SpaceX lifts off after chills and thrills

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

SpaceX finally sent its low-cost Falcon 1 rocket into space from a Pacific island launch pad on Tuesday — after last year's unsuccessful launch and two aborted attempts.

One of those attempts was aborted earlier in the day, just as the engine was being fired up for liftoff. The rocket was quickly recycled for a second try a little more than an hour later.

The two-stage, semi-reusable rocket made it into space — but the second stage went into an unstable roll and did not reach its intended orbit, said the company's millionaire founder, Elon Musk.

"It's been a pretty nerve-wracking day," he told reporters.

Although his voice was strained with fatigue, Musk said he wasn't disappointed with the launch.

"It was a very good day for SpaceX," he said. "We successfully reached space and really retired almost all the risks associated with the rocket. ... I feel very good about having successful satellite launches later this year."

The $7 million mission, funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was aimed at demonstrating Falcon 1’s suitability for orbital launches to come. The rocket carried a 100-pound (50-kilogram) experimental payload with monitoring equipment developed by NASA.

Musk, a 35-year-old entrepreneur who made his fortune as a co-founder of the PayPal online payment system, created California-based SpaceX five years ago to develop a low-cost alternative to the launch vehicles fielded by aerospace giants such as the Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin. He has said he's put about $100 million into the venture.

SpaceX This rocket-cam view, transmitted back from space, shows the SpaceX Falcon 1's first stage falling back toward Earth, with the second-stage rocket engine in the foreground.

The company already has about $400 million in future orders booked — including a $278 million NASA contract for demonstrating a next-generation spaceship by 2010. But Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's vice president for business development, told reporters before the launch that “there are many customers who need to see a successful orbital insertion.”

“We have to demonstrate success at some point,” she said. “There’s no question.”

SpaceX’s first launch, conducted from the same Omelek Island launch pad at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific, went up in flames shortly after liftoff — and the kerosene-fueled rocket plus its experimental satellite payload fell back into the sea. A months-long investigation determined that a corroded aluminum nut caused a fuel leak and led to a premature engine cutoff.

Since then, the company has beefed up its system for monitoring the rocket and aborting the launch if something goes awry.

Two abortive attempts
The ground launch control system detected one glitch on Monday, during this week's first scheduled launch attempt. With just a little more than a minute remaining before T-minus-zero, the software stopped the countdown because of a communication glitch, Musk said.

He explained that there was a gap of "a few hundred milliseconds" in the flow of range data during a switchover from land-based communications to radio communications — and during that brief instant, the software detected a break in the data and aborted the launch.

Shotwell said the software was updated and tested overnight, setting the stage for Tuesday's launch attempts.

During Tuesday's first try, the countdown went all the way to zero, and the first-stage engine was ignited. But the pressure in the engine chamber was 0.2 percent below allowable limits, forcing another launch abort, Shotwell said. She said the pressure was down because the Falcon 1's fuel was just a couple of degrees cooler than it should have been. The tanks were quickly recycled and refilled for the day's second attempt.

This time, the launch went off without a hitch.

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