#FALCON 9 SECOND STAGE FULL#
The next generation vehicles after the Falcon architecture will be designed for full reusability. Transcript - Elon Musk at MIT's Aero/Astro Centennial (part 1 of 6) But it sounds like they have given up on that.
SpaceX would love to recover the second stage, which they had planned. This hasn't happened yet, but the next mission, launching DSCOVR (currently scheduled for January 29, likely to be delayed), will see the upperstage place the 570kg payload in Earth-Sun L1, before entering a solar orbit, becoming the first piece of SpaceX hardware to leave Earth's orbit.Ī mission to LEO obviously leaves the second stage in a very different orbit than a GEO mission, where perhaps they boosted to some odd 80,000M X 250M orbit, where the satellite bus will correct the orbit after it is done with the second stage. This has been the case for Falcon 1 Flights 4 & 5 which remain in a nearly equatorial LEO to this day, as well as the first 5 Falcon 9 flights - of which COTS1 performed an unannounced upper stage restart boosting it into a 290x10,700km orbit & CASSIOPE, which attempted a "sideways" upperstage restart which failed, stranding it in a 900km polar orbit. Some of the largest items found intact were the Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessels (COPV's), which stored helium. It made quite the fireworks on reentry though: Not always! The upper stage of AsiaSat 6 reentered over Brazil and parts of it were found scattered in an open field. You'd also expect the stage to disintegrate upon reentry, wouldn't you. It was launched on January 6 and decayed May 28. In the latter, it was in excess of 90,000km. The standard apoapsis for GTO is about 35,000km, but for the first two GTO missions (SES-8 & Thaicom 6), they were injected into what is known as a "Supersynchronous Orbit" with an apoapsis beyond 35,000km. No deorbit profile has been attempted as it presents SpaceX with a liability if the stage decides to explode, scattering debris in GTO (additionally, if not enough fuel remains, they cannot safely deorbit either). At this time, none remain in orbit, as the periapsis of each is so low (~200-300km) that they decay within 2-6 months.
So far, this has been standard operating procedure for all 4 Falcon 9 upper stages that have delivered communications satellites to GTO. We know this because occasionally SpaceX will post a NOTAM declaring the zone unsafe for a certain time. This has been done on every LEO mission since CRS-3 (including Orbcomm OG2), and usually results in the stage being deorbited Southsouthwest of Australia in the Indian Ocean (close to the area where MH370 was lost). This is done for missions where the upper stage has enough remaining fuel reserves to ensure an intentional decay can occur safely. It's not an insurmountable technical challenge. There's actually a few outcomes of the second stage that can occur (and some interesting tales to go along with them), but as geoffc has mentioned, second stage reuse is no longer planned for Falcon as Musk thinks the resources to develop it are better spent elsewhere.
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