SpaceX launches most powerful ‘Falcon’
NASA to fly helicopter on Mars
TAMPA, May 12, (Agencies): SpaceX on Friday blasted off its newest and most powerful Falcon 9 rocket, known as the Block 5, carrying the first highorbit communications satellite for Bangladesh and marking a leap forward in re-usability for the Californiabased aerospace company.
The rocket is designed to require far less maintenance and refurbishment between flights, and is certified to carry humans to space later this year when SpaceX launches its Dragon crew capsule to the International Space Station.
“Three, two one, zero, ignition, liftoff,” a SpaceX commentator said as the rocket launched at 4:14 pm (2014 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket’s main goal for its maiden mission was to propel a communications satellite for Bangladesh, called Bangabandhu Satellite-1, to a geostationary transfer orbit roughly 22,000 miles (35,000 kms) above Earth.
“In the continuous advancement of Bangladesh another milestone is added today,” said Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a video address aired on SpaceX’s launch webcast.
“With the launch of Bangabandhu-1, we are hoisting our national flag into space.”
The satellite will offer video and communications coverage over Bangladesh and its territorial waters in the Bay of Bengal, as well as in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
“The satellite will also provide broadband connectivity to rural areas throughout the country,” said a SpaceX statement, noting that the mission is expected to last at least 15 years.
About a half hour after launch, live images showed the satellite drifting into the inky blackness of space, as cheers and screams erupted at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
“Successful deployment of Bangabandhu Satellite-1 to geostationary transfer orbit,” SpaceX said on Twitter.
The launch was postponed at the last minute Thursday, when an automatic abort switch was triggered, but SpaceX said it was just a glitch and the spacecraft remained in good health.
The rocket is built to re-fly up to 10 times with minimal refurbishment, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told reporters ahead of the launch.
“We expect there would be literally no action taken between flights, so just like aircraft,” Musk said, describing the many years of effort that went into the rocket as “crazy hard.”
After liftoff, the rocket made a successful upright landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, marking the 25th successful touchdown for SpaceX.
Meanwhile, billionaire Elon Musk says he’s almost completed a tunnel under a Los Angeles suburb to test a novel transportation system that would scoot commuters underground on electric sleds called skates.
Musk tweeted Thursday that, pending regulatory approvals, free rides will be offered to the public in a few months. He also posted an Instagram video of the interior of the tunnel.
Also: WASHINGTON:
NASA said on Friday it will send a small helicopter to Mars as part of the US space agency’s 2020 mission to place a next-generation rover
on the Martian surface, marking the first time such an aircraft will be used on another world.
The remote-controlled Mars Helicopter, designed to take flight in the thin Martian atmosphere with twin counter-rotating blades, weighs about four pounds (1.8 kgs), with a fuselage the size of a softball, NASA said. Its blades will spin at almost 3,000 rpm, roughly 10 times the rate employed by helicopters on Earth.
“The altitude record for a helicopter flying here on Earth is about 40,000 feet (12,200 meters). The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it’s already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet (30,480 meters) up,” Mimi Aung, the Mars Helicopter project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.