The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission, which is traveling to asteroid Didymos and its…
  • burble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    as Falcon 9 returns to flight

    Bad headline. They clarify it in the article, but it launched with a one-off exception because the 2nd stage for this mission didn’t have to do a controlled deorbit. The rest of the Falcons are still grounded.

    I’m glad Hera beat the weather.

    • threelonmusketeersOPMEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Good point. Would the upcoming Falcon Heavy for Europa Clipper have the same exception?

      • burble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        It should, yeah.

        There are a handful of GTO missions coming up in the manifest that might be able to get it, too, but the’ll probably lift the grounding by the time I look into all of those to figure that out.