SpaceX Falcon 9 Full Thrust - Eutelsat 117 West B - ABS-2A - Launching June 15, 2016
Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the launch of Eutelsat 117 West B - ABS-2A
Rundown: SpaceX FT - Eutelsat 117 West B + ABS-2A
Written: January 30, 2021
Why is this landing thing still so hard?
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will deliver two commercial communications satellites to Geostationary Transfer Orbits (GTO). The two satellites, EUTELSAT 117 West B and ABS-2A, are operated respectively by Eutelsat and ABS – two companies that provide global communications services to a variety of users.
SpaceX are targeting the launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on June 15. The approximately 45-minute launch window opens on June 15 at 10:29 am EDT, 2:29 pm UTC. EUTELSAT 117 West B will be deployed approximately 30 minutes after liftoff, and ABS-2A will be deployed 5 minutes later.
The experimental three engine landing burn went wrong, because one engine's propellant intake got starved, so it died during descent. The first stages landed hard, buckled all landing legs and damaged the engines so much, it caught fire. Apparently a one engine landing burn is less fuel efficient compared to a three engine landing burn.
With a 28-30 second single engine landing burn and 10-12 second triple engine landing burn, I’m pressed to see the fuel gain on the latter landing burn. Hmm. Three engines splitting the workload in a third of the time. I think I got it. So long, booster B1024. Rest in pieces. OCISLY is now three for three with crashes and landings.
The payloads
Eutelsat 117 West B (previously SATMEX 9) is a communications satellite that is operated by Eutelsat, providing video, data, government, and mobile services for the Americas. The satellite was designed and manufactured by Boeing Space Systems, and is a Boeing 702SP model communication satellite. It is located at 117 degrees west longitude. It was launched on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on June 15, 2015 (UTC time).
The satellite is solely propelled by electrically powered spacecraft propulsion, with the onboard thrusters used for both geostationary orbit insertion and station keeping. The XIPS-25, or 25-cm Xenon Ion Propulsion System, is a gridded ion thruster manufactured by L-3 Communications. The XIPS-25 engine is used on Boeing 702 class satellites for station-keeping as well as orbit-raising.
XIPS is 10 times more efficient than conventional liquid-fuel systems. On a XIPS equipped 702 satellite, four 25 cm (9.8 in) thrusters provide economical station keeping, needing only 5 kg (11 lb) of fuel per year, "a fraction of what bipropellant or arcjet systems consume". An XIPS-equipped satellite can be used for final orbit insertion, conserving even more payload mass, as compared to using a traditional on-board liquid apogee engine.
The two satellites each had a launch mass of 4,861 pounds (2,205 kg). It is notable for being the second pair of commercial communications satellites in orbit to use electric propulsion, providing significant weight savings. The first pair - Eutelsat 115 West B and ABS-3A - was launched on an earlier flight with Falcon 9.
Eutelsat 117 West B is planned to be the second in a family of 4 satellites in the Eutelsat constellation.
The launch is also notable for being the second flight of Boeing's stacked satellite configuration for the Boeing 702SP, a configuration Boeing designed specifically to take advantage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 Full Thrust capabilities.
ABS-2A — The sister-satellite 702SP from the same launch became fully operational as a geosynchronous communications satellite in the first quarter of 2017 after a handover from Boeing to ABS for on-orbit operations on March 23, 2017. An earlier press release on January 16, 2017 stated that Eutelsat 117 West B also has started providing service.
How to stack two satellites before shipping them to SpaceX. ABS-2A is the bottom one.
ABS-2A will join Asia Broadcast Satellite’s fleet at a longitude of 75 degrees East, where it will be co-located with the existing ABS-2 which was launched in February 2014.
ABS-2A carries 48 Ku-band transponders which will be used to provide communications to Russia, India, Africa, the Middle East and South and South-East Asia.
Not much is written about Eutelsat 117 West B, so I’m taking my data from the sister satellite 115 West from Wikipedia, therefore dates are wrong among other things.
Sorry. My bad. They are now corrected.
I have much later found a more reliable source of data in NASAspaceflight.com
At T+03:39 and videotime 21:39 you see a third engine camera on top between the two normal cameras, pay attention to the exhaust pipe on the engine bell. It’s above the two regular engine bell cameras of which one is mounted upside down. Because with Earth to the left that makes it look like it's flying backwards. Weird camera view.
