Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center on the USSF-44 mission for the U.S. Space Force. The mission will deploy two main payloads into geosynchronous orbit, and the Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters will return to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for landing. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.
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Artist’s concept of the Psyche spacecraft, which will conduct a direct exploration of an asteroid thought to be a stripped planetary core. Credit: SSL/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA says the Psyche mission, a robotic asteroid explorer that missed a launch opportunity this year due to software testing problems, has been rescheduled for liftoff from Florida in October 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
The space agency announced Friday the outcome of a so-called “continuation/termination review” chartered to decide whether to proceed with the Psyche mission after problems with testing the spacecraft’s software caused it to miss launch periods in August, September, and October of this year.
NASA officials decided to continue with the Psyche mission after reviewing the work of an independent review board established to look into the causes of the software testing issues, which involved a software testbed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, the NASA center in charge of the Psyche project. The spacecraft itself was delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in April for final launch preparations, and it remains in a clean room processing facility at the Florida spaceport.
But the software for the Psyche spacecraft’s guidance, navigation, and control system was completed several months late, and engineers ran into problems configuring testbed simulators at JPL to verify all the software functions are ready for launch.
“I’m extremely proud of the Psyche team,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL. “During this review, they have demonstrated significant progress already made toward the future launch date. I am confident in the plan moving forward and excited by the unique and important science this mission will return.”
The new launch period for the Psyche mission opens Oct. 10, 2023, according to NASA. SpaceX is under contract to launch the Psyche mission on a Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Psyche spacecraft will swing by Mars in 2026 for a gravity assist that will send it toward its its destination, the asteroid Psyche. The spacecraft will enter orbit around the asteroid in August 2029 after a nearly six-year cruise through the solar system. Due to constraints of orbital dynamics, the one-year launch delay will trigger a three-year delay in the spacecraft reaching the asteroid it will study.
If the mission had launched this year, the spacecraft would have arrived at asteroid Psyche in 2026.
NASA said the independent review board set up to investigate the software testbed woes is finishing its report. The agency said it will share the report publicly, along with NASA’s official response.
When they announced in June that Psyche would miss its launch opportunity this year, NASA officials said the software testing problem involved the unique blend of mission components from JPL and Maxar, which supplied the Psyche spacecraft’s solar electric propulsion chassis.
The software simulator is located on the JPL campus in Southern California, and is designed to replicate functions of the Psyche spacecraft. Engineers needed to merge components from JPL and Maxar to fully test the software for the Psyche mission.
In Friday’s update on the Psyche mission, NASA did not quantify the financial impacts of the launch delay or detail any of the corrective actions to restore the JPL testbed and complete software testing. The Psyche mission is part of NASA’s Discovery program of cost-capped planetary science missions, and the continuation/termination review is part of the agency’s standard response when a such a mission runs into a delay or a significant cost increase.
Before the launch delay to 2023, the Psyche mission was estimated to cost $985 million, including expenses for the launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and operating costs for the cruise to Psyche. NASA said in June it had spent $717 million on the Psyche mission to date.
“I appreciate the hard work of the independent review board and the JPL-led team toward mission success,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission directorate, in a statement. “The lessons learned from Psyche will be implemented across our entire mission portfolio. I am excited about the science insights Psyche will provide during its lifetime and its promise to contribute to our understanding of our own planet’s core.”
Psyche, the asteroid, has an irregular shape, an average diameter of about 140 miles (226 kilometers), and is made mostly of nickel and iron metals. The NASA mission will be the first spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid, which may be the leftover core of a protoplanet that began forming in the early solar system more than 4 billion years ago.
Two small spacecraft were originally supposed to share the Falcon Heavy launch with Psyche. NASA’s twin Janus probes, each weighing just 80 pounds (36 kilograms), are designed to head off into the solar system to fly by different asteroids.
With the Psyche launch delay from August of this year, the Janus small satellites were no longer able to reach their original asteroid targets. NASA said Friday it is continuing to assess options for the Janus mission.
The first stage of ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket was lifted onto its launch stand at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on Sept. 28. Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Steve Gerlich
The final flight of an Atlas 5 rocket from California has been delayed from Tuesday until no earlier than Nov. 9 to replace a battery on the launcher’s Centaur upper stage, United Launch Alliance and NASA officials said.
The Atlas 5 rocket’s Centaur upper stage will place the JPSS 2 weather satellite into polar orbit for NOAA and NASA, then the rocket stage will perform a deorbit burn and deploy a joint ULA-NASA re-entry technology experiment named LOFTID, or the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator.
The mission will have to wait until no earlier than Nov. 9 to blast off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launch time Nov. 9 is set for 1:25 a.m. PST (4:25 a.m. EST; 0925 GMT).
The rocket is fully stacked on its launch pad at Vandenberg to begin a mission that will close long chapters in the history of the Atlas rocket program. It will mark the final flight of an Atlas rocket from Vandenberg, and the last Atlas 5 rocket to fly with the vehicle’s classic 4-meter-diameter (13-foot) payload fairing.
There are 20 more Atlas 5 rocket flights on ULA’s schedule in the next few years, including the JPSS 2 mission. ULA is phasing out the Atlas 5 rocket, along with its other legacy rocket, the Delta 4. There are two Delta 4-Heavy rockets left on ULA’s launch manifest.
The Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets will be replaced by the next-generation Vulcan Centaur launcher, which ULA says will be cheaper to build and operate, and will exceed the capabilities of the company’s previous vehicles.
The Atlas 5’s payload fairing containing the JPSS 2 weather satellite and LOFTID tech demo experiment was moved to the launch pad earlier this month. Credit: USSF 30th Space Wing/Carlos Velasco
The JPSS 2 weather satellite is the second in NOAA’s newest generation of observatories gathering data on Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, mapping and monitoring wildfires and volcanoes, and measuring dust and smoke in the air. JPSS 2 will also track the health of the ozone layer.
Built by Northrop Grumman, the JPSS 2 spacecraft is the third satellite in NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System series of weather observatories. It follows the launch of the Suomi NPP and JPSS 1 weather satellites in 2011 and 2017, both on ULA’s now-retired Delta 2 rocket.
JPSS 2 will fly at an altitude of 512 miles (824 kilometers), allowing its four instruments to collect data over the same location on Earth twice per day, once in sunlight and once at nighttime, as the planet rotates underneath the satellite’s orbit.
The new satellite will be renamed NOAA 21 after it reaches orbit, continuing a line of U.S. government weather satellites dating back to 1960. Forecasters use data from polar-orbiting satellites to help predict weather three to seven days in advance, while NOAA’s GOES weather satellites in geostationary orbit provide real-time monitoring of severe weather and tropical cyclones.
The LOFTID secondary payload on the Atlas 5 rocket will test an inflatable heat shield design that could be used in the future to help land massive cargo on Mars. ULA partnered with NASA on the re-entry tech demo experiment because the company could use a similar heat shield system to help it recover rocket engines from the next-generation Vulcan rocket for refurbishment and reuse.
The 27 Merlin engines on the Falcon Heavy’s three first stage boosters. Credit: SpaceX
The first Falcon Heavy rocket flight since 2019 is scheduled Tuesday to kick off SpaceX’s longest-duration launch mission to date, a roughly six-hour climb into geosynchronous orbit more than 20,000 miles over the equator with a bundle of payloads for the U.S. Space Force. The powerful rocket’s two reusable side boosters will return to Cape Canaveral for landing.
The mission’s high-altitude target orbit means the Falcon Heavy’s upper stage will need to coast for some six hours through the Van Allen radiation belts before reigniting its engine and deploying the Space Force’s satellites.
The long-duration mission required SpaceX to make some changes to the Falcon Heavy rocket. The most visible modification is the addition of gray paint on the outside of the upper stage’s kerosene fuel tank, which will help ensure the fuel does not freeze as the rocket spends hours in the cold environment of space.
The launch, which the Space Force has designated USSF-44, will mark the fourth flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket currently flying. But it is the first Falcon Heavy mission since June 25, 2019, following a series of delays encountered by SpaceX’s customers.
The USSF-44 mission has been delayed about two years from the original schedule of late 2020. The Space Force blamed the delay on satellite-related problems.
The launch will be the first fully operational national security mission to fly on SpaceX’s heavy-lifter. The Falcon Heavy’s most recent launch in June 2019 carried 24 experimental satellites for the military and NASA on the Space Test Program-2, or STP-2, mission. The STP-2 mission was billed as a demonstration flight of the rocket before future launches with more critical national security payloads.
“We’ve worked side-by-side with SpaceX to ensure the Falcon Heavy meets all our requirements and has a successful launch,” said Walt Lauderdale, the Space Force’s mission director for the USSF-44 launch. “This will be the first Falcon Heavy launch in over three years and we’re excited to get these payloads to space. This launch is an important milestone and continues a robust partnership that is cementing a capability that will serve the nation for years to come.”
“This launch culminates years of effort by a dedicated team comprised of mission-focused people from across the U.S. Space Force and SpaceX. The Falcon Heavy is an important element of our overall lift capability, and we’re very excited to be ready for launch,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Space Force’s program executive officer for assured access to space.
The Space Force has released little information about the satellites launching on the Falcon Heavy rocket.
There are two payloads stacked on top of the other inside the Falcon Heavy’s nose cone. One is called the Shepherd Demonstration, and the other is the Space Force’s second Long Duration Propulsive ESPA, or LDPE 2, spacecraft, itself hosting six payloads — three that will remain attached to the spacecraft and three that will deploy from LPDE 2 to perform their own missions.
The fully assembled Falcon Heavy rocket rolled out to Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday afternoon, riding a transporter the quarter-mile distance from the hangar to the launch pad. SpaceX teams planned to raise the Falcon Heavy vertical on pad 39A overnight in preparation for liftoff Tuesday during a 30-minute window opening at 9:41 a.m. EDT (1341 GMT).
Forecasters predict a 90% chance of good weather for launch Tuesday, with light winds and scattered clouds predicted. “The primary weather concern will be a rogue Atlantic shower or enhanced cumulus brushing the coast,” the Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron wrote in an outlook issued Monday.
After receiving its supply if kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants, the Falcon Heavy’s three first stage boosters fire their 27 main engines and throttle up to produce 5.1 million pounds of thrust, around twice the power of any other operational rocket in the world. The rocket will head due east from the launch site, arcing over the Atlantic Ocean before shedding its two side-mounted boosters two-and-a-half minutes into the flight.
The core stage, which will throttle back its engines for the first phase of the flight, will fire longer before jettisoning to fall into the Atlantic. It will not be recovered on the USSF-44 mission. An upper stage engine will finish the task of placing the USSF-44 payloads into an equator-hugging geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth.
The Space Force’s patch for the USSF-44 mission. Credit. U.S. Space Force
The rocket will release the LDPE 2 and Shepherd Demonstration satellites into orbit to conclude the Falcon Heavy launch sequence. The satellites will orbit will orbit in lock-step with Earth’s rotation, a feature that makes geosynchronous orbit a popular location for military communications, early warning, and reconnaissance satellites.
Most satellites heading to geosynchronous orbit get dropped off by their launcher in an egg-shaped transfer orbit. That requires the spacecraft to use its own propulsion resources to circularize at an operational altitude over the equator.
Some launches deploy their satellites directly into geosynchronous orbit. The Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets built by United Launch Alliance, a SpaceX rival in the U.S. launch industry, have accomplished this feat before. But the launch Tuesday will be SpaceX’s first attempt to place payloads directly into geosynchronous orbit.
SpaceX tested its long duration coast capability on previous flights, including the Falcon Heavy launch on the STP-2 mission in 2019, which lasted three-and-a-half hours from liftoff through the final burn of the upper stage stage engine. In December 2019, SpaceX performed a long duration six-hour coast experiment on a Falcon 9 rocket upper stage following launch of a resupply mission to the International Space Station.
The Shepherd Demonstration satellite on the USSF-44 mission “hosts payloads that mature technologies and accelerate risk reduction efforts to inform programs of record,” the Space Force said. A military spokesperson declined to provide additional details in response to questions from Spaceflight Now.
The LDPE 2 spacecraft was built by Northrop Grumman, and is similar to the LDPE 1 satellite launched in December 2021 on a ULA Atlas 5 rocket. LDPE 2 hosts six payloads, and has its own propulsion system to maneuver in space. The spacecraft is capable of releasing small satellites into orbit, and a Space Force spokesperson confirmed to Spaceflight Now that three of the LDPE 2 payloads will separate as free flyers in geosynchronous orbit.
The Space Force says the LDPE program allows the military to more affordably send small and secondary payloads into geosynchronous orbit, helping accelerate the service’s “pivot to new, more resilient space architectures.”
“This capability has broad potential to fill capability gaps in our space systems architecture and provide helpful services for our mission partners with frequent and low-cost access to orbit,” said Brig. Gen. Tim Sejba, Space System’s Command’s program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power.
“LDPE 2 hosts a variety of payloads that advance technology concerning communications and space weather sensing,” a Space Force spokesperson said.
The next military mission to fly on a Falcon Heavy rocket, named USSF-67, will launch the LDPE 3 spacecraft and a Space Force communications satellite in tandem. That launch is scheduled for January.
[…] NASA announces 13 landing sites for Artemis 3 at the South Pole of the Moon. The mission would have a 6.5 day stay on the moon by 2 astronauts using a SpaceX Lunar Starship. Starship’s unmanned test landing will also occur at south pole. Gateway was not mentioned as part of the mission. Landing is scheduled for April 2025. Construction of the Orion and SLS has already begun. Each site is within 6 degrees of the pole around craters that I don’t recognize because they are too hard to observe from Earth. The mission will have continuous daylight for the duration of the mission by using the rims of the craters. The map of pole shows possible ice concentration locations. […]
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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket fires its 27 main engines Thursday night at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX fired up 27 engines on a Falcon Heavy rocket Thursday night at Kennedy Space Center, sending a rumble across the spaceport in a hold-down test-firing before a launch next week for the U.S. Space Force.
The 27 Merlin engines ignited at 8 p.m. EDT Thursday (0000 GMT Friday) and ran for nearly 10 seconds. SpaceX’s launch team loaded about three million pounds of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Falcon Heavy during the final hour of the countdown before the static fire test.
A plume of exhaust rushed out of the north side of the flame trench at Launch Complex 39A, and the static fire test generated a window-rattling roar heard for miles around. The engines briefly throttled up to full power, producing 5.1 million pounds of thrust, before shutting down to conclude the test-firing. SpaceX drained propellants from the rocket and planned to lower it horizontal and return it to the hangar a quarter-mile south of pad 39A for integration with its Space Force payloads.
SpaceX conducted the static fire test Thursday night without the payloads or payload fairing on the Falcon Heavy rocket. Those elements were prepared at a separate satellite processing facility at the spaceport.
Launch of the USSF 44 mission is set for 9:40 a.m. EDT (1340 GMT) Tuesday.
The Falcon Heavy is the world’s most powerful operational rocket, and next week’s launch will be the fourth flight of the heavy-lifter since its debut in 2018. The first test flight of a Falcon Heavy rocket sent a Tesla Roadster on an Earth escape trajectory into a heliocentric orbit. Two missions in April 2019 and June 2019 delivered to orbit a commercial communications satellite for Arabsat and a cluster of small experimental satellites for the U.S. military and NASA.
A lack of ready payloads has delayed several Falcon Heavy missions the last few years, including the mission set for liftoff next week. This mission, designated USSF 44, will carry multiple satellites into a geosynchronous orbit for the Space Force, targeting a deployment altitude more than 20,000 miles over the equator.
The mission will require a long coast of roughly six hours between burns by the Falcon Heavy’s upper stage, making it the longest duration SpaceX rocket mission from launch until payload deployment. SpaceX added gray paint around the kerosene fuel tank on the upper stage to provide thermal insulation and keep the fuel from freezing during the long coast through the cold vacuum of space.
Despite the break in Falcon Heavy launches since 2019, SpaceX has continued to win contracts to build its backlog of Falcon Heavy missions, which offer payload lift capability greater than the Falcon 9 but below that of the company’s next-generation Starship and Super Heavy rocket. The Falcon Heavy is powered by 27 Merlin main engines from three Falcon rocket cores connected together, and stands 229 feet (70 meters) tall and 40 feet (12.2 meters) wide.
The Falcon Heavy’s upper stage is mostly identical to the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, with a single Merlin engine.
SpaceX says the Falcon Heavy rocket is capable of placing a payload of up to 140,000 pounds, or more than 63 metric tons, into a low-altitude orbit. That figure assumes the Falcon Heavy’s boosters are burned to near fuel depletion and not recovered.
For the USSF 44 mission, SpaceX aims to land the Falcon Heavy’s side boosters back at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station less than 10 minutes after liftoff. The center core will devote all of its propellant to sending the Space Force payloads into orbit, and will not be recovered.
SpaceX’s most recent Falcon Heavy launch contract win was in July, when NASA awarded the company a deal worth $255 million to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in 2026.
With the Roman launch contract in hand, SpaceX now has a backlog of up to 13 Falcon Heavy rocket missions.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fires its upper stage engine to propel 53 Starlink internet satellites into orbit. The rocket’s first stage booster and two halves of the payload fairing are visible returning to Earth for recovery and reuse. Credit: Gene Blevins / LA Daily News
SpaceX fired a Falcon 9 rocket off a launching stand in California at sunset Thursday, producing a twilight sky show visible as far away as Texas as the mission delivered 53 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit.
Powered by a first stage booster making its eighth flight, the Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles at 6:14:10 p.m. PDT (9:14:10 p.m. EDT; 0114:10 GMT). Nine Merlin engines powered rocket southeast from Vandenberg over the Pacific Ocean for the first two-and-a-half minutes of the flight.
An upper stage engine then took over the mission, steering the rocket on a slight left-hand turn to line up with the mission’s target orbital path and accelerating to nearly 5 miles per second. The first stage extended titanium grid fins and reignited three of its engines for a braking burn, then plunged back into the atmosphere and lit a single Merlin engine to slow down for landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California.
The Falcon 9 aimed to deliver the stack of Starlink internet relay nodes into a low-altitude orbit ranging in altitude between 143 miles (230 kilometers) and 209 miles (337 kilometers), with an inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator.
Fifteen minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s upper stage deployed the mission’s payload of 53 Starlink internet satellites into an on-target orbit. The deployment milestone concluded SpaceX’s 49th mission of the year, a record for any launch company, and SpaceX’s 13th flight of 2022 from the West Coast launch base in California.
The sunset climb to space was visible across the Southwestern United States and Mexico, with the last rays of evening sun lightning up the Falcon 9’s expanding exhaust plume in space. Photos shared on social media from as far away as West Texas showed the rocket’s comet-like exhaust trail illuminated against the night sky on the western horizon.
Liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from California on the Starlink 4-31 mission, adding 53 satellites to the company’s privately-owned global broadband network. https://t.co/iGgdghI0H5pic.twitter.com/c0kqMsX2xQ
The first stage booster flown on Thursday night’s mission, designated B1063, completed its eighth trip to space. The booster debuted in November 2020 with the launch of the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich oceanography satellite, launched again a year later with NASA’s DART asteroid deflection experiment, and has now flown six Starlink missions.
The drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” will return the rocket to the Port of Long Beach for refurbishment and reuse on a future SpaceX mission.
After separating from the Falcon 9, the 53 new Starlink satellites were expected to disperse and extend solar panels to begin generating electricity to recharge their batteries. The satellites will go through an automated checkout and activation sequence, then use krypton-fueled ion thrusters to raise their altitude to 335 miles (540 kilometers), where they will enter operational service in the Starlink network.
The 52 new Starlink satellites launched into one of five orbital “shells” in SpaceX’s internet constellation.
SpaceX targeted Shell 4 with Thursday’s mission. The network architecture includes satellites flying a few hundred miles up, orbiting at inclinations of 97.6 degrees, 70 degrees, 53.2 degrees, and 53.0 degrees to the equator. The spacecraft beam broadband internet signals to consumers around the world, connectivity that is now available on all seven continents with testing underway at a research station in Antarctica.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster stage has landed on the drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” in the Pacific Ocean. This completes the 8th flight to space for this booster, designated B1063.
SpaceX completed launches to the first Starlink shell, at 53.0 degrees inclination, last year. The company’s current focus is on deploying satellites into Shell 4 using a series of Falcon 9 rocket launches from Florida and California.
About three-quarters of SpaceX’s 45 missions so far in 2022 have been flights primarily dedicated to delivering Starlink satellites into orbit.
SpaceX initially focused on providing Starlink internet service to fixed users, such as homes and businesses. The company is now developing Starlink services for mobile users, such as consumers in cars, trucks, RVs, ships, and airplanes.
“Earlier this week the team began accepting orders for the new flat high performance Starlink antenna designed for use while in motion on land,” said Jessie Anderson, a SpaceX production engineer and commentator for Thursday night’s launch. “The new panel features a wide field of view and enhanced GPS capabilities, allowing users to employ high speed, low latency internet while on the go.”
With the 53 satellites launched Thursday, SpaceX has put 3,558 Starlink spacecraft into orbit on a series of nearly 70 Falcon 9 rocket missions. That tally includes test satellites and prototypes no longer in service, and some failed and decommissioned spacecraft. More than 3,200 Starlink satellites are currently in orbit, either providing commercial internet service to maneuvering to their operating slots in the constellation, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert tracker of spaceflight activity.
SpaceX used their Falcon 9 rocket to launch 53 Starlink Salettites into orbit from California today.
SpaceX’s next launch is set for Tuesday, Nov. 1, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A Falcon Heavy rocket will launch multiple satellites into orbit for the U.S. Space Force.
The launch next week will mark the first Falcon Heavy launch since June 2019, and the fourth Falcon Heavy flight overall. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful operational launcher in the world, created by combining three Falcon 9 first stage boosters together to generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust.
[…] sixth Falcon 9 in a single calendar month, repeating a feat done previously in April, July and August, last night’s flight also marked SpaceX’s second flight of October from Vandenberg […]
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Russia’s Progress MS-21 resupply spacecraft is on course for an automated docking with the International Space Station at 10:51 p.m. EDT (0251 GMT) to deliver more than 2.7 tons of cargo to the lab’s seven-person crew.
The unpiloted cargo freighter launched Tuesday on top of a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, beginning a two-day pursuit of the space station. The Soyuz-2.1a rocket placed the Progress MS-21 supply ship into orbit about nine minutes after liftoff.
The Russian spacecraft extended solar panels and navigation antennas, then commenced a series of orbit-raising rocket firings with on-board thrusters to approach the station for docking Thursday night. The cargo delivery marks the 82nd launch of a Progress supply ship toward the space station. Three of the 82 Progress missions have failed to reach the space station.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, said the Progress MS-21 cargo ship carries 1,548 pounds (702 kilograms) of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants to replenish tanks on the space station’s Zvezda service module. The mission will also deliver 926 pounds (420 kilograms) of fresh water, 90 pounds (41 kilograms) of nitrogen gas, and 2,992 pounds (1,357 kilograms) of dry cargo.
The dry cargo includes food and clothing for the space station crew members, personal protective equipment, and medical, sanitary, and hygienic supplies, according to Roscosmos. The Progress MS-21 spacecraft is also packed with scientific equipment and spools of filament for a 3D printing experiment on the space station.
The Russian supply ship will also reboost the orbital altitude of the station, and perform any required burns to steer the complex out of the path of space junk.
Russian cosmonauts on the station will open hatches to begin unpacking cargo from the pressurized cabin of the Progress spacecraft.
Russia’s Progress MS-19 spacecraft, which delivered supplies and fuel to the station in February, undocked from the lab’s Poisk module Oct. 23 and fired thrusters for a final disposal burn to fall back into the atmosphere. Loaded with trash and other unnecessary equipment, the Progress MS-19 spacecraft largely burned up during re-entry, spreading bits of debris over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
The departure of the Progress MS-19 spacecraft cleared the way for the arrival Thursday of the new Progress supply ship to the Poisk module, located on the space-facing side of the station.
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A Russian Soyuz 2-1a rocket rolled out to its launch pad Oct. 22 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome with the Progress MS-21 cargo ship. Credit: Roscosmos
Russia is set to launch a Progress supply freighter Tuesday on a two-day trek to the International Space Station to deliver 5,556 pounds (2,520 kilograms) of cargo, fuel, water, and nitrogen to the orbiting research laboratory.
A Soyuz-2.1a booster will launch the Progress cargo ship at 8:20 p.m. EDT Tuesday (0020 GMT Wednesday) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The liquid-fueled rocket will deploy the Progress MS-21 spacecraft into orbit about nine minutes later, and the supply ship will unfurl solar panels and navigation antennas to begin the flight to the space station.
A series of orbit adjustment burns will put the Progress spacecraft on course for an automated, radar-guided docking at the station’s Poisk module at 10:49 p.m. EDT Thursday (0249 GMT Friday). Russian cosmonauts on the station will open hatches to begin unpacking cargo from the pressurized cabin of the Progress spacecraft.
Russia’s Progress MS-19 spacecraft, which delivered supplies and fuel to the station in February, undocked from the Poisk module Oct. 23 and fired thrusters for a final disposal burn to fall back into the atmosphere. Loaded with trash and other unnecessary equipment, the Progress MS-19 spacecraft largely burned up during re-entry, spreading bits of debris over a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
The departure of the Progress MS-19 spacecraft clears the way for the arrival of the new Progress supply ship Thursday.
Meanwhile, Russian ground crews at Baikonur rolled the Soyuz rocket from its integration hangar to its launch pad Oct. 22. A hydraulic erector raised the rocket vertical at the Site 31 launch complex for final liftoff preparations, and gantry arms enclosed the Soyuz launcher to provide technicians with access to different parts of the vehicle.
A Russian Soyuz-2.1a rocket rolls to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in preparation for launch of a space station resupply mission. Credit: Roscosmos
Russian managers plan to meet a few hours before launch Tuesday to approve loading of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Soyuz rocket. The gantry arms at the launch pad will retract away from the rocket in the final hour of the countdown, and ground crews at Baikonur will insert the launch key into a control panel about six minutes before liftoff.
Propellant tanks on the launcher will be pressurized beginning about two-and-a-half minutes prior to liftoff, and engines on the core stage and strap-on boosters will ignite and ramp up to full power to propel the Soyuz off the pad with more than 900,000 pounds of thrust.
The Soyuz rocket will head northeast from Baikonur to line up with the flight path of the space station. The launcher’s four first stage boosters will jettison two minutes into the flight, followed moments later by jettison of the aerodynamic nose cone to reveal the Progress supply ship to the environment of space.
The Soyuz core stage, also known as the second stage, will shut down and separate nearly five minutes after launch. A third stage RD-0110 engine will ignite to finish the job of accelerating the Progress cargo freighter to orbital velocity, then will deploy the supply ship almost nine minutes into the mission.
The Progress MS-21 mission is known as Progress 82P in the space station’s schedule of visiting vehicles. It’s the 82nd Russian Progress resupply mission to launch to the International Space Station.
Russia’s Progress MS-21 supply ship is encapsulated inside the Soyuz rocket’s payload fairing. Credit: Roscosmos
Russia’s space agency said the Progress MS-21 cargo ship will carry 1,548 pounds (702 kilograms) of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants to replenish tanks on the space station’s Zvezda service module. The mission will also deliver 926 pounds (420 kilograms) of fresh water, 90 pounds (41 kilograms) of nitrogen gas, and 2,992 pounds (1,357 kilograms) of dry cargo.
The dry cargo includes food and clothing for the space station crew members, personal protective equipment, and medical, sanitary, and hygienic supplies, according to Roscosmos. The Progress MS-21 spacecraft is also packed with scientific equipment and spools of filament for a 3D printing experiment on the space station.
The Russian supply ship will also reboost the orbital altitude of the station, and perform any required burns to steer the complex out of the path of space junk.
Russia’s Progress MS-20 supply ship, which remains docked at the station, performed a debris avoidance maneuver Monday to move the outpost away from the predicted track of a fragment of debris from the Kosmos 1408 satellite, which the Russian military destroyed in an anti-satellite weapon test in 2021.
India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket, also called LVM3, lifts off with 36 OneWeb internet satellites. Credit: ISRO
OneWeb confirmed it established contact with all 36 new satellites launched Saturday on top of India’s most powerful rocket, resuming the deployment of the company’s fleet of internet relay platforms after suspending launches with Russia earlier this year.
The mission Saturday was one of five rocket launches OneWeb needs to complete the first-generation constellation. OneWeb contracted SpaceX for three of the remaining missions, and inked a deal with NewSpace India Limited, the commercial arm of India’s space agency, for two flights.
“Today’s launch is a significant milestone for OneWeb,” said Sunil Bharti Mittal, executive chairman of OneWeb, and the and the billionaire founder of Bharti Enterprises, OneWeb’s largest shareholder. “This new phase of our launch programme from India brings us a step closer to not only enhancing our global coverage but also delivering connectivity in India and South Asia, particularly to the communities who need it most.”
The 36 OneWeb satellites lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India’s east coast at 2:37:40 p.m. EDT (1837:40 GMT) Saturday on top of a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk.3 rocket, also called the LVM3. The GSLV Mk.3 is India’s most powerful launch vehicle, and the OneWeb flight was the first commercial mission to use it.
The 143-foot-tall (43.5-meter) rocket fired two powerful S200 solid rocket boosters to begin the climb off the pad at the Indian spaceport, located on Sriharikota Island about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Chennai. The GSLV Mk.3 headed southeast over the Bay of Bengal, riding 2.2 million pounds of thrust from the two solid-fueled boosters before igniting two core stage Vikas engines nearly two minutes into the mission.
With the hydrazine-fueled core engines firing, the solid rocket boosters burned out and jettisoned a little more than 2 minutes into the flight. The nose cone on top of the rocket jettisoned moments later to reveal the OneWeb satellites mounted to a dispenser structure. The core stage separated and the cryogenic third stage ignited a hydrogen-fueled engine to more than 10 minutes and accelerate the OneWeb satellites to orbital velocity.
The OneWeb satellites began separating from their dispenser on the GSLV’s upper stage at T+plus 19 minutes, 45 seconds. The spacecraft deployed in groups of four over the following 90 minutes. The 36 satellites totaled
Massimiliano Ladovaz, OneWeb’s chief technology officer, tweeted late Saturday that ground controllers established contact with all 36 satellites after deployment from the Indian launch vehicle. U.S. military tracking data confirmed the rocket placed the satellites into an on-target orbit with a peak altitude of about 373 miles (601 kilometers) and an inclination of 87.4 degrees to the equator.
The OneWeb satellites, each weighing about 325 pounds (147.5 kilograms at launch), were expected to deploy solar panels and activate xenon ion thrusters to maneuver into their operational orbit at an altitude of 745 miles (1,200 kilometers).
OneWeb’s satellites are built in a factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida by a joint venture between OneWeb and Airbus Defense and Space. The satellites are are designed to beam low-latency broadband internet signals to customers around the world. Based in London, OneWeb is one of several operators either already launching large fleets of internet satellites, or planning to begin launches soon.
SpaceX has launched more than 3,500 Starlink internet satellites using the company’s own reusable Falcon 9 rocket. OneWeb has launched 428 satellites of a planned first-generation constellation of 648 spacecraft using 13 Russian Soyuz rockets purchased through Arianespace, the French launch services provider. And Amazon plans to launch its first two prototype internet satellites of a planned constellation of 3,236 spacecraft next year on the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket.
But OneWeb’s launch plans were interrupted earlier this year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Arianespace was on the hook with OneWeb for six more Soyuz launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, including a 14th launch that was set to take off in March. But Russia’s space agency set conditions on the mission after rolling the rocket and the OneWeb satellites to a launch pad at Baikonur, including a demand that the UK government give up its stake in OneWeb.
The UK government declined, and OneWeb announced March 3 it was suspending launches from Baikonur. OneWeb reported a loss of $229.2 million on its financial statements as a result of the termination of the planned Soyuz launch in March. The financial charge also covers losses associated with the postponement of subsequent Soyuz missions, and the loss of 36 satellites stranded in Kazakhstan and not returned to OneWeb by Russia, which runs the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Less than a month after Soyuz launches were suspended, OneWeb announced an agreement with SpaceX to launch some of its remaining satellites. OneWeb finalized a similar agreement with New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of India’s space agency, for launches on Indian rockets.
The contract with SpaceX was surprising to many satellite industry watchers because OneWeb is an indirect competitor in broadband market. SpaceX sells Starlink service directly to consumers, while OneWeb sells to enterprises and internet service providers to provide connectivity for entire businesses or communities.
There are three Falcon 9 flights planned for OneWeb into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral — a short drive from OneWeb’s factory on Florida’s Space Coast — later this year and early next year. OneWeb has procured two launches on India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket, the first of which blasted off Saturday.
Thirty-six OneWeb internet satellites are mounted on a dispenser inside the nose cone of India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket. This photo was taken earlier this month during encapsulation inside the rocket’s payload fairing. Credit: ISRO
OneWeb and its new launch providers completed preparations to resume the launch campaign within months.
“Usually a launch integration takes about a year to get ready,” Ladovaz said. “There’s a lot of analysis to get done … We had to do all that in less than six months. I think we are breaking a record here.”
OneWeb said earlier this year the three Falcon 9 flights will be equivalent to the launch capacity of four Soyuz rockets, which carried as many as 36 OneWeb satellites on each flight. That would mean SpaceX will launch around 48 OneWeb spacecraft on each mission, although the exact figures haven’t been confirmed.
The five additional launches should be complete in the first half of next year, with all the satellites entering commercial service by the end of 2023, according to OneWeb.
The launch Saturday was also the first commercial flight of India’s GSLV Mk.3, or LVM3, rocket. It was the fifth flight of a GSLV Mk.3 rocket overall. The stack of 36 OneWeb satellites, combined with their dispenser made in Sweden by Beyond Gravity, weighed about 12,800 pounds (5.8 metric tons) at liftoff, the heaviest payload ever delivered to orbit by an Indian rocket.
“GSLV Mk.3 has made a most remarkable entry into the commercial launch service market,” said D. Radhakrishnan, chairman and managing director of NSIL. “I’m extremely thankful for OneWeb for having faith in us, in our launch, and the most professional and technical capability of team ISRO.”
“With this mission we have shown the entire world how to contract and execute a mission in less than three to four months,” he said.
Mittal, head of OneWeb’s largest investor, told Indian media that OneWeb paid NSIL around $240 million for the two GSLV Mk.3 missions.
“Today my dream of having an Indian element in the OneWeb constellation has been realized,” Mittal said. “This launch with ISRO and NSIL opens up the space sector in India with the possibility of billions of dollars flowing into the country.”
OneWeb kept busy developing and testing ground systems and user terminals during the break in launches this year.
Eutelsat and OneWeb also announced plans to merge in July, bringing together OneWeb’s network of internet satellites in low Earth orbit with Eutelsat’s fleet of larger video, data relay, and broadband platforms in geostationary orbit.
The switch in launch vehicles for OneWeb’s remaining deployment missions was not the first hurdle the company has overcome. OneWeb weathered bankruptcy in 2020, and emerged under the majority ownership of Bharti Global, an Indian telecom company, and the UK government.
Founded by entrepreneur Greg Wyler in 2012, OneWeb is already planning an even larger constellation called Gen 2 that the company says could be ready for commercial service by early 2028. Pending the conclusion of the merger, Eutelsat’s resources will help OneWeb finance its Gen 2 constellation. OneWeb’s other current shareholders include Bharti, the UK government, and the Japanese company Softbank, among others.
OneWeb signed a settlement agreement with Arianespace earlier this year after the suspension of Soyuz launches. The terms of the settlement are confidential, Arianespace said, but could allow Arianespace to resume launches for OneWeb in the future on Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket for the second generation of the OneWeb constellation.
OneWeb also announced an agreement with Relativity Space in June for multiple Gen 2 satellite launches beginning as soon as 2025 on the launch company’s next-generation reusable Terran R rocket.
A Soyuz launcher lifts off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome with four satellites at 3:57 p.m. EDT (1957 GMT) Saturday. Credit: Roscosmos TV
A Russian Soyuz rocket launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome at 3:57 p.m. EDT (1957 GMT) Saturday with three Gonets data relay payloads and a demonstrator spacecraft for a proposed constellation of Russian broadband internet satellites.
The three-stage rocket, topped by a Fregat upper stage, will take off from Vostochny, Russia’s newest spaceport near the country’s border with China in the far eastern Amur Oblast. The Soyuz will head north from the remote spaceport to target a near-polar orbit, using its Fregat upper stage to place the three Gonets data relay satellites into an orbit about 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) above Earth.
Then the Fregat upper stage will fire its main engine multiple times to inject Russia’s Skif-D tech demo satellite into a much higher orbit about 5,014 miles (8,070 kilometers) above Earth. The entire launch sequence will take several hours from liftoff until separation of the final satellite.
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk.3 with 36 OneWeb internet satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below. Follow us on Twitter.
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Thirty-six OneWeb internet satellites are mounted on a dispenser inside the nose cone of India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket. This photo was taken earlier this month during encapsulation inside the rocket’s payload fairing. Credit: ISRO
After the suspension of commercial launches on Russia’s Soyuz rocket earlier this year, OneWeb is set to resume deploying satellites for its global internet network Saturday with an Indian GSLV Mk.3 launcher, one of five OneWeb missions planned before mid-2023 to finish the company’s first-generation constellation.
There are 36 OneWeb satellites attached to the top of India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk.3, or GSLV Mk.3, awaiting liftoff at 2:37 p.m. EDT (1837 GMT) Saturday from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, located on Sriharikota Island on India’s east coast. Launch is scheduled for 12:07 a.m. Sunday local time in India.
The GSLV Mk.3, also called the LVM3, is India’s most powerful rocket, propelled by two large side-mounted solid rocket boosters producing 2.2 million pounds of thrust, a core stage with two hydrazine-fueled Vikas engines, and a cryogenic upper stage with a hydrogen-burning engine.
The 143-foot-tall (43.5-meter) rocket will aim to release the 36 OneWeb satellites into a 373-mile-high (601-kilometer) polar orbit. Each OneWeb satellite will deploy solar panels and use ion engines to reach their operating altitude of 745 miles (1,200 kilometers).
OneWeb’s satellites are designed to beam low-latency broadband internet signals to customers around the world. The London-based company is one of several operators either already launching large fleets of internet satellites, or planning to begin launches soon.
SpaceX has launched more than 3,500 Starlink internet satellites using the company’s own reusable Falcon 9 rocket. OneWeb has launched 428 satellites of a planned first-generation constellation of 648 spacecraft using 13 Russian Soyuz rockets purchased through Arianespace, the French launch services provider. And Amazon plans to launch its first two prototype internet satellites of a planned constellation of 3,236 spacecraft next year on the first flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket.
But OneWeb’s launch plans were interrupted earlier this year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Arianespace was on the hook with OneWeb for six more Soyuz launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, including a 14th launch that was set to take off in March. But Russia’s space agency set conditions on the mission after rolling the rocket and the OneWeb satellites to a launch pad at Baikonur, including a demand that the UK government give up its stake in OneWeb.
The UK government declined, and OneWeb announced March 3 it was suspending launches from Baikonur. OneWeb reported a loss of $229.2 million on its financial statements as a result of the termination of the planned Soyuz launch in March. The financial charge also covers losses associated with the postponement of subsequent Soyuz missions, and the loss of 36 satellites stranded in Kazakhstan and not returned to OneWeb by Russia, which runs the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Less than a month after Soyuz launches were suspended, OneWeb announced an agreement with SpaceX to launch some of its remaining satellites. OneWeb finalized a similar agreement with New Space India Limited, the commercial arm of India’s space agency, for launches on Indian rockets.
The contract with SpaceX was surprising to many satellite industry watchers because OneWeb is an indirect competitor in broadband market. SpaceX sells Starlink service directly to consumers, while OneWeb sells to enterprises and internet service providers to provide connectivity for entire businesses or communities.
There are three Falcon 9 flights planned for OneWeb into polar orbit from Cape Canaveral — a short drive from OneWeb’s factory on Florida’s Space Coast — later this year and early next year. OneWeb has procured two launches on India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket, the first of which is set to blast off Saturday.
OneWeb said earlier this year the three Falcon 9 flights will be equivalent to the launch capacity of four Soyuz rockets, which carried as many as 36 OneWeb satellites on each flight. That would mean SpaceX will launch around 48 OneWeb spacecraft on each mission, although the exact figures haven’t been confirmed.
The five additional launches should be complete in the first half of next year, with all the satellites entering commercial service by the end of 2023, according to OneWeb.
India’s GSLV Mk.3 rocket rolled out to its launch pad Oct. 15 at the Satish Dhawan Space Center. Credit: ISRO
Despite the pause in launches, production of OneWeb satellites continued at a factory near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The satellites are built by a joint venture between Airbus and OneWeb.
OneWeb shipped 36 satellites from Florida to India last month for the company’s first launch on the GSLV Mk.3.
The 36 OneWeb spacecraft rode to the launch site on a Ukrainian Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft. Antonov airplanes have been widely used for transporting satellites between their factories and launch sites around the world, but have seen less use this year after Russian-owned aircraft — as most active An-124s are — were banned from U.S. and European airspace in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The Antonov An-124 used for the OneWeb transport last month was a Ukrainian-owned aircraft.
Technicians at the Satish Dhawan Space Center attached the 36 OneWeb satellites — each weighing about 325 pounds (147.5 kilograms) — to a Swedish-built dispenser provided by Beyond Gravity, formerly known as RUAG Space. The same type of deployer was used on the Soyuz launches for OneWeb.
Once the satellites were mounted to the deployment fixture, the entire structure was encapsulated by the Indian rocket’s payload fairing. Then ground teams drove the payload compartment to the GSLV Mk.3 integration hangar for stacking on top of the rocket, which was already assembled inside the building.
On Oct. 15, Indian engineers transferred the fully-stacked rocket to the Second Launch Pad at the spaceport for final liftoff preparations.
The final steps before launch will include filling the rocket’s core stage with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, and loading super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the cryogenic upper stage.
The GSLV Mk.3 rocket will ignite two 86-foot-long (26.2-meter) S200 solid rocket boosters to climb off the pad. A core stage driven by two Vikas engines will ignite at T+plus 1 minute, 46 seconds, followed by burnout and separation of the strap-on boosters at T+plus 2 minutes, 10 seconds, after they each burn through their supply of more than 225 tons (205 metric tons) of pre-packed solid propellants.
The twin Vikas engines will fire until T+plus 5 minutes, 3 seconds, each producing around 190,000 pounds of thrust. The liquid-fueled powerplants are new higher-thrust variants of the Vikas engine that debuted in 2018.
The GSLV Mk.3’s upper stage engine will ignite at T+plus 5 minutes, 5 seconds, moments after separation of the core stage. The upper stage engine burned until T+plus 15 minutes, 45 seconds, to place the 36 OneWeb satellites into orbit.
The OneWeb satellites will begin separating from their dispenser on the GSLV’s upper stage at T+plus 19 minutes, 45 seconds. The spacecraft will deploy in groups of four over the following several hours.
The payload fairing for the GSLV Mk.3 rocket, containing 36 OneWeb internet satellites, was transported across Satish Dhawan Space Center earlier this month for integration on top of the rocket. Credit: ISRO
OneWeb kept busy developing and testing ground systems and user terminals during the break in launches.
Eutelsat and OneWeb also announced plans to merge in July, bringing together OneWeb’s network of internet satellites in low Earth orbit with Eutelsat’s fleet of larger video, data relay, and broadband platforms in geostationary orbit.
The switch in launch vehicles for OneWeb’s remaining deployment missions was not the first hurdle the company has overcome. OneWeb weathered bankruptcy in 2020, and emerged under the majority ownership of Bharti Global, an Indian telecom company, and the UK government.
Founded by entrepreneur Greg Wyler in 2012, OneWeb is already planning an even larger constellation called Gen 2 that the company says could be ready for commercial service by early 2028. Pending the conclusion of the merger, Eutelsat’s resources will help OneWeb finance its Gen 2 constellation. OneWeb’s other current shareholders include Bharti, the UK government, and the Japanese company Softbank, among others.
OneWeb signed a settlement agreement with Arianespace earlier this year after the suspension of Soyuz launches. The terms of the settlement are confidential, Arianespace said, but could allow Arianespace to resume launches for OneWeb in the future on Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket for the second generation of the OneWeb constellation.
OneWeb also announced an agreement with Relativity Space in June for multiple Gen 2 satellite launches beginning as soon as 2025 on the launch company’s next-generation reusable Terran R rocket.
This view of Jovian moon Europa was created by processing an image JunoCam captured during Juno’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSSImage processing by Björn Jónsson CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Continuing to gather bonus science data in an extended mission around Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft recorded sharp views of the icy moon Europa Sept. 29 as the solar-powered probe raced by at a relative velocity of nearly 53,000 mph (85,000 kilometers per hour).
Juno’s flyby of Europa was the closest visit of a spacecraft to Europa since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew 218 miles (351 kilometers) from the moon’s icy surface. Juno’s flyby Sept. 29 reached a distance of 218 miles from Europa.
Europa, slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, is covered in a global ice shell on top of an ocean of salty water that may be habitable. NASA is building the Europa Clipper spacecraft for launch in 2024 on a mission dedicated to studying Jupiter’s icy moon, and to search for evidence that Europa harbors the ingredients for life.
Europa Clipper will make nearly 50 flybys of Europa after reaching Jupiter in 2030, traveling as close as 16 miles (25 kilometers) from Europa’s frozen crust. But the Juno spacecraft had just two hours to capture data Sept. 29.
Juno was designed to collect data on Jupiter itself, focusing its science instruments on the giant planet’s atmosphere, magnetic field, and internal structure. Juno was also the first spacecraft to image the poles of Jupiter after entering orbit around the planet on July 4, 2016. The robotic mission launched Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket.
NASA approved an extension of the Juno mission in early 2021, allowing the spacecraft — if it remains healthy — to continue its exploration around the solar system’s largest planet through September 2025.
Jupiter’s asymmetric gravity field is gradually perturbing Juno’s trajectory and pulling the closest point of the spacecraft’s elongated orbit northward over time. The shift in Juno’s orbit will allow the spacecraft to get a better view of Jupiter’s North Pole, and also enables flybys of Ganymede, Europa, and Io, three of the planet’s largest moons.
Juno flew by Ganymede on June 7, 2021, and is on track for two encounters with the volcanic moon Io on Dec. 30, 2023, and Feb. 3, 2024.
The spacecraft’s orbit is growing shorter with each flyby. The pull of gravity from Ganymede shortened Juno’s orbit from 53 to 43 days last year, and Europa’s gravity tightened Juno’s orbital period around Jupiter to 38 days. The Io flybys in 2023 and 2024 will pull the Juno spacecraft into a smaller orbit with a period of 33 days.
“Juno started out completely focused on Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The team is really excited that during our extended mission, we expanded our investigation to include three of the four Galilean satellites and Jupiter’s rings.
“With this flyby of Europa, Juno has now seen close-ups of two of the most interesting moons of Jupiter, and their ice shell crusts look very different from each other. In 2023, Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, will join the club,” Bolton said in a statement.
Juno’s nine scientific instruments include a microwave radiometer for atmospheric soundings, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers, particle detectors, a magnetometer, and a radio and plasma waves experiment. The Jupiter orbiter also carries a color camera known as JunoCam, which collects image data for processing and analysis by an army of citizen scientists around the world.
This illustration depicts NASA’s Juno spacecraft soaring over Jupiter’s south pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
JunoCam captured images of Europa doing the Sept. 29 flyby, while the spacecraft’s other instruments were tuned to look for particles lofted from Europa in possible eruptions through fractures in the moon’s global ice sheet. Signs of recurring eruptions from Europa were detected by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Juno’s microwave radiometer was expected to probe the thickness of Europa’s global ice shell. And the spacecraft’s spectrometers were to map concentrations of water ice, carbon dioxide and organic molecules across about 40 percent of Europa’s surface.
“The science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa’s surface features have changed over the past two decades,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator who leads planning for the JunoCam camera at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area.”
[…] satellites. Liftoff of the B1062 core—which previously lofted eight humans to space on last year’s all-civilian Inspiration4 flight and last spring’s first all-private International Space Station (ISS) mission, Ax-1—occurred […]
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@SpaceX has launched its 5th Falcon 9 mission of October. Up next, hopefully before month's end, will be the return of Falcon Heavy after a 3yr hiatus.
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Starlink 4-36 mission will launch SpaceX’s next batch of 54 Starlink broadband satellites. Follow us on Twitter.
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Fifty-four Starlink internet satellites are fastened to a Falcon 9 rocket for launch Thursday from Cape Canaveral, continuing SpaceX’s deployments for a broadband network reaching into an ever-expanding market linking rural households, ships, commercial airplanes, and Ukrainian military forces in their fight against Russia.
The 54 satellites are set for launch at 10:50:40 a.m. EDT (1450:40 GMT) Thursday from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX has backup launch opportunities later Thursday morning and Thursday afternoon.
The 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket will head northeast from Florida’s Space Coast, aiming for a low Earth orbit inclined 53.2 degrees to the equator. The rocket’s upper stage will release the 54 flat-packed Starlink satellites about 15 minutes into the mission.
The satellites on-board the Falcon 9 will add to SpaceX’s consumer-grade, high-speed, low-latency internet network. Subscribers can currently connect to the Starlink network in more than 40 countries and territories, and the Japan recently became the first Asian nation to receive Starlink service.
Alongside previous offerings aimed at homes and businesses, RVs, and boats and ships, SpaceX on Tuesday announced Starlink service for aircraft. “With Starlink, passengers will be able to access high-speed, low-latency internet from the moment they walk on their plane,” SpaceX tweeted.
The company said airlines can outfit their planes with Starlink receives for a “one-time hardware cost” of $150,000, presumably per aircraft, with deliveries starting in 2023. The service fee will range between $12,500 to $25,000 per month, SpaceX said.
For comparison, SpaceX charges $110 per month for Starlink’s basic consumer-grade broadband service, with a one-time hardware cost of $599.
While most customers have to pay to connect to the network, SpaceX has provided Starlink ground terminals and internet service for free to Ukraine’s government and military since the days after the start of Russia’s invasion of the country in February.
CNN reported this week that SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon last month saying it can no longer continue funding the Starlink service in Ukraine as it has since February. Ukraine’s military has relied on the network to maintain communications as terrestrial cell phone and internet networks were destroyed or disrupted by Russian attacks.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, tweeted Oct. 7 that providing the Starlink service in Ukraine has cost SpaceX $80 million to date, and that figure will exceed $100 million by the end of the year. Around 25,000 Starlink user terminals have been sent to Ukraine so far, with roughly 11,000 of them paid for by countries, organizations, and donors, but not the U.S. Defense Department, according to Musk.
In addition to terminals, we have to create, launch, maintain & replenish satellites & ground stations & pay telcos for access to Internet via gateways.
We’ve also had to defend against cyberattacks & jamming, which are getting harder.
SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable.
SpaceX was widely praised when it began donating Starlink internet terminals to Ukraine in February, but Musk’s comments encountered a backlash on social media. The world’s richest man appeared to change his mind earlier this week, tweeting that SpaceX will continue funding the Starlink service in Ukraine.
SpaceX is losing about $20 million per month “due to unpaid service and costs related to enhanced security measures for cyberwar defense, but we’ll keep going it (sigh),” Musk tweeted Tuesday.
Politico reported Monday that the Pentagon is considering paying for the Starlink satellite network in Ukraine, citing two unnamed U.S. officials involved in the deliberations.
The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free
Musk said the Starlink program is not yet a moneymaker for SpaceX.
“Also, Starlink is still losing money!” Musk tweeted. “It is insanely difficult for a LEO communications constellation to avoid bankruptcy – that was the fate of every company that tried this before.”
SpaceX is developing an upgraded, much larger Starlink satellite design sized to launch on the company’s huge next-generation Starship rocket. But the Starship has not yet attempted a launch into low Earth orbit, and Musk said delays in developing and testing the new rocket could force SpaceX to start launching a smaller version of the new Starlink satellite design on Falcon 9 rockets.
SpaceX is more than halfway complete with deploying the initial fleet of 4,400 Starlink internet satellites. The company has approval from the Federal Communications Commission to eventually launch and operate up to 12,000 Starlink spacecraft, and SpaceX has signaled it could aim to fly as many as 42,000 Starlink satellites in orbit.
The Starlink network was conceived as a venture to help draw in revenue to fund SpaceX’s ambition to build a base on Mars. The Starship rocket itself, designed to be fully reusable with relatively low operating costs, is central to Musk’s Mars dream.
After Thursday’s mission, SpaceX will have sent 3,505 Starlink satellites into orbit, including prototypes and failed spacecraft. The company currently has more than 3,100 functioning Starlink satellites in space, with about 2,700 operational and another 400 moving into their operational orbits, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an expert tracker of spaceflight activity and an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The launch Sunday night, designated Starlink 4-36, will be SpaceX’s 48th launch of the year. SpaceX plans to complete more than 60 missions this year, an average of about one launch every six days.
The higher launch rate has been aided by shorter turnarounds between missions at launch pads in Florida and California, and SpaceX’s reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings. Launches carrying satellites for SpaceX’s own Starlink internet network, like the mission Thursday, have accounted for about two-thirds of the company’s Falcon 9 flights so far this year.
The Falcon 9 booster awaiting blastoff Thursday is numbered B1062 in SpaceX’s inventory of reusable rockets. The booster launched for the first time on Nov. 5, 2020, with a U.S. military GPS navigation satellite, and launched another GPS mission on June 17, 2021. It has launched two commercial astronaut missions — Inspiration4 and Axiom-1 — along with the Nilesat 301 communications satellite for Egypt, and four previous Starlink missions.
The Starlink 4-36 mission will be the 10th flight of B1062.
Credit: Spaceflight Now
Stationed inside a launch control center just south of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for Thursday’s countdown, SpaceX’s launch team will begin loading super-chilled, densified kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Falcon 9 vehicle at T-minus 35 minutes.
Helium pressurant will also flow into the rocket in the last half-hour of the countdown. In the final seven minutes before liftoff, the Falcon 9’s Merlin main engines will be thermally conditioned for flight through a procedure known as “chilldown.” The Falcon 9’s guidance and range safety system will also be configured for launch.
After liftoff, the Falcon 9 rocket will vector its 1.7 million pounds of thrust — produced by nine Merlin engines — to steer northeast over the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket will exceed the speed of sound in about one minute, then shut down its nine main engines two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. The booster stage will release from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, then fire pulses from cold gas control thrusters and extend titanium grid fins to help steer the vehicle back into the atmosphere.
Two braking burns will slow the rocket for landing on the drone ship “A Shortfall Of Gravitas” around 400 miles (650 kilometers) downrange approximately nine minutes after liftoff.
The Falcon 9’s reusable payload fairing will jettison during the second stage burn. A recovery ship is also on station in the Atlantic to retrieve the two halves of the nose cone after they splash down under parachutes.
Landing of the first stage on Thursday’s mission will occur moments after the Falcon 9’s second stage engine cuts off to deliver the Starlink satellites into orbit. Separation of the 54 Starlink spacecraft, built by SpaceX in Redmond, Washington, from the Falcon 9 rocket is expected T+plus 15 minutes, 23 seconds.
Retention rods will release from the Starlink payload stack, allowing the flat-packed satellites to fly free from the Falcon 9’s upper stage in orbit. The 54 spacecraft will unfurl solar arrays and run through automated activation steps, then use krypton-fueled ion engines to maneuver into their operational orbit.
The Falcon 9’s guidance computer aims deploy the satellites into an elliptical orbit at an inclination of 53.2 degrees to the equator. The satellites will use on-board propulsion to do the rest of the work to reach a circular orbit 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth.
The Starlink satellites will fly in one of five orbital “shells” at different inclinations for SpaceX’s global internet network. After reaching their operational orbit, the satellites will enter commercial service and begin beaming broadband signals to consumers, who can purchase Starlink service and connect to the network with a SpaceX-supplied ground terminal.
ROCKET: Falcon 9 (B1062.10)
PAYLOAD: 54 Starlink satellites (Starlink 4-36)
LAUNCH SITE: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
LAUNCH DATE: Oct. 20, 2022
LAUNCH TIME: 10:50:40 a.m. EDT (1450:40 GMT)
WEATHER FORECAST: Greater than 90% chance of acceptable weather; Low-moderate risk of upper level winds; Low risk of unfavorable conditions for booster recovery
BOOSTER RECOVERY: “A Shortfall Of Gravitas” drone ship east of Charleston, South Carolina
LAUNCH AZIMUTH: Northeast
TARGET ORBIT: 144 miles by 209 miles (232 kilometers by 336 kilometers), 53.2 degrees inclination
LAUNCH TIMELINE:
T+00:00: Liftoff
T+01:12: Maximum aerodynamic pressure (Max-Q)
T+02:27: First stage main engine cutoff (MECO)
T+02:31: Stage separation
T+02:38: Second stage engine ignition
T+02:42: Fairing jettison
T+06:50: First stage entry burn ignition (three engines)
T+07:09: First stage entry burn cutoff
T+08:29: First stage landing burn ignition (one engine)
T+08:42: Second stage engine cutoff (SECO 1)
T+08:49: First stage landing
T+15:23: Starlink satellite separation
MISSION STATS:
182nd launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010
190th launch of Falcon rocket family since 2006
10th launch of Falcon 9 booster B1072
156th Falcon 9 launch from Florida’s Space Coast
101st Falcon 9 launch from pad 40
156th launch overall from pad 40
123rd flight of a reused Falcon 9 booster
64th dedicated Falcon 9 launch with Starlink satellites
48th Falcon 9 launch of 2022
48th launch by SpaceX in 2022
46th orbital launch attempt based out of Cape Canaveral in 2022
Kate Rubio 
