On Tuesday, February 6th, SpaceX launched one of the world’s most powerful launch vehicles – in fact, currently, the most powerful launcher in operation since NASA’s massive Saturn V rocket by a factor of 2 in terms of lift capability.
I’m of course talking about the Falcon Heavy, which after years of development and launch delays, finally took the to skies at 15:45 EST (20:45 UTC) on the 6th, after upper altitude wind shear delayed the launch from its planned 13:30 EST lift-off time – which would have been at the start of the four-hour launch window required to send its payload on a trans-Mars injection heliocentric orbit.
The run-up to the launch was handled fairly conservatively by SpaceX: Falcon Heavy is a complex system – effectively three individual Falcon 9 rockets which have to operate in unison. So much might go wrong that even Elon Musk was stating he’d be happy if the vehicle was lost after it had cleared the launch pad. This was not a joke: in September 2016, a pre-flight test of a Falcon 9 lead to the loss of the vehicle, its payload and massive damage to its Cape Canaveral launch pad, putting a dent in SpaceX’s launch capabilities at the time. A similar event at Kennedy Space Centre’s pad 39-A, the only launch facility capable of handling the Falcon Heavy, would be a massive setback for the company’s 2018 aspirations.
However, and as we all know, the launch proved to be flawless. All 27 engines fired as required, generating the same thrust as 18 747 running all their engines at full throttle, and the vehicle took to the air. Two minutes later, the “stack” reached the point of “max-Q”, the point at which aerodynamic stress on a vehicle in atmospheric flight is maximised (symbolised in a formula as “q” – hence “max Q”). At this point, were the rocket’s engines to continue to run at full thrust, the combined stresses could literally shake the vehicle apart; so instead the motors are throttled back, easing the strain on the vehicle, prior to them returning to full thrust as “max-Q” has passed.
After passing through “max-Q”, the vehicle completed perhaps the most spectacular part of its flight. Their job done, the two outer Falcon 9 stages shut down their engines and separated from the core rocket. Then then re-lit their engines to boost them vertically to where both could perform a back-flip and then return for a landing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, just south of Kennedy Space Centre. So perfect was this aerial ballet that the two boosters landed almost simultaneously.
The central first stage should have also made a return to Earth after separating from the upper stage, landing aboard one of the company’s two autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) – necessary because the stage had flown too far and too high to make a return to dry land. This was the only point of failure for the flight. Unfortunately, it over-burnt its propellants, leaving it without enough fuel to land on the floating platform. Instead, it slammed into the sea at an estimated 480 km/h (300 mph), some 100 metres (300ft) from the ASDS – the only notable failure in the launch.
The second stage, however, performed perfectly, the payload fairings jettisoned, and the world got its first look at a car in space: Musk’s own Tesla Roadster, complete with a spacesuited mannequin (“Starman”) at the wheel, Don’t Panic – a reference to The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – displayed on the dashboard. During the ascent, he was apparently listening to David Bowie’s Space Oddity played on the car’s stereo.
Right now, “Starman” and the car are en-route to a point out just beyond the orbit of Mars. It is is on a heliocentric (Sun-centred) orbit, travelling between 147 million and 260 million km (91.3 million and 161.5 million mi) from the Sun, and passing across both the orbits of Mars and Earth in the process – but without actually coming close to either. It will continue in this orbit for millions of years. Continue reading “Space Sunday: rocket power and space stations”
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