Dragon SpX-3 (CRS3), Hermes 2, LMRSat, TechCube 1, All-Star (THEIA) - Falcon 9 v1.1 - Canaveral SLC-40 - 18.04.2014

[Salo]

http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/37077pressure-mounts-on-orbital-sciences-with-spacex-likely-unavailable-for

Pressure Mounts on Orbital Sciences with SpaceX Likely Unavailable for December Cargo Run
By Dan Leone | Sep. 5, 2013
 
   WASHINGTON — Orbital Sciences Corp., which is preparing to send its Cygnus cargo freighter to the international space station (ISS) for the first time later this month, was put on notice Sept. 4 by a NASA official who said the Dulles, Va., company could be needed for another cargo run as soon as December because Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) — the agency's other cargo-delivery contractor — likely will not be ready to fly.
Orbital is slated to launch Cygnus Sept. 17 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. It will be Cygnus' maiden flight and the sophomore effort for its Antares carrier rocket, which flew successfully in its own demo mission April 21. Orbital is slated to carry nonessential cargo to ISS in order to prove the company is ready to begin service under the eight-flight, $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract it signed with NASA in 2008.
SpaceX also got a delivery contract from NASA in 2008: a 12-flight deal worth $1.8 billion. The Hawthorne, Calif., company already has made two of those runs, the second of which wrapped up in March. Since then, SpaceX has been working on a more powerful variant of the Falcon 9 rocket that launched those missions, as well as an enhanced version of its Dragon space capsule.
That work will keep SpaceX from returning to ISS in 2013, said Michael Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"I would not expect them to be ready in December, or even January time frame," Suffredini said during a Sept. 4 press briefing from Johnson.
SpaceX spokeswoman Christina Ra, reached by email Sept. 4, had no immediate comment."
Par for the course during the development of a new launch vehicle, SpaceX ran into delays with its so-called Falcon 9 1.1, which is slated to debut Sept. 14 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket will not carry Dragon on that launch, but a Canadian space weather satellite called Cassiope and several ride-along payloads.
Should Orbital be called upon to make its first contracted cargo run in December, it could mean turning around its launch pad, rocket and spacecraft in just under three months. Back in 2012, SpaceX flew its first contracted cargo run about four months after successfully completing the same type of demonstration mission Orbital will attempt Sept. 17 from the Virginia coast.
In April, Mike Laidley, Orbital's program director for Antares, said the minimum turnaround time between Antares missions is about one month.
Even if both SpaceX and Orbital should be unavailable in December, Suffredini said ISS is well provisioned and could ride out a missed delivery.

[Salo]

http://www.livestream.com/aiaa/video?clipId=pla_97b4511a-3322-4a6d-816f-63ba12f6f17a

[Salo]

Most affordable cargo transportation by kg to the ISS.

Интересно: Прогресс уже стоит больше 127 зелёных лимонов за полёт?

[SFN]

Когда при нерасрытии антенны на Прогрессе возник вопрос про стоимость замены его на другой, ответ энергетиков был про потерю $200 млн. Так что спейсексы могут с полным правом писать "Most affordable"
Хотя, возможно, энергетики подсчитали все, в том числе и стоимость морального ущерба руководства Энергии  

[Lanista]

200кк - подозрительно круглая цифра.

[Salo]

http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/AW_09_23_2013_p40-617797.xml

December ISS Mission Delayed By Dragon Upgrades
By Amy Svitak
Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology


September 23, 2013
Credit: SpaceX

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) is modifying its Dragon capsule to afford more payload capacity for NASA cargo runs to and from the International Space Station (ISS). But the improvements will push a planned December ISS mission into 2014, in which the company's crowded launch manifest is pending the delayed debut of the revamped SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

President Gwynne Shotwell says NASA needs SpaceX to make the Dragon enhancements in order to increase the reusable cargo vessel's cold-storage capacity for transporting research samples between Earth and the ISS.

"We're developing a major upgrade to Dragon to triple the amount of science that we carry up and back," Shotwell said Sept. 10 at the World Satellite Business Week conference here, adding that the capsule's December mission is now scheduled for February.

Under the terms of SpaceX's $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA, the company is supposed to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 lb.) of food, supplies and science materials to the ISS by Dec. 31, 2015. Dragon's advertised payload capacity is for more than 3,300 kg of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the space station and up to 2,500 kg on the return trip.

Since the December 2008 CRS contract was signed, however, Dragon has conducted just three trips to the ISS, delivering a combined 1,595 kg of pressurized cargo and returning a total of 2,120 kg to Earth.

NASA spokesman Joshua Byerly says no new requirements have been added to the SpaceX CRS contract, suggesting the upgrades are expected to fulfill a long-standing requirement to meet ISS cargo needs. But he says the work is taking longer than initially planned.

"The December launch date was chosen in cooperation with SpaceX and assumed the enhancements being implemented by SpaceX," Byerly explains. "It is simply taking longer to get all the modifications completed, which is not unreasonable, given the nature of the enhancements."

Спойлер

In the meantime, SpaceX is still sorting out technical troubles with a new version of its Falcon 9 rocket.

More than a year behind schedule, the Falcon 9 v1.1 is a significant departure from the baseline Falcon 9 that has launched four times since its first flight in December 2010. The changes include a complete redesign of the vehicle's Merlin 1 engine, known as the Merlin 1D, and a new octagonal configuration for the rocket's nine first-stage motors. Other enhancements include considerably longer fuel tanks and a wider payload fairing. All the upgrades are aimed at lofting more mass—including crew—to the ISS, while affording entry to the commercial launch market. Falcon 9 has more than $1 billion in commercial-launch backlog to execute in the coming years.

Previously slated to debut Sept. 15 from SpaceX's new launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., the company shifted the Falcon 9 v1.1 mission to the end of September following a recent static-fire test. SpaceX founder, CEO and Chief Technology Officer Elon Musk stated on Twitter Sept. 13 that during the 2-sec. test, the rocket's nine engines achieved full thrust, but that "some anomalies" need to be investigated. Two days later, he tweeted plans to conduct a second static-fire test before launching Sept. 29-30.

For its first flight, the new Falcon 9 is expected to deliver a small Canadian science satellite to an elliptical polar orbit. If successful, this will clear the way for SpaceX to conduct its first commercial mission to geostationary transfer orbit, launching the SES-8 satellite for SES, the world's second-largest satellite fleet operator by revenue. SES-8 was expected to launch from Cape Canaveral in the first quarter of this year. SES says it is waiting to deliver the Orbital Sciences Corp.-built spacecraft to Vandenberg until the first Falcon 9 v1.1 mission is successfully lofted.

In addition to SES-8, Shotwell says SpaceX is planning to put the Orbital-built Thaicom 6 communications satellite into orbit by year-end before launching at "a cadence of almost one a month in 2014." For now, the company is producing four Merlin 1D engines per week, but plans to increase the rate to five per week starting in January, she says. This pace is necessary to keep up with SpaceX's busy launch manifest, which indicates 12 Falcon 9 v1.1 missions next year, including the one to the ISS in February.

"Our production is now ahead of our launch," Shotwell adds. "We have to get these vehicles to the launch site and fly them, but production should not be an issue going forward."

[свернуть]

[Salo]

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/384401857365692416

Jeff Foust ‏@jeff_foust   Musk: won't hold up CRS-3 launch to install legs on F9. Schedule driven by upgrades to Dragon. Probably Feb '14 launch. #falcon9

  10:38 PM - 29 Sep 13

https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/384404700394971136

Jeff Foust ‏@jeff_foust   Musk: goal is to attempt 1st stage recovery on all future CRS launches and many others; next two (w/out recovery) more of an anomaly.

  10:49 PM - 29 Sep 13

[SFN]

SpaceX's next Dragon mission moved to February 11
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/10/spacexs-dragon-moved-february-11/

[SFN]

The SpX-3 flight will carry a full launch and return complement of 1,580kg/3,476lb of payload, an increase fr om the previous lim it of 800kg, afforded by the increased upmass capabilities of the Falcon 9 v1.1.

========================
чтобы было чтонибудь новое из статьи в НСФ )))

[Salo]

Было:
http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/messages/forum10/topic13485/message1108562/#message1108562

[ronatu]

[SFN]

Эх, Семен Семеныч! Этот макет в другую тему надо.  Тут двухэтажные кресла для экипажа и картонный СУ с паучьими рамочками отмененного iLIDS
 

[Salo]

Chris Bergin: SpaceX's CRS-3 Dragon recruited for ISS spacesuit relay
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/11/spacex-crs-3-dragon-spacesuit-relay/

[Salo]

Ушёл на 22 февраля.

[cavia]

не могу убить лишнюю картинку, удаляю, но она снова возникает  

[AlexioM]

Following second-stage separation, SpaceX will conduct a second controlled-descent test of the discarded booster vehicle, and this time, will attempt landing on land at Cape Canaveral, assuming all the licensing issues and safety issues can be worked out with various regulatory authorities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_launches

Похоже, на этот раз первую ступень попробуют посадить на "ноги".
 

[Петр Зайцев]

Ну-и-ну пишет:
Интересно, Лори написала в резюме "участвовала в отмене программы Констелейшн, что закопало 4.5 ярда народных денег, труд тысяч людей и успешно перенесло возвращение на Луну минимум на пятилетку"?

Пихайте эту ложь кому-нибудь еще. А тут всем известно, что Constellation ползла вправо быстрее чем воплощалась. Ни на какую Луну Гриффин нас не привел бы никогда, вот и все.

[Ну-и-ну]

Петр Зайцев пишет:
Пихайте эту ложь кому-нибудь еще. А тут всем известно

Мне неизвестно. Я читал квартальные отчёты по Констелейшн, срывы сроков соответствовали недофинансированию. Экстраполируя реальные темпы, к 2018 не долетели бы до Луны точно, но в 2021 - вполне.

PS: Некрофильский спор странен. Пост был полгода назад.

[Space Alien]

Летим не ранее 1 марта.

[Salo]

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32603.msg1153008#msg1153008

SpaceX-3 is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 1st and rendezvous with ISS on March 3rd.