SpaceX Launches Falcon 9 Rocket On High-Stakes Commercial Satellite Mission

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SpaceX Launches Falcon 9 Rocket On High-Stakes Commercial Satellite Mission
SPACE.com
By Tariq Malik, Managing Editor 17 hours ago






A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up the night sky over Florida Tuesday (Dec. 3) in a landmark communications satellite mission that catapulted the private spaceflight company into the commercial launch business.

The upgraded Falcon 9 rocket launched into space from SpaceX's pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on a mission to deliver the 3.2-ton SES-8 communications satellite into orbit. The liftoff at 5:41 p.m. EST (2241 GMT) marked SpaceX's first entry into the large commercial satellite market and its first launch into a geostationary transfer orbit needed for such a mission.

The launch also marked the first flight of SpaceX's enhanced Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket from Florida and came after two aborted attempts last week due to technical glitches, making the third time the charm for the upgraded rocket design.

"We've had a great launch today," SpaceX Falcon 9 product manager John Insprucker said just after liftoff.

Another major milestone for SpaceX occurred 27 minutes after liftoff, when the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket reignited its second stage for a maneuver that delivered the SES-8 satellite into its intended orbit. An attempt to perform the maneuver during a September test flight of the upgraded Falcon 9 failed due to a frozen igniter fluid line, a glitch SpaceX engineers fixed with the addition of insulation to the affected system.

"Spacecraft separation confirmed!" SpaceX officials wrote in a Twitter post 33 minutes after launch. "SES-8 is now in its targeted GEO transfer orbit."



A SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket streaks toward space carrying the commercial SES-8 communications satellite


SpaceX's billionaire CEO and founder Elon Musk was exultant.

"Restart was good, apogee raised to 80k km (50k miles). Yes!!!" Musk wrote on Twitter.

The 6,918-lb. (3,138 kilograms) SES-8 satellite was placed in a transfer orbit that ranges between 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Earth at its nearest point and 49,709 miles (80,000 km) at its highest point. The satellite is a hybrid Ku-and Ka-band spacecraft built to provide high-definition telecommunications services to SES World Skies customers across the South Asia and Pacific region.

The smooth launch is a landmark achievement for SpaceX's plans to provide reliable and affordable launch services to commercial satellite operators and government space agencies.

SpaceX has already demonstrated the dependability of its baseline Falcon 9 rocket with the repeated launch success of its unmanned Dragon space capsule. Today's mission marked SpaceX's seventh Falcon 9 launch since 2010, all of them successful.



The second stage engine on SpaceX's upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket glows red with the blue airglow of Earth's atmophere


The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company has a $1.6 billion deal with NASA to launch its unmanned Dragon capsule on 12 cargo delivery missions to the International Space Station; two of these missions have already flown. The company is also developing a manned version of Dragon to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

But to launch commercial satellites, SpaceX upgraded the 224.4-foot (68.4 meters) Falcon 9 rocket to boost its capabilities. The rocket's nine-engine first stage was modified with new SpaceX Merlin 1D engines that provide more thrust than their predecessors. The rocket has a larger 17-foot (5.1 m) payload fairing to fit even the largest satellites inside, and boasts a triple redundant avionics system for reliability, company officials said.

The first Falcon v1.1 launched on Sept. 29 from SpaceX's pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a mission that successfully carried the CASSIOPE space weather tracking satellite into orbit for the Canadian Space Agency.

SpaceX engineers also changed the configuration of the first-stage engines, which were in a three-by-three block, into a circular "Octaweb" pattern with eight engines encircling the ninth to increase reliability and streamline its manufacturing process, company officials said.

SpaceX has also outfitted the upgraded Falcon 9's first stage with heat shielding and a restart capability as part of its ongoing project to develop a completely reusable rocket launch system.

"We've done everything we can think of to maximize the reliability of this launch system," Musk told reporters on Nov. 24, one day before the first launch attempt. "We're really happy with this rocket design, and it's an incredibly capable vehicle."

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets are named after the fictional Millennium Falcon spaceship from the "Star Wars" films. The Dragon spacecraft are named after the fictional Puff the Magic Dragon, SpaceX officials have said.


http://news.yahoo.com/spacex-launches-falcon-9-rocket-high-stakes-commercial-001350324.html

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SpaceX rocket lifts off on first commercial satellite launch
Reuters
By Irene Klotz  21 hours ago


* Rocket carries communications satellite owned by SES

* Seventh flight of company's Falcon 9 booster

* SpaceX has backlog of nearly 50 launches, worth $4 billion


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Dec 3 (Reuters) - An unmanned Falcon 9rocket developed by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX,blasted off on Tuesday to put the company's first commercialsatellite into orbit, staking a potentially game-changing claimin a global industry worth nearly $190 billion a year.

The 22-story rocket lifted off from its seaside launch padat Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 5:41 p.m.EST/2241 GMT.

Two previous launch attempts last week were scuttled bytechnical glitches, including a last-second abort on Thursday.Engineers later discovered oxygen inside the rocket'sground-based engine igniter system.

Perched on top of the rocket was a 7,000-pound (3,175 kg)communications satellite owned by Luxembourg-based SES S.A., which operates a 54-satellite fleet, the world'ssecond-largest.

"I'd like to thank SES for taking a chance on SpaceX,"company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitteran hour before launch. "We've given it our all."

The satellite, known as SES-8 and worth more than $100million, will be positioned to provide television, broadband andother communications services to customers in India, China,Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia.

"It's an extremely important satellite for us," MartinHalliwell, chief technology officer of SES, told reportersbefore the launch.

"We know that as we go forward into these very significantgrowth markets that it's absolutely critical that we have acost-effective and efficient way to get to orbit. That's reallywhat SpaceX has brought us," Halliwell said.

SpaceX's launch schedule includes nearly 50 missions, worthabout $4 billion. About 75 percent of the flights are forcommercial customers.

The global satellite industry had revenues of nearly $190billion in 2012, including nearly $90 billion in televisionservices alone, the Satellite Industry Association trade groupreported in October. The U.S. share of the market is 45 percent,the report said.

Previous SES satellites were launched primarily aboardRussian Proton and European Ariane rockets, which cost far morethan the approximately $55 million the company paid for its rideon SpaceX's Falcon booster, Halliwell said.

He would not say exactly how much SpaceX undercut thecompetition, but did say SES received a discount by agreeing tofly on Falcon 9's first mission to high orbits orbit used bycommunications satellites.

In addition to a Sept. 29 test flight of an upgraded Falcon9, older versions of the rocket flew five times successfully,including three missions for NASA to deliver cargo to theInternational Space Station, which orbits about 250 miles (about400 km) above Earth.

SpaceX aims to put SES-8 into an elliptical orbit thatreaches more than 50,000 miles (80,000 km) from Earth, about aquarter of the way to the moon.

That altitude requires less fuel for SES-8 to fly itselfinto its 22,369-mile (36,000-km) high operational orbit, therebyextending its service life.

SpaceX needs three successful launches of its upgradedFalcon rocket before it will be eligible to compete to carry theU.S. military's largest and most expensive satellites, a marketnow monopolized by United Launch Alliance, a partnership ofBoeing and Lockheed Martin.


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/spacex-rocket-lifts-off-first-231549684.html

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX Nails Mission on 3rd Launch Attempt
Justin Lloyd-Miller  December 04, 2013



Tuesday’s launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.



If the Challenger and Columbia shuttle tragedies proved anything, it’s the fact that rocket science is not something to be taken lightly when it’s being implemented on a full-scale effort. It’s only logical, then, that space-exploration startup SpaceX scrapped its two previous launch attempts of the Falcon 9 rocket literally seconds prior to ignition.

The third time proved fruitful, however, as SpaceX — led by Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk — successfully launched the Falcon 9 on Tuesday, bringing its commercial payload — a 6,918-pound, SES-8 telecommunication satellite — 22,000 miles away from Earth, the farthest mission flown by SpaceX.

NBC reports that SES is said to have paid less than $60 million for the launch, “which is tens of millions of dollars less than the going rate for satellite launches heading for geostationary orbit.” This could be a game-changing development for the industry, Martin Halliwell, chief technology officer of Luxembourg-based SES, said. ”It’s going to really shake the industry to its roots,” he told reporters in November.





SpaceX has flown some NASA-sponsored missions to resupply the International Space Station, which orbits the Earth 250 miles up. But 22,000 miles was a whole different league, one that SpaceX has had some difficulties reaching in the past.

To begin, prior versions of the Falcon 9 rockets were simply not powerful enough to bring objects to such an altitude. However, SpaceX has upgraded the spacecraft with Merlin 1D engines, among other things, to expand its potential customer base with a wider scope of capabilities.

The Falcon 9′s first trial came in September, when it launched the Canadian Space Agency’s Cassiope research satellite. The deployment went off without a hitch, but afterward, “the Falcon’s second-stage engine failed to reignite in a test to reach higher orbit,” NBC reports. “Relighting the second stage is essential for the success of geostationary satellite launches.” The cause? A frozen igniter fluid line — a problem in space that was unaccounted for on Earth, where the testing climate was warmer. SpaceX simply insulated the line for future use.





No such hiccups occurred for Tuesday’s flight, as SpaceX reported that the launch met “100 percent of mission objectives.”
 
“The successful insertion of the SES-8 satellite confirms the upgraded Falcon 9 launch vehicle delivers to the industry’s highest performance standards,” Musk said in a statement. “As always, SpaceX remains committed to delivering the safest, most reliable launch vehicles on the market today. We appreciate SES’s early confidence in SpaceX and look forward to launching additional SES satellites in the years to come.”


http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/elon-musks-spacex-nails-mission-on-3rd-launch-attempt.html

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SpaceX’s latest rocket launch a success after recent setbacks
By Eric Pfeiffer  21 hours ago

     

The unmanned Space Exploration Technologies' Falcon 9 rocket is seen before liftoff



SpaceX added another historic mission to its resume with the successful launch of its Falcon 9 rocket with a $100 million SES-8 satellite in tow.

This was the seventh official launch in the Falcon 9 series and takes SpaceX, run by founder Elon Musk, one step closer to its ultimate goal of  transporting humans into space by 2017.

The successful launch came from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday afternoon after two previous attempts were canceled in recent weeks.

"The entry of SpaceX into the commercial market is a game-changer," SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell said in a recent teleconference. "It's going to really shake the industry to its roots."

SpaceX has said the goal of the launch is to take a payload to a predetermined “geostationary” location 50,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. The 224.4 foot tall  rocket can be used to carry cargo payloads or SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft into orbit.

“Meeting this national priority for an American human space transportation capability is paramount for SpaceX and we are very focused on this for our NASA customer,” reads an explanation on the company’s site.

And having NASA as a paying customer surely is one of SpaceX's most public accomplishments.

So how much does it cost to launch your own private payload into space? About $56.5 million, according to SpaceX’s price index listed on its site. And that's part of SpaceX's commercial appeal, beating comparable offers from Russia ($100 million) and European ventures ($200 million), according to the Houston Chronicle. Although heavier payloads can run the cost up to $135 million.


http://news.yahoo.com/spacex-s-latest-rocket-launch-a-success-after-recent-setbacks-234415447.html