SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 - Sentinel-6A launch November 21, 2020
Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the launch of Sentinel-6A from SLC-4E and LZ-4W in view
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 B5 - Sentinel-6A
Written: August 1, 2021
We’re flying south looking out for waves
Fresh off their second crewed launch for NASA, SpaceX temporarily shifted focus on launches to the U.S. West Coast, where a Falcon 9 rocket launched the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich oceanography satellite in cooperation with NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Space Agency, and various other partners.
SpaceX launched the Sentinel-6A satellite at 09:17 Pacific Standard Time — or 17:17 UTC — on Saturday, 21 November from Space Launch Complex 4 East SLC-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California,. The joint NASA/ESA satellite will collect data on sea level changes and atmospheric conditions to improve weather forecasts and climate models.
The Falcon 9 that will launch Saturday’s mission Sentinel-6A was core B1063-1. This designation originates from SpaceX’s internal booster naming/numbering scheme, with B1063 being the 63rd Falcon booster core built at their headquarters/production facility in Hawthorne, California, and the “-1” signifying the booster’s first flight.
Before the launch, on November 17 at 20:17 PST SpaceX conducted a static fire test of B1063-1’s nine Merlin 1D+ first stage engines on pad SLC-4E and verified the engines had performed nominally. Following this test, the rocket was rolled back inside SpaceX’s Vandenberg Horizontal Integration Facility for integration and final checkouts.
SpaceX is the first entity ever that recovers and reflyes its fairings. The leased recovery vessels, NRC Quest on the west coast, will most likely recover the fairing halves.
After being jettisoned, the two fairing halves will use cold gas thrusters to orientate themselves as they descend through the atmosphere. Once at a lower altitude, they will deploy parafoils to help them glide down to a soft landing for recovery.
The Type 2.2 lifeboat sized fairings - 34 x 17 feet with 8 ventilation ports, a thermal steel tip, a lowered square protrusion and acoustic tiles mounted on the inside.
Following the launch of Sentinel-6, the next SpaceX launch set to take place from Vandenberg Air Force Base is the SARah-1 phased radar array satellite, currently scheduled for no earlier than February 2021. The spacecraft is expected to fly with smaller rideshare payloads.
Only other possible launches are polar Starlink satellites to Starlink Shell 4 and 5 later next year or in 2022. Vandenberg is the least used launch site SpaceX are leasing from the US government. It must be a money drain.
I found an unexpected jemstone with SpaceX launches and landing sites near Vandenberg Air Force Base. Each color coded dot tells us the details about SpaceX hardware in the waters of California's coast. Tjeck it out. It’s cool man. Every launch is there.
The Payload
The Sentinel-6 satellite will continue the oceanographic work of the Jason-3 satellite that was launched in 2016. Sentinel-6 is designed to help scientists study climate change and improve weather forecasting. Sentinel-6 is able to measure the sea level of 90% of the world’s oceans with millimeter accuracy, which is more accurate than any other satellite.
European ESA poster about Sentinel-6, only the rocket part is wrong? Falcon 9, not a Delta Heavy
It will also collect data on atmospheric temperature and humidity. Among other instruments, the satellite includes a radar altimeter for high-precision sea-surface topography measurements and a GNSS-RO (GNSS Radio Occultation) instrument to measure atmospheric temperature, pressure and water vapor.
The satellite’s full name, Sentinel-6A Michael Freilich, is a tribute to Michael Freilich, the former director of NASA’s Earth Science division who passed away earlier this year. Sentinel-6A’s twin satellite, Sentinel-6B, is scheduled to launch in 2025. The two Sentinel satellites will continue a decades-long mission of measuring climate change started by the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite in 1992.
The Michael Freilich spacecraft was built by Airbus Defence and Space at their Friedrichshafen facility in Germany. It is 5.15 meters in length, 2.35 meters in height, and 2.58 meters in width. The satellite weighs approximately 1,192 kilograms (2,628 pounds) when fully fueled for launch. The mass is 1362 kg fully fueled though according to this massive source of information. No word on Bus type or design of the satellite.
The spacecraft obtains electrical power via two 17.5-square-meter body-mounted solar arrays, which cover the top and sides of the satellite like a tent (hence its house/tent shaped appearance).
Excess energy will be stored inside a double-module lithium-ion battery, which has a total capacity of approximately 200 amp hours. Sentinel-6A’s electrical system is able to provide an average of 1 kilowatt of power while on orbit.
Communications between the satellite and ground stations is accomplished using microwave S-band and X-band transmitters and antennae, which are located on the nadir (Earth-facing) panel of the spacecraft bus.
The spacecraft is also outfitted with a series of thrusters for propulsion, with the fuel consisting of hydrazine monopropellant. Two sets of four 8 Newton thrusters each.
The Rocket Falcon 9 Block 5
The mission will be launching on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. Falcon 9 is a partly reusable two-stage launch vehicle. Falcon 9 has launched nearly 100 times, with one in flight failure, since its debut in 2010. The latest version of the Falcon 9, Block 5, has launched 43 times since 2018, and has a 100% success rate. Landing it is less successful since eight Block 5 boosters haven't done that part perfectly so far.
The first stage is powered by nine Merlin 1D# engines, each producing 845 kN (~190,000 lbf) of thrust. The second stage is powered by a single vacuum-optimized Merlin 1D# engine that produces 981 kN (~221,000 lbf) of thrust. It’s the only part of Falcon 9 to be launched like a regular rocket without a return ticket.
The Falcon 9 is unique among orbital rockets in that it’s partially reusable. Following stage separation, stage two will continue onto orbit while stage one prepares for landing. Stage one will do a boostback burn to counteract enough of its horizontal velocity to return to its launch site. Following that, it will do a reentry burn to slow down enough to survive the harshest parts of reentry through the atmosphere.
The booster will use cold gas thrusters and titanium grid fins to control itself during the descent through the densest part of the atmosphere. Just prior to landing, it will ignite its center E9 engine for the landing burn. The booster will deploy its landing legs about 100 meters above LZ-4 ‘west’ for a soft landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base next to its launch site SLC-4E just 430 meters away.
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