Same Time, Same Station

Here's the update from SpaceX's Elon Musk:

The abort that occurred a few minutes before T-0 was triggered by our ground control software. It commanded a switchover of range telemetry from landline to radio, which took place correctly, however, because of the hardware involved, this transition takes a few hundred milliseconds. Before it had time to complete, our system verification software examined state and aborted.

Our simulations done beforehand all passed, because the simulator did not account for a hardware driven delay in the transition. We considered putting the vehicle into a safe state yesterday and updating the ground control software to make the very minor fix needed, but the safer course of action was to stand down.

Yesterday afternoon and evening (Kwaj time), our launch team updated the software to address the timing issue and verified that there were no similar problems elsewhere. We ran the software through several simulated countdowns and then once again with the rocket and range in the loop.

All systems are now go for launch with T-0 at 4pm California time today (Tues).

You can bet that I'll be here, watching the video and liveblogging.

Updates:

3:40pm PDT. The SpaceX Updates page now says that the launch has been moved to 5:05 pm PDT. The webcast is supposed to start an hour before launch, so I'll check back in with an update in half an hour.

4:15 pm PDT, T-minus 50 minutes. The webcast has started. Fuel and liquid oxygen loading is about 40% complete.

T-minus 33 minutes. LOX loading is complete.

T-minus 15 minutes. Looks like everything is proceeding normally. The launch team is working its way through the countdown checklist. All stations are ready for launch.

T-minus 8 minutes. I've been having trouble getting a screenshot of the rocket, so I'm going to try something here. if this works, then the webcast will also be broadcast here on my blog. Whoops, that sucked. Anyone know why I can't get a frozen screen capture? When I try to do a capture, the live feed comes through rather than a screen cap. Weird.

Ah well. Anyhow, the strongback arm has been retracted. Keep your fingers crossed.

T-minus 2 minutes. The clock keeps ticking, there was a warning on their LOX pressure, but it looks like it isn't a concern.

T-minus 1 minute. My heart is pounding.

LIFTOFF! GO BABY GO! Whoa... wtf... abort?

Geez... they started the engines, and then immediately aborted. The rocket didn't even lift off the pad. At least they didn't blow it up or lose any hardware.

5:12 pm PDT. The vehicle has been put into a safe mode, and they are now determining what happened. No idea yet whether they will try again today.

5:17 pm PDT. It sounds like they are going to reset the clock to T-minus 11 minutes and try again.

5:35 pm PDT. They are looking to reset the clock to T-minus 16 minutes at 5:54 PDT, for a new launch time of 6:10 pm PDT (0110 Greenwich).

5:55 pm PDT, T-minus 15 minutes. The countdown has restarted.

T-minus 13 minutes. Everything is go, they are cleared for launch. Hopefully this third time's the charm...

T-minus ten minutes. Terminal count has started.

T-minus 4 minutes. I'm going to sit back and watch now, no more updates until after the launch.

T+3 minutes or so. The launch went off well, they had separation of first and second stages, and they definitely got into space. Then the webcast feed died. At the time the feed died, the engine bell was getting red hot. Hopefully they didn't have a burn-through.

7:18 pm PDT. Daniel Schmelzer reports that Elon Musk confirms that telemetry on the rocket was lost at T+5:05. The rocket did not make its intended orbit. Dang, double dang. However, the rocket did make it into space, successfully sepearated first and second stages, and the fairing did successfully separate. I'll post another update when I find out what happened to the rocket.

Upperdate: Via Space Liberates Us! comes this gif of the first stage separation. It looks like the first stage impacted the engine bell on the second stage.


Via Kimbal Musk (Elon's brother) comes this image of the second stage engine bell four minutes into the launch. Note the red-hot glow on the engine bell; I don't have access to SpaceX's test data, but I'm pretty sure that such a glow is not nominal, nor a good sign at all.


According to Elon, they did achieve 300 kilometers, which is well beyond the edge of space. It is not known at this time if the rocket achieved a very low eccentric orbit or if it crashed halfway around the world. I'll update as I find out. (Update to the update: it looks like it ended up crashing in the Pacific.)

I just downloaded the hi-res video of the launch, and I'm going to post it on YouTube. As soon as that upload is complete, I'll post the video of the launch here.

Uppestdate: Here's the video of the launch.