F2RE launches for its 5th time this year
On the 24th of March at 16:45 GMT, F2RE lifted off from Pad 01B at the National Space Center in Euresia. At liftoff, the vehicle cleared the pad with a full set of reflown engines for the first time, successfully completing a full-duration ascent burn.
Immediately after stage separation, the booster ignited six engines to boost itself back towards our LZ-1 site, which has been relocated into the Pad 01B enclosure. After transitioning to two engines for the final phase of the boostback burn, the vehicle shutdown its engines and polled go for return.
The booster successfully reoriented itself and began to control its aerodynamic descent using the four fins at the top of the vehicle. At 4km the vehicle commanded the start of 12 engines, all of which successfully ignited to slow down the vehicle, culminating in the smoothest and most accurate landing by F2RE ever.
Following stage separation, the second stage Aeolus 2 engine successfully ignited and completed a full-duration burn which put the vehicle in a parking orbit. Approximately 2 minutes later the second stage restarted the Aeolus 2 engine and successfully inserted the payloads into the targeted orbit. However, after the expected shutdown of the Aeolus 2 engine, the vehicle was still accelerating and was gaining an extra 0.8m/s of velocity every second.
Following extensive analysis of telemetry, we have concluded that this acceleration was likely caused by a valve in the Aeolus 2 engine which failed to close entirely, causing a LOX leak which lasted for 13 hours. The first batch of payloads were deployed at the expected time, but due to the acceleration their orbits could be off by as much as 250km.
Because of the leak on the Aeolus 2 engine, we were ultimately forced to abort the next two relights of the engine to get the rest of the payloads to their orbits. The teams commanded an early deployment of the second batch of payloads.
This valve issue was likely an error in quality control and the engine was somehow able to pass through safety checks. Going forward, we will be improving our pre-flight checks to mitigate any faulty hardware making it to the launch pad.
We would like to apologize to the customers who entrusted us with their payloads, and we will be offering 50% refunds for any inconveniences that have been caused.