BigSoccer IN SPACE!!! (The BigSoccer Space Exploration Thread)

Koichi Wakata was born on August 1, 1963, in Ōmiya, one of three towns merged in the 1980s to form the city Saitama. He earned a bachelor's in aeronautical engineering from the University of Kyushu in 1987, and a master's in applied mechanics from Kyushu in 1989. He would later earn a doctorate in 2004.

After working as a structural engineer at Japan Airlines, he was selected to be an astronaut by NASDA In 1992, and sent to train with NASA as part of Astronaut Group 14.

His career as an astronaut has been a long one, and has been well-documented here. STS-72 aboard Endeavour in January 1996, STS-92 aboard Discovery in October 2000, ISS Expeditions 18-20 in 2008 and 2009, and ISS Expeditions 38/39 in 2013 and 2014.

As it stands, he is currently the most experienced Japanese astronaut at 347 cumulative days in space; Akihiko Hoshide, currently on the International Space Station with SpaceX Crew-4, is still about a month behind him. He will reach the one year mark 18 days after launch of SpaceX Crew-5.

He was also originally set to be on Starliner-1 along with Josh Cassada.

He is married to a German woman, and they have a son together.

 

Anna Yurievna Kikina was born on August 27, 1984, in Novosibirsk, Russian SFSR.

She graduated from the Siberian State University of Water Transport in 2006 with a degree in hydraulic engineering, and trained rescue swimmers in Altai.

Anna was selected as a scientist cosmonaut by Roscosmos in 2012. By 2016, she was the only woman left in the cosmonaut corps.

She was finally selected as part of the crew of Soyuz MS-22 in August 2018. She was moved to the current NASA crew exchange program in December 2021, and re-assigned to SpaceX Crew-5.

Though, for obvious reasons, that assignment has been jerked around a little bit.

Anna is married to a physical trainer at the Cosmonaut Training Center.

 

SpaceX teams at LC-39A are currently converting the Transporter Erector into the Falcon Heavy configuration.https://t.co/B6nAk4xPE1 pic.twitter.com/DysXavrK1X

— Michael Baylor (@MichaelBaylor_) October 6, 2022

The SpaceX TE at Pad 39A is being converted to Falcon Heavy configuration. As it stands, USSF-44 is planned for October 28.

The next several Cape Canaveral Falcon 9 launches are all planned for Pad 40. In addition to tonight's launch of a pair of Intelsat Galaxy comsats, there's Hot Bird 13F for Eutelsat in the late evening next Wednesday, and up to three Starlink launches.

The side boosters for USSF-44, B1064.1 and B1065.1, will return to Landing Zone 1, and will be recycled for the USSF-52 launch, currently planned for April 2023.

The core stage, B1066, will not be recovered. No one knows if SpaceX will ever attempt to recover a Falcon Heavy core again.

 

This just in: The #DARTmission impact is confirmed to have changed the orbit of moonlet Dimorphos around its asteroid Didymos.

For the first time ever, humans changed the motion of a celestial object. More details: https://t.co/aQj8N7fnuV pic.twitter.com/NLR6AqEcaO

— NASA (@NASA) October 11, 2022

NASA has announced preliminary results for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test.

According to telescopic tracking of Dimorphos, the satellite of asteroid 65803 Didymos, the DART impact resulted in its orbital period being decreased by 32 minutes. Its orbital period was originally 11 hours, 55 minutes; it is now 11 hours, 23 minutes, ±2 minutes.

NASA defined a successful test as a change of orbital period of at least 73 seconds. So the change was 25 times larger than their hoped-for minimal change.

The examination of the impact is hardly complete. Next up for mission scientists is calculating the efficiency of the impact. DART struck Dimorphos at a relative velocity of 22,530 km/h. It has been estimated to have produced a trail of ejecta behind Didymos that is 6,000 km long thus far.

It is believed that the blast of the ejecta enhanced the push imparted by DART's impact. The strike itself was estimated to produce an explosion of 3 metric tons of TNT equivalent.

 

🚨#Artemis I update:@NASA is targeting Nov.14 for the next launch attempt of the @NASA_SLS rocket and @NASA_Orion spacecraft from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39B.

The rocket and spacecraft will leave the Vehicle Assembly Building as early as Nov.4.

➡️: https://t.co/wVIjL0w55g pic.twitter.com/jKZACqZ8ql

— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) October 12, 2022

NASA has announced that they are currently tracking for Artemis 1 to return to Pad 39B around November 7, targeting the opening of the late-November launch window.

The current plan is to launch early morning November 14, with a 69-minute launch window opening at 12:07am EST.

Nice.

If launched on November 14, it will lead to one of the shortest possible mission profiles at 26 days.

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There's lots of news piling up about Starship.

Starship 24 and Booster 7 fully stacked on the orbital launch pad at Starbase pic.twitter.com/1VKn6juQor

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 12, 2022

Yesterday, SpaceX re-stacked Starship S/N 24 and Super Heavy Booster 7 at the Orbital Launch Mount at Space Padre.

There are rumors that if this round of testing goes well, it may not be de-stacked before finally undergoing its orbital test flight. Though nothing is set in stone yet.

But SpaceX is putting together the crew for Starship's first occupied flights.

The first crewed Starship flight will be the third mission of Project Polaris; its only astronaut right now is Jared Isaacman. There is also still the #dearMoon project, which will carry up to 12 Japanese artists.

And, of course, there will be the launch of the Starship Human Landing System for Project Artemis, which is supposed to remain in the lunar vicinity for multiple landings.

At least after #dearMoon, there will be another commercial flight.

Dennis and Akiko Tito are the first two crewmembers on Starship’s second commercial spaceflight around the Moon → https://t.co/z2Z9iVGw8x pic.twitter.com/07RHJlb6Dc

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 12, 2022

Among the crew is Dennis Tito, the first commercial astronaut. Joining him will be his wife, Akiko, aged 57.

The way the article about the announcement is framed, it is very likely there will be more than a few other crewmembers on that mission, and it will likely be a cislunar free return mission.

 

46 years ago today, Soyuz 23 was launched atop a Soyuz rocket from Site 1/5, Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Cosmonauts Vyacheslav Zudov and Valeri Rozhdestvensky were intended to be the second expedition on the Salyut 5 Almaz-class military space station. However, issues with the Igla docking station reared their ugly head yet again.

Sensors were reading lateral velocity during approach incorrectly, and engaging in unnecessary thruster firings, making automated docking impossible. They were left without enough fuel to do a manual docking, and ended up aborting the mission.

Then came the landing. Re-entry two days after launch went alright, but they descended to the Kazakh steppe in a blizzard. They ended up splashing down in Lake Tengiz, where the parachutes sank and pulled the capsule around on its side.

It took nine hours for the crew to be found, and an extra two hours to be rescued. At one point, rescue crews were expecting the cosmonauts to be found dead, as battery power had been depleted and contact was lost. But they emerged alive and well, though a little cold.

Though both would continue to work for NPO Energia for another decade, neither cosmonaut would ever fly again.

This was also the final launch of the original Soyuz 11A511 rocket.

 

Karl Heinze was born on October 17, 1926, in Cincinnati. He dropped out of high school in his junior year to join a Navy college prep program so he could get into World War II quicker. He ended up at the University of Virginia, but the war ended before he graduated. He would ultimately be placed in the Navy Reserve, where he'd rise to the rank of lieutenant commander.

He got a master's in astronomy from Virginia in 1948, and became an astronomer at their McCormick Observatory. He would later get his doctorate from Michigan in 1954. Into the 60s, he would be a globetrotting guest astronomer at various observatories. He'd be involved in the writing of 70 scientific papers, and discovered many astronomical objects, including over 2,000 stars.

Heinze was disallowed from applying to NASA with Group 4 because of its age cap. He would ultimately be chosen with the XS-11 in 1967, when NASA removed the age cap; he was the oldest member of the group.

He would be on the support teams throughout the Skylab program. He would finally fly during the Shuttle program, being part of the STS-51-F Spacelab mission aboard Challenger in August 1985. Also on the mission were fellow Group 6 recruits Story Musgrave and Tony England.

After the mission, Heinze left the Astronaut Office and transferred to the Space Sciences Branch within NASA. One of his focuses was space junk hazards in connection to Space Station Freedom.

In 1993, Heinze took leave from NASA to participate in an expedition to Mount Everest that would involve research in oxygen absorption at different altitudes. He began to suffer high-altitude pulmonary edema on their way to advanced base camp at 22,000 feet. His team retreated to the main base camp, but Heinze died on October 5, 1993, aged 66.

He was buried at Changtse glacier on the Tibetan side of the mountain. He left a wife and four children.

 

✅NASA’s #LucyMission completed its 1st Earth Gravity Assist, passing just 220 miles/350 km above Earth’s surface!

In 2 years, Lucy will return for a 2nd gravity assist, which will let it reach the main asteroid belt & observe asteroid Donaldjohanson. https://t.co/rOFSJXtk9D pic.twitter.com/fpB8wUiLHZ

— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) October 16, 2022

Lucy completed its first gravity assist of Earth yesterday morning.

With one of the solar panels still not completely deployed, they actually made a slight course change so the fly-by would be at an altitude of 350 km instead of the originally-planned 300 km.

Teams at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) got some positive results in testing related to fully deploying and latching the loose solar panel. The circular panel is within 10 degrees of complete deployment, and its electrical output is around 95% of its intended capacity.

Lucy also took some calibration photos to test its L'LORRI camera and L'Ralph color mapper. Those will probably be released soon. As noted previously, those two instruments were derived from equipment used on the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

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Starlink has its next launch Thursday morning at 10:45am EDT from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. There's another one penciled in for next Wednesday, and there might be yet another one before October ends.

USSF-44 is currently set for October 31 at 6:44pm EDT.

OneWeb is finally set for its first launch since Russia got ostracized. It will deploy its original capacity of 36 atop a GSLV Mark III rocket on Saturday afternoon at 2:37pm EDT.

This is probably the last set of OneWeb satellites that was left in Russia. They are currently planning their first Falcon 9 launch in December.

 

19 years ago today, the 16th satellite in Block 5D of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program was launched atop a Titan 23G rocket from Pad 4W, Vandenberg AFB.

It was the first satellite with the full third version of Block 5D equipment; the previous launch had a third-version bus, but used the second-version suite of instrumentation.

By this time, Block 5D of the DMSP had become the program that wouldn't die. The first satellite was launched in 1976, and three version 2 satellites would explode in-orbit in the mid-2010s.

The last Block 5D-3 satellite would finally be launched in 2014, with one last satellite mothballed on the ground in 2015, to be scrapped two years later.

Currently, there are at least three still functional, including this one. The replacement system, Weather System Follow-on Microwave (WSF-M), is planned to begin launching in 2024, with SpaceX getting the launch contract using the Falcon 9 rocket.

As for this launch, it was the final use of the LGM-25C Titan II rocket. They were launched a total of 106 times between ICBM tests and orbital launches, with only five failures (4 suborbital, 1 23G orbital).

 

📹#Eutelsat10B: impressive behind the scenes of the preparation and the departure last week from our #Cannes site 🚢heading to Cape Canaveral launch site in Florida #staytuned 🚀#spaceforlife #connectivity pic.twitter.com/yCUEQ6yJVb

— Thales Alenia Space (@Thales_Alenia_S) October 19, 2022

Eutelsat-10B is finally on its way to Cape Canaveral.

It left the Thales Alenia Space factory in Cannes, France, last week and was loaded onto Arianespace cargo ship MN Colibri. It is currently due to arrive at Port Canaveral next Tuesday.

This means it will likely be some time in November when it will be fitted in its fairing and attached to Falcon 9 Booster 1049.11.

The launch is still manifested as TBD for November. Another Eutelsat mission, Hot Bird 13G, is also planned for November.

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As is the next big space exploit for the United Arab Emirates, the Emirates Lunar Mission.



Okay, maybe not physically big.

It is actually a joint mission with Japan. The centerpiece is an Emirati-built solar-powered mini rover, Rashid. It will carry two high-res cameras, a thermal imager, and a microscopic camera.

A Japanese rover, the Transformable Lunar Robot, will also be on the mission.

They will be carried on Hakuto-R. Hakuto is the Japanese name for a rabbit that lives on the Moon in Oriental folklore. It was originally a lander planned for the failed Google Lunar X Prize.

The team behind Hakuto, ispace, repurposed it as a commercial lander for the purpose of this mission. Rashid was originally planned for a 2024 launch. But ispace offered them an early ride for the rover, which was already ready.

The mission is penciled in for a launch window of November 9-15. Its target on the Moon is Lacus Somnorium, a magma plain on the northeast quadrant of the near side of the Moon.

The original target for Hakuto as part of the Lunar X Prize was Lacus Mortis, which to the north of Lacus Somnorium.

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Booster B1051.14 will be following B1049.11 to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Or is it the other way around?

It is planned to be the booster that will lift Galaxy 31 and Galaxy 32 for Intelsat. The launch is penciled in for November 5.

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And Cygnus NG-18 is set to launch on November 6 at 5:50am EST.

It has been christened S.S. Sally Ride.



(The timestamp didn't work with the media embed. It's supposed to be 0:25.)

The spacecraft will carry, among its cargo, three cubesats, including one each for Uganda and Zimbabwe. There will also be two cubesats in the second stage of the Antares rocket that will be deployed in a super-low orbit.

The next flight, Cygnus NG-19, will be the last launch of the Antares 230 rocket, as Northrop Grumman is out of Russia-sourced first stage engines. There will be three Cygnus launches on Falcon 9 rockets in 2023 and 2024 while they test the Antares 330 rocket, which will use first stage engines developed by Firefly Aerospace.

Antares 330 will use seven Firefly Miranda engines, which will total 1.56 million pounds-force of thrust. Miranda is also planned to be used on the Firefly Beta rocket, also in a cluster of seven.

Firefly Beta is planned for a debut launch in the second half of 2024, while Antares 330 is planned for its first launch in 2025. Antares 330 will use the uprated Castor 30XL second stage, and Orion 38 third stage. It will have just about double the payload capacity of the Antares 230.

 

Ariane 6 has been delayed to Q4 2023. And may yet slip further.

An external review from this past May by Arianespace and ArianeGroup determined that the rocket simply is not ready. They might also be implementing further upgrades to the system.

The elephant in the room is the nine launches planned on Ariane 6 in 2023. This includes three Galileo navigational satellites; commercial launches for SES, Optus, and ViaSat; and the Euclid near-infrared space telescope, which was planned for a launch to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point.

Euclid was originally planned to launch on a Soyuz-STB rocket in 2023. It might be moved to a Falcon 9 rocket if Ariane 6 slips further.

 

Happy 59th birthday to Canadian astronaut Julie Payette.

Born in Montreal, she was an exchange student in Wales during high school. She received a bachelor's in electrical engineering from McGill University in 1986. After spending two years as a systems engineer at IBM Canada, she got a master's in computer engineering from Toronto in 1990.

After her post-grad research, she spent a year at IBM's research lab in Switzerland. She then worked with voice recognition at Bell Canada. But that didn't last long, as she was chosen in 1992 by the Canadian Space Agency as an astronaut, and trained with NASA Astronaut Group 14.

In her early training, Julie worked on development of Canadarm2 for the International Space Station. She also trained with the Canadian Forces Air Force at CFB Moose Jaw with the Canadair CT-114 Tutor.

Her first mission was STS-96, one of the early ISS construction missions, aboard Discovery in June 1999. She would operate Canadarm from within the ISS to attach the first Strela cargo crane.

She would finally return to the ISS On STS-127 aboard Endeavour in July 2009. During that mission, she helped install the Exposed Facility portion if the Kibō module. With Robert Thirsk on-board the ISS as part of Expedition 20, it was the first time two Canadians were in space at the same time.

Julie left the CSA in 2011. She would spend a few years as a Quebecois scientific delegate in DC, then became COO of the Montreal Science Center in 2013. She would join the board of the Canadian Olympic Committee in 2016.

In October 2017, She became Governor-General of Canada, the official representative of Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Canada. However, in June 2020, she was accused of fomenting a toxic workplace environment. She resigned on January 21, 2021.

At the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was accused of not vetting her properly. There's a good amount of drama behind the scandal, and I will leave it at that.

She is twice divorced, and has one child with her second husband.

 

51 years ago today, the third quick-response weather satellite in the Improved TIROS Operational System, ITOS B, was launched atop a Thor-Delta N6 rocket from Pad 2E, Vandenberg AFB.

The oxidizer tank on the Delta N second stage sprung a small leak at T+20 seconds. The launch proceeded anyway, and the leak was enough to afflict the stage's course during its burn.

The upper stage tried to compensate with its reaction control jets, but ran out of fuel in that system. ITOS B was left with a low perigee, and in an odd inclination (102.5°, instead of the typical SSO of 98°).

It re-entered later that day over the Arctic Ocean.

 

Three massive tanks for SpaceX's Starship Pad at LC-39A were removed and later shipped out for unknown reasons. Meanwhile, fairings for New Glenn arrived at Kennedy Space Center.

Video from Space Coast Live. Production by Gav (@SpaceOffshore).

📺 https://t.co/69HiD79nx0 pic.twitter.com/Sbqg52EAb0

— Brady Kenniston (@TheFavoritist) October 21, 2022

There have been jokes recently about SpaceX having to RMA the methane tanks meant for Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.

Several large tanks were shipped to the Starship launch tower being built there, but mysteriously were sent back out.

This brings us to another big event. Payload fairings for the New Glenn rocket have arrived at Pad 36, Cape Canaveral.

It is accurate to say it as a single pad now. What was Pad 36B is now the site for New Glenn's Horizontal Integration Facility, with a track running to the new launch pad.

With the arrival of more flight hardware, a 2023 launch is looking more and more likely.

For what it's worth, Vulcan Centaur has not slipped any further from its current plan of Q1 2023, with the Peregrine commercial lunar lander still planned as its first payload.

 

Yesterday's launch of the GSLV Mk. III—no, Launch Vehicle Mark 3, or LVM3—rocket carrying the latest stack of 36 OneWeb comsats was a success.

It was LVM3's first commercial launch, and its heaviest payload yet at 5,796 kg. It has a max capacity to LEO of 10,000 kg, though it's likely a little less to SSO, where these OneWeb satellites went.

OneWeb's next planned launch will be atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. It's penciled in for December.

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The next Starlink launch will be Wednesday night at 8:30pm EDT from Pad 4E, Vandenberg SFB.

Cape Canaveral is currently focused on preparation for the next Falcon Heavy launch, USSF-44. It's still holding for next Monday at 9:44am EDT.

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Next Tuesday is planned to be an Atlas V launch from Pad 3E, Vandenberg SFB, carrying JPSS-2 for NOAA.

The Joint Polar Satellite System is a recent addition to NOAA's meteorological satellites. It ensure there is good straight-on coverage of Earth's polar regions, making a decent supplement for the geostationary GOES system.

The first JPSS satellite was originally NOAA-20, and was launched atop a Delta II 7920 rocket in November 2017. It is still in service. A third satellite, JPSS-3, currently isn't planned until 2028.

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Firefly Aerospace has named former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine to their Advisory Board.

Bridenstine oversaw the reorganization of the Project Constellation lunar program into Project Artemis and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

He has a triple-major from Rice (psychology, business, and economics), and an MBA from Cornell.

 

Mikhail Kuzhmich Yangel was born on November 7, 1911, in Zyryanov, Russia. Essentially, central Siberia. His grandfather had been deported there by the Tsarists.

He graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1937, and became an airplane designer during the Great Patriotic War, associated particularly with Nikolai Polikarpov and Andrei Mikoyan. After the war, he shifted to Sergei Korolev, and began working on missile guidance systems.

Yangel would eventually strike out on his own, and would be put in charge of a design bureau, OKB-586. He was one of the earliest specialists in storable fuels, developing the R-12 Dvina, the R-16, and the R-36.

The middle of those was involved in the Nedelin disaster on October 24, 1960, when hasty repairs on the first R-16 launch test led to an explosion that destroyed a launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome and claimed the lives of 122 people, including Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin.

Yangel would escape death in the incident. He would later serve on the Supreme Soviet while continuing his work on the R-36 and its later orbital rocket versions, the Tsyklon.

He died 51 years ago today of a heart attack in Moscow, about two weeks short of his 60th birthday. He left a wife and two children.

 

NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel met today.

Things did not look good for Starliner after all.

Aerospace Safety Adv Panel is over already but they had a lot to say--too quickly to tweet.
Key takeaways: (1) Starliner OFT-2 met many test obj but also produced a number of in-flight anomalies that need to be worked before CFT, delays to post certification flts seem likely;

— Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) October 27, 2022

While the flight in general went well, a number of anomalies were identified in analyzing the data from the mission. These need to be remedied before the Crewed Flight Test.

This is likely why the CFT was delayed to February.

(2) ASAP has reopened a recommendation it closed in 2020 re ISS deorbit plan bc was conceptual agreement but tech and op issues identified since, need one urgently in case there's a contingency, operating "at risk" today;

— Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) October 27, 2022

In addition, they have identified issues with the original plan for de-orbiting the International Space Station. They have re-opened their workgroup on it, and want a solution as soon as possible, because Russia.

and (3) ASAP pleased w/progress NASA has made on Artemis architecture (glad there will be annual reviews) and developing integrated master schedule-NASA's doing just what ASAP said was needed.

— Marcia Smith (@SpcPlcyOnline) October 27, 2022

But they are pleased by NASA's work through the issues with Artemis 1, and Project Artemis in general. What NASA has been doing in that regard is apparently what ASAP has been requesting of the program.

 

13 years ago today, Ares I-X was launched from Pad 39B, Kennedy Space Center.

Ares I-X was the first test launch for Project Constellation, which was President George W. Bush's vision for NASA human spaceflight following the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

This launch carried a boilerplate that was supposed to represent Ares I's External Tank-derived upper stage, the Orion spacecraft, and the launch escape system.

Yes, Orion has been in development that long.

It was originally supposed to launch the previous day, which would've been the anniversary of the first Saturn I test flight. But it was scrubbed due to a wayward boat in the range.



Ares I was intended to be the orbital workhorse of Project Constellation, the one that would send Orion to the International Space Station. Its first stage was essentially a Thiokol Solid Rocket Booster. This test flight would have four segments, plus a boilerplate fifth segment.

The upper stage would exhaust the remaining RS-25 Space Shuttle Main Engines, then move on to the Rocketdyne J-2X. It would have a payload capacity of 25,400 kg to LEO.

This test flight was definitely not without its problems.

NASA discovered that pogo oscillations (haven't mentioned those in a while) were actually possible on a solid rocket. The oscillations were within variables known from Space Shuttle flights.

But one of the parachute pyrotechnics in the upper stage boilerplate went off during flight. This destroyed one of its four parachutes, and damaged another, causing it to fail during descent. The mass simulator suffered minor damage on a rough splashdown.

The first stage, which was to be recovered like a Shuttle SRB, was also damaged after a rougher-than expected splashdown.

This would ultimately be the only flight of Project Constellation. Its uprated version, the Ares V, would later be evolved into the Space Launch System, while flights to the ISS would be outsourced via the Commercial Crew Program.

This would be the final flight from Pad 39B before it was stripped down and turned into a clean pad configuration.

 

60 years ago today, ANNA 1B was launched atop a Thor-Ablestar rocket from Pad 17A, Cape Canaveral.

ANNA was an acronym that stood for Army-Navy-NASA-Air Force. It was a joint project in geodesy constructed by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. The first one was lost in a launch failure the previous May.

ANNA-1B carried a high intensity beacon that could be observed from the ground to gauge gravometrics of Earth. It also carried doppler radar with a resolution of 20 metres.

The probe was launched into a roughly 1180x1075-km orbit at 50.1° inclination. It was powered by a band of solar cells and a nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery.

One of its navigational instruments was damaged during launch. Additionally, some of its solar cells were damaged by the radiation belt that was still left over by the Starfish Prime nuclear test the previous June.

 

The majority of the Falcon Heavy's roughly six-hour flight to geosynchronous orbit on the USSF-44 mission will occur in secret, under orders from the US Space Force.

Live coverage is expected to end after landing of the two side boosters.

📷: @SpaceXhttps://t.co/X96w68eOkV pic.twitter.com/vr2RWywTAs

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) November 1, 2022

USSF-44 finally stands tall at Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center.

It was wheeled out of SpaceX's Horizontal Integration Facility yesterday afternoon, and lifted vertical just before Midnight last night.

It is still on schedule to lift off at 9:40am EDT this morning. It will be SpaceX's first launch attempt to go directly to geostationary orbit.

Though most of that will go unseen, since the payload is classified.

Side boosters B1064.1 and B1065.1 will both return to Cape Canaveral. Core booster B1066 will be expended.

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NASA says the Psyche mission, a robotic asteroid explorer that missed a launch opportunity this year due to software testing problems, has been rescheduled for liftoff from Florida in October 2023 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. https://t.co/bxRslHHeCw pic.twitter.com/ShA0RpVn1u

— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) November 1, 2022

After concerns that the project might be canceled following oversights in its software testing process caused it to miss an aggressive launch window this year, Psyche has been put back on the manifest.

It is now penciled in for a launch on October 10, 2023. If it hits the mark, it will reach asteroid 16 Psyche in August 2029 following a gravity assist at Mars in 2026.

The status of its remaining piggyback mission, the twin Janus probes, is currently up in the air. Their original intended targets will be out of reach with the new launch window, so NASA is trying to find new targets.

NASA said it will release findings of its review of Psyche's software soon.