Launch News SpaceX Falcon 9 launch with Jason-3, January 17, 2016

[ADSWNJ]

Looking marginal for the drone ship landing: 14-16 ft sea swells and 2 ft waves. If they can land on that platform it'll be borderline miraculous.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Two favors of live coverage will be offered by SpaceX starting from this flight:

If you are of the party kind, use this one:

If you want the technical countdowns, use this:

Also NASA TV is already covering it from an hour ago. :tiphat:

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I wonder if they have any sort of accounting for deck elevation changes in their control software:

If land_on_land then z(t) = constant, else if land_on_sea then z(t) = MSL + A sin(2pi*(t/T))?

Complicated, but the idea in both cases is to match both the touchdown position z and have v_rel = 0. The guidance software would need to anticipate the deck position and velocity at the time of touchdown.

OK everybody, you may open your blue examination booklets and begin. Show all work. There will be no partial credit. You have until 10:42:18 PST to figure it out. Good luck! :rofl:

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

It's probably not a co-incidence that our latest sea barge heading rocket launch is carrying something that will measure the heights of the ocean surface from space!

Jason-3 is the 4th member in a long series of ocean altitude measuring satellites co-developed by NASA and the French CNES since TOPEX/Poseidon flying in 1992, followed by Jason-1 in 2001 and Jason-2 in 2008. These satellites use a radar altimeter to measure the time delay in the reflected radar beep from the ocean surface. This, combined with precise measurements of the satellite's position (by GPS receivers, laser reflectors and a radio transmitter), means that the heights of the ocean (which can vary by up to 2 meters around the world!) can be measured to the nearest inch or so (2-3 cm).

So what is the use of such measurements? Besides obvious ones such as monitoring the sea level rise from global warming and providing tide changes info to commercial entities, there's the fact that higher ocean level areas tend to be warming and lower ones being colder, so it also provides a measurement of the heat capacity in that ocean region. This temperature difference is the crux of how strong hurricanes become, as well as being the key parameter of causing El Nino (happening right now as I am writing this)/La Nina effects.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjf5uL31n-Y"]Getting To Know Jason-3 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0AgqhS6B-U"]The Science of Jason-3 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Well, uh, this is the worst fog I have seen in VAFB for launches of the last few years! :shifty: (and remember there is almost always some kind of fog there from past launch experiences )

 

[Cairan]

Darn... The video feed cut out and so did the sat link to JRTI ... I have a bad feeling about this one...

We would have seen people erupt in applause like the previous shot if the landing had been successful, but despite the sugar coating of the webcasters, the timing of LOS with the barge and the video feed seems rather suspicious...

Please, proove me wrong, Oh Great Probe...

 

[GLS]

2º stage in orbit, now coasting until re-ignition, and I'd say the 1º stage crash landed... barge stream stopped around the time of expected landing and there's no people jumping this time so...

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Good transfer orbit insertion by the second stage (175 x 1321 km x 66 degrees).

Alas, the first stage on the other hand is currently in a Schrödinger's cat quantum state.... :uhh:

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Darn... The video feed cut out and so did the sat link to JRTI ... I have a bad feeling about this one...

MBDA is going to sue SpaceX for infringing on their anti-shipping missile technology if this keeps happening.

 

[Cairan]

Body language of a group of SpaceX stations in Mission Control that celebrated the last landing seem to be chatting together and don't seem quite enthusiastic this time around ... I think she's dead, Jim.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

MBDA is going to sue SpaceX for infringing on their anti-shipping missile technology if this keeps happening.

Start renaming the first stage "Harpoon" after staging? :lol:

 

[GLS]

Hard landing, one leg broke -> BUM!

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Broken leg on hard touchdown, no video yet, but sounds like crash.

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Looks like the first stage hit hard again and broke a leg before falling. Yeah, landing on the sea isn't the easiest thing around..... :uhh:

 

[Cairan]

"Slightly harder landing than expected, and it seems a landing leg broke" ...

Well, I guess Just Read The Instructions took another one for the team ...

This was the final shot with the F9 1.1 non-full thrust version, so maybe the new design iteration really corrected necessary bugs out of the system ... or maybe landing on a barge justn't doesn't cut it.

 

[Frilock]

or maybe landing on a barge justn't doesn't cut it.

I'm guessing this.

 

[Sky Captain]

Those landing legs just don't look sturdy enough to take any abuse. I suspect when stage touched down barge was rising on a wave and combined impact velocity of stage coming down and barge rising exceeded capabilities of landing legs.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

They seem to be avoiding the word "exploded", but I think JRTI is going to need some steel work and paint.

 

[Pipcard]

"'We’re excited to get a ride to space and we hope SpaceX breaks a leg — but not literally a leg,' said Josh Willis, Jason-3 project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

 

[Cairan]

The sat would have been to the south of the barge, in the direction of the incoming returning first stage ... it probably interfered with the sat link in the final few seconds, so we didn't get to see the "chemokinetic exothermal event" that took place just after LOS...

Ah darn. I was expecting this. But in other news, Stage 2 seems to be doing everything by the book yet again...

---------- Post added at 02:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:26 PM ----------

"'We’re excited to get a ride to space and we hope SpaceX breaks a leg — but not literally a leg,' said Josh Willis, Jason-3 project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

Prophetic words... :shifty: