Monday night space rocket launch and landing LIVE (SLC-40)
This post has been updated with the new date/time
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**** RESCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY APRIL 18th ****
23:51 GMT (22:51 UTC)
YouTube Stream Here
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SpaceX launch and landing, ten mins before midnight Wednesday 18th - maybe get there half an hour before. The launch window is only 30 seconds, at 23:51 BST, 22:51 GMT. Haven't seen the amazing landings of Stage 1 rockets for a while. It's also on NASA.TV from around 11PM UK Time (but the SpaceX stream is better, if it's up, on their website).
This is a Falcon 9 rocket, carrying TESS, the "Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite". You might know Keplar, which found 1000+ Earth-like planets - it's similar, but will look at 400 times as much sky. The launch site is Cape Canaveral, Florida. There is a 20% chance of cancellation due to weather, in which case they'll try again on Tuesday. TESS is going into a weird orbit, a long way out (around 150,000 miles); it's a challenge to deliver it there. The Stage 1 will (hopefully) land on the drone-ship “Of Course I Still Love You” about 8 minutes after take-off. After that, it'll take about half an hour until TESS is deployed (see 'reply' for more details).
Future launches, for your diary:
This is the 3rd launch for "Rocket Lab", one of the few rivals to SpaceX, Two commercial CubeSats for weather and ship tracking, and a small GPS satellite. The previous flight was "Still Testing".
May 4 (time TBD) SpaceX Falcon 9 taking Bangabandhu comms sat, First time for new Block 5 Falcon, and landing (Delayed from April 24)
May 5, 1105-1305 GMT the huge ATLAS-V heads to Mars (arrives Nov), the NASA "Insight" mission includes a Mars rover, and all kinds of things to study the geology.
2028: Manned mission to Mars, first off-world colony. (Date and time TBA)
Bonus links: Failed landings (fun), last night's Atlas 5 launch
(, Sun 15 Apr 2018, 1:52, Share, Reply)
Atlas V Flight Commentary...
Patrick Moore!
Lovely little dash of serendipity.
(, Sun 15 Apr 2018, 20:04, Share, Reply)
Some people complained about those presenters
They said he was wooden, obviously reading from a script, etc.
Personally, I'd rather see that than some slick professional presenter; it keeps it more real. Same happens with SpaceX - their last launch had an engineer, and he made mistakes (the fairing 'falling back to space' instead of Earth), but his enthusiasm came through, the glint in his eye when the solar panels opened (which he'd worked on).
(, Mon 16 Apr 2018, 20:19, Share, Reply)
Cool, just saw this and remembered I wanted to watch it
Looking forward to seeing them nail another landing.
(
My Name was saying these words inside your head on, Sun 15 Apr 2018, 21:17,
Share,
Reply)
Note 23:32 BST
11:32PM UK TIME, 23:32 BST, 22:32 UTC "Instantaneous launch"
Minute-by-minute;
-01:10:00 RP-1 (kerosene) loading
-35:00 LOX (liquid oxygen) loading
-07:00 Engine chill
-01:00 Prelaunch checks, Propellant tank pressurization
-00:45 Launch Director verifies go for launch
-00:03 Engine ignition sequence
00:00 Liftoff
01:16 Max Q (moment of peak mechanical stress on the rocket)
02:29 1st stage main engine cutoff (MECO), separation, 2nd stage engine starts
03:05 Fairing deployment
06:29 1st stage entry burn
08:17 2nd stage engine cutoff (SECO-1)
08:20 1st stage landing
40:50 2nd stage engine restarts
41:49 2nd stage engine cutoff (SECO-2)
48:42 TESS deployment
(, Mon 16 Apr 2018, 17:33, Share, Reply)
Wednesday, 23:51
(16 hours from time of writing)
Rescheduled stream is up
(, Wed 18 Apr 2018, 7:10, Share, Reply)