Falcon 9 Rocket Raised At Cape Canaveral

A historic first took place over the weekend as SpaceX raised its first Falcon 9 rocket on Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The move to vertical came two days ahead of schedule for the rocket, which has been selected by NASA to haul cargo to the International Space Station after the agency's space shuttle orbiter fleet is retired in September 2010.

SpaceX officials said the operation Saturday was a key step in validating electrical and mechanical connections at the launch pad -- a former Air Force Titan rocket complex than is being converted for commercial use.

"Any engineered system has requirements that can only be recognized through actual assembly of real hardware," Brian Mosdell, the company's director of Florida launch operations, said in a statement. "This rapid integration and stand-up provided our engineers and technicians with invaluable insights that will greatly streamline our efforts towards the first Falcon 9 launch in 2009."

The Falcon 9, which is slated to fly in the middle of the year, was delivered to the Cape in stages late last year. The vehicle was put together in a horizontal position and then mated to a transporter erector system for transportation to the pad.

The rocket -- which is 180 feet long and 17 feet in diameter -- was raised into the vertical position in about 30 minutes.

"This entire process has helped us validate key interfaces and operations prior to executing our launch campaign with the vehicle in its final flight configuration," SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in a statement.

"We encountered no show-stoppers or significant delays. I am highly confident that we will achieve our goal of being able to go from hangar to liftoff in under 60 minutes, which would be a big leap forward in capability compared with the days to weeks required of other launch vehicles."

The rocket raising follows a full mission-duration firing of a cluster of nine first-stage engines back in November. The test also validated that a single engine can be shut down without effecting the performance of the remaining eight engines.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 and the Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus rockets were selected by NASA in December to haul cargo to the International Space Station after the shuttle fleet is retired.

The SpaceX contract with NASA includes 12 flights between 2010 and 2015, which represents a guaranteed minimum of 20,000 kilograms to be carried to the International Space Station.

Founded in 2002, the SpaceX team now numbers more than 620 full time employees, primarily located in Hawthorne, California, with additional locations in Texas, at SpaceX's Test Facility in McGregor near Waco; offices in Washington DC; and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific.

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ABOUT THE IMAGES: Click to enlarge any of the SpaceX images of its first Falcon 9 rocket being raised at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40. The 30-minute operation took place as a near-full moon peaked up over the Atlantic Ocean. The Falcon 9 is 180 feet tall and 17 feet in diameter. It is slated to be launched in mid-2009.