SpaceX Falcon Block 5 - CSG-2 - Launched January 31, 2022
Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the launch of CSG-2 at sunset
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 - CSG-2
Written: August 8, 2022
How about watching a Rocket fly by?
SpaceX Falcon 9 will on January 31, 2022 be attempting to launch the Cosmo-Skymed Second Generation 2 (CSG-2) satellite to a Sun-Synchronous orbit for the Italian Space Agency, a part of the European Space Agency. The Falcon 9 Block 5 Booster B1052-3 will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) and a few minutes later perform a boostback burn to return to land and touchdown on Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1).
The launch used a flight-proven Falcon 9, with the booster – B1052-3 – having previously flown twice as a Falcon Heavy side booster. It was previously part of the Falcon Heavy vehicles that launched Arabsat-6A in April 2019 and STP-2 in June of the same year.
B1052-3 has a history as a Falcon Heavy side booster that has been refitted as a single launch vehicle. After 950 or so days it was decided to let it back in rotation so it wouldn’t be technically obsolete with too much dust in sensible parts of its hardware.
B1052-3 will technically have made its maiden flight - Maid 17 - as a single stick booster even if it’s the third flight after launching the following missions:
B1052-3 performed a static fire test 16:00 EST Jan. 23 after refurbishment and waiting for an east coast launch out of the Cape. SpaceX has omitted this safety precaution many times so far. It is not required to perform a static fire test inhouse missions like Starlink, that was to save money and time before the launch.
SpaceX is the first entity ever that recovers and reflies its fairings. 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 drogue chutes and parafoils to help them glide down to a soft landing for recovery.
Falcon fairings halfs have been recovered and reused since 2019. Improved design changes and overall refurbishment procedures have decreased the effects of water landings and led to an increased recovery rate of fairings.
The fairings are a used pair from 5 previous missions with one joint mission. Both fairings survived the landing. The active fairing supported 3 missions. The passive fairing half were also on 3 missions. The joint mission was Transporter-2. Active fairings are equipped with four pushrods to separate the two fairings halfs.
Fairings used to have evenly spaced venting ports that have been redesigned a number of times by having first ten, then eight and now having their venting ports built as close pairs along the fairing edge. This prevents saltwater from the ocean from flooding and sinking the fairing, and makes refurbishment toward the next flight easier.
There are two models: Type 3.1 fairing with 4x2 venting ports, thermal steel tip, lowered protrusion and no acoustic tiles and the Type 3.2 with payload protecting acoustic tiles.
After lift off from Space Launch Complex 40, SLC-40, Falcon 9 took a southward trajectory in a slight turn - a Yaw - as it climbed through the atmosphere. The first stage’s nine Merlin-1D engines cut off around the T+2 minutes 30 seconds mark, with stage separation and a 1st stage 150° flip maneuver following within seconds after MECO.
The second stage continued CSG-2’s journey to orbit while the first stage performed a 42 second long boost back burn to put it on a course back to the launch site.
Unlike most recent Falcon 9 launches from Florida, the CSG-2 flight’s booster did not need a drone ship sent out to the Atlantic to recover it. Instead it flew a return to launch site (RTLS) profile, with the booster touching down on the concrete pad at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) back at the Cape.
After the boostback burn was completed, B1052-3 positioned itself for atmospheric entry before conducting an entry burn to protect the stage from excess heating — fighting fire with fire — by slowing the stage down. The final landing burn began shortly before touchdown, slowing the booster to a soft landing at LZ-1.
The Payload
The Cosmo-Skymed Second Generation 2 (CSG-2) is a Earth observation satellite that will be accompanying the original COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) constellation 180 degrees from the CSG-1 satellite. The CSG system aims to provide data to both civilian and military customers. CSG-2 has a design life of seven years with an additional two years built into its timeline. The second generation satellites also have improvements over the original constellation to meet customer’s needs.
The COSMO-SkyMed satellites have provided much useful data after natural disasters, including this month’s eruption of the Hunga Tonga volcano in the South Pacific. They have also assisted in the response to the 2008 Cyclone Nargis landfall in Myanmar, landslides after Typhoon Talas in Japan in 2011, the Nepal earthquake of 2015, the central Italy earthquakes of 2016, and many more events.
CSG-2 and accompanying second generation satellites have no new instruments on board. Instead, they are duplicates of the CSK satellites, which have been operating for close to a decade, with upgraded instruments.
One of the most critical and largest instruments is the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). While also being featured on the original CSK satellites, the CSG satellites now hold a more powerful and advanced SAR. Those improvements include a higher image resolution as well as single or dual polarization modes. SAR images in the X-band allowing for cloud penetration enabling ground coverage in nearly any weather.
Another overall improvement is the more simple delivery to customers. Most changes have been made to onboard hardware. A newly designed Payload Data Handling and Transmission (PDHT) instrument now has double the onboard storage capacity, double the transmission rate of space to ground data, and an increased data reception rate from SAR.
With the addition of these upgrades, the ground equipment necessary to receive data will also be upgraded to operate with both CSK and CSG satellites. CSG satellites are a part of a larger constellation with the SAOCOM system. SAOCOM satellites operate in the L-band. Learn more about the latest SAOCOM launch here: SAOCOM-1B | Falcon 9 Block 5.
CSG-2 satellite in the Thales Alenia Space anechoic chamber during a load bearing stress test.
The 4 foot release ring should be strong enough to hold the satellite horizontal without something getting stuck, bending or breaking on the CSG satellite. The white payload holder can hold the CSG satellite in any angle and rotate it as well while the noise and EMC radiation mast bombarde it with for humans deadly doses of electromagnetic radiation.
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