SpaceX hopes to resume launches in November

Falcon 9 start. Photo: SpaceX

SpaceX does not plan to stop launches for 9-12 months, as estimated by the United Launch Alliance . A week ago, the head of a rival company, Tori Bruno, suggested that the explosion of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle would disrupt the SpaceX flight schedule for the next 9-12 months due to a lengthy investigation into the causes of the incident. This could cause a strong SpaceX reputational damage. Some customers could go to competitors.

But the company Ilona Mask, perhaps, will recover from the strike much earlier. SpaceX may resume flights as early as November 2016, said company president Gwynne Shotwell.

"We expect ... a stop for about three months with the resumption of flights around November," said Gwynn Shotwell during a video call on September 13 at the World Satellite Business Week conference in Paris. A video of her performance was posted on Youtube ; it was shot by a reporter from the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche .
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Shotwell said nothing about whether any missile repairs are required [probably meant refining the design] to return to the launches in November. She did not report the extent of damage to the launch platform and ground support equipment, but the launch platform at the explosion site is unlikely to be repaired before November. Therefore, the November launch, if it takes place, will occur from another launch pad - either from the Vandenberg Air Force Base (LC-4E), or from the territory of the A. Kennedy Florida (LC-39A).

As a result of the explosion on September 1, the communications satellite of the Israeli company Space Communication worth $ 200 million was destroyed. Shotwell said that the specialists still could not establish the cause of the explosion. It is not clear even the cause of a rocket or ground equipment. After the explosion, Ilon Musk said that "this is the most difficult failure in 14 years of the company's operation."


Earlier, SpaceX reported that it had almost prepared a second launch pad for the LC-39A in Florida, in the territory of the Yevgeny Space Center. Kennedy. It should be finished in November. This launch pad was last used five years ago to launch NASA shuttles. True, the deputy. Director of the Center for Planning and Development of the Space Center. Kennedy Tom Engler (Tom Engler) said that SpaceX did not receive pre-orders for launch from this launch pad.


Launch pad 39A in Florida. Photo: SpaceX

Tom Engler also added that the September 1 incident from the point of view of NASA does not change anything in the planning and preparation of launches.

At the same time, sources in SpaceX told Reuters that the first from the site of the Space Center. Kennedy will fly a non-heavy Falcon Heavy rocket, as previously planned, but a regular Falcon 9. It is not yet known whose cargo it will lift. Before the explosion on September 1, the next SpaceX client from the launch pad in Florida was to become the Luxembourg company SES SA with its satellite. And from a site in California in September they planned to raise the satellite Iridium Communications.

Falcon Heavy is a heavy-class launch vehicle with 27 engines that can deliver up to 54.4 tons to a low reference orbit, up to 22.2 tons to a geo-transfer orbit, and up to 13.6 tons to Mars. According to the new information, the first test launch of Falcon Heavy was moved to Q1 2017

In the list of outstanding orders SpaceX more than 70 missions, it must put into orbit equipment worth more than $ 10 billion. Before September 1, the Falcon 9 rocket made 27 successful launches and 1 unsuccessful.