![]() Starlink 4-23 marked SpaceX’s 64th consecutively successful booster landing. Even Falcon landings, once considered a secondary objective that could be allowed to fail, haven’t suffered. Instead, the company somehow manages to continue upgrading Falcon 9’s performance without obviously impacting its reliability or incurring the wrath of its strictest US government customers. Given how successful and reliable Falcon 9 already is, it would be hard to blame SpaceX if it decided to freeze the program and avoid additional changes, even if those changes could slightly improve the rocket’s performance. ![]() If SpaceX pushing the envelope on Starlink 4-23 had somehow caused the launch to fail, all Falcon 9 rockets would have likely been grounded for months, almost certainly delaying Crew-5 and throwing NASA’s ISS program into chaos. SpaceX’s fifth operational NASA astronaut launch (Crew-5) is scheduled as early as October 3rd. What is impressive, however, is that SpaceX pushed the envelope while Falcon 9 is both fast approaching its 150th consecutively successful launch and the only rocket currently certified to launch multiple NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. The last confirmed record – claimed by CEO Elon Musk – was 16.25 tons spread over 53 Starlink V1.5 satellites, which doesn’t entirely add up unless SpaceX added several kilograms to the mass of each satellite between March and August 2022.Īssuming that both numbers are comparable, a roughly 3% improvement is far from an earth-shaking or surprising step forward for SpaceX, a company, renowned for relentless iterative improvement. SpaceX confirmed that Falcon 9 broke the record with its launch of 54 Starlink V1.5 satellites at the end of its hosted webcast, revealing that the rocket launched 16.7 metric tons (~36,800 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Starlink 4-3 and 4-5 serve as a stand-in to visualize Starlink 4-23’s record-breaking payload deployment. The damage B1069 suffered on its first launch makes it even more impressive that SpaceX attempted to break Falcon 9’s payload record with its return to flight, suggesting that the company was extremely confident in its repairs. While there’s a chance that SpaceX was or will be able to salvage the parts of B1069’s original M1D engines above their bell nozzles, it’s little surprise that the company had to fully replace those engines before the booster could fly again. Worse, each of its nine fragile Merlin 1D engine nozzles had been crushed like tinfoil against Octagrabber, damaging them well beyond repair. ![]() (Richard Angle)Įither way, B1069 returned to port pressed against the lip of drone ship Just Read The Instructions’ (JRTI) deck, leaning hard to port. Designed to passively hold boosters to the deck with its sheer weight, even the tank-like robot wouldn’t be able to save a booster if a storm caught the drone ship off guard and the waves were high enough. ![]() Likely already in high seas, the conditions prevented SpaceX workers from safely boarding the ship and manually securing the booster, which was then free to slide about its tilting deck.Īlternatively, it’s possible that Octagrabber successfully secured the booster but was then subjected to truly awful sea conditions. Sometime shortly after Falcon 9 B1069’s flawless December 2021 launch and landing debut, a robotic helper known as Octagrabber most likely lost its grip on the booster while attempting to secure it. Squeezing extra performance out of Falcon 9 – almost at 17 metric tons to an actual useful orbit with booster & fairing reusable! - Elon Musk August 28, 2022Īccording to spaceflight writer Alejandro Alcantarilla Romero, one additional cost – at minimum – was a full set of new Merlin 1D engines. ![]()
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