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I'm Ryan Caton for NSF and this is your weekly space Traffic report for T Minus Space. Starting off the week, we had a starLink launch on August 30th. Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 9:59 UTC, carrying 24 more Starlink V2 mini satellites to add to the constellation. SpaceX used B1082 for this mission, which flew for the 15th time, after which it touched down successfully on the deck of droneship. Of course I Still Love youe. Over in deep space, the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or juice, flew past Venus. But this flyby got a bit more dicey than expected as ESA lost contact with the spacecraft just a few weeks earlier. These flybys require some prec manoeuvring, so not being able to contact the spacecraft was definitely far from ideal. So what happened? Well, on July 16, the spacecraft didn't contact ESA's ground station in Spain at the planned time. After ruling out ground station issues and failing to reach the spacecraft through other antennas, the engineers confirmed the problem was with the spacecraft itself. Juice is programmed to enter survival mode when multiple things go wrong. But that didn't happen this time. In survival mode, the spacecraft spins slowly, beaming a signal at Earth each hour. But Juice wasn't sending any signals at all. So the engineers expected there might be a problem with the medium gain antenna. There were two possible solutions. Wait for the next automatic reset in 14 days or radio some commands in the general direction of the spacecraft and hope the low gain backup antennas would pick it up. With the Venus flyby coming up soon, Waiting wasn't really an option, so the team resorted to blindly sending commands. After 20 hours and six failed attempts, they finally re established contact with Juice. Fortunately, the spacecraft was in good health, and the engineers determined the problem was caused by a software timing bug that meant the signal amplifier wasn't turned on when it was time to communicate with Earth. So Juice tried to phone home, but its signal was just too weak to be detected from the ground. With communications restored, the spacecraft safely flew by Venus on August 31, passing closest to the planet at 05:28 Universal Time. The environment around Venus is much hotter than the cold and dark space around Jupiter that Juice is designed for, so the spacecraft used its main high gain antenna as a shield to protect its sensitive instruments. Unfortunately, that means means we didn't get any pictures of the flyby. But ESA did confirm that the maneuver successfully helped the spacecraft pick up speed. At roughly 6,000 kilograms, juice is one of the heaviest interplanetary spacecraft ever launched, so it needs all the help it can get. Last year it performed a double flyby of Earth and the Moon. And it will need two more flybys of our home planet in September 2026 and January 2029 to accelerate to the required 11km per second. After that, it will head towards its destination, Jupiter, where it's set to arrive in. Next up, we had another Starlink launch. This one took off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida on August 31 at 11:49 Universal and added 28 more Internet satellites to the Constellation. The booster for this mission was B1077, which ended its 23rd flight by successfully touching down on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. With another month wrapped, it's time for some numbers. Throughout August, we saw 28 orbital launch attempts, half of which were by SpaceX with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. As usual, SpaceX was followed by China, which attempted eight launches. Unfortunately, one of them didn't reach orbit. The Jute 2E launch in August 15 ended in failure. Going into the month of September, we had the launch of an Israeli Shavit 2 on September 2nd. The rocket lifted off at 19:30 UTC from the Pamalchim Air base, launching a synthetic aperture radar surveillance satellite called ofek19. As usual for the country's launches, this one launched westward over the Mediterranean, lofting its payload into a retrograde low Earth orbit. Now back to California for another StarLink mission. On September 3rd at 3:51 Universal Falcon 9 ignited its engines to deliver 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into orbit. This launch used a fresh booster, B1097, which ended its first flight by touching down on the deck of Droneship. Of Course I Still Love youe. Later that day, we had the 200th orbital launch attempt of the year. And guess what it was A Starlink launch from Florida. At 11:56 UTC, Falcon 9 lifted off from the Cape, lofting 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The booster for this flight was B1083, which performed its 14th mission and landed successfully on the deck with a shortfall of grav. Later, on September 3, the International Space Station got a little boost that's not particularly special on its own, as the station regularly gets boosts to maintain its orbit. What was different this time was the spacecraft that boosted the station, a Dragon. The CRS 33 Cargo Dragon, which was launched on August 24, is outfitted with a special boost trunk. This trunk features extra propellant tanks and two Draco engines. Dragon lit these engines on September 3rd at approximately 18:15 UTC, and over the following 5 minutes and 3 seconds, it raised the station's orbit. But wait, didn't Dragon Dr. The station's forward port? Wouldn't that mean it lowers the orbit if it fires from the trunk? Well, yes it would, but the ISS has a trick up its sleeve. In preparation for the manoeuvre, it flipped over 180 degrees to face retrograde, allowing Dragon to fire in the correct direction to raise the orbit. Of course, Dragon isn't the first visiting vehicle to boost the station. Usually a Russian Progress resupply craft gets the job, but in recent years it has also been done by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus, and last year also by another Dragon, though that one used its regular thrusters and didn't have the special trunk. Now, with this Trunk, Dragon has 3 times more reboost capacity compared to Cygnus, and about 1.5 times compared to progress. The CRS33 Dragon is set to stay at the orbital outpost until late December or early January. During that time, it will perform a series of longer burns to maintain the station's altitude. We also had a Chungzhou 3C launch from China. On September 5, the rocket lifted off from the Shichang satellite launch center. No details were announced about the payload at the time of recording. Back in the United States, we had yet another Starlink launch. This mission lifted off on September 5th from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space center and delivered 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. Booster B1069 flew this mission on its 27th flight, which became the fourth booster to fly this many times. It ended the flight by successfully landing on Just read the instructions. The successful landing also marked SpaceX's 500th successful recovery since the first successful landing on Falcon 9's 20th mission in December 2015. With the five Starlink missions this week, SpaceX landed a total of 1 satellites to the Constellation, bringing the number of Starlink satellites launched to 9,660. Of those, 1,288 have re entered and 7,551 are currently in their operational orbits, closing out the week as Ceres 1 from Galactic Energy launched from China. The rocket lifted off from zhou Chen on September 5, just like the previous launch from China. We don't know anything about the payload at the moment, but more details may be released later, so keep an eye on the next spaceflight app. Next week, Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch three times from California. We'll have a Starlink launch and a mission for the US Space Force's Space Development Agency from Florida. Falcon 9 is set to launch an Indonesian communications satellite into geostationary transfer orbit. There's also a launch from China on the manifest As a Zheangjiang 6A is expected to fly from the Taiyan Satellite launch center on September 11th. The Progress MS.32 resupply mission is set to lift off from Kazakhstan to prepare for the spacecraft's arrival on the 13th. The Progress MS.30 craft is set to undock from the ISS2 on September 9th. Finally, we'll also have a total lunar eclipse on September 7th as the Moon passes through Earth's shadow. The full eclipse will be visible over most of Asia and parts of Australia and East Africa. If you're in Europe or most of Africa, you might be able to see a partial eclipse during the moonrise, and if you're west of the Pacific, you might catch it during moonset. Our American viewers will unfortunately have to miss out, as this lunar eclipse won't be visible from that continent. You did get a total solar eclipse last year, though. Anyways, I've been Ryan Cayton for nsf, and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T minus Space.
