Successful Launch of DSCOVR Sun monitoring Satellite

Post date: Feb 12, 2015 3:3:51 PM

On 11 Feb 2015 SpaceX had a text book Successful Launch of their Falcon 9 rocket carrying the DSCOVR Sun monitoring Satellite.

With a beautiful Sunset evening at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base.

At almost 1 million miles away the L1 Lagrange point is where the gravitational pull of the sun counter acts the pull from the Earth giving a low fuel maintenance point on which to observe the sun and give 15mins warning to Earth of Solar storms.

Unfortunately the Ocean was to rough to land the Falcon 9 first stage on the barge, but apart from that the return would have worked if give the Barge was able to maintain station but one of its four engines had failed as well as very large waves.

The Falcon 9 first stage successfully soft landed vertically in the Ocean within 10 meters targeted.

This all bodes well for the next attempt 8th April 2015 to be more much more than 50% chance of success for the 1st stage landing.

Elon Musk tweeted "High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather."

The droneship will have a significant upgrade for future missions to handle "literally anything".