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  • three.

  • It's june 15th 2016 about to 12.

  • Universal Coordinated time or 10 12 Eastern.

  • Sent on your screen is a live view of the Falcon nine launch vehicle beneath a sparkling sapphire sky at Space Launch Complex 40 and Cape Canaveral, Florida.

  • Welcome to the live Space six Webcast.

  • I'm Michel Hamersley, materials engineer for our avionics department.

  • I'm standing outside of Mission Control at our headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and launches about 15 minutes from now to 29 Universal coordinated time or 10 29 Eastern time.

  • We're launching two satellites today.

  • These are the all electric you tell Sat 1 17 west B and the A B s to a satellite.

  • We're taking them on a geo stationary transfer orbit and they're going to move themselves a little bit higher altitude to a geo stationary orbit.

  • You tell sat 1 17 West B will be near South America and a B s to a will be near South Asia were also hoping to recover the first stage again on this mission.

  • Lansing and landing it on a drone ship on and we're excited.

  • Let's get started.

  • Good morning from Los Angeles on Kate.

  • Thais process improvement engineering here in space sex.

  • And, like Michael said today, we are launching for you tell sat and a B s.

  • So we're gonna be talking a lot of detail about what those payloads are.

  • So I'm gonna be filling you in a little bit about what's going on at our launch site.

  • So this is Space Launch Complex 40 and Cape Canaveral, Florida He may hear us refer to it as SLC or slick 40 during our Webcast.

  • There's a lot that goes on here that you can't really see one of them being the hold down clamps here at the bottom of the rocket.

  • This is also where the nine Merlin engines are located.

  • For those of you that may be tuning in for the first time for a Webcast, that's where the fire comes.

  • Out here we have the first stage as well as the interstate's.

  • The first stage is what holds our propellants, so we used liquid oxygen, which we may refer to as walks as well as liquid kerosene.

  • Also known as R P.

  • One.

  • Those tanks are here in the first stage.

  • The interstate is what protects the nozzle of the second stage engine, which is right up here during stage separation.

  • The interstate and the first stage will come back and hopefully lands on our drone ship, which is currently laid located a couple 100 miles off the coast of Florida.

  • And that is, of course, I still love you.

  • So those will be coming back, back down with more information on that leader.

  • Well, second stage engine and the second stage will be taking the two satellites out, too.

  • Geo stationary transfer orbits.

  • And we do that again later on in Webcasting, giving you more tea details about that now, some of the other things that we often get asked about thes tolerance years.

  • Those air Lightning powers countered with me.

  • Orlando Cape Canaveral is the lightning capital of the United States, and so we want to make sure that our vehicle is protected from that high amount of energy that may come down.

  • So what is very difficult to see if we've got some wires here connecting those towers as well, and they kind of encapsulate a little bit around the top.

  • It's just to protect that vehicle from all sides, so that's a little bit about what goes on at Cape Canaveral.

  • Good morning.

  • Thank you.

  • To those who have got up early on the specific coast to watch the lovely launch of you tell Set and A B s to geo stationary transfer orbit.

  • My name is Brian, and I'm one of the automation software engineers here in Hawthorne, California.

  • And today I want to provide you an overview with two aspects number one, the general phasing that most space X launches go through and the number to the specific mission for today.

  • So in terms of the general things that we do on launch Day, as you just saw on the pad and as Kate just describes vulcanized essentially two rockets stacked on top of each other, both of those first lift off from the ground from the propulsion from first stage at a certain altitude, they separate first stage, then goes back to land.

  • I get the drone ship today, or the landing zone and other missions, and then Second states continues on to deliver the payload to its desired orbit.

  • That is the primary mission.

  • For every single time you see one of these Webcast, it's to get the payload that is sitting within the faring at the tip of second stage to its intended orbit.

  • Now what is that specific mission for today?

  • It's to launch a satellite from you Tell SAT and A B s, as my co hosts have mentioned, Utah SATs model is 1 17 w.

  • B.

  • Now that really stands for the longitude that it's going to 117 degrees west longitude.

  • This is to provide coverage to the Latin America's Remember Geo.

  • Stationary satellites stay above the same regions as earth rotates.

  • This is you'll see that what you tell sat 1 17 W b because we launch you tell sat 1 17 a just 15 months ago.

  • A B s is the other satellite within the fairing.

  • This is to a and it will be going to 76 degrees east to provide coverage to portions of Asia and Africa.

  • It's called a because launched A B s to 15 months ago on the same flight as with all programs will bring you live footage of lift off as well as another attempted landing of the first state so that we can get that reuse mailed down.

  • Hello, I'm John Inspector Falcon nine, principal integration engineer.

  • is I've done in the past.

  • I'll be bringing you status updates and Webcast commentary throughout the flight from our launch desk here in Space six headquarters in Hawthorne, California Now, as you hurt, it's early morning here in Hawthorne.

  • But as you also saw the start of the Webcast, the day shift employees they're gathering for the Falcon nine launch.

  • You're standing in front of our Mission Control center.

  • We'll be watching the flight along with all of us here on the Webcast.

  • Now.

  • Currently, we're deep into the launch, out of sequence at T minus and 11.5 minutes before launch.

  • This is where the ground computers assisted with the Falcon nine flight computers are doing the final checks of the vehicle and loading propellants.

  • So let's take a look where we are right now.

  • In the countdown.

  • Now the Falcon nine rolled out to the launch pad about T minus 17 hours yesterday.

  • Way got out to the pad and plenty of time to allow the spacecraft team to do spacecraft checkouts.

  • Way went vertical went through testing early this morning, and we're currently now loading propellant onto the 1st 2nd stage now currently feel is already loaded on to the second stage.

  • That is the RP one kerosene feel, and we have just ended loading feel onto the Falcon nine first stage.

  • So now we're just down the loading, the liquid oxygen on the boat, the first in the second stage.

  • It's that's going to continue up until just about the T minus two minutes.

  • Martin.

  • Now, on the spacecraft side, you tell Santa in the A B s teams, unless we got vertical on the pad, they did their checkouts.

  • They've gone from external power to internal power and just verified that they're on internal.

  • All their systems are looking good.

  • Range is ready to support with the tracking and flight safety systems that we need to fly into space today.

  • And the weather's looking good.

  • You can see the blue skies with just some puffy clouds in the background, the upper altitude winds.

  • They're still looking good, so everything is cooperating right now for a launch.

  • In just over 10 minutes, you tell Scent is one of the world's leading satellite operators.

  • They currently have 40 geo stationary satellites in their fleet, and you tell sat 1 17 west beat will be the second next generation satellite.

  • In there, you tell set America's fleet.

  • It'll be co located with 1 17 west, you tell sat 1 17 west a off the west coast of South America, and this new multi satellite neighborhood will strengthen the video capacities.

  • At that longitude, I will be offering key service's toe, Latin American clients and telecommunications and government service is, and it's expected to enter commercial service in the first quarter of 2017.

  • Now these videos service's air going to include direct HomeServices as well as support for digital terrestrial television networks.

  • The satellite has 48 transponders with four regional beams covering Mexico, the Caribbean, most of Latin American.

  • Even the tip of Antarctica is operating in the K U band, which is reserved exclusively for satellites.

  • Satellites, if you will recall, communicate with electromagnetic electromagnetic waves, which includes light and radio waves.

  • The K U band is a portion of that spectrum 12 to 18 gigahertz, part of the microwave spectrum on I know you're wondering.

  • Your home microwave oven operates at 2.45 gigahertz.

  • Another cool fact is that the hosted payload from raping on it will be hosting a payload from Raytheon that the federal Federal Aviation Administration excuse me, we'll be using for aviation safety.

  • A B s is one of the world's fastest growing global satellite operators.

  • They have six satellites serving 80% of the world's population.

  • A B s to a will be co located with A B S to 75 degrees East Indian Pakistan serving Africa in the Middle East, Russia, South Asia and South East Asian.

  • It's also equipped with high performance You banned beans.

  • It's part of the same spectrum is the hotel San satellite, and this satellite will be offering a B s customers expansion capacity as well as in orbit.

  • Redundancy for growing directive home business.

  • Both satellites are designed for director HomeServices the map that you see the moment eyes not the satellite's coverage as much as 80 s world coverage, and they're going to be designed for other V SAT operators.

  • These hot stands for very small aperture terminal.

  • That means you can point a small satellite dish about the size of a pizza box at the satellite and gain access to the communications network satellite operator provides.

  • And this footage that you're seeing on the screen at the moment is of the two satellites undergoing final preparations for launch.

  • After this step, they get integrated into the fairing on.

  • They are currently standing upright at the launch complex.

  • Then those solar panels are enormous.

  • Up next, we've got some cool footage of our Texas site where the Rocket undergoes its own preparations.

  • Hello, my name's David.

  • Helpfully, I'm the site director for the space sex Texas Rocket developed a test facility here in Texas.

  • What makes McGregor unique is this is generally where the fun happens, in my opinion, So we get to see some really cool stuff in McGregor, Texas.

  • We get to make the smoke and fire.

  • So last year we averaged about 400 Merlin tests.

  • That's more than one every counter day for just a moment.

  • If you throw, the stage is into the mix and everything else we do.

  • We could.

  • On any given day, we could be running somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 to 50 tests Space six Texas is about 4200 acres total.

  • I guess an interesting note on that is about half of it is cultivated that we inherited as we leased the land so we actually have corn, wheat and just hey in production on the side as well.

  • We have about 15 test areas, so we're standing in the central hangar, which is where we do the 1st 2nd stage integration work.

  • So after we test the stages, we put them in the hangar.

  • We do post test check outs before we send them to watch site.

  • Small site is where a lot of the smoking fire happens.

  • That's where the engines are tested in our own engines and second stages tested over there.

  • Well, we also have the components stand over there.

  • There's a lot of talk, a nine component tests.

  • If you go up to the north side of sight, that's where large site is.

  • That's where booster stand is.

  • That's where test for stage way have dragon sights.

  • That's where we test Drake.

  • Oh, that's such a process.

  • Dragon.

  • Do all the dragon cargo offload in Texas?

  • What's also great about Texas and particulars.

  • There's there's always something exciting happening at some particular test, and there's new boundaries.

  • Were pushing this new hardware here seemed to always be a new ground, which definitely means it's never boring around here.

  • There's always something exciting going on.

  • We're t minus five minutes 22 seconds and counting things they're looking go for an on time launch.

  • We're continuing to quickly step through.

  • The automated sequence that I talked about were bleeding in chilling the Merlin engines Right now.

  • Ground systems air continuing the load.

  • Liquid oxygen on the boat.

  • The first and second stages.

  • We pulled the team a T minus 38 minutes for readiness to enter launch.

  • Auto sequence is it's called.

  • That's the scripted sequence where the ground in the flight computers prepare the Falcon nine for flight.

  • There's minimal involvement by the launch team.

  • That's why you don't hear a whole lot on the countdown naps during the Webcast.

  • Now, currently, and propellant load, we're still putting liquid oxygen on the boat.

  • The first stage and the second stage is, I said before that will wrap up T minus two minutes.

  • Wait a cz long as we can to keep liquid oxygen as cold as possible.

  • Nick is this maximum performance for the Falcon nine to carry our customers into space.

  • Some of the event you're going to see coming up very shortly.

  • We're pressurizing the first and second stages that will open up the clamp arms and we'll begin retracting the strong back.

  • What about 3.5 minutes?

  • You'll see a strong backer, Klein, that move to the 77 degree position.

  • That's our launch position.

  • Proper little finish T minus two minutes.

  • Over £1.1 million.

  • Propelling will be on board the rocket.

  • Currently, you tell Sam a navy s team's already range is ready to support Weather conditions look good.

  • So a T minus three minutes and 50 seconds and counting always go rapid reusability.

  • You've heard this buzzword be used multiple times as a prerequisite for the quest to make humanity multi planetary.

  • What exactly is reusability?

  • Look is comprised of two main pieces recovery and then re flight.

  • Now, recovery is something that you've seen our previous Webcast.

  • We've had some success with, states goes to orbit and it comes back in.

  • It lands in a safe manner that we can recover.

  • Its second half of that puzzle is re flight.

  • It's making sure that you are ready to fly that same recovered vehicle again and so you can re fly it.

  • It's not technically reusable.

  • Then we're adding maturity to that research for vacation program as we speak.

  • But the ultimate finish line for all these rockets is to land.

  • If it lands on the drone ship, it gets taken on the service of the drone ship awaits support.

  • That's what you see on your screen now in the vertical position.

  • It then gets loaded horizontally onto a truck and taken back to the launch site to be re flown.

  • The exact same thing happens if it lands in a landing zone.

  • It gets put on a truck as you see and gets taken to the launch site again.

  • The goal is to return to the launch site, get refuels, retested and then go back up to space.

  • Now the refueling is a pretty easy part of the retesting.

  • It's hard.

  • We want to make sure that the engine that you remember seeing behind me they weren't jostled and flight.

  • Nothing was subjected to extreme heat conditions that would cause it to the form in a certain way.

  • That's where automation is keep.

  • We need to be able to ensure that the vehicle flies the second time justice safely, Justus nominally as the first time now, remember that is a secondary mission.

  • So as we turn our sights back over to the primary mission before we re fly way must land.

  • And before we land, we must launch.

  • So let's listen into terminal countdown now.

  • D minus two minutes.

  • Stage two lakhs secured for flight.

  • Initializing blocks grand close up Vehicles and self line.

  • Stage one.

  • Stage two.

  • You crow.

  • Helium scared flight VC.

  • Verify Falcon nine isn't startup.

  • Falcon nine's and start up.

  • Flight suffers.

  • Control the vehicle.

  • Stage one.

  • Stage two.

  • You're pressing for flight T minus 30 seconds.

  • T minus 20.

  • Falcon nine's security flight pressures.

  • T minus 10 nine eight seven 65 four three two one zero.

  • Lift off of the Falcon nine nine Towers dissection.

  • One minute in the flight.

  • Falcon nine is heading down range after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral.

  • Apparently the Merlin one be engines are operating at full power.

  • We're watching the launch from the space six cameras on the ground at Cape Canaveral.

  • Right now, the Falcon nine is heading through the supersonic phase.

  • It's a little hazy to see on the Webcast as we head out into space.

  • We've gone supersonic you've also heard the call out and that chill has begun, just like we do with the first stage.

  • Engines were now chilling in the turbo pump on the upper stage engine to get get it ready for ignition.

  • Coming up.

  • Guess before t plus three minutes.

  • Currently, the team is reporting Falcon nine is operating nominally major event.

  • Coming up in about 30 seconds is shutdown of the nine Merlin engines.

  • Let's listen in for the call out of main engine cut off, successful states raising and the view From the first days looking at the second stage engine has ignited.

  • We're on our way into the parking lot of it.

  • Let's go down to the floor and talk with the team.

  • With successful separation of the first and second stage, we now continue one.

  • As the two separate stages perform their separate responsibilities, you were just looking at a view of first stage.

  • Put it back down towards the earth.

  • Second, say just continuing on.

  • And we've just had confirmation that the fair ings encapsulation of the tip of second stage, which holds the satellites, has successfully separated important mouse.

  • No, breaking the fairing away like that allows the and back second stage engines to perform a little more robustly.

  • It'sjust efficiently is putting more of that force into accelerating the satellite.

  • The pairing is essentially dead.

  • Weight, once it gets out of the atmosphere is very important before that point exactly.

  • So the last week we can have around the payload and on the second stage, more efficient the vehicle itself will be and allowing us to use less fuel in order to get it out to specific place that we're trying to drive these two satellites to.

  • A lot of people don't realize we don't need the fairing anymore.

  • Once we're out in space.

  • Faring is there to design both protection and aerodynamics of the silent.

  • We're going through the atmosphere that needs to build a push through air very, very cleanly without any air anymore.

  • We're out of space.

  • We don't need that fairy.

  • That's what we like.

  • And while the second stage is continuing to speed up to get into low earth orbit as the beginning of a geo stationary transfer orbit, the first stage is headed back towards the drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, and you saw a cool shot of the griffins popped out there and the Griffins air What's controlling it back through the atmosphere in order to get it to approach the drone ship successfully, that you can see them right there And those those can join triangles of success that you see inside of the grid fins are actually just like small airplane wings.

  • They're used to fly the first stage back to the destination of the drone ship that it wants to reach.

  • So the Griffins are actually one of the mechanisms that I support in my day job on the manufacturing of those and the reason why we can't really show them to you in person because they're really big, right?

  • They're made out of aluminum, and we use about Will it sail seven front.

  • So they're about this wide, and they're about that long, so they're pretty heavy.

  • They're pretty strong, and they're a lot bigger than what you might anticipate, just based on the views that you get from the sun.

  • Interestingly, they're most useful at hypersonic and at lower velocity speeds through the shape of those.

  • That sort of cross hatch pattern is such that they're shocks that developed from just airflow mean that most of the air around the speed of sound at those sorts of speeds flows around.

  • The great concern actually aren't as efficient in steering the vehicle around the speed of sound, but very high above the speed of sound.

  • You're getting good control and close to, uh, sort of lower in the atmosphere when you're moving.

  • So you also have that good control again.

  • So we're gonna transition into the face.

  • We'll redo the reentry burn.

  • You'll see these grid fins deployed like little T rex arms in a few seconds after the reentry burn.

  • Once we're within the atmosphere, plus six minutes and 31 seconds.

  • Everything is looking good.

  • It's factor nine Heads to space.

  • Currently on the trajectory plot we're headed is usual right down the middle of the road between the predicted upper and lower limits projected on the man We're listening.

  • We just heard the call out for entry burn startup.

  • This is a three burn maneuver that brings the first stage, slows it down to get it ready to come back through the atmosphere.

  • Now, previous flights, we've done a boost back burn.

  • If we're coming back to Cape, we don't do a boost back burn in this case, we're doing the entry burn.

  • We're waiting to hear the shutdown.

  • We've got the shutdown and will then listen and wait for the first stage.

  • A comeback?

  • Meanwhile, the second stage continues to perform.

  • Nominally is we head into orbit.

  • You can see the glow of the nozzle on the M back D engine.

  • That's our niobium alloy nozzle, That red glow that you see right there on the close up camera that indicates temperatures are nominal where we like to use.

  • Here it space six.

  • So it t plus seven minutes and 42 seconds.

  • Everything is go.

  • Okay, So, like John, I said that the first stage in the interstate, they're coming back down.

  • We're waiting for the reentry burn to begin.

  • Any moment now.

  • This is the burned that slows the vehicle down enough so that it doesn't burn up upon re entry.

  • Given that this is a GT omission, like we said before, this is a rocket that's coming back in really hot really fast.

  • Yeah.

  • Most mission profiles three burns.

  • It's boost back.

  • Then.

  • Re entry in the landing burn this one.

  • We don't have a huge lofty perspective.

  • We're going much more flat, so it's just re entry and landing.

  • We're coming into the landing burn now, and you should be able to see it on your screen.

  • Footage cuts out.

  • We find that the drone ship shakes a lot with that final few seconds.

  • Is Theo wait?

  • It's like our feed may have a little bit again.

  • Intense vibrations from the drone ship due to the rocket smoke clearing smoke.

  • I see if you see someone of a rocket, you should be able to have some conclusive evidence in a second.

  • With you can you can hear as the footage is coming in and out.

  • Everyone's excited.

  • Sure will provide up this one.

  • We know if that first stage landed or not, Once the smoke clears and we have confirmation, will you say yes?

  • It successfully landed or No way simply got more experimental data, so we'll return with that at the moment.

  • But now focus back on the primary mission, which is second stage in orbit with animation.

  • That you were just seeing on your screen is is a good orbit.

  • We're hearing eyes what that animation is showing.

  • You can see where the second stage is in relation to the earth.

  • How it's continuing way you're hearing the crowd reacted again, that jumping footage of the first stage on the drone ship.

  • We don't know yet if you guys don't either.

  • But again, the focus is the second stage that it continues on in low earth orbit to take us to that geo stationary transfer.

  • Unfortunately, there's no WiFi out in the middle of the ocean yet eso were unable to get that clear picture as we had hoped.

  • This is, unfortunately a result of the city, the circumstances that we have.

  • But we will be short update you on that and we'll stay on for a second just in case we hear of any conclusion on the first stage, but the sequence of events as we continue on, we'll go through the coast, period.

  • That's what we're entering now for second stage.

  • There's no burn happening.

  • We are coasting to a specific spot to get to that point in, I believe, its apogee, where we burn a note where we burn again so that we can reach us to the final highest apogee of 360,000 kilometers 36 36.

  • Okay, so with that, like we said before, we're unsure of the status of the first stage as well as everyone else.

  • Because you can hear behind us at the moment, but we'll be sure to update you when we can.

  • We're gonna go into a break for just a moment while we enter the coast face.

  • We will return as we get closer to the second stage, start up as well as the double payload deployment.

  • So be sure to stick with us.

  • Yeah.

  • Okay.

  • Thanks.

  • Yeah, but, huh?

  • What?

  • Welcome back.

  • We're T plus 24 minutes and 52 seconds.

  • Way Just begin to re acquire telemetry from the Falcon Nine is we're beginning to prepare for lighting the upper stage engine.

  • Bring you commentary as we go through that.

  • Currently, we are pulsing the settling thrusters on the upper States.

  • That's helping keep propelling.

  • Get back so that it covers the inlets to the turbo pumps we've chilled in the upper stage engines.

  • Turbo pump.

  • We're about, I think, 30 seconds out from ignition.

  • Now.

  • We'll stay in a preparation phase right up until it's time to spin the turbine.

  • We is onboard high pressure helium gas.

  • We can't carry a long pipeline from the Earth.

  • It's not like we're operating often.

  • Electric cord all the way back to the launch site Way.

  • Carry our gas and propellants onboard will spend the turbine pump and that'll start the burn sequence waiting right now to see the start of the burn.

  • It will transfer us from parking orbit into the geo stationary transfer orbit and we see ignition.

  • Burn is underway.

  • Burn will last just under one minute.

  • Tank pressure is looking good.

  • Chamber pressure is looking good.

  • You see the characteristic red glow on the bio beom ally nozzle extension now currently to keep the payloads underneath the maximum acceleration way throttle the upper stage engine were beginning to do that right now to stay underneath the roughly five g acceleration limit for the you tell sent in the A.

  • B s spacecraft you can see on the webcast.

  • We're continuing the burn chamber.

  • Pressure is continuing to look good and we're into the shutdown phase and we have engine set down.

  • Give a minute here, let the stage total out.

  • I'll go take a look at the orbit and see how we are.

  • Okay?

  • So just a quick update on the status of Falcon nine on the drone ship.

  • Of course.

  • Of course I still love you.

  • Unfortunately, it appears as though we lost the vehicle.

  • We don't have a lot of details of this just yet, But the important thing to keep in mind is that we did receive a lot of really good data from this.

  • As always, these are experimental attempts.

  • And although we can say that Falcon nine was lost in this attack way did get a lot of really valuable data on with the second stage engine cut off.

  • Now the second stage is in the geo stationary transfer orbit.

  • We've just gotten confirmation that it is, in fact, a good geostationary transfer orbit.

  • So what that means is that the satellite or the second stage in the two satellites were starting in low earth orbit, and if that were to continue, it would be quite close to the Earth.

  • Geo stationary transfer orbit turns it from a tight circle around the earth to a big egg shape on what the satellites are gonna do when they eventually get to the top of that orbit is circular rises.

  • So that they end up being in that geo stationary Exactly with the conclusion as John mentioned of the second of second stage Burns.

  • This concludes the space sex launch portion of the entire trajectory today, and we transition over to kind of the mission phase to the two remaining upcoming events.

  • With the separation of you tell, Sad and a B s once deployed will continue on with their mission regarding the configuration of those two satellites.

  • Remember, they're sitting inside of the faring at the top of the second stage.

  • Faring has been deployed.

  • So the other exposed to space configuration is that a B s is on the bottom, made it directly to the top of second stage.

  • And then you tells you, tell sat is sitting on top of a B s.

  • They're clamp fans.

  • Next two satellites together a cz well, as a B s to be mechanical interface between between a B s in the top of the second state, that clamp band will be released on their springs that sit underneath it will push satellites away from second stage, and that that constitutes the payload deploy, after which then that takes care of most of the mission phase just confirmed that those satellites are in a good position to move themselves up to the Geo stationary orbit.

  • Now, of course, we don't want to be jolting the satellites in anyway.

  • So this push that we're talking about, it's a very gentle motion.

  • It's more of a release.

  • It's not really just like chucking it out.

  • Exactly.

  • And so we're gonna come up on our first deployment here in a second.

  • You tell sad because it's on top is going to be deployed first, so it's gonna be pushed off.

  • And then about five minutes later, a B s will be deployed.

  • Now, once they're deployed, they use their onboard ion thruster systems to do some pretty cool stuff.

  • Yeah, so Ionic propulsion is something that's really interesting.

  • It's very different from typical fire explosive kind of proportion that you see, like with Falcon nine, for example, ionic propulsion is different because we basically take ze non particles and they get fired through a change satellite were exact proportions is a propulsion system of systems aboard both of these satellite.

  • Essentially, we take Xena on gas and we fire.

  • Those satellites are firing those particles through a chamber.

  • And they are.

  • We should be coming up on satellite deployment in any minutes.

  • Any second here provide you live video.

  • You tell SATs employees when we're going over ground station coverage on the custom of a few different ground stations.

  • So if we don't have perfect video, that is the reason.

  • But you tell said was confirmed to be deployed successful.

  • We'll bring you visualization of that as soon as we can.

  • But like Ryan said, the video feed is a little tricky at this point.

  • So back to ionic propulsion.

  • So we're basically taking xenon particles were firing electrons at those Adams, and by doing so, they become positively charged.

  • This makes them in eye on.

  • Hence the name Ionic Propulsion.

  • These I ionized particles to me, Adam's air, then going through what is a magnetic, Great, essentially, because they're positively charged.

  • They're going through a great that one is one has negative side.

  • One is positive side.

  • They become.

  • They get acceleration from that, they basically bust out the back, and that is what provides forced to the engine itself.

  • So the acceleration for this type of proportion is on the slower side in fact, the amount of force that is given off by this type of propulsion is about the same force that a piece of paper gives on your hand as you hold it.

  • So it's really good for propulsion out in space where you don't have friction, you don't have a whole lot of gravity pulling against the payload itself.

  • So this is a good form of propulsion for these particular satellites.

  • It's also extremely massive efficient.

  • Because mass is so critical on satellite, you can afford to launch more communication.

  • Service is just really the whole premise of what the satellite's doing.

  • If you have a more mass efficient propulsion system like the ions, after a few moments in the health check on, you tell sets it will begin to fire up and start using that propulsion system to slowly get itself to its final geo stationary orbit.

  • A B s will do the same after deployments in a few moments.

  • So Kate, you'd mentioned that the final releases quite soft.

  • There are a lot of environments for the satellites, and during the actual ascent phases, that could be like a fairly strong on.

  • If you're curious to see exactly what those environments are.

  • We have a payload user's guide that we share with our customers when we're doing launches to make sure that satellite and the rocket are compatible in terms of the environments that are getting transferred from the ones in the other.

  • That payload user's guide is a space x dot com.

  • You're curious to see some of those nitty gritty details.

  • It includes things like power requirements prior to launch, like how we're actually keeping the satellite powered up before it switches over to its own internal power.

  • It also includes the shock loads from the large mechanical events that are occurring during a sense, including all the engine starts, the engine shut offs of separation events.

  • Max Q.

  • Each of those sends a quick pulse of energy for the vehicles, some of which were to get transferred to strongly to the satellite could potentially damaging way.

  • Make sure that that has not occurred by communicating those specific requirements from So just a quick recap.

  • In case you're just joining us.

  • We had a great sense of Falcon nine on the great stage separation first stage in the interstate turn back, too.

  • Of course, I still love you.

  • Ar drone ship off the coast of Florida, unfortunately, lost the vehicle in that landing.

  • However, second stage, as you can see, is performing nominally, we had a confirmation of good separation of you tell sat.

  • And right now we're just waiting on the second deployment for a B s.

  • Speaking of some of that device sensitivity that you're mentioning that we have to satisfy requirements for these satellites have all sorts of sweets of sensors on board to perform different duties that need to be safe throughout the launch process.

  • Some of those include star trackers, son sensors, GPS position, er's things that's held a vehicle where it is, how its position so that knows how to get to its final destination and those what orientation to be in when it does exert some thrust from that island back.

  • And so those sensors on those sweets to stay safe with the lost process so that they could be used right now as they are to get a store final position in particular, they need to also stay clean.

  • Staying clean is a big part of staying safe for those senses.

  • You can imagine if you're trying to look through a telescope, it's just got some smudge on it.

  • You're not gonna be able to see what you're looking at.

  • The same thing happens for the satellite and so inside of the fairing during Ascent way.

  • Make sure that the satellite environment within the fairing is very carefully controlled were actually filling it with Brian nitrogen To drop the relative humidity way.

  • Always make sure that we maintain positive pressure within the hearing was not pulling uncontrolled atmosphere during ascent.

  • If you have condensation that forms that can carry bits of smudge that would affect some of these sensors, we're about 15 seconds away from that second satellite deployed event where hopefully have good live footage that Theo, it's surreal to see that that's the ring of the Earth as a satellite of Florida.

  • Still fantastic.

  • So it turns out that that's most of our stuff done.

  • We need to confirm that the satellites are headed safely to geo stationary orbit, but we have a successful long way did not have a successful landing.

  • Unfortunately again, this all experimental.

  • We're very excited for the day when it becomes a regular, and but where clearly we're not quite there yet and we've had two successful pail of deploy events.

  • So again that just about close it up for space six on invested like a B s and you tell Zach for continuing their center geo stationary.

  • So this time we would like to think our customers A B s as well, and you tell SAT as well as the range and, of course, the whole space X team and you guys, the viewers be sure to check us out on our website www dot space x dot com, But we also got some other cool stuff going on on Facebook.

  • Instagram all over Instagram Page.

  • It's fantastic.

  • Asshole is YouTube and Twitter.

  • Final notes.

three.

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