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SpaceX Falcon 9 FT Launch of JCSAT-14 & First Stage Drone Ship Landing Attempt. May 6

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cameron

Member
SpaceX @SpaceX
First landed booster from a GTO-class mission (final spacecraft altitude will be about 36,000 km)
Launch/Landing Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacex/
F7RAtbx.jpg



I fell asleep like 20 minutes before launch. Feels bad man
Aw, looks like you bailed when the stream was just starting to show pre-launch info. There's another Falcon 9 launch coming up on May 26. It would also have a drone ship landing attempt for a GTO payload. Thaicom 8 communications satellite.
Spaceflight Now @SpaceflightNow
Coming soon: Two Soyuz from Russia & French Guiana on May 21 & 24. Next Falcon 9 on May 26 http://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
It just occurred to me: is this the fastest-v0 entirely powered, as in not relying on drag chutes or drag surfaces to any degree, landing mankind has ever done? At 8K-9K km/h speed at separation, that's beyond X-15 territory. The martian landings were likely at much faster v0, but those relied heavily on atmospheric drag chutes. And the shuttles/buran relied on drag surfaces, of course.

I'm curious, as it's indicative of our ability to land on high-gravity non-atmospheric bodies.
 

Mindlog

Member
I'm curious, as it's indicative of our ability to land on high-gravity non-atmospheric bodies.
Or low-gravity minimalist-atmospheric bodies.

I'm still amused by the landing.
yeaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWwwwhhhhhhhh
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
 
And...it's now stopped in dock. 11:20 PM, Florida time.

It'll be interesting to see how much time they shave off the first time they had to take it off the ship, vs. now. Musk admitted last time that while they had an engineering plan for how they would do it, they didn't really have all the details sorted. I'm sure now they have a pretty granular step-by-step procedure.
 

cameron

Member
SpaceX ‏@SpaceX
Static fire complete in advance of Thursday's launch
https://vine.co/v/i9bHDtOgmFi

Thaicom-8 is on schedule for a May 26 launch. Window opens at 5:40 pm ET. I'll create a new thread tomorrow if no one else wants to.
With SpaceX confirming the Static Fire was conducted on Tuesday, the vehicle will be detanked and rolled back into her HIF for final processing ahead of a launch that is currently targeting a window that has been slightly extended to 17:40 Eastern, through to 19:40, on May 26.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 will be aiming to follow the recent landing successes, with a return to the Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship (ASDS), positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. The drone ship set out to sea over the weekend.
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/05/spacex-line-up-falcon-9-upcoming-missions/


Edit. Thread for Thaicom-8: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1223884
 
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