SpaceX FH - ViaSat-3 Americas - LC-39A

Launch Date: April 30
Launch Window: 7:29pm EDT (4:29pm PDT, 23:29 UTC)
Launch site: LC-39A, Cape Canaveral, Florida
Side Booster Recovery: N/A Expended
Core Booster Recovery: N/A Expended
Boosters: Side Boosters: B1052.8 and B1053.3 Center Core: B1068.1
Mass: 6,400 kg ViaSat 3 and 300 kg Arcturus
Orbit: GEO (Direct)
Yearly Launch Number: 29

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the ViaSat 3 Americas broadband communications satellite. ViaSat 3 Americas is the first of at least three new-generation Boeing-built geostationary satellites for ViaSat. A small communications satellite named Arcturus will launch as a secondary payload for Astranis. A third cubesat will also be deployed: Nusantra H-1A at 22 kg. This mission will directly inject the satellites to geostationary orbit, thus the core and side boosters are all expendable alongside having the sixth second stage featuring Falcon mission-extension kit.

The entire stack for this launch will be expended. A first for Falcon Heavy.

ViaSat-3

www.viasat.com

ViaSat 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 (ViaSat 3 Americas, APAC, EMEA)

The ViaSat 3 series of high capacity broadband satellite for ViaSat Inc consists of three satellites for global coverage.

space.skyrocket.de

G-Space 1 (GS 1, Nusantara H-1A)

G-Space 1 is a geostationary 16U CubeSat by Gravity Space hosting several payloads for different customers including Earth observation, scientific ...

space.skyrocket.de

"SpaceX Falcon Heavy Blastoff (1 of 7)" by jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail

 

[ecarfan]

It doesn’t seem like a real launch when the boosters don’t land…

 

[Cosmacelf]

Successful launch. Several hours to go to see if destination reached since they are going direct to geo orbit.

So, in the Viasat commercial during the pre launch, one of the guys thanked Boeing. What role did Boeing have in this?

 

[ecarfan]

Did anyone notice two dots of light just after BECO? One moving from bottom to top, the other right to left. Moving pretty fast. Satellites? Seemed too fast for a commercial jet.

 

[Marcus Adolfsson]

Successful launch. Several hours to go to see if destination reached since they are going direct to geo orbit.

So, in the Viasat commercial during the pre launch, one of the guys thanked Boeing. What role did Boeing have in this?

They built the satellite

 

[Grendal]

Did anyone notice two dots of light just after BECO? One moving from bottom to top, the other right to left. Moving pretty fast. Satellites? Seemed too fast for a commercial jet.

My thought was satellite. It wasn't blinking, so a satellite.

Dang but that second stage is booking it.

 

[Electroman]

What happens to the 2nd stage after it injects the satellite directly into the required GS Orbit? Does it ever deorbit? or does it stay on that orbit for a thousand years before it naturally decays and burns up in atmosphere?

 

[Cosmacelf]

What happens to the 2nd stage after it injects the satellite directly into the required GS Orbit? Does it ever deorbit? or does it stay on that orbit for a thousand years before it naturally decays and burns up in atmosphere?

There’s a special graveyard orbit for geosats. All geosats are required to reserve fuel such that when they EOL, they can park themselves in that graveyard orbit. Presumably that’s where the Falcon second stage will head to after it drops off the satellites.

That orbit is so far out there, that I’m not sure it’ll ever decay in any reasonable timeframe.

 

[bxr140]

What happens to the 2nd stage after it injects the satellite directly into the required GS Orbit?

It's a near certainty that it will go into the geo graveyard orbit, a few hundred km above geo. Only needs 10m/s or so ∆V to get there.

Does it ever deorbit? or does it stay on that orbit for a thousand years before it naturally decays and burns up in atmosphere?

Near as makes no difference it is indefinite. There's no atmosphere that far out for drag to pull down a sat. What will happen is that the inclination will start to increase (GSO is actually unstable in inclination) and a gazillion years from now it will have a very north-south inclination instead of its initial ~0°. (Some older and beyond-life GEOs have this problem...by a couple degrees at least)

 

[Grendal]

It's sad that SpaceX lost 3 first stages but that was a really impressive mission. Direct to GEO. I wonder how many years of life that gave the satellite. bxr140 will probably know... It was cool to watch but I wasn't sure what was going on. I understand the orbital speed needed to get into LEO is 27,500 km/h. So the second stage burned for about a minute to get to out to GEO 34,600 km in four hours. It arrived with 6865 km/h. The final burn took the speed down to a minimum of 260 km/h then went back up to 462 km/h. So I'm not sure about the orbital mechanics of what happened. I'd appreciate it if someone who knows could explain it to me (and everyone else).

 

[MyJoule]

It's sad that SpaceX lost 3 first stages but that was a really impressive mission. Direct to GEO. I wonder how many years of life that gave the satellite. bxr140 will probably know... It was cool to watch but I wasn't sure what was going on. I understand the orbital speed needed to get into LEO is 27,500 km/h. So the second stage burned for about a minute to get to out to GEO 34,600 km in four hours. It arrived with 6865 km/h. The final burn took the speed down to a minimum of 260 km/h then went back up to 462 km/h. So I'm not sure about the orbital mechanics of what happened. I'd appreciate it if someone who knows could explain it to me (and everyone else).

I'm sure they were duly compensated for consuming 3 first stages - but I agree, it's odd and somewhat sad now that we've come to expect recovery every time.

I wondered if they'd have to slow down - with the 3rd burn- I'm no orbital math genius, I guess I was right though. They scrubbed most of the speed off, so the sats only have a little to scrub to be stationary with respect to earth's rotation.

They sure make something hard look easy- Way to go SpaceX.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I would imagine all those speeds are ground speeds, Ie relative to a fixed point on the ground. And of course, a geo orbit has zero relative ground speed, so that all makes sense. I think.

 

[bxr140]

I wonder how many years of life that gave the satellite.

Probably not too many. Basically every GEO is contracted to 15 years life and, while propellant load is one life limiter, the statistical degradation of pretty much everything starts to get pretty untenable after that long. Solar arrays degrade over time (just like the ones on your roof, just with no atmosphere to protect them) and inevitably there's micrometeorite strikes on the panels that take out strings...thermal surfaces become less efficient, battery cells start to drop out, electrical units start to fail...you get the picture. All that racks up to a satellite that's down on power/energy and also running on redundant gizmos [which means a subsequent failure is more catastrophic], and that's not great for revenue generating service. So, 15 is kind of the happy place. There's plenty of GEOs running out to 20+ years for sure, but those are in big fleets (Intelsat, SES, etc.) where other satellites can provide redundancy (sound familiar?), and the operators figure why not try to make a few more bucks of a fully amortized asset.

The direct to GEO upside to Viasat really ends up being:

• It skips the months long orbit raising of an electric propulsion satellite while also skipping the mass impact of chemical propulsion. That directly translates into months of revenue.
• It minimizes propellant load which maximizes payload mass (aka, revenue generating mass). You'll note that the satellite wasn't that heavy--6400kg is kind of a walk in the park for a regular F9 ASDS GTO huck, so if this was a regular GEO it would have been no problem on F9. What Viasat did (I assume) when spec'ing the satellite was to bank on a bigger-than-F9 launcher to get them into a higher energy insertion orbit. That basically enabled them to trade non-revenue generating propellant mass for more gizmos that make them money. The stupid tax on the bigger rocket (~$70M F9 vs ~$150M FH) ends up being pretty inconsequential in the beancounter circles; That cost will be easily recovered by selling Moar Service.
  • I doubt they actually planned on direct to GEO from the off, but there were probably unique circumstances around this FH that made it a "why not" kind of thing, not the least of which was likely the Astranis rideshare sat. I wouldn't be surprised if they paid 30 or more for their lift, which of course is a great deal compared to buying a Falcon outright.

I wasn't sure what was going on....orbital speed....

Yeah. Orbital velocity is kind of a counterintuitive deal. Energy plays into it as well, but that also kind of gets complicated. I'll have to actually watch the vid, but the bottom line is that when you tease out the equations altitude (technically the semi-major axis) ends up in the denominator and thus reduces velocity as altitude increases.

 

[moa999]

As an update to this ViaSat3 series, ViaSat is now re-tendering the launch of the Asia-Pac satellite, which was originally meant to fly on an Ariane 6 mission.

Between SpaceX and ULA (who will launch the Europe satellite later this year)

 

[Grendal]

As an update to this ViaSat3 series, ViaSat is now re-tendering the launch of the Asia-Pac satellite, which was originally meant to fly on an Ariane 6 mission.

Between SpaceX and ULA (who will launch the Europe satellite later this year)

I'm sure it would need to go on the Vulcan Centaur since all the Atlas V's have been spoken for. I'd be surprised if VC would have availability with all the launches it has backed up. Government launches would have priority over a commercial launch and ULA is already behind on those.

 

[moa999]

Agreed not sure if ViaSat will be wanting to risk another new platform given the issues with Ariane 6.

Remember this ViaSat3 program was announced in 2015 with expected launch in 2021, that has been continually delayed.

 

[bxr140]

I'm sure it would need to go on the Vulcan Centaur since all the Atlas V's have been spoken for.

Never say never. I have to imagine ULA would much prefer the AV program avoid a long (and potentially indefinitely long) tail full of managing aging program unique infrastructure/systems/processes and more or less obsolete inventory. Practically all of the remaining AV's are Kuiper and Starliner--both of which could easily port over to VC if either of their schedules push out and someone else needs a rocket. (Obviously Kuiper and Starliner would never actually push schedule so this is of course all just hypothetical...but just sayin'....)

Agreed not sure if ViaSat will be wanting to risk another new platform given the issues with Ariane 6.

FWIW there really aren't any significant technical issues with A6 that would concern a customer, or at least anything beyond the typical early-flight jitters that any rocket would bring. Viasat's concern with A6 is time. Each V3 is a ~$650M paperweight on their books until it starts returning duckets, and each month that goes by without turning on service is another month for Starlink to suck up even more of the addressable market.