Capping off a rare launch-free and scrub-riddled week, the spaceflight industry is looking to get back on track with four launches from around the world. This week, Electron’s 50th launch is scheduled to take flight, and SpaceX and CASC continue to dominate the launch schedule.
SpaceX begins the week preparing to take over with the launch of two Falcon 9 missions from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Vandenberg, California. Later in the week, Rocket Lab is expected to launch the No Time Toulouse mission on Electron from New Zealand. At the same time, China is considering another launch of its flagship rocket, the Chang Zheng 2C, to launch a joint Chinese and French telescope.
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Astra 1P/SES-24
After a week filled with weather delays and a rare T-0 abort after the Falcon 9 had already fired its engines, SpaceX is looking to get back on its feet with the launch of Astra 1P/SES-24. This mission has already been delayed a day due to bad weather at Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida.
Launched no earlier than June 18 at 5:35 p.m. EDT (9:35 p.m. UTC), and launched with a currently unknown booster, Falcon 9 will place the Astra 1P/SES-24 television satellite in an inclined geostationary position. of 19.2 degrees. orbit on an east trajectory from the same launch pad. It will then land about 648 km downstream on SpaceX’s autonomous drone. Just read the instructions.
SES-24/Astra 1P was built in Europe by Thales Alenia Space for the European television market and will provide updated reliability and picture quality capabilities to Germany, Spain and France. SES-24/Astra 1P is a wide beam satellite with 80 transponders. This gives it the ability to stream up to 500 HDTV channels.
Clean room photo of Astra 1P/SES-24 before shipping to Cape Canaveral. (Credit: Thales Alenia Space)
This will be the first time that SpaceX will launch an Astra satellite, with previous launches having been carried out by Atlas V, Proton M and Ariane 5. Once in orbit, this satellite will deploy its 45 meter wide solar array, producing 20 kW of electricity. energy, which will make it one of the most powerful satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 9-1
As the first Starlink cluster 9 satellites are about to enter orbit, four different types of Starlink clusters are now being actively added. After this launch was postponed from June 13-14 and now June 18, the official launch time is set for the night of June 18 at 8:00 p.m. PDT (03:00 UTC on June 19).
Falcon 9 will take what is believed to be 20 Starlink v2 mini satellites with Direct-to-Cell capabilities into a 53-degree inclined orbit on a southeast trajectory. Launched from Space Launch Complex-4E in Vandenberg, California, a currently unknown booster will bring these satellites into an initial 286 km by 295 km orbit where they will be orbited by the second stage and deployed. Then, using the Starlink satellite’s Hall effect thrusters, they will head into final orbit, likely at just over 500 km altitude, to add even more support to the more than 6,000 active Starlink satellites already in orbit.
View of a stack of 21 Starlink v2 Mini satellites before being enclosed in their fairing. (Credit: SpaceX)
Once the mission is completed, the booster will attempt the 246th consecutive landing on the autonomous drone. Of course I still love you, which will be stationed 642 km downstream in a landing position identical to that of the Starlink Group 8-7 and 8-8 missions. This will be the Falcon 9’s 62nd flight in 2024, putting SpaceX at 43% of the goal of 144 launches in a year, although the year was up 46%, leaving SpaceX just behind by a small margin. margin.
Electron/Curie | No time Toulouse
Electron is vertical for its 50th launch to complete the No Time Toulouse mission carrying the very first batch of five Kinéis 1-5 nanosatellites. After a two-day weather delay, Electron will take off in an instant launch window on June 21 at 6:13 a.m. NZT (June 20, 6:13 p.m. UTC) from LC-1B on the Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand. Electron will be launched inclined at a 98-degree angle to the equator where it will deliver the payload into low Earth orbit (LEO).
Once Electron reaches LEO, Rocket Lab’s Curie launch stage will circularize the orbit with an eight-second burn to a 635 km orbit. It will then release the satellites in their specific sequence, where they will move to the final 650 km orbit under their own power. Once Curie successfully releases all five satellites, it will conduct a deep descent to safely deorbit the spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean.
Delivery of Kinéis nanosatellites to Rocket Lab for final tests before integration. (Credit: Kinéis)
Kinéis is a French Internet of Things satellite operatorr and connectivity provider operating in Toulouse, France. These satellites are the first internal Kinéis satellites to be launched on Electron, with four other missions already planned in the future to launch 20 additional nanosatellites. Kinéis has already been using the Argos satellite system in orbit since 1978. Thanks to these satellites and the new Kinéis nanosatellites, they will be able to create a constellation to considerably reduce the revisit time between satellite passes.
ChangZheng 2C | ALL
A brand new telescope is preparing for its flight to LEO aboard the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Chang Zheng 2C rocket. Launched from LC-3 at China’s Xichang Satellite Launch Center on June 22 at 3:00 p.m. CST (07:00 UTC), Chang Zheng 2C will deliver the Satellite Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) telescope at an inclination of 30 degrees. LEO. This payload will be in a circular orbit of 625 km with an orbital period of 96 minutes. This will be Chang Zheng 2C’s fourth mission this year and the 78th mission ever.
The SVOM mission is the first joint astronomical mission between the French Space Agency and the Chinese National Space Administration. This partnership is due to a memorandum of understanding signed in 2014 which aimed to promote the exchange of research on issues of common interest to the two nations. SVOM is the result of this cooperation.
Final preparation for the launch of SVOM before integration into Chang Zheng 2C. (Credit: CASC)
The SVOM X-ray telescope will be used to detect and locate gamma bursts in the X-ray band using the ECLAIR instrument, observe gamma bursts in the soft X-ray range using the instrument MXT, measure the spectrum of high-energy bursts using the gamma-ray burst monitor and operate in the visible range to detect and observe the visible emission produced immediately after a gamma-ray burst using the VT telescope. The goal of SVOM is to study gamma-ray bursts emitted by exploding stars to learn about unknowns in the universe, such as the death of massive stars, the birth of black holes and much more.
(Main image: Electron on LC-1B in New Zealand before launch of No time Toulouse assignment. Credit: Rocket Lab)