Pierwszy klaster satelitów z Kourou03.09. o 01:51:10 z Kourou wystrzelona została RN Vega, która wyniosła w T+39' 34" na orbitę o parametrach:
hp=515 km, ha=515 km, i=97,45° ładunek SSMS POC (Small Spacecraft Mission Service Proof Of Concept), w skład
którego weszło siedem mikrosatelitów: Athena, GHGSat-C1 (Iris), NEMO-HD, UPMSat 2, ESAIL, Hypatia (NewSat-6,
Aleph-1 6) oraz dyspenser ION CubeSat Carrier Lucas, który przeszedł w T+1h 41' 41" na orbitę o parametrach: hp=530 km,
ha=530 km, i=97,51° i wypuścił tam cubesaty: FSSCat A (3Cat 5A), FSSCat B (3Cat 5B), AMICalSat, DIDO-3, NAPA 1
(RTAF-SAT 1, Royal Thai Air Force Satellite), Lemur-2y (8 sztuk), OSM-1 Cicero, PICASSO-BE, SIMBA, 12 satelitów
SpaceBee (10-21), TARS, TRISAT, TTÜ100, Tyvak-0171 i 26 satelitów Flock 4v.
http://lk.astronautilus.pl/n200901.htm#01Vega launches SSMS PoC4543 wyświetlenia•3 wrz 2020
Vega wynosi 53 satelity BY KRZYSZTOF KANAWKA ON 5 WRZEŚNIA 2020
(...) Ten start był kilkukrotnie opóźniany z uwagi na pandemię COVID-19, która spowodowała zatrzymanie prac w kosmodromie Kourou.
Wśród wyniesionych w tym starcie satelitów jest kilka ciekawych pozycji. Ciekawą misją jest ION CubeSat Carrier włoskiej firmy D-Orbit. Jest to nośnik satelitów typu CubeSat, które będą uwalniane w późniejszym terminie. Masa startowa tego satelity-nośnika wyniosła 150 kg. (...)
https://kosmonauta.net/2020/09/vega-wynosi-53-satelity/Some statistics on today's flight:16th Vega launch
1st Vega launch of 2020
4th launch from Guiana Space Center in 2020
6th Arianespace launch of 2020
41st launch from the ELA-1 / ZLV launch pad
1st SSMS rideshare mission by Arianespace
320th Arianespace mission since 1980
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/09/02/vega-vv16-mission-status-center-2/Arianespace passes the milestone of 700 spacecraft launchedSeptember 3, 2020
One of the smallest satellites launched by Arianespace was the ESTCube-1 technology demonstrator for Estonia’s National University of Tartu (at left), with a mass of 1.33 kg. – which was placed in Sun-synchronous orbit by a Vega launcher in 2013. The no. 5 Automated Transfer Vehicle (at right), lofted by Ariane 5 in 2014 on an ESA servicing mission to the International Space Station, is among the heaviest payloads, with a mass at liftoff of approximately 19,900 kg.Since Arianespace’s creation 40 years ago, the 700-plus spacecraft launched by the company have expanded the world’s ability to communicate, contributed to the improvement of global mobility, helped monitor Earth’s environment, advanced science and education, unlocked secrets of the universe, and supported human spaceflight.
Arianespace surpassed the 700-spacecraft milestone during Vega Flight VV16, which orbited more than 50 nano-satellites and micro-satellites on the Proof of Concept launch for its Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS).
Performed overnight on September 2-3, Flight VV16’s historic 700th payload was the SIMBA CubeSat for SAB-Launch Services, which was produced by the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium for the European Space Agency (ESA). (...)
Categories for the 700-plus spacecraft are as follows:
– Telecommunications relay platforms;
– Earth observation satellites;
– Navigation spacecraft;
– Technology payloads;
– Scientific spacecraft;
– Cargo resupply vehicles deployed to the International Space Station; and
– An in-orbit servicing vehicle.
(...)
https://www.arianespace.com/corporate-news/arianespace-700-spacecraft/Arianespace gives a lift to the small-sat market with Vega’s SSMS debutSeptember 3, 2020
(...) The satellite passengers on the SSMS Proof of Concept rideshare mission were released into Sun-synchronous orbits during a flight sequence lasting 1 hr. and 44 min. from liftoff to final separation, involving multiple deployments with the SSMS dispenser. These spacecraft will serve various applications – including Earth observation, telecommunications, science, technology and education. (...)
https://www.arianespace.com/mission-update/vv16-launch-success/With Vega, Arianespace successfully performs the first European mission to launch multiple small satellitesSeptember 3, 2020
(...) “With Vega’s successful return to flight, we are delighted to have served 21 customers from 13 different countries,” said Stéphane Israël, Chief Executive Officer of Arianespace. “These satellites will serve a variety of different applications, including Earth observation, the battle against climate change, telecommunications, the Internet of Things, science, as well as education. With this shared launch, space becomes accessible to everyone, including research labs, universities and startups. ‘Bravo’ to the European space team, which has worked from start to finish in adding this new service to Arianespace’s offering, enabling this magnificent success.”
The satellites onboard VV16 are in two categories: seven primary micro-satellites with a mass of 25 to 145 kg.; and 46 nano-satellites with a mass of 250 g. to 7 kg. The first seven satellites were released between the mission’s 40th and 52nd minute, while the remaining 46 were deployed during a sequence of less than three minutes, occurring 1 hour, 42 minutes after liftoff.
Among these 53 satellites, certain spacecraft will be dedicated to Earth observation, with innovative projects such as GHGSAT-C1, a Canadian satellite at the service of air quality; or ION Satellite Carrier Lucas for the Planet company. OSM-1 CICERO is the first satellite from Orbital Solutions Monaco, a Monegasque start-up; while ESAIL is the first commercial microsatellite developed under the European Space Agency’s SAT-AIS program for tracking ships. Several experimental satellites also were on board Vega, such as TARS from the Kepler company, which is dedicated to the Internet of Things; as well as the 14 satellites from Swarm Technology, an American start-up whose mission is the use of artificial intelligence in robots and computers.
With the demonstration of its new SSMS service, Arianespace is strengthening its position in the growing market for small satellites. This service will soon be supplemented by the MLS (Multi Launch Service) – a similar offer available on Ariane 6, allowing Arianespace to increase the number of affordable launch opportunities for small satellites and constellations. (...)
https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/with-vega-arianespace-successfully-performs-the-first-european-mission-to-launch-multiple-small-satellitesArianespace launches Vega on return-to-flight mission with 53 smallsatsby Caleb Henry — September 3, 2020
The Vega mission, designated VV16, endured a string of delays for a large number of reasons, including adverse weather and the coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Arianespace webcast.(...) Arianespace and Avio were again ready to launch Vega in June, but prolonged upper level winds blew the mission into August. Then a 19-day delay with an Ariane 5 launch bumped Vega to September. A final one-day delay occurred when Typhoon Maysak hit the Korean peninsula Sept. 1, preventing use of a ground station on the South Korean island of Jeju needed for telemetry during the Vega launch. (...)
Arianespace says it plans regular SSMS missions in the future with the next-generation Vega C, which is expected to launch in 2021. SSMS is designed for satellites up to 500 kilograms.
https://spacenews.com/arianespace-launches-vega-on-return-to-flight-mission-with-53-smallsats/Vega rocket deploys 53 satellites on successful return to flight missionSeptember 3, 2020 Stephen Clark
The two decks of the SSMS rideshare structure are seen as they were mated in preparation for launch. The Athena satellite is seen at the top of the payload stack. Credit: ESA – M. Pedoussaut(...) Sized to carry small-to-medium-class payloads into orbit, the Vega rocket flew with a new payload accommodation structure designed to allow dozens of satellites to launch on the same mission. The modular structure can be adapted to accommodate various numbers of small satellites of different sizes, and Arianespace and Avio plan to make it a regular part of their commercial launch service offering after Wednesday’s successful “proof of concept” demonstration flight.
The Small Space Mission Service, or SSMS, payload dispenser that flew for the first time Wednesday night was jointly funded by the European Space Agency and the European Commission. SAB Aerospace in the Czech Republic and Bercella in Italy designed and manufactured the dispenser.
Aggregating numerous small payloads on a single rocket can reduce launch costs for individual satellite operators.
“This project is a very important one because it shows flexibility, agility, and also cost reduction,” said Jan Woerner, ESA’s director general. (...)
The first satellite released into a 320-mile-high (515-kilometer) orbit by the Vega’s AVUM upper stage was Athena, a 304-pound (138-kilogram) spacecraft built by Maxar in California. Athena is a small experimental communications satellite for PointView Tech, a subsidiary of Facebook, that will test technologies that could be used in a future constellation of small satellites to provide global broadband Internet services.
Athena is PointView Tech’s first satellite.
A 330-pound (150-kilogram) spacecraft developed by the Italian space company D-Orbit also rode to space on the Vega rocket. D-Orbit’s ION Satellite Carrier is loaded with 12 SuperDove Earth-imaging CubeSats for Planet, which will be released after the carrier craft separates from the Vega rocket’s upper stage in orbit.
Counting the 12 SuperDoves inside the ION Satellite Carrier, the SSMS proof of concept mission is actually
launching with 65 satellites.
D-Orbit plans to develop more capable CubeSat carriers for future missions with propulsion systems that could maneuver customers’ nanosatellites into different orbital slots after separation from their launch vehicle. That capability could give CubeSat operators the ability to still put their spacecraft into tailored orbits even if launching on a rideshare flight to a slightly different altitude or inclination.
The launch marked the first use of D-Orbit’s InOrbit Now, or ION, service.
The largest satellite ever built in Luxembourg also hitched a ride into orbit on the Vega launch vehicle. Named ESAIL, the 246-pound (112-kilogram) spacecraft was developed in partnership between ESA and exactEarth, a Canadian company with maritime tracking sensors on more than 60 satellites already in orbit.
ESAIL is part of an ESA initiative called SAT-AIS, managed within ESA’s telecommunication program office, which aims to foster the development of a fleet of small satellites to receive and relay Automatic Identification System signals from ships.
Built by LuxSpace, ESAIL was funded by the Luxembourg Space Agency and other ESA member states. The project also received private funding from exactEarth, which will operate the satellite on a commercial basis.
A major user of ESAIL satellite data will be the European Maritime Safety Agency. Officials say ESAIL will improve fisheries monitoring, maritime fleet management, environmental protection, and border and maritime security services.
Slovenia’s NEMO-HD Earth-imaging microsatellite was also on the Vega launch. The 143-pound (65-kilogram) NEMO-HD spacecraft will collect medium-resolution color still and high-definition video imagery that can be downlinked to the ground in realtime.
NEMO-HD was built in Canada at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory for the Slovenian Center of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies, or SPACE-SI.
A 99-pound Spanish microsatellite named UPMSat 2 was also on the SSMS rideshare cluster. Loaded with tech demo payloads, it was developed as an educational project by students at the Polytechnic University of Madrid since 2009.
The ÑuSat 6 Earth-imaging microsatellite also launched Wednesday night. It’s the next spacecraft to join a remote sensing satellite fleet owned by Satellogic, an Argentine company.
Headquartered in Buenos Aires with a satellite manufacturing facility in Montevideo, Uruguay, Satellogic is building a fleet of satellites to cover the globe with visible, hyperspectral and infrared imagery. The company is one of several startups active in the commercial Earth-imaging market, along with Planet, BlackSky, ICEYE, and others.
Satellogic plans to deploy a fleet of 90 microsatellites primarily using Chinese rockets. ÑuSat 6 will be Satellogic’s 11th satellite to launch, and the first to fly on a European rocket.
A small satellite designed to monitor greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere was also deployed by the Vega rocket. The GHGSat-C1 satellite, with a launch mass of about 34 pounds (15.4 kilograms), is owned by a startup named GHGSat based in Montreal.
The Canadian-built spacecraft is the second to launch for GHGSat, which says the satellite will be capable of detecting methane emissions from specific sources, such as oil and gas wells. Buoyed by financial infusions from climate-focused investment funds, the oilfield services company Schlumberger, and the governments of Canada, Alberta and Quebec, GHGSat aims to field a fleet of greenhouse gas-monitoring satellites to feed data to regulators and industry.
After deploying the seven heavier payloads, the Vega rocket’s AVUM upper stage lit its liquid-fueled engine two more times to boost itself into a slightly higher orbit.
The SSMS dispenser then ejected 46 smaller nanosatellites over a period of less than three minutes.
The smaller payloads included 14 SuperDove remote sensing spacecraft for Planet, and eight Lemur-2 CubeSats for Spire’s fleet of maritime, aviation, and weather monitoring nanosatellites. The SuperDove and Lemur-2 satellites are about the size of a shoebox.
The remaining payloads deployed by the Vega rocket Wednesday night included:
12 tiny SpaceBEE satellites — each about the size of a slice of bread — for Swarm Technologies’ low-data-rate communications network
FSSCat A and B, two environmental monitoring CubeSats developed by developed by ESA and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain
DIDO-3, a CubeSat for the Swiss company SpacePharma
PICASSO, developed for ESA by the Belgian Institute of Space Aeronomy to collect data on the atmosphere and ozone
SIMBA, a Belgian CubeSat to measure how much solar energy enters Earth’s atmosphere
TRISAT, a CubeSat developed by the University of Maribor in Slovenia
AMICalSat, a CubeSat jointly developed by the Grenoble University Space Center in France and Moscow State University in Russia
NAPA 1, a CubeSat that will be Thailand’s first military satellite
Kepler Communications’ TARS tech demo CubeSat
OSM-1 CICERO, the first satellite manufactured in Monaco
Tyvak 0171, a CubeSat built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems of California for an undisclosed customer
(...)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/09/03/vega-rocket-deploys-53-satellites-on-successful-return-to-flight-mission/https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/09/01/arianespaces-first-smallsat-rideshare-mission-ready-for-another-launch-attempt/Two Belgian satellites successfully launched into orbitThursday, 03 September 2020
(...) Picasso, from the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA) will map the distribution of ozone across the Earth’s stratosphere using the light filtering across the planet’s atmosphere during sunrise and sunset.
Simba, by the Royal Meteorological Institute (IRM) will track climate change on Earth by measuring the balance of energy it receives from the Sun and the energy it loses to outer space. (...)
https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/129668/belgian-satellites-sent-into-orbit-will-monitor-ozone-and-climate-change-simba-picasso/słoweńskie satelity
https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=4017.msg147535#msg147535PICASSO CubeSat (The PICo-satellite for Atmospheric and Space Science Observations) https://www.forum.kosmonauta.net/index.php?topic=4017.msg147535#msg147535https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/09/arianespaces-vega-rtf-small-satellite-rideshare/Athena
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/athena_pointview.htmION CubeSat Carrier
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/ion-cubesat-carrier.htmESAIL
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/esail.htmUPMSat 2
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/upmsat-2.htmNEMO-HD
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nemo-hd.htmÑuSat 6 (NewSat 6, Aleph-1 6, Hypatia)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nusat-1.htmGHGSat C1 (Iris)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/ghgsat-d.htmFlock-4v 1 (Dove 2262)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/flock-1.htmFlock-4v 2 (Dove 2256)
Flock-4v 3 (Dove 225A)
Flock-4v 4 (Dove 2274)
Flock-4v 5 (Dove 2251)
Flock-4v 6 (Dove 225B)
Flock-4v 7 (Dove 227B)
Flock-4v 8 (Dove 2264)
Flock-4v 9 (Dove 2276)
Flock-4v 10 (Dove 2254)
Flock-4v 11 (Dove 2305)
Flock-4v 12 (Dove 2307)
Flock-4v 13 (Dove 2279)
Flock-4v 14 (Dove 227A)
Flock-4v 15 (Dove 227C)
Flock-4v 16 (Dove 227E)
Flock-4v 17 (Dove 2280)
Flock-4v 18 (Dove 2412)
Flock-4v 19 (Dove 2414)
Flock-4v 20 (Dove 2406)
Flock-4v 21 (Dove 2408)
Flock-4v 22 (Dove 240A)
Flock-4v 23 (Dove 2401)
Flock-4v 24 (Dove 2405)
Flock-4v 25 (Dove 240C)
Flock-4v 26 (Dove 2407)
Lemur-2 112
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/lemur-2.htmLemur-2 113
Lemur-2 114
Lemur-2 115
Lemur-2 116
Lemur-2 117
Lemur-2 118
Lemur-2 119
SpaceBEE 10
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/spacebee-10.htmSpaceBEE 11
SpaceBEE 12
SpaceBEE 13
SpaceBEE 14
SpaceBEE 15
SpaceBEE 16
SpaceBEE 17
SpaceBEE 18
SpaceBEE 19
SpaceBEE 20
SpaceBEE 21
FSSCat A (3Cat 5A)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/fsscat.htmFSSCat B (3Cat 5B)
NAPA 1 (RTAF-SAT 1)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/rtaf-sat.htm TARS (Kepler 3, IOD 5)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/kepler-3.htmTyvak 0171
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/tyvak-0171.htmOSM 1 CICERO
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/cicero.htmDIDO 3
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/dido-3.htmPICASSO
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/picasso.htmSIMBA
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/simba.htmTRISAT
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/trisat.htmAMICal-Sat
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/amical-sat.htmTTÜ100 (TTÜSat, MektorySAT 1, Hämarik)
https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/ttu100.htm