After several delays, the final CRS flight of 2017, CRS-13, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 40 for a standard cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.
This mission was a somewhat critical one – after the delay of the mysterious Zuma payload, SpaceX basically hasn’t had a launch since October. This one, while delayed from its original launch date, did get off the ground on about the last day it could.
The orbit of the International Space Station has it in a position right now of spending most of its time in sunlight – NASA and SpaceX are concerned that the thermal stresses on the berthing ports Dragon uses would cause an issue in actually securing Dragon to the space station, and so this was basically the last time frame they could before this would become an issue. Incidentally, many people didn’t seem to have a clue what this actually meant, which adds to my theory that most SpaceX fans don’t know much about the subject of space, orbital mechanics, and the like on a whole, but that’s another story.
Back on topic, this also marked the first use of Launch Complex 40 after the September 2016 explosion. It took 15 months, but they got it repaired, which sounds about how long I would expect it to take to tear down what remained of the launch tower and support structures, prep the site, and then actually build the new facilities. This was actually a part of the few days delay with this launch – they wanted to do more testing and checkout of the ground facilities and to clear up a few issues they had experienced during earlier tests. Can’t fault them for that.
Also of note, this was another re-use for a Falcon 9 1st stage, as well as a re-use of a Dragon capsule. This would be NASA’s first use of a re-flown Falcon 9 (which they agreed to per the request of SpaceX, more on that soon) and this is the second re-use of a Dragon capsule.
Of course, the launch occurred with no issues – Falcon launched, and landed, as it does now, and Dragon deployed successfully.
Below, as always, is the SapceX webcast on the launch. Yes, this webcast is just as annoying as they ever are.