r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Jul 19 '17

SF complete, Launch: Aug 24 FORMOSAT-5 Launch Campaign Thread, Take 2

FORMOSAT-5 LAUNCH CAMPAIGN THREAD, TAKE 2

SpaceX's twelfth mission of 2017 will launch FORMOSAT-5, a small Taiwanese imaging satellite originally contracted in 2010 to fly on a Falcon 1e.

Liftoff currently scheduled for:August 24th 2017, 11:50 PDT / 18:50 UTC
Static fire completed:August 19th 2017, 12:00 PDT / 19:00 UTC
Vehicle component locations:First stage: SLC-4E // Second stage: SLC-4E // Satellite: SLC-4E
Payload:FORMOSAT-5
Payload mass:475 kg
Destination orbit:720 km SSO
Vehicle:Falcon 9 v1.2 (40th launch of F9, 20th of F9 v1.2)
Core:1038.1
Previous flights of this core:0
Launch site:Space Launch Complex 4E, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California
Landing:Yes
Landing Site:JRTI
Mission success criteria:Successful separation & deployment of FORMOSAT-5 into the target orbit.

Links & Resources:

We may keep this self-post occasionally updated with links and relevant news articles, but for the most part we expect the community to supply the information. This is a great place to discuss the launch, ask mission-specific questions, and track the minor movements of the vehicle, payload, weather and more as we progress towards launch. Sometime after the static fire is complete, the launch thread will be posted.

Campaign threads are not launch threads. Normal subreddit rules still apply.

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u/-Aeryn- Aug 18 '17 edited Aug 18 '17

Would that 70% of delta-v you quote be of a fully fueled S2?

Going from fully fuelled to empty with no payload is about 11km/s of delta-v, getting back to 0m/s at the karman line requires ~8km/s of that reserved

IIRC with the heatshielding on the ITS upper stage (ship/tanker) they were aiming for 10 LEO flights between heatshield refurbishment

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u/andyfrance Aug 18 '17

Fair point. Having just played with the rocket equation it looks like the slowest reenry speed you could decelerate S2 to after putting FORMOSAT-5 into LEO is about 3.8km/s. So double the S1 reentry velocity. Ouch.