Tag: Rocket launch

Vega C Makes Maiden Flight

Space News reports that the new Vega C medium-lift rocket took off on its maiden flight Wednesday, “carrying an Italian physics satellite and six cubesats.” The Vega C was launched from the ESA facility in Kourou, French Guiana at 9:13 a.m. EST “at the end of a two-hour launch window. Technical issues had twice halted the countdown sequence.” The primary payload was the 295-kilogram Laser Relativity Satellite-2 (LARES-2), placed “in an unusual inclined orbit at 5,893 kilometers to test Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.”
Full Story (Space News)
 
 
 

 

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First launch of the ESA’s new Vega-C launch vehicle, July 13, 2022
(SciNews via YouTube)

Rocket Lab Launches NROL-162 Payload into Orbit

SPACE reports that Rocket Lab has delivered “another spacecraft to orbit for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates the nation’s fleet of spy satellites.” The Rocket Lab Electron booster “topped with the NROL-162 spacecraft lifted off from the company’s New Zealand site on Wednesday (July 13) at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local time in New Zealand).” About an hour later, “the Electron’s ‘kick stage’ deployed NROL-162 into Earth orbit as planned, Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck confirmed via Twitter.” Rocket Lab wrote Wednesday that NROL-162 “will strengthen the NRO’s ability to provide a wide range of timely intelligence information to national decision makers and intelligence analysts to protect the United States’ vital interests and support humanitarian efforts worldwide.” NROL-162 is a “joint effort of the NRO and the Australian Department of Defence.”
Full Story (SPACE)
 
 
 

 

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Rocket Lab’s NROL-162 Launch, July 13, 2022
(The Launch Pad via YouTube)

ULA’s Atlas 5 Launches Two Space Force Satellites to Test Early Warning Technology

CBS News reported that “after waiting out cloudy weather, the U.S. Space Force launched two satellites atop an Atlas 5 rocket Friday to test ballistic and hypersonic missile early warning and tracking technology and to deploy a maneuverable spacecraft carrying an unknown number of classified payloads.” United Launch Alliance’s 196-foot-tall rocket lifted off at 7:15 p.m. EDT from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, “knifing through low clouds and quickly disappearing from view as it streaked away to the east over the Atlantic Ocean. Eleven minutes later, the Aerojet Rocketdyne engine powering the rocket’s second stage completed the first of three planned firings designed to put the two satellites in a circular orbit 22,300 miles above the equator.” According to CBS News, the “trip was expected to take about six hours, ending early Saturday with the satellites’ deployment from the Centaur second stage.”
Full Story (CBS News)
 
 
 

 

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Atlas 5 rocket launch with U.S. Space Force experimental satellites, July 1, 2022
(Spaceflight Now via YouTube)

NASA Launches Rocket from Australia’s Northern Territory

SPACE reported that over the next weeks NASA “will launch three rockets from the Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory on the Dhupuma Plateau, near Nhulunbuy. The rockets are 13 meter ‘sounding’ rockets that will not reach orbit but will take scientific observations.” This is the first time NASA will launch rockets from a commercial site in a foreign territory. The launch will “represent a major step forward for commercial space operators, as well as signaling the opportunity for future joint projects between Australia and the United States.” The rockets “have been designed and built by NASA and will be used for scientific investigations into the physics of the sun, astrophysics and the type of planetary science we can only conduct in the southern hemisphere.”
Full Story (SPACE)
 
 
 

 

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NASA launches rocket from Australia’s Northern Territory, June 26, 2022
(9 News Australia via YouTube)