Alicia Siegel (9:24)
I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly space traffic report for T minus Space. This week was a busy one. Starting off with the starLink launch on May 10, Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 19 minutes past midnight UTC, adding 26 Starlink V. Too many satellites to the constellation SpaceX used booster B1081 for this mission and after successfully touching down on the Droneship Of Course I Still Love youe. It's now logged 14 flights. Over on the other coast we had another Starlink mission. Just over six hours later, Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral with 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites on board. The mission was flown by booster B1083, which has some impressive missions to its name, flying crew twice on Crew 8 and Polaris dawn, and launching the IM2 lunar mission in FE. It flew for the 11th time this week and successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of gravitas. Around the time that mission took off, an unusual spacecraft also returned to Earth. Now originally this spacecraft was set to touch down on Venus, but it clearly didn't make it that far. In late March of 1972, the Soviet Union launched the Venera 8 mission, which successfully landed on Venus. Later that year, however, a few days after that launch, another spacecraft was launched from Baikonur, which is believed to have also been destined for Venus. Unfortunately, a failure occurred and it never made it beyond Earth orbit. This spacecraft was later designated as Kosmos 482. Well, it stayed in that orbit for many years, slowly decaying over time, and this week it finally re entered Earth's atmosphere as the spacecraft was designed to survive its descent through Venus extreme atmosphere. The capsule might have even survived re entry, but we just don't know for sure if it did. Determining the exact time and location where the spacecraft re entered proved to be immensely challenging as there are a number of factors that affected way where and how the spacecraft entered the atmosphere. According to Roscosmos, this happened above the Indian Ocean on May 10 at 6,24 UTC, but the European Space Agency estimated it eight minutes earlier, meaning that it would have re entered over Central Asia. But there's also an uncertainty of + or -22 minutes attached to ESA's estimate. So far we haven't seen any reports of people witnessing the reentry, so fortunately the spacecraft most likely came down from far from any populated areas. Next we had a launch from China. A Changjang 6A took off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch center on March 11. Its fairing was loaded with three remote sensing satellites which were delivered into a polar orbit. According to official statements, the purpose of these satellites is to probe the electromagnetic environment. Reportedly, the launch campaign for the Changjung 6A has now been shortened to 14 days, clocking the rocket's turnaround record at 22 days since the previous mission on April 19. A day later a Chongjong 3C launched from Shichong. The rocket lifted off from the SPACeport's Launch Complex 3 on May 12 at 1809 Universal Time. It carried a single satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, which according to official reports is meant to verify multiband high speed satellite communication technology. But that's all we know about this classified satellite. On May 13, we had two more Starlink missions, the first of which also happened to be the 100th orbital launch attempt of the year. It lifted off from Vandenberg at 1:15 UTC. Falcon 9's fairing contained 26 Starlink V2 mini satellites which were delivered into low Earth orbit. The booster on this mission was B1088 and it ended the mission by successfully landing on SpaceX's drone ship Of Course I Still Love youe. B1088 now has six flights under its belt. A few hours later, the next Starlink mission took off from the Kennedy space Center at 5:05 UTC. The mission delivered 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The mission was flown by SpaceX's most experienced booster, B1067, which became the first to fly 28 times just over 28 days after its previous mission. And there's likely more to come as it perfectly executed its 28th landing by touching down on the deck of Just read the instructions. We had another capsule re enter this week, but unlike the Venera probe, this one was actually meant to come back to Earth. We also know exactly where it landed. On May 14th at 2:07 UTC, the capsule of Varda's W3 mission touched down under a parachute at the Kuniba test range in South Australia. This was Varda's third mission which was launched aboard the Transporter 13 mission in March and returned just 11 weeks after the previous mission touched down successfully. The company is developing these capsules specifically to return materials from orbit to enable space based manufacturing. The payload on this mission was an inertial measurement unit or navigation system provided by the U.S. air Force to test if it could withstand the re entry speeds that it was designed for. Back In China, a Chanjong 2D took to the skies above Zhouchuan on May 14. After lifting off at 04:12 Universal Time, the rocket carried 12 satellites into a sun synchronous orbit. The satellites will test on orbit data processing technologies and intersatellite laser links. The ultimate goal of this program is to build a constellation to perform initial data processing for other satellites. Traditionally this would have been done on the ground, but that approach is limited by data link bandwidth with the ground stations. Moving this step to a space bound data processing system makes the process much more efficient. Later that day we had another Starlink mission from Florida with T0 occurring at 16:38 UTC on Falcon 9 lifted off with 28 Starlink V2 minis to add to the Constellation. The booster for this mission was B1090, which flew its fourth mission and successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. A shortfall of gravitas. And now to Australia for an interesting launch that didn't happen. What did happen was actually kind of weird. The front fell off. So what exactly went down in the land down under? Well, Australian rocket company Gilmour Space had planned to launch the maiden flight of its ERIS rocket this week. This would have been the first orbital launch from Australia since the United Kingdom' last Black arrow launch in 1971. Gilmore Space got approval from the Australian space agency on May 13 and the company planned to launch the next day. Then a technical issue in the ground support systems delayed the launch by 24 hours, setting it up for May 15 UTC or May 16 local time. However, ERIS wasn't meant to fly that day. Gilmour performed some final checkouts the night before and during those procedures the rocket's fairing accidentally deployed following an electrical fault. This fairing protects the payload during the first minutes of flight and is only meant to deploy once the rocket has left most of Earth's atmosphere behind. Definitely not on the launch pad. Gilmour has since moved ERIS back to the vehicle assembly building where engineers will fit a new set of fairings and we assume thoroughly check their staging. The company wants to get to the root of the issue before the next launch attempt, which is now delayed by at least a few weeks. And don't worry, despite the fairings failure to protect the payload, Gilmore confirmed on social media that the jar of Vegemite that served as the mission payload had survived the untimely fairing deployment. And wrapping up the week, there was another Starlink mission launching from Vandenberg. Bet you didn't see that one coming this time. Falcon 9 carried a batch of 29 V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit and the mission's booster B1093 successfully ended its second mission on the deck of drone ship. Of Course I Still Love youe. In total, we had six Starlink missions this week and I think that's a record. Including those launched this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 8,664 Starlink satellites, 6,676 are now in their operational orbit and 1,138 have returned back to Earth. Next week is shaping up to be another busy week, with spaceflight events expected all around the world. We'll see two Starlink missions and if the schedule holds, the second of these will mark SpaceX's 15th Starlink flight in a row, following the Bandwagon 3 mission a few weeks ago. Over in New Zealand Rocket Lab is set to launch another radar satellite for IQPs. India is also planning to launch a radar satellite this week on their PSLV rocket. The current schedule also includes three potential launches from China on three different a Changjung 7A from Wencheng, a Kinetica one from Jochuan, and a Series 1S from a ship stationed off the coast in the Yellow Sea. SpaceX's CRS32 cargo mission is also expected to return from the ISS next week. It's currently scheduled to undock from the harmony module on May 22 and will return to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific off the coast of California. But next week's main event might just be a Starship mission. Or so we hope. As you probably know, SpaceX is gearing up for Starship's ninth test flight, having already tested both ship 35 and booster 14, the two vehicles flying on that mission. As of recording, the latest hazard notices show that a launch could happen as soon as May 22, and if so, that launch will happen in the early evening local time around midnight utc. Just this week the FAA confirmed that it had approved the license modifications needed for the rocket's ninth flight flight, but since the previous flight ended in a mishap, it needed a mishap report. Therefore, Starship's ninth flight won't be able to launch until either the FAA closes out that report or makes a return to flight determination ahead of this ninth flight. Both SpaceX and the agency have conducted a short environmental assessment to update airspace closures ahead of launch. These updates come as a result of the failures from flights 7 and 8 which scattered debris over the Caribbean, with some even reaching inhabited areas of Turks and Caicos. According to the assessment, the new aircraft hazard area projected to affect over 175 flights, almost all of them international flights. Document also states that the average expected delay for flights going through that area would be approximately 40 minutes, but it could also be up to two hours. That said, the FAA also agreed that none of these changes would significantly affect the environment, with the highest impact being as a result of a launch anomaly that could scatter debris once again. Diverted flights would also consume more fuel and therefore emit more greenhouse gases, but the scale of this impact would still be minimal. For this reason, the FAA released a Finding of no significant impact or Fonsi stating that the changes to the aircraft hazard area could be integrated into the updated license for Flight 9. So with most of the paperwork out of the way pending either the mishap report being cleared or the return to flight determination being signed, the question is will Starship be ready for flight next week? It's probably worth mentioning that of the paperwork previously mentioned, the FAA said that the Flight 8 Mishap Report wasn't submitted until May 14th and the FONSI for FL wasn't signed until May 15th. So that's cutting it close. As for the hardware, well, ship 35 just completed its minute long static fire Test on Monday, May 12th and it's been in Mega Bay 2 ever since. If SpaceX wants to launch in the coming days, we'll need to see it roll out soon, otherwise that will also be cutting it close. It probably doesn't help that we've also recently seen an engine leaving Mega Bay 2, which could indicate a change of engine on Ship 35 once again. Again, it's all a little bit confusing, but as always we'll try to stay on top of this as the events unfold. Also, as always, you can expect even more updates and more analysis about this and other Starship related events on our next Starbase Update episode. I'm Alicia Siegel for nsf, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T minus Space.
