Alicia Siegel (9:19)
I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T Minus Space. This week was another very busy one. Let's begin in New Zealand with the first of two Electron launches this week. The first mission, called the Lightning God Rains, began on March 15th at midnight UTC from Launch Complex 1B at Rocket Lab's own launch site in New Zealand. The mission was carrying the ninth QPS SAR satellite for IQPS into low Earth orbit. The satellite, fitted with a large but lightweight deployable antenna, can perform high resolution synthetic aperture radar observations of the Earth. From New Zealand, we'll go next to China with a Chongjiang 2D rocket. Liftoff took place on March 15 at 4.11 UTC from the South Launch Site 2 at the Zhouchuan Satellite Launch Center. The mission was carrying the second Superview NEO3 satellite into sun synchronous orbit Superview NEO3 satellites are Chinese commercial Earth observation satellites observing in the optical side of the spectrum. Along for the ride was also the Tianyan 23 satellite, another small Earth observation satellite in the optical range. A few hours later we had a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg with SpaceX's Transporter 13 mission. Liftoff took place on March 15 at 6:43 UTC from Space Launch Complex 4 East. Falcon 9 was carrying 74 different payloads into Sun Synchronous Orbit. Transporter 13 is SpaceX's latest launch as part of its smallsat rideshare program, the 15th overall and the 13th of the transporter type missions. Some of the notable payloads include Varda's third Winnebago spacecraft built by Rocket Lab, which launched just a few weeks after the return of the previous Winnebago 2 spacecraft that launched on the last transporter mission. There are also multiple Earth observation satellites, including Albedo Space's Clarity 1, a small satellite built to orbit the Earth at very low altitudes to capture images of the ground in high detail. On this mission there was also an orbital tug from deorbit called ION SCV017 Marvelous Matthias, which carried several of the payloads flying on this mission that were either hosted on the spacecraft or that will be deployed at a later time. For a full rundown on all payloads onboard Transporter 13, NSF's Danny Lentz wrote an in depth article for our website with an overview. For this mission, SpaceX used booster B1081, which flew for a 13th time. After stage separation, the booster returned back to the launch site at landing zone 4 to be reused on a later flight. Just a few hours later we had another Falcon 9 launch, this time from Florida. Liftoff happened on March 15th at 11:35 UTC, carrying a batch of Starlink V2 Mini and direct to cell satellites into low Earth orbit. This launch broke the record for shortest pad turnaround time by SpaceX, going from 2 days, 15 hours and 53 minutes down to 2 days, 8 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds. So essentially 30 seconds short of 57 hours. This also marked the third launch by SpaceX in 12 and a half hours, a record for the company having launched the Crew 10 mission which we covered in last week's space traffic, this Starlink Launch and the Transporter 13 mission. For this mission, Falcon 9 carried Booster B1078 on its 18th flight and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. This Week we also had an Angara 1.2 rocket from Russia. The mission took off on March 16 at 10:50 UTC from site 35.1 at the Pleisetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. The rocket was carrying three classified payloads for the Russian Ministry of Defense into low Earth orbit. It's believed, however, that these may be Rodnik military communications satellites. Based on the orbits in which the spacecraft were dropped heading back over to China, we had a Series 1 rocket taking off on March 17 at 807 from Site 95A at the Zhouchuan Satellite Launch Center. The mission, called Auld lang Syne, carried eight satellites into Sun Synchronous Orbit. All eight payloads on board were Earth observation satellites, six of them were Yunya 1 satellites and the other two were the Ersat 6 and 7 spacecraft. And as mentioned before, this was a rare week as we had two Electron launches back to back from New Zealand. The second of these missions, called Hi5, March 18 at 1:31 UTC from Launch Complex 1A at Rocket Lab's own spaceport. The mission carried the final batch of five Kanace Internet of Things satellites into a Sun synchronous orbit. This launch marked the shortest time between two orbital launches of the electron rocket, thanks in part to the existence of two separate launch pads at the same spaceport. Stick around though, because there's another one coming up next week. You'll see later this week we also had a return from space with the Crew 9 mission coming to an end. As is traditional, in order for the crew to return from International Space Station, the next one has to already be up there. Now, in case you don't Remember, last week SpaceX launched the Crew 10 mission on March 14th at 2303 UTC. Crew Dragon Endurance, which flew on that mission, docked to the front docking port of the ISS harmony module on March 16 at 4:04 UTC. Onboard were NASA astronauts Anne McLean and Nicole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskoff. The four crew members will now join the crews of Expedition 72 with Crew 10 at the ISS. NASA and SpaceX prepared for an expedited return of Crew 9. Taking advantage of favorable splashdown weather in the days after Crew 10's launch, Crew Dragon Freedom, which flew on the Crew 9 mission, undocked from the zenith port of the harmony module on March 18 at 05:05 UTC. Following a series of separation burns, Freedom and The crew of Crew 9 orbited the Earth for 15 more hours, waiting for the right alignment of their orbit. With the splashdown site, Dragon jettisoned its trunk and started its deorbit burn at around 21:11 UTC. Pulsing its forward Draco thrusters for about seven and a half minutes, the capsule successfully returned back to earth, splashing down at 21:57 UTC in calm blue waters off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida. The four crew members, NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, exited the spacecraft and departed for Houston where they were greeted by friends and co workers. With this mission, haig adds about 171 days to his total time spent in space for a total of nearly 374 days of accumulated time. Gorbunov, who was flying for the first time, now gets to log those 171 days as part of his own space career. For Sunny and Butch, their time is even longer as they went up to the station as part of the crew of Boeing Starliner's crew flight test mission. Both astronauts now add about 286 days to their careers, coming in sixth place in the list of astronauts with the longest single mission stays in space. In total, Sunny and Butch have accumulated a total of 608 days and 464 days in space respectively. With this return, their mission comes to an end, a mission that albeit had a wrench thrown at it early on, resulting in the crew being incorporated into the next crew rotation mission events that we've been covering at NSF for quite a long time. Now that the crew of Crew 10 is on the station, we can look forward to some major upcoming events including the departure of the NG21 Cygnus spacecraft next Friday, March 28th. In April we also have the next Soyuz crew rotation mission with the Soyuz MS.27 scheduled to launch no earlier than April 8, followed by the Soyuz MS.26 spacecraft departing no earlier than April 20. SpaceX is also planning a Dragon cargo resupply mission in April, followed by a private Axiom crew flying to the orbital outpost in late spring. The crew of Crew 10 should remain on station until mid July when the Crew 11 mission will launch to the ISS to repeat the cycle on the next crew rotation mission. Believe it or not, there were even more launches next we had another Falcon 9 launch from Florida. Liftoff took place on March 18th at 19:57 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40. The mission was carrying a batch of Starlink V2 Mini and direct to cell satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1077 was flying for a 19th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of gravitas with the two Starlink launches this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 8131 Starlink satellites into orbit. 1003 of them have now re entered and 6470 are in their operational orbit. We had another Falcon 9 near the end of the week from Vandenberg. The rocket was carrying out the NROL 57 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. The mission was the eighth in support of the NRO's proliferated space architecture constellation, which makes use of SpaceX's Starshield satellites. The number of satellites on this mission is unknown, but it couldn't have been too high as the Falcon 9 booster had enough performance to attempt a return to launch site. Another interest about this booster, B1088 is that it flew last week in support of the launch for NASA's Sphere X and Punch missions. This breaks the record for shortest turnaround time of a Falcon booster at just over nine days between the two missions going into next week, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is set to again come close to the sun, making its 23rd perihelion. This close approach will also be the second since the probe flew by Venus in November, which changed its orbit and brought it the closest ever to our own star. This means that the Parker Solar Probe will once again encounter extremely high temperatures like the ones from the closest approach back on December 24, so NASA expects to get a lot of data out of this next week. We'll also have more Falcon 9 launches, including the launch of the NROL 69 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office from Florida. The 42 minute launch window for this mission is set to open on March 24th at 17:42 UTC. The first stage is expected to make a return to launch site landing, so expect sonic booms if you're in the area. After having to stand down from an earlier launch attempt due to range conflicts, Firefly will again be trying to launch its sixth Alpha flight next week. The mission, called Message in a Booster is currently planned to take place during a 69 minute launch window that opens on March 26th at 13:37 UTC. As mentioned earlier, Rocket Lab has yet another electron launch coming up next week. The mission, called Finding Hot Wildfires near you is set to take place within a 30 minute launch window that opens on March 26th at 15:30 UTC. Next week. We'll also have a Starlink launch from Vandenberg, carrying more Internet satellites into orbit. The four hour launch window for that mission is set to open on March 26th at 22:00 UTC sometime next week. We're also expecting the launch of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket from Andoya in Norway. The company has announced that it has launch approval and the rocket is on the pad and ready for launch. According to hazard notices, there may be daily launch attempts from March 20th all the way to March 30th, with the window opening from 11:30 to 14:30 UTC each day. I'm Alicia Segal for NSF, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T minus Space.
