SPACECRAFT

USSF-52: SpaceX Super Heavy Launches X-37B To Orbit For US Space Force

Keneci News  @kenecifeed

X-37B lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 0107 UTC on Friday(Dec. 29), from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, as the United States Space Force's secretive space plane embarked on its latest clandestine Orbital Test Vehicle-7(OTV-7 or USSF-52) mission.

Falcon Heavy trasits a rising moon over Florida's Space Coast: USSF-52 mission. (H/t John Kraus and John Pisani)

Falcon Heavy's two reusable outer boosters returned safely, touching down about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, next door to KSC. This was the fifth launch and landing for both boosters, whose resume also includes the launch of NASA's Psyche asteroid probe, which took flight this past October.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy reusable boosters touch down at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, next door to KSC

"We have successfully landed both Falcon Heavy side boosters at Landing Zone 1 and Landing Zone 2," said Jessie Anderson, SpaceX's mechanical production and engineering manager, in a live webcast. "With these two side boosters, this marks the 257th and 258th overall successful landings of an orbital class rocket."

Heavy consists of three modified, strapped-together first stages of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. The central booster carries a second stage, which is topped by the payload in this case the X-37B. The booster which flew for the first and only time on Friday's mission, ditched intentionally into the Atlantic Ocean after launch, having expended too much of its fuel to return to Earth for recovery and reuse.

At the request of the U.S. Space Force, SpaceX shut down its livestream of Friday's launch before the X-37B space plane was deployed in its final orbit. The OTV-7 mission will take advantage of Heavy's muscle; the flight's main objectives "include operating the reusable space plane[X-37B] in new orbital regimes," Space Force officials wrote in a mission preview last month.

China and Russia have raised concerns the X-37B could be a weapons platform, which US denies.

X-37B looks like a much smaller version of NASA's retired space shuttle. The uncrewed vehicle is 8.8 meters long, with a wingspan of 4.6 meters( by contrast each shuttle orbiter  was 37 m long and had a wingspan of more than 24 m).

The Space Force is thought to own about two X-37B vehicles, both built by Boeing. The space planes are used primarily as orbital testbeds, allowing the military to see how  instruments perform and behave in the space environment. Details about X-37B missions tend to be classified. In addition to the "new orbital regimes" goal of OTV-7, the flight "will expand the United States Space Force's knowledge of the space environment by experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies," SF officials wrote in the mission description. "These tests are integral in ensuring safe, stable and secure operations in space for all users of the domain."

Among the unclassified payload hauled to orbit on OTV-7, is a NASA experiment called Seeds-2. 

Seeds-2 "will expose plant seeds to the harsh radiation environment of long-duration spaceflight," SF officials wrote. The project "will build upon the successes of prior experiments, paving the way for future crewed space missions," they added.

It's unclear how long OTV-7 will last in space. The previous six X-37B missions lasted more than seven months apiece, and each one bested its predecessors' duration:

The previous six missions all flew in low Earth orbit, just a few hundred kilometers above Earth. Falcon Heavy could take the X-37B much higher, potentially all the way to geosynchronous orbit, about 35,000 km up. But it's unclear if that's the plan for OTV-7.

Friday's early morning launch was X-37B's first ride on Falcon Heavy, the third-most powerful active rocket(after Starship and NASA's Space Launch System). The first five flights lifted off atop United Launch Alliance(ULA) Atlas V rockets. SpaceX has provided launch services for the most recent two, OTV-6 flew on a Falcon 9.

SpaceX Ends The Year With Record Launches And 'Upmass' Haul To Space

USSF-52 was SpaceX's 95th launch of 2023, followed just hours after by Falcon 9 rocket launch of 23 Starlink satellites from the nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, marking the company's 96th and final launch of the year.

No other family of orbit-class rockets has ever flown more than 63 times in a year. SpaceX's Falcon rockets have now exceeded this number by roughly 50 percent. Competitors in the United States, such as United Launch Alliance(ULA) and Rocket Lab, managed far fewer flights in 2023. ULA had three missions, and Rocket Lab launched its small Electron booster 10 times.

Nearly two-thirds of SpaceX's missions this year were dedicated to delivering satellites to orbit for SpaceX's Starlink internet network, a constellation of now over 5,000 satellites. The rocket company also launched five missions with the Falcon Heavy rocket.

Highlights from SpaceX's 2023 Falcon launch schedule included three crew missions to the International Space Station, and the launch of NASA's Psyche mission to explore a metallic asteroid.

In all, SpaceX's Falcon rockets hauled approximately 1,200 metric tons of payload mass into orbit this year. This "upmass" is equivalent to nearly three International Space Stations. And most of this was made up of the mass-produced Starlink satellites.

The back to back launches Friday morning(UTC) took off 2 hours and 54 minutes apart, the shortest turnaround between two SpaceX flights in the company's history. It also set a modern era record at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the shortest span between two orbital-class launches there since 1966. The Florida spaceport was the departure point for 72 orbital-class rockets in 2023, also an unprecedented level of launch activity there.

"Congrats to SpaceX team on achieving 96 launches in 2023," SpaceX's founder and CEO Elon Musk wrote on X, Friday.

Counting the two Starship test missions, SpaceX ends the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas.

Commenting on the potential mission schedule frequency with Falcon Heavy and Starship, Must wrote: "The super heavy booster can be used more frequently than the ship, as it returns in about ~6 minutes and can theoretically be ready for reflght in an hour. The ship needs to complete at least one orbit, but often several to have the ground track line back up with the launch site, so reuse may only be daily. This means that ship production needs to be roughly an order of magnitude higher than booster production. To achieve Mars colonization in roughly three decades, we need ship production to be 100/year, but ideally rising to 300/year."

Musk set a goal of 100 launches this year, up from the company's previous record of 61 in 2022. But a spate of bad weather and delays before this final Falcon Heavy launch of the year kept the company short of 100 flights.

"Congrats to the entire Falcon team at SpaceX on a record breaking 96 launches in 2023!" Jon Edwards, vice president of Falcon launch vehicles at SpaceX, wrote on X. "I remember when Elon Musk first threw out a goal of 100 launches as a thought experiment, intended to unlock our thinking as to how we might accelerate Falcon across all levels of production and launch. Only a few years later and here we are. I’m so incredibly proud to work with the best team on Earth, and so excited to see what we achieve next year."

The rocket and satellite company looks poised to set more records next year. In 2024, SpaceX aims for an average of a dozen launches per month, for a total of 144 rocket flights. New launches are already slated for January 2 and 3.

WATCH Falcon Heavy launch of X-37B to orbit