Fleet are on the final approach to Port, it's currently 4:30am local time.
That’s one scorched booster, still standing on JRTI at the moment, in the rain. B1046.3 arrived back at port earlier this morning after launching and landing for the 3rd time during the SSO-A mission. What. A. Sight. #spacex
While #SpaceX didnt nail landing the first stage from today’s successful CRS-16 launch, their west coast team was busy recovering the thrice flown booster from monday’s SSO-A launch (B1046). 2018 has been an incredible year for spaceflight. @NASASpaceflight
Congratulations to @SpaceX for launching and landing a reusable #Falcon9 rocket booster for the third time!
Legs are being removed from B1046.3 at port of LA. #spacex @Teslarati
First grid fin has been removed from the 3x flown Falcon 9 standing at port of LA. Been wanting to see this happen for years. So NEAT! #spacex @Teslarati
Clearly SpaceX still have work to do on leg retraction.Yes, it was stated several weeks ago that the existing stage cap and hoist cables were not lifting the legs properly, combined with some misalignment with the lock clamps on the legs and rocket barrels were not lining up properly. Can't find the related post just now.
Some scorchy landing leg closeups of B1046.3 on 12/7. #spacex
The most common question that I have received since launch has been “How did it go?”. The short answer is 100% mission success since our system did everything it was designed to do. The next question is “How are the customers doing?”. Overall they seem to be doing extremely well. One customer was not deployed, as expected, because we sealed them inside their dispenser when they could not demonstrate adequate licensing. We strongly suspect that a second spacecraft did not fully deploy from their customer-provided dispenser, which is still under investigation. Currently all but six spacecraft have been contacted by their owners and we hope that the organizations still working to contact their spacecraft have success in the next few days as all objects are positively identified and labeled by CSpOC.
From SpaceFlight:Quote...One customer was not deployed, as expected, because we sealed them inside their dispenser when they could not demonstrate adequate licensing. ...https://www.spaceflightindustries.com/2018/12/20/sso-a-smallsat-express-wrap-up/
...One customer was not deployed, as expected, because we sealed them inside their dispenser when they could not demonstrate adequate licensing. ...
We are happy to report that three new Swarm satellites launched into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on the SpaceX SSO-A on December 3. They have been reporting their telemetry back to our ground stations and are in great health. SpaceBEE-5, SpaceBEE-6, and SpaceBEE-7 were granted launch approval and radio frequency communications testing approval by the FCC (0976-EX-ST-2018) earlier this fall. We thank the FCC for its smooth processing of this license. We now have seven Swarm satellites in LEO.
...We have 42 SSO-A spacecraft with confirmed operational status:...possible 23 SSO-A spacecraft which have not been publicly confirmed operational:...