ViaSat-3 Americas previous launch attempt and looking like a Franken Heavy with its mixed colors
Mission Rundown: Falcon Heavy 6 - ViaSat-3 Americas
Written: May 1, 2023
On the sixth day… - …in April/May
SpaceX will be launching the ViaSat-3 Americas mission for ViaSat on a Falcon Heavy rocket. This Falcon Heavy is composed of a new block 5 center core ‘B1068-1’ and the two flight proven block 5 side boosters; B1052-8 and B1053-3.
FH6 is flying bareback with no landing legs and grid fins mounted on all three boosters.
ViaSat launched at 20:26 EDT - 00:26 UTC on April 30/May 1, 2023. The Falcon Heavy will be lifting off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
After burning for about 3 and a quarter minutes, the side boosters will separate from the core booster and fall back to the Atlantic Ocean 770 km downrange.
Map from the NGA notice. Side booster splashdown is about 770 km downrange. The Core booster splashdown about 1880 km downrange. Fairing recovery zone is more than 1960 km downrange
The core booster will continue burning before shutting down and separating from the second stage. That will continue until reaching Africa and the Equator.
The core booster will not be recovered and will crash land approximately 1 880 km downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. Given a 52% increase in speed and thereby range compared to FH3 with STP-2 attempt to land on OCISLY 1236 km downrange.
The Falcon Heavy is scheduled to fly three more missions this year. The USSF-52 mission is scheduled for launch no earlier than June 23, while the Echostar 24 (Jupiter 3) payload will fly no earlier than this coming August. The NASA Psyche asteroid probe launch is targeted for October 5.
Screenshot of Falcon Heavy mission view by Geoff Barret - A contemporary graphic can be found here
Falcon Heavy will have completed its sixth mission since the first testflight.
SpaceX performed a 7 second static fire test of the Falcon Heavy 6 with ViaSat-3 Americas at 18:00 EDT on April 13, 2023 while waiting for its launch out of Cape Canaveral.
There is confusion about the Y axis, so I might be wrong about it. MY is closest to the tower
Falcon Heavy is constructed by joining of three Falcon 9 boosters side by side with a central long mission duration second stage carrying the payload into orbit.
The fairings will be recovered, a record breaking ~1960 km downrange by recovery vessel Doug, who will lift both fairings out of the water and sail them back for refurbishment. Doug is named after Demo-2 Astronaut Doug Hurley.
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.
Lately it’s apparent that the fairings are actively being aiming for the droneship in order to speed up the recovery process and cut corners of the time table. The fairing is actively breaking its speed and turning back before deploying its parachute at the last moment.
Another solution is a ‘vertical’ boost lifting the fairings apogee so the ballistic trajectory is changed aiming for a landing nearer the droneship. It’s equivalent to raising the angle on a water hose giving the water stream an higher arc but giving it a shorter reach.
It’s not clear whether or not the cold gas nitrogen thrusters alone are capable of doing a ‘boost back’ or a ‘push up’ so the fairings can alter their forward momentum mid-flight.
Comparison of Type 1 and 2 with measurements based on pixels - Type 2 are 5-6 inches thicker
There are three known types of 34 x 17 foot fairings used by SpaceX to protect payload during ascent through the atmosphere. The first type had 10 evenly spaced ventilation ports in a circle on the bottom part of the fairings. This type was not aerodynamic enough to carry a parachute and ACS - Attitude Control System.
The aerodynamic balance during descent must have made them prone to stalling, or they burned up too easily. ACS gas tanks, flight orientation computers and ACS thrusters must have helped with these problems during development of type 2 fairings.
The second type is a slightly thicker fairing with only 8 evenly spaced ventilation ports in a circle on the bottom part of the fairings. The ventilation ports release the pressurized Nitrox gas during ascent, but let seawater in which makes it harder to refurbish the fairings after recovery from the ocean.
The new third type has 8 ventilation ports in pair’s near the edge of the fairings. Some old type 2 fairings have been rebuilt and reused in Starlink launches. That have been a test program to develop the type 3 fairings to prevent saltwater from the ocean from flooding and sinking the fairing, and makes refurbishment toward the next flight easier.
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 ViaSat-3 Americas Payload
ViaSat-3 Americas communication satellite as the main payload, plus the much smaller Arcturus and G-Space 1 rideshare satellites were launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy FH6 on April 30, 2023 at 21:29:00 EDT.
ViaSat-3 Americas is the first of three new geostationary communication satellites that together are intended to provide continuous near-global broadband service to 99% of the populated world.
ViaSat-3 satellites, each massing approximately 6,000 kilograms (kg), utilize the Ka-band, and will deploy one of the largest reflectors ever flown. The reflector, made of carbon fiber, reinforced polymers, and graphite, will be deployed at the end of a boom derived from one that deployed the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshade.
The ViaSat-3 series will also have eight solar panels that can collectively generate around 25 kilowatts (kW) of power, one of the highest power-generating capabilities ever for any communications satellite. The spacecraft and its solar panels will have a span of 43.9 meters, which is just about a third of the span of the International Space Station.
The power system and reflector will enable the ViaSat-3 Americas to have a throughput of up to one terabit per second, which is double the throughput of Viasat’s entire satellite fleet up to now. The entire ViaSat-3 constellation will have a throughput of up to three terabits per second, up to 500-600% of the capacity of the Viasat network before this year.
ViaSat-3 Americas is planned to use the geostationary orbital slot at 88.9 degrees West and is designed for an orbital lifetime of at least 15 years. The satellite, based on the Boeing 702MP bus, was built at Boeing’s El Segundo, California facility and shipped to Florida aboard a Ukrainian Antonov AN-124 cargo aircraft.
There are two small satellites on this flight that will also be placed into geostationary orbit. The Arcturus satellite, with a mass of 400 kg, was built by Astranis to provide broadband services to the state of Alaska for Pacific Dataport. The spacecraft will use a slot at 163 degrees West longitude.
Arcturus, also known as Aurora 4A, is the first Astranis commercial satellite to be launched. The spacecraft is designed for a lifetime of 10 years. It utilizes the Ku band with a throughput on the order of 7.5 Gbps.
The Arcturus satellite is one of Astranis’ MicroGEO satellites, built in San Francisco, will use electric propulsion to maintain its orbit, along with two solar panels to provide electric power. The Arcturus will provide dedicated service to one region. In this case, Arcturus will serve Alaska, whereas other MicroGEO satellites built by the company will serve Peru and the mobility markets (air and sea).
The G-Space 1 satellite is a 16U cubesat built in Denmark for Gravity Space. The satellite, massing 22 kg, is designed to support communication services for the internet of things. The satellite contains several payloads. One payload is a bring-into-use placeholder for Indonesia’s PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara known as the Nusantara H-1A.
The Nusantara H-1A payload will enable the operator to retain Ka and Ku band rights to a geostationary orbital slot reserved for a satellite that has been delayed. Other payloads on G-Space 1 include an “orbit guard” space situational awareness imaging system and an experimental rendezvous and docking payload.
G-Space 1 has a design lifetime of 15 years.
Falcon Heavy flight 6
Falcon Heavy stands 70 meters tall, weighs about 1.4 million kg at liftoff, and produces a thrust of approximately 22,241 kN from its 27 Merlin 1D engines. The rocket is capable of delivering 63.8 tonnes to low Earth orbit and 26.7 tonnes to geostationary transfer orbit.
SpaceX photo of FH3 STP-2 hanging under the loft cranes in the Horizontal Integration Hangar
Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured by SpaceX. It is derived from the Falcon 9 vehicle and consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 first stage as the center core with two additional Falcon 9-like first stages as strap-on boosters. Falcon Heavy has the highest payload capacity of any currently operational launch vehicle, and the third-highest capacity of any rocket ever to reach orbit, trailing the Saturn V and Energia.
The combined thrust of the Falcon Heavy 27 Merlin 1D# is 2/3 of the first stage thrust of the five F1 engines on the Saturn V rocket that lifted mankind through the atmosphere on its way to the Moon. This means that Falcon Heavy is almost capable of a Lunar mission like the Apollo Saturn V was. Two launches of Falcon Heavy should be able to do it.
Falcon Heavy consists of a structurally strengthened and therefore heavier Falcon 9 as the "core" component, with two additional Falcon 9 first stages without interstages but with nose cone acting as liquid fuel strap-on boosters, which is conceptually similar to Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Delta IV Heavy launcher.
The rocket was designed to meet or exceed all current requirements of human rating. The structural safety margins are 40% above flight loads, higher than the 25% margins of other rockets. The Falcon 9 tank walls and domes are made from Aluminium–lithium alloy. SpaceX uses an all-friction stir welded tank. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and it would restore the possibility of flying crewed missions to the Moon or Mars.
The interstage, which connects the upper and lower stage for Falcon 9, is a carbon fiber aluminum core composite structure. Stage separation occurs via reusable separation collets and a pneumatic pusher system. The second stage tank of Falcon 9 is simply a shorter version of the first stage tank and uses most of the same tooling, material, and manufacturing techniques. This approach reduces overall costs during production.
The Falcon Heavy includes first-stage recovery systems, to allow SpaceX to return the first stage boosters to the launch site as well as recover the first stage core following landing at an Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship barge after completion of primary mission requirements. These systems include four deployable landing legs, which are locked against each first-stage tank core during ascent. Excess propellant reserved for Falcon Heavy first-stage recovery operations will be diverted for use on the primary mission objective, if required, ensuring sufficient performance margins for successful missions.
The nominal payload capacity to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is 8,000 kg (18,000 lb) with recovery of all three first-stage cores versus 26,700 kg (58,900 lb) in fully expendable mode. The Falcon Heavy can also inject a 16,000 kg (35,000 lb) payload into GTO if only the two boosters are recovered.
The second stage is painted partial gray to prevent the RP-1 from freezing solid during the several hours long transfer trip to its geostationary orbit position. The Sun’s heat will not easily be reflected by the gray paint thus transferring surface heat to the RP-1.
The second stage will reignite to circularize the transfer orbit thus saving fuel consumption in ViaSat-3 Americas, so it will have an extra long service life in its geostationary slot. The rideshare payloads may be deployed depending on their individual mission profiles.
After the last deployment there will probably not be enough propellant in the second stage tanks to deorbit. The sixth Falcon Heavy second stage will be the 31st large piece of space debris that will take decades to deorbit on its own.
Maybe the 2nd stage should be equipped with a passive payload packet from NASA so it can do some good or do a bit of science.
The 2nd stage is with its avionics package in itself a kind of a satellite bus, it’s missing solar panels for power, gyroscopes for orientation, various military/science instruments and even Hall effect thrusters to deorbit itself with. Or just chase space junk.
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