Launch of the tenth Falcon Heavy (GOES-U)

It seems like yesterday that we saw the Tesla Roadster launch into a spare orbit for the first time, but it took six years for the world’s second most powerful rocket in service after NASA’s SLS to blast off for the tenth time. On June 25, 2024, at 21:26 UTC, SpaceX’s tenth Falcon Heavy took off from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Ramp 39A in Florida. The mission was also Falcon Heavy Block 5’s ninth mission and the first of the year. The fact that this mission is also SpaceX’s 65th orbital launch in 2024 shows the minor role Falcon Heavy plays in Elon Musk’s Falcon 9-dominated company schedule. And ongoing improvements to the Falcon 9 have led to Falcon Heavy being reserved for very specific missions. In this case, Falcon Heavy launched NASA’s GOES-U weather satellite into geostationary transfer orbit (16,000 x 35,240 kilometers and 4.4 degrees inclination) after three second-stage firings approximately 4.5 hours after liftoff.

The tenth Falcon Heavy used the B1087 core stage, which, as is typical for this launch vehicle, was jettisoned into the ocean. Side stages B1072 and B1086 also made their first flight and landed on solid ground in the LZ-1 and LZ-2 areas. With these landings, SpaceX successfully completed 250 first stage landings and then a total of 324 successful landings. It was also the 41st successful landing in the LZ-1 area and the 11th in the LZ-2 area, as well as the 85th launch from ramp 39A and the company’s 331st successful launch in a row. The numbers are as impressive as they are stunning. Let us recall that at the same time, exactly zero launches of orbital rockets with reused stages have been carried out in the rest of the world.

GOES-U is the fourth and final satellite in the latest generation of GOES weather satellites.Geostationary operational environmental satellites), called GOES-R. It was built by Lockheed Martin for NOAA (USA).National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) using the A2100A platform. It has a mass of 5192 kg (dry 2857 kg) and a useful life of about 15 years. Once in orbit, GOES-U will be named GOES-19 and will replace GOES-16 at the “GOES East” (75º W) position, which together with GOES-18 or GOES West (137º W) will cover the entire Northern and Southern hemispheres America. The GOES program is a joint effort between NASA and NOAA. Essentially, NASA is responsible for managing the construction and launch of satellites, and NOAA manages them.

The main tool is the ABI camera (Advanced Basic Imager), built by L3Harris and equipped with 16 visible and near-infrared channels to image the entire disk of the Earth. Other instruments are SEISS (Space Environment In-Situ Suite), which includes five sensors to detect energetic electrons and protons from the solar wind, EXIS (Space Environment In-situ Suite), for measuring solar radiation in X-rays and in the extreme ultraviolet range, SUVI (Solar UV Thermal Imager), UV solar camera, MAG magnetometer and GLM lightning detector (Geostationary lightning mapper), the latter is a device created by Lockheed Martin. It is also the first GOES-U series satellite to carry the CCOR-1 coronagraph (Compact Coronagraph 1) to study coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun, an instrument operated by NRL (Naval Research Laboratory), which will replace the SOHO veteran’s observations. This is the first GOES-R satellite launched by a Falcon Heavy rocket, as the previous three were launched into orbit by Atlas V 541 rockets (GOES-R, GOES-S and GOES-T) since 2016.

Using a powerful rocket like the Falcon Heavy will allow GOES-U to save fuel to enter geostationary orbit (GEO) and therefore extend its useful life, hopefully to twenty years. Atlas V was capable of placing GOES-R into a transfer orbit that required Delta-V at a minimum of 987 m/s to reach, while Falcon Heavy left GOES-U in an orbit requiring Delta-V. 566 m/s to achieve GSO. GOES-U will perform five firings of its LEROS-1C engine to raise its apogee and position itself in geodetic orbit, the last of which will occur around July 8th. The launch cost was approximately $153 million. The GOES-R series will be replaced in the future by GeoXO satellites (Geostationary enhanced observations), the general contractor of which will also be Lockheed Martin. The first of three planned GeoXOs will launch in 2032. This was the second Falcon Heavy launch with a NASA payload, following the Psyche probe. Next up will be the very important Europa Clipper mission, due to launch in October next year.