For the third time, SpaceX is launching the most powerful operational rocket in the world.
The Falcon Heavy stands at 70 meters tall, packs-in 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff,
AND can carry nearly 64 metric tons in payload into low earth orbit; more than twice its
closest competitor.
The mission is already checking off a lot of “firsts”, not only for the groundbreaking
experiments onboard that we’ll definitely get to later, but also for SpaceX.
The Falcon Heavy made some astounding accomplishments in the last year, starting with its debut
launch in February of 2018.
And just recently in April 2019, the Falcon Heavy had its first commercial launch and
the mission successfully landed all three of its boosters, including the difficult landing
of its center core on the off-coast drone ship, Of Course, I Still Love You, a first
for SpaceX.
Now those same rockets are going to be reused as the side boosters for the next Falcon Heavy
mission for the very first time.
If SpaceX pulls off the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program 2 mission, the rocket will
blaze the trail for SpaceX to fly humans to the moon, and one day, even Mars.
This STP-2 launch is a first with the DoD and U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems
Center, and the experiments within the payload range from those put forth by government facilities
like NASA and NOAA, to the U.S. military and even research projects from universities.
In total, the payload is filled with 24 different sized satellites, making this deployment one
of the most diverse ever. And deploying all of these satellites will be among the most
complex tasks in SpaceX’s history and everyone is watching for their success.
No pressure Elon.
But what makes this launch even more special isn’t just that it’s such a huge defining
moment for SpaceX, it’s also because of what the Falcon Heavy is carrying.
On board, this hefty vehicle are three experiments that if successful, could alter how we explore
the solar system in the future.
Firstly, LightSail 2 will be the first solar sail spacecraft to orbit the earth, next up is the Green Propellant
Infusion Mission testing their alternative rocket fuel, and lastly the Deep Space Atomic
Clock which will help spacecraft with more precise and autonomous radio navigation. But
let’s start with the one that sounds the most science-fictiony, but is definitely reality.
Solar sailing is technology using the sun’s light to propel spacecraft; no fuel, no expelling
of energy, no toxic by-products.
So solar sailing uses the push of light.
It's actually photons which have no risk mass, but in relativistic land, they actually carry
momentum.
So as the photons hit something, in, particularly if they hit and bounce off, then you end up
getting a momentum transfer that pushes your spacecraft.
When you get into the vacuum of space, that push actually becomes significant.
For this mission, LightSail 2 is encapsulated within a spacecraft built at Georgia Tech,
inside Prox-1, and will deploy at a height of seven hundred and twenty kilometers above
the earth—the optimal range for solar sailing.
But how will we know if it’s successful?
So we're trying to demonstrate that we actually are doing controlled solar sailing by raising
the orbit, or more formally, increasing the orbital energy.
And what we're looking for is anything measurable.
We have all retroreflectors on there, and the International Laser Ranging service will
be shooting lasers at it and then measuring the time to come back.
That may give us an indication very quickly within a couple of days if it works.
If successful, LightSail 2 will become the first spacecraft in Earth’s orbit to fly
on sunlight alone, and this would be a gamechanger for nanosatellites like CubeSats.
These already cost-effective satellites won’t have to carry fuel.
And this will enable them to live longer lifetimes, or tackle more challenging orbits, which will
then change the way we explore space entirely.
This tantalizing future of space travel is probably why the project has gotten so much
support over the years and means so much to the LightSail team.
LightSail 2 is also different because it is completely funded by individuals, more than
40,000 people have contributed money to the LightSail project.
So it really is the project that represents a huge interest in space exploration.
If you’re lucky you might just be able to see this historic mission in orbit while it
runs its course.
But LightSail 2 isn’t the only experiment onboard with the goal of more sustainable
space missions in the future.
NASA is collaborating with Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation and Aerojet Rocketdyne
to create the Green Propellant Infusion Mission or GPIM.
For over ten years, researchers have been developing a new low-toxicity, propellant
blend called hydroxyl ammonium nitrate,
also known as AF-M315E.
Essentially, what makes this fuel better than hydrazine is that it’s over 40% denser,
which means we can store more of it in the same size containers, and whereas hydrazine
needed the lining of its containers to be constantly warmed, AF-M315E can’t freeze.
Which requires less power from the spacecraft to maintain the fuel’s temperatures.
Basically, it yields higher performance, it’s cheaper, it's less toxic, and researchers just
need to prove that it works in space.
And if it does, we’ll be able to travel further into deep space than ever before.
But, as with any spacecraft, we also need to be able to control and navigate where it’s
going, and that’s the goal of the Deep Space Atomic Clock.
This mission aims to give spacecraft the autonomous ability to calculate its own trajectory with
the use of an atomic clock in conjunction with an onboard Artificial Intelligence system.
The Deep Space Atomic Clock is the very first ion-based space clock, the first that can
keep time very stably that's small enough that we can send it in a space, it's about
50 times more stable than the GPS clocks, the cesium rubidium clocks.
Stability for this atomic clock means that it should only lose a second in 10 million
years.
And that’s important because a second can mean landing on Mars or missing your target
by miles.
The success of its timekeeping is due to the mercury ions involved in the technology, which
the clock is the first to use.
What's really cool about using ions is that we can trap them electromagnetically to confine
them in a vacuum tube and confined them by EM fields.
So they're not actually hitting the walls of their containment trap, which essentially
means that the clock is much more stable over long periods of time.
And its performance is on par with the atomic clocks that we use on the ground in the Deep
Space Network.
But they're the size of a refrigerator, so not really something that we can send on a spacecraft.
The Deep Space Network is the world’s largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications
system.
It’s made up of 3 facilities placed very strategically around the world so we
never lose a connection with a spacecraft.
But right now, it’s a two-way relay system to give spacecraft directions, which can take
anywhere from minutes to hours, and the Deep Space Atomic Clock could help manage that.
If you can keep track of that signal, then we can just blast radio signals from the Deep
Space Network to our spacecraft, wherever they're traveling in the solar system.
And they can collect that signal on board, and then time tag it.
And then your computer needs to be programmed as such that it can actually perform the navigation
algorithms that people like me would do here on the earth.
We haven't flown this clock technology before.
So being able to fly this and demonstrate it in space is an absolutely huge milestone
for us.
And there’s more than just making sure that spacecraft know where they’re going.
If tests and demonstrations go well, the Deep Space Atomic Clock could one day help maintain
daily life on other planets.
We use GPS every single day here on Earth, and when we think about sending astronauts
to places like the moon or Mars or even beyond that, they're going to need a way to find
their way around the surface of that planet or moon, right?
They're going to need a way to navigate from, say, I don't know, whatever their field experiment
location is back to home base.
And by having a GPS like navigation system there, we can support that human presence
and the human ability to navigate on those foreign places.
After deployment via the Falcon Heavy, the Deep Space Atomic Clock won’t turn on until
4-7 weeks after lift-off that point, the real excitement starts for the deep space team.
The Falcon Heavy STP-2 mission has enormous future applications ahead, the kind that can
get us off the ground, into space, and beyond.
There are so many upcoming missions for this year, if you want to keep up with them subscribe!
And check out this Countdown to Launch here, where we talk about SpaceX-CRS17 mission from
just a couple months ago.
Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time on Seeker.