SpaceX, which has launched three rockets this year from Vandenberg Air Force Base and landed all three boosters on an off-shore barge, has built a permanent landing pad at the base to replace ocean recoveries.
The Hawthorne company’s 1.6-acre circular concrete landing pad was recently constructed directly west of its launchpad at Space Launch Complex 4 in the hills outside Lompoc. It could be in operation as early as this year.
While SpaceX hopes to rely on it for most West Coast landings, it also proposed to operate a second Pacific Ocean landing barge 31 miles off the Santa Barbara County coastline to recover boosters diverted from the ground by sensitive base operations.
State environmental reviews approved the proposal, with the caveat that SpaceX do some mitigating preparations to protect ocean life from sonic booms and potential explosions.
Federal regulators, still poring over the company’s Vandenberg landing-license application, declined to release any time line for the process, though most steps in the Federal Aviation Administration’s review are completed. SpaceX officials also have to finish radar-communication system tests to direct the robotic booster to the ground.
On Thursday morning, SpaceX returned its 16th launched booster to its only ground-based landing pad — Landing Zone 1 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida — minutes after delivering the Air Force’s secretive X-37B space plane into orbit.
It was the company’s 13th launch of the year, and its 13th consecutive successful launch since an explosion destroyed a rocket on Sept. 1, 2016. Of those, three were from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The boosters were returned to an at-sea barge far off the coast of Baja California.
Its next Southern California launch is set for Oct. 4. But that booster will likely return to the barge off Mexico, and then be towed to the Port of Los Angeles for recovery.
Jason Major, a graphic designer and space blogger, watched Thursday’s booster return in Florida from a nearby viewing station.
“While it’s magnificent to watch a rocket soar up into the sky, it’s even more remarkable to see one come down to Earth,” Major said in an email. “It looks like something out of science fiction.”
SpaceX first managed to bring back a booster intact nearly two years ago, following several failures that resulted in exploded 16-story-tall boosters catching fire and falling into the ocean.
More launches, landing pads coming
Recovering booster rockets is part of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. CEO Elon Musk’s plan to create a fleet of immediately reusable rockets that would make space travel much more affordable.
The decreasing costs of launches are opening up space to new commercial business opportunities for small satellite operators and others.
SpaceX’s long-term goal is to create a path to Mars colonization. But, first, it plans to launch what it calls “the most powerful rocket in the world” later this year. That rocket, the Falcon Heavy, will be able to lift payloads two or three times as heavy as what a Falcon 9 can carry.
But there are several competitors working to best the Falcon Heavy, not the least of which is Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos’ commercial rocket company, Blue Origin.
Next year, SpaceX intends to launch crewed missions to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Musk recently released photos of SpaceX’s futuristic gumdrop-shaped Dragon crew capsule and matching sleek white-and-black astronaut suit.
A second East Coast landing pad next to Landing Zone 1 is under construction to help land Falcon Heavy’s three boosters. SpaceX also operates an at-sea barge off the Florida coast for landings.
Growing pains
Despite devastating explosions that destroyed the company’s signature Falcon 9 rockets in June 2015 and September 2016, SpaceX launched more payloads to orbit this year that ever before.
The company also managed to achieve a series of firsts, including landing its first booster on a barge in the Pacific Ocean in January and delivering the first reused spacecraft to the International Space Station full of scientific research.
Its customers, however, have faced repeated and lengthy delays securing space on Falcon 9 launches.
The company is moving quickly to fix that problem.
In addition to its launchpads at Vandenberg and Kennedy Space Center, SpaceX is retooling the Cape Canaveral launchpad that was badly damaged in the Sept. 1, 2016, explosion. It’s also building a fourth launchpad in southern Texas for use late next year.
SpaceX would have several options to safely land its reusable rocket equipment on the West Coast if the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators approve its bid for a landing site at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Environmental concerns
In addition to the new landing pad at Vandenberg, SpaceX has proposed a backup at-sea barge platform off Santa Barbara to land boosters in case of conflicts on land.
NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service said the company’s proposed ocean-going landing pad 31 miles off Vandenberg near the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary would not cause major environmental damage.
The ground landing pad at the base “is the preferred landing location, (but) SpaceX has identified the need for a contingency landing action that would be exercised if there were critical assets on (the Air Force base) that would not permit an over-flight of the first stage,” the NOAA Fisheries’ review concluded.
The California Coastal Commission and FAA also determined the environmental impacts are minor.
Air pollution from the rocket’s engine burns to navigate back to Earth would be released about 3,000 feet above the ground “and would not have the potential to affect ambient air quality,” the FAA’s determination states. “The U.S. Air Force determined an explosion on the drone ship would not … have a significant impact on marine mammals.”
Any fuel released in an explosion would be quickly evaporated, according to the reviews. Debris that doesn’t immediately sink to the ocean floor would be recovered by SpaceX.
The most significant impact would result from scaring away migrating fish schools and marine mammals.
The booster produces a sonic boom as it zooms back to Earth faster than the speed of sound.
Major, who watched Thursday’s landing, said it was “like rapid cannon fire.”
The explosive sounds would likely send marine animals fleeing, the reviews state.
“SpaceX would implement several monitoring and mitigation measures for marine mammals,” NOAA Fisheries states. “We expect the responses from marine mammals … would be limited to temporary displacement from the area and/or short-term behavioral changes.”
