SpaceX Falcon 9 Full Thrust - GovSat-1/SES-16 - Launching January 31, 2018
Screenshot from SpaceX launch of GovSat-1/SES-16
Mission Rundown: SpaceX FT - GovSat-1/SES-16
Written: January 21, 2021
Floating around. Someone tugging on my leg
It's the second SpaceX launch of 2018! SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a 4200 kg satellite called GovSat-1/SES-16 in a Geostationary Transfer Orbit. This satellite built by Orbital ATK serves the Luxembourg Government and a commercial customer, SES. This is the 2nd flight of this particular Falcon 9 first stage B1032-2, having first flown last year in May for the NROL-76 mission, but it will be its last.
Despite having plenty of fuel to land, they will be letting this one touch down softly in the ocean after its primary mission is over. This is because SpaceX has so many of these current block 3 boosters around which are not meant for long term reuse, and they require too much refurbishment to reuse them more than once, AND the drone ship needs to be ready for Falcon Heavy's center core planned for next week.
Pr. Elon Musk tweet B1032-2 survived a very high retro thrust landing - This is CRS-16 booster
The booster B1032-2 survived a three engine suicide landing burn taking 10 seconds and not much more. It touches down softly on the ocean's surface, but the interstage is not strong enough for the tip over bodyslam. It breaks or bends the parts in the interstage, and it can rupture the LOX tank.
Apparently a hired salvage/demolition crew on the tugboat Manisee destroyed and scuttled the booster because it was too expensive to salvage it. Command and control over the booster's FTS Flight Termination System must have been impossible; maybe the antenna or flight control computer received a fatal blow in the bodyslam.
B1032-2 sank to the bottom at approximately 27 north latitude -77 west longitude some 130 km NEE Northeast to East from Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco, Bahamas.
This is the third time SES has opted to fly on a previously flown booster; they were the first customers to do so in March, 2017 with mission SES-10. This is the 6th reuse of a booster for SpaceX. This is the 29th launch from SpaceX's launch pad, SLC-40, and the 48th overall launch of the Falcon 9.
The Payload
SES-16/GovSat satellite is one of three which SES first announced in February 2015, along with SES-14 and SES-15 will be used to provide military satellite bandwidth to governments and institutions. The Luxembourg government has pre-committed a significant amount of capacity in support of its NATO obligations.
Based on Orbital ATK’s recently introduced GEOStar-3™ satellite platform, SES-16/GovSat is a multi-mission satellite using dedicated military frequencies (X-band and military Ka-band) to provide high-powered and fully steerable spot beams for multiple government-specific missions. It is Orbital ATK’s 40th GEOStar satellite sale, the third GEOStar-3 satellite purchased, and seventh GEOStar satellite to be built for SES.
SES-16/GovSat will be designed, manufactured and tested at Orbital ATK’s satellite manufacturing facility in Dulles, Virginia. It is slated for delivery in mid-2017. Once in orbit, it will be positioned on the European geostationary orbit arc with coverage areas over Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The satellite has a mass of about 4,230 kilograms (9,330 lb) and will have a service life of 15 years.
The company also offers a hybrid electric propulsion GEOStar-3 design that provides the benefits of higher power/higher payload capability while still maintaining advantageous launch costs. The spacecraft’s propulsion system consists of a single IHI Aerospace BT-4 liquid apogee rocket motor and four Aerojet Rocketdyne XR-5 Hall-effect ion thrusters. The GEOStar design is optimized for satellite missions requiring up to eight kilowatts powered by a pair of deployable solar arrays.
GovSat-1 is located at the 21.5 degrees East orbital slot, which allows supporting missions over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as providing extensive maritime coverage over the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, and the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
Dedicated only to governmental, NATO and institutional users, GovSat-1 features high powered fully-steerable spot beams, an X-band Global beam, incorporating anti-jamming capabilities and a total of 86 transponder units in the 36 Megahertz range.
Davy Jones Locker
The tug Manisee met up with Go Searcher at booster B1032-2 landing site in the Atlantic Ocean east of the launch site, where they assessed the condition of the damaged booster. It was decided that it was too damaged to be towed ashore to Port Canaveral so the tug Manisee crew was given the order to scuttle the booster on site.
The “tip over'' of the booster destroyed the interstage, damaged the integrity of the tanks and probably broke a landing leg in the tug process. So it was slowly sinking and would become a water hazard for some time because the tanks could remain buoyant. Small charges were placed, fuzes lit and B1032-2 was scuttled into Davy Jones Locker.
As with December’s Iridium-NEXT launch, SpaceX will dispose of the older Block 3 booster by flying it in an expendable configuration, despite still sporting landing legs. New-build Falcon 9 boosters are currently using the more capable Block 4 configuration, while the first Block 5 vehicles are expected to fly later this year, and SpaceX appears to have opted not to recover cores that would be unlikely to ever fly again.
Despite no attempt to land the stage, SpaceX still used B1032-2 for test demonstrations – such as a controlled water landing – after separation. This turned out to be the case, but more surprisingly, the booster survived the test.
Davy Jones Locker is an old maritime expression of lost ships, seamen and other things gone down never to be seen again by living souls. Pirate movies use this term and since rocket boosters and rocket stages since the fifties have been expendable usually to be lost in the ocean with the exception of Russia - USSR and China, who drop them all over the countryside and even Chinese towns.
I wonder if anyone has a count on all spent rocket parts, boosters, stages, payloads and deorbited space debris that is strewn all over the ocean flours from the world's launch sites. The number must be staggering high. First now, there has been a change in this behavior of “Fire and Forget” with rocket launch providers.
SpaceX has since december 22, 2015 landed 21 Falcon 9 boosters, reflown 6 of them and are gearing up to refly Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters 10 times or more, which they have done at this moment May 9, 2021. Spoiler. By that date it’s 83 landings of 117 launches.
A magnificent feat of human engineering.
First now do mankind have the technology needed to do such things, and therefore the way to reach the Planets and the Moon again? All it takes is money, determination, will power and know-how to make Science Fiction to Science Fact.
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