WASHINGTON — The launch of NASA’s Psyche mission represents the start of the agency’s use of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, which the agency will depend upon for a few of its biggest science and exploration missions this decade.
A Falcon Heavy is scheduled to lift off Oct. 13 at 10:19 a.m. Eastern carrying the Pscyhe mission to the metallic asteroid of the identical name. NASA elected not to aim a launch Oct. 12 due to poor weather expected at launch, with a 40% probability of favorable weather for this instantaneous launch window.
The launch might be the eighth flight of the Falcon Heavy but the primary dedicated to NASA. Previous launches, after the demonstration launch of the rocket in February 2018, were for business and U.S. military customers.
At a pre-launch briefing Oct. 11, Julianna Scheiman, director of civil satellite missions at SpaceX, noted the launch might be the primary company mission to fly under the NASA Launch Service Program’s Category 3, used for high-value missions that seek to reduce launch risk. That requires several successful launches and extensive agency reviews. “Which means Falcon Heavy has been through the wringer,” she said.
NASA has, in recent times, increasingly turned to Falcon Heavy for major missions. The rocket is under contract to launch the GOES-U weather satellite and Europa Clipper planetary science mission in 2024. That might be followed by the primary two modules of the lunar Gateway, the HALO module and Power and Propulsion Element, launching together. Falcon Heavy may even launch the Roman Space Telescope observatory in 2026.
Falcon Heavy has, in some cases, been the one option for NASA with the upcoming retirement of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 and delays with that company’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s Latest Glenn.
The agency sought and received some accommodations from SpaceX regarding this launch. After the corporate postponed a Falcon 9 launch of Starlink satellites from neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station late Oct. 8 due to weather, SpaceX said it might prioritize the Falcon Heavy launch, postponing the Starlink launch until after Psyche lifts off.
That was done on the request of NASA. “Now we have requested certain setbacks and SpaceX has accommodated our request,” said Tim Dunn, senior launch director for NASA’s Launch Services Program (LSP). “We did ask them to face down on that Starlink [launch] earlier this week.”
That postponement, he said, ensures that engineers have enough time to guage data from a previous launch before approving the Falcon Heavy launch. They were busy reviewing from one other Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base that took place early Oct. 9. The Florida Starlink launch has been rescheduled for the evening of Oct. 13, assuming the Psyche launch takes place as scheduled.
As with Falcon 9, NASA has accepted some extent of reusability with the Falcon Heavy. The 2 side boosters might be making their fourth launch on Psyche, having previously been used for 2 Space Force missions and the launch of the Jupiter 3 business communications satellite. The identical side boosters might be used on the Falcon Heavy launch of Europa Clipper in a 12 months, which might be their sixth flight.
“That’s the family of flights, as you’ll be able to tell, that we’re comfortable with today, but we’re all the time continually data and attempting to push that forward,” Dunn said.
While SpaceX also commonly reuses payload fairings, that just isn’t the case for Psyche. “We weren’t ready for reused fairings on Psyche,” he said, which extends to other NASA missions launching on Falcon. “Now we have begun the dialogue and we’re working with SpaceX, and I do see LSP and NASA reusing fairings in the longer term.” He suggested that NASA could be able to reuse fairings on its launches by late 2024 or early 2025.