2018 in review... China had 39 launches: 14 Long March 2 14 Long March 3 6 Long March 4 3 Long March 11 1 Kuaizhou 1 Zhuque The United States had 34 launches: 21 Falcon 9 5 Atlas 3 Delta 3 Electron (these are shared with New Zealand) 2 Antares Russia had 20 launches: 16 Soyuz (3 of these from French Guiana) 2 Proton 2 Rokot ESA had 8 launches: 6 Ariane, 2 Vega India had 7 launches: 4 PSLV, 3 GLSV Japan had 6 launches: 4 H-II, 2 solids. We had two total launch failures, and a partial failure: A spectacular failure of a Soyuz-FG rocket with the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. One of the boosters failed to separate cleanly, puncturing the core stage, and initiating an abort and spacecraft escape. The capsule landed safely 20 km east of Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan, with astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksei Ovchinin rescued unharmed. The premier of the "private" Chinese solid-fuel rocket Zhuque-1 failed on October 27. The third stage failed to reach orbit There was also a partial failure with an Ariane 5 rocket on January 25, requiring its two probes to reach geostationary orbit under their own power at a cost of useful life. The U.S., China, and India also each had successful launches that involved subsequent spacecraft failures. ******** The Parker Solar Probe began its downward spiral toward the Sun; its first perihelion, on November 9, was at 25 million km, and a speed of 95 km/s. Queciao, a set of probes that is supposed to support China's Chang'e 4 lander on the far side of the moon, didn't work fully. While the main probe is now at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point, one of the lunar orbit support probes failed to enter orbit, and instead is in solar orbit. Chang'e 4 itself is currently in lunar orbit, and will attempt a landing on the far side on January 3. Hayabusa 2 made it to asteroid 162173 Ryugu, and got three landers on it. Juno completed an additional seven flybys of Jupiter to get detailed meteorological readings of the planet. InSight landed on Mars at Elysium Planitia, and its landing was successfully assisted by two cubesats, which interfaced with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. OSIRIS-REx began its approach of asteroid 101955 Bennu. It is expected enter orbit this year. ******** Hopefully I will be able to post pictures from New Horizons of Ultima Thule later today. SpaceX will begin its manned spacecraft operations with a Crew Dragon test flight currently scheduled for January 17. Starliner is currently anticipated for March, but no set time is established yet. Hayabusa 2 will depart Ryugu toward the end of the year to return samples. Parker Solar Probe is scheduled for two more perihelions before its second fly-by of Venus on December 26. Juno has seven more fly-bys of Jupiter planned. There's really not much in terms of interplanetary spaceflight planned beyond already-flying missions. Pretty much everyone and their mother simply wanting to get into space. And hopefully, America finally returning to human spaceflight. Crew Dragon is anticipated for its first manned flight in June, and Starliner is anticipated for August. The Starliner flight may be an operational flight to the ISS. But both of those are tentative, awaiting successful unmanned test flights and in-flight abort tests.
This is the best image so far from the quick look data received late this morning from "Ultima Thule". Yeah, I know. Not much to look at so far. The early images suggest it rotates roughly along that long axis every several hours, more than twice per Earth day. It is believed that they will be able to get images with resolution as good as 30 metres per pixel from the best images. That ought to be enough to denote major geographical features. Due to the growing distance from Earth, data regarding "Ultima Thule" will take until September 2020 to finish downloading.
THIS is #UltimaThule. The image taken by @NASANewHorizons - shown in its original version (left) & sharpened version (on right) - is the most detailed image of the farthest object ever explored by a spacecraft. https://t.co/gItPsMvbPC @NASA pic.twitter.com/i7rDBURNrw— Johns Hopkins APL (@JHUAPL) January 2, 2019 The first detailed image has come in of "Ultima Thule". Or rather, "Ultima" and "Thule". The body is now being described as a "contact binary". They are two objects that likely cohabitated a similar orbit, and eventually got so close that they actually made contact and joined together. Eventually their gravitational forces pulled the two bodies together, and they merged into a joined body. The larger lobe is referred to now as "Ultima", while the smaller lobe is called "Thule". This image was taken from a distance of 27,000 km during approach. It was taken at 12:01am EST, just 30 minutes before closest approach. The detail is estimated to be about 140 metres per pixel, meaning they are hoping for resolution four to five times better from the best images.
51 years ago today, the last of the Surveyor lunar landers, Surveyor 7, was launched atop an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Pad 36A, Cape Kennedy. Three days later, it would land by Tycho crater, almost half-way between the Equator and the South Pole. Over the next two weeks, it would take nearly 21,000 photos of the surrounding landscape. The lander survived the lunar night, but sustained battery and camera equipment damage in the cold. It was only able to take an additional 41 photos during the second lunar day, and the probe failed on February 21. The probe was intended to be visited by Apollo 20 before that mission was canceled.
50 years ago today, Soyuz 5 launched atop a Soyuz rocket from Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome. I reported on this five years ago. Its mission was to dock with Soyuz 4, and two cosmonauts would transfer by EVA from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4. Early in the day, a cargo aircraft landed at Baikonur with mail, newspapers, and telegrams printed out the previous day. They were loaded aboard Soyuz 5 upon arrival. When Aleksei Yeliseyev and Yevgeny Khurnov transferred between spacecraft, they brought the media over with them. The letters and telegrams were addressed specifically to Soyuz 4's lone launch cosmonaut, Vladimir Shatalov. The Soviets did this to prove that the EVA had taken place.
72 years ago today, the United States Army established a launch range in southern New Mexico for the test launching of V-2 rockets procured as part of Operation Paperclip. The launches were conducted by a consortium of American military agencies that were interested in developing rocket technology. Even after the Air Force was separated from the Army, the Army held the lead on missile development during V-2 testing. The launch site was located at the south end of White Sands Proving Ground, about 23 miles east of Las Cruces, straddling the border of Doña Ana and Otero Counties. It was 88 miles south of the Trinity nuclear test site, the north end of the proving ground. The range would become the Joint Guided Missile Test Range in 1947, and White Sands Missile Range in 1955. A total of 67 V-2 rockets were launched at White Sands. Once they were exhausted, the armed forces would separate to create their own rockets, with the Army creating Redstone; the Navy creating Vanguard and Polaris; and the Air Force creating Jupiter, Thor, and Atlas.
29 years ago today, the Japanese ISAS agency launched MUSES-A atop a Mu-S3-II rocket from Uchinoura Space Center. Upon reaching orbit, it was renamed Hiten, one of the celestial maidens of Japanese Buddhist mythology. Hiten has an interesting history. Upon launch, it had a velocity deficit of 50 m/s, having been placed in a highly-elliptical orbit with an apogee of 290,000 km instead of 478,000 km as intended. A small burn of the spacecraft's reaction control engines was able to correct that. Its orbit was high enough for the probe to fly by the Moon. On the first fly-by, Hiten released a small subsatellite, Hagoromo, which was to be captured in orbit around the Moon. Though contact was lost shortly after release, they were able to verify that Hagoromo achieved orbit telescopically. After its primary mission, some scientists at JPL offered a proposal to ISAS to use a ballistic capture to actually put Hiten in a temporary orbit around the Moon. They did this in October 1991. After this, it would spend some time wandering in the area of the Moon's orbit, spending time at both the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon system to examine any smaller captured objects. After that, Hiten would be permanently placed in lunar orbit, and de-orbited from there on April 10, 1993.
19 years ago today, the first launch of the Minotaur I rocket was conducted from Pad 8, Vandenberg AFB. The rocket carried several minisats, including a carrier with three picosats, satellites that would be even smaller than what would today be termed a cubesat. Essentially a Minuteman II ICBM with a Pegasus rocket on top, the Minotaur I rocket has had 11 launches, all successful. The first launch in six years is scheduled for later this year.
Five years ago, I did some documenting of the Apollo 14 mission. I pretty much only covered launch, TLI, landing, and both EVA's. Over the next 10 days, I'll fill in the blanks. I mentioned that there was difficulty on the first attempt to dock CSM Kitty Hawk with LM Antares. It took them six total attempts to get a full dock, enabling them to extract Antares from the S-IVB upper stage. Following the extraction, the S-IVB stage was fired to exhaustion of its remaining fuel, and directed to impact the Moon. The impact was detected by the seismometer left with the Apollo 12 ALSEP package.
Apollo 14 is the least documented of the lunar missions on Wikipedia. Most of the other landings have separate pages just for the different phases of each mission. But for this one, it seems to jump from the LM extraction issues right to lunar descent. The NASA website used to have a lot more detail on the missions, but it's kinda gotten buried and/or erased by the modernization of their web presence. After some searching, I found the old, more detailed mission summaries at the Goddard Spaceflight Center website. That will help me get more in-depth on the mission. Early on Mission Day 2, the crew brought the docking latch in and examined it. They found no physical issue with the mechanism. As I mentioned yesterday, there would be no further issue with docking procedures during the mission. Toward the end of the day, a mid-course correction burn took place, a 10.2-second burn that increased velocity by about 22 m/s. This would compensate for the weather delays that took place on launch day.
The MarCO cubesat companions of the InSight lander have fallen silent. The two 6U-size cubesats, respectively named "WALL-E" and "EVE", flew to Mars independently of InSight. They were separately attached to the Centaur upper stage that sent all three probes to Mars. JPL actually used the MarCO CubeSats to connect InSight to Earth, instead of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Each of the CubeSats had an inexpensive 5W directional X-band antenna. Despite the lower panel, going through the dedicated MarCOs was actually quicker in terms of data relay for EDL procedures than going through MRO. The MarCO sats were kept about 10,000 km on either flank of InSight throughout the cruise, and drawn closer to the probe as EDL approached. As InSight landed, MarCO flew by Mars at a distance of about 3,500 km. EVE failed about a month after the landing, with WALL-E failing a week later. JPL will monitor their estimated trajectory to see if they catch enough power on their solar panels as their orbit approaches perihelion. Although an exact cause of EVE's shutdown is unknown, WALL-E is known to have a leaky thruster, and as a result is tumbling slightly, so it could've lost the ability to point its solar panels toward the Sun.
18 years ago today, Discovery was launched on STS-98 from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center. It was the first launch of humans in the 21st century. The mission brought the Destiny laboratory module to the International Space Station. Destiny was to be the primary NASA laboratory module. It would be placed at the Unity forward node. Over the course of three spacewalks, PMA-2 would be moved from Unity forward to Harmony forward, a spare communications antenna was installed, and fixtures were outfitted for Canadarm2, to be installed by STS-100 two months later. The third spacewalk of the mission was NASA's 100th overall extravehicular activity.
54 years ago today, the first Lincoln Experimental Satellite was launched atop a Titan IIIA rocket from Pad 20, Cape Kennedy. The Lincoln Experimental Satellites were a series of testbeds designed by the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT. Solar-powered, they would make perfect experimental payloads for rocket tests. This first one was intended for a 2800x15000-km orbit. But the Transtage was unable to complete the final burn, resulting in a circular 2800-km orbit. The LES platform would test communications techniques. The first four particularly would text X-band communications. The original series of seven satellites were to be launched by the Titan IIIA, Titan IIIB, and Titan IIIC rockets. The last of the series was canceled due to lack of funding. Two more LES experiments were launched in 1976. The two satellites would test cross-linking, a technology that would be used in TDRSS and FLTSATCOM.
The Mars Exploration Rover program has come to an end. Operations for Opportunity ended yesterday after the last of 835 attempts to contact it since the mid-2018 global dust storm on Mars failed. The rover traveled a total of 45.16 km over the period of over 14 years, roughly 56 times longer than its original 90-day mission. Its final resting place will be on the west rim of Endeavour crater, SE of its landing site at Eagle crater. The rover took over 225,000 photos during its mission, including the above "selfie", comprised of a collage of images taken over several days in February 2018.
Not bad for a mission that was supposed to last like 92 days being finally declared "over" after more than 14 years.
61 years ago today, the Secretary of the Air Force submitted a list of the Air Force's space priorities to the Secretary of Defense. Among them: Launching a weather satellite Developing satellites that could be recovered from orbit Developing the Hustler upper stage for larger payloads Launching a satellite to the Moon. All four goals were set to use the PGM-17 Thor IRBM as the base rocket, using various upper stages. The second and fourth goals were proposed to use the Vanguard second stage, which was called Delta. This would lead to the progenitors of the Delta rocket. Hustler was an early codename of what became the Agena upper stage. The hope for goal #4 was essentially the earliest form of the race to the Moon. All of the accomplishments were targeted to be completed by the end of 1958. Although goal #1 was not reached in 1958, they did begin testing meteorology equipment on Nike sounding rockets launched from a test range in Churchill, Manitoba, that October. Goal #2 would have to wait as well. The first re-entry tests were conducted on suborbital launches using the PGM-19 Jupiter MRBM. The Agena stage was not tested until February 1959. Pioneer 1 would be launched to the Moon that October atop a Thor-Able rocket, but wouldn't reach it.
At long last, the first competitor in the now-ended Google Lunar X Prize is shooting for the Moon. Beresheet, the lander for SpaceIL, was launched last night atop a Falcon 9 rocket on a ride-share with the Indonesian PSN-6 comsat. It was deployed first following the second stage's SSTO burn. The lander carries around 430 kg of propellant. Over the next month and a half, it will slowly raise its apogee so it can be captured in lunar orbit. It will then spend another couple weeks in lunar orbit before attempting landing. Its intended landing point is Mare Serenitatis. The lander carries a digital time capsule which includes a full copy of Wikipedia at the time of manufacture (which means stuff I've personally written will be there), the full text of the Torah, children's drawings, testimony from a Holocaust survivor, and the Israeli Declaration of Independence. It also carries a magnetometer produced by the Weizmann Institute of Science, and a laser retroflector from Goddard Spaceflight Center. The lander is expected to operate for only two days; it carries no thermal control, and is anticipated to overheat quickly.
23 years ago today, the Global Geospace Sciences satellite, Polar, was launched atop a Delta II 7925 tocket from Pad 2W, Vandenberg AFB. The satellite was placed in a high elliptical orbit with apogee just under geosynchronous distance, and perigee of about 2,600 miles. Its apogee at launch was over the North Pole. Polar's mission was to study the magnetosphere at the poles, as well as observe aurorae. It created the first photographs of Earth in the X-ray spectrum, allowing scientists to pinpoint the magnetic poles. The mission lasted for 12 years. Its orbit processes about 16 degrees a year. At the time its mission ended, its apogee had just passed the South Pole.
@Orlando Rays....as always your posts are fascinating. Any idea of how many launches to outer space there have been in total? I can't even begin to guess.
50 years ago today, Mariner 6 was launched atop an Atlas-Centaur rocket from Pad 36B, Cape Kennedy. Yes, I know, I've already covered this waaaaaay back when. But that description was rather brief, and really doesn't do the lead-up to the launch justice. Like how its original booster almost imploded on the pad. Yes. Implode. Not explode. One of the weaknesses of the Atlas ICBM, on top of it using cryogenic fuels, is that its structure is maintained pneumatically. It has to be constantly inflated, usually with helium. Two weeks before launch, they were conducting a simulated launch sequence at Pad 36A, where Mariner 6 was originally slated to launch, when an electrical malfunction caused valves on the booster to open. It immediately began to crumple on the pad. Here's an example of that process, with an Atlas-Agena rocket: Technicians on the pad saw the issue and were able to engage a manual override, closing the valves and allowing the booster to re-inflate before the payload and the Centaur upper stage could tumble to the ground. The first stage, however, was irreparably damaged. They moved the probe and upper stage to Pad 36B, where another Atlas was waiting for Mariner 7. This would delay Mariner 7 for a few weeks so they could get another Atlas rocket set up for it. It would ultimately launch from Pad 36A.
32 years ago today, GOES 7 was launched atop a Delta 3914 rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral. The probe was actually a ground spare for the first generation of GOES satellites, whose launch was scheduled due to the loss of GOES-G in 1986, and delays in the next generation of the GOES system. It was initially placed at 75°W to act as the GOES-EAST satellite. In 1989, GOES 6's imager failed, forcing GOES 7 to move to 98°W so it could cover the entire United States on its own. NOAA leased Meteosat 3 from EUMETSAT in 1992 to cover GOES-EAST, allowing GOES 7 to move to 112°W and become GOES-WEST. Once GOES 8 was finally launched and Meteosat 3 was returned to EUMETSAT, GOES 7 was moved further out to 135°W. It was retired in 1996 when it was replaced by GOES 9, and initially placed at 95°W as a spare. GOES 7 was leased by the PEACESAT initiative in 1999 and moved to 175°W to provide communications to Polynesian nations. This was a task also taken previously by GOES 2 and GOES 3. As its fuel finally ran out, it was lifted to a graveyard orbit in 2012. GOES 7 was the first, and is still the only, GOES satellite to act as both GOES-EAST and GOES-WEST in nominal operation.
The time has finally come. With a passing flight readiness review last Friday, and a successful rocket test-fire earlier this week, the first launch of Crew Dragon will take place early Saturday morning, 2:45am EST. Once it is successfully in orbit, the Dragon 2 capsule will be checked out thoroughly, then take a day-long trip to the International Space Station. It should dock the next day at 6am EST at the IDA-2 adapter at Harmony forward. It is scheduled to remain docked at the ISS for five days. It will undock early in the morning next Friday, and de-orbit for splashdown in the Atlantic four hours later. The Crew Dragon will only carry ballast, including a dummy astronaut outfitted with the SpaceX pressure suit probably not unlike the one flown on Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster that was launched to Mars last year. If all tasks are completed, then an in-flight abort test will follow in June. The first manned flight of Crew Dragon is currently scheduled for July, though it won't be solidified until the first two test flights are completed.
15 years ago today, Rosetta was launched atop an Ariane 5G+ rocket from ELA-3, Guiana Space Centre. Rosetta, which used ion thrusters to reach Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko over a 12 1/2-year cruise, is a mission we (and I do mean we as in everyone who visits here, not the Royal We where I mean just myself) have documented well since it approached and left a lander on the comet. The mission carried some of the largest solar panels yet put on a spacecraft in relation to the size of the probe itself. It had a plethora of scientific experiments, including an ultraviolet spectrograph nicknamed "Alice". If that sounds familiar, let me give you a hint. The mission was the European Space Agency's second attempt to launch an interplanetary mission on their own; their first since Giotto in 1985. It was one of three uses of the Ariane 5G+ variant, all launched in 2004. The uprated upper stage was folded into the G variant to create the Ariane 5GS, which would work for the rest of the 2000s.