SpaceX launches futuristic pop-up room, lands rocket at sea [on barge]

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barge landing


SpaceX launches futuristic pop-up room, lands rocket at sea | Fox News

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX resumed station deliveries for NASA on Friday, and in a double triumph, successfully landed its booster rocket on an ocean platform for the first time.

The unmanned Falcon rocket soared into a clear afternoon sky, carrying a full load of supplies for the International Space Station as well as a futuristic pop-up room.

After sending the Dragon capsule on its way, the first-stage booster peeled away. Instead of dropping into the Atlantic like leftover junk, the 15-story booster steered to a vertical touchdown on the barge, named "Of Course I Still Love You."

Hundreds of SpaceX employees gathered outside the company's glassed-in mission control in Hawthorne, California, cheered wildly, jumped up and down, and chanted, "USA, USA, USA!."

"Absolutely incredible," said a SpaceX commentator. "The crowd is going a little nuts here, as expected."

Although the company managed to land a spent booster rocket at Cape Canaveral in December, touchdowns at sea had proven elusive, with several attempts ending in explosions on the floating barge. SpaceX's founder Elon Musk wants to ultimately reuse rocket parts to shave launch costs.

This marks SpaceX's first shipment for the space station in a year. A launch accident halted cargo flights last June.

The Dragon and its 7,000 pounds of freight — including the attention-grabbing payload — should reach the space station Sunday.

Bigelow Aerospace is providing the expandable compartment, which swells to the size of a small bedroom. It's a testbed for orbiting rental property that the Nevada company hopes to launch in four years, and also for moon and Mars habitats.

Traffic has been heavy lately at the 260-mile-high complex. NASA's other commercial shipper, Orbital ATK, made a delivery at the end of March, then Russia just last weekend. SpaceX's Dragon will join three cargo carriers and two crew capsules already parked there.

Besides a bevy of biological experiments — including 20 mice for a muscle study, and cabbage and lettuce plants for research as well as crew consumption — the Dragon capsule holds the pioneering pod.

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, is a 21st-century reincarnation of NASA's TransHab, which never got beyond blueprints and ground mock-ups in the 1990s. Hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow bought rights to TransHab, then persuaded NASA to host BEAM at the space station.

Empty except for sensors, the experimental BEAM is Bigelow's first soft-sided space structure meant for people. Astronauts will enter periodically during the two years it's at the station.

Bigelow hopes to have two station-size inflatables ready to launch around 2020 for commercial use, potentially followed by inflatable moon bases. NASA, meanwhile, envisions using inflatable habitats during 2030s Mars expeditions.

On the eve of the launch, Bigelow said the mission promises to "change the entire dynamic for human habitation."

"It is the future ... the next logical step in humans getting off the planet," NASA's space station program manager, Kirk Shireman, told reporters Thursday.

SpaceX's last delivery attempt, in June, ended in flames after just two minutes, doomed by a snapped strut in the oxygen tank of the upper stage. The company successfully resumed Falcon launches late last year with satellites.

Besides Falcon repairs and upgrades, SpaceX activated the Dragon's parachute system this time. That way, in case of a launch accident, the Dragon could parachute into the Atlantic and hopefully be salvaged. The Dragon is the only station cargo ship capable of returning items to Earth and thus equipped with parachutes.

NASA is anxious to get back blood and other samples collected by one-year spaceman Scott Kelly, who returned to Earth in March, as well as a defective spacesuit that cut short a spacewalk in January.

Inflatable room ( Bigelow Expandable Activity Module - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia )

 

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Rocket barge arrives at Port Canaveral

 

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Falcon 9 booster preparing for reuse testing at KSC

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/04/falcon-9-booster-reuse-testing-ksc/

The first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9, that successfully helped launch the CRS-8 Dragon to the ISS prior to landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, has completed its Port Canaveral processing. The stage has now been transported to KSC for a series of static fire tests, with the ultimate goal to clear it for an upcoming mission that would mark the first reuse of a returned SpaceX booster.

F9-0023-S1:

Born in Hawthorne, California, this stage was assigned as part of SpaceX’s return to Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) missions with the Dragon spacecraft.

See Also

• LIVE: F9/S1 Return Updates
• SpaceX Missions Section
• L2 SpaceX Section
• Click here to Join L2

Transported to the McGregor test facility, the stage underwent a static fire test to ensure its nine Merlin 1D engines were ready for the first leg of pushing the Dragon uphill.

Another road trip resulted in the stage taking up residency at SpaceX’s Florida launch site at SLC-40, prior to a final quick burst of the engines via the static fire test that also provides a full dress rehearsal for the launch team.

Launching without issue, at the first attempt, during what was an instantaneous window, the Falcon 9 staged at T+2:40, allowing the Second Stage to complete the final leg to deploy the Dragon spacecraft.

The first stage flipped shortly after staging, before conducting a boostback burn with three of its Merlin 1D engines to begin the return leg for the stage. A re-entry burn sent the stage on the path towards the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS) “Of Course I Still Love You”.

A landing burn was already underway as the stage came into sight over the ASDS, followed by the historic landing on the drone ship at T+8:36.

Following up on the success of the OG-2 S1 landing at SpaceX’s LZ-1, the more challenging landing out at sea is a key requirement for SpaceX’s reusability goals, based on the amount of future missions that require the stage to return to the deck of a deployed ASDS.

Secured on deck, the ASDS and support ships then made the long trip back to the Florida coast, arriving into Port Canaveral in the early hours of April 12, on the 55th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight and the 35th anniversary of Columbia’s STS-1 launch.

The stage was then lifted off the deck of the ASDS via a large crane on site, surrounded by cherry pickers and soon to be joined by the KAMAG modular platform trailer, tasked with the transportation of the stage from Port Canaveral to the Kennedy Space Center.

A large amount of work has taken place since the S1 was lifted on the support structure next to the dock, with SpaceX engineers working to safe the vehicle on Wednesday, including the burn off of the remaining onboard TEA-TEB (first stage ignitor source).

Last Thursday was highlighted by the initiation of work to remove the four landing legs from the base of the stage, beginning with the detachment of the four pistons.

Although SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk had noted in the post-landing media briefing that the legs would be “folded up”, they were to be fully detached from the stage by Friday and placed onto a separate transporter.

The pace of the work slowed over the weekend, prior to Monday’s final operations to ready the stage for the translation to horizontal.

Future port processing is expected to be completed on a shorter timeline, with the CRS-8 S1 providing the role of a pathfinder.

Mr. Musk had described this first-time processing event as like a “dog catching a bus”, per working out what to do next.

However, the processing work was completed by the end of the work day on Monday, as the stage was secured atop the transporter and prepared for transportation.

The move began around 10am Eastern on Tuesday – to SpaceX’s new Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) at KSC’s Pad 39A.

The slow journey, which included a full escort, took most of the day, prior to arriving at the 39A HIF, to be parked alongside the OG-2 core that landed at LZ-1.

Additional work was conducted on the returned OG-2 booster inside the new HIF, prior to heading back to SpaceX’s Cape pad at SLC-40 for a short static fire test to prove the engines would still ignite after their adventure.

However, the CRS-8 S1 is hoping to provide the transformed 39A with its first fire and smoke since the final Space Shuttle launch via up to ten static fire tests, per Mr. Musk’s earlier comments.

It is currently unknown when these tests will take place although the goal is to launch the stage on a future – as yet undetermined – mission, possibly in June. However, following the arrival of the booster at the 39A HIF, Mr. Musk refined that timeline to “3-4 months” until its potential re-flight.

JCSAT-14:

One static fire that is upcoming in the next few days is the test of the recently arrived first stage for the JSCAT-14 mission.

JCSAT-14 is a Space Systems/Loral (SSL) telecommunications satellite that will succeed and replace JCSAT-2A, providing coverage to Asia, Russia, Oceania and the Pacific Islands.

With 26 optimized C-band transponders and 18 Ku-Band transponders, the satellite will extend JCSAT-2A’s geographical footprint and address fast-growing mobility markets across the Asia-Pacific region.

This mission is aiming to launch on April 28 in an early morning window ranging from 01:22 Eastern, through to 03:22.

The first stage tasked with this mission is now documented (L2) to undergo a static fire test at SLC-40 on April 24, pending an acceptable flow towards that date.

It will also be aiming to be the second time SpaceX successfully lands a first stage on the ASDS, with the drone ship already being prepared for its journey back out into the Atlantic.

Despite the success of the CRS-8 S1’s return, ocean landings on the ASDS are expected to suffer a number of failures due to the difficulties involved with such a return.

However, a second ASDS landing success in a row, via a mission with a different launch profile to that involved with the CRS-8 Dragon launch, would provide a massive boost for SpaceX’s advances at refining its reuse technology.

Eutelsat 117W B & ABS 2A:

Launches for the following month are also deep into preparations, with the booster for the Eutelsat 117W B & ABS 2A dual-payload launch already undergoing testing.

That stage was recently spotted on the test stand at SpaceX’s McGregor test site, ready for its static test fire.

It too will follow the path of the previous cores, making the road trip to Florida ahead of its launch – and it is understood the booster will also attempt an ASDS landing.

Manufactured by Boeing Defense and Space, EUTELSAT 115 West B is the first all-electric satellite of the fleet.

Following launch, EUTELSAT 115 West B will be located at 114.9 degrees West, providing coverage from Alaska and Canada down to South America, including Pan-American coverage over the Galapagos and Easter Island. A semi-hemispheric C-band beam provides coverage from Alaska to Peru.

Ku-band resources, connected to three fixed beams covering the Americas from Alaska to Patagonia, will provide optimized regional coverage of Canada, Mexico and South America for data services.

ABS-2A is a Boeing 702SP satellite that also utilizes all-electric propulsion.

Designed with 48 transponders and five dedicated high powered Ku-band beams, ABS-2A will serve South Asia, South East Asia, Russia, Sub-Sahara Africa and MENA regions.

Following launch, ABS-2A will be co-located with ABS-2 at the prime location at 75 degrees East. ABS-2 was launched by one of Falcon 9’s rivals, the Ariane 5, in 2014.

The frequency of SpaceX launches is expected to pick up the pace in June with up to three launches planned, potentially including the historic reuse of the CRS-8 S1.

(Images: SpaceX, NSF members Marek Cyzio and “Thomas Moore” at Port Canaveral, Jim at the Cape and L2 SpaceX – including McGregor testing for JSCAT-14 core by NSF member ScaryDare and F9 S1 39A testing render from L2 artist Nathan Koga – The full gallery of Nathan’s (SpaceX Dragon to MCT, SLS, Commercial Crew and more) L2 images can be *found here*)

 

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The rocket that landed being driven back to the launch area

Kind of hard to grasp this thing free-falling from the sky and then re-starting its engines to land.

 

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Bigelow BEAM inflated on the ISS

A Billionaire Hotel Magnate Is Sending an Inflatable Space Habitat Into Orbit

http://fortune.com/2016/04/07/billionaire-inflatable-space-habitat/

 

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360 view of landing. Use mouse to move the camera as the video plays!!!