SpaceX's Falcon 9 Rocket Certified to Launch NASA's Most Precious Science Missions
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | November 9, 2018 07:15am ET
"LSP Category 3 certification is a major achievement for the Falcon 9 team and represents another key milestone in our close partnership with NASA," SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement. "We are honored to have the opportunity to provide cost-effective and reliable launch services to the countrys most critical scientific payloads." [See the Evolution of SpaceX's Rockets in Pictures]
The LSP certification ladder only goes up to Category 3, which is reserved for the most dependable launchers. These rockets are expected to have a demonstrated reliability of 90 to 95 percent, according to LSP officials.
For comparison, Category 2 vehicles the level attained by the Falcon 9 in 2015 are expected to ace their missions 80 to 90 percent of the time.
Only Category 3 rockets can launch the priciest, most important, most complex NASA missions projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars rover Curiosity and the James Webb Space Telescope. (Hubble launched aboard the space shuttle Discovery in April of 1990, Curiosity flew atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in November of 2011 and Webb will ride an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket in March 2021.)
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