Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch Intelsat’s Galaxy 31 and 32 geostationary communications satellites. Follow us on Twitter.
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SpaceX will launch one of its reusable Falcon 9 rocket boosters for the last time Saturday on a rare expendable mission for Intelsat, devoting all of the launcher’s propellant toward placing a pair of television broadcasting satellites into orbit. Intelsat says it paid SpaceX an additional fee for the expendable mission.
The Falcon 9 rocket has a two-hour launch window Saturday opening at 11:06 a.m. EST (1606 GMT) for liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Forecasters from the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron predict a 90% probability of good weather for launch Saturday.
The two Intelsat communications satellites on top of the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket are heading into geosynchronous orbit to begin 15-year missions providing video broadcasting services over North America. The Galaxy 31 and 32 satellites were built by Maxar, and are part of Intelsat’s program to replace older communications satellites as the Federal Communications Commission transitions a segment of C-band spectrum for use by 5G cellular network services.
Intelsat launched the Galaxy 33 and 34 satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket Oct. 8, the first two of seven new C-band satellites that are part of the transition program. The company has three more new C-band broadcasting satellites under construction for launches on Falcon 9 and Ariane 5 rockets in the coming months.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will take off from Cape Canaveral and head east over the Atlantic Ocean, targeting a geosynchronous transfer orbit for deployment of the Galaxy 31 and 32 satellites. The elliptical transfer orbit will range between a few hundred miles above Earth up to tens of thousands of miles in altitude. The Galaxy 31 and 32 satellites are stacked one on top of the other for launch, with Galaxy 32 set to deploy from the rocket first at T+plus 33 minutes, 31 seconds. Five minutes later, Galaxy 31 will separate from the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
Intelsat decided to pay SpaceX extra money to get all of the Falcon 9’s lift capability. SpaceX typically reserves some of the booster’s propellant for landing maneuvers, but on this mission, all of the rocket’s fuel will be burned during the climb into space. The reusable first stage booster, designated B1051, will be making its 14th and final flight.
The booster debuted March 2, 2019, with the first unpiloted test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, a precursor to SpaceX’s later astronaut missions. It launched again in June 2019 with Canada’s Radarsat Constellation Mission. Later in its career, the booster launched SiriusXM’s SXM 7 radio broadcasting satellite, and flew on 10 missions carrying SpaceX’s own Starlink internet satellites.
Most recently, the Falcon 9 booster launched July 17 on a Starlink mission.
Jean-Luc Froeliger, senior vice president of space systems at Intelsat, said the Galaxy 31 and 32 satellites are a little heavier than the Galaxy 33 and 34 satellites launched on Intelsat’s flight with SpaceX last month.
“They’re a little heavier, so we decided go for an expendable launch to get the extra performance,” Froeliger said in an interview last month with Spaceflight Now.
“You pay extra when it’s expendable,” Froeliger said. “From a business point of view, you may also get a booster that has flown many times that they may retire anyhow, but you’re still paying because you pay for the expendable.”
During Saturday morning’s countdown, the Falcon 9 launcher will be filled with a million pounds of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants in the final 35 minutes before liftoff.
After teams verify technical and weather parameters are all “green” for launch, the nine Merlin 1D main engines on the first stage booster will flash to life with the help of an ignition fluid called triethylaluminum/triethylborane, or TEA-TEB. Once the engines ramp up to full throttle, hydraulic clamps will open to release the Falcon 9 for its climb into space.
The nine main engines will produce 1.7 million pounds of thrust for more than two-and-a-half minutes, propelling the Falcon 9 and Intelsat’s Galaxy 31 and 32 satellites into the upper atmosphere. Then the booster stage will shut down and separate from the Falcon 9’s upper stage to begin an uncontrolled fall into the Atlantic.
The booster is not fitted with SpaceX’s recovery hardware, such as titanium grid fins or landing legs. And SpaceX did not deploy one of its drone ships for the expendable mission.
SpaceX is expected to attempt to recover the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing after the nose cone’s two clamshell halves parachute into the sea downrange from Cape Canaveral. The payload fairing will jettison from the rocket about three-and-a-half minutes into the flight, shortly after ignition of the Falcon 9’s upper stage engine.
For Saturday’s mission, the Falcon 9 rocket will fire its upper stage engine two times to inject the two Intelsat spacecraft into an elliptical geostationary transfer orbit. The satellites will deploy from the rocket at 33 minutes and 38 minutes after liftoff.
Galaxy 31 and 32 will unfurl their solar panels and begin maneuvers with their own propulsion systems to circularize their orbits at geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.
Intelsat will operate the Galaxy 31 satellite in a slot at 121 degrees west longitude, replacing the Galaxy 23 satellite launched in 2003. Galaxy 32 will replace the Galaxy 17 satellite, launched in 2007, at 91 degrees west longitude.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1051.14)
PAYLOAD: Galaxy 31 and 32 communications satellites
LAUNCH SITE: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: Nov. 12, 2022
LAUNCH WINDOW: 11:06 a.m. – 1:06 p.m. EST (1606-1806 GMT)
WEATHER FORECAST: 90% probability of acceptable weather
BOOSTER RECOVERY: None
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: East
TARGET ORBIT: Geostationary transfer orbit
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
-
- T+00:00: Liftoff
- T+01:12: Maximum aerodynamic pressure (Max-Q)
- T+02:43: First stage main engine cutoff (MECO)
- T+02:46: Stage separation
- T+02:53: Second stage engine ignition
- T+03:32: Fairing jettison
- T+08:05: Second stage engine cutoff (SECO 1)
- T+26:50: Second stage engine restart
- T+28:00: Second stage engine cutoff (SECO 2)
- T+33:31: Galaxy 32 separation
- T+38:41: Galaxy 31 separation
MISSION STATS:
- 185th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010
- 194th launch of Falcon rocket family since 2006
- 14th launch of Falcon 9 booster B1051
- 158th Falcon 9 launch from Florida’s Space Coast
- 103rd Falcon 9 launch from pad 40
- 158th launch overall from pad 40
- 126th flight of a reused Falcon 9 booster
- 3rd SpaceX launch for Intelsat
- 51st Falcon 9 launch of 2022
- 52nd launch by SpaceX in 2022
- 49th orbital launch attempt based out of Cape Canaveral in 2022
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