SpaceX launch sends NASA probe to measure X-rays
SpaceX pushed forward with its increased pace of launches in 2021 sending up another Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center early Thursday morning.
Carrying the smallest payload ever for a Falcon 9, NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), the rocket blasted off from Launch Complex 39A at 1 a.m.
It’s the 40th mission the commercial company has successfully launched from KSC since it first began missions at the historic launch pad in 2017.
The mission was the fifth as part of NASA’s Launch Services Program which also saw the company sending up the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission last month from Vandenberg Space Force Base. This was first LSP mission from Kennedy.
The IXPE observatory, a joint effort with the Italian Space Agency and Ball Aerospace, is equipped with telescopes and measurement tools to measure X-rays emitted from distant objects including black holes, supernova and neutron stars. The mission
COURTESY will be run out of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
It also marked SpaceX’s first equatorial orbital launch from KSC.
“IXPE represents another extraordinary first,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Together with our partners in Italy and around the world, we’ve added a new space observatory to our fleet that will shape our understanding of the universe for years to come.”
Overall, it was SpaceX’s 28th mission among three launch locations for 2021, outpacing the record 26 the company flew in 2020. It has three more on tap through the end of the year.
Those include three human spaceflight missions: Crew-2 and Crew-3 bringing NASA astronauts to the International Space Station as well as the all-civilian Inspiration4 orbital mission, which all launched from KSC.
The company has stated it could support up to 60 Falcon 9 launches between KSC and its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station each year as well as up to 10 Falcon Heavy launches.
In the future, with its next-generation Starship rockets, the company has stated it could launch up to 24 times a year from a new pad it will be building at KSC.
To date, Space has successfully launched 130 Falcon 9 and three Falcon Heavy missions, and launched one more that failed after liftoff.
It has also successfully recovered 97 of the first stage boosters launched between the two rockets including the one flown Thursday.
That booster, which was previously used on four missions including Crew-1 and Crew-2, landed on the company’s autonomous droneship Just Read the Instructions in the Atlantic.
The next missions slated for SpaceX include a Starlink flight from Vandenburg SFB, a launch of a Satellite for Turkey from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base and a resupply mission from KSC.