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Title    SpaceX's Falcon 9 Certified to Lift NASA's Most Valuable Science Payloads
Date    Saturday November 10 2018, @07:13PM
Author    martyb
Topic   
from the things-are-looking-up dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/11/10/1635228

takyon writes:

SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Certified to Launch NASA's Most Precious Science Missions

SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket can now launch NASA's most expensive and highest-priority science missions. NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP) has certified the two-stage Falcon 9 as a "Category 3" rocket, SpaceX representatives announced Thursday (Nov. 8).

[...] The LSP certification ladder only goes up to Category 3, which is reserved for the most dependable launchers. These rockets are expected to have a demonstrated reliability of 90 to 95 percent, according to LSP officials. For comparison, Category 2 vehicles — the level attained by the Falcon 9 in 2015 — are expected to ace their missions 80 to 90 percent of the time.

Only Category 3 rockets can launch the priciest, most important, most complex NASA missions — projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars rover Curiosity and the James Webb Space Telescope. (Hubble launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in April of 1990, Curiosity flew atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in November of 2011 and Webb will ride an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket in March 2021.)

Also at NASASpaceflight.


Original Submission

Links

  1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
  2. "SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Certified to Launch NASA's Most Precious Science Missions" - https://www.space.com/42387-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-nasa-certification.html
  3. "Falcon 9" - https://www.space.com/18962-spacex-falcon-9.html
  4. "according to LSP officials" - https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20160002252.pdf
  5. "attained by the Falcon 9 in 2015" - https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/15/spacex-gets-certified-to-launch-nasa-science-missions/
  6. "Hubble Space Telescope" - https://www.space.com/29211-hubble-in-pictures-astronomers-top-picks-photos.html
  7. "NASASpaceflight" - https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/11/spacex-return-action-lsp-status-upgrade/
  8. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=30046

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