Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the launch of 03b mPower 1 & 2
Mission Rundown: SpaceX F9 B5 - 03b mPower 1 & 2
Written: December 18, 2022
Twin Sats have double the fun
SpaceX has launched the first of a pair of Falcon 9 missions approximately 23 hours apart from the company’s two Florida launch pads.
The first mission carried the first two satellites for a new constellation known as O3b mPOWER to orbit on Friday, Dec. 16, with liftoff coming at the very end of an 87-minute launch window at 5:48 PM EST (22:48 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SCL-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).
The booster launching from SLC-40 is B1067-8. This booster previously supported two CRS missions (CRS-22 and CRS-25), two Commercial Crew missions (Crew-3 and Crew-4), the Turksat-5B and Hotbird-13G communications satellites, and a Starlink mission.
It landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, 672 km due east of the launch site, roughly eight and half minutes after liftoff.
It’s buzzy out in the Atlantic Ocean with two landing zones being used almost the same time
Both fairing recovery ships, Bob and Doug, were called on to support the double mission and recover the payload fairing halves which protect the payloads during ascent through Earth’s atmosphere. They also both supported the two droneships.
Bob supported O3b mPOWER and ASOG while Doug supported Starlink 4-37 and JRTI.
B1067-8 will have made its eighth flight after launching its next mission:
B1067-8 didn’t perform a static fire test after refurbishment while waiting for an east coast launch out of Cape Canaveral. SpaceX has omitted this safety precaution many times so far. It isn’t required to perform a static fire test on inhouse missions like Starlink as to save time. Only a few other missions have omitted the static fire test.
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 later a parafoil 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 refurbished old pair from xx missions with no known joint mission. Both fairings are expected to survive the landing. Active fairings are equipped with four pushrods to separate the two fairing halfs.
Fairings 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.
The Payload
SES is a Luxembourg-based satellite telecommunications network with 67 currently operational satellites (before the O3b mPOWER launch) under its control in both geostationary orbit (GEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO). Five of those are part of a group called O3b, also referred to as O3b MEO.
The O3b mPower is a successor of the O3b constellation operating in MEO by SES S.A. It will consist of 11 next-generation high-throughput satellites that will also work in MEO around 8,000 km above the Earth. From MEO, the constellation will cover 96% of the globe.
The satellites are built and tested by Boeing and are based on its flight-proven 702 platform. Moreover, the O3b mPower 1 & 2 feature an all-electric propulsion system, custom solar arrays manufactured by Spectrolab, and the 702X software-defined payload with more than 5,000 steerable and fully-shapeable beams per satellite.
The O3b mPower 1 & 2 satellites make use of a software system called Adaptive Resource Control (ARC). ARC will provide dynamic management of service requests and available resources in orbit and on the ground. SES has been working on ARC with Kythera Space Solutions since September 2019, when they jointly announced the development.
The O3b mPower satellite system aims to provide high-performance connectivity services to multiple sectors, including government, energy, and cruise sectors, as well as telecom companies and mobile network operators.
Apart from the 11 satellites in orbit, the constellation will comprise eight ground stations worldwide and dozens of software service providers. The O3b mPower’s start-of-service date is scheduled for Q3 2023 with six satellites in orbit.
The O3b mPOWER network’s 11 satellites will be launched on five different SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, including the two on this mission. The satellites are designed to be stacked and launched in batches of two or three.
SES says the plan is to launch four more satellites on two different launches during the first quarter of 2023. That is expected to be followed by two more satellites launched later in 2023. A final three satellites are expected to launch in 2024, completing the network.
The company expects it to take approximately six months after launch for each satellite to reach its designated orbit 8,000 km above Earth and to be commissioned. The service is expected to begin rolling out to customers at the start of Q3 in 2023.
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