Demosat (LCT2 / AFSS)

Launch data:

Spacecraft data:

Description:

• DemoFlight-2 is a launch vehicle evaluation payload containing two small experiments from NASA. The first expriement is Low Cost TDRSS Transceiver, which woudl allow relay of telemetry to the ground through the agency's TDRS satellites. The goal of the LCT2 effort is to produce a transceiver that will significantly lower the flight hardware costs required to communicate through NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. The second experiment is the Autonomous Flight Safety System, a real-time onboard system for tracking and possible flight termination. AFSS is designed primarily for small expendable vehicles at remote launch sites where providing traditional ground-based range safety infrastructure. Engineers also planned to demonstrate the Falcon 1's satellite separation system by jettisoning a small 2-kg aluminum ring after arriving in orbit.
• The DemoFlight-2 payload was to had remained attached to the Falcon-1 second stage, but it did not reach orbit due to a problem with this stage. But for SpaceX, this launch was a success or, the Falcon flight reached an orbit of around -4200 km x 289 km x 9°.

Mission details:

• After a dramatic last-second abort an hour prior to actual launch -- a pad abort declared during main engine start at 0h05 UTC --, the Falcon 1 rocket, “a gleaming symbol of hopes to revolutionize space exploration through private industry”, took its second shot at orbit at 1h10 UTC. The rocket was targeting an orbit of 330 x 680 km as engineers had programmed the second stage to conduct a second burn about 45 minutes into the flight to demonstrate its engine capability to reignite.
• After first stage separation, within three minutes of lift-off, the second stage fired its engine for a planned 6½ minutes burn. But engineers stopped receiving live radio signals some 10 minutes into the flight. "We did encounter, late in the second stage burn, a roll-control anomaly," reports Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX.
• The Falcon flight reached an orbit of around -4200 x 289 km x 9 deg. SpaceX reported that the test payload instrument ring was successfully deployed; the payload and the second stage fell in the Pacific.
• But Musk said he was pleased with the mission: "I think I'll characterize this as a very good day for SpaceX. We successfully reached space and really retired almost all the risk associated with the rocket. So I feel very good about where things are… It definitely could have gone a little better today, but if we've retired almost all the risk associated with the rocket, I think it is hard to characterize that as anything but a success, at least in my book, because this is a test launch of the rocket and not a satellite launch."
• SpaceX's second launch came a year after the Falcon 1 rocket suffered a major failure during its maiden flight. Investigators traced the cause of that accident to a corroded aluminum nut in the first stage propulsion system, which triggered a fuel leak that led to a premature shutdown of the Merlin engine about 30 seconds after liftoff. The next launch of the Falcon 1 was scheduled for August carrying the TacSat 1 tactical research satellite for the Naval Research Laboratory. A subsequent mission to launch a Malaysian Earth-observation spacecraft was planned for late this year.