Soyuz crew launcher rolled out for liftoff from Kazakhstan

The Soyuz booster that will send the International Space Station’s next three residents into orbit later this week rolled out of an integration hangar early Monday and rode a railroad car to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The rocket will lift off at 2020 GMT (3:20 p.m. EST) Thursday from Baikonur, heading to orbit on a two-day chase of the space station, setting up for a radar-guided rendezvous and docking Saturday.

The Soyuz MS-03 spaceship, the third in a line of upgraded Russian crew capsules, will take the longer two-day route to the space station to continue tests of the modernized spacecraft. In recent years, Russia has typically launched Soyuz crews on a six-hour rendezvous trajectory, allowing the craft to reach the complex on the same day as launch.

Continuing a tradition dating back to the dawn of the Space Age, the Soyuz rocket emerged from its hangar at Baikonur mounted on a transport train for the trip to the launch pad.

The rollout Monday came a day after technicians installed the Soyuz capsule on the front end of the rocket. Last week, ground crews placed an aerodynamic fairing, which will jettison a few minutes into the flight, over the Soyuz spacecraft before moving the vehicle to the rocket assembly hangar.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, a 45-year-old Russian Air Force pilot and native of Belarus, will occupy the center seat of the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft as commander. About to fly to the space station for the second time, Novitskiy spent 143 days in orbit on the Expedition 33 and 34 mission in 2012 and 2013.

In the capsule’s left seat will be French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut who will serve as Novitskiy’s co-pilot during the flight to the space station. Pesquet, 38, was a spacecraft engineer at CNES, the French space agency, and an Air France commercial airline pilot before his selection as an astronaut in 2009.

Veteran NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 56, will launch in the the right seat of the Soyuz spaceship on her third spaceflight. Whitson first lived on the space station as a flight engineer and science officer on the Expedition 5 mission in 2002, the launched again in 2007 to command the Expedition 16 mission.

Whitson, a native of Iowa, has accumulated more than 376 days in space during her two previous flights.

Docking of the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft with the station’s Rassvet module on Saturday is scheduled for around 2201 GMT (5:01 p.m. EST). Expedition 50 commander Shane Kimbrough and flight engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko will welcome the three new crew members.

Whitson will command the station’s Expedition 51 crew next year after the departure of Kimbrough, Ryzhikov and Borisenko.

The Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft will remain docked to the space station until April or May.

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet address media before departing their training complex at Star City, Russia, for the launch site in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA/Stephanie Stoll

The arrival of the three fresh residents will kick off a busy couple of months on the space station.

“There will be quite a bit of traffic and crew time associated with that,” said Sam Scimemi, NASA’s space station program director at NASA Headquarters.

An Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo craft that arrived at the outpost in October is set to depart the complex Nov. 21 with a load of trash. Before heading for a destructive re-entry, the Cygnus supply ship will deploy several CubeSats and conduct a fire experiment inside a self-contained box within the craft’s pressurized module.

A Russian Progress cargo and refueling freighter is set for launch Dec. 1 from Baikonur, with docking expected Dec. 3.

Then a Japanese HTV supply mission will blast off aboard an H-2B rocket Dec. 9, setting up for its automated rendezvous and capture with the space station’s robotic arm Dec. 13.

The HTV mission will deliver six lithium-ion batteries to kick off a multi-year effort to replace the space station’s aging nickel-hydrogen battery system. The battery changeout will require at least two spacewalks in January, and perhaps as many as four EVAs if astronauts run into any trouble.

“During the next increment, they will be busy,” Scimemi said Monday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations subcommittee. “There are going to be some challenges. We’ve got two EVAs scheduled to install the batteries, and another couple of EVAs as contingency if they don’t go so well.”

Other activities, aside from a heavy slate of science experiments, will include maintenance on the station’s carbon dioxide removal assembly, activation of a new galley, and preparations to relocate a docking port on the complex, Scimemi said.

Photos of the Soyuz rocket’s rollout Monday are posted below, including images of the launch pad’s gantry towers enclosing the booster backdropped by nearly full moon.

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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.

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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.

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Soyuz launcher puts Russian military spy satellite in orbit

The Soyuz rocket carrying Russia’s second Bars-M military spy satellite lifted off at 0942 GMT (5:42 a.m. EDT; 12:42 p.m. local time) Thursday. Credit: Russian Ministry of Defense

A Russian military spacecraft with a high-resolution digital mapping camera is in orbit Thursday after a successful ascent aboard a Soyuz rocket.

The Soyuz-2.1a rocket lifted off at 0942 GMT (5:42 a.m. EDT; 12:42 p.m. local time) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, a military spaceport about 500 miles (800 kilometers) north of Moscow, according to a statement released by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The launch went normally, Russian defense officials said, and the rocket deployed its secretive payload in orbit less than 10 minutes after liftoff.

U.S. tracking data show two objects attributed to Thursday’s flight — the Soyuz rocket’s third stage and the Russian military satellite — in an orbit with a low point of around 201 miles (324 kilometers) and a high point of around 333 miles (536 kilometers) with an inclination of 97.6 degrees to Earth’s equator.

Animation

The satellite lofted Thursday is believed to be Russia’s second spacecraft in the Bars-M series of sharp-eyed optical reconnaissance platforms.

The first member of the Bars-M series launched in February 2015 from the same launch pad at Plesetsk, and aboard the same type of Soyuz booster, which features a modernized digital flight control system to replace analog guidance employed aboard earlier versions of Russia’s workhorse rocket.

Made by TsSKB Progress in Samara, Russia, the Bars-M satellite’s capabilities are classified, but analysts believe it hosts a digital imager, replacing older satellites that carried film cameras that returned to Earth via parachute to be recovered and developed.

The Bars-M satellite’s Karat electro-optical camera was developed by the Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association, and the satellite is expected to operate at least five years, according to documents posted on a Russian government procurement website.

The Soyuz rocket carrying Russia’s second Bars-M military spy satellite lifted off at 0942 GMT (5:42 a.m. EDT; 12:42 p.m. local time) Thursday. Credit: Russian Ministry of Defense

The upgrade allows the Bars-M satellites to remain in orbit longer and send imagery to analysts via radio links.

The last of the old-generation satellites launched in 2005, leaving Russia with a gap in the imaging capability to be filled by Bars-M, which specializes in collecting stereo images to help create maps for use by the Russian military.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday that the new satellite received the designation Kosmos 2515, keeping with the military’s naming scheme for defense-related spacecraft.

The Kosmos 2515 satellite is functioning normally after Thursday’s launch, and ground controllers are in contact with the spacecraft, the defense ministry reported on its website.

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LIVE: Soyuz rocket to launch Resurs P3 Earth observation satellite

Launch of Resurs-P #3 on Russian Soyuz 2-1B
A Soyuz 2-1B rocket will launch the third Resurs P3 Earth observation satellite from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 13.

The Resurs series of Earth observation satellites are being used for collecting remote data for Russian civilian Earth observation agencies and foreign customers. The Resurs-P satellites are based on their military counterparts and deliver a similar image resolution.

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Nave espacial rusa Soyuz TMA-19M alista motores para nueva misión a la EEI (VIDEO)

actualidad.rt

El cohete portador ruso Soyuz-FG con la sonda espacial tripulada Soyuz TMA-19M ha sido instalado en la primera plataforma de lanzamiento Gagarin del cosmódromo de Baikonur, en Kazajistán.

Está previsto que el lanzamiento del Soyuz-FG tenga lugar este 15 de diciembre a las 14:03 hora de Moscú (11:03 GMT), con los integrantes de la expedición 46/47, misión que durará 143 días, informa la agencia RIA Novosti.

A bordo del Soyuz TMA-19M viajarán los nuevos tripulantes de la Estación Espacial Internacional (EEI): el cosmonauta ruso Yuri Malénchenko y los astronautas Timothy Kopra (EE.UU.) y Timothy Peake (Reino Unido) .

https://actualidad.rt.com