The Daily Mail (UK) reports that Virgin Orbit “is set to fire seven satellites into space later today, when RAF pilot [Matthew Stannard] ‘Stanny’ unleashes the LauncherOne rocket from a Boeing 747.” The jet “will fly up to 35,000ft over the Pacific Ocean for an hour, before deploying the Launcher One rocket and roughly 660lb of satellites contained within,” sending the satellites “into a 310 mile orbit” at 16:00 ET (21:00 GMT).
Full Story (Daily Mail (UK))
Tag: launch
AIAA Statement on Successful Launch of James Webb Space Telescope
For Immediate Release
December 25, 2021 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Executive Director Dan Dumbacher made the following statement:
“On behalf of the 30,000 professional and student members of AIAA, we congratulate NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and the entire James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team on today’s successful launch. This amazing observatory will allow us to look into the history of our cosmos. We look forward to the new discoveries from JWST that will help us understand the origins of the universe.
Countless AIAA professional members have dedicated years of their careers to the research, engineering, testing, and development of this incredible astronomy mission. In addition, numerous academic and industry partners on the JWST team are AIAA corporate members who contributed mightily to this mission. Applying their technical expertise with determination and perseverance since 1996 has led us to this exciting day. Over the years, they have chronicled their work on JWST by authoring articles for AIAA journals and meeting papers for AIAA forums. These original research results and technological progress on JWST have been published in AIAA’s Aerospace Research Central, at arc.aiaa.org, to fulfill our commitment to ensuring students and professionals can stay current on the most important advances in aerospace science and technology. Through the combined efforts of AIAA members on the JWST mission, they are shaping the future of aerospace.”
Media Contact: Rebecca B. Gray, [email protected], 804-397-5270 cell
About AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 91 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit aiaa.org, or follow AIAA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
About ASCEND
Powered by AIAA, ASCEND promotes the collaborative, interdisciplinary, outcomes-driven community of professionals, students, and enthusiasts around the world who are accelerating humanity’s progress toward our off-world future! For more information, visit ascend.events, or follow ASCEND on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
H-2A Rocket Launches into Orbit with Inmarsat-6 F1 Satellite
Space News reports that the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ H-2A rocket “lifted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at 10:32 a.m. Eastern and deployed the nearly 5,500-kilogram Inmarsat-6 F1 satellite into geostationary transfer orbit about 26 minutes later. A little over two hours later, London-based Inmarsat tweeted that it had acquired initial telemetry from the satellite.” The Inmarsat-6 F1 is “Inmarsat’s first dual-band telecommunications satellite.” It will “need about 200 days to climb to its geostationary slot above the Indian Ocean.”
Full Story (Space News)
SpaceX Launches NASA X-ray Polarimetry Explorer
Spaceflight Now reported that SpaceX “launched a refrigerator-sized NASA X-ray observatory from Kennedy Space Center into an unusual orbit hugging the equator Thursday, beginning a $214 million mission to study black holes and super-compact neutron stars.” NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) “mission is modest in size but promises to open a new window into the structure and behavior of collapsed stellar skeletons, such as black holes and neutron stars.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
ULA Launches Nuclear Blast Detection, NASA Laser Communication Payloads
Spaceflight Now reports that after a delay due to high winds, ULA successfully launched an Atlas 5 rocket carrying the STP-3 mission Tuesday morning. WESH-TV Orlando, FL reports that the main spacecraft “houses an experiment designed to more accurately detect nuclear detonations on Earth,” and will also deploy “two satellites with new technology that have never been deployed to space before.” The second experiment is “for NASA to study and refine the process that uses lasers instead of radio waves to transmit data.”
Full Story (Spaceflight Now) More Info (WESH-TV)
SpaceX Launches 51 Starlink Internet Satellites Into Orbit
The AP reports that SpaceX “launched 51 Starlink satellites into orbit from California on Monday night.” The Falcon 9’s reusable first stage successfully landed on an oceangoing platform in the Pacific Ocean.
Full Story (Associated Press)
Inspiration4 to Launch from Kennedy Space Center This Week
Florida Today reported that the four member civilian crew of Inspiration4 will launch aboard a SpaceX rocket from Kennedy Space Center this week. Inspiration4, the first all-civilian space flight to orbit the Earth, is scheduled to launch “no earlier than 8 p.m. EDT Wednesday.”
Full Story (Florida Today)
SpaceX Scrubs Launch of Transporter-2 Mission Tuesday after Airspace Violation
Space News reports that on Tuesday, the launch of SpaceX’s Transporter-2 mission atop a Falcon 9 rocket was delayed “in the final seconds of its countdown when an aircraft violated restricted airspace.” The mission, which will carry 88 satellites for several customers, was scheduled to launch at 2:56 p.m. EDT. However, “the countdown was stopped 11 seconds before liftoff because of a ‘fouled range,’ or range violation of some kind.” Although SpaceX “had nearly a one-hour launch window for this mission, the company scrubbed the launch minutes later because it would not have time to prepare the vehicle for another launch attempt.” The launch “has been tentatively rescheduled for the same time June 30.”
Full Story (Space News)
Vega Rocket Lifts Off in First Mission Since November
Spaceflight Now reports that the first launch of Arianespace’s Vega Rocket “since an in-flight failure nearly one year ago has been postponed to no earlier than Monday night due to unfavorable upper level winds over the Vega launch base in Kourou, French Guiana.” The rocket will carry 53 small satellites for “21 customers in 13 countries, including European Space Agency member states,” the US, Canada, Argentina, Thailand, and Israel. Whatever the date of the launch, the liftoff will be scheduled for 9:51:10 p.m. EDT.
Full Story (Spaceflight Now)
Soyuz Launches New Crew to ISS
Space News reports that a Russian Soyuz spacecraft bringing Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and American astronaut Mark Vande Hei to the International Space Station arrived April 9, “a few hours after launching from Kazakhstan.” The Soyuz 2.1a rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 3:42 a.m. ET and docked with the station’s Rassvet module at 7:05 a.m. ET, following “a two-orbit approach to the station.” The trio is expected to “remain on the station through at least October as part of the Expedition 65 crew.”
Full Story (Space News)