This week will see a fourth flight of the Japanese H3 rocket carrying a communications satellite tv for pc for the Japanese navy and two launches from China. Blue Origin will try to check its second human-rated New Shepard capsule, which has been delayed twice because the begin of the month.
The week will begin with a Starlink mission out of Cape Canaveral atop a SpaceX Falcon 9. Later within the week, Falcon 9 may also fly a categorized mission for the Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace.
SpaceX has picked up its cadence following Falcon 9’s latest return-to-flight and is shortly approaching its four-hundredth orbital mission. The corporate started the week at 398 complete missions, following the launch of the OneWeb #20 mission from California. If schedules maintain, the corporate will attain its four-hundredth orbital flight with the NROL-167 mission out of Vandenberg this week. Simply as spectacular, SpaceX launched a Falcon automobile for the one hundredth time this 12 months on the OneWeb mission, having already damaged final 12 months’s document of 98 launches. To place this into context, 1 / 4 of all SpaceX launches within the firm’s historical past could have taken place this 12 months alone.
Falcon 9 launches the OneWeb #20 mission, SpaceX’s one hundredth orbital launch of the 12 months. (Credit score: SpaceX)
SpaceX launched 5 instances in lower than six days final week, with a launch from every of its 4 launch websites, together with Starbase, and igniting 87 first-stage engines within the course of. The milestone OneWeb mission was the corporate’s sixth profitable launch in seven days. LC-39A is presently being reconfigured for Falcon 9 flights, leaving Area Launch Complicated 40 (SLC-40) on the east coast and Vandenberg’s SLC-4E on the west coast to deal with the Falcon 9 launch manifest.
Marking China’s fiftieth launch of 2024, a Chang Zheng 6 (CZ-6) rocket took flight from LC-16 on the Taiyuan Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle within the Shanxi Province of China on Tuesday, Oct 22, at 00:10 UTC. On board have been the Tianping-3A(01), B(01), and B(02) satellites which shall be utilized by ground-based companies as orbital radar calibration targets, and also will help with orbital prediction mannequin refinement. This single-core launch automobile burns liquid kerosene and oxygen and has been lively since 2015. CZ-6 has launched 12 instances up to now, most lately with Geely’s Future Mobility Constellation Group 3.
Chang Zheng 6 on pad LC-16 on the Taiyuan Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle. (Credit score: CASC)
The CZ-6 household of rockets all launch from the inland Taiyuan launch website and now consists of the taller CZ-6C rocket, which took its maiden, and to date solely, flight this Might. This can be a booster-less variant of the newer medium-lift CZ-6A rocket, which was China’s first rocket so as to add stable rocket boosters (SRBs).
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-61
A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch the Starlink 6-61 mission on Tuesday, Oct. 22, from SLC-40 on the Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station in Florida. Liftoff is anticipated at 6:52 PM EDT (22:52 UTC) initially of the accessible four-hour launch window. Onboard shall be a batch of 23 Starlink v2 Mini satellites, that are headed into an orbit inclined 43 levels to the equator. The booster supporting this mission has not but been confirmed however is anticipated to land on the autonomous droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which shall be stationed downrange within the Atlantic.
SpaceX’s Starlink service supplies high-speed web entry throughout over 100 nations and has greater than 4 million subscribers, most lately including Samoa and the island nation of Vanuatu this month. On the finish of final week, SpaceX had launched 7,105 satellites, of which 6,150 have moved into their operational orbit.
A stack of Starlink v2 Mini satellites earlier than being enclosed of their fairing. (Credit score: SpaceX)
SpaceX lately filed a request to the Federal Communications Fee (FCC), looking for a modification to its present license concerning the second-generation Starlink satellites (v2). The request consists of decreasing the satellites’ altitude by 45 km to as little as 475 km. The request additionally proposes that the satellites’ bandwidth be elevated to gigabit-per-second speeds by way of extra highly effective antennas and that the satellites entry extra spectrum within the E band. The heavier, full variations of the v2 satellites would require Starship to hold them to orbit and look to be renamed to v3 from the FCC request doc.
Chang Zheng 2C | Unknown Payload
Little is understood concerning the payload onboard the subsequent flight of a Chang Zheng 2C (CZ-2C) from the Xichang Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle in China. Liftoff is anticipated from pad LC-3 on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 01:05 UTC throughout a brief 17-minute launch window.
Standing 42 m tall with a 3.35 m large fairing, the long-established CZ-2C has been lively since 1982 and has 78 missions below its belt. Most lately, CZ-2C carried the Area Variable Objects Monitor, or SVOM, to low-Earth orbit in June — a French/Chinese language X-ray telescope undertaking to review gamma-ray bursts from the explosions of large stars.
RSS Kármán Line and Booster 5 on the pad from the primary try and launch NS-27 (Credit score: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin will try and launch an uncrewed suborbital mission on Wednesday, Oct. 23, to confirm its second human-rated New Shepard capsule, the RSS Kármán Line. Launching from the corporate’s Launch Website One in West Texas, liftoff is scheduled for 7:00 AM CDT (15:00 UTC). The preliminary launch try on Oct. 7 was scrubbed following an prolonged maintain whereas the technical crew tried to troubleshoot a problem with the automobile. The corporate additionally scrubbed an try on Oct. 13.
The eight earlier crewed launches have used Booster 4 and the RSS First Step capsule. The NS-27 mission will debut and confirm that RSS Kármán Line and Booster 5 meet Blue Origin’s wants and carry out as anticipated as the corporate’s launch manifest will increase. The automobile options an up to date livery and expertise upgrades that enhance its efficiency and reusability. The brand new capsule’s title refers back to the boundary line that’s extensively thought to be the beginning of house.
Among the many new upgrades is an lodging for carrying payloads on the booster — 5 of which shall be carried on this flight — whereas one other seven shall be contained in the crew capsule. New navigation methods developed for the New Shepard and New Glenn autos are amongst these payloads, alongside two totally different Gentle Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors for the Lunar Permanence program. NS-27 can be carrying some ultra-wideband sensors as a part of a NASA TechFlights grant and a few reproductions of the black monoliths from the basic house film 2001: A Area Odyssey for Spacemanic. As with different New Shepard flights, tens of 1000’s of student-designed postcards from Blue Origin’s Membership for the Future program may also be onboard.
Aerial view of SLC-4E on the Vandenberg Area Drive Base with a Falcon 9 being ready for flight. (Credit score: SpaceX)
NROL-167 will see Falcon 9 carry a payload to low-Earth orbit for the Nationwide Reconnaissance Workplace (NRO), which is suspected to be the fourth batch of Starshield satellites launched for the company as a part of a $1.8 billion contract. Liftoff is anticipated to happen on Thursday, Oct. 24, at 10:15 AM PDT (17:15 UTC) from SLC-4E on the Vandenberg Area Drive Base in California.
The booster supporting this mission has not but been confirmed however is anticipated to land downrange on the autonomous droneship Of Course I Nonetheless Love You. As talked about, if schedules maintain, NROL-167 will function SpaceX’s four-hundredth orbital launch of all time, Falcon 9’s one hundredth mission of 2024, and the 195th orbital launch try worldwide in 2024.
Render of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H3 in its 22S configuration. (Credit score: JAXA)
A Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H3 launcher, in its 22S configuration, is about to launch a geostationary communications satellite tv for pc on Saturday, Oct. 6, at 06:44 UTC initially of a launch window lasting almost two hours. Operated by the DSN Company, DSN-3, also referred to as Kirameki 3, will function within the X-band for the Japanese navy.
H3 is anticipated to fly from pad LA-Y2 on the Yoshinobu Launch Complicated on the Tanegashima Area Middle in Japan. This would be the third flight of this rocket this 12 months, with all three flying within the 22S configuration. “22S” denotes two LE-9 engines on the primary stage burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen, two SRB-3 facet boosters, and a short-length payload fairing.
This identical configuration is anticipated to fly as soon as extra earlier than the tip of the 12 months carrying the Michibiki 5 navigation satellite tv for pc. A four-booster model with an extended fairing, the 24L configuration, will debut subsequent September with the primary HTV-X cargo transport automobile to fly to the Worldwide Area Station (ISS). That is the next-generation model of the HTV, which carried cargo to the ISS 9 instances between 2009 and 2020. The fiftieth and ultimate flight of H3’s predecessor, the H-IIA, would be the GOSAT-GW mission, which can be anticipated to fly earlier than the tip of the 12 months.
Render of the HTV-X approaching the Worldwide Area Station (Credit score: JAXA)
There are additionally plans for H3 to launch the robotic Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) subsequent 12 months to the Moon’s south pole — a joint undertaking developed by the Indian Area Analysis Organisation (ISRO) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA). What’s extra, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries signed an settlement this week for H3 to launch the MBR Explorer mission in 2028 for the United Arab Emirates. This probe will go to seven asteroids throughout its mission and can try and land on one.
(Lead picture: A Falcon 9 sits on the pad at SLC-4E at Vandenberg Area Drive Base, the situation from which SpaceX is anticipated to launch its four-hundredth orbital mission. Credit score: SpaceX)
