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SpaceX is replacing two engines on the rocket that will launch the company’s next manned mission, which is expected to take off on November 14.
The measure follows an investigation into the aberrant behavior of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that was supposed to launch a GPS satellite for the US Space Force on October 2. That takeoff was automatically aborted with only two seconds left on the countdown when the sensors took out-of-rated readings.
The upcoming astronaut launch, which will kick off the SpaceX Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station for NASA, will also employ a Falcon 9. So NASA and SpaceX have rejected the crew-1 take-off date, which it was October 31st, to allow time for an investigation and make sure the same problem doesn’t affect the astronaut’s launch.
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The October 2 outage investigation traced the problem back to two of the nine Merlin engines on the Falcon 9’s first stage. Those two Merlins retained residues of a “masking paint” designed to protect sensitive parts during treatment. corrosion-resistant anodizing, said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX’s vice president of flight construction and reliability on Wednesday (Oct. 28).
The vendor performing the treatment failed to remove all of the lacquer afterwards, and some of it ended up blocking the 0.06-inch-wide (1.6mm) vent holes for the valves in two of the Merlins that they were supposed to power the two-stage Falcon 9 skyward on October 2, Koenigsmann said.
After analyzing a wide range of Merlin data, SpaceX found signs of a similar problem with two of the engines in the first stage of Crew-1’s Falcon 9, as well as a Merlin in the first stage of the Sentinel’s scheduled loft booster. -6 Earth observation satellite Michael Freilich for NASA and several of its partners on 10 November.
So SpaceX is now replacing all affected Merlins with ones known to be free of masking paint residue, Koenigsmann said.
The investigation and troubleshooting process, which SpaceX conducted with the help of NASA and the Space Force, “resulted in a really good overhaul and a really good bug fix that, in my opinion, makes for a better and better vehicle. a better engine in the future, “Koenigsmann said.
SpaceX’s security systems functioned properly on Oct.2, noticing the anomaly in time and halting the launch, he said. And a takeoff that day may not have been disastrous, Koenigsmann added; the Falcon 9 may have experienced a “hard start” caused by the introduction of various fluids – ignition liquid, liquid oxygen and kerosene – in the wrong order into the affected engines.
“It’s not necessarily bad,” he said of a difficult start. “In most cases, it causes the engine to vibrate and can cause some damage to the engine. In extreme cases, it can cause more damage to the engine.”
In the photos: SpaceX’s historic Demo-2 test flight with astronauts
Still on track
Falcon 9 is expected to be ready in time for Crew-1’s planned November 14 launch, NASA officials said at a press conference on Wednesday, though they stressed that the mission will depart when ready and will not be bound by an arbitrary timeline.
And NASA wants to see another Falcon 9 fly ahead of the astronaut’s launch – specifically, the one that will charge the GPS satellite that was supposed to go up on October 2 (and which also got a swap of two Merlins), Steve Stich said. , manager of NASA’s commercial crew program. The launch of the GPS, which will take place from the Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is currently scheduled for no earlier than November 4, according to Spaceflight Now.
The elaboration of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that will transport the four astronauts of Crew-1 – Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Michael Hopkins of NASA and Soichi Noguchi of Japan – to the space station for a 6-month stay is going well, he said. Stich.
If all goes according to plan, NASA and SpaceX will conduct a flight readiness review for Crew-1 on Friday (October 30) and begin loading propellant this weekend into the Crew Dragon, which its pilots have called “Resilience.” Stich said.
The four astronauts are currently in “soft quarantine” in their homes and will enter a stricter quarantine on Halloween, Stich added. The quartet will travel to Crew-1’s launch site, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on November 6 if all goes to plan.
Crew-1 will be SpaceX’s second astronaut mission to the International Space Station on behalf of NASA. On May 30, Elon Musk’s company launched Demo-2, a test flight that took NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station for a two-month stay. A review of the Demo-2 data has been completed, paving the way for Crew-1, Stich said.
SpaceX has a $ 2.6 billion contract with NASA to carry out at least six operational missions, the first of which will be Crew-1, to and from the station. Boeing has signed a similar deal, worth $ 4.2 billion, which it will build using a capsule called the CST-100 Starliner. Starliner isn’t quite ready to transport the astronauts, however; the capsule is yet to make an unmanned test flight to the station, having failed to meet the orbiting laboratory as planned during its first attempt in December 2019.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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