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SpaceX fairing recovery program

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This article is about the SpaceX marine vessel. For the comic book series, see Ms. Tree (comic book).

Ms. Tree
Ms. Tree during its second successful catch of a fairing in 2019
History
Name
  • Ms. Tree since June 2019
  • Mr. Steven 2014–2019
Owner
  • Guice Offshore June 2019–present
  • SeaTran Marine 2014–2019
OperatorGuice Offshore
BuilderGulf Craft
ChristenedNovember 2014
Identification
General characteristics
TypePlatform supply vessel
Tonnage
Length205 ft (62 m)
Beam34 ft (10 m)
Draft5 ft (1.5 m)
Depth13 ft (4.0 m)
Installed power10,300 bhp (7,700 kW)
Propulsion4 × Cat 3516C DH
Speed32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph)
Capacity84 (maximum)
Notes[1][2][3]

Ms. Tree, formerly known as Mr. Steven,[4] and its sister ship, Ms. Chief are marine vessels chartered by SpaceX as platforms for recovery of rocket payload fairings. These ships have been retrofitted with large nets that are intended to catch fairings—to prevent the fairings from making contact with seawater—as a part of an iterative development program to create technology that will eventually allow rocket payload fairings to be economically reused and reflown.

Ms. Tree was used for SpaceX Falcon 9 fairing recovery experiments on a number of occasions in 2018 and early 2019, while named Mr. Steven. The ship first successfully caught a descending fairing in its large net on June 25, 2019 during the STP-2 mission from a Falcon Heavy flight, coincidentally on its first fairing recovery voyage after the ship had been renamed Ms. Tree following a change of ownership.[4]

History

The ship was originally built in 2014 for SeaTran as a platform supply vessel to support fast crew transport operations. The vessel was named Mr. Steven after Steven Miguez, the father of SeaTran CEO Blake J. Miguez.[5]

The vessel subsequently was chartered by SpaceX for an experimental program to provide surface marine "catch and recovery" operations for a test program attempting to bring the large 5.2 by 13.2 meters (17 ft × 43 ft)[6] Falcon 9 launch vehicle satellite fairings—separated at high velocity and high altitude—through atmospheric reentry and parachute descent to the ocean surface in a controlled way, and then recover them for evaluation and potential reuse. Since satellite fairings are traditionally expended into the ocean, the fairings used for these tests were somewhat modified test articles. As part of that effort, Mr. Steven was fitted in July 2018 with four large arms which support an elevated horizontal net, similar to a giant trampoline or trapeze net.[7]

In July 2018, Mr. Steven was upgraded and refit with a much larger net with an area of 3,700 m2 (0.91 acres), four times the original net size.[8] The upgrade included replacing the original rigid arms and fitting four new arms, which are each supported and positioned by two extendable shock-absorbing booms.[9] Each arm can be removed and disassembled into six subsections.[10]

In June 2019, Mr. Steven was renamed Ms. Tree (a play on the word mystery), after being purchased by Guice Offshore (GO), a company with a long-standing contractual relationship to SpaceX as a provider of a variety of marine services.[4][11]

On June 25, 2019, SpaceX successfully caught its first-ever fairing half on Ms. Tree in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast as part of the Falcon Heavy STP-2 mission.[12]

On August 6, 2019, Ms. Tree was used to successfully catch another fairing half from a Falcon 9 that successfully launched Amos-17.[13] SpaceX has two complete fairing halves that have reentered from space and been recovered dry, without contacting the saltwater.[14] It is important to maintain a clean environment inside the fairing to protect future payloads.

In August 2019, SpaceX chartered the sister ship to Ms. Tree, the Ms. Chief (a play on the word mischief), as the second fairing catcher vessel so that it could be possible to retrieve both halves of the same fairing on a Falcon 9 launch.[15][11] This second ship is also operated by Guice Offshore, and is therefore titled "GO Ms. Chief" on the ship sides. Ms. Chief was outfitted with a matching set of four wide arms and a catch net by October 2019, in preparation for dual simultaneous fairing recovery attempts.[16]

On 11 November 2019, during the Starlink L1 mission both ships were sent to sea but were recalled due to rough seas so a recovery was not attempted.[17]

On 16 December 2019, both ships were positioned in the Atlantic ocean for a recovery attempt, but both ships narrowly missed catching the fairing halves.[18]

On 29 January 2020, both ships were positioned for a recovery attempt for the Starlink 3 launch. Ms. Tree caught one fairing half, but Ms. Chief narrowly missed the other fairing half.[19]

Fairing reuse

Main article: SpaceX reusable launch system development program § Fairing reuse
SpaceX payload fairing before the launch of TESS

During the first six decades of spaceflight, payload fairings were expended by atmospheric reentry and allowed to drop into the ocean as debris/flotsam.

In 2018, SpaceX began flight test experiments with fairings descending from sub-orbital trajectories above the atmosphere on its Falcon 9 rockets.

As a part of the SES-10 mission in March 2017, SpaceX successfully performed a controlled landing of the payload fairing into the ocean for the first time. SpaceX was able to recover the fairing half from the water after it landed, aided by attitude-control thrusters and a steerable parachute, gently on water.[20][21] At the SES-10 news conference, the company announced its intent to land the fairings on a dry flexible structure, jokingly described by Elon Musk as a "floating bouncy castle", with the goal of reusing the fairings.[22][23] The cost of a fairing is about $6 million which accounts for 10 percent of overall launch costs.[7]

The "bouncy castle" idea led to SpaceX contracting for the fast vessel Mr. Steven which has had modifications to facilitate a large net being strung between long arms that extend considerably beyond the width of the ship. Mr. Steven is equipped with a dynamic positioning system and was first tested after the launch of the Paz satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in February 2018.[24][25] The test was not fully successful because the fairing missed the boat by a few hundred meters but landed safely in the water[26] before being recovered and taken back to port.[25] All four attempts in the first half of 2018 to land a fairing on the recovery ship failed, despite fitting Mr. Steven with larger nets before the July 2018 attempt.[27][28]

In October 2018, to practice recovery outside mission situations, SpaceX performed drop tests of a fairing half from a helicopter with Mr. Steven below.[29] The outcome of the tests has not been publicly released.[30]

On the ArabSat-6A mission on April 11, 2019, SpaceX used the recovery boats GO Searcher and GO Navigator to recover both fairing halves quickly after they landed in the sea; Musk declared the recovery successful and reused the fairings in a later Starlink mission.[17][31] SpaceX used the same recovery method in May 2019 on another Starlink launch.[32]

A first successful fairing catch was made as part of the STP-2 mission on June 25, 2019.[12]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Mr. Steven". www.seatranmarine.com. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  2. ^ "Mr. Steven". MarineTraffic. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  3. ^ "Vessel Documentation Query". www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  4. ^ a b c Ralph, Eric (June 30, 2019). "SpaceX successfully catches first Falcon Heavy fairing in Mr. Steven's/Ms. Tree's net". Teslarati. Retrieved June 25, 2019.
  5. ^ Wattles, Jackie (March 31, 2018). "SpaceX's latest launch and recovery attempt: We explain it all". CNNMoney. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  6. ^ "Falcon 9 Launch Vehicle Payload User's Guide, Rev 2" (PDF). October 21, 2015. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 14, 2017. Retrieved June 24, 2017.
  7. ^ a b Clark, Stephen (June 1, 2018). "New photos illustrate progress in SpaceX's fairing recovery attempts". Spaceflight Now. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
  8. ^ Miley, Jessica (July 18, 2018). "SpaceX's Recovery Vessel 'Mr. Steven' Gets a Massive Net Upgrade". Interesting Engineering. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  9. ^ "SpaceX fairing catcher Mr Steven armless once more for maintenance and upgrades". www.teslarati.com. August 27, 2018. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  10. ^ Ralph, Eric (October 1, 2018). "SpaceX's Falcon 9 fairing catcher Mr Steven preps for October recovery attempt". www.teslarati.com. Retrieved October 3, 2018.
  11. ^ a b Ralph, Eric (October 14, 2019). "SpaceX to catch two Falcon 9 fairings at once with twin nets". TESLARATI. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
  12. ^ a b Etherington, Darrell (June 25, 2019). "SpaceX records another first for reusable rocketry by catching Falcon Heavy fairing with a boat". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
  13. ^ Etherington, Darrell (August 6, 2019). "SpaceX successfully launches twice-flown Falcon 9, catches fairing at sea". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 6, 2019.
  14. ^ "Watch SpaceX's droneship catch a rocket part that fell from space : SpaceX is getting good at this". CNET. August 6, 2019. Retrieved August 7, 2019.
  15. ^ Ralph, Eric (August 13, 2019). "SpaceX adds new ship to fleet after fairing catcher Ms. Tree nails second recovery in a row". Teslarati. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
  16. ^ @realChefJared (October 10, 2019). "The big 4 of #SpaceX east coast. @GOmsChief, GO MS. TREE, GO NAVIGATOR, and @OCISLYDroneship" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  17. ^ a b "Successful launch continues deployment of SpaceX's Starlink network". November 11, 2019. Retrieved November 11, 2019.
  18. ^ "SpaceX launches satellites to orbit, but misses catching nose cone". December 18, 2019.
  19. ^ "SpaceX launches 60 Starlink satellites, catches a fairing". January 29, 2020.
  20. ^ Henry, Caleb (March 30, 2017). "SpaceX demonstrates reusability". SpaceNews. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
  21. ^ Lopatto, Elizabeth (March 30, 2017). "SpaceX even landed the nose cone from its historic used Falcon 9 rocket launch". The Verge. Retrieved March 31, 2017.
  22. ^ DeArmond, Chris (April 24, 2017). "Full Transcript: 3/30/17 SpaceX SES-10 Press Conference". Expedited Transcripts. Retrieved June 24, 2019.
  23. ^ Kelly, Emre (March 31, 2017). "Things we learned after SpaceX's historic Falcon 9 relaunch and landing". Florida Today. Retrieved April 1, 2017.
  24. ^ Etherington, Darrell (February 20, 2018). "SpaceX to use a net boat called 'Mr. Steven' to recover next rocket fairing". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 20, 2018.
  25. ^ a b Baylor, Michael (February 25, 2018). "SpaceX's Mr. Steven, the FSV fairing catcher – NASASpaceFlight.com". NASASpaceFlight.com. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  26. ^ @elonmusk (February 22, 2018). "Missed by a few hundred meters, but fairing landed intact in water. Should be able catch it with slightly bigger chutes to slow down descent" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  27. ^ Bartels, Meghan (July 25, 2018). "SpaceX Lands Rocket in Harshest Conditions to Date and Attempts to Catch Fairing". Space.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
  28. ^ Wall, Mike (July 13, 2018). "SpaceX Gives Nose-Cone-Catching Boat 'Mr. Steven' a Bigger Net". Space.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018.
  29. ^ Ralph, Eric (October 11, 2018). "SpaceX's Mr. Steven returns with Falcon fairing half in net after drop test practice". Teslarati. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  30. ^ Ralph, Eric (October 19, 2018). "SpaceX's Mr. Steven highlights ambiguity of Falcon fairing catches with port return". Teslarati. Retrieved October 30, 2018.
  31. ^ "SpaceX launches re-flown fairing for the first time and breaks a Falcon 9 booster re-use record". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 24, 2019.
  32. ^ Musk, Elon (May 23, 2019). "Fairing halves recoveredpic.twitter.com/F82LE8JlLJ". @elonmusk. Retrieved June 16, 2019.

External references

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=SpaceX_fairing_recovery_program&oldid=962485547"