SpaceX scrubbed its Falcon Heavy launch on April 27 after poor weather interrupted the countdown at 10:48 a.m. EDT, ending a planned liftoff from Launch Complex 39A for the company’s first flight of the rocket in more than a year and a half.
The mission was set to send ViaSat-3 Flight 3, a six metric ton communications satellite, toward geosynchronous transfer orbit on an easterly trajectory. The opening launch window ran 85 minutes, with liftoff planned for 10:21 a.m. EDT, but launch weather officers were tracking the cumulus cloud rule and the surface electric fields rule as the clock ran.
The mission carried more than routine technical weight. It was the 12th flight of a Falcon Heavy rocket, which debuted in 2018, and it came as SpaceX was trying to return the vehicle to flight after a gap of more than a year and a half. The 45th Weather Squadron had forecast a 70 percent chance of favorable weather during the Monday launch window, a reminder that even a strong outlook can turn quickly on the coast.
Dave Abrahamian said the launch marked a personal and programmatic milestone, describing it as the end of an era after more than 10 years working on the project. He said the ViaSat-3 program had changed dramatically since it began, with the company now preparing to fly its third ViaSat-3 satellite after launching the first two and merging with Inmarsat.
Had the launch gone ahead, the two side boosters, tail number 1072 and tail number 1075, were set to separate and target landings at Landing Zone 2 and Landing Zone 40. Booster 1072 was flying for a second time, while 1075 was on its 22nd flight. The center core, tail number B1098, was planned to be expended into the Atlantic Ocean, not recovered.
Abrahamian said Falcon Heavy offered ViaSat a more favorable transfer orbit for electric propulsion than Atlas 5, and that the satellite should be dropped off in an orbit just below geostationary Earth orbit apogee-wise. From there, the satellite was expected to separate from the Falcon Heavy upper stage nearly five hours after liftoff and begin a roughly two-month climb to its operating position at 158.55 degrees East along the equator.
The scrub leaves the company with the same problem that shadows every heavy-lift launch: the rocket and payload were ready to go, but the sky was not. When SpaceX resets this mission, the next count will decide whether Falcon Heavy returns to work after its long pause or waits again on the pad.