Space Stuff and Launch Info

[hutchphd]

From the same article, it appears that there are differing opinions on the matter:

But Jeff Hanley, who manages NASA's Constellation program that includes the Ares I, questioned the validity of the Air Force study because it relied on only one example. He said NASA had done its own study, using supercomputers to replicate the behavior of Ares I, that predicted a safe outcome.​

Jeff Hanley got fired (*oops I mean promoted) for being too gung-ho on Ares after being told told to stand down. Maybe not the best source! Have you seen pictures of Titan 4 blowing up...seems unlikely to me...but point well taken.

 

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The abort test was successful.

NASA made extra sure they will get the test results: In addition to the capsule transmitting back the data they also stored it on 12 independent recorders that were ejected in 6 groups of 2 each. Each recorder is designed to survive the water impact, floats, transmits its position, and has printed instructions to return it to NASA if found by someone else. Each of them has the full test data, finding a single one of them is sufficient even if the data transmission fails. NASA did a test run earlier and recovered all of them.

Video and more information:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/07/...rion-launch-abort-system-before-moon-flights/
Video of the discarded booster hitting the ocean:

 

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Payload fairing half from Falcon Heavy detaches and falls through the atmosphere:

 

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Vega had its first launch failure in its 15th flight. It looks like the second stage simply didn't ignite. Video below.

We have a couple of interesting launches coming up:

• Chandrayaan-2 on July 14, India's attempt to land softly on the Moon (planned landing in September).
• Maiden flight of Hyperbola-1 on July 22, the second startup trying to reach orbit this year. 300 kg to low Earth orbit.
• Delta IV on July 25, the last flight of the regular Delta IV. From that point only Delta IV Heavy (with three boosters instead of one) will keep flying.
• Falcon 9 launching Amos 17 on July 27. The flight is free for the customer - as compensation for the loss of Amos 6 in 2016.
• Maybe in July: Maiden flight of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) from India. Yet another small and cheap rocket, 500 kg to low Earth orbit.

Video of Vega launch failure (note how the reporter just reads from some script and describes events that have nothing to do with reality):

 

[Borg]

APOD has been showing videos celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Today's moon landing video is a nail biter...
Apollo 11: Descent to the Moon
Apollo 11 Launches Humans to the Moon

 

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Look, an early Christmas present falling from the sky!



Worth $3 million each, SpaceX has a big interest in catching these fairing parts (one lands in the net, the other one lands in the water and is picked up later). This is the second successful catch.

 

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An Atlas V launched shortly before sunset on the East Coast. Perfect conditions for a beautiful view.

 

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Chandrayaan-2, India's first attempt to land on the Moon, has entered a Moon orbit. It will now lower its orbit over the next days; the landing is still scheduled for September 7.

Other news:
Hyperbola-1 and Jielong 1 had successful maiden flights, both built by (separate) Chinese start-ups.
SpaceX got a second boat to capture both fairing parts.
The first flight of Soyuz-2.1a will launch 22 August 03:38 UTC. It will replace the Soyuz capsules used for crewed flights.
The last flight of Delta IV is planned for 22 August, 13:00 UTC. Only Delta Heavy will keep flying (once in a while, given it heavy price tag).

 

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The first flight of Soyuz-2.1a will launch 22 August 03:38 UTC. It will replace the Soyuz capsules used for crewed flights.

Successful launch but the docking lead to problems. According to Roscosmos the problems are on the ISS side. Now they plan to go into a Soyuz capsule that is already docked, undock, fly to another port, dock there, and then have the waiting Soyuz dock at the now free place on August 27. Sounds complicated? It is.

https://spacenews.com/uncrewed-soyuz-aborts-iss-docking/
Edit: Second docking attempt was successful.

 

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Chandrayaan-2 prepares for landing. Friday, Sept. 6, between 20:00 and 21:00 UTC (4 pm to 5 pm EDT), in 18 hours from now +- 30 minutes. If successful India will be the fourth country to (softly) land something on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the US and China.

Not sure if there will be some live coverage. Here is a news article.

Update: Lander crashed, apparently in one piece but not operational.

 

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The first prototype of Starship has been put together yesterday. In about half an hour Elon Musk will give his yearly update on the status of Starship. Livestream

Edit: Rescheduled to have 15 minutes delay. Now xx:15.

 

[gleem]

Musk remains as optimistic as usual. If all goes according to plan I may actually witness the occupation of Mars. He is definitely aiming high in his goal of putting a payload into orbit the size of 1.25 Nimitz class aircraft carriers each month. He says he likes things as simple as possible to reduce problems, but how simple can you make a rocket that goes to Mars? His schedule mantra is " long is wrong, tight is right". Tight but not too tight and simple but not too simple I hope.

 

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1.25 Nimitz class carriers is 125,000 tonnes, or nearly 1000 flights. To get that done in a month you need 10 spacecraft flying at maximal rate.
It's a theoretical capacity, but that's what you get with a rapidly reusable system.

We have a dedicated thread here.

 

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Astronauts on the ISS get an oven to bake cookies

A second Starlink mission is planned for November 11. Visibility: To be seen. scnr[/size]

 

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The SpaceX Starship Mk1 prototype has been damaged beyond repair 20 November 2019 during a cryogenic pressure test. Entire top been torn off.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-prototype-anomaly-pressure-test.html

Split to become its own thread

 

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Commercial Crew in the US should get two important milestones this month: Boeing plans to launch its uncrewed orbital flight of Starliner on December 17. It will stay at the ISS for about a month. SpaceX wants to do the in-flight abort test of Dragon 2 in late December.
Apart from (probably) more parachute tests these are the last major tests before the companies can fly astronauts to the ISS at some point in 2020.

SpaceX will be quite busy with other activities, too. After launching a Dragon (1) to the ISS on December 4 they have just a bit over 11 days to prepare the launch pad again for JCSAT-18 / Kacific 1 - a record turnaround time if the launch dates hold. They might even use the same pad a third time in December if the next Starlink mission gets ready quickly enough.Edit: I missed Cheops! ESA's first dedicated exoplanet mission. Launch: December 17. It will focus on precision measurements of exoplanets nearby.

 

[anorlunda]

I just watched the SpaceX Dragon launch. Beautiful day. Beautiful launch.

 

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CHEOPS, ESA's first exoplanet mission, will launch in 20 hours from now. Livecast
Edit: Delayed.

SpaceX will launch an unremarkable geostationary satellite in 11 hours and 10 minutes, but (assuming no delays) it will break its record pad turnaround time: 11 days 7 hours between subsequent launches from the same pad. There is no time to rest afterwards either: The same pad will be used again for another Starlink launch on December 31 (Dec 30 local time). We will get Starlink trains again in the evening or morning sky on Dec 31 and early next year.

Boeing's uncrewed Starliner flight was delayed, it is now planned for Dec 20. The in-flight abort test of Dragon 2 shifted to January 4.

Edit: Cheops delayed, Falcon 9 launch was a success (including booster landing).

 

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I moved the discussion about the Starliner launch to a new thread.

 

[sas3]

Red's Rhetoric has some very good videos of a lot of launches https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrHsrhLqowsAIYbaNE7GcBg/videos

 

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2 hours until the next Starlink launch. We'll get a dense train of 60 satellites again.
Live coverage

With this launch - just the third one - Starlink will become the largest satellite constellation, and SpaceX will become the largest private satellite operator (by number of satellites). One or even two more launches might follow later this month. SpaceX says they produce 7 satellites per day now, enough to cover two launches per month plus some spares.

SpaceX shared approximate orbit data in advance, this website makes predictions for a few days - but you can't choose your location, it only uses your browser settings. As this is just an estimate before launch and as the satellites will raise their orbit these predictions won't be 100% accurate, but the deviations over 5 days shouldn't be too large. As a rough guideline: From the southern US, North Africa and the southern part of Asia you can see the satellites early in the morning (~0.5-2 hours before sunrise), from Australia, NZ and similar latitude regions in Africa/South America you can see them in the evening (~0.5-2 hours after sunset). Southern Europe and Northern US/Canada are problematic, Central/Northern Europe is probably out of luck.

 

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Video of Boeing's Starliner test flight from inside the capsule

The in-flight abort of Dragon 2 is planned for Saturday (18th) 13:00 UTC, this is one day and 12 hours after my post. It is a 4 hour launch window, as this is a test it is quite possible that the launch is pushed back within the window.

Just two days and 4 hours later (Jan 20, 17:20 UTC) SpaceX will launch yet another batch of Starlink satellites - only 13 days after the last one. The satellites might be visible in Europe very quickly after launch as extremely compact and bright train after one orbit.

Edit: Discussion of the in-flight abort test is now in a separate thread.

 

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Another Starlink launch in ~2.5 hours, the third routine launch and fourth in total. Didn’t see a visibility forecast yet. These trains of satellites look really weird.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/01/27/falcon-9-starlink-3-mission-status-center-2/

Edit: Shifted by 24 hours due to the weather (Tuesday 14:28 UTC)

Edit2: https://celestrak.com/cesium/pass-viz-beta.php?source=CelesTrak&tle=/NORAD/elements/supplemental/starlink-4.txt&satcat=/pub/satcat.txt#visualization/pass. Looking okay for sightings in the evening from the southern half of the US, but not from Europe.

Edit3: Shifted by another 24 hours (Wednesday 14:06 UTC)

The 22 minutes difference each day accounts for precession of the satellites in orbit. A smaller contribution (~4 minutes) comes from the difference between solar time (same place of the Sun) and sidereal time (same place of the stars). If they are not launched they don't precess, but the launch time must adjust as if they would, because all the other satellites in orbit do so already and their relative orientation must stay the same.

 

[Baluncore]

I hear the 4'th Starlink launch, another 60, is now up there.

 

[anorlunda]

Just missed it. Darn. It took off in front of the rising sun from my angle. That blinded me and I couldn't see it.

 

[gleem]

For what ever reason I couldn't see it either and I am south of the Cape in Port St. Lucie. It is a beautiful day too.

 

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I found this great website that monitors the Starlink satellites and has many different graphs plotting the deployment progress:
https://leo-internet.com/constellation/STARLINK
Click on the launch numbers or satellites for more information.

They also monitor OneWeb, currently just 6 satellites are in space but the first large batch is scheduled for February 7 (in 1 week!): https://leo-internet.com/constellation/ONEWEB

 

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A couple of interesting launches coming up. This months up to four rockets could make their first orbital flight (for comparison: In all of 2010 we had just three to five depending on the way to count).A Soyuz will launch 34 OneWeb satellites February 6, 21:42, the first large batch after 6 test satellites early last year. They are deployed in a conventional way, so they will probably spread out faster than Starlink satellites, but they might still form an interesting group of satellites for a while.
SpaceX counters with yet another Starlink launch February 15, the third launch this year. They promised a launch every two weeks, so far they have one every three weeks, quite close.

Simorgh, Iran's attempt to scale up their rocket systems, is being prepared for a launch in the first half of February. After a successful suborbital test the rocket had two launch failures, the next flight could be the first one that reaches orbit. Payload capacity is still relatively low with 350 kg.Commercial spaceflight start-ups everywhere:

Virgin Orbit plans the maiden flight of LauncherOne on February 15. A relatively small air-launched rocket (500 kg to orbit).

Astra Space plans the maiden flight of its rocket Astra on February 21. At $2.5 million per launch (up to 100 kg) they have the cheapest option for a dedicated launch - but rideshare launches are much cheaper.

ExPace plans the maiden flight of Kuaizhou 11 on February 25. They have experience with smaller rockets already, however.

 

[anorlunda]

Astra Space plans the maiden flight of its rocket Astra on February 21. At $2.5 million per launch (up to 100 kg) they have the cheapest option for a dedicated launch - but rideshare launches are much cheaper.

Wow, that's much cheaper than even Pegasus, the one that launches from the wing of a B52 or other aircraft. Wikipedia puts a Pegasus launch at $40 million.

 

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Pegasus is terribly overpriced in today's market, they don't get many contracts these days (all launches in the last 15 years were from the US government). You can launch half that mass with Electron for ~$6 million, or over 20 times the mass with Falcon 9 for 50-60 million.