The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has launched its Vulcan Centaur rocket for the second time. The successful, if dramatic, mission saw Vulcan carry an inert payload to orbit alongside some experiments and demonstrations and should complete its certification process with the U.S. Space Force (USSF).
SpaceX has delayed missions this week following an off-nominal deorbit burn of a Falcon 9 second stage following the Crew-9 mission. The stage landed in the South Pacific Ocean but outside of the defined reentry corridor. While the team investigates, the company has rescheduled the planned launch of its OneWeb mission out of Vandenberg to next week. Two Starlink missions, which may have flown towards the end of this week, have since been removed from the schedule while Falcon 9 awaits a return to flight. As an exception, the FAA authorized one Falcon 9 flight carrying the Hera mission for the European Space Agency (ESA). This featured booster B1061 on its 23rd and final flight.
The @FAANews has stateted that a return to flight of Falcon 9 is possible, ONLY for the October 7 Hera mission. The mishap investigation remains open.
Reason is the fact, that no second stage reentry burn is present for this mission. pic.twitter.com/oifpcRsUFp
— Adrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) October 6, 2024
With two cubesats onboard, Hera will study the results of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) asteroid deflection test, which impacted the Dimorphos asteroid two years ago. The pad at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) remains configured for the upcoming Europa Clipper mission, which is due to fly on a Falcon Heavy next week, pending how Hurricane Milton might develop. Both of these interplanetary missions have launch windows that extend to the end of the month in case of any further delays.
Starlink launched its public beta service four years ago this month. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell announced that Starlink passed four million subscriptions last week, and it is now predicted to exceed $6 billion in revenue by the end of this year. At the start of the week, SpaceX had sent a total of 7,062 Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 636 have reentered, and 6,138 have reached their operational orbit.
Vulcan Centaur begins its rollout to the pad at SLC-41 from the Vertical Integration Facility-G. (Credit: ULA)
Vulcan Centaur VC2S | Certification Flight 2
This second flight of ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, named Certification Flight 2 (or Cert-2), will complete Vulcan’s certification process with the USSF. The USSF requires two flight tests before the vehicle can carry a number of national security payloads that are already booked on its manifest. Liftoff occurred on Friday, Oct. 4, from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida at 7:25 AM EDT (11:25 UTC) following a couple of brief holds during the countdown.
Sierra Space’s Dreamchaser Tenacity was originally planned to take its maiden voyage onboard this certification mission. However, when Sierra Space announced earlier this year that more time was needed for further testing and flight preparations, Tenacity was removed from the mission as a payload. Tenacity will now likely be riding on Vulcan’s sixth mission in March 2025. In its place on Cert-2 is a mass simulator, also referred to as an inert payload, which is likely the mass simulator that was prepared ahead of the Vulcan’s first flight in the event that the Peregrine lander had not been ready in time. Also onboard are experiments and technology demonstrations that may be incorporated into future missions.
Vulcan Centaur is a two-stage heavy-lift rocket specifically designed to meet the requirements of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. It evolves technologies developed for ULA’s heritage Atlas V and Delta IV rockets with a modular design around a common booster core. The wider 5.4 m core has an internal orthogrid aluminum construction and, unlike its predecessors, burns liquid methane and oxygen via two BE-4 engines.
Two Graphite Epoxy Motor (GEM) 63XL solid rocket boosters (SRBs) assisted these engines in propelling the vehicle on its initial ascent. The SRBs burnt through their solid propellant after approximately 90 seconds of flight, after which they were jettisoned. An anomaly was observed on SRB1 during ascent, however, and a nozzle was seen to fly off.
An anomaly was observed on one SRB during ascent. (Credit: NSF)
Following stage separation, dual RL10C-1-1A engines propelled the Centaur V upper stage onwards before shutting down for a coast phase. These engines later reignited to propel the vehicle into a hyperbolic injection orbit around the Sun. Despite the observation, ULA confirmed the mission was completed successfully and that the vehicle had an otherwise nominal flight and a precise orbital insertion.
Two missions for the USSF are planned to fly on Vulcan before the end of the year, assuming certification is granted. The USSF-106 mission will be the first Vulcan flight to use the VC4S configuration with four GEM 63XL SRBs. This same configuration is also planned for use on the USSF-87 Mission, which will carry GSSAP-7 and 8 directly into a geosynchronous orbit. This identical pair of Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness satellites will form part of the USSF’s planned Space Base Situational Awareness (SBSS) constellation, which will track space traffic and debris in orbit.
Additional missions are planned for 2025, including several launches of Block III satellites for the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation and Vulcan’s first launches from SLC-3E in Vandenburg.
Render of the Hera spacecraft with its solar wings deployed. (Credit: ESA)
Two years after NASA’s DART mission purposely crashed a spacecraft into the Dimorphos moonlet asteroid at 6.1 km/s, the Hera mission is heading back to the binary asteroid system to study the results of DART’s impact in more detail. The planetary defense experiment sought to prove that spacecraft could defend Earth from an incoming asteroid by deflecting its trajectory as a result of striking it with a spacecraft. DART successfully altered Dimorphos’ orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos, sending a plume of debris across space.
The Hera mission lifted off from SLC-40 at the CCSFS on Monday, Oct. 7, at 10:52 AM EDT (14:52 UTC). The FAA had authorized this flight to proceed as an exception while the current mishap investigation is ongoing because there was no re-entry of the second stage for this mission profile.
Booster B1061 supported this mission on its 23rd and final flight. This was the first to support two crewed missions, carrying Crew-1 on its maiden voyage and Crew-2 on its second flight – that mission also made B1061 the first reflown booster to carry crew. Active since Nov 2020, this first stage has also visited the ISS with the CRS-23 cargo mission. It also supported Transporter 4 and 5, Maxar’s Worldview Legion 1 and 2, the recent Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission and 10 Starlink flights amongst others.
Render of the Milani and Juventus cubesats which are carried onboard the Hera spacecraft. (Credit: ESA)
ESA developed the Hera mission, which will provide crucial data to inform the international Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA). Following launch, the Hera spacecraft will travel through space for two years before reaching Dimorphos, performing a Mars flyby in March 2025 during its coast phase to the binary system. Hera is powered by twin three-panelled solar arrays, each measuring five meters long.
Hera will orbit Dimorphos to investigate it in great detail, including characterizing its mass and composition, DART’s crater size, and the momentum transfer efficiency from DART’s impact. To communicate, the spacecraft has a 1.3 m high-gain antenna and two omnidirectional low-gain antennas, in addition to deep space transponders.
Launch campaign update: #HeraMission is now encapsulated within its Falcon 9 fairing – the last time any human eyes ever see it! https://t.co/zgcC298WZf pic.twitter.com/czcJEhhiZa
— ESA's Hera mission (@ESA_Hera) October 4, 2024
Navigating through a cloud of debris from the original impact, Hera will autonomously approach the asteroid using onboard framing cameras and image processing. These are assisted by a PALT laser range finder, which measures distances through the reflection and receiving of laser pulses. A thermal infrared imager will enable mapping of the asteroid’s surface while the Hypercount H hyperspectral imager will allow the craft to survey and prospect the asteroid.
Two 6U cubesats are being carried by Hera, and will be released once in the vicinity of Dimorphos. Milani will map the surface and characterize the composition of the asteroid and the dust clouds around it. Juventus will perform the first internal radar sounding of an asteroid. It will descend to land on Dimorphos, measuring its gravity field, surface properties, and interior geophysical structure. It is expected that Dimorphos will have become the most studied asteroid in the solar system by the end of Hera’s mission.
New livery is seen on New Shepard’s second human-rated vehicle (Credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin had intended to launch an uncrewed suborbital mission to verify its second human-rated New Shepard capsule, the RSS Kármán line this week. The eight previous crewed launches have used Booster 4 and the RSS First Step capsule. The NS-27 mission will debut and verify the new vehicle to meet increasing customer demand, launching the new capsule atop Booster 5.
The launch attempt was scrubbed on Monday, Oct. 7 at the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas, following an extended hold while the technical team attempted to troubleshoot a vehicle issue. The company has not yet announced a date for a second attempt.
RSS Kármán line and Booster 5 wait on the pad while the team attempted to troubleshoot a vehicle issue (Credit: Blue Origin)
The vehicle features an updated livery as well as technology upgrades that improve its performance and reusability. The new capsule name refers to the 100 km high boundary that is widely regarded as the boundary line for the start of space.
The upgrades also include the accommodation for carrying payloads on the booster – five of which will be carried on this flight – while another seven will be inside the crew capsule. New navigation systems developed for the New Shepard and New Glenn vehicles are amongst these payloads alongside two different Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) sensors for the Lunar Permanence program. The mission is also carrying some ultra-wideband sensors as part of a NASA TechFlights grant and some reproductions of the black monoliths from the classic space movie 2001: A Space Odyssey for Spacemanic. As with other New Shepard flights, tens of thousands of student-designed postcards from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future program will also be hitching a ride.
(Lead image: Vulcan Centaur rolls out to SLC-41 ahead of the Cert-2 mission. Credit: NSF)
