Saturday, December 19, 2015

SpaceX ORBCOMM OG2 Mission 2 is on for tomorrow


[Dec. 20 update] In a tweet, Elon Musk said that the flight simulations showed a 10% better chance of a successful landing tomorrow (Dec. 21st), and therefore the launch will be rescheduled for the 5 minute launch window that opens at 8:29pm ET, Monday Dec. 21st.  The SpaceX site has also confirmed that they will attempt to land the Falcon 9 on land (instead of the previous attempts at sea).  And they stated that both the launch and the landing attempt will be webcast live.  The webcast is already up and is showing photos of the rocket on the pad and looking ready to go.  The SpaceX site also reminds everyone that the landing is a secondary test objective - in other words, mission success is not dependent on a successful landing.

It looks like it's a "go" for tomorrow nights launch of the second ORBCOMM OG2 mission, marking SpaceX's return to normal flight operations following the failure of the CRS-7 mission in late June.

The ORBCOMM web site now has a live countdown on it, and the mission page had been update with this announcement:
We are excited to report SpaceX completed their static fire test of Falcon 9 this evening. We are now targeting ORBCOMM’s OG2 Mission 2 launch for no earlier than Sunday, December 20 at 8:29 PM ET from launch pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Also, the Livestream event for the launch has just been created.  So, as with all of the recent SpaceX launches, there will be live coverage via Lifestream.

No comments:

Post a Comment