| Issue 1 | Volume 146 | Wednesday, September 7, 2016 | theavion.com |
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Photo Courtesy/US Launch Report
The Falcon Fails- Static Test Anomaly Michael Weinhoffer Correspondent
What’s Inside
At 9:07 AM on September 1st, 2016, a SpaceX rocket exploded during the propellant fill stage of a pre-launch static fire test. Fortunately, no one was injured, but both the rocket and the payload were engulfed in several small explosions. The launch was supposed to take place around 3 a.m. on September 3rd. Of course, numerous news sources covered the stories, with some of them being more critical of SpaceX than others. Hopefully this article will give SpaceX the credit it deserves, without embellishing the details of the incident. This mission's objective was the delivery of the 5.5 ton Amos-6 Earth communications satellite to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), and an attempt at landing the Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket on a drone ship. A static fire test is conducted before virtually any rocket launch, and entails firing the engines for a few seconds
in order to check that all systems are working. The GTO orbit is the most common orbit for communication satellites, due the orbit matching the rotation of Earth. The owner of the payload was Spacecom, an Israeli communications satellite operator. Spacecom was supposed to be purchased by a larger Chinese communication technology company after the launch, but the failure of the rocket makes the purchase seem unlikely. The payload was the heaviest yet scheduled for launch, so this launch was not entirely routine. SpaceX Founder, and CEO, Elon Musk said that the explosion "originated around [the] upper stage oxygen tank," but no other details regarding the cause of the explosion were available at the time of this writing. The blast also severely damaged the launch pad and cracked a few windows miles away from the site. The rocket was not one that had already been to space, but the incident is still damaging to all of
Space Traffic Management Conference
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the companies involved. Facebook and Frenchbased satellite provider Eutelsat saw Amos-6 as a gateway to test new communication services. Earlier this year, both companies payed a total of $95 million over seven years to lease a high-end broadband capacity featured on the satellite. Facebook intended to use the capacity to help provide internet services for sub-Saharan African countries, while Eutelsat hoped to reach African businesses. A Business Insider headline claimed that the explosion "destroyed Facebook's new satellite," but Facebook never owned the satellite; they simply had a lease of a technological feature. Mark Zuckerberg can express his disappointment, but more attention ought to be put on the owners of the payload, instead of the leasers. Saturday's flight would have been the 29th flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, and this incident was only the 2nd full failure and the 11th total objective failure. The 19th
flight, on June 28th, 2015, failed in flight, and no flights were flown until December of that year. Because this was a pre-flight failure, I would expect the delay to be much shorter. Hopefully another rocket, with the backup unit of Amos-6 or another satellite, will launch before the year's end. Although failures like these are very rare, they always make the headlines and remind all of us of the danger of space exploration,
Despite this failure, SpaceX is certainly not done with flights. Elon Musk had a very bad day, but like in the past, the company will continue to press on with their ambitious plans after a careful assessment of the incident. This failure could have been much worse, and we should all be thankful that no humans were harmed, and hope to see SpaceX overcome this obstacle to reach for the stars once again.
Photo Courtesy/Spacecom The payload the destroyed Falcon 9 was carrying was the AMOS-6 satallite, pictured above. The AMOS-6 would have replaced AMOS-2, which provides TV, radio, and internet services to parts of Europe and Africa.
Department Spotlight: Homeland Security
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particularly in the hands of private companies such as SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin. Through a discussion in my commercial space operations seminar class, taught by CSO program coordinator Dr. Karl, it was suggested that the cause of the accident was human error. Propellant fill intake readings were most likely not paid close enough attention too, and too much propellant allowed the rocket to explode in an inferno.
Student Presents Research on Capitol Hill
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