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SpaceX delivers for Intelsat 35 on heavyweight Falcon 9 mission

Credit: SpaceX

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rumbled into the sky Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, flexing the rocket’s muscles and lofting a massive Intelsat satellite to orbit supporting wireless communications, television broadcasting and trans-Atlantic data relays.

Recovering from back-to-back countdown aborts earlier in the week, the two-stage, 229-foot-tall (70-meter) launcher lit nine Merlin 1D main engines and rocketed away from pad 39A at the Florida spaceport at 7:38 p.m. EDT (2338 GMT) Wednesday.

The slender white booster pivoted 1.7 million pounds of thrust from its main engines to steer eastward from the Space Coast, powering through the speed of sound as the kerosene-fueled first stage climbed above the stratosphere.

The nine-engine first stage shut down less than three minutes after liftoff, and the booster dropped away with the help of pneumatic pushers for a destructive plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.

Wednesday’s mission — the third SpaceX launch in 12 days — carried the Boeing-built Intelsat 35e communications satellite toward a perch in geostationary orbit 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

The commercial spacecraft weighed around 14,900 pounds (6,761 kilograms) at launch, the heaviest payload SpaceX has ever launched to such a high orbit. SpaceX committed all of the Falcon 9’s propellant to send the Intelsat satellite into the highest orbit possible, a ride designed to minimize the spacecraft’s own fuel consumption as it maneuvers into its final operating position.

The lift requirement left no fuel in the Falcon 9’s first stage to brake for landing, and the rocket was not equipped with landing legs or fins needed for an intact recovery.

Two firings of the upper stage’s single Merlin engine placed the Intelsat 35e spacecraft into a temporary oval-shaped orbit that ranges as far as 26,700 miles (43,000 kilometers) from Earth, according to Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and chief executive.

After a half-hour trek across the Atlantic, the Falcon 9 deployed Intelsat 35e around 32 minutes into the flight. An on-board camera beamed back a live view of the satellite receding into the blackness of space.

Intelsat confirmed later Wednesday night that the spacecraft radioed controllers via a ground station, suggesting the satellite was healthy following the fiery journey into space.

“Thanks Intelsat!” Musk tweeted. “Really proud of the rocket and SpaceX team today.”

Wednesday’s launch wrapped up a busy two weeks for SpaceX, in which the company deployed 12 satellites on three Falcon 9 rockets, including a previously-flown booster that sent the first Bulgarian-owned communications spacecraft into orbit June 23 from pad 39A.

Two days later, a Falcon 9 rocket took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and successfully placed 10 next-generation Iridium voice and data relay satellites into orbit.

Credit: Walter Scriptunas II / Spaceflight Now

SpaceX intended to launch the Intelsat 35e mission Sunday, but software errors led to computer-triggered aborts at T-minus 10 seconds during back-to-back countdowns Sunday and Monday.

John Insprucker, the Falcon 9’s principal integration engineer who provided launch commentary on SpaceX’s webcast, said ground software halted Monday’s launch attempt because a measurement in the first stage avionics system did not match a pre-programmed limit in a ground database.

He said engineers confirmed the rocket was OK to fly without any changes to flight hardware, and officials modified the limit for Wednesday’s launch attempt.

The countdown Wednesday sailed through the T-minus 10 second software readiness check, and the rocket’s 32-minute ascent appeared to go smoothly.

The weight and destination orbit of Intelsat 35e maxed out the lift capability of the current configuration of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, according to Ken Lee, Intelsat’s senior vice president of space systems.

Besides the need to fly the rocket without recovery equipment, the Falcon 9’s upper stage was programmed to continue firing until its propellant tanks were nearly empty during the engine’s second burn. Rockets typically aim for a certain altitude and shut off their engines after reaching their target.

That left some uncertainty in where Intelsat 35e would end up, and Lee said in a pre-launch interview that the Falcon 9 rocket needed to send the satellite into an orbit stretching to a peak altitude of at least 19,405 miles (31,230 kilometers), per an agreement between SpaceX and Intelsat.

It turns out the Falcon 9 exceeded that requirement, placing its satellite passenger into a better-than-predicted orbit.

Intelsat 35e’s own rocket thruster will reshape its orbit in the next few weeks at a circular altitude of nearly 22,300 miles (35,800 kilometers). The satellite will raise the low point of its current transfer orbit, which currently swings as low as a few hundred miles up, and shift its ground track from the tropics to a path directly over the equator.

The satellite will park itself at 34.5 degrees west longitude, where it will remain in lock-step with Earth’s rotation during a 15-year lifetime.

The Intelsat 35e satellite is pictured preparing for shipment from its Boeing factory in El Segundo, California, to Cape Canaveral for launch. Credit: Intelsat

Hosting C-band and Ku-band communications payloads, Intelsat 35e is the fourth “Epic-class” relay satellite developed and launched by Intelsat, joining three previous versions orbited by European Ariane 5 rockets.

The latest generation of Intelsat satellites carry all-digital payloads, giving the company added flexibility in how it beams video, voice and data signals.

“In this version, what we do is we actually digitize all the traffic that comes to the spacecraft, and once you’re in a digital domain, you can do so many things,” Lee said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. “You can put it into the beams that you want to, or you can put it into all the beams, or any one of the beams for different connectivity.”

Intelsat 35e can process about 20 gigabits of data per second, routing television programming and mobile phone calls across its field-of-view. Intelsat said its newest satellite will primarily support wireless communications operators in Africa and Latin America, offer broadband services to cruise ships, and broadcast television to Caribbean customers for the French company Canal+.

Parts of Europe and North America will also fall inside Intelsat 35e’s communications coverage area.

Intelsat did not disclose the cost of the Intelsat 35e, but a spokesperson said the company’s Epic satellites typically cost between $300 million and $425 million each.

“Companies including Orange, INWI, Tele Greenland, Sonatel, Marlink, Speedcast, ETECSA and eProcess will be among the first to deploy services on the satellite once it is placed into service,” Intelsat said in a press release after Wednesday’s launch.

Intelsat 35e will replace the aging Intelsat 903 satellite at the 34.5 degrees west position. The older satellite, which launched on a Russian Proton rocket in March 2002, will be repositioned to a new coverage area before the end of the year, Intelsat said.

Artist’s illustration of the Intelsat 35e satellite in orbit, with its antenna reflectors and solar arrays extended. Credit: Intelsat

SpaceX will slow its rapid-fire launch campaign in the coming weeks as it gears up for the next Falcon 9 launch from the Kennedy Space Center. That mission is scheduled to blast off Aug. 10 with several tons of supplies and experiments for the International Space Station, followed by up to two more Falcon 9s later in August from California and Florida.

SpaceX’s three launches in a little more than 12 days, including two from the same pad, gave the company 10 successful Falcon 9 flights just past the halfway mark of 2017.

The launch record this year has already set a record for the most launches by SpaceX in a single year. The previous high was eight flights, achieved last year before a Falcon 9 rocket exploded at Cape Canaveral, destroying an Israeli-owned communications satellite, damaging SpaceX’s primary launch pad, and grounding the company’s rockets more than four months.

“Our priority is to reliably launch our customers,” said Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, in a statement following Wednesday’s mission. “SpaceX is able to attempt three launches for three customers in 12 days not only because we have the rockets, launch pads and droneships at the ready, but because we have the teams on the ground to get the job done.

“We are pleased with the progress we are making this year to launch and recover our rockets, which is key towards achieving full and rapid rocket reusability,” Shotwell said.

Before Wednesday’s expendable Falcon 9 launch, the last two missions featured booster landings at sea on separate SpaceX barges stationed in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

As for Intelsat, one of the world’s biggest and oldest commercial satellite operators, the company currently has no further missions booked with SpaceX, Lee said.

“Nevertheless, when there is an opportunity, we consider SpaceX to be a viable option for us, and we’ll engage them,” Lee said. “If the payload works out right with them, then we don’t have any reservation using SpaceX.”

Experiment devoted to neutron star research installed on space station

Artist’s concept of a pulsar (blue-white disk in center) pulling in matter from a nearby star (red disk at upper right). The stellar material forms a disk around the pulsar (multicolored ring) before falling on to the surface at the magnetic poles. The pulsar’s intense magnetic field is represented by faint blue outlines surrounding the pulsar. Credit: NASA

A NASA instrument built to help astronomers learn about the structure and behavior of neutron stars, super-dense stellar skeletons left behind by massive explosions, has been mounted to an observation post outside the International Space Station after delivery aboard a SpaceX supply ship earlier this month.

Since its arrival inside the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule, the X-ray astronomy experiment has been transferred from the spacecraft’s unpressurized carrier to a platform on the space-facing side of the space station’s starboard truss backbone, powered up and checked to ensure it can point at stellar targets as the research outpost orbits around Earth.

The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, or NICER, is now going through alignment checks and test scans, allowing scientists to fine-tune the instrument. The calibrations should be complete next month, and NICER’s ground team has penciled in July 13 as the first day of the instrument’s 18-month science mission.

NICER’s developers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center crammed 56 individual X-ray mirrors inside the instrument’s shell, with matching silicon detectors that will register individual photons of X-ray light, measuring their energies and times of arrival.

NASA says NICER is the first mission dedicated to neutron star research. Astronomers discovered neutron stars in 1967, decades after scientists first predicted their existence.

Neutron stars are left behind after lower-mass stars exploded in violent supernovas at the ends of their lives. The material from the star ends up crammed into an object the size of a city, and astronomers say one of the densest stable forms of matter in the universe resides in the deep interiors of neutron stars.

The NICER instrument. Credit: NASA

Scientists compare the density of a neutron star to packing the mass Mount Everest into a sugar cube. One teaspoon of neutron star matter would weight a billion tons on Earth, according to NASA.

NICER flew to the space station inside the rear trunk of a SpaceX Dragon supply ship, which launched June 3 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and berthed with the orbiting outpost June 5.

The station’s Canadian-built robotic arm extracted the NICER experiment from the Dragon spacecraft June 11, and the instrument rode to its mounting location on an external platform — EXPRESS Logistics Carrier-2 — on a mobile rail car down the station’s truss.

Mission controllers in Houston commanded and monitored the multi-day transfer from the ground, with the help of the station’s two-armed Dextre robot.

The space station’s robotic arm installed NICER on its mounting plate June 13, and controllers powered up the instrument’s electronics the next day, verifying all systems were OK. Range of motion tests were completed Friday after engineers needed extra time to release troublesome launch restraint bolt

NASA experiment dedicated to neutron star research installed on space station after delivery by SpaceX this month. https://t.co/hUe7VEhd5p pic.twitter.com/FYvbsm8xP5

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) 20 de junio de 2017

NICER rode to the space station with two other experiments in Dragon’s trunk.

One of the payloads, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, will test a new solar array design could be used on future commercial satellites, making the power generators 20 percent lighter and able to fit into a launch package four times smaller than conventional fold-out solar panels.

A commercial Earth-imaging platform developed by Teledyne Brown was also stowed in Dragon’s trunk. The Multiple User System for Earth Sensing, or MUSES, can host high-definition and hyperspectral cameras for Earth-viewing.

The MUSES payload was robotically moved to its new home on the space station before NICER, and the solar array testbed was unfurled for seven days of testing this week.

The installation of NICER clears the way for nearly a month of calibrations before it can start regular science observations.

“Neutron stars are fantastical stars that are extraordinary in many ways,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, NICER’s deputy principal investigator and science lead at Goddard. “They are the densest objects in the universe, they are the fastest-spinning objects known, they are the most strongly magnetic objects known.”

The NICER science team wants to know the structure and composition of neutron stars, which are so extreme that normal atoms are pulverized, freeing subatomic particles like neutrons, protons and electrons.

“As soon as you go below the surface of a neutron star, the pressures and densities rise extremely rapidly, and soon you’re in an environment that you can’t produce in any lab on Earth,” said Slavko Bogdanov, a research scientist at Columbia University who leads the NICER light curve modeling group.

A view of the space station’s Canadian-Built robotic arm removing NICER instrument from its berth inside SpaceX’s Dragon capsule last week. Credit: NASA

Unlike black holes, which develop from explosions of stars more than 20 times the mass of the sun, neutron stars can be directly observed.

A partnership between NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Naval Research Laboratory, NICER should give scientists their first measurements of the size of a neutron star.

“They emit light all across the spectrum, from radio waves to visible light up to X-rays and gamma rays, primarily in narrow beams from their magnetic poles,” Arzoumanian said. “Just like the Earth, the magnetic poles on a neutron star are not necessarily aligned with the spin of the star, so you can get narrow beams that sweep as the star spins, just like a lighthouse.

“And if we happen to be in the path of the sweep we see a flash everytime one of these beams go by and the stars from a distance appear to be pulsing, so they’re called pulsars,” Arzoumanian said.

Scientists will also demonstrate the potential of using the timing of pulses from neutron stars for deep space navigation.

“We’re going to look at a subset of pulsars in the sky called millisecond pulsars,” said Keith Gendreau, NICER’s principal investigator at Goddard. “In some of these millisecond pulsars, the pulses that we see are so regular that they remind us of atomic clocks.”

Atomic clocks are the basis of the Global Positioning System satellites, according to Gendreau.

NASA calls the navigation demonstration the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology, or SEXTANT.

Jason Mitchell, SEXTANT’s project manager at Goddard, said his team aims to use predictable pulsar signals to locate the space station with a precision of 6 miles, or 10 kilometers, without the aid of GPS satellites or on-board navigation solutions.

“That’s a small step compared to GPS, but it’s a giant step for using only pulsar measurements, and that will help us get into deep space,” Mitchell said.

“Our goal is to turn the G in GPS into galactic, and make it a Galactic Positioning System,” he said.

https://spaceflightnow.com

Chinese broadcasting satellite ends up in wrong orbit after rocket failure

File photo of a previous Long March 3B launch. Credit: Xinhua

Ground controllers could try to salvage a Chinese television broadcasting satellite deployed in a lower-than-planned orbit Sunday by a Long March 3B rocket.

A brief statement from the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., a state-run contractor for China’s space program, confirmed an anomaly in the Long March 3B rocket’s third stage left the Chinasat 9A communications satellite in the wrong orbit following a liftoff from the Xichang space center.

An investigation into the cause of the launch failure is underway, CASC said.

The contractor said the Chinasat 9A satellite separated from the Long March 3B’s third stage after the anomaly and deployed its electricity-generating solar panels and antennas. The spacecraft is apparently healthy and in contact with engineers on the ground, who are taking “relevant efforts” to control the satellite, according to CASC.

Officials did not elaborate on what went wrong on the Long March 3B’s third stage, which is powered by a dual-nozzle YF-75 engine that burns a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.

Sunday’s launch mishap was the first time one of China’s Long March 3-series rockets has failed to deliver a payload into its intended orbit since August 2009. Variants of the Long March 3 rocket, which include configurations with and without strap-on boosters, logged 49 straight successful launches in the last seven-and-a-half years.

China’s other Long March rockets, which use the same engine technology as the Long March 3-series, have suffered failures in recent years. A Chinese Earth observation satellite was destroyed during the botched launch of a Long March 4C booster Sept. 1, and a Long March 2D placed a pair of commercial Earth-imaging spacecraft into a lower-than-intended orbit in December, but those satellites recovered from the rocket mishap.

A diagram of China’s Long March 3 family of rockets. The Long March 3B, center, features four strap-on boosters. Credit: China Great Wall Industry Corp.

U.S. military tracking data indicated Chinasat 9A is orbiting around Earth at altitudes ranging between 120 miles (193 kilometers) and approximately 10,165 miles (16,360 kilometers), significantly lower than intended.

The rocket’s upper stage aimed to release Chinasat 9A in an egg-shaped elliptical orbit with an apogee, or high point, around 35,800 kilometers (22,300 miles) above Earth.

Chinasat 9A carried its own fuel to circularize its orbit more than 22,000 miles over the equator following its deployment from the Long March 3B. If the satellite is able to overcome the altitude deficit after Sunday’s launch, it will have to consume more of its on-board propellant supply than expected, likely shortening its useful life.

In addition to the orbit-raising maneuvers needed to reach its final operating position, Chinasat 9A must also reshape its orbit, which is currently tilted 25.7 degrees to the equator, into one that always hovers over the equator.

The 184-foot-tall (56-meter) Long March 3B rocket lifted off with Chinasat 9A at 1611 GMT (12:11 p.m. EDT) Sunday from the Xichang launch base in southwestern China’s Sichuan province.

The liquid-fueled launcher, comprised of a three-stage core and four strap-on boosters, turned east from Xichang after blasting off at 12:11 a.m. Monday, Beijing time.

Chinese media did not release any photos of the launch, but an amateur video from Xichang shared on Twitter shows the rocket taking off just after midnight.

【ZX-9A】2017年6月19日00:12，长征三号乙运载火箭发射中星9A直播卫星 pic.twitter.com/eUpgbBYehg

— ChinaSpaceflight (@cnspaceflight) 18 de junio de 2017

The early portion of the mission went according to plan, and the Long March shed its four boosters and first stage a few minutes after liftoff. A second stage firing also apparently performed well, and the third stage took over nearly six minutes into the flight for the first of two burns needed to place Chinasat 9A into a geostationary transfer orbit.

The third stage’s first engine firing was expected to cut off around 10 minutes after liftoff to propel Chinasat 9A into a preliminary low-altitude orbit, and a second burn a few minutes later was supposed to send the spacecraft toward its high-altitude target.

Chinasat 9A, with a launch mass estimated in excess of 11,000 pounds (5 metric tons), was scheduled to separate from the Long March 3B’s third stage less than a half-hour after liftoff.

Based on the DFH-4 satellite design built by the China Academy of Space Technology, Chinasat 9A is China’s first domestically-made communications satellite for direct-to-home television broadcasting, according to China Satcom, the craft’s owner and operator.

Chinasat 9A was supposed to enter service later this year in geostationary orbit over the equator at 101.4 degree east longitude, where its orbital velocity would match the speed of Earth’s rotation, making the satellite remain fixed over the same geographic coverage area.

The satellite’s 24 Ku-band transponders are designed to provide television broadcasts and other media services to China Satcom customers in China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, the company said.

Proton-M returns to flight with launch of EchoStar

Launch of the Proton-M / EchoStar 21 mission rocket. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

After a delay of nearly one year, International Launch Services (ILS) launched the EchoStar 21 communications satellite atop a Proton-M rocket from Site 81/24 at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff took place at 11:45 p.m. EDT on June 7 (03:45 GMT on June 8), 2017.

The mission is tasked with delivering the EchoStar 21 satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). The flight will last slightly more than nine hours, counting from launch until spacecraft separation.

EchoStar 21 has come a long way to get to this point. The project dates back to 2005 when TerreStar Networks, Inc. finished final design reviews for the TerreStar-1 satellite that was launched into space in 2009. The TerraStar-2 spacecraft was ordered in 2006 and was renamed to EchoStar 21 in 2012 when Englewood, Colorado-based company EchoStar acquired all of TerreStar Network’s assets.

PROBLEMS AND DELAYS

An agreement to launch the EchoStar 21 satellite was signed with ILS in May 2013, initially targeting the end of 2015 for liftoff. However, the mission has faced several delays. First, it was postponed to June 2016; however, in May of that year, it was rescheduled to August 29, 2016.

Later, on July 28, it was decided the launch needed to be postponed to October 2016 due to the prolonged investigation into the problem with the Proton-M’s second stage that occurred after the June 9, 2016, liftoff. Then it was rescheduled for December 2016 before being delayed into 2017.

Then in early 2017, problems were discovered with the launch vehicle’s engines, prompting further investigation.

Finally, in late May 2017, a firm launch date of June 7 (June 8 local time) was set. By this time, Proton had experienced its longest delay in its history: about 364 days. The record before this was 247 days in 1966 into 1967

The Proton-M / EchoStar 21 mission rocket on the launch pad. Photo Credit: Roscosmos

PROTON-M

The 190-foot (58-meter) tall Proton-M booster measures some 13.5 feet (4.1 meters) in diameter along its second and third stages. Its first stage has a diameter of 24.3 feet (7.4 meters). The total overall height of the rocket’s three stages is about 138.8 feet (42.3 meters).

The first stage consists of a central tank containing the oxidizer surrounded by six outboard fuel tanks. Each fuel tank also carries one of the six RD‑275M engines that provide power for the first phase of flight. The cylindrical second stage is powered by three RD-0210 engines along with a single RD‑0211 engine.

A single RD-0213 engine and a four-nozzle vernier engine powers the third stage. Guidance, navigation, and control of the Proton-M during operation of the first three stages is carried out by a triple-redundant closed-loop digital avionics system mounted in the third stage.

Topping off the rocket is the Breeze-M upper stage. It is powered by a pump-fed gimbaled main engine. This stage consists of a central core and an auxiliary propellant tank (APT) that is jettisoned in flight after the depletion of its fuel. The stage’s control system includes an onboard computer, a three-axis gyro stabilized platform, and a navigation system

THE MISSION

The countdown that led the Proton-M rocket to the ignition of its engines commenced about 11.5 hours ahead of liftoff. The launch vehicle and its systems were activated about six hours before the launch, enabling fueling operations. The campaign entered its final phase approximately 45 minutes before ignition when final checkouts of all systems were performed and the launch abort system armed.

The last five minutes of the pre-launch phase was the most crucial as the automated countdown sequence began, switching the launch vehicle to internal power. About two minutes before liftoff, propellant tank pressurization took place and engineers had their last opportunity to conduct health checks of the rocket’s Breeze-M upper stage. With all systems declared “go”, the Proton-M ignited its six RD-275M boosters to begin climbing toward space.

Photo Credit: Roscosmos

Maximum dynamic pressure, or max Q, occurred about 62 seconds after liftoff. It was at this point the vehicle endured its maximum stresses.

Stage one and two separated less than a minute later at two minutes after liftoff. The second stage continued burning for about 3.5 minutes before it too cut off and separated.

At this point, the third stage had taken control. It fired at 5 minutes, 26 seconds after liftoff. Nineteen seconds later, the payload fairing jettisoned, revealing the Breeze-M upper stage and the EchoStar 21 satellite.

At 9 minutes, 41 seconds after leaving the launch pad in Baikonur, the third stage cut off and separated from the Breeze-M. About 1.5 minutes after that, it too ignited to finish the climb to orbit.

Fifteen minutes, 32 seconds after liftoff, Breeze-M with EchoStar 21 was in a parking orbit. The first of five burns the upper stage needed to do was complete.

After coasting for 54 minutes, the Breeze-M ignited again and burned for about 18 minutes. This intermediate orbit had a low point of 168 miles (270 kilometers) and a high point of 3,107 miles (5,000 kilometers).

The Breeze-M and EchoStar 21 then coasted again for about two hours before the third upper stage ignition occurred. This burn started 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 36 seconds after liftoff; it continued for just under nine minutes. At its conclusion, the APT jettisoned.

About 1.5 minutes later, the fourth burn started. This seven-minute burn concluded at a mission elapsed time of 3 hours, 47 minutes, 53 seconds.

Coasting again, the Breeze-M upper stage had a five-hour break before its final burn.

That burn occurred 8 hours, 52 minutes, 58 seconds after leaving Baikonur. The primary objective of this 4.5-minute burn was to change the inclination of the vehicle and satellite from 51.5 degrees relative to the equator to just 30.5 degrees. The low point of its orbit was now 1,429 miles (2,300 kilometers) and the high point was 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers).

At 9 hours, 13 minutes mission elapsed time, the EchoStar 21 satellite separated from the Breeze-M.

The 6.8-metric ton EchoStar 21 is based on SSL’s 1300 spacecraft platform and features two deployable solar arrays and a large un furlable reflector.

Once the spacecraft’s onboard propulsion to circularize its orbit, EchoStar 21 will be in a geostationary orbit at the 10.25 degrees East orbital slot where it will provide its services for 15 years.

EchoStar describes the newest addition to its in-orbit fleet as a state-of-the-art S-band satellite designed to provide mobile connectivity throughout Europe.

This was the first ILS Proton launch in 2017 and the 94th ILS Proton launch overall. Additionally, six EchoStar satellites have now been launched by the company atop Proton rockets.

In total, 413 Proton rockets have launched since 1965. Since 2001, 90 Proton-M variants have launched using the Breeze-M upper stage.

This was the third launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2017. The next mission from that spaceport will be the Progress MS-06 cargo ship bound for the International Space Station. It will take to the skies at 5:20 a.m. EDT (09:20 GMT) on June 14, 2017.

The Proton-M / EchoStar 21 mission rocket on the launch pad. Photo Credit: Roscosmos,

Photo Credit: Roscosmos,

Photo Credit: Roscosmos

Photo Credit: Roscosmos

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SpaceX successfully boosts top secret U.S. government satellite into space

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired into space from Florida’s Atlantic coastline Monday with a clandestine payload for a U.S. government spy agency, then returned to Cape Canaveral for a pinpoint landing.

Climbing away from launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with 1.7 million pounds of thrust at 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT), nine Merlin 1D engines gave the Falcon 9 rocket a thundering sendoff, darting through low clouds about a half-hour after sunrise along Florida’s Space Coast.

Sound waves from the rocket’s kerosene-fueled engines rattled windows at the spaceport’s press site around three miles from the pad, and the Falcon 9 left behind a contrail of white exhaust twisted by upper level winds as it soared into the stratosphere and turned northeast from Cape Canaveral.

The nine Merlin main engines shut down around T+plus 2 minutes, 18 seconds, and the lower part of the rocket separated from the Falcon 9’s second stage a few seconds later. A single Merlin powerplant on the upper stage ignited and throttled up to full thrust to guide the mission’s secretive satellite passenger into orbit, and an aerodynamic fairing covering the payload jettisoned on time just shy of the flight’s three-minute point.

SpaceX’s live webcast of the launch ceased covering the second stage’s trip into orbit at that time, and long-range tracking cameras followed the 14-story first stage booster’s journey back to Earth.

The National Reconnaissance Office, which owns the payload launched Monday, requested the information blackout during the rest of the launch sequence in a bid to keep the satellite’s final orbit and purpose secret.

Credit: SpaceX

Spectacular video from ground-based trackers and a camera on-board the Falcon 9 booster showed the stage’s cold gas nitrogen control thrusters regularly pulsing to flip the rocket into a tail-forward orientation. Telemetry data from SpaceX’s webcast indicated the booster reached a peak altitude of more than 100 miles — about 166 kilometers — over the Atlantic Ocean before dropping back to the Earth.

Three of the Merlin engines at the base of the launcher ignited for “boost-back” and “entry” burns to slow the rocket’s descent, and grid fins helped stabilize the first stage as it encountered a thicker air stream deeper in the atmosphere. The booster’s center engine started up seconds before touchdown for a final braking maneuver, and four landing legs extended as the rocket approaching Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The rocket landed around nine minutes after liftoff, settling on a concrete pad around 9 miles (15 kilometers) south of where the Falcon 9 took off. SpaceX intends to inspect the rocket, which was an all-new vehicle Monday, and ready it for another mission.

The commercial launch company’s first mission dedicated to a U.S. national security payload was declared a success.

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk confirmed a good launch and landing on Twitter around 20 minutes after liftoff, and the National Reconnaissance Office issued a statement later Monday morning.

“Thanks to the SpaceX team for the great ride, and for the terrific teamwork and commitment they demonstrated throughout,” said Betty Sapp, director of the NRO. “They were an integral part of our government/industry team for this mission, and proved themselves to be a great partner.”

Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

The launch was the 33rd flight of a Falcon 9 rocket, and the fifth SpaceX mission of 2017. Thirty-two of the Falcon 9’s launches have been successful, a tally that does not include an on-pad explosion last year that destroyed a commercial communications satellite during pre-flight preparations.

With Monday’s rocket-assisted landing, SpaceX has retrieved one of its first stage boosters intact 10 times in 15 tries. Landing attempts at Cape Canaveral, which are possible on missions with light payloads going to low orbits, have a four-for-four record.

The Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to take off Sunday, but the SpaceX launch team called off the launch less than a minute before liftoff, blaming a faulty sensor on the booster’s first stage. SpaceX said technicians replaced the sensor in time for another countdown Monday.

The identify of the classified National Reconnaissance Office payload remains a secret, but the spy organization revealed some information about the mission Sunday.

An NRO spokesperson confirmed to Spaceflight Now on Sunday that the launch, codenamed NROL-76, was booked with SpaceX through a third party contractor. The NRO official said Ball Aerospace, a spacecraft manufacturer based in Boulder, Colorado, arranged the launch with SpaceX under the auspices of a “delivery in orbit” contract with the U.S. government spy agency.

In the satellite business, a delivery in orbit contract typically describes an arrangement where a spacecraft builder hands over control of a payload the the end user — in this case, the NRO — once the mission is declared ready for operations in orbit.

he NROL-76 mission patch “depicts Lewis & Clark heading into the great unknown to discover and explore the newly purchased Louisiana Territory,” the NRO said. Credit: NRO

A copy of the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial launch license for Monday’s flight obtained by Spaceflight Now suggested the mission aimed to put its payload into low Earth orbit, a regime several hundred miles above Earth. The exact parameters of the orbit were not disclosed, but hazard notices released to pilots and sailors ahead of the flight indicated the rocket was expected to travel northeast from Cape Canaveral, seemingly heading for a high-inclination orbit that will allow the spacecraft to pass over the bulk of the world’s population as it flies around Earth.

Ted Molczan, an experienced observer of satellite movements, said the publicly available information points to the payload on Monday’s launch being a small imaging satellite built by Ball Aerospace. In a post to an online forum, he wrote a radar-equipped spacecraft “would make sense” in the type of orbit targeted Monday.

Commercial and government-operated reconnaissance satellites with optical cameras typically fly closer to the poles in so-called sun-synchronous orbits. Radar imagers are not subject to the restrictions of optical cameras, capable of seeing through clouds and taking pictures day or night.

A network of amateur observers around the world was on standby to find the spacecraft after Monday’s launch, an exercise that usually yields an accurate estimate of the satellite’s altitude and ground track. The U.S. military does not release orbital data on classified satellites owned by the United States and its allies.

Most NRO missions launch on ULA’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets, and SpaceX will be eligible to win more NRO satellite deployment contracts later this year. The Air Force is managing head-to-head competitions between ULA and SpaceX for the rights to national security launches, and six upcoming flights with NRO payloads are to be competed in the next two years, along with seven Air Force missions.

SpaceX already won contracts to launch two GPS navigation satellites under the Air Force’s new competitive launch procurement strategy.

Monday’s launch clears the way for two more SpaceX launches later this month.

A Boeing-built commercial communications satellite owned by Inmarsat of London is set for liftoff no earlier than May 15 from pad 39A, and SpaceX’s next Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station is scheduled for launch as soon as May 31.

Three more NRO missions are set for launch later this year, all on ULA rockets.

The NROL-42 and NROL-52 missions are targeted to lift off on Atlas 5 rockets Aug. 14 and Aug. 31 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and from Cape Canaveral, respectively. A Delta 4 launcher is due to send the NROL-47 payload into orbit from Vandenberg on Dec. 20.