This week’s manifest features four Falcon 9 launches, including the highly anticipated Polaris Dawn crewed mission, a mission carrying AST SpaceMobile’s first five cellphone-compatible broadband satellites, and the delayed launch of two more satellites for Europe’s mid-Earth orbit Galileo constellation.
Additionally, Roscosmos has launched the Soyuz MS-26 crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Plans for Japan to launch a radar reconnaissance satellite on an H-IIA rocket and for Rocket Lab to launch the second batch of IoT satellites to orbit for its customer Kinéis have been delayed, however, due to weather constraints.
Currently, Falcon 9 launches on the east coast requiring drone ship 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 week’s 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 week’s 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 week’s only Starlink mission will launch from Vandenberg in California.
Render of NASA’s ACS3 Solar Sail in orbit (Credit: NASA)
NASA’s 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.
China’s 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 began 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 launched from historic pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center, where Falcon 9 and Resilience had been standing waiting for weather in the recovery zone to improve. Liftoff took place on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 5:23 AM EDT (09:23 UTC) during 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 constellation’s orbit. They will also assess the performance of SpaceX’s 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 was making its fourth flight on this mission and landed successfully on the autonomous drone ship Just Read The Instructions approximately ten 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 NSF’s dedicated launch article for full details of the mission.
Soyuz TMA-03M and Progress M-14M docked to the ISS. (Credit: NASA)
The latest crewed mission to the ISS saw NASA astronaut Don Pettit join Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner onboard a Soyuz 2.1a rocket to the orbiting laboratory. The launch took place 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 was 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 André 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.
This mission also set a new milestone of 19 people in orbit at once, with Butch and Suni contributing to the nine on the ISS, three taikonauts aboard Tiangong, and the four private astronauts on the Polaris Dawn mission. This beats last May’s record of 17 and also sets the same record for those above the Kármán line. There were 20 people “in space” briefly this January when the six passengers on Virgin Galactic 06 temporarily contributed to that count, reaching an apogee below this line of around 89 km.
Render of Bluebird Satellites in orbit. (Credit: AST Spacemobile)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bluebird Block 1 #1-5
Later during the week, Falcon 9 launched the first five cellphone-compatible satellites into orbit for AST SpaceMobile’s 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 took place on 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 at the start of a four-and-a-half-hour launch window. Booster B1078 supported the mission on its 13th flight and returned to land at CCSFS on the concrete pad at LZ-1. This booster made its debut last year with the Crew-6 mission, going on to lift 03b mPower 3&4, USSF-124 and nine Starlink missions for Groups 6 and 10.
The first five Bluebird satellites completing final assembly in August 2024. (Credit: AST SpaceMobile)
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 9-6
The only planned Starlink launch of the week flew from SLC-4E at the Vandenberg Space Force Base. The mission was rescheduled for Thursday, Sept. 12, and lift-off occurred at 9:45 PM PDT (01:45 UTC on Sept. 13) at the start of the launch window. Onboard was another batch of 21 Starlink v2 Mini satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities. After deployment, the satellites began to make their way to an orbit with an altitude of 535 km inclined 53 degrees.
Booster B1071 supported this mission on its 18th flight, all of which have launched from SLC-4E. It landed downrange on the autonomous droneship Of Course I Still Love You. Active since early 2022, this first stage has now carried three missions for the National Reconnaissance Office, the Transporter 8 and 9 rideshare missions, the Surface Water Ocean Topography and SARah 1 satellites, and 12 Starlink missions across the majority of the active shells.
SpaceX has now launched over 7,000 Starlink satellites into orbit. Last week’s 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.
Iran has launched a Chamran-1 technological demonstration satellite to test out a propulsion system. Launch of the three-stage Qaem 1 rocket took place on Saturday, Sept. 14 at 05:58 UTC from the launch platform at the Shahrud missile test site in Iran. The vehicle uses solid rocket fuel motors and carried this 60 kg satellite into a low-Earth orbit of around 550 km in altitude.
Falcon 9 Block 5 | Galileo FOC FM26 & FM32
Delayed from its initial launch date last Monday, this mission has since moved a day from plans earlier this week to lift off on Sunday evening. The Falcon 9 is now expected to launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday, Sept. 16 at 6:55 PM EDT (22:55 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 Union’s 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 Russia’s 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. Marking the 170th global orbital launch attempt of the year, this will be SpaceX’s 90th mission of 2024.
H-IIA launches IGS-Radar-7 in January 2023. (Credit: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries)
The penultimate launch of a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA 202 rocket was planned to carry the IGS-Radar 8 radar reconnaissance satellite into a Sun-synchronous orbit this week from pad LA-Y1 at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. Liftoff was originally planned for Wednesday, Sept. 11, but was postponed due to weather at the launch site. The launch was rescheduled for Monday, Sept. 16 at 05:24 UTC but scrubbed in advance of the launch attempt due to upper-level wind constraints.
This satellite serves a combination of defense and disaster monitoring purposes and is operated by the Cabinet Satellite Information Center, which is part of Japan’s 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 JAXA’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT-GW), formerly known as GOSAT-3.
“Kinéis Killed The RadIoT Star” mission patch. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
Electron / Curie | Kinéis Killed The RadIoT Star
Rocket Lab has been planning to launch the second batch of nanosatellites for customer Kinéis, 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.
The launch was planned for Monday, Sept. 16 from Pad B at Launch Complex 1 at the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand but has since been delayed to no earlier than Wednesday, Sept. 18th at 23:00 UTC. This is an instantaneous launch window, with other opportunities at the same time across the following 11 days. This mission will be Electron’s 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)