Inside the SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s Most Challenging Payload Yet
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy begins its first flight. (Credit: NASA)
Aerospace packed two dozen satellites inside the nose cone of the world’s most powerful rocket.
EL SEGUNDO, Cali. (Aerospace Corporation PR) — It’s a little like trying to fit as many people as possible into a Nissan Leaf.
But in this case, Aerospace is overseeing the process of safely packing more than two dozen satellites into the nose cone of a giant SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Falcon Heavy is currently the most powerful rocket in the world. It can generate about five million pounds of thrust through its cluster of three Falcon 9 rocket stages with 27 main engines -which SpaceX describes as “roughly the power of eighteen 747 aircraft.” On February 6, SpaceX staged a successful test launch of the first Falcon Heavy and sent a Tesla Roadster and mannequin named Starman into space.
In late-June, the Falcon Heavy will undertake it’s third flight -carrying 25 satellites to orbit for the U.S. military, NASA, other government agencies, schools, and research institutions. Named STP-2, the mission involves one of the most diverse group of payloads ever launched into orbit on a single launch vehicle.
There are two dozen payloads of varying shapes and sizes, ranging from CubeSats (including one developed by a high school) to a six-satellite Taiwanese meteorological constellation named COSMIC-2.
Another payload comes from NASA, which is flying its Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) to test a green alternative to conventional chemical propulsion systems.
The Falcon Heavy will deliver the STP-2 payloads into three different mission orbits before the rocket puts itself into a “disposal orbit,” a safe place in space where it isn’t likely to encounter other satellites.
The Aerospace team in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is playing a major role in the flight, making sure all the satellites fit together aboard the world’s most powerful rocket. Aerospace engineers ensure the payloads don’t negatively affect each other in this complex arrangement by using a rideshare mission assurance protocol called “Do-No-Harm” (DNH). DNH is a process that focuses on ensuring no payload on a rideshare mission will negatively affect the on-orbit functionality of any other payload.
The individual payloads on STP-2 are all responsible for their own mission success, but through the DNH process, Aerospace is ensuring that everyone inside the Falcon Heavy nose cone plays nice with each other.
The New Mexico Aerospace team has divided up the set of payloads so each team member is responsible for conducting the DNH assessment for their payloads, which means ensuring that the payload team meets all the necessary requirements that relate to the safety of the launch vehicle and the other space vehicles.
During this process, the team regularly consults with Aerospace’s Engineering and Technology Group (ETG) for risk assessments and analysis. Aerospace also acts as a highly responsive intermediary between the STP-2 program office and the various satellite teams, facilitating the communication of pressing issues, and raising concerns that may otherwise be lost in the swirl of such a complex team.
30 responses to “Inside the SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s Most Challenging Payload Yet”
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go go go
Expect to see “more than two dozen satellites” packed into the nose cone of a standard SpaceX Falcon 9 to be launched next week. But those Starlink prototype satellites won’t be “of varying shapes and sizes” as with the STP-2 payloads.
Yes, completely standardized this should put SpaceX well ahead of its rivals who are only flying a few very early test satellites. These are basically pre-production prototypes.
https://www.teslarati.com/s…
SpaceX’s Starlink launch debut to orbit dozens of satellites later this month
“Corroborated by several sources, the actual number of Starlink satellites that will be aboard Falcon 9 is hard to believe given that it is a satellite constellation’s first quasi-operational launch. Suffice it to say, if all spacecraft reach orbit in good health, SpaceX will easily become the operator and owner of one of the top five largest commercial satellite constellations in the world with a single launch. Such an unprecedentedly ambitious first step suggests that the perceived practicality of SpaceX’s Starlink ambitions may need to be entirely reframed going forward.”
“According to FCC filings, the first 75 satellites will be of the partial-prototype variety, followed soon after by the first spacecraft with a more or less finalized design and a full complement of hardware.”
Arguably the most important payload is DSAC or Deep Space Atomic Clock, which would enable fundamentally new means of deep space flight. A probe could do complex navigation far away from earth without depending on real-time tracking and command from DSN.
GPIM is funny. It’s years late now waiting to be “infused”, while Bradford / ECAPS is racking up commercial design wins for LMP-103S and has cumulative lifetime of decades on orbit.
And funnier, it was supposed to fly a 22N thruster as a demo, in addition to 1N ones. And then it was scaled back down because they couldnt get it to work
It has the chance of making the FH THE USAF launcher…to bad Musk didnt put a cryo second stage on it
Given the fact that Vulcan does not look like it will be commercially competitive with Falcon 9, I’d consider selling payloads to the USAF with ACES as an integral part of the payload and have the USAF only contract for a Falcon 9 booster ride to a particular box in the sky with a particular set of vectors for position and velocity. Maybe even make a launch pad that could accommodate a Falcon 9. I still think that a law will be proposed splitting launch providers from launch vehicle manufacturers once ULA decides it wants to be an operator of launch vehicles instead of designing and manufacturing them.
The proposal ACES is just another paper rocket from Old Space. ULA has been discussing it since 2006 as an eventual future replacement for the old Centaur, but never seems to get around to building it. Of course as a paper rocket it’s performance is amazing?
In terms of a law separating launch vehicle manufacturers from operators, that only makes sense if you have reusable launch vehicles. Since Boeing is no where near developing a reusable booster they will block it.
I believe that Falcon Heavy can handle all of the current USAF reference payloads/orbits. So, I really don’t understand the idea that they should spend hundreds of millions of dollars over a few years developing a cryogenic (fuel) upper stage. What would be the point beyond the gee-wiz factor?
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
long with blowing up the crew dragon SpaceX has a parachute problem
Mo is an idiot a nazi lover…but well SpaceX has a problem
Nice long term follow up to challenges made to you in the past that you could not answer. You could not answer, and the Congressional witnesses could not either. But nice confirmation on a point you made some time ago. Big cred goes your way on this. Congressional oversight is in many ways my primary news source these days. I use the news to guide what I watch on C-Span and YouTube. It’s going to be weeks to never before we start seeing the fallout from this. And those of us on this ‘blog know you were warning us months ago on this issue to the extent you could.
Not surprising the Huntsville (Boeing) Representative is focusing on this, and cut Gerstenmaier off when he said he was comfortable with the results and it could have just been related to the test drop from the aircraft being problematic which NASA was studying. In short something that was an artifact of the test itself and would not be seen on an actual capsule. Given the long experience SpaceX has with recovery of capsules for NASA with parachutes compared to Boeing’s very limited experience that confidence by NASA is not surprising.
Either way, Space X has extra time to address whatever the problem is.
yes quite a bit of time I suspect
Mo is a right wing zenophob but there is a chute problem, as I have been saying. and no its not trivial.
Any word on what Boeing has been doing with their parachute issues? They seem to be more serious from what I heard, not surprising since it’s been over 45 years since Boeing recovered a capsule by parachute, compared to SpaceX’s 19 successful recoveries of the Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon.
Given SpaceX’s advantage in flight’s the fact that both have issues is a surprise to me. I wonder if there’s some specific line item that a parachute recovery system has to meet in order to be human rated that can be bypassed or ignored for non crewed craft? It’s highly unlikely after the Dragon 2 explosion that corners are going to be cut in human space rating Boeing or SpaceX’s hardware.
The test was based on what would happen if one of the parachutes failed, as one actually did on Apollo 15. But as Dr. Gerstenmaier was attempting to explain, before Rep. Brooks cut him off so he would have his sound bite for Boeing, it may have been due to an artifact of how the sled was released and not the parachute itself. It appears it was the only anomaly on the two dozen or so tests SpaceX has done on its parachutes, plus it’s replacement of the original Cargo Dragon parachutes with the Crew Dragon ones to get actual flight data.
Boeing, which has run barely a dozen tests, also had a parachute anomaly and of course has yet to even do the abort test for the CST-100 so no one knows how well it’s parachutes will actually work in flight. Yes, they have simulations, but simulations are not the same as actual tests. So Boeing’s parachutes are a far bigger question than the well tested SpaceX parachutes.
This is the difference between Boeing and SpaceX. Boeing hardware is so expensive they are forced to depend on simulations and are only able to afford the bare minimum of testing. SpaceX’s hardware is inexpensive enough they are able to use it to run actual real world tests. That is why SpaceX is able to do an actual launch abort test, in which they plan to actually disable the booster at Max Q, while Boeing will only be able to simulated one based on the results of a pad abort test since the Atlas V is just too expensive.
It should also be noted that the test that SpaceX did that destroyed the capsule, shaking it twice as hard as the aerodynamic forces it would experience from a fail booster, is one Boeing would never do because of the cost of it.
What’s your sources for this rundown of tests and their outcomes? What’s the date range for the sequence of events? I had no idea this was a real issue, all I had herd before was unsubstantiated claims.
Its been reported repeatedly. I don’t have time to track down all the articles. Besides I am still waiting for Robert to reveal his so called sources… But here is one showing Boeing has a second parachute problem is much more serious that no one is discussing.
http://www.planetary.org/bl…
Jason Davis • January 17, 2018
Let’s talk about NASA’s latest commercial crew delay
“Boeing is also addressing a risk that during re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, a portion of the spacecraft’s forward heat shield may reconnect and damage the parachute system. NASA Commercial Crew Program analysis indicates that this may occur if both parachutes that pull the forward heat shield away from the spacecraft deploy as expected. Boeing’s analysis indicates the risk exists only if one of two parachutes does not deploy as expected. If the program determines this risk is unacceptable, Boeing would need to redesign the parachute system, which the program estimates could result in at least a 6-month delay.”
BTW if you want more proof Rep. Brooks was favoring Boeing here it is…
https://spaceflightnow.com/…
Commercial crew capsules still beset by parachute problems
May 9, 2019
Stephen Clark,
“Lawmakers did not ask Gerstenmaier about Boeing’s recent parachute test results. But in response to a question from Spaceflight Now after the hearing, he confirmed that Starliner parachute drop tests have encountered anomalies similar to the one suffered by SpaceX last month.”
Again, isn’t it interesting how Rep. Brooks cut him off before he could go into detail and perhaps reveal Boeing has the same issues? But of course Rep. Brooks knows who he owes his seat in Congress to….
Thanks for the news leads. Those are helpful. I’ll be trying to put this story together myself in the coming weeks.
Monitoring Congress for news gets a lot of raw data, but always comes with an editorial shoved in right next to it. So long as there are conflicting interests asking the questions the facts come out. The press will leave things like this out for any number of reasons. But really you should not be upset with the Congressman, you’re an advocate for your economic system of choice as you see it. So really, you’re just as bad, only your bandpass filters are tuned to a different part of the spectrum.
As for Cpt Oler, we’re never going to hear about his sources, and you know that. All you can do with someone like that is remember what they say, and see how it pans out as events move on and decide what coefficient you want to put in front of the expectation value of what he has to say. This has been a thread going back about a year with him, and it seems he just scored some sort of verification. What do you do with a source like that? Just chalk it up as someone to listen to, know what he has to say is unverified, but keep your ears and eyes open to see if his points of view are fitting with reality or not. That’s all you can do. I color everything I read from you with the filter that you’re a constant advocate for free market capitalism in the American libertarian tradition. You are well informed, you are educated, and your posts do have merit, but your conclusions always advocate and are almost never flat or neutral. I don’t discount everything you say because of it, but I know you’ll never make a public statement addressing the failings of capitalism, and I suspect you spiritually buy into it as a force of nature in much the same way a Islamc thinks Mohamid actually talked with some god and it’s angles. Cpt Oler has some fantastic musings, however with time and patience many of them play out.
Representatives are suppose to represent the desires of their Districts, but the great ones also lead by putting the nation first, and encourage the voters in their districts to do likewise.
Since you have a science background you should read “The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society” by Erin D. Beinhocker.
It reports on the work in economics that has been done based on Evolutionary Systems Theory. This is the same theory that is the foundation of modern evolutionary biology. Several of the studies have been done by the Santa Fe Institute. It also explains how economics was detoured into politics and the need to separate economics from politics. It will illustrate the why philosophical approaches you use for economics as meaningless, and cloud your analysis, as would religious perspectives when you study the Stars.
Off the cuff, as worthless as that is, a claim like that sounds sorta like the attempts to link science and a certain economic system born in Germany and practiced in Eastern Europe. My own observations are that economic systems have little to do with nature, and much to do with the human desire to be served while someone else does all the hard work. In other words to remain in a child like state of being cared for.
Nope, nothing like it. It has no more to do with Social Darwinism than Social Darwinism has to do with biological evolution. I suggest you read the book before trying to shoehorn it into your existing belief system because your views of economics sound much like the views the old philosophers had about space, with the Earth being the center of the Universe. You need to come into the 21st Century in terms of economic thought and science.
I’m familiar with arguments as economics being written into the fabric of the universe and evolutionary. Evolution is for animals. Try running a gigawatt through a natural system, engineered systems can do high powered operations. You’re like christians who are convinced that if I just read some book of the bible or another, I’ll re-find my christian roots. They think I’m just one push away from buying into their whacky world view. No book is going to change my observations on the overall good of an economic theory, I only pay attention to how systems function with factories and tools in the real world and how the practitioners of a system behave and interact in the presence of those systems. Talk is cheap.
Another story today with more details. It notes that SpaceX had conducted 19 tests of its parachutes. This is beyond the many years of experience with recovery of the Cargo Dragon and the two tests with the Crew Dragon (Abort and DM1). Boeing has only done 5 tests, of which one failed.
https://www.businessinsider…
‘It failed’: NASA says SpaceX and Boeing’s recent spaceship-parachute tests did not go well
Dave Mosher
May 10, 2019, 7:40 AM
“Boeing, for its part, emphasized that every other parachute test it has conducted so far went smoothly.
“We’ve made no major discoveries on the design or performance of our parachute systems through extensive testing. We’ve successfully completed four of five parachute qualification drop tests, meeting all test objectives with parachutes that continually perform as expected,” the company said in a statement.
Gotta love the spin that Boeing put on it, but with all their recent failures they must be well practiced in the art 🙂
But its no wonder Rep. Brooks cut Dr. Gerstenmaier off before he could give a full reply and implicate Boeing as well.
Great! Thanks!
Perhaps SpaceX should offer the use of their “paint shaker” to Boeing?
Get with the program. Aggressive testing might reveal problems that Boeing would have to fix out of pocket. Unacceptable. Simulation and power point are far far superior to testing, Especially to the bottom line when you don’t know if your equipment can handle it.
So all totalled what mass is FH lifting?
BTW while we debate the old style rockets and capsules, SpaceX is moving forward with its SLS killer at Boca Chica
https://twitter.com/NASASpa…