Live broadcast of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon 9 rocket will launch SpaceX’s 25th resupply mission to the International Space Station. Follow us excitement.
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SpaceX’s 25th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 20:44 EDT on Thursday (Friday 0044 GMT). A Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon capsule towards the station with about three tons of cargo.
Takeoff from pad 39A at Kennedy occurred at exactly 20:44:22 EDT (0044:22 GMT), roughly the moment Earth’s rotation brought the launch field below the space station’s orbital plane.
According to the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Air Squadron, there was a 70 percent chance of a favorable weather for Thursday’s launch. The main weather concerns were cumulus clouds, which could pose a flight risk through lightning and precipitation.
But the weather held to allow Falcon 9 to take off from Florida’s Space Coast on Thursday.
After takeoff, Falcon 9 descended northeast from Kennedy with nine Merlin engines producing 1.7 million pounds of thrust. The rocket shut down the first-stage booster about two and a half minutes into mission, allowing the booster to land on a drone carrier about seven and a half kilometers downstream in the Atlantic Ocean. – Half a minute after takeoff.
The booster, with the tail number B1067, made its fifth flight on the CRS-25 mission. It had previously launched the CRS-22 cargo mission last June, sent two NASA crew missions to the station, and towed Turkey’s Türksat 5B communications satellite into space.
The Dragon spacecraft departed from Falcon 9’s upper stage about 12 minutes after takeoff to begin its one-and-a-half-day journey to the International Space Station. The Dragon cargo capsule on mission CRS-25 was launched on its third flight to the station.
Located inside a firing chamber at a launch control center at Kennedy, SpaceX’s launch crew began loading supercooled, condensed kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants aboard the 215-foot (65-metre) Falcon 9 vehicle in T-minus 35 minutes.
In the last half hour of the countdown, helium pressure entered the rocket. In the last seven minutes before takeoff, Falcon 9’s Merlin main engines were thermally conditioned for flight in a procedure known as “calming down”. Falcon 9’s guidance and range safety systems are also configured for launch.
The Dragon cargo ship, which will launch on time Thursday night, is scheduled to automatically dock at the space station’s Harmony module at 11:20 PM EDT (1520 GMT) on Saturday.
Astronauts on the space station will open the hatches and open the supplies, experiments and other equipment housed in the pressurized compartment of the Dragon capsule. At the end of the mission, the reusable capsule will leave the station and go on a parachute-assisted splashdown with several tons of cargo off the Florida coast in mid-August.
The cargo ship was launched with approximately 5,800 pounds of material and payload, including a NASA climate instrument to be mounted outside the space station.
The Earth’s Surface Mineral Dust Resource Survey, or EMIT, was developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It will be attached to a mounting pole outside the space station to measure the mineral content of the world’s desert regions, which are the source of global dust storms that can affect climate and weather worldwide.
The data collected by the instrument will help scientists learn more about how dust rising from deserts into the atmosphere affects Earth’s ecosystems and human health.
“This is going to be a really intense mission for us,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s deputy space station program manager. “It’s full of a lot of science. The planned duration is about 33 days.”
The mission was originally scheduled to launch in early June, but SpaceX delayed the flight to resolve a steam leak in the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system and replaced the capsule’s four main parachutes as a precautionary measure in case the smash material was disrupted by the poisonous propellant. leak.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1067.5)
LOAD: Cargo Dragon (CRS-25)
LAUNCH SITE: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: 14 July 2022
START TIME: 20:44:22 EDT (July 15, 0044:22 GMT)
WEATHER FORECAST: 70% acceptable weather probability; Low risk of high winds; Low risk of adverse conditions for booster recovery
UPGRADE RESCUE: “A Deficiency Gravitas” drone ship east of Jacksonville, Florida
START AZIMUT: northeast
TARGET Orbit: 118 miles x 130 miles (190 kilometers x 210 kilometers), 51.6 degree incline
STARTING TIMELINE:
- T+00:00: Departure
- T+01:12: Maximum aerodynamic pressure (Max-Q)
- T+02:27: First stage main engine cut-off (MECO)
- T+02:30: Stage separation
- T+02:38: Second stage engine ignition
- T+02:43: First stage boost rear burn ignition (three engines)
- T+03:15: First stage boost burnback cutout
- T+05:45: First stage inlet burn ignition (three engines)
- T+05:59: First stage input burn cutout
- T+07:06: First stage burner ignition (single engine)
- T+07:33: First stage landing
- T+08:37: Second stage engine cut-off (SECO 1)
- T+11:49: Cargo Dragon split
TASK STATISTICS:
- 164th launch of Falcon 9 rocket since 2010
- 172nd launch of Falcon rocket family since 2006
- 5th launch of Falcon 9 booster B1067
- The 143rd Falcon 9 launch from Florida’s Space Coast
- 51st SpaceX launch from Pad 39A
- 145th launch overall from pad 39A
- Flight 106 of a reused Falcon 9 booster
- 5th launch of the upgraded Cargo Dragon
- 25th SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station
- 30th Falcon 9 launch of 2022
- 30th launch by SpaceX in 2022
- 30th orbital launch from Cape Canaveral in 2022
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