Finding of the week #211

Veröffentlicht am von

Reusable Space Program

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about SpaceX’s successful flight of a reused Falcon 9 first stage.

On March 31, 2017, at 00:27 GMT SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket began its ascent into space from the historic launch pad 39A at Kenedy’s Space Center with the mission to place a communication satelite in a geostationary transfer orbit. Although this launch sounds like a regular rocket launch, it was totally different as the Falcon 9 first stage already flew into space once on April 8, 2016 carrying a Dragon spacecraft and subsequently landed back on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. During this first flight, the first stage logged about 9 minutes of flight during which it experienced the stresses of the ascent, reentry as well as landing.

Almost a year later, after being inspected, refurbished and tested, the Falcon 9 first stage basically repeated its first flight by carrying the second stage as well as the communication satelite into space and landing back on top of the autonomous spaceport drone ship ‚Of Course I Still Love You‘ floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

In addtion to this impressive achievement, SpaceX also tried to recover and reuse the fairing shells that protected the payload against the rough conditions of an atmospheric flight during the initial phase of the launch. Once the rocket has escaped the atmosphere, the fairing gets jettisoned and falls back to Earth. This time, however, the two fairing parts were equipped with small thrusters and a steerable parachute thus allowing them to reenter the atmosphere and fly towards a designated landing area. This first test of a recoverable fairing worked out quite well as SpaceX was able to recover at least one of the two fair halves.

Ultimately, SpaceX’s main goal is to reduce the launch costs by reusing most of the rocket parts for subsequent launches. Moreover, this not only will make space flight more affordable, but also protect the environment. The only thing that is left over, is the rocket’s second stage which, so far, is not intended to be reusable. However, it might be possible that SpaceX engineers will start to work on concepts to make it reusable, soon.

The next special SpaceX launch might take place in late summer this year, when the Falcon 9 Heavy could fly for the very first time.

Well done, SpaceX!