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SpaceX launch is a go for Sunday after successful static fire completed

New and improved boosters need a careful touch

Updated Elon's Musketeers at SpaceX have been on tenterhooks on Friday as the team tried to static fire its improved Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the firm's first commercial launch in months.

Things haven't been going to plan with the launch of 11 Orbcomm satellites, which was supposed to take place this weekend. But, after numerous delays, the test was completed late on Friday and on Sunday the launch will be attempted.

Ever since the explosion of an ISS resupply mission 139 seconds into flight in June, SpaceX has been examining what went wrong and doing some more engineering work. Earlier this week, Elon Musk told the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting that the new Falcon 9 was "significantly improved."

The new design increases the amount of thrust the Falcon can generate and the fuel tanks have been stretched to allow for longer burn times. There's also an improved stage separation system for the first stage main booster.

On Wednesday the rocket was raised at Cape Canaveral in Florida and systems checks began, but problems started to emerge with the new supercooled oxygen fuel used by the rocket. Reducing the temperature of the oxygen to -340F (-207C) increases the amount that can be stored, and the Falcon is going lower than other rocketeers have tried so far.

On Friday the team was less than five minutes from a static test firing when flight control aborted the procedure over concerns about an upper stage throttle valve. The clock was restarted and got down to two minutes from firing before a slow ground side valve halted the attempt.

SpaceX is now fiddling with the ignition timing sequence to see if that will fix the issue. The stakes are high; SpaceX can ill afford another failure, particularly with a Federal Aviation Authority decision as to whether it can try landing the rocket on land still pending.

Of course I still love you

The Of Course I Still Love You heading off its dock. Credit: Lisa Rodriguez

The floating landing pad, named Of Course I Still Love You after the General Contact Unit spaceship in Iain Banks' SF Culture novel The Player of Games, was seen on the water earlier this week but it's not known if SpaceX will try to land the first stage of the Falcon after it launches.

Given that the Orbcomm satellite mission is for low-Earth orbit delivery rather than a higher geosynchronous mission, there should be plenty of fuel left for a landing attempt. Earlier efforts haven't quite made it yet, but after Jeff Bezos landed his rocket safely (albeit at slow speeds and low altitude), Musk wants to show the most expensive stage of the rocket can be recycled.

Later on Friday, the final kinks were ironed out and the Falcon fired up its motors for a test burn. Elon Musk, characteristically, took to Twitter with the news. ®

Updated to add

The launch has been knocked back to today, Monday, at "approximately 8:33pm ET" (01:33 GMT Tuesday).

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