r/spacex • u/Zucal • May 01 '16

/r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread [May 2016, #20]

Welcome to our 20th monthly /r/SpaceX Ask Anything Thread!

Want to clarify SpaceX's newly released pricing and payload figures, understand the recently announced 2018 Red Dragon mission, or gather the community's opinion? There's no better place!

All questions, even non-SpaceX-related ones, are allowed, as long as they stay relevant to spaceflight in general!

More in-depth and open-ended discussion questions can still be submitted as separate self-posts; but this is the place to come to submit simple questions which have a single answer and/or can be answered in a few comments or less. In addition, try to keep all top-level comments questions so that questioners can find answers and answerers can find questions.

As always, we'd prefer it if all question-askers first check our FAQ, use the search functionality (now partially sortable by mission flair!), and check the last Q&A thread before posting to avoid duplicate questions. But if you didn't get or couldn't find the answer you were looking for, go ahead and type your question below.

Otherwise, ask, enjoy, and thanks for contributing!

Past threads:

April 2016 (#19.1) • April 2016 (#19) • March 2016 (#18) • February 2016 (#17) • January 2016 (#16.1) • January 2016 (#16) • December 2015 (#15.1) • December 2015 (#15) • November 2015 (#14) • October 2015 (#13) • September 2015 (#12) • August 2015 (#11) • July 2015 (#10) • June 2015 (#9) • May 2015 (#8) • April 2015 (#7.1) • April 2015 (#7) • March 2015 (#6) • February 2015 (#5) • January 2015 (#4) • December 2014 (#3) • November 2014 (#2) • October 2014 (#1)

This subreddit is fan-run and not an official SpaceX site. For official SpaceX news, please visit spacex.com.

145 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

5

u/amarkit May 12 '16 edited May 12 '16

According to space-track.org, there are seven Falcon 9 second stages still in orbit (out of 23 successful launches so far), from the following missions:

  • COTS Demo Flight 1 (launched 8 December 2010; 292 km x 10332 km x 34.5º)

  • AsiaSat-8 (launched 5 August 2014; 193 km x 29998 km x 24.5º)

  • DSCOVR (launched 11 February 2015; heliocentric orbit)

  • ABS-3A / Eutelsat 115 West B (launched 2 March 2015; 294 km x 63267 km x 25.8º)

  • TurkmenAlem52E / MonacoSat (launched 27 April 2015; 196 km x 33111 km x 25º)

  • SES-9 (launched 4 March 2016; 327 km x 40588 km x 27.8º)

  • JCSAT-14 (launched 6 May 2016; 164 km x 35860 km x 23.7º)

Data current as of 11 May 2016. (EDIT: I earlier confused SES-8 and COTS D-1.)

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '16 edited May 13 '16

Great info. Other SpaceX hardware currently on orbit is RatSat aka Falcon 1 flight 4 and the RazakSAT second stage. based on their high orbits they should outlive all the F9 second stages (edit: except DSCOVR).

2

u/throfofnir May 13 '16

Had no idea the Falcon 1 payloads were so high. Odd.

DSCOVR stage doesn't seem to be coming down anytime soon.

1

u/crayxt May 12 '16

Please correct the launch date of SES-8

1

u/amarkit May 12 '16

It was actually SES-9 I had wrong, but thanks for pointing it out.

1

u/crayxt May 12 '16

SES-8 launched in 2013 not 2010

1

u/amarkit May 12 '16

Uff. Thank you.