KSC is located in Florida Peninsula, USA. This peninsula extends from the North American continent to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, and there is a triangular cape extending into the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of its east coast, namely Cape Canaveral. The name comes from the Spanish explorer. When they came here in the17th century, they found that it was a sharp corner covered with sugar cane, so they called it Cape Canaveral. In Spanish, "Canaveral" means "sugarcane field".

Cape Canaveral has always been an inaccessible place, full of swamps, sand dunes and orange orchards; In the eyes of missile developers, this is an ideal place to test missiles. There are three reasons:

1947, the us military turned cape Canaveral into a missile testing ground, and launched its first missile on July 24, 1950. Since then, the military has successively built dozens of launch pads, making Cape Canaveral the most important launch pad in the United States, and conducted a large number of flight tests of missiles and rockets.

In order to meet the launch needs of Apollo manned spacecraft, 1962, NASA requisitioned 324 square kilometers of land on Merritt Island to build KSC Kennedy Space Center; ; Merritt Island covers an area of 380 square kilometers and faces Cape Canaveral across the banana river. KSC is the most important place for NASA to test, prepare and launch manned and unmanned spacecraft. Its name is in memory of the late American President John F. Kennedy.

Launch pad 39A was originally built to send astronauts to the moon. Later, it was used as the launch platform for the space shuttle of NASA. In the early 1960s, in order to launch Saturn V rocket with great thrust, NASA began to build a launch pad that could support the heavy Mars launch mission. As a backup launch site, NASA has also built two launch pads: 39A and 39B, which can support Saturn V launch mission.

The whole facility is octagonal and covers an area of 28 square kilometers. The launch pad is located in the center of the facility and is a rectangular reinforced concrete structure with a height of120x100m. ..

The launch pad was completed in 1963, 1965, 65438+ 10, and most facilities of the launch pad for 39A have been completed. 1967165438+1On October 9th, the first flight of Saturn V rocket took off from launch pad 39A. Up to the last use of 20 1 1, launch pad 39A has carried out 94 launch missions, including 12 Saturn V rocket launches and 82 space shuttle launches.

Since the space shuttle 20 1 1 retired, the launch pad 39A of Kennedy Space Center has been idle. In order to control costs and cut high maintenance costs, NASA once considered dismantling or abandoning the launch pad.

With the increase of Space X's launch missions, Musk signed a lease contract with NASA in order to cope with the intensive launch missions. According to the contract, NASA leased the 39A launch pad to Space X for 20 years. During this period, all operations and maintenance of the launch pad will be undertaken by Space X Company. As the only condition, NASA requires X space to keep some historical landmarks of the launch pad.

At present, Space X has three space launch pads, namely, pad 39A of Kennedy Space Center, pad 40 of Cape Canaveral Air Force Base and pad 4E of vandenberg air force base in Southern California.

Falcon 9 is a recoverable medium-sized launch vehicle developed by Space Exploration Technology Company. Falcon 9 completed its first launch on June 4, 20 10, and its first recovery on February 26, 20 15.

2019165438+1October1kloc-0/,the American Falcon 9 rocket was launched, setting a load record for Falcon 9 rocket (15.6 tons); On April 22, 2020, American Space Exploration Technology Company sent the seventh batch of 60 satellites of the "Star Chain" program into space with a Falcon 9 rocket, and continued to build a global satellite Internet.

On May 30, 2020 15: 22 local time, the "Dragon" spacecraft of American Space Exploration Technology Corporation was successfully launched with the "Falcon 9" rocket.

Falcon 9, a space exploration technology company, offered a standard price of $62 million and was launched into low-earth orbit (Leo, with an orbital height of about 400-2,000 kilometers) with a maximum load of 22.8 tons. Launched into geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO, elliptical orbit, perigee 1000 km, apogee about 36000 km), with a maximum load of 8.3 tons.

The standard price of the space exploration technology company's heavy falcon is 90 million US dollars, and it is launched into low earth orbit (LEO) with a maximum load of 54.4 tons. Launched into geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) with a maximum load of 22.2 tons; Launched to Mars, maximum load 13.6 tons.

The take-off thrust of Falcon 9 can reach 775.6 tons, and the heavy Falcon can reach 23 13.3 tons.

In order to realize the first-class recovery of rockets, the space exploration company has gone through three stages: one is to demonstrate the feasibility of the verification machine and verify the technology; Second, the "Falcon -9V 1. 1" rocket has been verified by seven recovery flights; Third, Falcon -9FT was recycled three times. The third stage mainly solves the three technologies of "controllability", "precise aiming" and "stable landing" of the first stage reentry return.

The first stage of Falcon 9-foot rocket was successfully recovered on land, which took the first step of rocket reuse. After that, successful recycling at sea is the second step. The value, environmental conditions and technical difficulty of the two successful recoveries are different.

The carrying capacity of the land-based recovery rocket is lost by about 40%, that is, only the near-earth launch mission can implement the rocket first-class recovery strategy; At present, Falcon -9FT can carry out the recovery strategy of launching missions below 5t in GTO orbit, which is expected to cover more than 80% of the launch market.

Space Exploration Technology Company has built an autonomous spaceport unmanned ship (ASDS) with a width of only 10 meter. Through many experiments, space exploration technology company realized the technology of "how to automatically land vertically at the landing site" after the liquid fuel rocket launch mission.

The difficulty of this technology lies in: firstly, Falcon 9 rocket is as high as 14 floor, and the climbing speed reaches 1600m/s, just like "putting the handle of a rubber broom on the palm of your hand in strong wind" to make the rocket rise vertically without injury.

Secondly, the ASDS at sea is not fixed, and the fuel rocket landing must be balanced and stable with the help of the engine.

Space exploration technology companies are constantly improving their technologies and products from Falcon-1, Falcon-1e, Falcon -9V 1.0, Falcon -9V 1, Falcon -9FT to Falcon -9. It has a new model for almost two years. Through continuous rapid development and innovation,