I’ve been interested in rockets and space technology for several years. I recall that when I was first starting to get into it, SpaceX had just landed their first Falcon 9 booster at the landing zone, and were still attempting to land on a droneship. I was watching live when they accomplished that first droneship landing. Regardless of what you or I might think of their CEO, the company has really done some amazing things.
Earlier this year, Sarah and I were in Florida and we were able to watch a rocket launch, our first one to ever see in person. And it was, indeed, a SpaceX launch!
I started writing this post a while ago, then crazy stuff happened, and I’m just getting back to it. Better late than never!
It was an evening launch, and we didn’t go all the way into Kennedy Space Centre to watch it, but we had a great vantage point, along with several other spectators, on a nearby bridge, about 20 km (12 miles) from the launch.
The rocket was lifting off from Space Launch Complex 39A, the historic launch pad where the majority of the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions began their journey. However, interestingly, there was another SpaceX launch scheduled for later that evening from Space Launch Complex 40. We were far enough away that it was a bit hard to tell where the rocket was going to launch from. I had my binoculars, and I found a launch pad that was lit up, and had a Falcon 9 rocket standing on it. I was convinced that it was the right one, until we double-checked the GPS and compass and determined that it was actually SLC-40, where the later launch was happening! Eventually, we found 39A, and saw the Falcon 9 rocket with plumes of condensation around it. This was the one!
The rocket was carrying a very interesting payload, the Intuitive Machines Athena Lunar Lander. This was the IM-2 mission, where the company, Intuitive Machines, was making their second attempt to land on the moon. This was part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, in which there are several companies participating.
I didn’t have a lot of data on my phone, so I kept turning on the SpaceX live stream to get a status update, and then turning it back off again to conserve data. But it all looked like the launch was going ahead on schedule.
And then, it started!
We saw the pad light up with a bright orange glow. I actually had to stop watching through my binoculars because it was too bright! It was nighttime, so the rocket really lit up the night, reflecting on the lagoon between us and the pad. Gradually, the bright little orange “sun” started to rise higher in the sky. Eventually, it got further away and I was able to watch in my binoculars again.
I could see when the rocket started getting into the thinner atmosphere and the exhaust started fanning out rather than going in a straight line, something I’ve seen on live streams many times but had never witnessed in real life. And I saw the Main Engine Cut-Off (MECO) event through the binoculars as well, and when the second stage engines lit up.
Being a Falcon 9 launch, they were also planning to attempt a landing. I wasn’t able to see the booster flip around, because it was dark. But I did see the second stage fly away and gradually recede into the distance. And then, a few minutes later, we saw the re-entry burn of the booster coming in for a landing! It was a brief burn, only 20 seconds or so, but we saw the orange flame off in the distance as it came in. The landing was on a droneship in the Atlantic, and it was too far away for us to see the landing burn, but it did indeed land successfully.
It was such a cool experience to see a launch in person, even from quite a distance. I had watched so many live streams of launches like this one, being there in person was a bit surreal.
Unfortunately, the rest of the mission was not totally successful, although there were some successes. The Athena lander managed to make it into Lunar orbit, and we watched the live stream from home as it came in for a landing, a little over a week later. Some of the instrumentation on the lander was a bit “noisy”, so they weren’t sure if there were going to be problems. Athena performed the deorbit burn, entered the landing phase, performed an 11 minute burn to go into vertical descent…
And then things got a little weird.
The team lost contact for a bit, and when they regained contact, it became clear that the lander was not standing up as it should have been. Instead, the lander was on its side. We didn’t have clear information at the time as to why that happened, but unfortunately it meant that the solar panels aren’t lined up properly, and the batteries couldn’t charge fast enough to keep it online. They were able to trigger some of the science payloads before the batteries died, but it appears that now the lander is offline and the mission is over.
That said, watching the launch was still a very cool experience, and it was a fun (albeit short) mission to follow. Hopefully we’ll get to see another one someday!
