Engine inspections ground Atlas V until early summer

 James Dean, FLORIDA TODAY

An Atlas V rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a mission to the International Space Station. NASA video. March 22, 2016 Wochit

United Launch Alliance's next Atlas V rocket launch is now targeted for early summer, after the company inspects its inventory of Russian main engines for a flaw believed responsible an early engine shutdown that threatened a mission last month.

During the March 22 launch of International Space Station supplies from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the rocket's Russian-made RD-180 main engine shut down six seconds early. The upper stage engine fired for an extra minute to save the mission, ensuring an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft reached its proper orbit.

ULA on Friday said engineers have traced the premature shutdown to a "mixture ratio control valve" that limited the flow of kerosene fuel to the engine

"In addition to analysis and testing, all RD-180 engines are being inspected," the company said in a statement.

An Atlas booster recently was placed on a stand at Launch Complex 41 to support inspections that ULA hopes will "confirm all engine components are ready for launch."

That rocket had been targeting a May 5 launch of a heavy U.S. Navy communications satellite, but the mission was put on hold indefinitely after the last flight's problem.

It now appears the valve issue will delay launch of the Navy's fifth Mobile User Objective System satellite at least six weeks, until sometime after the first day of summer on June 20.

ULA is reviewing dates for Atlas V missions to follow, but said no missions scheduled this year will slip into next year.

"Expect all 2016 missions to launch this year," CEO Tory Bruno said on Twitter

Of particular importance is a planned early September launch of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to collect an asteroid sample. Missing the mission's 39-day window would delay it for a year.

Before the next Atlas V launches, ULA is preparing a Delta IV Heavy rocket for a June 4 launch of a classified intelligence mission from Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX is next up on the Eastern Range, with a Falcon 9 rocket targeting a 1:22 a.m. Wednesday blastoff with a Japanese communications satellite

http://www.floridatoday.com

El Curiosity nos ofrece una espectacular panorámica en 360º desde Marte (VIDEO)

El rover Curiosity de la NASA ha alcanzado el punto más alto y uno de los más peligrosos de Marte en una misión en el planeta rojo que ha durado 44 meses

El vehículo espacial de exploración en Marte, el Curiosity, alcanzó con éxito en las últimas semanas uno de los puntos más altos del planeta rojo y obtuvo una espectacular panorámica virtual de 360 grados de su rugosa superficie, informó el Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro de la NASA

Las imágenes tomadas desde la meseta de Naukluft muestran texturas esculpidas por el viento cerca del vehículo y el borde del cráter Gale de aproximadamente 154 kilómetros de diámetro. En uno de los extremos es posible observar el monte Sharp, que se encuentra situado en medio del cráter

Tras cumplir su misión, considerada una de las hazañas más complicadas hasta el momento, los científicos han mostrado preocupación por el estado del sistema de movimiento del Curiosity. Las cuestas empinadas y las rocas afiladas entre otros obstáculos han provocado un serio deterioro en sus seis llantas, situación que puede poner en riesgo misiones futuras. Sin embargo, Steven Lee, uno de los encargados de la misión, asegura que su capacidad de resistencia "aún alcanzará para llevarnos a lugares más interesantes en las laderas del monte Sharp".

First launch from Russia’s new cosmodrome declared a success

Disclose.tv - Космодром Восточный. Пуск РКН Союз-2.1а.

A Soyuz rocket streaked into sunny skies over a new multibillion-dollar Siberian spaceport Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin watching from a nearby viewing stand, opening another gateway to space for satellites, and eventually cosmonaut crews.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket took off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome with three satellites at 0201 GMT Thursday (10:01 p.m. EDT Wednesday), one day after a technical glitch scrubbed the launch in the final minutes of the countdown.

Vostochny’s construction began in 2011, four years after Putin approved the spaceport’s development. The cosmodrome has been one of Putin’s top domestic priorities, with an eye toward shifting more Russian space launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to launch facilities on the country’s home territory.

“I would like to congratulate you all. We have reason to be proud,” Putin said at a meeting with rocket launch team and Roscosmos representatives, according to a statement released by the Kremlin. “This is definitely a very important and significant step forward in the development of the Russian cosmonautics.”

Located in Russia’s Amur region near the Chinese border, Vostochny sits about 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometers) from Moscow, not far from an abandoned Soviet-era missile base called Svobodny, which itself hosted a handful of satellite launches.

Vostochny will eventually have a launch pad for Russia’s future heavy-lift Angara rocket, a booster designed to replace the Proton launcher, and accommodations for human spaceflights. The first Angara launch from Vostochny is targeted for 2021 — all Angara test flights will take off from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome until then — and crewed missions could begin launching from the new cosmodrome in 2023, according to plans released by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

Thursday’s launch is the only mission on the manifest at the partially-built cosmodrome this year, but its success offers a counter to critics who note construction delays at Vostochny and widespread corruption among the launch base’s contractors.

Putin told reporters before Thursday’s launch that contractors found guilty of crimes will face prison sentences.

“If their guilt of the suspected of crimes is proven, they’ll have to swap their warm beds at home for prison bunks,” Putin said, according to a report by Russia’s Interfax news agency

Russian President Vladimir Putin watches Thursday’s launch at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Credit: Kremlin

But the mood Thursday was one of celebration.

“As they say, the proof is in the pudding,” Putin told the launch team in congratulatory remarks after Thursday’s mission. “You need a successful first launch to prove that the space center is ready for work. You have done it.”

Workers raced to complete the first phase of the Vostochny project in time for a first launch by the end of 2015, the date targeted when construction began, but officials in October delayed the Soyuz fight until this month as construction progress ran behind schedule.

Facilities finished in time for Thursday’s liftoff included a satellite processing clean room, a hangar for assembly of Soyuz rockets, and the Soyuz launch pad at Vostochny, featuring a huge concrete flame trench and a mobile gantry with a mural of Russian cosmonaut hero Yuri Gagarin.

Next up will be the completion of a space city with schools, mid-rise apartment blocks, rail and road links and other amenities for the cosmodrome’s workforce, which could number in the tens of thousands of engineers, technicians and support personnel.

Building the Angara launch pad at Vostochny is also on the to-do list.

“The construction teams still have much to do yet,” Putin said Thursday. “The first stage has been completed, but there are more stages ahead. As you know, we plan to build new infrastructure for heavy carrier rockets. We are also considering building infrastructure for super-heavy rockets and manned missions here. I am confident that together we will accomplish this task.”

The civilian-operated Vostochny complex covers an area of 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) — about the size of Singapore — and Roscosmos says it will cost 180 billion rubles, or $2.7 billion, when finished.

A Soyuz rocket lifts off for the first time from its new launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East. Credit: SpaceX

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket — its engines guzzling a combination of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants — took off Thursday and rolled on a course north-northwest from Vostochny, heading to a polar orbit with three satellites on-board.

The launcher’s four strap-on boosters came off the rocket two minutes after liftoff, and moments later the Soyuz shed its aerodynamic nose done to reveal the three satellite passengers, all experimental spacecraft developed with the participation of Russian universities.

A Volga upper stage detached from the Soyuz rocket’s third stage less than nine minutes into the mission and started maneuvers to place the three satellites into orbit.

The trio of payloads deployed from the Volga rocket stage 0407 GMT (12:07 a.m. EDT), Roscosmos said in a statement.

U.S. military tracking data indicate the rocket put its satellite passengers into an orbit with a high point of about 300 miles (483 kilometers), a low point of 290 miles (468 kilometers), and an inclination of 97.3 degrees.

Those parameters are close to preflight targets.

The largest of the satellites sent into orbit Thursday will study high-energy cosmic rays and gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe, which astronomers believe come from the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives.

“From the Earth’s orbit, using a space experiment, we will first study the particles of the highest energies that exist in the universe,” said Mikhail Panasyuk, director of the Skobeltsyn Research Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, which is managing the mission. “We observe an acceleration of cosmic particles called cosmic rays in the universe. The particles with the greatest energies are difficult to measure from the ground, because they are very few. Now we will do this with the space experiment on-board.”

Named for Mikhailo Lomonosov, an 18th century Russian scientist and writer, the multipurpose spacecraft weighs more than 1,400 pounds (about 645 kilograms) and will also investigate Earth, attempting to pinpoint the origin of mysterious brilliant flashes of light in the upper atmosphere called transient luminous events.

The flashes occur in milliseconds in a region of the atmosphere stretching up to 60 miles (100 kilometers) in altitude, making them hard to detect and study. But scientists believe they are linked to lightning in thunderstorms closer to the ground.

The Mikhailo Lomonosov satellite is designed for a three-year lifetime in orbit.

The 1,170-pound (531-kilogram) Aist 2D satellite, made by TsSKB Progress in partnership with Samara State Aerospace University, will demonstrate a new small spacecraft design with a high-resolution hyperspectral Earth imaging camera. Aist 2D also carries an innovative radar operating in P-band, a wavelength that penetrates through forest canopies and Earth’s surface to study underground structures.

Aist 2D’s other science instruments will study the environment around the spacecraft and monitor how the satellite’s components respond to the harsh temperature extremes, vacuum conditions and micrometeoroid and space debris impacts in orbit, according to TsSKB Progress.

A shoebox-sized CubeSat named SamSat 218 also launched aboard the Soyuz rocket Thursday.

Built by students at Samara State Aerospace University, SamSat 218 will pursue educational and technological tasks, including tests in how to control tiny satellites in orbit.

Indian launch rounds out domestic navigation network

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle takes off Thursday with India’s seventh navigation satellite. Credit: ISRO

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle blasted off Thursday with the seventh and final spacecraft for a regional navigation network to provide position data to users across the subcontinent independent of foreign satellite systems.

The PSLV took off from the First Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on India’s east coast at 0720 GMT (3:20 a.m. EDT), or 12:50 p.m. local time, Thursday.

The seventh member on the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System — IRNSS 1G — completes the deployment of an indigenous network of satellites thousands of miles above Earth to broadcast information about the location of users across India and neighboring territories.

Disclose.tv - Launch of PSLV-C33/IRNSS-1G

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi watched the launch via a live video broadcast and spoke in public remarks after the mission’s successful conclusion, in which he congratulated space officials and renamed the IRNSS constellation Navic.

Modi also emphasized the independence of the $210 million Indian navigation system, calling it a “made in India” project.

The final satellite in the IRNSS, or Navic, fleet will be operational in a few weeks.

“We are on the threshold of completing a navigation satellite constellation, which is going to provide India and its surroundings an independent geo-positioniong system,” said A.S. Kiran Kumar, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. “This is a unique system, which has been (developed) with the intention of providing to the country an independent navigation service with a combination of a minimum number of satellites.”

India’s navigation satellites are targeted at the country’s home territory.

“Unlike other global positioning services, which have been provided by the United States, Russia, the European Union and China, we have gone for a regional navigation satellite service, which requires only a seven-satellite constellation,” Kiran Kumar said.

The 44-meter (145-foot) PSLV, augmented by six powerful solid rocket boosters each loaded with 12 metric tons of pre-packed propellant, flew east from the launch base on Sriharikota Island, a beachfront land mass about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the Indian city of Chennai.

The launcher made its 35th flight — and the 13th mission in its most powerful PSLV XL configuration — since India’s workhorse rocket debuted in 1993. Thursday’s launch marked the third PSLV flight of the year, as India executes launches at a record pace.

After firing away from India’s spaceport and turning east over the Bay of Bengal, the PSLV shed four of its boosters 70 seconds after liftoff, followed by the release of the last pair at T+plus 92 seconds.

The separation of the boosters was visible in live video from ground-based tracking cameras as the PSLV soared through a clear midday sky.

An engineer in the launch control center at Sriharikota called out milestones throughout the 20-minute mission.

The rocket’s solid-fueled first stage fell away away T+plus 1 minute, 50 seconds, when the PSLV’s liquid-fueled Vikas second stage engine ignited for a burn of more than two-and-a-half minutes.

The PSLV’s nose section, or payload fairing, jettisoned at T+plus 3 minutes, 20 seconds, during the second stage engine firing.

Another solid rocket motor lit at T+plus 4 minutes, 23 seconds, at an altitude of 132 kilometers (82 miles), then a twin-engine hydrazine-burning fourth stage injected the IRNSS 1G spacecraft into an elliptical “sub-geosynchronous transfer orbit.”

The mission aimed for an orbit with an apogee, or high point, nearly 20,700 kilometers (nearly 13,000 miles) above Earth at an inclination of 17.86 degrees, according to ISRO.

This photo shows the IRNSS 1G satellite before encapsulation inside the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle’s payload fairing. Credit: ISRO

Officials verified separation of the IRNSS 1G satellite from the PSLV about 20 minutes after liftoff. Engineers at ISRO’s satellite ground station in Hassan, India, were to take control of the spacecraft soon after the rocket’s fourth stage released it in orbit.

The mission director for Thursday’s launch — dubbed PSLV-C33 by ISRO — declared the mission fully accomplished moments after IRNSS 1G’s separation from the rocket.

Solar panels on the 1,425-kilogram (3,141-pound) IRNSS 1G spacecraft were programmed extend shortly after separation from the rocket to begin generating electricity for the satellite.

A rocket thruster on the satellite will boost it into a circular geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of more than 35,700 kilometers (about 22,300 miles), where it will join India’s six other navigation satellites launched aboard PSLV missions since July 2013.

The seven-satellite navigation constellation will provide positioning services over a primary coverage area encompassing India and extending up to 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) from its borders. Partial coverage will be available across much of Asia, stretching from the Middle East to Japan, and from Mongolia to Australia.

“With the operationalization of six spacecraft, proof-of-concept of an independent regional navigation satellite system over India has been demonstrated for the targeted position accuracy which is much better than 20 meters (66 feet) over 24 hours of the day,” ISRO officials wrote in an information kit for Thursday’s launch.

“With the launch and operationalization of IRNSS 1G, the sixth in the constellation, the completion of the (the) IRNSS constellation will be achieved,” the ISRO press kit said.

Once it is operational, IRNSS 1G will be the third satellite to enter an equator-hugging geostationary-type orbit at an inclination of 5 degrees. Four other navigation satellites are in geosynchronous-type orbits inclined 29 degrees to the equator.

“With this (system), we are able to provide for India and the surrounding 1,500 kilometers a capability to locate yourself using a set of ground receivers, which are also being designed and developed in the country,” Kiran Kumar said. “We are also developing the chip sets required for (helping) the entrepreneurs come out with their own solutions for positioning capability.”

Each IRNSS satellite designed for a 12-year lifetime and carries L-band and S-band navigation signal transmitters. A C-band transponder aboard each spacecraft helps generate location estimates for the satellites, and a rubidium atomic clock keeps time aboard each platform.

Retro-reflectors aboard the IRNSS spacecraft are also available for laser ranging, according to ISRO.

“It’s a made in India payload, and its concept, its coding, its software, everything is built in India,” said Tapan Misra, director of ISRO’s Space Applications Center.

India’s next PSLV flight is scheduled for June with the Cartosat 2C Earth observation satellite and secondary payloads from the United States, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Italy and Latvia

http://spaceflightnow.com

New Russian space base ready for first launch

Disclose.tv - Космодром Восточный. Вывоз РКН Союз-2.1а с КА Ломоносов, Аист-2Д, SamSat-218

A new $3 billion cosmodrome in nestled in the remote taiga wilderness of Russia’s Far East, a sprawling, sparkling facility constructed at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will host its first rocket launch early Wednesday.

A Soyuz rocket is set to blast off with three satellites at 0201 GMT Wednesday (10:01 p.m. EDT Tuesday) from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a partially-finished spaceport in Russia’s Amur region near the Chinese border about 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometers) east of Moscow.

Liftoff is set for 11:01 a.m. local time at Vostochny.

Russian officials gave approval to begin filling the Soyuz rocket will kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants Tuesday.

Putin is expected to attend Wednesday’s launch, according to Russian media reports.

Russian space officials delayed the launch several months after construction mishaps and corruption marred development of the cosmodrome, which will eventually take over much of the launch activity currently based at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

But any shutdown of Baikonur is still decades away — Russia has leased the facility from the Kazakh government until 2050 — and Wednesday’s launch is the only mission on the manifest at Vostochny this year. A Russian government satellite is scheduled for launch on a Soyuz rocket from Vostochny in 2017, and a fraction of the 21 Soyuz launches ordered by OneWeb, the commercial satellite Internet venture, could originate from the new cosmodrome.

Most of the OneWeb flights will lift off from Baikonur and the Soyuz launch pad in French Guiana.

Russia is building a launch pad at the Siberian cosmodrome for the new Angara rocket, a replacement for the Proton booster. The first Angara launch at Vostochny is scheduled for 2021, and test flights before then will originate from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

No Angara launch pad will be built at Baikonur.

Crewed launches from Vostochny could begin as soon as 2023, according to plans released by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

The Vostochny complex covers an area of 700 square kilometers, or 270 square miles

Credit: Roscosmos

After Wednesday’s mission, construction crews at Vostochny will finish building support infrastructure at the forested cosmodrome and turn attention to the Angara launch facility. Teams completed construction of the Soyuz launch pad, integration hangar and a satellite processing clean room ahead of this week’s launch.

Putin approved the Vostochny project in 2007, and construction began in 2011, aiming to be ready for an initial launch by the end of 2015.

The first phase of the construction project, one of the biggest in Russia, cost about 120 billion rubles, or $1.8 billion, according to the Russian Interfax news agency. The cosmodrome’s total cost is estimated at 180 billion rubles, or $2.7 billion, Roscosmos said in December.

Workers rolled out the Soyuz-2.1a rocket to its launch pad Saturday and erected the iconic booster vertical on top of a cavernous concrete flame trench. A mobile service gantry, emblazoned with a mural of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, rolled into position around the rocket for final preflight checks.

The moveable tower is new to Russia’s space program, borrowing from the design of the Soyuz launch pad in French Guiana. Other Soyuz launch pads at Baikonur and Plesetsk were built at the dawn of the Space Age and feature work platforms that fold up around the rocket.

The three-stage rocket will take off and turn northwest from Vostochny to put its three satellites into a near-polar orbit.

It will be the second Soyuz launch in less than two days, coming after a Soyuz blasted off from French Guiana with five European satellites.

Roscosmos said the rocket will fly with a long-range communications system to transmit telemetry to distant ground stations. The Soyuz trajectory northwest from Vostochny does not pass above ground stations normally used in Russian launches

The Spanish Deimos 2 satellite took this image of the Vostochny Cosmodrome April 24. Credit: Deimos Imaging

The rocket also carries four on-board cameras in hardened cases to beam back live video of the flight, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com.

A Volga upper stage will deliver mission’s three spacecraft passengers to orbit after separation from the Soyuz booster’s third stage.

Named for Mikhailo Lomonosov, an 18th century Russian scientist and writer, the main spacecraft on Wednesday’s launch will weigh more than 1,400 pounds (about 645 kilograms) at liftoff, according to Lomonosov Moscow State University, the institute managing the project.

The Mikhailo Lomonosov satellite will study high-energy cosmic rays and gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe astronomers believe come from the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives.

The craft will orbit 304 miles (490 kilometers) above Earth, the university said in a statement.

Other sensors on the spacecraft will look at Earth’s magnetosphere, the bubble that protects the planet from harmful solar and cosmic radiation.

The 1,170-pound (531-kilogram) Aist 2D satellite, made by TsSKB Progress in partnership with Samara State Aerospace University, will demonstrate a new small spacecraft design with a high-resolution hyperspectral Earth imaging camera. Aist 2D also carries an innovative radar operating in P-band, a wavelength that penetrates through forest canopies and Earth’s surface to study underground structures.

Aist 2D’s other science instruments will study the environment around the spacecraft and monitor how the satellite’s components respond to the harsh temperature extremes, vacuum conditions and micrometeoroid and space debris impacts in orbit, according to TsSKB Progress.

The SamSat 218 satellite, a CubeSat built by students at Samara State Aerospace University, is about the size of a shoebox. The craft’s mission is part-educational and part-technology demo, with its flight plan including tests in how to control tiny satellites in orbit

http://spaceflightnow.com

Sentinel-1B launch from Kourou

Date

Mon, Apr 25 2016 5:40 PM — Mon, Apr 25 2016 10:30 PM

About

Following an anomaly observed during the countdown for the launch of Soyuz flight VS14 carrying Sentinel-1B, the countdown was halted. The launch vehicle and satellites have been switched into a completely safe standby mode. The new launch date will be communicated after the anomaly has been analysed. LAUNCH DATE TBD

Live from Europe ’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana: follow the launch of Sentinel-1B. Webcast 25 April. Three ESA-sponsored CubeSats and the CNES Microscope satellite are also being launched on the same Soyuz rocket.

   European Space Agency

Sentinel-1B ready for orbit

After Sentinel-1A, last 3 April 2014, Sentinel 1B will be launched next 22 April on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The Sentinels, a new fleet of ESA satellites, are poised to deliver the wealth of data and imagery that are central to Europe’s Copernicus programme. By offering a set of key information services for a broad range of applications, this global monitoring programme makes a step change in the way we manage our environment, understand and tackle the effects of climate change, and safeguard everyday lives. The first in the series, Sentinel-1 carries an advanced radar instrument to provide an all-weather, day and night supply of imagery of Earth’s surface. Sentinel-1 is the result of close collaboration between the ESA, the European Commission, industry, service providers and data users. Designed and built by a consortium of around 60 companies les by Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space, it is an outstanding example of Europe’s technological excellence

http://livestream.com/ESA/Sentinel1BLaunch

Live coverage: Soyuz launch from French Guiana delayed to Saturday

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana with Europe’s Sentinel 1B radar Earth observation satellite, France’s Microscope relativity probe and three CubeSats from Belgium, Italy and Denmark

13:59 SCRUB

Bad weather over the Guiana Space Center will keep the Soyuz rocket on the ground today, officials said.

Unacceptable high-altitude winds over the spaceport exceeded safety constraints for today's flight with five European satellites.

The launch has been rescheduled for 2102 GMT (5:02 p.m. EDT; 6:02 p.m. French Guiana time) Saturday, when weather conditions are forecast to be better.

07:34 Five European satellites ready for Soyuz flight to custom orbits

The term “direct flight” will go to new heights Friday with a four-hour flight by a Soyuz rocket and its Fregat upper stage to deliver five satellites to three distinct orbital destinations hundreds of miles above Earth.

The Russian Soyuz booster — crowned by a Fregat upper stage — is set for liftoff at 2102:13 GMT (5:02:13 p.m. EDT) Friday from the Guiana Space Center, a European-run spaceport on the northern shore of South America.

07:33 Norsat 1 grounded

Officials from the Norwegian Space Center are looking for another launch opportunity for a microsatellite designed to track ship traffic and study space weather after engineers determined it could not safely be attached to a Soyuz rocket set for liftoff Friday.

Officials decided to keep the Norsat 1 spacecraft on the ground earlier this month. Such a decision is rare so close to a launch.

http://spaceflightnow.com

Five European satellites ready for Soyuz flight to custom orbits

Five European satellites ready for Soyuz flight to custom orbits

Artist’s concept of the Sentinel 1B satellite aboard its Soyuz booster moments after fairing separation. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

The term “direct flight” will go to new heights Friday with a four-hour flight by a Soyuz rocket and its Fregat upper stage to deliver five satellites to three distinct orbital destinations hundreds of miles above Earth.

The Russian Soyuz booster — crowned by a Fregat upper stage — is set for liftoff at 2102:13 GMT (5:02:13 p.m. EDT) Friday from the Guiana Space Center, a European-run spaceport on the northern shore of South America.

The rocket will take three laps around the planet before its job is complete to place in orbit Europe’s Sentinel 1B environmental monitoring spacecraft, France’s Microscope physics experiment and three student-built CubeSats from universities in Belgium, Italy and Denmark.

The delicate maneuvering required to put Sentinel 1B, Microscope and the CubeSats into different orbits will last four hours, with the Fregat upper stage tweaking its trajectory around Earth multiple times to put each payload in the correct position.

Powered by a core stage and four first stage boosters generating 930,000 pounds of thrust, the kerosene-fueled Soyuz rocket will turn north from its purpose-built launch pad in French Guiana and drop its RD-107A strap-on engines in the Atlantic Ocean two minutes after liftoff.

The rocket’s clamshell-like nose cone will split open and jettison at T+plus 3 minutes, 29 seconds, followed by separation of the Soyuz core stage and its RD-108A main engine at T+plus 4 minutes, 48 seconds.

Four minutes later — at T+plus 8 minutes, 49 seconds — the third stage’s RD-0110 engine will finish its burn and fall away from the Soyuz rocket’s Fregat upper stage, which will ignite its hydrazine-burning main engine for the first time at T+plus 9 minutes, 49 seconds.

The first of the mission’s five Fregat engine firings will end at T+plus 20 minutes, 14 seconds, after reaching a target orbit 686 kilometers (426 miles) in altitude at an inclination of 98.18 degrees.

The 2,164-kilogram (4,770-pound) Sentinel 1B satellite is due to deploy from the Fregat upper stage at T+plus 23 minutes, 35 seconds. It will unfurl its power-generating solar panels and C-band radar antenna in the hours after launch

The Sentinel 1B satellite is seen mounted on top of the multi-payload stack before encapsulation inside the Soyuz rocket’s payload fairing April 15. France’s Microscope spacecraft is inside the multi-payload support structure below Sentinel 1B. The Fregat upper stage is visible at bottom covered in gold insulation. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Meanwhile, the Fregat stage will coast for more than an hour-and-a-half until restarting its main engine at T+plus 2 hours, 5 seconds (2302:18 GMT; 7:02:18 p.m. EDT) for a planned 13-second burn.

That maneuver will lower the rocket’s orbit for the release of the mission’s three CubeSat passengers

• OUFTI-1 from the University of Liege, Belgium, will test an experimental communications subsystem
• e-st@r-II from the Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, will demonstrate an attitude control system using measurements of Earth’s magnetic field
• AAUSAT-4 from the University of Aalborg, Denmark, will operate an automated ocean vessel identification system

Each one of the trio is about the size of the palm of a hand and weighs about a kilogram, or 2.2 pounds.

They will spring-eject from their container at T+plus 2 hours, 48 minutes, 11 seconds (2350:24 GMT (7:50:24 p.m. EDT), according to a mission timeline provided by Arianespace, the Soyuz rocket’s launch services provider.

The mission profile aims to put the CubeSats in a lower orbit than Sentinel 1B — with a high point of 665 kilometers (413 miles) and a low point of 453 kilometers (281 miles) — to make the tiny spacecraft succumb to atmospheric drag and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere faster, easing concerns that the satellites could become dangerous pieces of space debris

Technicians work on the carrier module containing three student-built CubeSats sponsored by the European Space Agency. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – JM Guillon

Fifty seconds after separation of the CubeSats — at T+plus 2 hours, 49 minutes, 1 second (2351:14 GMT; 7:51:14 p.m. EDT) — the Soyuz rocket’s multi-payload carrier will jettison to reveal France’s Microscope physics probe for separation.

But the Fregat upper stage must first steer into Microscope’s intended orbit, a feat that requires two more brief burns of the main engine, which produces nearly 4,500 pounds of thrust at full power.

A 12-second engine firing is due to commence at T+plus 3 hours, 32 minutes, 35 seconds (0034:48 GMT; 8:34:48 p.m. EDT). Approximately 25 minutes later — at T+plus 3 hours, 57 minutes, 46 seconds (0059:59 GMT; 8:59:59 p.m. EDT) — the Fregat’s fourth burn will begin and last for about 16 seconds.

The Fregat upper stage will set up for separation of the 303-kilogram (668-pound) Microscope spacecraft at T+plus 4 hours, 52 seconds (0103:05 GMT; 9:03:05 p.m. EDT).

Microscope will test the equivalence principle, which states that different objects fall the same way in vacuum. The principle is a tenet in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, but the concept was first proposed by Galileo.

Developed by CNES, the French space agency, Microscope contains two concentric cylindrical test masses to be suspended in an electrostatic field. The motion of the two test masses — one made of titanium and the other made of a platinum-rhodium alloy — should be the same if the equivalence principle is verified.

The Microscope mission has been in development since 1999 and aims to test the equivalence principle with 100 times greater precision than feasible on Earth

Technicians lower the Soyuz rocket’s auxiliary payload support structure over the Microscope satellite at the Guiana Space Center. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin

The Microscope satellite is destined for an orbit 711 kilometers (441 miles) above Earth at an inclination of 98.23 degrees, according to Arianespace.

A final ignition of the Fregat main engine about 15 minutes after Microscope’s separation is expected to last about 29 seconds, enough to slow down the rocket’s orbital velocity enough to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere and burn up over the South Atlantic Ocean.

The four-hour mission will require tracking and communications support from ground stations in French Guiana, Saint-Hubert and Saskatoon in Canada, Lucknow, India, and Mauritius, according to Nathalie Philippe, Arianespace’s quick look telemetry display technical authority.

Philippe said each of the ground stations will be used at least two times during Friday’s mission, supplying data on the progress of the flight to managers in French Guiana and Russian engineers at the Fregat monitoring center in Moscow.

http://spaceflightnow.com

Tolhuin y Río Grande son evaluadas para la estación satelital

Expertos de la CONAE están evaluando a Tolhuin y Río Grande para la instalación del campo de antenas satelitales que servirá de infraestructura para la comunicación y bajada de información y datos de estos ingenios espaciales. Junto a la Facultad Regional Río Grande de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, propician generar un centro tecnológico espacial en Tierra del Fuego. En un inicio serán tres las antenas a instalar

Los ingenieros Leonardo Comes y Marcelo González Fircoli, Jefe de División de Estaciones Terrenas y Jefe de Ingeniería de Estaciones Terrenas de la Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales –CONAE-, respectivamente, junto al Decano de la Facultad Regional Río Grande de la Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, ingeniero Mario Félix Ferreyra, fueron entrevistados en el programa ‘Buscando el Equilibrio’ que se emite por FM Universidad (93.5 MHZ).

Los primeros pertenecen al Centro Espacial ‘Teófilo Tabanera’ de la CONAE y se encuentran en Tierra del Fuego estudiando el emplazamiento donde se van a instalar las tres antenas satelitales.

El ingeniero Ferreyra comentó que "ellos están trabajando en la provincia para la instalación de un campo de antenas para seguir los satélites vinculados al sistema de datos e informaciones pertinentes”.

El Decano de la FRRG agregó que "los ingenieros están trabajando muy especialmente en un proyecto que la CONAE está desarrollando para tener los propios satélites argentinos con su propio lanzador que es el proyecto Tronador II”.

En tanto el ingeniero Leonardo Comes detalló que "la CONAE tiene en este momento dos proyectos principales en desarrollo y uno de ellos, como dijo el ingeniero Mario Ferreyra, es que la Argentina tenga un lanzador propio con el proyecto Tronador II, es una tecnología que no la teníamos en el país y se está desarrollando actualmente, al margen de que los satélites argentinos han sido desarrollados en gran parte en nuestro país”.

Agregó que "el otro proyecto principal en relación a los satélites que trabajamos es el SAOCOM que va a ser la próxima misión argentina e involucra al proyecto específico por el cual estamos acá en Tierra del Fuego y es el establecimiento de una estación terrena satelital para dar servicios a lanzadores y a satélites”.

Al ser consultado sobre la factibilidad del lugar para esta estación satelital, contó que "son inversiones muy grandes y a largo plazo; hemos estado haciendo un análisis exhaustivo desde hace un año y medio aproximadamente, viniendo a las tres localidades, Ushuaia, Tolhuin y Río Grande, por las características geográficas y climáticas que hemos estado analizando y de este estudio se desprende que los lugares más aptos para esta estación serían Tolhuin y Río Grande. Son las dos posibilidades que estamos evaluando en este momento”, confió.

En referencia al proyecto espacial argentino el entrevistado dijo que "si bien es la CONAE el que lo lleva adelante, intervienen agencias de otros países. Por ejemplo, la CONAE es miembro del Charter Internacional de Emergencias que es muy utilizado en catástrofes, inundaciones, etcétera, donde hay agencias como la NASA de Estados Unidos, la ESA de Europa, la JAXA de Japón y otras organizaciones de este tipo de todo el mundo que están trabajando en conjunto y de hecho en Tierra del Fuego vamos a poder bajar y procesar imágenes, tanto de los satélites argentinos como de terceros países en cooperación con la CONAE”.

El campo de antenas satelitales en Tierra del Fuego "sería el más austral del mundo porque aquí estamos hablando de satélites de órbita baja a diferencia de los satélites geoestacionarios ubicados en el Ecuador y en posición fija respecto de la Tierra”.

En cambio, "estos satélites de órbita baja están girando todo el tiempo alrededor del planeta y van hacia los polos. Entonces, las estaciones que están ubicadas más cerca de los polos tienen mejor visibilidad y es por ello que Tierra del Fuego es una posición estratégica por que estamos muy cerca del Polo Sur y podemos contar con mucha mejor visibilidad”.

Aspiran a crear un centro de tecnología aeroespacial fueguino

El ingeniero Comes confió que esperan sentar las bases para un centro tecnológico satelital fueguino. "Es un tema geopolítico y de soberanía; en un principio vamos a estar bajando imágenes pero después vamos a necesitar una capacidad profesional, porque no es solo bajar imágenes sino qué hacer con esas imágenes y entonces es ahí donde ya empezamos a hablar de las aplicaciones específicas que requieren desarrollarse para lo cual se requiere gente especializada”,

En este sentido agregó que "por ejemplo la Misión SAOCOM que es un radar de apertura sintética, que por ahí suena complejo pero que básicamente se trata de tener un mapa de humedad de nuestro territorio, lo cual –entre distintas cuestiones- va a contribuir tanto al estudio del tema de inundaciones y asimismo sobre un mar tan extenso como el argentino, los derrames de hidrocarburos y otras muchas cuestiones más”.

Añadió que "son todas aplicaciones específicas que se van derivando de una imagen adquirida para lo cual hace falta tener una capacidad profesional que debe desarrollarse y esto a futuro va a involucrar tener esa capacidad”.

El Jefe de División de Estaciones Terrenas de esta comisión nacional graficó que "desde la CONAE siempre decimos que lanzamos para arriba para mirar hacia abajo –a diferencia de los satélites geoestacionarios que se utilizan para las telecomunicaciones (telefonía y televisión)- porque lo que queremos es tener toda esta información que es vital para el país. En este caso Argentina es el octavo país en extensión territorial en el mundo y es fundamental por lo tanto contar con satélites que velen sobre su territorio”.

Agregó que "el poder monitorear nuestra geografía, tener información de diversa índole relacionada con distintas facetas de la realidad, desde una inundación hasta la disposición de los sembradíos y cosechas, que son datos esenciales para la toma de decisiones del Estado argentino y por eso se desprende que no tener tecnología satelital es más caro que no tenerla”, argumentó.

"En un principio vamos a instalar tres antenas satelitales”

Por su parte el ingeniero Marcelo González Fircoli explicó que "los satélites argentinos se desarrollan en general en Bariloche por parte del INVAP por pedido de la CONAE y los últimos fueron lanzados al espacio desde la Base Aérea de Vanderberg Estados Unidos (California). Alguna de las piezas de estos satélites son de fabricación nacional y otras piezas son importadas”.

En relación a las antenas que se van a instalar en Tierra del Fuego, González Fircoli detalló que "en primera instancia una de las antenas va a tener 13 metros de diámetro en su plato o parábola y la altura desde este plato al piso, serían de unos 15 metros aproximadamente”.

Agregó que "en principio van a ser tres las antenas que se instalarán en Tierra del Fuego, la mencionada de 13 metros de diámetro, otra de cinco metros y una tercera de tres metros de diámetro. Pero esto es solo el principio porque estamos hablando de un proyecto a largo plazo. Por ejemplo, en Córdoba se comenzó con una sola antena de 4,5 metros de de diámetro en 1996 y hoy contamos con diez antenas”.

Sobre la extensión del predio, el ingeniero González Fircoli confió que "estamos necesitando como mínimo entre diez a doce hectáreas, pero seguramente esto va a estar en constante crecimiento a futuro por lo que necesitaremos una extensión mayor”.

In Flight Call with Tim Peake

European Space Agency

European Space Agency

On Thursday 14 April, ESA astronaut Tim Peake will connect live from space with teachers from Norway, UK, and Poland. Tim Peake, currently living and working on the International Space Station (ISS), will answer teachers’ questions regarding STEM and space careers. Primary and secondary school teachers and students, as well as space scientists and engineers, will gather at national events taking place at York, Warsaw, and Oslo, from where they will watch Tim on the ISS and interact with him. The inflight call with Tim Peake is part of a vast range of educational activities delivered by the ESA ESERO project.