Space Stuff and Launch Info

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Another Starlink launch June 12, just 8 days after the previous. From the same pad, a record turnaround time (planned).
And then another one June 24 (different pad).
Viewing conditions are unclear until we have better launch time estimates.
There might be yet another Falcon 9 launch June 30, a GPS satellite. If they all happen then SpaceX will have launched 4 rockets and over 180 spacecraft in June, and 5 rockets in 5 weeks (with the crewed flight and the previous Starlink launch).

Here is an animation of Starlink satellite orbits. The reference frame has operational satellites stay in place where horizontal lines are satellites following each other in the orbit. Satellites are launched to lower orbits where they orbit faster -> move to the right. They also precess at a different rate, which makes them move up slowly in the diagram. As they raise their orbit they become stationary in both axes, and clever timing of the process makes them arrive at just the right spot. Each launch ends up with three groups of 20 satellites after ~4 months. The goal is a uniform grid for early operation, later launches will then add more and more horizontal lines in between to increase bandwidth. From August on we can expect non-stop service in some latitude ranges, around that time a private beta test should begin.

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After its July 2019 launch failure, Vega will return back to flight June 19, launching 50 smaller spacecraft .

In July we'll see three missions flying to Mars:
The US plans to launch its rover Perseverance with its small helicopter, now called Ingenuity
China plans to launch Tianwen-1, a rover and an orbiter.
The UAE plans to launch Hope, a Mars orbiter.

 

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Rocketlab's launch attempt for "Don't stop me now" was cancelled due to bad weather. Next attempt tomorrow, with the same name.

 

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An Electron launch failed during the second stage burn. The reason is not clear (or public) yet.
Video - at 5:40 into the flight, shortly before they discard empty batteries, the velocity suddenly stops increasing (22:10 video timestamp)
News

It's interesting to see how different companies handle this in their livestreams. It was immediately obvious that something went wrong with the propulsion, but the guy in the livestream just talked about problems with the video stream. Not as bad as the reporting during the Vega failure, at least, where they kept reading milestones that were obviously wrong based on telemetry.

 

[trurle]

An Electron launch failed during the second stage burn. The reason is not clear (or public) yet.
Video - at 5:40 into the flight, shortly before they discard empty batteries, the velocity suddenly stops increasing (22:10 video timestamp)
News

It's interesting to see how different companies handle this in their livestreams. It was immediately obvious that something went wrong with the propulsion, but the guy in the livestream just talked about problems with the video stream. Not as bad as the reporting during the Vega failure, at least, where they kept reading milestones that were obviously wrong based on telemetry.

On the video shortly before 1st stage separation, the outer skin of interstage or 1st stage is buckling. The buckling was not visible on launch 13 june 2020. Seems the 1st stage was damaged yet burned properly. 2nd stage may had damage too. Handling issues or in-flight overstressed?

 

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RocketLab says the first stage flight was without problem, maybe it was just some logo or other uncritical part that peeled off.
Statement by CEO Peter Beck

Edit: Here is an acceleration plot. The final stop is the most notable but thrust went down before.

 

[trurle]

RocketLab says the first stage flight was without problem, maybe it was just some logo or other uncritical part that peeled off.
Statement by CEO Peter Beck

Edit: Here is an acceleration plot. The final stop is the most notable but thrust went down before.

Could you post image or table of acceleration directly? Twitter is blocked on my side.

 

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Youtube video, also by Scott Manley
~5:20 has the acceleration

Image alone:

Spoiler

 

[trurle]

Youtube video, also by Scott Manley
~5:20 has the acceleration

Image alone:

Spoiler

View attachment 265946

Thank you.
After re-checking the video, seems it was indeed logo peeling off.
Regarding acceleration and camera feed, it is consistent with fuel slosh resulting in either engine damage or automatic engine cutoff. Seems the mild roll and yaw oscillations were coincident with thrust reduction, and rocket yawed sharply seconds before video termination.

 

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Starlink started its private beta in the northern US and southern Canada. There is some confusion what is covered by the NDA and what is not. Here is an antenna photo that was found on the SpaceX website, this is certainly fine to distribute, here is a bit more from the website, more can be found via search engines.

Beta testers are required to install the antenna on their own - SpaceX seems to be pretty confident that it is easy as claimed.

Based on the satellite orbits they probably can't deliver 24/7 service right now, but outages should be short (maybe just a minute several times a day or something like that) and go away within a month as more satellites move to their final orbits. SpaceX said that it should be fine for e.g. video streaming but unsuitable for gaming.------------------------

Edit: Almost forgot. UAE's "Hope" mission, its first mission to Mars, is expected to launch in 6 hours. It is the first of three Mars missions this launch window.

 

[Leo Liu]

Pictures of Tianwen 1's LM5 launch vehicle on the launch pad. Credit to CASC.

 

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That's the second of the Mars missions, liftoff is planned for July 23 but I don't have a time.
The US Mars mission is planned for July 30.
They will all arrive in February 2021.On July 28 an Ariane 5 will launch another Mission Extension Vehicle (together with other satellites), which will fly to a communication satellite to keep it operational for longer.

The next Falcon 9 launch or the one after that (looks like early August now, but who knows) will use a trajectory last used 60 years ago: Launching south from Cape Canaveral to go to a polar orbit.

Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken are now planned to leave the ISS August 1 and land the next day. After a few weeks for the final NASA certification the first routine crew mission of Crew Dragon could launch mid September.

 

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NASA's next Mars rover arrived at the launch pad, for its launch Thursday 11:50 GMT - in ~39 hours. The last of three Mars missions this year.

NASA announced the astronauts for Crew-2, the second operational flight of Dragon 2 (third flight with crew) in spring 2021.
A coincidence: This flight is expected to reuse the capsule of Demo-2, the mission that is currently at the ISS. One of the Crew-2 members is Megan McArthur, the wife of Bob Behnken, one of the Demo-2 astronauts. She'll fly to space in the same capsule as her husband before.

 

[dlgoff]

How cool is this mission?

 

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Crew Dragon departed from the ISS. They are slowly leaving the ISS now. In a few hours they'll get some sleep while Dragon keeps orbiting Earth. The deorbit burn is scheduled to start 17:51 UTC, in 16.5 hours, about half an hour later they enter the denser parts of the atmosphere, with a splashdown 50 minutes after the deorbit burn started.

Edit: They have a problem with a tablet and just discussed if it is in airplane mode.

 

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The capsule is on board the recovery ship and the astronauts have left it just a minute ago. Demo-2 ended successfully.

 

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speedtest.net keeps their results shareable - which means you can find every result if you search enough. And people do exactly this to find Starlink results.

Here is a recent Starlink result. 21 ms ping, 46 Mbit/s down, 10 Mbit/s up. For a service that is available literally everywhere with electricity and a view of the sky? That's better than the access some people in cities get. We don't know if this is typical, but at least it demonstrates that low-latency connection via satellites is possible. At least 7 ms comes from physical propagation time of signals (twice up, twice down, at least 550 km each time).

Edit: Here are more test results

 

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Fairing catch from the recent Starlink launch. This time they had a drone capturing a video. That's $3 million worth of hardware falling from the sky.
The booster (which landed safely, too) set a record by flying for the 6th time.

 

[Tom.G]

Likely in the next four to six months, we on the West coast of the USA will get to watch a Falcon 9 launch. No firm dates set yet. More info and photos at:
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-next-california-launch-booster-spotted/

Cheers,
Tom

 

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6 launches in the next 6 days, three of them from Florida.
* Delta IV Heavy (which looks like it's exploding every time it takes off - but that is the design)
* Falcon 9 - flying south over Cuba, a maneuver last done 50 years ago.
* Electron returns to flight after its recent failure (from New Zealand)
* Another Falcon 9 within two days of the first one. Starlink, so we get new satellite trains for a while
* Maiden flight of "Rocket 3" from Alaska
* Vega returns to flight after its failure, launching tens of smaller satellites (from French Guiana)

 

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Delays, delays...

After some delays Delta IV Heavy tried to launch, but 3 seconds before lift-off a problem occurred. Here is a video and https://www.ulalaunch.com/missions/next-launch/delta-iv-heavy-nrol-44.
As its payload is some expensive classified satellite that's sitting on the launch pad they originally didn't allow Falcon 9 to take off before Delta IV Heavy (delaying Falcon 9, too) - but now it looks like they can launch earlier. ULA will need a few days to check what went wrong.
Edit: Further reading suggest they can't launch earlier, so the southward launch will be delayed even more. Starlink flies in a different direction, that is not affected.
Edit2: It has been confirmed that the southward launch date is unchanged. The rocket doesn't fly directly over the Delta IV Heavy, apparently someone decided the risk is low enough to not let it wait for another week.

The delays lead to an interesting coincidence: Both Falcon 9 launches are now planned for the same day, with just 9 hours in between. Independent rockets on independent launch pads, but it's nice to see that they can prepare two rockets at the same time. The weather forecast is not promising, however.
A Starship hop is planned for the same day. It's unlikely that all three happen, but there is a chance to have 3 SpaceX launches in a single day.

 

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Very interesting week in spaceflight, although none of these events happened without delay:

Vega returned to flight successfully.

Electron returned to flight successfully. They also launched their first Photon satellite bus. It is designed to make satellite design easier for customers. Don't worry about keeping your spacecraft orientation or orbit, don't worry about designing communication systems, power, or all the other things, just design the science payload and attach it to Photon.

Falcon 9 flew south from Florida, overflying Cuba, for the first time in ~50 years. It means SpaceX can focus their operations on one launch site because Vandenberg in California will rarely be needed.

Starship prototype SN6 made a hop, the second hop of a realistic prototype.

SpaceX announced that they tested laser links between Starlink satellites in the webcast of the most recent launch. They are not strictly needed for service but they will allow service over oceans and elsewhere far away from ground stations, improve overall bandwidth and reduce latency.

 

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China has some launch sites far away from the coast, that means the first stage always lands somewhere in China. It's a sparsely populated region but not without people living there. In the past they just discarded it randomly, recently they added grid fins (similar to Falcon 9) to steer it away from populated places. Not without issues, apparently, from yesterday's launch:
Tweet
News article

 

[jackwhirl]

Bad enough they have landed near people, but hypergolics too?

 

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Maiden flight of Rocket 3 (Astra)
They previously lost a rocket during a test on the ground, this was the other one they had prepared. Going to space is still difficult and most companies don't make it with their first attempt. Electron needed a second launch, SpaceX needed 4 launches. LauncherOne's maiden flight failed, and so on.

 

[berkeman]

Any word on why the engine(s) quit?

 

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They have a description on the company website:

Early in the flight, our guidance system appears to have introduced some slight oscillation into the flight, causing the vehicle to drift from its planned trajectory leading to a commanded shutdown of the engines by the flight safety system.

They have built their next rocket already, so we might see another attempt in the near future after the root cause of the problem has been found.

 

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Astra thinks they can fix the problem with a software update and they hope to fly again later this year.

Dynetics update on their proposed Moon lander in 6 hours.
As the preview image suggests they have a full-scale mock-up of their capsule. Blue Origin built one before. I'm not aware of one from SpaceX (for the crewed part), they seem to focus on the rocket part first.

 

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For rocket launches people are extremely careful, so it's not uncommon that they are aborted, sometimes just seconds before the planned take-off. But the last few days were still really odd. There are three rockets standing on their launch pads at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center:

• Delta IV Heavy with a classified payload. A launch was planned and then scrubbed Aug 27, Aug 29, Sep 28, Sep 29, Sep 30. Two of them were within the last 10 seconds before the launch when there is already some hydrogen burning around the rocket. Sep 30 scrub
• Falcon 9 with a GPS satellite. Originally planned for Sep 29 it was delayed to Sep 30 and then Oct 3 to avoid conflict with the Delta IV Heavy (which has a higher priority). That launch attempt was aborted - three seconds before takeoff.
• Falcon 9 with 60 Starlink satellites, the lowest priority. Delayed from Sep 27, aborted Sep 28 due to weather, then waiting for other launches, aborted Oct 1 just 18 seconds before the planned take-off.

All three have been on the launch pads for a while now. The Falcon 9 will probably have more launch attempts soon, while the Delta IV Heavy issue might take at least a few days to resolve.

Bonus scrub: Antares, launching much farther north from Virginia. The launch attempt Oct 1 was scrubbed, the launch attempt Oct 3 was successful.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/10/...satellite-continuing-streak-of-launch-scrubs/

 

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SpaceX started assembling the first prototype of what will become the most powerful rocket stage ever built - SuperHeavy. Half of the rings for serial number 1 are assembled and stacking them could begin in a few weeks.
Early flight tests will only use 2 Raptor engines instead of all 28. It needs ~20 engines to surpass the thrust of N1.

 

[gleem]

Not heard from in some time Blue Origin launched its New Shepard rocket (SN-13) from its facility in Texas to test new systems. https://everydayastronaut.com/ns-13-new-shepard/