EN DIRECTO: Lanzamiento de un cohete Falcon 9 de SpaceX I MARCA
Video from the channel MARCA about Falcon 9, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 21:41. Language: English. Video type: Livestream.
What is being broadcast
This is the live broadcast, with SpaceX's original English-language commentary, of the launch of a Falcon 9 carrying the USSF-366 mission from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The customer requested that no footage of the second stage or payload deployment be shown, so coverage ends with the recovery of the first stage. During the countdown the hosts review the rocket section by section. The fairing protects the payload from aerodynamic heating and is recovered at sea for reuse. Below it are the second and first stages. They also explain the transporter-erector and its strongback arm, which holds the rocket on the pad, supplies it with fuel and power, transmits telemetry, and retracts before liftoff.
Key moments
Full loading of RP-1 and liquid oxygen into both stages is confirmed, close to a million pounds of propellant. The Falcon 9 enters the startup sequence, the computers take control of the countdown and, after the launch director's final go, it lifts off on its nine Merlin 1D engines. What follows is coverage of maximum aerodynamic pressure, main engine cutoff, stage separation, ignition of the second stage's MVac engine, and fairing separation, both halves of which had already flown before. To return, the first stage performs a re-entry burn that slows it as it enters the atmosphere. The hosts explain that this burn leaves the soot that blackens these boosters. The landing burn and leg deployment follow.
Result
The first stage, on its eighteenth flight, landed successfully on the droneship stationed in the Pacific Ocean. The hosts note that this was SpaceX's second launch of the day, following a Globalstar mission, and that with it the company broke its record for shortest time between two launches, now standing at 38 minutes.