SpaceX completes 3 rocket launches, 1 Dragon landing in 22 hours

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Dec 17, 2024

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In a span of less than 22 hours, SpaceX managed three Falcon 9 rocket launches and one landing of a Dragon spacecraft.

It flew a Department of Defense mission from Cape Canaveral on Monday night and on Tuesday knocked out a National Reconnaissance Office mission from California, the landing of the latest cargo Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Florida and the final topper of a busy day with a launch from Kennedy Space Center.

The final launch saw a Falcon 9 on the mPower-E mission lifting off from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A at 5:26 p.m. EST with a payload of a pair of satellites for Luxembourg-based communications company SES headed to medium-Earth orbit.

This was the first launch of the first-stage booster, which made a recovery landing downrange on the droneship Just Read the Instructions, in the Atlantic.

It marked the 90th launch from all providers among Space Coast pads for 2024, with SpaceX responsible for all but five of them.

Earlier Tuesday, a SpaceX cargo Dragon spacecraft made a successful splashdown off the coast of Florida to complete the CRS-31 mission.

The Dragon arrived at the International Space Station with 6,000 pounds of resupply payloads back on Nov. 5 after launching from the Space Coast, and returned with thousands of pounds of supplies and science experiments.

Also, earlier on Tuesday, the company flew the NROL-149, a National Space Security Launch mission, from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The busy schedule began on Monday night, with what had been a secretive mission leading up to launch.

That one was a Falcon 9 that lifted off on the RRT-1 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 7:52 p.m. This was the fourth launch of the first-stage booster, which made a recovery landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

After launch, the Space Force revealed in a press release the RRT stood for “Rapid Response Trailblazer,” and its payload was a GPS III satellite flying under a National Security Space Launch contract that had switched from United Launch Alliance to SpaceX.

It touted the launch as “a new level of readiness and resilience” for its Space Systems Command and Space Operations Command, as it took less than five months to turn around the mission from its inception to launch. Normally this sort of NSSL mission would take 24 months to execute. The prelaunch processing timeline was also sped up from a normal six-month turnaround to only three months.

It took an existing satellite manufactured by Lockheed Martin from storage, sped up its integration and readiness for launch. The mission was originally tapped to fly on a ULA Vulcan rocket, but had been delayed because Vulcan has yet to be certified by the Space Force.

“This launch was a remarkable achievement that highlights the Space Force’s ability to execute high-priority launches of major space systems on a significantly reduced timescale,” said Col. Jim Horne, senior materiel leader of Launch Execution for the Space Force’s Assured Access to Space program. “As an added benefit, it also demonstrates flexibility to adjust our manifest to minimize the impact of Vulcan delays.”

The GPS satellite, which was nicknamed “Sally Ride,” joins 31 others already active in orbit, along with seven backup satellites and three more awaiting launch.

“Over six billion people use GPS on a daily basis, and we are always eager to update the global capability we provide by getting some new technology on orbit,” said Col. Andrew Menschner, Space Force Delta 31 mission commander, which acted as the space vehicle lead for the first time.

With the three launches from three pads in Florida and California, SpaceX has now completed 128 launches in 2024, not including the four suborbital test flights of its in-development Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Texas.

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