SpaceX took advantage of its latest mission with a Falcon 9 rocket to perform an unusual maneuver: filling the payload with methane. The American company indicates that it has never carried out such an operation on this type of launcher.
A historic mission can hide another great first, much more discreet. This is exactly what happened very early in the morning of February 15, with the departure of the IM-1 lander towards the Moon. If it is completed, it will become the first 100% private American mission to reach the Moon.
Indeed, the flight was chartered by SpaceX and the moon lander was built by the company Intuitive Machines. If all this is fundamentally aimed at responding to a request from the public sector, in this case NASA, which has surrounded itself with private partners to relaunch its lunar conquest program, it would however be an event.
Methane in a Falcon 9 (sort of)
But, at the same time, a tweet published on February 15 by SpaceX, reveals that the departure of the Falcon was the opportunity to carry out an unprecedented maneuver: “ This is the first time that methane has been used on Falcon 9. The Falcon team was therefore able to rely on the expertise of the Starship team in this area to prepare for this mission. »
In a previous tweetSpaceX specified that this launch “ required its teams to design a new refueling system and specific procedures to load the lander with CH4 and LOX while encapsulating it in the Falcon 9 fairing “. A successful attempt, obviously, the preparations having gone well.
The Falcon 9 rocket has not seen any changes to its propulsion system. It continued to use its traditional mix of liquid oxygen (LOX, for Liquid OXygen) and kerosene (RP-1, for Rocket Propellant-1). The use of methane (CH4) in this type of mixture occurs in another context, with the Starship.
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