 |
UpClose with Octagrabber
arms grasping upright thrice flown/landed
Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 standing upright on the OCISLY droneship from SpaceX Starlink 1 launch May 23, 2019 arrived in Port Canaveral, FL around noontime May 28. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com |
PORT CANAVERAL/CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, FL – SpaceX’s thrice flown and thrice landed Falcon 9 first stage from last weeks Starlink 1 launch sailed into Port Canaveral at lunchtime Tuesday basking in the glow of the Sunshine states bright sun – 4 days after it soared aloft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and successfully delivered the first 60 Starlink broadband satellites to LEO.
Standing fully upright and firmly grasped by the arms of the specially designed Octagrabber restraining device atop the “Of Course I Still Love You” (OCISLY) droneship upon which it accomplished a precision guided, rocket assisted smooth touchdown the recovered 156 foot tall spent booster with four fully deployed landing legs sailed into the mouth of Port Canaveral around 11:30 a.m. EDT.
 |
SpaceX naval
fleet towing thrice flown/landed Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 from Starlink 1 launch May
23 enters Port Canaveral at 1130 a.m. EDT May 28, 2019. Tug Hollywood towed the Falcon 9 landed
upright on the OCISLY droneship as onlookers watch from Jetty Park Pier, FL.
Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
|
Enjoy our Space UpClose photo gallery of the arrival and docking of Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 at the droneships normal berthing port.
Check back as our gallery grows.
 |
SpaceX naval
fleet towing thrice flown/landed Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 from Starlink 1 launch May
23 enters Port Canaveral at 1130 a.m. EDT May 28, 2019 in
this overhead view from Exploration Tower.
Tug Hollywood towed the Falcon 9 landed upright on the OCISLY droneship. Credit: Ken
Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
|
Eight minutes later the Falcon 9 first stage successfully made a precision rocket assisted intact and upright touchdown on the ‘Of Course I Still Love You’ droneship prepositioned in the Atlantic Coast off the Carolinas.
Falcon 9’s first stage for this mission previously supported the Telstar 18 VANTAGE mission in September 2018 and the Iridium-8 mission in January 2019.
 |
Tug Hollywood tows thrice flown/landed Falcon 9 booster
1049.3 from Starlink 1 launch May 23 entering Port Canaveral, FL
at 1130 a.m. EDT May 28, 2019 as it sails by Jetty Park Pier. Credit: Ken
Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
|
The SpaceX workers had cleaned off much of the charry soot from the booster exterior core to create a regular series of nearly white rectangular boxes aligned on top of one another from top to bottom – that were easily visible in my last prelaunch photos.
The rectangular boxes were easily visible as the 1st stage was towed in and appeared to be only slightly darker following the third launch and landing.
Perhaps SpaceX engineers conducted an experiment to more easily measure the amount of new soot deposited via a side by side comparison using the cleaned vs uncleaned spots.
 |
SpaceX naval
fleet towing thrice flown/landed Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 from Starlink 1 launch May
23 enters Port Canaveral at 1130 a.m. EDT May 28, 2019 in
this overhead view from Exploration Tower.
Tug Hollywood towed the Falcon 9 landed upright on the OCISLY droneship. Credit: Ken
Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
|
Overall it took about 30 minutes
from Port arrival to docking of OCISLY at its normal berthing port. Everything
appeared to go very well.
Its quite possible that this
Block 5 version booster will be launched a fourth time. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
has stated that the Block 5 is designed for 10 or more recycled launches.
 |
UpClose with Octagrabber
arms grasping upright thrice flown/landed
Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 standing upright on the OCISLY droneship from SpaceX Starlink 1 launch May 23, 2019 arrived in Port Canaveral, FL around noontime May 28 -in this overhead view from Exploration Tower. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com |
OCISLY docked nearby the fairings.
 |
Tugboats towed recovered SpaceX
Falcon 9 booster landed atop OCISLY
into Port Canaveral and nudged it into berthing spot at Noon May 28, as yellow
hoisting crane and BLLRD cap awaits ship to shore duty just hours later at 4 PM
ET. From Starlink 1 launch May 23. Credit: Ken
Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
|
Watch for my follow-up
articles and galleries about the craning and leg detachments.
The landing legs
were not retracted this time round- likely since the legs were recycled and not
suited for retraction due to aerodynamic stresses as did occur last time on the CRS-17 mission earlier in
May.
 |
UpClose with Octagrabber
arms grasping upright thrice flown/landed
Falcon 9 booster 1049.3 standing upright on the OCISLY droneship from SpaceX Starlink 1 launch May 23, 2019 arrived in Port Canaveral, FL around noontime May 28 -in this overhead view from Exploration Tower. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com |
 |
Thrice flown/landed Falcon 9 booster
1049.3 from Starlink 1 launch May 23 towed into Port Canaveral,
FL at 11:30 a.m. EDT May 28, 2019 as onlookers observe in
Jetty Park. Note the white rectangular
boxes intentionally clean off prelaunch- appeared only somewhat more sooty post
launch. Recovered SpaceX Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
|
SpaceX’s highly anticipated Starlink broadband
constellation has begun with the 1st blastoff of the inaugural batch of 60 satellites
on the firms Falcon 9 rocket on what
turned out to be the third try on May 23 as the recycled Falcon 9 rocket soared
to space.
In the not to distant future the Starlink constellation will grow to many thousands of next generation satellites that could very will revolutionize the way the world accesses and uses the internet in the next few years by slashing prices and broadening coverage to hard to reach places across the globe.
At least that’s the hope and dream put forth by SpaceX CEO and billionaire founder Elon Musk for his planned network of Low Earth orbiting (LEO) Starlink satellites aiming to provide global high speed broadband internet services to customers worldwide.
Up to 6 more Starlink launches could take place this year, Musk tweeted post launch.
Developing and building the first 60 Starlink satellites “is one of the hardest engineering projects I’ve ever seen done [and SpaceX has ever undertaken],” Musk said as he outlined his first detailed vision of the firms Starlink broadband constellation in a prelaunch media conference call on May 15 - just hours prior to the original target launch date that eventually was scrubbed minutes before liftoff due to powerful upper altitude winds.
“The goal of the Starlink system is to provide
high bandwidth, low latency connectivity, ideally throughout the world that will offer an alternative to expensive services
and also provide internet options to places where no connectivity is currently
available.”
Watch my SpaceX launch commentary and rocket photos at this Fox 35 Orlando report from May 16 launch attempt:
Watch for Ken’s continuing
onsite coverage of NASA, SpaceX, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman
and more space and mission reports direct from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia.
Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news: www.kenkremer.com –www.spaceupclose.com – twitter @ken_kremer – email: ken at kenkremer.com
Dr. Kremer is a research scientist and journalist based in the KSC area, active in outreach and interviewed regularly on TV and radio about space topics.
Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news: www.kenkremer.com –www.spaceupclose.com – twitter @ken_kremer – email: ken at kenkremer.com
Dr. Kremer is a research scientist and journalist based in the KSC area, active in outreach and interviewed regularly on TV and radio about space topics.
………….
Ken’s photos are for sale and he is available for lectures and outreach events
Ken’s photos are for sale and he is available for lectures and outreach events
No comments:
Post a Comment