21 Dec. 2015: At 8:29:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (01:29:00 22 December, UTC) the SpaceX Falcon 9 two-stage liquid-fueled rocket, production number 21, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station ¹ on the east coast of Florida. This mission, Flight 20, was to place 11 Orbcomm-OG2 communications satellites into Earth orbit.
This was the first flight of Falcon 9 Full Thrust Version.²
The first stage booster, B1019, fired its nine Merlin 1D engines for 2 minutes, 20 seconds, then shut down. The first and second stages separated. The single second stage engine ignited 15 seconds later and fired for eight minutes.
The 11 satellites were placed “within a fraction of a degree in inclination and 5 km (3.1) mi) in altitude of the intended orbit.”
Three minutes after launch, the first stage executed a 30 second “boostback” maneuver to reverse its direction of flight, heading it back toward Cape Canaveral. Five minutes later, three engines were ignited for a 20 second reentry burn.
At approximately 9 minutes after liftoff, a single engine, the center engine, performed a 32 second landing burn.
Booster 1019 performed a vertical landing near the center of Cape Canaveral’s Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at approximately 8:38:45 p.m., EST (01:38:45 UTC).
This was the first successful vertical landing of a rocket booster during an orbital space launch mission.
After landing, there was a small fire near the booster’s base, lasting approximately 30 seconds.
B1019 was later moved to Space Launch Complex 39A where it was static fired for evaluation, 15 January 2016. One of the nine engines experienced thrust fluctuations, believed to be a result of debris ingestion.
In August 2016, B1019 was placed on permanent display in front of the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Booster 1019 is a first stage booster for the Falcon 9 orbital launch vehicle. It is 40.9 meters (134.19 feet) long and 3.66 meters (12.01 meters) in diameter. Its empty mass is 27.2 metric tons (59,966 pounds). It carried 411 Metric tons (906,100 pounds) of propellant. Its total mass at launch was 438.2 metric tons (966,066 pounds).
The booster was powered by nine SpaceX Merlin 1D rocket engines. These burned a mixture of liquid oxygen and RP-1, a highly refined form of kerosene. These gave a total Sea Level thrust of 694 metric tons (6,806 kilonewtons/1,530,008 pounds of thrust), and 757 metric tons (7,424 kilonewtons/1,668,899 pounds of thrust) in vacuum.³
¹ Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) 9 December 2020
² This Falcon 9 variant was originally called Falcon 9 Upgrade, then Falcon 9 v1.1 Full Thrust, but finally Falcon 9 v1.2 (this is the name filed with FAA). It is also known as Block 3.
³ Metric tons (tonnes, or t) are from a NASA Falcon 9 v1.2 Data Sheet at https://sma.nasa.gov/LaunchVehicle/assets/spacex-falcon-9-v1.2-data-sheet.pdf
© 2024 Bryan R. Swopes