SpaceX Aborts Thanksgiving Rocket Launch Due to Engine Trouble

[Buster's Uncle]

SpaceX Aborts Thanksgiving Rocket Launch Due to Engine Trouble
SPACE.com
By Stephen Clark, Spaceflight Now  5 hours ago



The SES-8 telecommunications satellite is an Orbital Sciences GEOStar-2 spacecraft



Topped with a television broadcasting satellite, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket fired its engines and was moments away from liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Thursday, but the commercial booster aborted the launch after computers detected the engines were too slow building up thrust.

Engineers raced to understand and resolve the problem, but they could not get comfortable enough to attempt the launch again before Thursday's time-constrained flight opportunity closed.

Officials had not announced a new target launch date Thursday evening, but SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk posted on his Twitter account the mission would likely be delayed a few days. [See photos of SpaceX's milestone Falcon 9 rocket mission]

SpaceX was targeting liftoff of the 22-story rocket at 5:39 p.m. EST (2239 GMT) Thursday, aiming to achieve the first Thanksgiving Day launch from Florida's Space Coast since 1959. The launch was pushed back to Thursday after multiple technical problems thwarted an initial launch attempt Monday.

The rocket's mission is to place the SES 8 television broadcasting satellite into orbit more than 50,000 miles above Earth, the highest altitude ever achieved by a SpaceX launch.

Musk and industry officials say the flight is critical to SpaceX's future in the commercial launch market, in which it competes against stalwart launch vehicles from Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.

The countdown marched smoothly toward liftoff Thursday, with the rocket clearing key hurdles that hamstrung Monday's launch attempt. The Falcon 9 pressurized its propellant tanks, switched to internal power and ignited its nine Merlin 1D first stage engines a few seconds before the appointed launch time.

But the Falcon 9's computer-controlled countdown sequencer recognized a problem and called off the launch, shutting down the engines after they flashed to life and sent a wave of sound across the Florida rocket base.



A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands poised to launch the SES-8 communications satellite into orbit


Moments later, as SpaceX's webcast went silent, Elon Musk went to Twitter to describe the status of the launch.

The launch was "aborted by autosequence due to slower than expected thrust ramp," Musk posted on Twitter.

The technology mogul, who founded SpaceX in 2002, later posted the launch team was relaxing conservative preset limits on the rocket by increasing the pressure of the engines' helium spin start system.

As engineers continued to study the problem, SpaceX elected to restart the countdown to preserve a chance to launch Thursday.

Ultimately, however, SpaceX said they could not get comfortable with the issue in time and ordered another hold with less than a minute left in the day's second countdown.

"We called manual abort," Musk tweeted. "Better to be paranoid and wrong. Bringing rocket down to borescope (inspect) engines."

With time running out in the launch window, the launch director called off the flight for Thursday.

"We have scrubbed for the day," the launch director announced. "We'll continue through the abort safing and go into detank and site securing.

"Essentially, we just ran out of time to complete [the] data review from the first engine start. So taking the safe path out of here, we decided to abort for the day and do [a] sufficient, complete data review."

Spaceflight Now is also providing updates on SpaceX's mission via its Mission Status Center.


http://news.yahoo.com/spacex-aborts-thanksgiving-rocket-launch-due-engine-trouble-122101119.html

[Buster's Uncle]

SpaceX postpones first satellite launch
AFP
17 hours ago



SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon space craft, seen preparing for a launch on October 7, 2012 from Cape Canaveral, Florida



Washington (AFP) - Private US company SpaceX postponed the launch of a rocket carrying its first telecommunications satellite on Thursday after two unsuccessful attempts at take-off.

The launch at a US Air Force base in Cape Canaveral, Florida was moved to Thursday after an attempt on Monday was aborted.

The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket launch was aborted for a first time on Thursday shortly after engine ignition at 5:39 pm (2239 GMT) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

A second attempt was made at 6:44 pm (2344 GMT) but was also scrapped.

SpaceX's billionaire founder Elon Musk said on Twitter it would likely "a few days" before a further attempt is made.

"We called manual abort. Better to be paranoid and wrong," Musk wrote.

The precise reasons for the failure to launch were not specified.

It was to be the first launch with an improved version of the Falcon 9 after a test flight in California.

SpaceX is eager to get into the commercial satellite launch business, estimated to be worth $190 billion a year, with competitive prices.

This time it was to launch a satellite for the Luxembourg company SES, the second largest in the world in that sector.

Until now, SES has used European Ariane rockets or the Russian Proton.

These are much more expensive than the $55 million charged by SpaceX, said SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell.

The SES satellite is due to provide television, cable TV and other services to countries including China, India and Vietnam.

The Falcon 9 has already succeeded in sending its Dragon capsules to the International Space Station under a contract with NASA.

The capsule takes cargo into space and brings back material from scientific experiments.


http://news.yahoo.com/spacex-postpones-first-satellite-launch-005557550.html