SpaceX CRS-3 Mission | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX CRS-3 Mission

spacex.com

288 pointsColinWright122 comments

Here is a CRS-3 launch and ascent event list. Please note that all timings and values are approximate, as I have based them on a mix of CRS-2 profile telemetry and CRS-3 mission notes.

T-00:00:00 - Falcon 9 lift-off. Stage 1's nine Merlin engines produce 1.3M pounds of thrust.

T+00:00:07 - Falcon 9 clears the launch tower.

T+00:01:00 - Altitude: 6km, Velocity: 241m/s, Downrange distance: 1km

T+00:01:10 - Falcon 9 achieves supersonic speed.

T+00:01:23 - Falcon 9 achieves maximum dynamic pressure (Max Q).

T+00:02:00 - Altitude: 30km, Velocity: 1km/s, Downrange distance: 23km

T+00:02:30 - Altitude: 51km, Velocity: 1.8km/s, Downrange distance: 59km

T+00:02:41 - MECO (Main Engine Cut-Off) Altitude: 80km, Velocity: Mach 10

T+00:02:44 - Stage 1 separates from Stage 2.

T+00:02:45 - Stage 2's single Merlin engine ignites.

T+00:03:25 - Dragon's nose cone is jettisoned.

T+00:04:21 - Altitude: 148km, Velocity: 3.2km/s, Downrange distance: 346km

T+00:05:22 - Altitude: 182km, Velocity: 4km/s, Downrange distance: 541km

T+00:06:24 - Altitude: 200km, Velocity: 4.6km/s, Downrange distance: 767km

T+00:07:31 - Altitude: 210km, Velocity: 5.6km/s, Downrange distance: 1,080km

T+00:09:40 - SECO (Second-stage Engine Cut-Off)

T+00:10:15 - Stage 2 separates from Dragon.

Elon has just confirmed [1] that they will be attempting to recover the first stage. This is the first flight with the landing leg module attached to the first stage. The landing legs will be deployed over sea for a soft landing in preparation for a land-based recovery.

This will be a historic moment if the recovery succeeds, ushering in a new era of space travel due to the massively reduced operating costs of recoverable engines.

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk

Is Musk planning to have his drones watch the landing? I'm guessing that's what the "recovery ship" would be doing, although his twitter feed is saying that heavy seas might make that difficult.

That would be awesome. I was astounded the first time I saw one of their McGregor, Texas rocket tests from the point-of-view of a hexacopter flying near the rocket's flightpath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZDkItO-0a4

In this video, the copter is actually HOVERING ABOVE the rocket as the rocket descends back down to the launchpad. The only time I've ever seen something like that before was Hollywood (Apollo 13, and then when the footage was re-used in Austin Powers 2).

Quadcopters don't have the endurance to hover in the recovery zone, unless one of the SpaceX recovery ships were to deploy them.

Ideally, you'd use something like a Predator or Reaper with long endurance and stabilized optics. At $4MM per drone (new), that's not outside the realm of possibility.

You don't buy a single predator, you buy a set of them, along with all of the support gear including the ground control station, and support from the manufacturer. - former shadow 200 military drone pilot

Can you rent time from a non-military agency? I know NASA has at least one Global Hawk.

Addition/Edit: They own at least two: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/aircraft/GlobalHawk/in...

Highly unlikely, the big UAVs tend to contain top secret avionics and we don't always want the world to know the capabilities of their payloads. It might be possible, but it would be a lot easier to call IAI or Northrop and ask if they would rent it to you.

Update from Elon [1]:

"Last known state for rocket boost stage is 360 m/s, Mach 1.1, 8.5 km altitude and roll rate close to zero (v important!)"

So it appears it may be a failure, we'll find out soon what went wrong this time. More from Elon regarding what success would be, telemetry wise:

"Rocket boost stage reaching 0 m/s in one piece :) Will know soon. Odds not high." [1]

Regardless, they've demonstrated that the landing-leg module can survive the stresses of liftoff and fully powered flight, particularly at Max Q. This is quite an achievement, and vital for future tests.

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/with_replies

I think you're reading more into his comment than he intended. The first tweet,

    Last known state for rocket boost stage is 360 m/s,
    Mach 1.1, 8.5 km altitude and roll rate close to zero
    (v important!)

Was a very upbeat message in the context of their previous attempts.

This rocket was only doing 360 m/s, but importantly, wasn't rolling at all -- Their last 'test' failed when the rocket started rolling at a very high rate of speed and they lost engine power.

Musk was then asked:

    if anything could go better, what would it be?

To which he replied:

    Rocket boost stage reaching 0 m/s in one piece :)
    Will know soon. Odds not high.

The first line is just a joke that the test would go better if the rocket got to the surface in 1 piece. I think his 'odds not high' statement is just to dampen excitement a bit, since they went into this with a ~40% chance of success for the landing stage.

I believe the 0 m/s refers to the boost stage's speed after a successful landing.

Since this is over the ocean, I interpreted this to mean reaching a state of stable hover.

It does, but the hover is at sea level... ;-)

Agreed, it appears I was unnecessarily pessimistic. Seems like SpaceX has pulled it off [1]:

"Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas."

Congrats to the SpaceX team if this is the case. I've been glued to my laptop since the launch. I can finally say we've made a significant breakthrough in aerospace during my lifetime.

The last time a breakthrough of this magnitude occurred was during the Apollo program.

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856

UPDATE: Further confirmation.

"Flight computers continued transmitting for 8 seconds after reaching the water. Stopped when booster went horizontal."

It appears that we've witnessed history today ladies and gentlemen.

Woooooooo!

I was probably unnecessarily optimistic, but I'm so glad they are making this much progress so quickly!

Wow, I had no idea this was such a breakthrough. I'm not in the industry and I barely know anything about this, but can you explain what it is about recovering the booster that is such a huge breakthrough? Haven't we had recoverable space equipment for ages (e.g. space shuttle?) Forgive what is surely an ignorant question.

The F9R would be the first sub-orbital booster to return to Earth and land vertically under its own engine thrust.

SpaceX suggested that the boosters account for upwards of 75% if the rocket's cost so reuse is a huge economic benefit. SpaceX estimated that it could reduce a launch from $60m to under $10m.

The space shuttle did have recoverable boosters but the refurbishing process offered much less cost savings.

I believe no other rockets provide for booster recovery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_reusable_launch_system_d...

The Space Shuttle was only partially recoverable. There were three main parts to the system.

1. The shuttle itself - this needed extensive maintenance work done to it after each flight.

2. The big orange fuel tank - this couldn't be reused

3. The solid rocket boosters on either side - these had to be completely rebuilt after they splashed down in the ocean (it is easier to splash them down in the ocean than the Falcon 9 first stage, as they separate at a lover altitude).

Overall this didn't save much on costs, with the average cost of a flight (inclusive of development costs) being about US$1.5 billion.

"The shuttle itself - this needed extensive maintenance work done to it after each flight."

Including complete rebuilds for the three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs), they were I gather somewhat needlessly too high performance/sports car types of devices.

In general, the Space Shuttle design was twisted by various unnecessary requirements (e.g. while the Air Force didn't want it, it could originally do a single polar orbit mission, which required extreme heat shield technology to land back at the same location while the earth turned underneath it. This was later mitigated by replacing a lot of those tiles with a ... glass fiber mat???), and to minimize development costs. Solid fuel booster you can't turn off were formerly considered to be unacceptably dangerous for manned missions, but they were the cheapest to develop.

Operating costs? Well, NASA post-Apollo makes the most sense if you view it as a public works project.... Low launch rates, especially post-Challenger after more people realized what an abomination it was, plus a huge fixed work force made it very expensive to operate.

The key engineering problem that they solved is related to fuel and weight. They need more fuel for the landing, but more fuel adds more weight, which requires more fuel for lift off.

They said during the press conference that the 8.5km altitude is when they lost telemetry from the cape due to the stage going below the horizon. Further data will come from the plane, but they didn't have those data yet. So the end of data at that point does not imply a failure.

Your SECO timing was off only by 4 seconds, pretty impressive.

But it doesn't reach the space station until some time on Sunday? Can someone explain the long maneuvering time once it is in orbit?

in short, they save fuel/money at the cost of time.

Instead of going to ISS directly, they have put the Dragon to some cheaper point in the space with some speed vector. After that, it will turn around Earth multiple times, until the orbits of the Dragon and the ISS are closer.

But it's very short and partially incorrect (as they may also have a few correction boosts)

It is primarily due to the fact that changes in altitude with regard to achieving orbital synchronization take time. This is also related to the concept of a launch window. Today's launch had an instantaneous launch window, required to reach all mission objectives, and for Dragon to achieve its precise window of opportunity in space. This means that the launch had to occur at an exact moment, down to the exact second of accuracy.

For a more exhaustive understanding, further explanation and exploration, you will enjoy the following:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_plane_%28astronomy%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_phasing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_rendezvous

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docking_and_berthing_of_spacec...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_window

Obligatory: Then play some KSP.

Or play KSP for a while first, then read the links and understand much more of them instantly.

It's an obligatory thing to say, but combining experience tinkering with these things (KSP) with the reading is the real way to do it!

(Yes, and it seems like I've been flagged for saying it!)

Soyuz made first direct ascent last year, docking within few hours instead of days as usual.

Is this submission being flagged by users, or has it tripped some sort of scoring penalty?

http://hnrankings.info/7609667/

Dropping suddenly from 3rd to 20th on the front page suggests some sort of penalty being applied, but is it community driven, or automated? Even with the new openness about the actions of the moderators on HN I still find some things deeply confusing.

Added in edit: This does bring home just how important upvotes are. I've seen how disproportional the effect is of downvotes on an item's ranking - one downvotes out-weights many upvotes. If you like something, upvote it, or see it sink without trace.

>how disproportional the effect is of downvotes on an item's ranking

I think you mean flagging as there is no down voting of submissions as far a I am aware.

Sorry, yes, flags. I mis-spoke myself - there is indeed no down-voting of submissions, and I was referring to the disproportional effect of flags on a submission's ranking.

I put a moderate moderator flag on it so that it would be lower, but still on the front page. My reasoning: Space X is cool and interesting, but it isn't a major story every time they do a launch.

Edit: We took the penalty off several hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611240

Launches aren't all that often, and this launch has the entirely new feature of looking to recover the first stage. This is a technical project of interest specifically to hackers, I'd've thought, hence the number of up-votes. I know that up-votes alone aren't enough to show that something is relevant or of value, but I thought this was.

Certainly I thought the discussion was interesting.

FWIW, it's not me who has down-voted you. Not least, of course, I can't since your comment is a reply to mine. Personally I think your comment should not be down-voted - it's certainly of value.

Ok, I'll change it.

We have no way of knowing which of these posts are particularly significant. Many people seem to upvote anything with SpaceX in the title, and I'm skeptical that it should be on the front page so often. Since you say this one is unusual, I believe you.

But really, please send questions like this to hn@ycombinator.com rather than posting them in the threads.

p.s. Downvoting that comment is fine; it's an efficient way for users to communicate that I made a mistake there. That's better than posting a low signal-noise reply.

All noted. Email is not always as easy as replying or commenting here, but I'll keep that in mind and try to do so.

Edit for clarity.

Personally, I'd be fine with SpaceX being on the front page every day.

Google/Facebook/Twitter are on the front page all the time, every time they make some little burp. I like those companies and what they do, but SpaceX is 1000x more interesting to me than any of those.

I'll start by saying that I didn't down-vote you, either. I appreciate the feedback that you have been giving our community in recent weeks.

That said, I have said the following before, but I will repeat it here. These launches are important, in a time when, "[...] in the U.S., I think there has been an under-current feeling for the last several years, that could perhaps be paraphrased as, "Where are we heading, as a nation?" I think it is easy for us to lose touch with the pulse of the nation when we are head-down in code at a start-up or elsewhere, but I think this feeling is real. So, this is perhaps at the root of at least some of this passion and excitement. It perhaps affirms, in some way to us, that the collective "We" are still builders." [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4024834

I tend to agree. Shoot, even Hollywood, sees it. Watch this trailer for an upcoming space movie ... it's all scenes from the US's early spaceflight successes, accompanied by Matthew McConaughey saying we shouldn't believe all our best accomplishments are behind us. If this is how smart marketers are advertising the movie, it's a safe bet it's on many peoples' minds.

http://www.interstellar-movie.com/

This isn't a US only site so do we really need the "USA is exceptional" rhetoric ? It actually cheapens the importance of these launches. And I have to agree that not every little launch should be posted but absolutely important moments in the SpaceX journey (which I believe this is).

This isn't a US only site so do we really need the "USA is exceptional" rhetoric ?

Please kindly read my entire previous comment (the one in the link that I provided in the text that you are responding to)... note that I said that I was, "Speaking as an American, here [...]" before I said the quoted text. I believe that the context of my entire previous comment is important.

Respectfully, your interpretation is incorrect. That was not my intention at all, and it does not represent the type of person that I am.

It's not a major story every time they do a launch, but this one was definitely a major story, being the first test of their landing legs during a real launch.

Punishing worthy, interesting stories because there are too many other stories about the company seems really wrong.

Since you posted this well after we removed the penalty from the story, I'm thinking you must not have seen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611240.

The only issue is that it's not always obvious which stories are the worthy, interesting ones.

If it's not obvious, doesn't that mean further research is in order before flagging it?

That's not always possible, nor does "further research" always yield the right answer. Perfection isn't going to happen. Correcting mistakes? That we can do.

Further research does not always yield the right answer, but it a a damn sight better than flagging something popular based on no information.

Even the slightest look into this would have revealed why it is special.

That is a bummer. Compared to other stuff I see sitting on the front page for hours, I'd say a Space X launch that is testing first stage recovery is a pretty big deal.

We heard that, which is why the post went back to the top 10. We're not experts, so it takes feedback to get this right.

You make a good point about stuff sitting on the front page for hours, though. I've been wondering whether the mega-popular posts of the last day or two are choking out good new stories.

I've noticed some stories hang out on the front page for days recently. Is that recent change?

No, we haven't made any change that would affect that. The most popular stories get much higher vote totals than they used to. That might explain their inertia.

I would expect the biggest factor is lower traffic over Easter - and that the "gravity" calculation isn't fully normalized for total traffic volume. (The new queue is probably slower than usual too).

IIRC it's usually like this over holidays.

What's with all the downvotes? He simply states his reasoning, and after a mea culpa later on, makes the change people ask for (un-flag the story). Disagreeing is one thing (and isn't that what comments & conversation is for?), but voting the comment down seems petty.

Downvotes are considered a legitimate expression of disagreement on HN. This is pg-level policy.

And the result is that important information is now silenced. The comment is now greyed out. Disagreement should not lead to silencing.

That's dramatizing it a bit much. The text is still there. If you're interested in reading it, you can. I regularly highlight grayed out text to see what it says, but I also read YouTube comments for fun. If you feel the grayed-out text is too blatant, then ask for a feature where you can use Javascript to toggle downvoted comments for visibility.

I think that's over-moderation. There's obviously interest and reasonable minds can disagree on the importance. This is not "just another Space X launch". 1) it's going to the space station and 2) it includes the fascinating concept of the rocket landing back on earth.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7611240

Surely you are kidding? This isn't just any space-x launch.

That Russian spy-boat Elon Musk tweeted about seems to be moving away from Cape Canaveral:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-79.71987/c...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457190623640969216

Anyone know where the stage is supposed to be coming down?

It's already south of Miami? That's a fast tugboat.

Tugboat was a very generous description:

Some pictures: http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/of/ships/photo_keywor...

From a Naval Book:

http://books.google.com/books?id=tkGDkpkQh-sC&pg=PA272&lpg=P...

* 4 diesel engines

* 24,480bhp, 2 shafts

* 18 knot cruising speed

* World's most powerful salvage tug (at the time)

* Two 8-ton cranes, one 3-ton crane

> * World's most powerful salvage tug (at the time)

> * Two 8-ton cranes, one 3-ton crane

I had joked on Reddit in the CR3 thread that Putin would brazenly try to snag the first stage. Now it doesn't seem so funny.

First a Super Bowl ring, next the first stage of a used rocket.

At an absolute minimum this flight has shown that SpaceX is capable of testing reuse of the first stage on operational launches (including use of landing legs on the first stage) with no impact to the launch (provided there is sufficient payload margin, which there will be on any further Dragon launches). That's a big deal, it means they get tens of millions of dollars in free testing subsidized by their customers, and that gives them a huge leg up in working towards reusability.

As of about an hour ago, this flight has also shown that they can successfully do a powered landing of the first stage. This has been one hell of a good day.

That's a massive understatement. This is history in the making.

Well, the original plan was to use several :-D smileys to convey the well-deserved breadth of my grin, but when I typed them all out they looked tacky.

... Ah, to hell with it. A modified Falcon 9 rocket stage did a powered landing for the very first time. Eventually this could cause launch costs to plummet, and open up space in earnest. EEEEEEE!!!! :-D :-D :-D

>Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas.

Success!

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856

Alan Boyle reports "first-stage reignited during descent and video was being sent back." https://twitter.com/b0yle/statuses/457248899464314880

Yes he did, and no video was forthcoming. I would have loved to skip the incredibly smooth and nominal Dragon launch for some good coverage of the first stage test.

Anyone know what the timeframe is for the test of the first-stage soft landing? The livestream was just showing the Dragon and seems to have ended now.

It'll already have happened by now. We'll see if they release footage or not. Usually the footage isn't very clear because of condensation and water spray.

Elons wife: Not sure what happened to main stage. Trying to confirm a visual, I think.

https://twitter.com/TalulahRiley/status/457245124406165505

Huh, I could've sworn I read somewhere that he and Talulah had divorced a while back.

According to her wiki page, that either was a hoax or they reconciled.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/elon-musk-divorce_n...

From Musks wiki page: Also, in a 60 Minutes interview on Mar 30, 2014 with CBS journalist Scott Pelley, Musk and Talulah are still happily together in their marriage with Elon's five children from his first marriage with Justine Musk. [0]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

They got back together.

I can't believe we wasted time on this. Never underestimate the power of trying to correct someone on the internet chuckle

Elon Musk's twitter feed is worth a watch to get news:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk

Elon just Tweeted this (!)...

F9R First Flight Test | 250m

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjWqQPWmsY

They start making it look easy. I wonder how many grasshoppers were damaged until they had the controls set up right.

0 I think. I think there was only one Grasshopper, which is now retired (visible in the video!) and replaced by F9-R.

Apparently management was actually mildly annoyed that Grasshopper team didn't break one, as that suggests they weren't pushing it hard enough. I think it may have been more "tongue in cheek annoyed" though.

That is what I call supportive management.

Launch success. I'm incredibly excited to hear about first stage recovery attempt. This is going to be huge no matter the outcome.

My hunch is we won't see or hear much about it unless it's a (relative) success, then we'll have video from multiple drone POVs.

Given that the hexacopter range isn't that great, I doubt you can fly a hexacopter in from outside the keep-out area.

Nice sense of humor from Elon: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457190623640969216

Are there alternatives to livestream.com for the livestream?

It works only intermittently from northern Europe. It only plays back for a few seconds and then stops for buffering...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7610769

VLC/mplayer live stream

pip install livestreamer

apt-get install rtmpdump

pip install python-librtmp

livestreamer ustream.tv/nasahdtv best

python package python-librtmp needs ubuntu package librtmp-dev and python package cffi. python package cffi needs ubuntu package python-dev.

So:

  sudo apt-get install python-dev
  pip install cffi
  sudo apt-get install librtmp-dev
  pip install python-librtmp

It sounds like it was successful "Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas." - Elon Musk

Link: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/457307742495993856

Would it be possible to add "live webcast at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT"?

The original submission had something like that, but it's been changed by the mods to be less informative.

<fx:shrug />

Currently the countdown shows an intended launch at roughly 18:45 UTC, 19:45 BST. It may change because of the weather, so you'll need to keep an eye on it, or keep the window open and the sound on.

Is NASA ever this quick to restart a launch mission after a scrubbed attempt? 3 days seems blazingly fast considering the risks and possible consequences.

Arguably, SpaceX's raison d'etre is fast turnaround on launches. NASA's... well... if y'all want to have the political debate about their true raison d'etre in reply to this I can't stop you, but let's just agree that in practice, fast turnaround has always been a stated goal, but not one they've been able to put much work towards in practice. (i.e., if one were simply handed a Shuttle design and asked to figure out what the top priorities were in its design, one would be very unlikely to answer "fast turnaround in launches", regardless of the process that got us there.)

When my former co-worker was in Kwajalein he got to watch a SpaceX launch. It was initially scrubbed and all the Air Force people went home, but he stayed around and they had a successful launch a few hours later.

STS-128 launched 4 days after a scrub. STS-134 had 3 days between attempts. STS-74 was scrubbed due to weather at landing sites, and launched the next day (about 30 hours later).

The older shuttle launches generally had less penalty for missing their launch window because they were not going to ISS (or Mir or Hubble) and didn't have to wait for a very specific launch window for rendezvous, which can take days.

Apollo never had a scrub, which is nice because missing your launch window to the moon can mean waiting another month. The Saturn V could turn around in 2 or even 1 day, theoretically. They did have to do a few holds.

This launch, if it had been scrubbed, had another launch window tomorrow, just a few minutes shy of 24 hours (3:02PM EST).

Cool! Would like know how did the landing with legs go. By the way, here's the launch video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65zDaDSvIww

"Dirty" water "geyser" rose up as high as the rocket itself :) Looks like water from acoustic suppression system had created a puddle under rocket?!

The `Date` section says

  Fri Apr, 18 2014 2:45 PM EDT — Fri Apr, 18 2014 4:00 PM EDT

But the `About` section says

  ... targeted to launch on April 14 at 4:58 pm EDT ...

Looks like they copied and pasted the `About` info from their last launch.

The earlier attempt was scrubbed - this is a re-scheduled attempt.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/statuses/455798296557002752

I am having a problem finding video of the launch that was scrubbed after ignition, do you have somewhere?

I believe it was in Dec of 2010 but not sure.

It was Thanksgiving; I'm pretty sure 2013.

Good news: Elon just tweeted "Data upload from tracking plane shows landing in Atlantic was good! Several boats enroute through heavy seas."

News roundup: http://techwatching.com/page/spacexs-third-iss-supply-missio...

Congrats to the folks at SpaceX on another great launch.

If the launch is a success, how will the world react?

"The World" won't notice and won't care. By the time Apollo 13 came around television networks weren't bothering to cover the launches and in-flight transmissions - not interesting enough. News services have no imagination and no understanding of the enormity of these events.

The other day I went out to watch the ISS fly over and some random passers-by asked what I was doing. When I explained they were, quite frankly, incredulous. They had no idea that there were people flying around the Earth in an oversized tin can, in constant danger of being hit by space debris, doing experiments and increasing our understanding. No idea. I'm still not convinced they believed me.

The general population doesn't care.

Everybody I've ever talked to cared - but the news networks can only carry so much news and 23:59 of the day needs to be devoted to missing planes and whether the President of America or Russia is more manly.

Reuse of the Falcon 9 first stage probably won't make huge news waves until they land the stage back near the launch site.

Is there a livestream of this?

http://new.livestream.com/spacex/events/2833937

Edit: Actually, just checked, that might not be the case. The link in the original submission will somehow, somewhere lead to a livecast. Still checking.

thanks brosef

I think that is the correct link. On the main "Livestream" site, the SpaceX URL is the one you have listed. It says 2:45 PM (18:45 UTC); presumably, coverage will begin at that time.

This may be another option, but I'm not entirely sure:

http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

Anyone chromecasting this successfully?

New cubesats deployed too!

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