SpaceX Falcon 9 V1.1 - CRS-5 - Launching January 11, 2015
Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the launch of CRS-5
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 V1.1 - CRS-5
Written: February 3, 2021
Okay. I’m waiting right here. For what?
After five successful missions to the International Space Station, including four official resupply missions for NASA, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are set to liftoff from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, for their fifth official Commercial Resupply (CRS-5) mission to the International Space Station, mankind’s orbiting lab.
The launch is currently targeted for Saturday, January 10 at 4:47am EST. A live launch webcast will begin at approximately 4:30am EST. If all goes as planned, Dragon C107 will arrive at the station approximately two days after liftoff.
The Dragon Payload
SpaceX CRS-5, also known as SpX-5, was a Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station, conducted by SpaceX for NASA, and was launched on 10 January 2015 and ended on 11 February 2015. It was the seventh flight for SpaceX's uncrewed Dragon cargo spacecraft and the fifth SpaceX operational mission contracted to NASA under an ISS resupply services contract.
The Falcon 9 rocket carrying the CRS-5 Dragon spacecraft successfully launched on 10 January 2015 at 9:47 UTC. Dragon reached the station on 12 January. It was grappled by the Space Station Remote Manipulator System at 10:54 UTC and berthed to the Harmony module at 13:56 UTC.
The Dragon spacecraft for CRS-5 carried 2,317 kilograms (5,108 lb) of cargo to the ISS. Included in this was 490 kg (1,080 lb) of provisions and equipment for the crew, 717 kg (1,581 lb) of station hardware, 577 kg (1,272 lb) of science equipment and experiments, and the 494 kg (1,089 lb) Cloud Aerosol Transport System (CATS).
CATS is a LIDAR remote sensing instrument designed to measure the location, composition and distribution of pollution, dust, smoke, aerosols and other particulates in the atmosphere. CATS is to be installed on the Kibo external facility and is expected to run for at least six months, and up to three years.
Dragon was loaded with 1,332 kg (2,937 lb) of outgoing cargo, returning it back to Earth in a parachute assisted splashdown off the coast of southern California. Cargo Dragon C107 spent 29 days 3 hours and 17 minutes in space.
The test landing of booster B1012
In an unprecedented test flight, SpaceX attempted to return the nearly-empty first stage of the Falcon 9 through the atmosphere and land it on a 90-by-50-meter (300 ft × 160 ft) floating platform called the autonomous spaceport drone ship. In October 2014, SpaceX had revealed that the barge Marmac 300 was being rebuilt for SpaceX in Louisiana, by mid-December, the barge was docked in Jacksonville, Florida, ready to go to sea to support the test flight landing attempt.
SpaceX attempted a landing on the drone ship on 10 January. Many of the test objectives were achieved, including precision control of the rocket's descent to land on the platform at a specific point in the south Atlantic Ocean and a large amount of test data was obtained from the first use of grid fin control surfaces used for more precise reentry positioning. However, the rocket was destroyed due to a hard landing.Musk said that one of the problems was the grid fins running out of hydraulic fluid but that is RP-1,
The SpaceX webcast indicated that the boostback burn and reentry burns for the descending first stage occurred, and that when the descending rocket then went "below the horizon," as expected, the live telemetry signal will be eliminated .
Shortly thereafter, SpaceX released information that the rocket did get to the drone spaceport ship as planned, but "landed hard ... Ship itself is fine. Some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced."
Meanwhile on the Atlantic Ocean, JRTI is thinking: I got a headache. What happened?
SpaceX made a video of the landing attempt available on Vine.
Other things we learned
Special view at 18:44 of the first stage RP-1 tank during MECO, when the RP-1 becomes weightless. The yellow coloring of baffles and the black bottom layer made me think twice about the propellant tank content. LOX appears to be azur blue in color.
At 22:57 - 23:30 - 24:03 - 24:36 - 25:23 - 26:11 several views of the second stage LOX tank, the last two shows LOX becoming weightless and LOX really being weightless. And at 29:27 - 30:27 - 31:27 there is LOX just drifting around doing nothing. Now isn’t that material for a computer pause screen. Maybe even put a Goldfish in it. If it’s water.
But seriously we can learn a lot from these clips about LOX tanks internal structure, the diminishing amount of LOX during the second stage burn, and why it is important to push the LOX toward the engines intake valves, before you start SES-2 and maybe SES-3.
Any spare fuel in a tank should be ready to use at a moment's notice, so a thick pipe with a gas driven piston plunger filled with propellant will be a valuable thing in an emergency start up situation. Pressurized Helium gas spins up the turbopump, the preburner is ignited by propellant from the pipe, gravity and the turbopump forces the remaining propellant into the main combustion chamber and a shot of TEA-TEB ignites the rocket engine.
You never know when it's time to avoid something hard and change your course.
