Launches...

[2hats]

Sentinel 2B remote sensing launch on an ESA Vega rocket from Kourou in a few minutes at 0149UTC to a polar orbit just under 800km high. Can be seen live on Arianespace TV, and the same within a science presentation on Livestream. 2B will join 2A in conducting multi-spectral earth observation.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Sentinel 2B remote sensing launch on an ESA Vega rocket from Kourou in a few minutes at 0149UTC to a polar orbit just under 800km high. Can be seen live on Arianespace TV, and the same within a science presentation on Livestream. 2B will join 2A in conducting multi-spectral earth observation.

This is a composite of Europe from Sentinel 2A of cloudless days
Sentinel-2 cloudless map of Europe by EOX

 

[2hats]

Delta IV launch of a (radar imaging) spysat (NROL-47) at 0005UTC in a few minutes out of Vandenberg. Live stream:

 

[2hats]

I think that’s SLC-6 - would have been the polar orbit launch site (exact pad) for the space shuttle.

Hold. Recycling to T-4 minutes.

 

[2hats]

Troubleshooting a valve in the ground system. Retargetting launch to 0059UTC.

e2a: 24 hour scrub.

 

[2hats]

A Japanese Elipson rocket lofted the ASNARO-2 SAR radar imaging satellite a couple of days ago. This short video clip captures the ascent nicely:

Note the two separate solid stages. The exhaust is bluish tinged where the light of the rising sun is scattering off fine smoke particles of one of the combustion by-products - aluminium oxide - high in the mesosphere.

e2a: Nice still from the same observer:

 

[2hats]

New Zealand managed to launch their first orbital payload on their Electron rocket from a site on the east coast of the North Island a few days ago (21 Jan).


Aside from three cubesats it also orbited a payload called “Humanity Star”, a 1 metre wide disco ball. Details of where/when to spot it at the link given.

 

[Crispy]

Electron's launch site is in the running for most photogenic in the world.

 

[2hats]

Arianespace Soyuz (VS18) launch coming up in a minute...

 

[2hats]

Japanese company Interstellar Technologies tried to launch the first Japanese private rocket, Momo-2, this morning. Unfortunately it didn’t go to plan…

Nice corporate mascot though.
More.

 

[editor]

Japanese company Interstellar Technologies tried to launch the first Japanese private rocket, Momo-2, this morning. Unfortunately it didn’t go to plan…

Nice corporate mascot though.
More.

Started so well as well!

 

[2hats]

Made a bit of a mess of the pad…

 

[2hats]

Ariane 5 ES launch in just under 20 minutes (1225BST) carrying 4 more satellites in the Galileo navigation system. Live coverage.

That will be followed 14 minutes later (1239BST) by a SpaceX Falcon 9 from VAFB carrying the Iridium-7 batch of 10 satellites aloft to polar orbits. Stream here.

e2a: Ariane launch running to plan thus far - 4 Galileo sats are climbing towards their deployment orbits. SpaceX launch also proceeding to plan thus far - nice hole punched in the west coast fog at launch.

2e2a: The Galileo satellites have just passed over the UK, in a barbecue roll, on target for their transfer orbit. Falcon 9 first stage appears to have landed on the recovery ship. They are attempting fairing recovery but the target drop zone does not have favourable weather.

3e2a: Payload fairings were not captured.

 

[2hats]

ESA have now gradually 'flown' one of the two satellites to an alternative lower orbit (but one where it syncs up with the rest of the constellation) and have fired it up and received navigation (and in due course, with any luck, SAR) signals from it. So it looks like they plan to operate that (and the other partner satellite that went up with it to a wrong orbit) from this alternate location such that they will effectively achieve the planned mission anyway.

Just a follow up to this. The two satellites are now in alternative operational orbits and may soon be declared operational and start contributing navigation messages to the Galileo GNSS constellation (the ground segment has been adapted to accommodate them). The on board SAR (Search and Rescue) payloads are already contributing to the global COSPAS-SARSAT emergency locator beacon network.

Because their orbits are not perfectly circular, ESA engineers and scientists decided to capitalise on this opportunity and use both to carry out the most accurate test of the local position invariance aspect of General Relativity to date, by conducting gravitational redshift tests (the satellites each carry a passive hydrogen maser atomic clock and are fitted with laser retroreflectors which facilitate precise independent tracking of their orbits) - ie measuring the slow down of their on board clocks as they move through the Earth’s gravitational field.

The results verify and better those of a one off dedicated satellite launched specifically to conduct such an experiment several decades ago (and the most accurate test of such until now), and agree with the predicted GR value to within 0.001%.

Data collection is ongoing (the satellites are expected to have something like a 10 year lifetime) so further refinements are likely.

Paper - doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.231101

 

[Limejuice]

I've been looking at launches all wrong, it seems...

 

[ferrelhadley]

Dreamchasers spaceplane now has a contract for ISS resupply.

Private Dream Chaser Space Plane Cleared to Begin Full-Scale Production

It will be scheduled to fly on a ULA Altas V in 2020.That would give NASA 3 separate vehicles for cargo delivery to the ISS,(Dragon, Cygnus and Dreamchaser), two manned vehicles likely to arrive this year (Crewed Dragon, Starliner) the possibility of Dreamchaser being changed to a crewed variant and off course its own manned system, Orion, to come online sometime in the early 2020s.

 

[2hats]

The opposite of a launch - a re-entry over New Zealand (North Island) caught live on TV during a cricket match. Actually Cosmos 2430 (a Russian military US-K type optical/IR early warning satellite).

 

[Steel Icarus]

"Apparently that's a meteor shower"

 

[ferrelhadley]

40 minutes to Iridium 8

Last of the new gen Iridium launches, (they in the process of getting shot of the famous flare causing generatio of satellites. )
From Vandenberg so USAF and not affected by events in DC. Looking for a stage recovery the booster was flown in September 18 so its a refurbished unit.

 

[skyscraper101]

Just over 5 minutes to go.

*Settles in*

 

[twentythreedom]

Fucking amazing shit, especially landing the first stage back on the droneship

 

[skyscraper101]

Awesome stuff. The landing on the drone ship is so awesome.

 

[cybershot]

Grr i clicked away and missed that bit.

 

[ferrelhadley]

We have 2 Falcon Heavy launches slotted for the next couple of months.
Two first flights of soon to be crewed vehicles.
Two in flight aborts of soon to be crewed vehicles.
And two first flight of crewed vehicles with crews.
Oh and the Germans have a lander and rover aiming for an ex Apollo site.

If the golden age of human space flight was Gagarin to Armstrong, we may just be on the brink of the silver age.

 

[2hats]

Iridium 8 ascent arc photo.

 

[2hats]

Japanese Epsilon rocket launch (4) tonight in about 10 minutes at 0050UTC. Live stream here. The payload several small satellites:

RAPIS 1 (200 kg)
ALE 1 (68 kg)
AOBA-Velox 4 (3 kg)
RISESat (60 kg)
MicroDragon (50 kg)
NEXUS (1 kg)
OrigamiSat 1 (4 kg)

ALE 1 is the first test satellite from Astro Live Experiences’ SkyCanvas project.

e2a: and away it goes…

 

[editor]

Japanese Epsilon rocket launch (4) tonight in about 10 minutes at 0050UTC. Live stream here. The payload several small satellites:

RAPIS 1 (200 kg)
ALE 1 (68 kg)
AOBA-Velox 4 (3 kg)
RISESat (60 kg)
MicroDragon (50 kg)
NEXUS (1 kg)
OrigamiSat 1 (4 kg)

ALE 1 is the first test satellite from Astro Live Experiences’ SkyCanvas project.

e2a: and away it goes…

What a strange mission!

The six ride-along satellites include ALE-1, which was built by the Tokyo-based company Astro Live Experiences. ALE-1 is 24 inches long by 24 inches wide by 31 inches tall (60 by 60 by 80 centimeters) and is packed with 0.4-inch-wide (1 cm) particles engineered to create a sky show when they come down through Earth's atmosphere.

ALE-1 and a few follow-on craft will "investigate feasibility of man-made meteors and [their] marketability," as well as provide data about Earth's upper atmosphere, Astro Live Experiences representatives wrote in a project description.

Those first artificial meteors won't flare up for another year or so. ALE-1 will eventually deploy a drag-increasing "membrane," which will help lower the satellite's altitude by about 62 miles (100 km). Then, in the spring of 2020, it will deploy its first pellets — over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, if everything goes according to plan. The resulting meteors should be visible to more than 6 million people, across a region about 125 miles (200 km) wide, Astro Live Experiences representatives said.

Japan Launches Meteor-Spawning Minisatellite, 6 Other Spacecraft to Orbit

 

[editor]

Blue Origin's privately build New Shepard spacecraft has aced its biggest mission yet, and this time the spacecraft flew for NASA.

The reusable New Shepard launched into space today (Jan. 23) on its 10th-ever test flight, a brief uncrewed jaunt that carried at least eight NASA-sponsored research and technology payloads to suborbital space and back. The mission, which lasted 10 minutes and 15 seconds, reached an altitude of 66 miles (107 kilometers), Blue Origin officials said.

Blue Origin's New Shepard Launches NASA Experiments, Aces Rocket Landing

 

[petee]

a sad launch

We learned this weekend from this story in The New York Times that Boisjoly died last month in Utah at age 73.

Bulky, bald and tall, Boisjoly was an imposing figure, especially when armed with data. He found disturbing the data he reviewed about the booster rockets that would lift Challenger into space. Six months before the Challenger explosion, he predicted "a catastrophe of the highest order" involving "loss of human life" in a memo to managers at Thiokol.

NPR Choice page

 

[petee]