Engineers have since mitigated the issue on the F9-19, 21 and 22 vehicles.
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Up until recent days it was predicted the SES-9 satellite would be the passenger for the RTF mission.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX said Friday that it plans to resume launches by mid-December – about six months after the fiery loss of its unmanned rocket that was carrying cargo to the worldwide Space Station.
With almost 20 years of innovation and expertise in M2M, Orbcomm has more than 1.3 million subscribers with a diverse customer base including premier OEMs such as Caterpillar Inc., Doosan Infracore America, Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., Ltd., John Deere, Komatsu Ltd., and Volvo Construction Equipment, as well as end-to-end solutions customers such as C&S Wholesale, Canadian National Railways, CR England, Hub Group, KLLM Transport Services, Marten Transport, Swift Transportation, Target, Tropicana, Tyson Foods, Walmart and Werner Enterprises.
SpaceX revealed that the SES-9 mission and the launch for Orbcomm satellites could happen by mid-December.
SpaceX on October. 16 said it had changed its return-to-flight plans and would first launch 11 small Orbcomm messaging satellites into low Earth orbit, and then test reignition of the redesigned second-stage engine during the same flight before launching SES’s heavier telecommunications satellite into higher orbit, a mission that will need the reignition capability. That satellite must go into a higher orbit, requiring the refiring of the second-stage engines.
SpaceX also intends to run an Orbcomm-2 mission. This on-orbit test, combined with the current qualification program to be completed prior to launch, will further validate the second stage relight system and allow for optimization of the upcoming SES-9 mission and following missions to geosynchronous transfer orbit. SpaceX will therefor take the opportunity to conduct on-orbit testing of the secondary stage’s relight system.
SpaceX revealed that all concerned parties have agreed to a launch time frame that will see the Orbcomm satellites launched first followed by SES spacecraft sometime in late December.
The decision to switch customers suggests that beneath the confidence routinely demonstrated by SpaceX officials lies a prudence that may have been enhanced by the June failure. The satellite should reach the air force station by the end of this month.
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A successful launch of the OG2 mission, with acceptable post flight reviews, will allow SpaceX to return to a launch cadence that is expected to result in 2016 being the busiest in the company’s history.
