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India is all set to launch its most sophisticated broadband communications satellite GSAT-20, also called GSAT N-2, into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time next week. The rocket is made by SpaceX, the company owned by 'The First Buddy' of US President-Elect Donald Trump, Elon Musk. However, the question that looms is - how reliable is this American rocket and could India have used another launcher?
Falcon 9 is a partially reusable rocket made by billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX and it had its first flight of the current version in 2018. To date, the rocket has been part of 393 launches and has faced just four failures, achieving a remarkable success rate of 99 percent. A dedicated launch of a Falcon 9 rocket costs about $70 million on average, experts say.
"We got a good deal on this maiden launch with SpaceX," says Radhakrishnan Durairaj, Chairman and Managing Director of New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) that is spearheading this satellite launch. Falcon 9 was the only commercial launcher available for India for the time frame ISRO was seeking.
A standard Falcon 9 rocket is 70 meters high and weighs around 549 tons at lift-off. It is designed as a two-stage rocket that can lift up to 8,300 kilograms to the geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) and 22,800 kilograms to the low earth orbit (LEO). It can also carry nearly 4,000 kilograms to the orbit of Mars. The GSAT N-2 satellite, which the rocket is supposed to carry, has a mass of 4,700 kilograms. India has sought a dedicated launch of the rocket and there will be no co-passenger satellites on this flight.
One of the key features of SpaceX's Falcon 9 is that it is a reusable rocket designed for reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into the Earth's orbit and beyond. It is also the world's first orbital-class reusable rocket. This allows SpaceX to re-fly the most expensive parts of the rocket, which in turn drives down the cost of space access. It is fuelled by rocket-grade kerosene and liquefied oxygen.
The Falcon 9 rocket has had 324 re-flights, which means rockets with reusable parts. From its many missions, it has had 349 landings of the stages. The first stage of the rocket returns to its base after it completes its job, which makes for a spectacular viewing. To date, the maximum a stage has been reused is 23 times. This, SpaceX says, helps lower the cost of launches.
Tracking footage of Falcon 9 first stage returning to Earth after launching the Ax-2 mission to orbit pic.twitter.com/fLPQ7OhJOg
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 3, 2023
In 2021, Falcon 9 set a world record by launching 143 satellites into orbit on a single mission, breaking India's 2017 record of launching 104 satellites on a single mission of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.
This year alone, SpaceX has already had 106 Falcon 9 launches and the company aims to complete a total of 148 launches by the end of the year, which would be a record for any single rocket. In fact, within this week itself, there are four scheduled launches of the Falcon 9 rocket from three different launch sites. In comparison, ISRO has made 95 launches in the last 45 years since India began launching heavier rockets.
The same Falcon 9 rocket is also used for undertaking orbital missions to supply cargo and fly astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The rocket has carried SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on 20 missions to the ISS, out of which, the most talked about is the Crew Dragon mission launched on September 28, 2024, aimed to bring back astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS. They will return to Earth in February 2025 on the Crew Dragon module.