FORMOSAT 5, SHERPA SSO - Falcon 9 - Ванденберг SLC-4E - 24.08.2017

[tnt22]

Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 5 мин. назад

All on track. F9 coming alive with prop loading.

[Зловредный]

javax пишет:
Как я понял посадка на корабль, потому что запретили сажать на землю.
А почему?

Как я понял из статьи, когда оформлялись разрешительные документы на этот запуск, посадочная площадка на земле ещё не была готова.

[Apollo13]

Зловредный пишет:

javax пишет:
Как я понял посадка на корабль, потому что запретили сажать на землю.
А почему?

Как я понял из статьи, когда оформлялись разрешительные документы на этот запуск, посадочная площадка на земле ещё не была готова.

И неизвестно готова ли сейчас.

[tnt22]

Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 24 сек. назад

STATIC FIRE! SpaceX Falcon 9 (Formosat-5) fires up! *WAIT* for SpaceX tweet to confirm good test via quick look review. (File Image below).

[tnt22]

SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 42 сек. назад

Static fire test of Falcon 9 complete—targeting launch of FORMOSAT-5 from SLC-4E at Vandenberg AFB on August 24.

[javax]

Apollo13 пишет:

Зловредный пишет: 
Как я понял из статьи, когда оформлялись разрешительные документы на этот запуск, посадочная площадка на земле ещё не была готова.

И неизвестно готова ли сейчас.

Разве на неё еще не садились?

[Apollo13]

javax пишет:

Apollo13 пишет:

Зловредный пишет:
Как я понял из статьи, когда оформлялись разрешительные документы на этот запуск, посадочная площадка на земле ещё не была готова.

И неизвестно готова ли сейчас.

Разве на неё еще не садились?

Нет.

[Зловредный]

javax пишет:

Apollo13 пишет:

Зловредный пишет:
Как я понял из статьи, когда оформлялись разрешительные документы на этот запуск, посадочная площадка на земле ещё не была готова.

И неизвестно готова ли сейчас.

Разве на неё еще не садились?

Нет, потому что это не та площадка, которая на мысе Канаверал. Это площадка на Ванденберге.

[tnt22]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/08/19/falcon-9-rocket-test-fired-for-california-launch-next-week/

Falcon 9 rocket test-fired for California launch next week
August 19, 2017 Stephen Clark

A commercial Falcon 9 rocket in the final stages of launch preparations fired its nine Merlin main engines Saturday at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, verifying its readiness for liftoff with a Taiwanese Earth-imaging payload Thursday.

SpaceX engineers rolled out the two-stage rocket Friday to Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg, and the Falcon 9 launch team oversaw a computer-controlled countdown and fueling sequence ahead of Saturday's static fire test.

Спойлер

The Falcon 9 rocket slated to launch Aug. 24 with the Formosat 5 satellite test-fires its nine main engines Saturday. Credit: SpaceX

Restraints kept the rocket firmly grounded on its hillside launch pad overlooking the Pacific Ocean as the Merlin 1D engines throttled up to 1.7 million pounds of thrust for several seconds.

The hold-down firing is a customary part of all SpaceX launch campaigns, used by engineers to confirm the readiness of the launcher and ground systems, and as an exercise of the ground team.

The next step in SpaceX's launch campaign at Vandenberg will be the removal of the rocket from the pad for attachment of the Formosat 5 spacecraft, a Taiwanese satellite designed to test out the country's domestic aerospace manufacturing capability and collect a range of black-and-white and color imagery of Earth.

Developed and funded by Taiwan's National Space Organization, or NSPO, Formosat 5 weighs around 1,047 pounds (475 kilograms) with a full load of fuel, according to information posted on NSPO's website.

After flying south from Vandenberg, the Falcon 9 rocket will send the Formosat 5 satellite into a 447-mile-high (720-kilometer) sun-synchronous orbit that passes near Earth's poles.

Liftoff is scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 24, at 11:50 a.m. PDT (2:50 p.m. EDT; 1850 GMT) at the opening of a 44-minute launch window.

The launch will be the fifth time a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will blast off from Vandenberg, an Air Force-run base on California's Central Coast northwest of Los Angeles. It will be the 40th Falcon 9 launch overall, including flights departing from SpaceX launch pads in Florida.

"We are proud to provide a safe and secure launch location for our mission partners," said Col. Gregory E. Wood, vice commander of the Air Force's 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg. "This mission is the practical demonstration of the professional spirit and teamwork found in the everyday operations of Team Vandenberg and SpaceX."

SpaceX plans to return the Falcon 9's first stage to a drone ship positioned downrange in the Pacific Ocean for refurbishment and reuse. The booster launching Formosat 5 is fresh from the factory and making its first flight.

Formosat 5 will only take up a fraction of the Falcon 9's lift capability, and officials from NSPO and SpaceX originally planned to launch the satellite on a Falcon 1e rocket. But SpaceX discontinued the small launcher, which was powered by a single Merlin booster engine, in favor of developing the Falcon 9 and larger rockets.

The Taiwanese government, through the National Space Organization, originally paid SpaceX around $23 million in 2010 for the launch, less than half of the advertised price of a Falcon 9 launch today.

Formosat 5 carries two instruments.

One is an optical imaging payload capable of resolving features as small as 2 meters — about 6.6 feet — in black-and-white. The camera has half that resolution in color mode.

An advanced ionospheric probe from the National Central University in Taiwan is also aboard Formosat 5.

The ionospheric instrument is an "all-in-one plasma sensor to measure ionospheric plasma concentrations, velocities, and temperatures over a wide range of spatial scales," according to a fact sheet released by NSPO. "The transient and long-term variations of ionospheric plasma can be monitored as seismic precursors associated with earthquakes."

Formosat 5 was to be accompanied by a package of approximately 90 small satellites fastened to a multi-payload Sherpa adapter developed by Spaceflight, a Seattle-based company that builds lightweight spacecraft and brokers launch services for CubeSats on rideshare rocket flights.

But Spaceflight canceled that plan after the Formosat 5 launch faced years of delays in the aftermath of two Falcon 9 rocket failures that combined to ground SpaceX's fleet for nearly a year. Formosat 5's launch was shuffled later in SpaceX's manifest for unexplained reasons.

Spaceflight has reserved a dedicated Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg next year with a Sherpa space tug expected to loft around 90 small satellites on the same rocket.

Meanwhile, the Seattle launch broker arranged for most of the 90 satellites slated to launch with Formosat 5 to fly on other rockets, including an Indian PSLV mission and a Russian Soyuz flight earlier this year.

Several others were rebooked on the next Sherpa adapter flying on a Falcon 9 next year.

Next week's launch from California will mark the 12th Falcon 9 flight of the year, coming in the heels of an Aug. 14 mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida that deployed a space station-build supply ship in orbit.

[свернуть]

[tnt22]

http://spaceflight101.com/falcon-9-formosat-5/spacex-formosat-5-static-fire-test/

SpaceX Conducts Static Fire Test for Long-Delayed Falcon 9 Launch with Taiwan's FormoSat-5
August 20, 2017

SpaceX on Saturday successfully completed the Static Fire Test for the company's next mission out of Vandenberg Air Force Base which, by on several counts, will be an unusual flight of the Falcon 9 rocket. Targeting an August 24 launch date, Falcon 9 will be tasked with lifting the FormoSat-5 Earth Observation Satellite for Taiwan's National Space Organization.

The mission is unusual in that it carries a particularly light payload and comes at a net financial loss for SpaceX, representing a leftover contract from the abandoned Falcon 1e program. FormoSat-5, weighing in at 475 Kilograms, requires only one-twentieth of Falcon 9's performance to the target 720-Kilometer orbit and only fills out a small fraction of the standard Falcon 9 payload fairing, sized to fit the largest communications satellites.

Спойлер

Photo: SpaceX

FormoSat-5 had a rather interesting road to the launch pad, starting development in 2005 as Taiwan's first domestic-built satellite after earlier FormoSats were designed and built by outside contractors.


Photo: NSPO

The project had the typical technical challenges faced when developing a space mission, causing its schedule to be revised several times. The National Space Organization (NSPO) signed with SpaceX in June 2010 for a launch on the company's Falcon 1e rocket – a proposed upgrade of the Falcon 1 rocket with a higher-thrust Merlin 1C engine on the first stage, lengthened tanks to hold more propellant and an upgraded second stage. The FormoSat-5 launch contract value was reported as $23 million at the time.

Falcon 1e, capable of lifting one metric ton into Low Earth Orbit, was expected to make its debut in 2011 and FormoSat was targeting liftoff in late 2013, but plans changed significantly when SpaceX withdrew Falcon 1e from the market and moved payloads to the much more powerful Falcon 9. This allowed a series of Orbcomm satellites that would have used individual rockets to be bundled for only a pair of Falcon 9 missions, but the stand-alone FormoSat project remained on its own for some time on SpaceX's launch manifest.

>> FormoSat-5 Spacecraft & Instrument Overview


Spaceflight SHERPA – Image: Spaceflight Industries

Due to payload-related delays, FormoSat's launch date drifted from 2014 to 2015 and eventually 2016, giving SpaceX time to seek a co-passenger for the lightweight satellite. News emerged in the second half of 2015 that Seattle-based launch services broker & satellite builder Spaceflight Industries had signed up to ride with FormoSat, targeting this mission as the first launch of the company's SHERPA space tug delivering some 90 small satellites and aiming for a lower injection orbit than FormoSat. Even with SHERPA, the flight was still going to be light with an expected payload mass of 1,700 Kilograms.

FormoSat-5 concluded its pre-flight testing campaign in Taiwan in May 2016 and was ready to ship out for launch when reports surfaced that SpaceX had informed NSPO the mission would encounter a delay due to a range outage, taking a place in SpaceX's launch queue behind the inaugural Iridium-NEXT launch, then planned for September 2016. The September 1st explosion of a Falcon 9 on its SLC-40 launch pad in Florida further knocked back schedules due to an extended grounding of the Falcon 9 rocket.

San Francisco-based Planet that had 56 payloads on SHERPA pulled out in November in favor of India's PSLV that was able to provide a February 2017 launch opportunity.


FormoSat-5 ships out for launch – Photo: NSPO

At the time of Falcon's return to flight in January with the Iridium-1 mission, FormoSat had vanished from the near-term Vandenberg manifest due to launch vehicle availability. SpaceX's focus after recovering from mishaps in 2015 and '16 was to fly customers that were facing the most severe financial impacts or regulatory issues from staying on the ground, dealing with these critical missions – and the company's obligations to NASA – first.

SHERPA was de-manifested in February of this year and Spaceflight re-booked most of the flight's customers on other rockets with clearer schedules. According to a report by Taipei Times, SpaceX was facing a financial penalty of 1.25% of the total FormoSat-5 launch contract value for each month of delays on their part with a cap at 10%, leaving SpaceX with around $20.7 million for this mission when the typical asking price is $62M for a standard Falcon 9 launch.


FormoSat-5 in Falcon 9 Fairing (minus SHERPA) – Image: NSPO

Despite coming at a net loss for SpaceX, the contract signing at the time in 2010 represented important business that helped the company over initial struggles with Falcon 1 and on to bigger things.

Riding solo, FormoSat-5 will be the lightest payload launched by Falcon 9. The vehicle's potential performance numbers illustrate the colossal waste of rocket performance that will be transpiring on Thursday: according to NASA's Launch Services Program, Falcon 9 FT could deliver 7,900 Kilograms into the required orbit while keeping sufficient propellant for a Return-to-Launch-Site landing of the first stage, 10,955kg when using the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship deployed to the Pacific Ocean.

Thursday's planned launch will be 40th flight for the Falcon 9 rocket since its inauguration in 2010, the 12th of the year and the third Falcon 9 launch out of Vandenberg in 2017. It will be the fifth launch overall for Falcon 9 from its launch pad overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The FormoSat-5 mission will involve a Falcon 9 FT Block 3 first stage and Block 4 second stage – a combination that has been flying since May and will be replaced by all-Block 4 vehicles going forward (with the exception of Block 3 re-flights coming up later this year). Block 5, the final iteration of Falcon 9, is expected to roll out in the not too-distant future to complete at least seven flights with a frozen design needed for crew certification under NASA's requirements.

>> Falcon 9 FT Launch Vehicle Overview


File Image of Falcon 9 atop its West Coast Pad – Photo: SpaceX

Pressing into the launch campaign for FormoSat, both stages of Falcon 9 traveled east from their manufacturing base in Hawthorne, California to undergo hot fire tests at SpaceX's Texas test facility. Then, the stages were shipped back west to Vandenberg in mid-July for final processing and integration. The vehicle was moved to the pad on Friday and went through a full propellant loading sequence on Saturday ahead of the brief ignition of the nine Merlin 1D engines on the first stage, typically aiming for a 3.5-second firing duration to allow all engines to come up to liftoff thrust.

Saturday's Static Fire Test occurred at 19 UTC, right at the opening of a multi-hour test window, indicating Falcon 9 enjoyed a smooth countdown with no hold-ups in its hour-long automated countdown and tanking sequence. After an initial quick review of data that confirmed all necessary performance parameters were captured, Falcon 9 went into de-tanking to return to the hangar next to the SLC-4E launch pad to meet its payload.

Thursday's launch window stretches from 18:50 to 19:34 UTC, though liftoff will target a near-instantaneous opportunity once committing to loading sub-cooled Liquid Oxygen and chilled Rocket Propellant 1 into the tanks.

Given its very light load, this mission would be a prime candidate for SpaceX's first Return-to-Launch-Site landing at the West Coast via a Falcon Landing Zone established at Space Launch Complex 4W just a few hundred meters from the SLC-4E launch pad. However, FCC documents filed in June show this mission will utilize the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship "Just Read The Instructions" for the powered landing of the first stage some 344 Kilometers south west of the launch pad. The exact reasons for opting for a more difficult ASDS landing are not clear – SpaceX appears to have finished construction of the landing pad and regulatory hurdles have been cleared via environmental impact assessments by the Federal Aviation Administration.


Falcon 9 Fairing Half – Photo: SpaceX

Even with the ASDS landing, Falcon 9 will have much excess performance on its second stage – likely leaving it with plenty of surplus propellants after dropping FormoSat-5 off in a planned 720-Kilometer Sun Synchronous Orbit inclined 98.3 degrees. What SpaceX intends to do with the leftover rocket capacity – if anything – remains to be seen. In a similar but not as drastic case of surplus performance on the NROL-76 mission earlier this year, SpaceX demonstrated a multi-orbit coast phase before deorbiting the second stage as the company works toward long-coast capability for its second stage to support complex mission profiles like direct Geostationary Injections.

It was strongly indicated that Thursday's mission will feature an attempt to recover the rocket's payload fairing halves as SpaceX pushes toward making more parts of Falcon 9 re-usable for further cost reduction. The fairing, 5.2 meters in diameter and 13.1 meters long, is a large composite structure that costs around $5 million and requires a lengthy manufacturing process that could become a bottle neck in the future as SpaceX continues to step up its launch pace from multiple launch sites.

Thursday's mission will likely feature a lofted trajectory, allowing the fairing to be separated relatively early in flight when the rocket's velocity will not be as high as for a Geotransfer mission featuring a less-lofted design. This should create a more favorable entry environment to increase the odds of the fairing making an intact return.

[свернуть]

[tnt22]

ПМСМ, наш клиент (других претендентов вроде не наблюдается):

НОТАМ

NZZO

B3858/17 - TEMPO DANGER AREA NZD028 (EAST AUCKLAND OCEANIC FIR)
IS PRESCRIBED AS FLW:
ALL THAT AIRSPACE BOUNDED BY A LINE JOINING
S 25 49 00, W 157 00 00
S 62 04 00, W 168 58 00
S 62 02 00, W 178 36 00
S 25 49 00, W 161 58 00
S 25 49 00, W 157 00 00
ACTIVITY: SPACE DEBRIS RETURN
USER AGENCY: FOREIGN SPACE AGENCY
PRESCRIBED PURSUANT TO CIVIL AVIATION RULE PART 71 UNDER A DELEGATED
AUTHORITY ISSUED BY THE DIRECTOR OF CIVIL AVIATION. SFC - FL999, 24 AUG 20:45
2017 UNTIL 24 AUG 21:55 2017. CREATED: 14 AUG 21:16 2017

[tnt22]

[Безумный Шляпник]

NAVAREA XII 353/2017 (18)  
EASTERN NORTH PACIFIC.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS 1820Z TO 2018Z DAILY 24 THRU 27 AUG IN AREA BOUND BY
   32-28N 122-01W, 32-10N 120-56W, 30-53N 121-22W, 31-09N 122-27W.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 272118Z AUG 17.
( 190250Z AUG 2017 )

HYDROPAC 2814/2017 (29,76,83)  
SOUTH PACIFIC. DNC 06, DNC 29.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS 2046Z TO 2154Z DAILY 24 THRU 27 AUG IN AREA BOUND BY
   25-49S 161-58W, 25-49S 156-56W, 62-04S 168-58W, 62-02S 178-36W.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 272254Z AUG 17.
( 190321Z AUG 2017 )

[tnt22]

Прогноз погоды L-2

L-2 Launch Weather - 22 Aug 2017
 

[Pirat5]

Formosat-5 Launch Hazard Areas

[tnt22]

SpaceX выпустила пресс-кит миссии:

formosat5presskit.pdf - 396589 B, 2 стр, 2017-08-23 06:22:58 UTC

[tnt22]

 

[tnt22]

Эмблема миссии

 

[tnt22]

[tnt22]