SpaceX successfully launches SES-9 into GEO but crash lands rocket on drone ship

Today at 6:35pm EST, SpaceX successfully launched the SES-9 communications satellite into Geostationary orbit (GEO).

Launching the SES-9 payload was the primary goal of today’s mission, but many had their eyes back on the ground for what would have been the first successful landing of a rocket on a drone ship in the ocean. Unfortunately, however, the rocket landing was unsuccessful.

SpaceX had repeatedly set expectations low for this particular rocket recovery attempt.

Characteristics of today’s mission made rocket recovery more difficult for a couple different reasons. First, the speed of this particular rocket was considerably faster than previous landing attempts.

Second, the landing attempt was made on a floating drone ship at sea rather than on a stable platform on land, which is how SpaceX’s first successful rocket recovery was completed.

Rocket speed was greater because the mission required SpaceX to send its payload into GEO, which is about 100 times higher than Low Earth Orbit (LEO) where other SpaceX payloads have been placed.

SpaceX’s last rocket recovery attempt, made in January, was on a mission that sent a satellite into LEO and therefore required a lower speed. That landing was alsounsuccessful, but the rocket did soft land on its target and only fell over because one of the rocket’s support legs failed to lock upon touchdown.

SpaceX landing attempt after Jason-3 mission in January / Courtesy of SpaceX

Drone ship rocket landings are also inherently more difficult than land-based recovery attempts, but for certain missions – like the one today – that’s the only option.

As seen in the video above, the live stream of the drone ship landing cut out just as the rocket appeared in the video.

SpaceX has experienced challenges with their drone ship video connection in the past as well. The video feed requires a constant satellite connection and because the drone ship is constantly moving that connection is hard to maintain. As the rocket comes in for landing, it can shake the drone ship, making it even harder to maintain this connection.

Two earlier launch attempts on February 24^th and 25^th were scrubbed because of concerns with SpaceX’s super-chilled liquid oxygen propellant.

A third launch attempt on February 28^th was delayed due to safety reasons because a boat strayed within range of the launch site. If anything were to happen to the SpaceX vehicle after launch while the rocket was over the water, it could potentially be extremely dangerous to boats within a specified range.

After the boat had moved and it was safe to launch, SpaceX began launch procedures, but aborted in the final seconds of countdown because of a low thrust sensor alarm.

A fourth launch was scheduled for March 1st, but upper winds were too high to launch.

With SES-9 safely placed in GEO, the fifth time was a charm and today’s mission by all accounts was a success. According to Musk, SpaceX’s next mission will have a better chance for a rocket recovery.

Comments

Workato Chat Bot Brings Enterprise Workflow Into Slack

As we head into 2016, enterprise chat applications like Slack are suddenly a hot commodity, and if you’re inside chat a good portion of the day the argument goes, you should be able to access other work without leaving the chat client. This is exactly what Workato’s newly announced chat bot, Workbot, is designed to do. Chat bots are small programs that integrate with a chat platform and provide some advanced type of functionality in a fairly easy fashion. The new Workbot-chat bot enables users to access and control over 100 enterprise applications such as a Salesforce CRM record, Quickbooks accounting information or Zendesk customer service interactions directly inside of Slack. One of the primary issues with early Enterprise 2.0 tools was that they were just another application busy employees needed to pay attention to. The idea here is to give users customer information directly in the context of the discussion they may be having...

Best Web Design Company in Pondicherry

#Technology has two faces. We all feel it, but sometimes can’t find words to describe it. #Ebooks are the best example to show the 0-1 nature of emotions the #technology evokes. #itwhere provide a #Best #solutions to #Growyourbusiness feel free to drop a #Mail info@itwheretech.co.in www.itwheretech.co.in

Montana-based mapping startup onXmaps raises a round of funding fit for Big Sky Country

A mapping startup based in Missoula, Mont., which allows users to download sophisticated offline topographic maps outlining public and private lands and a number of other features geared towards hunting, fishing and camping, has pulled in its first major outside funding. onXmaps has closed a $20.3 million Series A round led by Summit Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Next Frontier Capital and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke also participated in the round. The company is calling the fundraise one of the biggest ever among startups based in Montana. onX Hunt app This is impressively the first bout of outside funding that the 70-person startup has ever taken since being founded in 2009. The company’s founder and CEO Eric Siegfried, an avid outdoorsman himself, had created a more basic program to integrate these maps with his own Garmin GPS. After finding his friends were interested in having a product like this too, he put down $27k of his...

Phoenix OS is (another) Android-as-a-desktop

Google Android may have been developed as a smartphone operating system (and later ported to tablets, TVs, watches, and other platforms), but over the past few years we’ve seen a number of attempts to turn it into a desktop operating system. One of the most successful has been Remix OS , which gives Android a taskbar, start menu, and an excellent window management system. The Remix OS team has also generated a lot of buzz over the past year, and this week the operating system gained a lot of new alpha testers thanks to a downloadable version of Remix OS that you can run on many recent desktop or notebook computers. But Remix OS isn’t the only game in town. Phoenix OS is another Android-as-desktop operating system, and while it’s still pretty rough around the edges, there are a few features that could make it a better option for some testers. Some background I first discovered Phoenix OS from a post in the Remix OS Google Group , altho...

Engineering against all odds, or how NYC’s subway will get wireless in the tunnels

Never ask a wireless engineer working on the NYC subway system “What can go wrong?” Flooding, ice, brake dust, and power outages relentlessly attack the network components. Rats — many, many rats — can eat power and fiber optic cables and bring down the whole system. Humans are no different, as their curiosity or malice strikes a blow against wireless hardware (literally and metaphorically). Serverless software deployment to the cloud, this is not. New York City officially got wireless service in every underground subway station a little more than a year ago, and I was curious what work went into the buildout of this system as well as how it will expand in the future. That curiosity is part of a series of articles I’ve written on an observed pattern known as cost disease, the massively inflating costs of basic human services like health care, housing, infrastructure, and education. The United States spends trillions of dollars on each of these fields, massively outspending sim...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog