About eight minutes after the planned 12:45 a.m. Monday blastoff with International Space Station supplies, the rocket’s first stage should reappear with an engine firing to slow its descent, dropping toward a touchdown a couple miles south of the launch site.
The scene should look much like the one that unfolded Dec. 21, when SpaceX achieved its historic first landing of a Falcon 9 booster at the Cape’s “Landing Zone 1.”
“You’re going to see the same thing that you saw last time,” Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability at SpaceX. “I’m pretty optimistic at this point in time that we land it, but I would always knock on wood. That’s part of the nature of this maneuver. It’s pretty challenging.”
NASA plans to evacuate parts of Kennedy Space Center prior to the launch, but not because of any danger the incoming rocket booster poses.
The Air Force’s 45th Space Wing determined that if the mission failed early in flight, prevailing winds could push SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule, after it had aborted from the rocket and deployed parachutes, toward Launch Complex 39.
As a precaution against an impact or toxic fumes from the spacecraft’s hypergolic propellants being blown through the area, KSC will clear the Press Site, Vehicle Assembly Building and other nearby buildings.
“The Brevard County community outside of KSC was not affected, however,” said Cody Chambers from KSC’s Range Safety office.
The Dragon is carrying nearly 5,000 pounds of space station cargo and experiments, including a $26 million docking ring that must be in place for astronauts in Boeing and SpaceX crew capsules to link up to the station, as planned in the next year or two.
“We’re looking forward to this mission,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy ISS program manager for utilization. “It’s bringing critical supplies, critical hardware.”
The mission hopes to make up for one last summer, when SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket failed for the first time. A Dragon carrying $118 million worth of cargo including the first International Docking Adaptor, or IDA, and a spacesuit that ended up in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX returned to flight in December – the mission whose booster landed at Cape Canaveral – and now could notch its seventh successful flight in 2016, its best total in any calendar year.
In addition to the landing on land in December, SpaceX has landed three Falcon 9 boosters on a “drone ship” in the ocean.
The reinforced concrete landing pad at the former Launch Complex 13, which measures about 280 feet in diameter, offers a larger and more stable target than the “drone ship” as the rocket drops from some 70 miles up.
“It doesn’t move,” said Koenigsmann. “That’s one advantage.”
On the down side, the rocket needs to reserve and burn more fuel to make it back to land.
The experimental landings are aimed at developing reusable rockets. Koenigsmann said the booster landed in April – SpaceX’s first successful landing at sea, during another launch of ISS cargo – could fly again this fall, pending ongoing discussions with an unnamed customer.
If Sunday night’s launch attempt scrubs, the next opportunity would be around midnight Wednesday.
If it does go off successfully, the Dragon would be expected to arrive at the orbiting research complex Wednesday morning.
Jeff Williams, a NASA astronaut commanding the station’s Expedition 48 crew, would be responsible for snaring the Dragon with a 58-foot robotic arm.
Launch tonight
Rocket: SpaceX Falcon 9
Mission: Ninth International Space Station resupply flight (CRS-9)
Launch Time: 12:45 a.m. Monday
Launch Window: Instantaneous
Launch Complex: 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Weather: 90 percent “go”
By: James Dean (Florida Today).
Photo: NASA.
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