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Welcome to Issue 2.42 of the Rocket Report! Our report this week is packed with news on the biggest of the boosters, from the flight hardware for Omega to the continued development of Starship and the near availability of China’s most powerful rocket for its next mission.
Rocket Lab Launches Electron in Virginia. In preparation for a launch in the third quarter of this year, Rocket Lab has launched the first Electron rocket to take off from Launch Complex 2, reports NASASpaceflight.com. This is the company’s launch site at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Space Port. Construction of the launch site began in earnest in February 2019.
Tracking a pandemic, hoping for the best … The first LC-2 mission will be the STP-27RM mission for the US Air Force Space Testing Program. USA Previously, the mission was expected to launch in the second quarter of 2020. However, due to delays in COVID-19 related closings, the launch has been delayed to the third quarter. (presented by Ken the Bin and platykurtic)
Singapore-based company unveils “The Dorado” rocket. Equatorial Space, a Singapore-based space technology startup, says it is preparing its new sound rocket for a launch attempt above the Kármán line. The slim 6.5m-long rocket will weigh approximately 370kg once it is ready for its first mission in the fourth quarter of 2020, SpaceWatch reports.
Well we like the name … “El Dorado will be available in two versions, a single-stage vehicle designed to reach a peak of 105 km, and a two-stage version capable of reaching altitudes above 200 km,” said Simon Gwozdz, CEO of the company. . “This will provide our customers with approximately 3 and 6 minutes of weightlessness respectively.” An attempt at orbital launch by the company is possible as early as 2022. We have never heard of The Dorado before, but we hope it will lead the company to gold. (presented by Ken the Bin)
Arianespace will resume spaceport activities in May. As European governments begin to break out of their COVID-19 blockades, Arianespace said this week that it will begin a “gradual” resumption of activity starting May 11 at its Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. These activities will be carried out “in strict compliance with sanitary regulations” established by local governments and the French space agency.
Summer is launched … Arianespace also confirmed the first two missions it would start working on. The first shared-ride mission on the Vega rocket, which will also be the vehicle’s return-to-flight mission after a failure last year, is now scheduled for mid-June. And a double-loaded mission on the Ariane 5 rocket, for Intelsat and B-SAT, is scheduled for the end of July.
Sea Launch has no plans for impending releases. The two ships that serve as the floating launch pad and command ship for Sea Launch are now in a Russian port, but the company owner says no launches are planned for the foreseeable future, SpaceNews reports. Vladislav Filev, who is chairman of the board of S7 Group, the Russian airline that owns Sea Launch, said there was currently no opportunity to do anything with the ships, “so we have frozen the program until better times.”
Seventy releases in 15 years? … The two vessels had been based in the port of Long Beach, California, since Sea Launch began operating in the late 1990s. They were used for launching the Zenit-3SL rocket, a medium-lift rocket, most recently in 2014. In 2016, the S7 Group announced an agreement to purchase Sea Launch from RSC Energia, which had become the primary owner during a subsequent reorganization. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009. Filev said the S7 Group paid about $ 150 million for Sea Launch, and planned to carry out 70 launches over 15 years with the system. (presented by platykurtic, JohnCarter17 and Ken the Bin)
UAE mission to Mars arrives at launch site. An Emirati-built Mars explorer named Al Amal (“Hope” in English) and developed by engineers at the Mohammed bin Rashed Space Center has been dispatched to the JAXA-managed Tanegashima Space Center. Once there, it will undergo final payments and preparations before launching aboard a Japanese rocket, reports NASASpaceflight.com.
To the red planet from the land of the rising sun … The launch window for this mission is scheduled to open on July 14, with an arrival on the Red Planet scheduled for early 2021. The vehicle arrived in Japan on April 24 and will fly in the experienced H2-launch vehicle. A built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. (presented by Ken the Bin)
Large rockets will play an important role in Artemis. NASA revealed its selections for a Human Landing System on Thursday, and the winners are the Blue Origin “National Team”, a team led by Dynetics and SpaceX. The agency’s chief human space flight, Doug Loverro, said a final architecture for the Artemis 3 mission planned in 2024, which will be the first human landing, has yet to be chosen. That will depend on which landing system NASA chooses, Ars reports.
To SLS or not to SLS … However, the first mission will look like this: For Blue Origin and Dynetics, the crew would launch in Orion on Block 1 of the Space Launch System rocket into high lunar orbit. Then an integrated lander would find them there, having launched a commercial rocket. (New Glenn for Blue Origin; Vulcan for Dynetics). Starship would launch into Super Heavy with the crew inside.
SLS managers concerned about fuel leaks. Earlier this year, NASA moved the central stage of the large rocket to a test site at the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. Before the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily halted work, teams from NASA and Boeing were working on a critical summer exercise. During this “green ride” test, the blocked rocket will start its engines and burn for approximately eight minutes to simulate an ascent to orbit, Ars explained.
The purpose of a fuel tank is to contain the fuel. … The new report “Evaluations of Major NASA Projects” from the General Accounting Office raises the possibility of fuel leaks. “Program officials indicated that one of the main remaining technical risks for the green run test is that the central stage may develop leaks when it is filled with fuel,” the report on page 82 states. “According to these officials, they have carried conducted extensive scale tests of the gaskets and seals used in the central stage, however it is difficult to accurately predict how this large volume of liquid hydrogen will affect the stage. ” We hope so.
Starship passes a cryogenic test. Late on Sunday night, SpaceX completed a critical cryogenic test of a spacecraft prototype at its launch site in South Texas. During the successful test, the cooled nitrogen was loaded into pressurized fuel tanks. Called SN4, which means Serial Number 4, the vehicle was pressurized to 4.9 bar, or 4.9 times the atmospheric pressure at the Earth’s surface. This pressure is not as high as the Starship fuel tanks and plumbing system are designed to withstand, but it is enough for a basic flight, Ars reports.
Friday night lights … Since November 2019, the company has lost three large-scale spacecraft prototypes during cryogenic and pressure tests. The most recent failure occurred on April 3. This is the first time that a vehicle has survived pressure tests to advance to additional work. Such tests are designed to ensure the integrity of a rocket’s fuel system before starting an engine. Now, Musk said, SpaceX engineers will connect a single Raptor engine to this vehicle and perform a static fire test. The company hopes to go ahead with the test on Friday night.
Long March 5B arrives on the launch pad. China is preparing its large launcher Long March 5B on Wednesday for a mission to test the space station’s launch capabilities and test a new spacecraft for human space flight in deep space. Images of the Long March 5B shared on Chinese social media indicated that the deployment to the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center was completed in early April 29, SpaceNews reports. Launch from the Wenchang coastal launch site can now be expected around May 5.
A high-profile mission. … The payload for the test launch, a new generation manned spacecraft prototype, will be loaded with nearly 10 tons of propellant. This will make the spacecraft analogous to a space station module of more than 20 tons and allow the prototype to reach higher orbits and test a high-speed reentry. The mission will resemble Orion Spacecraft Exploration Flight Test 1 2014. The new spacecraft is expected to reach a peak of around 8,000 km. (Presented by Ken the Bin, Platykurtic, and JohnCarter17)
Northrop Grumman begins building Omega flight hardware. After reviewing the results of the first and second stage tests of its Omega rocket, Northrop Grumman says the vehicle is ready to move on to its next phase of preparation for a debut flight in 2021. The first and second stages of the Omega rocket Called C600 and C300, respectively, they use a large diameter case known as the Common Boost segment that the company developed with funding from the US Air Force. USA, reports SpaceNews.
Looking for Air Force contracts … Both static fires “and other subsystem tests complete all engine tests of the common booster segment before the first flight of the Omega launch vehicle intermediate configuration,” said Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman is one of four companies competing for two contracts that the United States Space Force will award later this year to provide launch services for five years beginning in 2022. (submitted by platykurtic, JohnCarter17, and Ken the Bin)
Falcon Heavy will attempt a dual drone landing. Falcon Heavy’s next mission, which will fly no earlier than the end of 2020, will send a 3.7-metric-ton satellite and an unknown number of secondary spacecraft directly into geostationary orbit, Teslarati reports. This is the first time that SpaceX has attempted a direct power launch to GEO.
Hopefully they are not synchronized swimmers … For this mission, the Falcon Heavy rocket will employ an expendable center stage and two side thrusters that will attempt simultaneous landings at sea on separate unmanned ships. The launch of the United States Space Force will be Falcon Heavy’s first “high-priority national security mission” for the military. It should be fun to watch. (presented by Ken the Bin and DanNeely)
Next three releases
May 5th: Long March 5B | Test flight of the next generation crew capsule | Wenchang, China Satellite Launch Center | TBD
May 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink-7 | Cape Canaveral, Florida | 11:30 UTC
May 16: Atlas V | USSF 7 Mission | Cape Canaveral, Florida | TBD
