SpaceX's next Falcon Heavy flight has been delayed until early 2022 due to a payload problem.
Tuesday, October 5, 2021 | Chimniii Desk
Highlights
- SpaceX's next Falcon Heavy flight has been delayed until early 2022 due to a payload problem.
- The Space Force's USSF-44 mission was scheduled to launch on Oct. 9, but authorities postponed the operation "to ensure payload readiness,".
- Previously, payload problems delayed the USSF-44 launch from July to October.
- Falcon Heavy's next commercial flight is likewise slated for the second quarter of 2022, delivering a Viasat 3 broadband communications satellite into geostationary orbit.
- Another mission, dubbed USSF-67, scheduled for late 2022, might possibly utilise a Falcon Heavy rocket, although the Space Force has not confirmed whether it would launch on a Falcon Heavy or SpaceX's single-stick Falcon 9 rocket.
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SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket's next launch, originally slated for this month, has been pushed back to early 2022 due to additional delays imposed by the rocket's US military cargo, a Space Force official said.
The Space Force's USSF-44 mission was scheduled to launch on Oct. 9, but authorities postponed the operation "to ensure payload readiness," a Space Systems Command spokeswoman stated in response to queries from Spaceflight Now.
The Space Force did not announce a new launch date for the USSF-44 mission, but a spokesman stated that the mission is now scheduled to launch in early 2022, over three years after the most recent Falcon Heavy flight in June 2019.
On the USSF-44 mission, the Falcon Heavy will transport numerous military payloads to a high-altitude geosynchronous orbit. The top stage of the rocket will fire numerous times to position the satellites more than 22,000 miles above the equator.
The upper stage flight plan will involve a more than five-hour coast period between burns, making the USSF-44 mission one of the most challenging SpaceX launches to date.
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Pic: TETRA 1 (Source: Space Skyrocket)
TETRA 1 is one of the spacecraft on the USSF-44 launch. It was manufactured by Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing company located in El Segundo, California. According to military sources, the TETRA 1 satellite was developed to "prototype missions, tactics, methods, and procedures in and around geosynchronous Earth orbit."
The military has made no disclosures on the other satellite, or satellites, on the USSF-44 mission. Previously, payload problems delayed the USSF-44 launch from July to October.
SpaceX will launch the USSF-44 mission using three newly built rockets. Earlier this year, all of the boosters were brought to the Florida launch base.
According to the Space Force, the difficult launch profile will leave no propellant remaining to retrieve the Falcon Heavy's central core. The core stage of the rocket will be used in the launch, while the rocket's two side boosters will be collected by two SpaceX drone ships located downrange east of Cape Canaveral.
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Despite the lengthy gap between Falcon Heavy missions, next year is shaping up to be a busy one for the rocket, with four launches from Florida's Space Coast slated between January and August.
According to a spokesman for Space Systems Command, the USSF-52 mission, the next national security launch on a Falcon Heavy following the USSF-44 mission, is slated for the second quarter of 2022. Falcon Heavy's next commercial flight is likewise slated for the second quarter of 2022, delivering a Viasat 3 broadband communications satellite into geostationary orbit.
NASA's robotic Psyche spacecraft is set to fly on a Falcon Heavy rocket next August on a mission to investigate a metallic asteroid circling the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
Another mission, dubbed USSF-67, scheduled for late 2022, might possibly utilise a Falcon Heavy rocket, although the Space Force has not confirmed whether it would launch on a Falcon Heavy or SpaceX's single-stick Falcon 9 rocket.
All Falcon Heavy flights depart from NASA's Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A, the same facility used by Apollo moon missions, space shuttle missions, and SpaceX's crew missions.
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SpaceX has confirmed at least ten Falcon Heavy launches in the pipeline, including missions to carry NASA's Europa Clipper probe into Jupiter and the first two components of the proposed Gateway mini-space station toward the moon in 2024.
Pic: NASA's VIPER Lunar Rover (Source: NASA)NASA's VIPER lunar rover is also scheduled to launch on a Falcon Heavy in late 2023, as is a NOAA weather satellite in 2024.
NASA has also hired SpaceX to fly two Falcon Heavy rockets in support of Dragon XL cargo trips to the Gateway station later in the 2020s.
Three modified Falcon 9 first stage boosters are linked in a triple-core configuration to form the Falcon Heavy. At liftoff, the rocket's 27 Merlin main engines generate approximately 5.1 million pounds of thrust, more than any other rocket currently in use.
The Falcon Heavy will receive further military launch contracts from the United States in the future years.
The Space Force announced last year multibillion-dollar contracts with United Launch Alliance and SpaceX to carry the military's most vital national security payloads on Vulcan Centaur rockets and Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers through 2027.
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