Space X’s Elon Musk, has pushed back the official launch date of Falcon 9 yet again, this time due to bad weather. With extreme highs, and extreme lows, Space X – Space Exploration Company and its CEO Elon musk undoubtedly had a roller coaster of a year in 2016. The most notable of events unfortunately being the unexpected explosion of the previous Falcon 9 while still on the launchpad and attempting to take off in September. Quickly Identifying and fixing the problem, the launch of the 2nd Falcon 9 has been long awaited and despite there already being a number of delays, the launch is going to have to wait again.
On Sunday, Iridium officials confirmed that the launch would be delayed until atleast the 14th of January due to heavy winds and rain that are expected in the area of the launch-pad in California.
“Bad weather the cause,”. “Anti-rain dances didn’t work – oh well. Cal needs rain?” – Iridium chief executive Matt Desch tweeted Sunday
Before the delay, Space X had the 8th of January marked on the chart for the official launch day. This was following an investigation done by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) where the issue was found, understood and has now been fixed to prevent further similar incidents. It took 4 months to figure out what had gone wrong.
“A summarized version of the findings of the investigation team is enough to understand the core reason behind the explosion of the Falcon 9 rocket during pre-launch fueling in September. The team concluded on the basis of facts that there was a failure of a pressure vessel that is normally found inside a tank that stores liquid oxygen to help the second part of the rocket’s fuel burn. The problem here was that oxygen built up in between the overwrap of the vessel and the liner and the intensity of the problem increased as helium was loaded, the helium turned the built up oxygen from liquid to solid and therefore caused a major problem.”
“The FAA accepted the investigation report on the Amos 6 mishap and has closed the investigation,” the FAA said in an email statement to The Verge on Friday. “SpaceX applied for a license to launch the Iridium NEXT satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The FAA has granted a license for that purpose.”
It now appears that SpaceX is ready to successfully take Falcon 9 into space where it will take 10 Satellites for the company Iridium. This is all part of the Iridium Next mission.
Everything is ready to go for this mission and the satellites have already been mounted onto the rocket. The launch will be on January 14th at 12:54PM ET from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Sources: WCCFTech, The Verge, NYTimes.
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