Falcon 9· guided tour

Payload Fairing

the nose cone

This is the rocket's nose — a hollow shell that carries the satellites inside. Air pushes on a rocket very hard when it goes fast, so the cargo rides inside this smooth cone where nothing can touch it.

Height
13.1 m
Width
5.2 m
Thrown away at
T+2:56
How it works

Once the rocket is above almost all the air, the fairing is not needed any more — and it is heavy. So it splits into two halves like a clamshell and falls away. The halves have little thrusters and parachutes, and SpaceX fishes them out of the ocean to use again.

For the grown-up

The fairing is a carbon-fibre / aluminium-honeycomb sandwich structure separated by pneumatic pushers. Jettison happens only once dynamic pressure has dropped low enough that free-molecular heating on the payload stays within limits — typically above ~110 km.

Falcon 9 Block 5 — specifications