CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Feb. 11 (UPI) — SpaceX’s DSCOVR-carrying Falcon 9 rocket had been frustrated by several days of uncooperative weather, but the launch finally happened Wednesday evening. The rocket’s high-tech cargo, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, is now en route to deep space.
The Falcon 9 and DSCOVR spacecraft telemetry is telling ground controllers that everything is OK,” officials announced a half-hour into the mission.
The rocket blasted off at 6:03 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral, Florida. But while weather was decent enough to seen Falcon 9 and DSCOVR skyward, stubbornly stiff winds did force SpaceX to abandon its plans to return the rocket to a landing barge in the ocean.
The last time the aerospace company attempted the feat the rocket hit the landing platform, floating in the Atlantic. But its entry was too fast and at the wrong angle, and the rocket was destroyed upon impact.
And while each attempt has seen the aerospace firm getting closer and closer to perfecting its plans for reusable rocketry, another attempt was not to be on Wednesday.
“The drone ship was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather,” SpaceX said in a statement. “We are experiencing just such weather in the Atlantic with waves reaching up to three stories in height crashing over the decks. Also, only three of the drone ship’s four engines are functioning, making station-keeping in the face of such wave action extremely difficult. The rocket will still attempt a soft landing in the water through the storm (producing valuable landing data), but survival is highly unlikely.”
The rocket was originally supposed to carry the new Earth-observing satellite of NASA and NOAA into space on Sunday, but the early evening attempt was cancelled due to problems with a “telemetry item” and an “Air Force range” issue with one of their radars.
But after another two days of delays, DSCOVR is on its way to its final orbit, one million miles from Earth. There it will have a constant view of the half of the Earth lit by the sun. It will watch both the sun and the Earth and track solar radiation that might interfere with communication systems. DSCOVR is a joint mission between NASA and NOAA.
Thor Benson contributed to this report.
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