The SpaceX RTF (Return To Flight) mission for Orbcomm-2 is scheduled for no earlier than this Saturday, December 19th, between 9 and 10 PM EST. There will be a static fire test on the pad on Dec 16th. If that goes well, then that may confirm the launch for the 19th (usually 3 days between a successful test and launch date being officially set).
"SpaceX is currently aiming for a December 16 static fire of the Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral, Florida in advance of the upcoming ORBCOMM-2 launch. The launch of 11 next-generation OG2 satellites is part of ORBCOMM's second and final OG2 Mission at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.* The static fire will verify the readiness of the Falcon 9 rocket and once completed, ORBCOMM'S second OG2 Mission is targeted to launch about three days later between 8pm and 9pm ET. For updates, visit
www.spacex.com and www.orbcomm.com."
It will attempt to soft land a Falcon-9 core. The landing MIGHT be back at the Cape, at the new landing facility previously known as LC-13. That seems to mostly hinge on whether the FAA grants a permit in time, the USAF which runs CCAFS has signed off on it.
This will be the first flight since the failure last June. It is also the first flight of the upgraded Falcon-9 that some have called V1.2, but that SpaceX calls Falcon9 v1.1 FT. The FT refers to "Full Thrust", as the first stage Merin engines have been upgraded to their full design potential to produce more thrust, giving an increase in performance (less gravity loss).
Also, there are other improvements. Super-Chilling of the propellants will allow for more propellant density per volume. As well, some tanks have been made a bit longer to hold more, and some mass has been shaved off.
One of the benefits of this is that the core will be able to have enough fuel to land on an ASDS barge, or even back near the launch site (RTLS), when launching heavier payloads that previously required so much propellant that there was not enough left to try a soft landing.
Of course, changes have also been made to address the failure of the CRS-7 flight, when the 2nd stage blew apart when a helium tank leaked and overpressurized the oxygen tank (One of the struts holding the helium tank in place failed, leading to a cascade of bad things)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_v1.1#Falcon_9_v1.1_Full_Thrust
Here is a recently released photo showing the first stage core
Some minor external changes have been noted in the interstage area. Here is a cropped view of the interstage, which shows that the grid fins no longer have an aerodynamic fairing, and that the RCS thruster quads have been moved down (to left of photo) to about same level as the grid fins.
Compare that with this image of an earlier Falcon (grid fins are not deployed for launch, only after staging). RCS quad at far right.
So, again, this flight MAY try an RTLS landing back at the Cape. Such a decision will not be made until shortly before launch. If the FAA does not issue a permit, then it will try to land on the ASDS landing barge, so SpaceX needs to have the barge ready and indeed it will need to leave port by at least Thursday, IIRC (if the launch is set for the 19th, for an ocean ASDS landing still as the default).
If FAA does issue the permission then the ball is in SpaceX's court to decide to go for the RTLS landing or not (there was some question as to whether the landing facility is ready, nobody outside of a small number of SpaceX officials knows). I will note that this decision by SpaceX to go for an RTLS for THIS flight was a relatively sudden thing. It may well have been in response to the Blue Origin flight last month that got so much publicity over landing a rocket that technically flew into "space", though it was an apples and oranges comparison 99% of the media did not understand.
IIRC, the FAA has never issued a statement on whenever they might issue a permit to try to land. Some speculate that SpaceX leaked their "hopes" of landing this mission near the pad to put pressure on the FAA to speed up their decision. If FAA doesn't bite, blame SpaceX for jumping the gun and trying to pressure the issue publicly, not the FAA.
- George Gassaway