Two directions for Falcon 9
Taken by Gilbert Plumer on December 9, 2021 @
Rockledge, Florida, USA
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Both images in the attached photo were taken looking East over my roof in Rockledge, FL, 20 West of Cape Canaveral. In both images you can see where the 1st stage cuts out, then the 2nd stage ignites. Mostly, Falcon 9 launches to the Northeast, especially for delivering Starlink satellites, as in the image on the right from 9 May 2021.But sometimes it heads Southeast, as in the image from 1 AM today on the left. Here is some striking info about today's launch from spaceflightnow.com:
"Satellites booked for dedicated launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket can weigh many tons, but NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer weighs just 727 pounds (330 kilograms) and fills a small fraction of the launcher’s voluminous payload shroud...[I]nstead of flying on a straight shot east or northeast from Cape Canaveral, as most SpaceX missions do, the Falcon 9 rocket will make a hard left turn when it crosses the equator less than a half-hour after liftoff. The Falcon 9’s second stage engine will fire with the rocket flying sideways, maneuvering the IXPE spacecraft into an orbit deviating just 0.2 degrees in latitude on each side of the equator. The maneuver to change the plane of the satellites orbit, colloquially called a “dogleg,” will consume much of the Falcon 9’s performance capability. A Falcon 9 launching to a similar altitude without the plane change maneuver could loft a payload of more than 30,000 pounds, or 14 metric tons."
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