I may have the opportunity to watch the upcoming Falcon 9 launch of NASA's TESS mission in person. Because of this, I'm curious whether I'll be able to watch the first stage of the Falcon 9 land back at Cape Canaveral or if this is a mission where the first stage will land on a barge instead.
In general,
- Does SpaceX publish a list of the first stage landing sites for their upcoming missions?
- If not, does anyone know specifically for the TESS mission launch if/where the first stage will be landed?
- Is there a published cutoff payload mass/delta v for the Falcon 9 to have to land at sea instead of back on land (and similarly, a published cutoff payload mass/delta v for whether the first stage can be landed at all)?
TESS is a fairly small satellite (Wikipedia has its launch mass listed as 350 kg), but it will be going beyond low-earth orbit (a high-eccentricity orbit with perigee at about the moon's orbital distance), so from that I don't know what to expect with regards to how much fuel consumption will be required for the first stage.