Cape Canaveral

United Launch Alliance successfully launched its second Vulcan rocket this morning from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. The launch was not a perfect one, however, as Vulcan survived a very close call when one of the two solid-rocket boosters on the first stage partially failed and lost its nozzle in flight.

Despite a partial loss of thrust from the errant SRB, ULA’s flight software and engineering teams were able to make corrections to trajectory of the rocket as it continued to ascent.

Read more

Despite on a 10% GO forecast and storms closing in from a distance, Falcon 9 flies another perfect mission.

SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Northrup Grumman’s Cygnus CRS-2 NG-21 (S.S. Francis R. “Dick” Scobee) to orbit this morning from Cape Canaveral. Liftoff was at 11:02 AM EDT under variable skies that showed a strong chance of storms coming in shortly afterwards.

Read more

A dawn view of the busiest rocket launch pad in the world, Space Launch Complex 40. A Falcon 9 rocket is 229.6 ft (70 m) tall and 12 ft (3.7 m) in diameter, or 21.2 stories — it would be a tall building in most city skylines. Unfortunately, a line of thunderstorms forced a launch scrub on this day, but still, being at a launch pad is a special thing any time.

Read more

Florida weather can be a capricious, fickle thing, and that’s just what it has been the past few days on the Space Coast: windy, occasional rain, or sometimes both — weather that’s normal for this time of year but not very good for launching rockets. That caused two scrubs for SpaceX this week, due to high winds at Cape Canaveral.

Today, on the third attemt, the winds abated and the storms stayed far enough away for SpaceX to launch Falcon 9 carrying the Astra 1P / SES-24 television satellite to orbit. Liftoff was at the opening of the launch window at 5:35 PM EDT and roughly eight-and-a-half minutes later, Booster B1080 touched down safely aboard ASDS ‘Just Read The Instructions’ in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its mission for the day. At 6:10 PM EDT, SpaceX confirmed successful deployment of the payload, marking another successful mission for the launch services company. Astra 1P will now move under its own power to geosynchronous orbit, where it will begin its commissioning process.

Read more