On May 9 at 09:42 am Kiev time, SpaceX plans to carry out a record launch of a partially reusable rocket* Falcon 9. No one in the history of astronautics has used the first stage of a rocket 10 times.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., a company of Elon Musk, has no competitors in the reusable media market yet. SpaceX’s main rivals for commercial and government payload launch contracts are America’s ULA and Europe’s Arianespace. China also has a tight launch schedule, and India has a smaller one.
The price tag of one Falcon 9 launch is estimated at about $ 52 million.
At the launch point on the Florida Space Coast, it will be deep night at this time – 02:42. The launch window is one-time, that is, if something interferes with it, the start will be postponed to 09:21 am on May 10 in Kiev.
Stage B1051 will go into orbit for the 10th time (altitude -> 40 m). It was first used on March 2, 2019 – more than two years ago, and the last time – on March 14 this year. The stage flew in six Starlink missions, sent the Crew Dragon ship on its first demo flight to an orbital station, and launched the RSM and SXM-7 satellites.
If all goes according to plan, the B1051 will autonomously sit on one running engine on a floating drone platform Just Read The Instructions after 8.5 minutes. It will take place in the Atlantic Ocean about 631 km northeast of the launch point and will be shown live, including from the camera on the steps.
Watch the video: Tumbling stage of the PRC rocket, which will soon fall to Earth
The rocket nose cone flaps will also be second-hand: they flew on a mission to launch the GPS III SV04 satellite into orbit. They will be picked up in the ocean 682 km from the launch site.
The current mission is to launch another batch of 60 Starlink Internet satellites (~ 15 600 kg). SpaceX has already launched about 1,500 such vehicles into orbit.
The height of the Falcon 9 rocket is about 70 m, the diameter of the steps is 3.66 m, the nose cone is 5.3 m; weight without fuel ~ 29 t, with full filling up to 549 t. The first stage is equipped with nine Merlin 1D engines, the second – with one Merlin 1D Vacuum. More details here.
* – we are not talking about the entire rocket, but about its reusable first stage. The word “rocket” in the title is not entirely correctly used solely for greater audience coverage, since some, even in 2021, did not hear or see how SpaceX reuses the largest part of the rocket, gently lowering it from space onto a barge in the ocean or onto a site not far from starting points.
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