Następny Electron 29.06. o 04:30 z Onenui wystrzelona została RN Electron/Curie, która wyniosła w T+51' 11" na orbitę o parametrach:
hp=450 km, ha=450 km, i=43° dwa satelity Prometheus, ACRUX-1, BlackSkys Global-3, SpaceBEE-7 i 8 i jeszcze jeden,
na razie nie podany do wiadomości publicznej.
http://lk.astronautilus.pl/n190616.htm#06Udany start rakiety Electron (29.06.2019) BY KRZYSZTOF KANAWKA ON 3 LIPCA 2019
Rakieta Electron wyniosła 29 czerwca siedem satelitów na niską orbitę okołoziemską.
Start rakiety Electron nastąpił 29 czerwca 2019 roku o godzinie 06:30 CEST. Start nastąpił z wyrzutni Onenui 1 położonej na nowozelandzkiej Wyspie Północnej. Na pokładzie tej rakiety Electron znalazło się siedem satelitów o łącznej masie 80 kg (największy z nich – Global-3 – miał masę startową 60 kg). Lot przebiegł prawidłowo i satelity zostały uwolnione na niskiej orbicie okołoziemskiej (LEO) o wysokości 450 km i nachyleniu 43 stopni.
Co ciekawe, firma Rocket Lab nie podała nazwy oraz właściciela siódmego z satelitów. Jest możliwe, że był to kolejny amerykański satelita, zbudowany przez wojsko tego państwa, służący do demonstracji technologii na orbicie.
Był to ostatni start rakiety orbitalnej w czerwcu 2019 roku. Łącznie w poprzednim miesiącu wystartowało sześć rakiet orbitalnych. Od początku 2019 roku odbyło się 41 startów rakiet orbitalnych, z czego 4 nie były udane.
(RL, PFA)
https://kosmonauta.net/2019/07/udany-start-rakiety-electron-29-06-2019/Rocket Lab launches satellites for Spaceflightby Jeff Foust — June 29, 2019
A view of the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, the launch site for Rocket Lab's Electron rocket, seen by an Electron as is ascended into space on a June 29 launch of seven smallsats. Credit: Rocket LabWASHINGTON — A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launched an Earth imaging satellite and several smaller satellites on a mission for rideshare services company Spaceflight June 29.
The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula at 12:30 a.m. Eastern, with the rocket’s upper stage deploying the satellites into low Earth orbit 53 minutes later. The launch was delayed two days by problems with ground tracking equipment that Peter Beck, the company’s founder and chief executive, said will soon be phased out in favor of an autonomous flight termination system.
Rocket Lab carried out the launch for Spaceflight, the Seattle-based company that offers rideshare services on a variety of vehicles. The launch is the first of as many as five Electron missions this year for Spaceflight, carrying a mix of small satellites.
The largest satellite on this mission is Global-3 for Earth imaging company BlackSky. The satellite, weighing about 60 kilograms, will be the company’s first to go into a medium-inclination orbit, providing faster revisit times over selected areas of the Earth.
“As we continue our constellation expansion, it will be critical to leverage the frequent launch cadence Spaceflight offers through Rocket Lab and others, and we’re excited to be on this inaugural mission,” Brian O’Toole, chief executive of BlackSky, said in the statement.
Six other satellites are also on the rocket, bring the total payload mass to the mission to approximately 80 kilograms. Two of the satellites are Prometheus cubesats for U.S. Special Operations Command, believed to be used for tactical communications. Two others are SpaceBEE smallsats for Swarm, a company developing a constellation of such satellites for Internet of Things services. The fifth satellite is ACRUX-1, an Australian student-built cubesat, and the sixth is for an undisclosed customer.
Launching on Electron offers a new approach for Spaceflight, which has traditionally provided launches for smallsats as secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles. The company did purchase a dedicated Falcon 9 mission, called SSO-A, that launched 64 satellites last December.
Electron offers the company the ability to provide dedicated launches, with control over orbit and schedule, but for smaller numbers of satellites at a time. “Having the Electron in our arsenal of small launch vehicles provides our customers with a low-cost, flexible option to get on orbit,” Curt Blake, chief executive of Spaceflight, said in a pre-launch statement.
The mission was the third of 2019 for Spaceflight, after a mission in February where it launched SpaceIL’s Beresheet launch as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 and one in March that launched 21 satellites as secondary payloads on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. Speaking at the Space Enterprise Summit here June 26, Blake said the company planned to perform as many as 19 launches in 2019.
“What we try to do is buy up the excess capacity on all these different launch vehicles to drive efficiencies,” he said at the summit. “Launch is a scarce resource, and it’s really important that we use all the performance of those launch vehicles to get as much into orbit as we can, because that drives launch costs lower.”
The launch was the third this year for Rocket Lab’s Electron small launch vehicle. The Electron launched DARPA’s Radio Frequency Risk Reduction Deployment Demonstration (R3D2) satellite in March, and three technology demonstration satellites for the U.S. Air Force in May.
Lars Hoffman, senior vice president of global launch services at Rocket Lab, said during a June 6 panel discussion at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference that the company plans to move towards monthly launches of Electron after this mission.
“The value that we bring to the market is being able to launch on a monthly cadence,” he said, providing assurances to companies, and their investors, that their payloads can get into orbit on schedule. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand.”
https://spacenews.com/rocket-lab-launches-satellites-for-spaceflight/Rocket Lab flies again from New Zealand as work progresses at Virginia launch padJune 29, 2019 Stephen Clark
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifts off from New Zealand on Saturday. Credit: Rocket Lab(...) Rocket Lab’s webcast streamed spectacular live video from cameras aboard the launch vehicle, but the live stream ended after the second stage completed its burn and released the Curie kick stage for the final phase of the flight.
A camera on-board the Electron rocket’s second stage shows a Rutherford engine, with its glowing engine nozzle, and part of the launcher’s payload fairing falling away from the vehicle around three minutes after liftoff Saturday. Credit: Rocket Lab(...) The biggest payload on the next Electron launch was the BlackSky Global 3 Earth-imaging satellite — with a launch weight of approximately 123 pounds (56 kilograms) — set to join BlackSky’s first two commercial surveillance craft already in orbit after launches last year.
BlackSky is a business unit of Spaceflight Industries, which is also the parent company of Spaceflight, the rideshare launch broker.
Like the two BlackSky Global satellites currently in space, BlackSky’s third satellite will be capable of capturing up to 1,000 color images per day, with a resolution of about 3 feet (1 meter).
Last year, Spaceflight Industries announced a joint venture with Thales Alenia Space — named LeoStella — to build the next 20 BlackSky satellites in Tukwila, Washington, following the initial block of four smallsats, which includes the BlackSky Global 3 spacecraft launched Saturday.
BlackSky says its fleet of satellites will enable frequent revisits over the same location to help analysts identify changes over short time cycles. The company expects to have eight satellites in orbit by the end of the year, and aims to eventually field a constellation of up to 60 Earth-imaging spacecraft deployed.
One major customer for BlackSky could be the U.S. government. The National Reconnaissance Office, which owns the government’s spy satellite fleet, announced three study contracts earlier this month with BlackSky, Maxar Technologies and Planet to assess the usefulness of commercial imagery for U.S. intelligence agencies.
The BlackSky Global 3 Earth-imaging satellite was the largest of seven spacecraft launched on Rocket Lab’s seventh mission. Credit: Rocket LabThe launch also delivered two Prometheus CubeSats to low Earth orbit for U.S. Special Operations Command. The Prometheus smallsats are the latest in a series of CubeSats designed to test low-cost, easy-to-use communications relay technologies that could be used by special operations forces on combat missions.
According to information previously released by the military, the Prometheus spacecraft demonstrate the transmission of audio, video and data files from portable, low-profile, remotely-located field units to deployable ground station terminals using over-the-horizon satellite communications.
Two SpaceBEE CubeSats from Swarm Technologies, each weighing less than 2 pounds (1 kilogram), were also aboard the launch. The “BEE” in SpaceBEE stands for Basic Electronic Element.
Swarm is developing a low-data-rate satellite communications fleet the company says could be used by connected cars, remote environmental sensors, industrial farming operations, transportation, smart meters, and for text messaging in rural areas outside the range of terrestrial networks.
Swarm’s first four SpaceBEEs launched in January 2018 aboard an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle without approval from the Federal Communications Commission. After an investigation into the unlicensed launch — a first for the U.S. commercial satellite industry — the FCC fined Swarm $900,000 but allowed the launch of three more satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket in December.
The FCC raised concerns that the first four SpaceBEEs, each about the size of a sandwich, were too small to be reliably tracked by the military, which maintains a public catalog of objects in orbit. Like the satellites launching this month, the SpaceBEEs shot into orbit in December used a larger design based on a one-unit, or 1U, CubeSat standard.
The ACRUX 1 CubeSat developed by the Melbourne Space Program, a non-profit educational organization affiliated with the University of Melbourne in Australia, also launched on the Electron rocket. Built by engineering students, ACRUX 1’s primary mission is education.
The ACRUX 1 CubeSat. Credit: Melbourne Space ProgramAustralia’s first amateur satellite, Australis-OSCAR 5, was also built by students in Melbourne. Launched in 1970, it was the first amateur satellite designed and assembled outside North America.
“Since then, Australia’s satellite-related space capabilities have been stymied by outdated policies and regulation, hindering growth of the nation’s space industry and support of its incredible local talent,” members of the Melbourne Space Program wrote in an update on the organization’s website.
“In light of these challenges and obstacles, the Melbourne Space Program considers the design and build of ACRUX 1, as well as the successful securing of an international launch and related licenses, as significant accomplishments in themselves,” team members wrote on the group’s website.
The student engineers who developed the ACRUX 1 CubeSat say they will consider the mission fully successful if they receive a “ping” signal from the spacecraft in orbit.
“Receiving that ping from ACRUX 1 may seem like a modest mission goal, but the truth is far from it,” the team wrote. “That ping would mean ACRUX-1 has not only turned on in space, but has also communicated data back to us at our ground station in Greater Melbourne. In other words, it demonstrates that the satellite system built by our engineers actually works in space.”
A seventh satellite rode to space on the “Make it Rain” mission, but Spaceflight and Rocket Lab have not revealed its identity or owner.
Beck said it was the customer’s decision not to disclose the identity of the seventh payload on Saturday’s launch. The satellite’s purpose and owner coul be announced at a later date.
“There’s nothing incredible there,” Beck said. “Some customers have business propositions and business ideas that they’re trying to get to market first, just like every other industry. This is an example of that.”
He said the mystery satellite is not owned by Rocket Lab.
“It’s really up to the customer,” Beck said. “We’re providing the flight service. The customer has all the appropriate government approvals, so it’s purely a business decision.” (...)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/06/29/rocket-lab-flies-again-from-new-zealand-as-construction-advances-at-virginia-launch-pad/https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/06/26/launch-timeline-for-rocket-labs-make-it-rain-mission/BlackSky Global 3
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/blacksky-global.htmPrometheus 2.6 ?
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/prometheus-2.htm Prometheus 2.7 ?
ACRUX 1
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/acrux-1.htmSpaceBEE 8
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/spacebee-5.htmSpaceBEE 9
?
Wątek: Starty rakiet (II kwartał 2019 roku) (Przeczytany 34980 razy)