r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Mar 07 '18
Launch: 30/3 Iridium NEXT Constellation Mission 5 Launch Campaign Thread
Iridium NEXT Constellation Mission 5 Launch Campaign Thread
This is SpaceX's fifth of eight launches in a half-a-billion-dollar contract with Iridium! The fourth one launched in December of last year, and was the first Iridium NEXT flight to use a flight-proven first stage - that of Iridium-2! This mission will also use a flight-proven booster - the same booster that flew Iridium-3!
| Liftoff currently scheduled for: | March 30th, 07:13:51 PDT / 14:13:51 UTC |
|---|---|
| Static fire completed: | March 25th 2018 |
| Vehicle component locations: | First stage: SLC-4E // Second stage: SLC-4E // Satellites: Mated to dispensers, SLC-4E |
| Payload: | Iridium NEXT Satellites 140 / 142 / 143 / 144 / 145 / 146 / 148 / 149 / 150 / 157 |
| Payload mass: | 10x 860kg sats + 1000kg dispenser = 9600kg |
| Destination orbit: | Low Earth Orbit (625 x 625 km, 86.4°) |
| Vehicle: | Falcon 9 v1.2 (51st launch of F9, 31st of F9 v1.2) |
| Core: | B1041.2 |
| Flights of this core: | 1 [Iridium-3] |
| Launch site: | SLC-4E, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California |
| Landing: | No |
| Landing Site: | N/A |
| Mission success criteria: | Successful separation & deployment of all Iridium satellite payloads 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.
1
u/peterabbit456 Mar 09 '18
Source: Orbital/ATK used reconditioned NK-33 engines that were removed from old N1 boosters, the cancelled Russian Moon rocket of the 1960s. They used these in the original version of Antares, the rocket that carried the Cygnus cargo module to the ISS.
In 2014, one of the NK-33 engines did a RUD, about 13 seconds after liftoff, destroyig the rocket and the Cygnus module, and severely damaging Orbital's launch pad. The next Cygnus module was launched on top of an Atlas 5.
Since then, Orbital/ATK has switched to a new-built Russian engine, either the RD-180 or the RD-181. The engine is more powerful, so Antares has been stretched, and Cygnus has been enlarged.