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March 20, 2007
Tuesday
 
 
Trivial problem in Falcon 1 launch software fixed
Dale Amon (Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy)  Aerospace

The Kwajalein launch abort of the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket yesterday was caused by a minor timing problem that would not have affected the launch. According to 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.

I remember the first Space Shuttle launch attempt (STS-1) being scrubbed on first try due to... a software timing glitch between the redundant onboard computers. Certain classes of problems (like LOX valve freeze ups) are just in the nature of the beast, part of the learning curve of a new vehicle and launch control system.

The software fix has been uploaded and a launch attempt is scheduled for 1600 Pacific time today. As I type it is 17:37:32 UTC (GMT) and 10:37:32 AM PDT putting the launch about 5 hours from now. I will return about an hour before launch and give commentary as I did last night.

See you all later!

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