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SpaceX Falcon Heavy center core sticks upright
landing on OCISLY droneship on April 11, 2019, but toppled over due to rough
seas. Credit: SpaceX
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – The core booster of the triple stick Falcon Heavy that successfully landed on a drone ship after last weeks SpaceX launch has been lost due to rough seas while returning to Port Canaveral.
The 15 story tall center booster that successfully made a dramatic soft landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” (OCISLY) drone ship several hundred miles off shore in the Atlantic Ocean toppled over at some point over the weekend because of hefty eight to ten foot sea swells.
The booster slipped and slided atop OCISLY because teams were unable to secure it tightly with the octagrabber robot that would have clamped onto it firmly atop the droneship deck.
Octagrabber is normally maneuvered beneath the booster but in this case was unable to grasp the landed Falcon Heavy core booster because its geometry is different from a normal Falcon 9 booster or the twin side boosters that made a successful soft landing on the ground back at Cape Canaveral.
“Over the weekend, due to rough sea conditions, SpaceX’s recovery team was unable to secure the center core booster for its return trip to Port Canaveral,” SpaceX spokesman James Gleason told Space UpClose.
“As conditions worsened with eight to ten foot swells, the booster began to shift and ultimately was unable to remain upright.”
The octagrabber system generally used to stabilize the booster on the droneship was not able to be used for this mission due to the center core having a different mechanical interface. Despite that SpaceX still plans to use this system for their next Falcon Heavy launch on mission #3.
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Stunning blastoff of triple barreled SpaceX Falcon Heavy on April 11, 2019 at 6:35 PM ET from Launch Complex-39A at
the Kennedy Space Center, FL carrying the Arabsat-6A telecommunications
satellite to Earth orbit, on 1st commercial launch of Falcon Heavy. From my remote camera placed at pad 39a. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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Powered by 27 first stage Merlin 1D engines the 23 story tall Falcon Heavy behemoth thundered off pad 39A into picture perfect skies to the cheers of the SpaceX team and well as to the tens of thousands of spectators who flocked to Florida Space Coast beaches, parks, roadways and restaurants - crowding into any open spot available to get an eyewitness birdseye view of this not to be missed space spectacle.
And for the first time in history all three Falcon Heavy launched boosters soft-landed successfully as well.
It was a happy case of ‘3 Up, 3 Down.’
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| Spectacular double landing of SpaceX twin side cores as legs deploy just above ground moments before touchdown about 8 minutes after stunning Falcon Heavy launch on April 11, 2019 at 6:35 PM ET from Launch Complex-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com |
“While we had hoped to bring the booster back intact, the safety of our team always takes precedence.”
Despite the loss of the core booster, that second Falcon Heavy mission is still on the manifest because a new Falcon Heavy center core is being manufactured in case this one had not touched down upright on OCISLY.
“We do not expect future missions to be impacted,” Gleason added.
This launch also marked the debut of the first all Block 5 version of Falcon Heavy compared to all Block 4 Falcon 9’s for the maiden liftoff 14 months ago in Feb. 2018.
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Stunning blastoff of triple barreled SpaceX Falcon Heavy on April 11, 2019 at 6:35 PM ET from Launch Complex-39A at
the Kennedy Space Center, FL carrying the Arabsat-6A telecommunications
satellite to Earth orbit, on 1st commercial launch of Falcon Heavy. From my remote camera placed at pad 39a. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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The overall sea level thrust for Falcon Heavy is 5.1 million pound of thrust at sea level.
This rises to 5.5 million pounds of thrust in a vacuum.
The side cores touched down approximately 8 minutes after liftoff and the center core nearly 10 minutes after liftoff.
Beyond that SpaceX was also able to recover both payload fairing halves.
“Both fairing halves recovered. Will be flown on Starlink mission later this year,” SpaceX CEO and billionaire founder Elon Musk tweeted.
“They each have avionics, several nitrogen thrusters & steerable parachutes.”
Thus SpaceX plans to reuse the side booster and fairings on upcoming launches.
Musk aims to drastically cut the high cost of access to space by recovering and reusing the first stage boosters and engines, fairing and more of the SpaceX Falcon family of rockets.
Watch my Falcon
Heavy prelaunch commentary
for 1st SpaceX launch attempt April 10 - in these two News 6 WKMG / ClickOrlando TV News reports from
correspondent James Sparvero
and:
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.
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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
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