On November 22, Saturday morning local time, the US space exploration technology company SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched in California, combining an advanced joint development by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The ocean mapping satellite Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich was put into orbit.

This satellite is manufactured by the German Airbus company and is about the size of a small pickup truck. It carries multiple instruments that can track changes in sea level with an accuracy of only a few centimeters. To measure the sea level, they will send electromagnetic signals down the world's oceans and then measure how long it will take them to bounce back. The mission scientist explained that sea level rise is only one of the consequences of climate change. Previous Earth observation satellite data show that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating, so scientists hope to monitor it for a longer period of time.

The US$97 million satellite is the first of two identical ocean observation satellites. The next Sentinel-6B satellite will be launched in 2025. The two satellites will continue NASA's 30-year effort to record sea level rise and will allow scientists to understand coastlines more accurately than ever before. With the data collected by this satellite, scientists around the world will be able to make higher-resolution observations of the ocean near the coast, which means that more accurate weather forecasts can be made before the storm makes landfall.

The latest launch marks the first time a SpaceX rocket has been launched from California in 18 months. Since most of the missions were launched from Florida, SpaceX moved its second unmanned recovery vessel "Just Read the Instructions" over the east coast, which allowed the company to maintain a rapid pace of launch. Saturday’s launch is the third time that SpaceX boosters have been recovered on land in California. This is different from the typical unmanned recovery vessel capture, because there is no unmanned recovery vessel on the west coast. The company warned local people that when the booster passes through the atmosphere, a sonic boom may be heard overhead.

So far this year, SpaceX has launched a total of 22 rockets in 2020, and has successfully recovered 66 boosters since it resumed work. Most tasks are performed using its recovery booster. SpaceX now has a total of 10 flight-proven boosters, including the newly returned Crew-1 booster for the first commercial manned launch and the booster used on Saturday. If the inspection process goes well, these boosters will continue to perform future tasks.

SpaceX recovered its first booster in 2015, but only really increased its recovery efforts in 2017 and began to launch boosters regularly. This year, the company achieved a new milestone by flying three new boosters. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had predicted that when the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket Block 5 booster debuts, its rocket can fly at least 10 times, with almost no time between flights. It needs to be refurbished and can fly up to 100 times before retirement. He also said that eventually the company hopes to reuse the same booster within 24 hours.

Although this milestone is still not achieved, the SpaceX team has learned a lot about simplifying the inspection process and reducing the refurbishment time for two flights from a few months to just tens of days. So far, the shortest refurbishment time between two flights is less than two months. This record is maintained by the booster B1060, which sent two astronauts to the International Space Station in May and then launched a communications satellite for the South Korean military in July.

Saturday’s launch is the first of two launches that SpaceX plans to conduct this weekend. If everything goes according to plan, the company will launch the second launch in 10 hours, putting the 16th batch of Starlink Internet satellites into orbit. This may help SpaceX set a new launch record, which is four launches a month. (Little)

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate