This morning was the successful launch of of the EchoStar 23 communications satellite from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A on a Falcon 9 booster. This is the second launch of a Falcon 9 from LC-39, and the 3rd successful launch since the September 2016 explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket on LC-40. It looks […]
As always for any SpaceX launch, here are both the technical and hosted webcasts. For this launch I mainly watched the actual NASA feed, as it felt more fitting for the launch from pad 39. I should have stuck with the SpaceX feed though as it had better video and the added telemetry data that […]
Todays launch of the Falcon 9 carrying the Dragon spacecraft for the CRS-10 mission was scrubbed until tomorrow, February 19th. The reason? An issue with Thrust Vector Control (VTC for short) on the 2nd stage. Reports are early, so I don’t have details, but this seems to have been the key issue for the scrub, […]
Saturday, February 18th, 2017, will mark the first launch in 5 years from Kennedy Space Center LC-39. Pad 39A last saw usage for the final launch of the Space Shuttle Program, STS-135, in 2011, and since then has been only slightly modified from its shuttle configuration to accommodate the future SpaceX Commercial Crew Missions to […]
No, I still can’t get past the insanity a few weeks ago on YouTube when I brought up the fact that the SpaceX booster has a large number of engines, and that increases the chance for something to go catastrophically wrong. To recap, not only did people get mad at me over even daring to […]
YouTube user Thunderf00t, a scientist who also happens to make videos about a wide variety of subjects, has spent quite a bit of time in the week following the Falcon 9 explosion studying the event in detail and formulating his own ideas as to why the vehicle exploded – more accurately, describing the variables that […]
A SpaceX Falcon 9 Booster exploded on the pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 40 today, minutes before a standard test of the first stage engines in anticipation of a scheduled launch on Saturday, September 3rd. Of course, this explosion destroyed the booster vehicle and the payload, the AMOS-6 satellite which was […]
We had another successful SpaceX launch this morning. In fact, as I begin typing this, the second stage and the payload, JCSAT-16, have yet to leave their parking orbit – we are still about 5 minutes away from the second engine burn that will put the satellite on course for a geostationary orbit! This launch, […]
As I type these words, a new Communications satellite, JCSAT-14, is on its way into orbit to provide Japan with more bandwidth for both entertainment broadcasts, and in an emergency, satellite based communications when grown infrastructure may be damaged. The launch vehicle for this payload was the powerful Falcon 9, provide by the commercial spaceflight […]