The Verge by Loren Grush 5/15/2017
But that means no landing this time
This evening, SpaceX will attempt to launch its sixth Falcon 9 rocket of the year, sending a communications satellite into orbit for the company Inmarsat. But don’t expect one of the company’s signature landings after launch this time. Unlike most of its missions these days, SpaceX will not try to recover the Falcon 9 post-takeoff.
That’s because the requirements of this mission would make it pretty hard to land the rocket after launch. The satellite that SpaceX is launching, called Inmarsat-5 F4, is larger than a double-decker bus and weighs nearly 13,500 pounds. That makes it perhaps the heaviest single probe that the Falcon 9 has ever lifted. Plus, the satellite is going into a particularly high orbit called Geostationary Transfer Orbit — a path 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. Both of these factors combined mean that the Falcon 9 will need to use a whole lot of propellant during launch to get the satellite where it needs to go. That means there will be very little propellant leftover to perform a landing.
---Tonight’s Falcon 9 is scheduled to take off around 7:20PM ET from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. ---
Launch was successful
More:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/15/15640268/spacex-launch-watch-live-stream-falcon-9-rocket-inmarsat
