SpaceX First Re-Flight
On March 30, 2017, SpaceX achieved the world’s first re-flight of an orbital class rocket.
Following delivery of the payload, the Falcon 9 first stage returned to Earth for the second
time.
Curious to learn more about the first ever recycled rocket?
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In a milestone for the private spaceflight company, SpaceX successfully launched a reused
Falcon 9 rocket booster into space, the same first stage that carried a bouncy house into
space in 2016.
The rocket booster had previously stuck a spectacular landing on a drone ship floating
off the Florida coast, playfully named “Of Course I Still Love You.”
That reused booster stuck its landing again on Thursday 30 March, 2017. and on the same
drone ship no less, after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This time, the rocket wasn’t carrying an inflatable space pod, but was instead delivering
a communications satellite to orbit for a company called SES.
The rocket’s vertical touchdown marks the ninth successful SpaceX landing in 14 tries.
six of which have been on ships floating offshore.
In April, 2016, SpaceX launched an inflatable habitat to the International Space Station—and
then successfully turned the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket around, flew it back to
Earth, and parked it on a drone ship floating 185 miles off the U.S. East Coast.
“The rocket landed instead of putting a hole in the ship, or tipping over, so we’re
really excited about that,” said SpaceX founder Elon Musk at a press conference after
the landing.
After launching from Cape Canaveral, the SpaceX rocket rocket boosted its payload-carrying
Dragon capsule toward low-Earth orbit, then turned around and headed for home about 4.5
minutes after launch.
As it approached the drone ship, the Falcon 9 righted itself, slowed down, and landed
perfectly.
“The 1st stage of the Falcon 9 just landed on our ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ droneship.
Dragon in good orbit,” SpaceX tweeted, in what must be the most understated announcement
of the successful landing to cross our feed.
To space and back, in less than nine minutes?
Hello, future.
In 2015, the company successfully set a rocket back down on the ground, but landing at sea
is much trickier than landing on … land … because the ocean is a moving beast.
Previous attempts failed when earlier rockets toppled over and experienced a “rapid unscheduled
disassembly” (i.e., they exploded).
Musk said that before that April launch, company members were placing the odds of success at
2:1.
“We thought it was more likely than not that this mission would work, but still probably
have a 1/3 chance of failure,” Musk said.
“It’s still quite tricky to land on a ship … it’s quite a tiny target.”
The name of the game here is making spaceflight cheaper by developing reusable rockets that
can ferry people and cargo into orbit, instead of spending millions of dollars building new
launch rockets.
Blue Origins, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, is also working on reusable rocket systems,
and has successfully landed its New Shepard rocket on the ground multiple times.
Musk and his team hope that once reusable rockets become more than a mere curiosity,
they’ll help reduce the often prohibitive costs of space travel, which is crucial for
Musk’s ambitious plan to populate Mars within a few decades.
His next goals include two successful launches of the same booster within 24 hours.
The Re-flight mission made Falcon 9 the second orbit capable rocket after the space shuttle,
to achieve partial reusability.
The Falcon 9 flew from launch complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, the same pad
from which the Shuttle began eighty-two of its missions, including its first and final
flights.
Reusability has long been a key objective for SpaceX.
Making the company’s first launch in March 2006, the small Falcon 1 vehicle carried a
parachute system intended to bring its spent first stage back to Earth.
SpaceX attempted to recover the first stages of four Falcon 1 vehicles.
However, the rocket’s first launch failed early in the mission and its third launch
failed at stage separation, leaving the first stage unrecoverable.
During the second and fourth launches, recovery attempts were unsuccessful.
Following three failures, SpaceX achieved its first successful launch in September 2008,
with the fourth Falcon 1 successfully placing the demonstration payload RatSat into low
Earth orbit.
The rocket made its fifth and final flight in July 2009, successfully placing Malaysia’s
RazakSAT satellite into orbit.
For the RazakSAT launch, the Falcon flew without a recovery system.
SpaceX originally planned a family of Falcon rockets, with the smaller single Falcon 1,
a five-engine Falcon 5 and a nine-engine Falcon 9.
Two heavier vehicles, the Falcon 9S5 and 9S9, would have used two additional cores strapped
to the first stage, with the 9S5 using Falcon 5 cores and the 9S9 Falcon 9 cores.
The first five Falcon 9 launches used a version of the rocket which has retrospectively become
known as the Falcon 9 v1.0.
Following the rocket’s original design the first stage was powered by nine Merlin-1C
engines arranged in a square three-by-three grid.
The second stage used a single Merlin Vacuum engine, derived from the Merlin-1C.
Both stages of the two-stage vehicle are fuelled by RP-1 kerosene propellant, oxidized by liquid
oxygen.
Following its maiden flight, the Falcon 9 v1.0 made four more launches, all carrying
Dragon spacecraft.
The first of these launches, in December 2010, carried Dragon C1.
Dragon’s maiden flight, C1 completed two revolutions around the Earth before the capsule
reentered the atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.
The final three launches of the original Falcon 9 carried Dragon missions to the International
Space Station; the first the Dragon C2+ COTS demonstration mission, followed by the first
two operational flights under the commercial resupply services program.
The earliest Falcon 9 launches carried parachutes which were to have been used to recover the
first stage.
However, this was abandoned due to the stage disintegrating during reentry, before the
parachutes could be deployed.
Instead, SpaceX began to investigate using the stage’s engines to make a powered descent
and landing.
Alongside this, an improved Falcon 9 vehicle, the Falcon 9 v1.1, was developed.
In order to help with the reusability development program, SpaceX constructed a test vehicle
named Grasshopper which is a single-engine Falcon 9 v1.0 first stage with fixed landing
gear.
In 2012 and 2013 Grasshopper made a series of test flights from SpaceX’s facility at
McGregor, Texas.
After eight successful low-altitude flights, Grasshopper was replaced with a new three-engine
development vehicle using the stretched first stage of the Falcon 9 v1.1.
This new test vehicle introduced the retractable landing legs and later grid fins that would
fly with operational Falcon 9 rockets, making four successful flights in 2014 before a sensor
issue led to its failure during the fifth mission.
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The Falcon 9 v1.1 stretched both the first and second stages of the rocket and upgraded
from Merlin 1C to Merlin 1D engines.
The first stage engines were rearranged into the octagonal – or OctaWeb – configuration
that is now familiar.
The upgrades increased the rocket’s payload capacity, giving it sufficient margin on some
missions for powered recovery tests following first stage separation.
The first few Falcon 9 v1.1 launches tested restarting the first stage engines after separation,
attempting to achieve a controlled descent into the ocean.
The rocket first flew with legs in April 2014, and grid fins to provide additional control
were added ahead of January 2015’s launch of the CRS-5 Dragon mission.
During the CRS-5 launch, SpaceX deployed its first ASDS “Just Read the Instructions”
into the Atlantic Ocean to provide the returning stage with a landing platform.
A converted barge, the ASDS was positioned downrange and left unmanned for the landing
attempt.
Although the first stage reached the drone ship, it depleted its hydraulic fluid during
descent resulting in a hard and uncontrolled landing and explosion.
The next Dragon launch CRS-6 made another landing attempt using “Just Read the Instructions”
three months later.
The stage toppled over on touchdown, before again exploding.
The final mission for which Just Read the Instructions was deployed was the CRS-7 launch
in June 2015.
Towards the end of first stage flight, a composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) broke loose inside
the second stage oxidizer tank.
The tank over pressurized, resulting in structural failure and the disintegration of the Falcon.
Just Read the Instructions was subsequently converted back to a regular barge; however
her name was reused for a new drone ship commissioned for launches out of Vandenberg Air Force Base.
A replacement East Coast ASDS was also introduced, named “Of Course I Still Love You”.
The two vessels are named after ships in the works of science fiction author Iain M. Banks.
When Falcon returned to flight after the CRS-7 failure, it was in a new configuration which
has become known informally as the Falcon 9 v1.2 or Falcon 9 Full Thrust.
This version of the Falcon 9 has uprated engines and uses super cold liquid oxygen to increase
oxidizer density, allowing a greater mass to be carried relative to the volume of its
tanks.
The second stage was further stretched compared to the Falcon 9 v1.1.
The Full Thrust configuration’s improved performance allows for recovery attempts on
a greater range of missions, including geosynchronous launches such as the reflight launch.
On missions that do not require the rocket’s full performance the first stage can now return
to the launch site for a touchdown on dry land.
In December 2015, the first flight of the Falcon 9 v1.2 carried eleven Orbcomm communications
satellites into low Earth orbit, with the first stage making its first attempt to fly
back to Cape Canaveral.
A landing pad, landing zone 1, was constructed on the site of Launch Complex 13, a former
Atlas launch pad which was used between 1958 and 1978.
While the second stage continued to orbit, successfully deploying its payload, the first
stage achieved a flawless landing at Landing Zone 1 marking the first time SpaceX had successfully
brought the stage back to Earth.The Falcon 9 v1.1 made its final flight in January 2016
with an unsuccessful attempt to land on the new “Just Read the Instructions” after
lifting off from Vandenberg Air Force Base with the Jason 3 satellite.
One of the first stage’s legs failed to lock into position and the stage toppled over
on landing.
In March 2016 SpaceX made its first recovery attempt with Of Course I Still Love You, during
the launch of the SES-9 satellite.
The first attempt to recover the first stage from a geosynchronous mission, the first stage
returned to the drone ship but did not have sufficient fuel remaining to achieve a survivable
landing.
The next launch, the CRS-8 Dragon mission achieved the first successful landing at sea.
Launched on 8 April 2016, the twenty-third flight of the Falcon 9 and the third of the
v1.2 configuration lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station to send Dragon on its way to the International Space Station.
After propelling the Falcon 9 for the first two and a half minutes of her mission the
first stage – Core 1021 – separated.
Six minutes later, following boostback, reentry and landing burns, the stage touched down
atop the drone ship.
A year later, following refurbishment and testing, the same first stage was ready to
fly again.
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