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Tracking System Bug Delays SpaceX's DSCOVR Launch
The SpaceX two-fer launch that was scheduled for today has been scrubbed. NBC News reports that the launch
was postponed until Monday at the earliest due to a problem with the range-tracking system in Florida. That means an ambitious second attempt to land the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage on an oceangoing platform will also have to be delayed. ... Satellites such as the Advanced Composition Explorer and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which are already located at the L1 point, can provide up to an hour's warning of major storms. Both those satellites are well past their anticipated lifetimes, however, and DSCOVR is designed to provide a much-needed backup. SpaceX's two-stage Falcon 9 rocket will boost DSCOVR into a preliminary orbit, but it will take 110 days of in-space maneuvers to get the probe into the right position. This launch would mark the first time that SpaceX has sent a spacecraft so far, and it will be judged a success if DSCOVR reaches its intended orbit.
The delayed launch could take place as soon as tomorrow (Monday) evening.
Great, now I need to make my own Air Force with my own radar systems...
During the webcast, the product manager for Falcon kept referring to a telemetry problem on the SpaceX side that they needed to resolve before T -2:00. Somewhere around T -8:00, reports started showing up online that there was also an issue with the AF radar. The webcast never clarified what the telemetry issue was. Elon mentioned a "1st stage video transmitter (not needed for launch, but nice to have)." It sure sounded like they intended to scrub the launch if they hadn't fixed the telemetry problem by T -2:00, so either the video transmitter really was needed, or they had another problem.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Why "DSCOVR"? That's even worst than an MS-DOS filename.
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One of the multiply redundant 1st stage telemetry radios on the vehicle was glitching. They will go ahead and swap it out before tomorrow's launch attempt..
I really wish more of the world (America is the worst) would use GMT/UTC, as that's easy to translate (and it means I don't need to look up the offset of the timezone someone refers to - which again is usually only given by name). We are not all in America. :-)
SpaceX is quite good at giving launch times in UTC in their own press materials. They tend to run their software systems in UTC too, since there's no point in trying to use a "local" timezone for a vehicle that is going to be crossing multiple timezones in a few minutes. It's just the press who are lazy about it. The SpaceX webcast page just gives a countdown in hours and minutes on the day of a launch, so you don't have to do the math yourself.
The video transmitter was just something on the rocket so nice folks here on Slashdot and elsewhere can get pretty pictures of the 1st stage landing. It had nothing to do with the successfully launching this rocket, although it might have impacted what was seen on the webcast if the landing attempt was going on... assuming SpaceX doesn't mine showing video of the rocket falling into pieces again but this time from the perspective of the rocket as it is falling apart.
The payload can be sent into space and meet 100% of the paid objectives without this telemetry working. It likely is a frequency conflict, or at the very least a secondary transmitter that isn't working properly as this link is only really needed after stage separation. Most other rocket launching companies treat spent 1st stages as trash to be randomly discarded in hopefully an unpopulated area and ignored afterward... but SpaceX intends to treat the 1st stage like a separate vehicle with its own mission objectives (mainly to land on the barge in once piece).
Better launch countdown where you can see in your local time (click on the globe). Looks like the launch moved to Tuesday night (EST) now.
http://spacexstats.com/mission...