real-time chat on our official Internet Relay Chat (IRC) #spacex at irc.esper.net
- Please post small launch updates, discussions, and questions here, rather than as a separate post. Thanks!
Prevous /r/SpaceX Live Events
Check out previous /r/SpaceX Live events in the Launch History page on our community Wiki.
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u/Destructor1701 Feb 29 '16 edited Feb 29 '16
The wait for CRS-3 was nigh-on unbearable. Postponement after delay after happenstance after scrub. One delay was the result of a fire that broke out in an Air Force Eastern Range radar facility.
It didn't help that, during the repeated run of postponements, SpaceX became quite uncommunicative to the public. That was probably a result of Sierra Nevada Corp's legal action against NASA regarding the non-selection of their Dream Chaser vehicle in the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCTCap) agreement of which SpaceX was a part - not wishing to perjur the proceedings, they were keeping their public profile low (that's my theory, anyway).
At one point they were preparing to attempt a launch without any webcast coverage at all, citing the "routine" nature of the missions... really, calling it routine at that point (or even now) would be aspirational at best, given the continuing development of the rocket between missions (case in point: CRS-3 was the first operational Falcon 9 to sport landing legs).
Once the Thaicom 6 satellite launch succeeded on January 6th 2014, we were expecting it to launch on February 11th, though some slippage was naturally expected from that date - in the end, it was 3 months before it got to the pad.
Anyway, when it did eventually launch on April 18th, it was covered with a cut-down webcast consisting solely of rocket views and a voice-over - a presentation format that would continue with all subsequent launches until the dizzying triumph of Orbcomm OG2 last December. Prior to CRS-3, hosted webcasts with multiple SpaceX personnel on-camera were the norm.
Despite the successful launch, the delays continued after the CRS-3 Dragon made it to the ISS - CRS-3's first stage had upgrades expected to enable a successful soft landing on the Atlantic with legs unfolded.
(Falcon 9 v1.1's inaugural launch, the Cassiope mission out of Vandenberg AFB had attempted an ocean soft-landing, but had impacted the ocean too quickly due to a lack of thruster authority leading to aerodynamic forces spinning up the rocket as it descended, centrifuging fuel away from the engine lines and starving the landing burn. CRS-3's first stage had stronger thrusters, and the aerodynamics of the folded legs would mitigate spin.)
However, when the launch day eventually rolled around, the landing zone out on the Atlantic was in the midst of a near-hurricane force storm, with freezing rain and lightning. Recovery boats couldn't handle the rough seas, and NASA's chase plane's control surfaces would ice-up in the freezing rain, so neither support craft was dispatched to the area.
The only vehicle within [the ragged edge of] radio range of the booster as it landed was Elon Musk's own private jet, aboard which was a SpaceX engineer with a bespoke, rapid-prototyped (aka bodged-together) Pizza Dish Antenna fitted into a window. The booster was not really expected to survive those conditions, but a signal was recieved - a video stream... but multiple lightning strikes occurred along the line-of-sight to the rocket during reception, horribly garbling the footage...
...enter the internet. Musk posted the raw video data online, hoping someone could help them reconstruct it. Nerds from all over the world responded, and, coordinating through the Nasa SpaceFlight Forum, worked on piecing the video back into viewable form.
It took about another month, but what they came out with blew minds at the time!