Launch Roundup: Polaris Dawn, ISS crewed launch headline busy week

Date:
Mon, 09 Sep 2024 22:28:29 +0000

Description:
This weeks manifest features up to four Falcon 9 launches, including the highly anticipated Polaris The post Launch Roundup: Polaris Dawn, ISS crewed launch headline busy week appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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This weeks manifest features up to four Falcon 9 launches, including the highly anticipated Polaris Dawn crewed mission, a mission carrying AST SpaceMobiles first five cellphone-compatible broadband satellites, and the delayed launch of two more satellites for Europes mid-Earth orbit Galileo constellation.

Additionally, Roscosmos will launch the Soyuz MS-26 crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS), and Japan will launch a radar reconnaissance satellite on an H-IIA rocket. Lastly, Rocket Lab will launch the second batch of IoT satellites to orbit for its customer Kinis.



Currently, Falcon 9 launches on the east coast requiring droneship landings remain limited to utilizing only Just Read The Instructions (JRTI), while A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) is out of service following the recent landing failure of booster B1062. ASOG left Port Canaveral late last week, heading to Freeport in the Bahamas for repairs to its damaged deck. This, together with
a volatile launch schedule that has continually shuffled in reaction to Polaris Dawn mission delays, resulted in last weeks Galileo launch being delayed until this Sunday. Nonetheless, SpaceX has retained a recent cadence of around three flights per week, which is helped by return-to-launch site missions, where boosters return to the Cape and land at Landing Zone 1
(LZ-1).

Unfavorable weather conditions have delayed more than just the launch of Polaris Dawn, as last weeks only Starlink mission was scrubbed on its first attempt due to weather. Despite a Phase 1 lightning watch on its second attempt, the Group 8-11 mission took to the skies near the end of its launch window. This weeks only Starlink mission will launch from Vandenberg in California. Render of NASAs ACS3 Solar Sail in orbit (Credit: NASA)

NASAs Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) launched in late April on
an Electron on the Beginning of the Swarm mission. The ACS3 deployed its reflective sails on August 29 and can currently be seen in the night sky during a planned tumbling sequence while the mission team finishes assessing the booms and sail. The attitude control system will then be engaged to stabilize the spacecraft ahead of a series of orbit-raising and
orbit-lowering maneuvers. The tumbling will mean visibility will vary, but NASA noted the craft could be nearly as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.

Chinas secretive and experimental reusable spaceplane landed last Friday
after spending 268 days in orbit. The spaceplane launched from the nearby Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center last December on a Chang Zheng 2F rocket, two weeks before the U.S. launched its own X-37B spaceplane. This third mission did not exceed its previous flight duration of 276 days, but once again, it was seen to release an object during the mission, appearing to test
rendezvous and proximity operations with it. The crew of Polaris Dawn stand
in front of Crew Dragon Resilience. (Credit: SpaceX)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Polaris Dawn

This busy week of launches begins with the delayed but highly anticipated launch of Polaris Dawn a groundbreaking mission that, if successful, will achieve many firsts and milestones.

Four private astronauts will spend up to five days in Crew Dragon C207 Resilience , which has been modified specifically for this mission and last carried the Inspiration4 crew to orbit. Commander Jared Issacman, pilot Scott Poteet, and mission specialists Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon hope to travel further from the Earth than any human since Apollo 17 in 1972. Targeting an apogee of 1,400 km, the team intends to exceed the highest Earth orbit achieved by a crewed mission, which was set by Gemini 11 in 1966 with an apogee of 1,368 km. This would also award Sarah and Anna the accolade of
being the furthest women who have ever traveled from our planet.



Polaris Dawn is scheduled to fly out of historic pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center, where Falcon 9 and Resilience have been standing waiting for weather in the recovery zone to improve. Liftoff is currently expected on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 3:38 AM EDT (07:38 UTC) at the start of a three-and-a-half-hour launch window.

The mission will see the crew conduct multiple research activities, including investigating human health during long-duration spaceflight and testing Starlink laser communications between spacecraft from significantly higher altitudes than the Starlink constellations orbit. They will also assess the performance of SpaceXs brand new extra-vehicular activities (EVA) suit during a spacewalk on the third day of the mission, during which Resilience will be completely depressurized and opened to the vacuum of space.

Booster B1083 will be making its fourth flight on this mission and is
expected to land on the autonomous droneship Just Read The Instructions approximately eight minutes into the mission. This droneship recently broke turnaround records following the Starlink Group 8-11 mission, heading back
out to sea just three hours and one minute after arriving with B1077.

Read NSFs dedicated launch article for full details of the mission. Soyuz TMA-03M and Progress M-14M docked to the ISS. (Credit: NASA)

Soyuz 2.1a | Soyuz MS-26

The next crewed mission to the ISS will see NASA astronaut Don Pettit join Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner onboard a Soyuz 2.1a rocket to the orbiting laboratory. Launch is expected on Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 16:23 UTC from the pad at Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are expected to stay at the Station until April 2025.

This will be the fifth mission of the year for Soyuz 2.1a, which is approaching 80 missions since it became active twenty years ago. The other four missions launched this year include the crewed MS-25 mission in March
and three Progress cargo supply missions all of which traveled to the ISS.

Don has spent almost 370 days in space, including over 13 hours of experience on two EVAs. He previously served as a mission specialist on Space Shuttle mission STS-113 (ISS Expedition 6) in 2002. He became one of the first U.S. astronauts to arrive on a Shuttle and depart on a Soyuz following the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia , which extended his mission by two months.

Don then returned to the ISS on the STS-126 mission aboard Endeavour and, as part of the Expedition 30/31 crew, operated the Canadarm 2 with Andr Kuipers to grapple the first Dragon 1 and berth it to the Harmony module the first time a private spacecraft had ever rendezvoused with the ISS. Star trail time exposure from my third mission to @Space_Station . Solar panels blur into the exposure, creating a ghostly afterimage.

City lights streak to the right, and disappear in rural plots to the left, dividing the image into a black and gold mosaic of human presence. pic.twitter.com/Y3wJelhdGG

Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) March 30, 2024



Ovchinin has almost 375 days in space, having served on Expedition 47/48 in 2016 and, most recently, Expedition 59/60 in 2019, serving as commander of Expedition 60. He was also a member of the MS-10 mission in 2018, which was aborted a few minutes after launch due to a booster failure, with Ovchinin
and the other crew members returning safely after a ballistic descent. Vagner spent almost 196 days in space during Expedition 62/63 in 2020 and was one of the crew members who welcomed the crew of the Crew Dragon Demo-2.

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 9-6

The only planned Starlink launch of the week will fly from SLC-4E at the Vandenberg Space Force Base. Launch is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 11, at 7:45 PM PDT (02:45 UTC on Sept. 12). Onboard will be another batch of 21 Starlink v2 Mini satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities. After deployment, the satellites will begin to make their way to an orbit
with an altitude of 535 km inclined 53 degrees. The currently unannounced booster will land downrange on the autonomous droneship Of Course I Still
Love You .

SpaceX has now launched over 7,000 Starlink satellites into orbit. Last weeks Group 8-11 mission took the count to 7001, of which 5,770 have moved into their operational orbits. The Starlink service is available in over 100 countries, with the Solomon Islands and Zimbabwe being added last week.
Render of Bluebird Satellites in orbit (Credit: AST Spacemobile)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bluebird Block 1 #1-5

Later this week, Falcon 9 will launch the first five cellphone-compatible satellites into orbit for AST SpaceMobiles planned constellation. The satellites will use patented technologies from AST & Science to enable uninterrupted 4G/5G connectivity to standard, unmodified smartphone devices for users outside of cellular coverage through agreements with mobile network operators.

Massing a total of 7,500 kg, these first five satellites are similar to the Bluewalker 3 prototype, which launched on a Falcon 9 with the Starlink Group 4-2 mission in 2022. Each satellite will deploy a 10 m diameter phased array antenna consisting of numerous sub-antenna modules across a 64 square meter area. Subsequent satellites in this constellation are anticipated to be
larger and more powerful.

Launch is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 12, at 4:52 AM EDT (08:52 UTC), lifting off from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida with a four-and-a-half-hour launch window available. The booster, which has yet to be assigned, will then return to land at CCSFS on the concrete pad at LZ-1. Marking the 168th global orbital launch attempt of the year, this will be SpaceXs 90th mission of 2024. The first five Bluebird satellites completing final assembly in August 2024. (Credit: AST
SpaceMobile)

Gushenxing-1 | Unknown Payload

Launching on Friday, Sept 13 at 07:15 UTC, the fifth mission of 2024 for Galactic Energys Gushenxing-1 rocket, also known as the Ceres-1, is expected to take place from Site 95A at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu province of China.

Galactic Energy is a private Chinese company founded in Beijing in 2018. This four-stage vehicle first launched in late 2020 and has since flown 15 times. As usual, the details of the payload for this mission will be uncertain until after launch.

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Galileo FOC FM26 & FM32

Delayed from its initial launch date last Monday, this mission is now
expected to launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Sunday, Sept. 15, at 6:57 PM EDT (22:57 UTC). Rendering of the Galileo navigational satellites getting released from Falcon 9. (Credit: European Union)

Falcon 9 will loft two 700 kg global navigation satellites built by ESA for the European Union to a medium-Earth orbit at an altitude of around 23,000
km. This mission was originally planned to launch on Soyuz and then Ariane 6, and is one of two satellite pairs contracted to SpaceX following delays with the Ariane 6 vehicle. The company has already launched the other pair earlier this year in April.

The Galileo satellites are part of the European Unions high-precision positioning system. The constellation was planned to grow to 30 satellites across three equally spaced orbital planes, three of which will be spares.
The satellites will ultimately allow Europe to not depend on either the
United States GPS or Russias GLONASS systems. The first Galileo satellites were activated in 2011, and the system gained operational status in 2019.

The last Galileo mission launched by Falcon 9 expended booster B1060 on its 20th flight. The booster for this mission is not yet known, but it is
expected to land on an autonomous droneship. H-IIA launches IGS-Radar-7 in January 2023. (Credit: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries)

H-IIA 202 | IGS-Radar 8

A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA 202 rocket will carry the IGS-Radar 8 radar reconnaissance satellite into a Sun-synchronous orbit from pad LA-Y1 at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Liftoff was originally planned for Wednesday, Sept. 11, but has been postponed due to weather at the launch
site. The launch will likely be delayed until later this week.

This satellite serves a combination of defense and disaster monitoring purposes and is operated by the Cabinet Satellite Information Center, which
is part of Japans Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office. This will be the 49th mission for this vehicle type, which has been active since 2001.
Previous missions have included the SLIM lunar lander and XRISM telescope, as well as others in the IGS-Radar and IGS-Optical series. The vehicle last flew in early January, carrying IGS-Optical 8, and is expected to fly again before the end of the year, carrying JAXAs Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT-GW), formerly known as GOSAT-3. Kinis Killed The RadIoT Star mission patch. (Credit: Rocket Lab)

Electron / Curie | Kinis Killed The RadIoT Star

Rocket Lab is launching the second batch of nanosatellites for customer
Kinis, the global connectivity provider dedicated to Internet of Things
(IoT). The first batch was carried to orbit on an Electron back in June on
the No Time Toulouse mission, which began building out a planned
constellation of 25 nanosatellites massing 30 kg each.

Launch is planned for Monday, Sept. 16, at 23:01 UTC from Pad B at Launch Complex 1 at the Mhia Peninsula in New Zealand. This is an instantaneous launch window, with other opportunities at the same time across the following 13 days. This mission will be Electrons 53rd mission to date and will place the satellites at an altitude of 643 km in an orbit inclined 98 degrees. This mission will bring the total number of satellites launched by Rocket Lab to 192.

The Curie kick stage will perform an eight-second burn after circularizing to deploy the satellites into precise locations. After releasing the satellites, Curie will conduct a perigee-lowering burn to reduce its orbital lifetime. Additional batches of five satellites are expected to launch on Electron rockets this November and December, with a final batch targeting next February.

(Lead Image: Crew Dragon Resilience sits atop booster B1083 on the pad at LC-39A, awaiting the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission. Credit: Max Evans
for NSF)

The post Launch Roundup: Polaris Dawn, ISS crewed launch headline busy week appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024/09/launch-roundup-090924/


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