A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off today for the first time, soaring from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on what appeared to be a successful first test flight. The white, 18-story rocket developed by SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., lifted off at 2:45 p.m. and arced to the east over the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket's first stage separated as planned nearly three minutes into flight and the upper stage engine ignited and burned as scheduled. Both were fueled by liquid oxygen and a highly refined kerosene called RP-1.
SpaceX said the upper stage and a dummy payload mimicking the company's Dragon spacecraft had reached orbit, but could not immediately confirm that the target orbit was reached.
A launch attempt earlier in the four-hour window, which opened at 11 a.m., was aborted automatically when computers senses that one or more of the first stage's nine Merlin engines were out of specification.
Later, delay was caused when a boat apparently strayed into the launch hazard area off the Atlantic Ocean coast.
The rocket's 2:45 p.m. launch came 15 minutes before the launch window closed and SpaceX would have had to try again Saturday.
Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk had lowered expectations for the first-ever launch, the test flight was seen as critical to the Obama administration's plans for NASA to rely on commercial companies to launch astronauts instead of developing its own rockets under the Constellation program.
Next up for the Falcon 9: the first of three planned test flights for NASA before the company begins to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.
SpaceX said the first test flight under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services, or COTS, program could occur this summer, and cargo delivery could occur next year.
IMAGE: By Mike Brown, Florida Today.
9 comments:
It's a great day to be an American. Congratulations to all the forward looking Engineers, Scientists, Technicians, and Management of SpaceX...you are leading the way to the USA's continued leadership in spaceflight technology.
SpaceX made this look easy. What an awesome team they have assembled. They're writing the next chapter of commercial space flight.
Space X is 100 miles and a human crew short. They aren't ready to play with the big boys yet, but well done for their launch. Someday they might be able to compete with a real Human Space Flight Program like the Shuttle program and Constellation.
Forward looking ? We did this 60 years ago . It s a bottle rocket . We ve launching better rockets for years at the Cape. Take your knee pads off
Great launch for the future,
It's a test flight. It was a baby step in a good direction, and I'm glad it was successful. The fact that they got a test flight off the ground doesn't make it "look easy" or make them "leading the way" in spaceflight. Their true success will be measured by whether they can deliver cargo to the ISS on schedule and within budget.
The general public fail to realize that no matter how many times we flew the Space Shuttle, nor how many times we upgraded it (both in capability and safety), it was always an experimental spacecraft. We have decades of active, fully-funded space flight before it can be considered routine. Just look how long it took (and how many people were killed) before we all considered commercial aviation "safe"...and only after the government (Air Force and NASA) invested billions of dollars and many, many years refining the technology.
random 230: your jealous because this program will not require so much fat as shuttle grew into. SpaceX is not looking to launch people at this time. They have a multiple billion dollar contract with NASA to launch cargo. Hello! Cargo! Dragon rocket, tells me they are already ahead of the game for that cargo shipment. Plus, don't you think they have prelim design for the actual rocket that will carry humans? Remember baby steps? Or are you just stuck on baby?
It may be a bottle rocket but it does the same job as an Ares I, and it's safer, and it exists. It also doesn't cost $40 billion. It'll carry cargo for a few years until NASA decides it's reliable enough to carry humans, and at that point, it still won't be anywhere near a tenth of $40 billion.
How can anyone say today Falcon 9 is safer than Ares, or ANY other rocket for that matter? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. This was a test flight. It was successful, so in the right direction. Elon is getting caught up in his own launch fever by calling for accelerating the goals for the next flight (the first test flight of Dragon)to press for prox ops and perhaps docking with ISS. He needs to remember what got him this far and stick with the plan. By the way, there is NOTHING simple about gettting a spacecraft into orbit. Just because it takes no effort by the public to view a launch, it doesn't translate to being easy. Get a grip.
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