THE LAUNCH PAD NEWS
America
Relativity Space Scrubs Second Attempt At Maiden Flight Of Terran 1 Rocket
On 11th March 2023, Relativity Space scrubbed the Good Luck Have Fun (GLHF) launch, during a second attempt on that day, at T-45 seconds before liftoff.
Sat Mar 11 2023Written by Delta V
On 11th March 2023, Relativity Space scrubbed the Good Luck Have Fun (GLHF) launch, during a second attempt on that day, at T-45 seconds before liftoff. A new launch date is to be determined, but a marine hazard notice has been posted for March 16th.
Details
Abort #1
A corner case in the stage separation automation a few seconds before T-0 that properly aborted at T-0.5 seconds. The team then pushed an update to the vehicle automation, successfully recycled the vehicle, and secured a new T-0 time, which was an instantaneous window, given it was at the last minute of the launch window at 21:00 UTC.
Abort #2
After getting down to T-45 seconds, the rocket had an automated abort due to the fuel pressure in Stage 2 being one PSI too low. Relativity confirmed the vehicle was healthy after both aborts.
Based on initial data review, vehicle is healthy. More info to follow on cause of aborts today. Thanks for playing. #GLHF pic.twitter.com/h6MmFKHUNl
— Relativity Space (@relativityspace) March 11, 2023
8th March Abort
During the live stream for the 11th March attempts the Relativity hosts added to what had caused them to scrub during the attempt on the 8th of March. The rocket had an issue with propellant conditioning on Stage 2 due to a ground equipment valve malfunctioning, which prevented the propellant from reaching the right temperatures. Teams fixed the valve and implemented additional mitigations to prevent it from happening again.
Relativity learnt a lot from the attempts and got closer to launch than ever before. "Thanks for playing", Clay Walker, Launch Director for the GLHF mission said following calling a scrub for the day.