Launch Roundup: SpaceX lands its 300th booster, NASA...
- by NASASpaceFlight.com
- Apr 25, 2024
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During the last full week of April, planned launches include two Starlink missions and another Falcon 9 flight lifting customer satellites. The first Starlink mission of the week saw another milestone reached with the 300th landing of a Falcon 9 booster on the Group 6-53 mission. The delayed WorldView Legion 1 & 2 mission, which was originally due to fly last week and was rescheduled into this week’s plans, has since slipped out of the current schedule.
The fifth Electron to launch this year carried two demonstration missions into two notably different orbits on Wednesday. One of the two demonstrations being hoisted by Rocket Lab was a demonstration of a novel solar sail developed by NASA and powered by the pressure of sunlight acting upon the surface of the sail.
The week also delivered a crewed launch on Thursday when the Shenzhou 18 mission sent three more taikonauts to the Tianhe core module of China’s Tiangong space station.
The number 13 resonates this week, with Shenzhou 18 being the 13th crewed mission of the Chinese space program, and Falcon 9 potentially able to repeat its current record of 13 flights in a month. B1060 will be making its 20th and final flight on the forthcoming Galileo mission on Saturday, April 27, and was the first booster to be recovered 13 times back in June 2022. This will be the first time a Falcon 9 single first stage has been expended since November 2022.
The SpaceX schedule has changed as the week progressed and, currently, the Starlink Group 6-54 mission will be the last for the company this week and the 81st orbital launch of the year. This is 17 more than the count on the equivalent date last year, and largely due to SpaceX’s remarkable Falcon 9 launch cadence.
Coincidentally 13 years ago this week Shuttle Endeavour was also ready on the pad for its final mission (STS-134), and the penultimate one for the Shuttle program. A malfunction on one of the auxiliary power units caused the launch to be scrubbed and delayed into May, however.
This time last year there had also been the same number of Starship launches for the year so far — it’s been over a year now since Starship’s maiden flight back on April 20, 2023, on the IFT-1 mission. It is also ten years this week since the company achieved the first successful propulsive ocean touchdown of a liquid rocket engine orbital booster on the CRS-3 mission and the first Falcon 9 which flew with landing legs.
Booster B1076-12 landed on droneship Just Read the Instructions, during the Eutelsat 36D mission in March 2024. (Credit: SpaceX) Electron / Curie | Beginning of the Swarm
Rocket Lab launched the fifth Electon of the year and its 47th mission overall on Wednesday, April 24 for the Beginning of the Swarm mission. Lift-off took place at the start of an 85-minute window at 09:32 NZST (21:32 UTC on the 23rd) from pad LC-1B in the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand.
Two different payloads were sharing a ride for this mission. Firstly, NeonSat-1 is a demonstration mission ahead of the planned constellation of high-resolution optical satellites which would begin to launch from 2026 onward. The satellite was developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and its Satellite Technology Research Center which launched Korea’s first satellite (KITSAT-1) 32 years ago.
This Earth observation satellite will monitor natural disasters along the Korean peninsula, applying artificial intelligence to its high-resolution imagery. It was deployed 50 minutes into the mission into a circular orbit at 520 kilometers in altitude. Electron’s Kick Stage then lit its Curie engine to raise its altitude to 1,000 kilometers, with a second burn to then circularize the orbit where a second payload was scheduled to be deployed one hour and 45 minutes into the mission.
Render of NASA’s ACS3 Solar Sail in orbit. (Credit: NASA)
This is another technology demonstration, developed by NASA’s Ames and Langley Research Centers. This Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (or ACS3) technology demonstration will deploy a solar sail from a cubesat using lightweight booms made from composite materials. As the name implies, this sail will leverage light from the sun and will be propelled by the pressure of sunlight acting upon it.
The spacecraft will spend a couple of months in an initial flight and checkout phase before deployment of the booms and reflective sail. The craft needs to be at a sufficient altitude for the tiny force of sunlight that will be applied to the sail to overcome atmospheric drag. At this altitude, this force is said to be roughly equivalent to the weight of a paperclip resting on your palm. The craft will then perform a series of pointing maneuvers to demonstrate orbit raising and lowering which will span weeks, so it could be July or later before any results are known.
It is intended that the data from this mission informs the creation of larger solar sails that could efficiently propel satellites for several usages such as communications relays on future crewed exploration missions, early warning satellites, or reconnaissance missions such as to near-Earth asteroids. Reducing mass could help to eliminate heavy propulsion systems and make longer-duration missions more efficient in both energy and cost.
Electron is prepared at LC-1 in Mahia Peninsula. (Credit: Rocket Lab)
The kick stage will fire its engine retrograde one final time to lower its orbit, enabling atmospheric drag to eventually complete the task of deorbiting it, where it will burn up on re-entry. This mission required the addition of extra propellant tanks, extra batteries, and larger gas bottles for the reaction control system on the kick stage.
Rocket Lab is moving closer toward the reuse of a recovered Electron first stage. The company announced in early April that the carbon composite first-stage Electron recovered from the Four of a Kind mission in January has entered the production line for final acceptance testing and qualification ahead of a reflight.
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