NASA pushes back Artemis 1 launch to November
Original Publication Date: 2022-10-03 00:43
NASA won't try to launch the Space Launch System until at least the middle of November. Agency cites the impacts from Hurricane Ian on Kennedy Space Center facilities. No evidence of damage to the SLS or Orion spacecraft, which had moved back into the VAB. An October launch, even in the best circumstances, would have been difficult.
Space Development Agency is now officially part of the Space Force
Original Publication Date: 2022-10-01 22:13
Congress mandated the transfer in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers noted that a key reason they supported establishing the Space Force was to consolidate and streamline the management of acquisition programs. SDA faced early opposition from Air Force leaders and skepticism on Capitol Hill. Despite its relatively small size of under 200 people, it has had outsize impact in the world of military procurement.
Firefly, Millennium Space selected for U.S. Space Force rapid-launch demonstration
Original Publication Date: 2022-10-01 17:21
Firefly and Millennium won contracts for the TacRS-3 mission. TacRS-3 will be a space domain awareness small satellite projected to launch in 2023. The companies will perform a Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) mission in 2023. TacRS is part of an effort by the U.S. Space Force to accelerate the timeline for deploying payloads.
Firefly’s Alpha rocket reaches orbit on second launch
Original Publication Date: 2022-10-01 14:52
Firefly Aerospace's Alpha launch vehicle reached orbit on its second launch Oct. 1. The rocket’s upper stage achieved orbit nearly eight minutes later. Firefly initially attempted to launch Alpha nearly three weeks earlier, on Sept. 11. The company later determined a faulty electrical connection caused the engine to shut down.
NASASpaceFlight.com
The SSLV or Small Satellite Launch Vehicle conducted its launch debut from Sriharikota, India on Sunday, August 7 at 03:48 UTC. An issue with the fourth stage resulted in the satellites being deployed in an unusable orbit. The SSLV program’s genesis was a December 2015 National Institute of Advanced Studies proposal to create a “Small Satellite Launch Vehicle-1”
Commercial Archives
Firefly successfully launched FLTA002 – its second demonstration flight of the Alpha launch vehicle. A scrub on Friday morning came after a hold was called at T-0 during engine ignition. Launching from Space Launch Complex 2 West (SLC-2W) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
International Archives
Soyuz MS-21 landed outside of Dzhezkazgan on Thursday, Sept. 29. MS-21 launched three Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station on March 18 of this year. MS-21 completed a 195-day mission in low Earth orbit.
Chinese Long March 3B Launches APStar-6C Communications Satellite – Spaceflight101
China conducted a rare commercial launch of a Long March 3B rocket with the APStar-6C communications satellite for APT Satellite Holdings to join their constellation of Geostationary Communications Satellites. Long March 3B lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 16:06 UTC on a mission of under half an hour to lift the spacecraft into an elliptical Geostationary Transfer Orbit.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard Reaches new Heights in latest Test Flight – Spaceflight101
Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard launch system reached a new altitude of 107 Kilometers on Sunday. Sunday’s flight marked the second for this particular set of hardware, following up on the successful December 2017 mission that debuted “Crew Capsule 2.0” The flight was the eighth in Blue Origin’s New Shepard flight test program that was off to a bumpy start in 2015.
ISS Updates – Spaceflight101 – International Space Station
A veteran NASA spacewalker and an EVA rookie from Japan ended their week with nearly six hours of work outside the International Space Station. The restoration of the Station’s Mobile Servicing System started last year and continued in January to provide Canadarm2 with a new pair of grappling hands.
Featured – Spaceflight101
SpaceX Falcon 9 takes to the skies over Florida’s Cape Canaveral Monday afternoon. The Falcon 9 is lifting a flight-proven Dragon spacecraft into orbit for a critical delivery of science gear, supplies and maintenance hardware to the International Space Station. This is the first of at least six cargo ships inbound to the U.S. Segment of ISS this year.
News – Spaceflight101
Russia's Rockot booster set to blast off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 17:57 UTC with the Sentinel-3B multi-function satellite. The rocket will carry the multi-function Sentinel-3B satellite into orbit. The launch is scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
Re-Entry: Long March 11 Rocket Body – Spaceflight101
The CZ-11 fourth stage of a Long March 11 rocket re-entered the atmosphere on April 29, 2018 after only three days in orbit. It lifted a cluster of five commercial Earth-imaging satellites into a 500-Kilometer orbit. Exact details on the fourth stage of China’s new Long March 11 launcher are not available.
NASA, USGS Map Minerals to Understand Earth Makeup, Climate Change
NASA and USGS will map portions of the southwest United States for critical minerals using advanced airborne imaging. Hyperspectral data from hundreds of wavelengths of reflected light can provide new information about Earth’s surface and atmosphere. The research project, called the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment (GEMx), will use NASA’s ER-2 and Gulfstream V aircraft.
NASA’s Juno Shares First Image From Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Europa
The image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft’s closest approach, on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.M. EDT) This is only the third close pass in history below 310 miles (500 kilometers) altitude and the closest look any spacecraft has provided at Europa since Jan. 3, 2000.
NASA-Built Weather Sensors Capture Vital Data on Hurricane Ian
NASA instruments captured images of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, as the storm approached Cuba on its way north toward the U.S. Mainland. Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province at 4:30 a.m. EDT, according to the National Hurricane Center. At that time, it was a Category 3 hurricane, with estimated wind speeds of 125 mph (205 kph)
NASA’s Asteroid-Striking DART Mission Team Has JPL Members
DART will be at a point 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth when it impacts Dimorphos, which is just 525 feet (160 meters) across. The spacecraft will be closing in on the space rock at about 4 miles (6.1 kilometers) per second. The Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids has the important task of imaging DART’s impact effects on Dimorphos.
NASA’s Juno Will Perform Close Flyby of Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa
Juno will come within 218 miles (351 kilometers) of Europa. Scientists think a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell. The close flyby will modify Juno’s trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days.
NASA’s InSight ‘Hears’ Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. InSight’s seismometer has detected over 1,300 marsquakes. The Sept. 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain
The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7. Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake.