Alicia Siegel (6:45)
I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T Minus Space. Starting off the last week of 2024, we had an Electron rocket launching from Rocket Lab's launch complex in New Zealand. The rocket lifted off on December 21 at 14:17 UTC, carrying another strict satellite for Synspective into a Sun synchronous orbit. The mission, called Owl the Way up, is the sixth out of 16 that Synspective has booked to fly on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket. Synspective's Strix satellites are synthetic Aperture Radar satellites designed to deliver imagery capable of detecting millimeter level changes to the Earth's surface from space. After Electron, we had a Falcon 9 launch from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. Liftoff took place on December 23 at 5:35 UTC, carrying a batch of Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. This batch consisted of eight Starlink V2 mini and 13 Starlink direct to cell satellites. The booster for this mission, B1080, was flying for a 14th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions and While many were preparing for the holidays, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made its closest ever approach to the Sun. 24th at 11:53 UTC, the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft came within 6.1 million kilometers of the sun, swooping by it at about 192 kilometers per second. During that historic pass, it came closer to the sun than any other spacecraft before it and collected large amounts of data about the Sun's corona. The Parker Solar Probe arrived there after seven flybys of Venus, which effectively reduced the spacecraft's distance from the sun on each pass. That last pass, performed in November of last year, brought it to the closest that it will ever get, facing temperatures of up to 980 degrees Celsius. While in this orbit, the Parker Solar Probe will once again come close to The sun on March 22 and on June 19, collecting more data about our star's corona and its dynamics. These, however, will be among the last few close swings that the probe will make around the Sun. The spacecraft has been operating in space for over six years, consuming its fuel to operate its attitude control system, which means that at some point it won't be able to point itself to transmit data to Earth or keep its heat shield facing the sun for protection at close approaches. But NASA has a really interesting plan for when that time comes. Once the Parker solar probe is low on fuel, the agency plans to turn it around, exposing its instruments to the full blast of the sun, and conduct one last data gathering before it melts away and vaporizes around the Sun. Coming back down to Earth, we had a milestone launch out of Kazakhstan. Liftoff of the Soyuz 2.1B happened on December 25 at 7:45 UTC from site 31.6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The rocket was carrying the resource P5 spacecraft into a sun synchronous orbit. The Resource P satellites are a constellation of Russian Earth observation satellites capable of high resolution imagery in multiple wavelengths. This was the fifth of those after the first three launched between 2013 and 2016 malfunctioned in orbit. But this launch wasn't even notable for the payload itself, rather because of the rocket. This was the 2000th launch of any rocket derived from the R7 intercontinental ballistic missile that the so Soviet Union developed in the 1950s. Members of this family were famously named after the first payload that they launched. So they have names like Sputnik, Vostok, Voskhod, Molnia, Luna, and of course the most famous of them, the Soyuz rocket. There were other lesser known ones as well. But if we were to add up all of the launches that they've made, this one was the 2000th launch. In fact, Roscosmos added a sticker to the rocket to make note of this and even made infographics on the launches that make up that 2000 number. It'll be interesting to see whether any other rocket family will ever come close to this number in the near future. Up next we go to China, where unfortunately we had another launch failure, this time with a Kinetica One Rocket liftoff took place on December 27th at 1:03 UTC from Site 130 at the Zhouchuan Satellite Launch Center. The rocket was carrying the Deer 3 research platform and 10 other rideshares into a Sun synchronous orbit. The 11 payloads, however, never made it there. Kaspace, the launch operator of the rocket, confirmed on social media shortly after launch that the Rocke suffered an issue with its third stage, resulting in a launch failure. According to the company, preliminary results show that the third stage lost attitude control three seconds into its burn, triggering the self destruct system the mission was the sixth launch of the Kinetica 1 rocket, the fourth of the year and its first failure overall. The company was aiming to ramp up production and launch cadence of this rocket, targeting eight launches of the Connecticut 1 rocket in 2025 with the goal of debuting a new and larger rocket, the Connecticut 2, also in 2025. But safe to say those plans may now have to change in light of this failure. Coming Back to the US we had two back to back launches of Falcon 9 rockets. The first took place from a foggy Vandenberg in California on December 29th at 1:58 UTC. The mission was carrying a batch of Starlink V2 mini satellites into low earth orbit as part of the Starlink Group 113 mission. The booster for this mission, B1075, was flying for a 16th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Of course, I still Just a few hours later from humid Florida, we got another Falcon 9 launch, and this one had no Starlinks. Liftoff happened on December 29 at 05:00 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40, carrying four Astranis satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The mission, nicknamed From One to Many, was the first dedicated launch of Astranis satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket. These satellites are based on the company's Microgeo satellite bus, which has a mass of roughly 400 kg and dimensions of roughly 1 meter by 1 meter by 1 meter. These are a departure from the typical geosatellite, which is often several tons in mass, the size of a school bus, and needs a rocket like Falcon 9 all by itself. Those kinds of satellites often cover entire continents, or maybe half of one and half of another. But Astranis Microgeo satellite bus is intended for a more localized market and it's tailored for the needs of the region that they're going to cover. The mission name From One to Many, is a reference to the satellite that Astranis already has in orbit, which launched last year as a rideshare on a Falcon Heavy mission. The company hopes to launch many more of these smaller satellites into GEO in the future, therefore going from one to many. The booster for this mission, B1083, was flying for a seventh time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship, a shortfall of gravitas. However, this wasn't the booster originally intended for this mission. During the first launch attempt on December 21, there was an abort at engine ignition, something that happened with booster B1077. The booster was replaced by B1083, which flew in its stead, so the mission could still launch relative quickly. The penultimate launch of the year took place from India with a PSLV rocket lifting off on December 30th at 16:30 UTC. The payload for this launch was Spade X, which stands for Space Docking Experiment, and it was inserted into a low earth orbit. The Spade X payload consists of two nearly identical satellites fitted with rendezvous and docking mechanisms. To test these systems in orbit, one of the satellites, called a chaser, will approach another satellite, the target, and will try to dock to it while in orbit. Once docked, the mission will also aim to perform second test objectives like transfer of power between the spacecraft or joint operations in orbit. This test mission is key for India to be able to rehearse and gain experience with docking spacecraft while in orbit, something that only Russia, the United States and China have been able to do thus far. This type of technology will be important for the country's future ambitions as India is aiming to launch its own space station into orbit by the end of the decade and will need on orbit rendezvous and docking to assemble it in space. Its upcoming human spaceflight capsule, Gaganyan, will also need to rendezvous and dock with that station as well. The country is also targeting a lunar sample return mission, Chandrayaan 4 later this decade, which will need multiple encounters and dockings while in different orbits around the Earth and the Moon. Ultimately, India wants to land its own astronauts on the lunar surface by 2040. So the hope is that all of this new knowledge will help to bolster them towards that goal and to wrap up the year. We had of course, a Starlink. It's always the ones you least expect, right? Liftoff took place on December 31st at 5:39 UTC from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. The mission was carrying 8 Starlink V2 mini and 13 Starlink direct to cell satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage B1078 was flying for a 16th time and it successfully landed on SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. With the Starlink launches this week, the total tally of Starlink satellites launched goes up to 7,632 since the first one back in 2019. Of all of these, 737 have re entered and 6,176 satellites have moved into their operational orbit. That Starlink launch was the 259th and last launch of 2024. This is up from the 221 launches that we had in 2023, all thanks to SpaceX's record breaking cadence. In fact, SpaceX performed so many launches this year that if you add up all of the launches from everyone else in the world, they still don't surpass the number that SpaceX carried out. And they did it despite suffering three mishaps to its Falcon family of rockets one on launch, another at landing, and a third one during second stage disposal. And the amazing thing is that they're aiming for even More launches in 2025 of both Falcon and Starship rockets. Amazingly, unlike last year, no launches have taken place so far in 2025, at least as of the time of recording. That may change soon, though, with the launch of a Falcon 9 carrying the Thoraia 4 NGS satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit from Florida. The four hour launch window is set to open on January 4th at 1:27 UTC. Also next week we may finally see the first launch of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. With its prelaunch static fire test now complete, everything is being readied for that launch. The rocket went horizontal, rolled back into its hangar, and it should have received its Blue Ring Pathfinder payload by now, assuming all went well, of course. Jaclyn, the landing barge for New Glenn, also departed Port Canaveral just yesterday and is on its way to the landing zone located approximately 620km downrange range. Hazard notices are also starting to come out and all point to a potential launch as early as January 6th, within a three hour window that opens at 6:00 UTC. After New Glenn, we'll have, of course, another Falcon 9 launch, this time from Launch Complex 39A, carrying a batch of Starlink satellites into orbit. The four hour launch window is set to open on January 6th at 16:19 UTC. If schedules hold, another Starlink launch could take place from neighboring space launch complex 40. The four hour launch window for that one would also open on January6, but at 16:44 UTC, just 25 minutes after the one from 39A. Next week in Deep Space, we'll also have the sixth and final flyby of Mercury by the BepiColombo spacecraft. This flyby will see the spacecraft pass as close as 345km from the surface of the planet. This will alter its orbit enough to bring it back for another encounter in November of 2026 when the spacecraft will enter orbit around Mercury and begin its science operations. Coming back to Earth we'll have another couple of Falcon 9 launches near the end of the week. The first of those will be a Starlink launch from Florida, which is planned to take place within a four hour launch window that opens on January 9th at 15:55 UTC. The second launch won't be a Starlink, but it'll be kind of like a Starlink. That's because it'll be the launch of the NROL153 mission carrying a batch of star shield satellites for the national reconnaissance office. The one and a half hour launch window is set to open on January 10th at 3.19utc. And another big launch that will take place next week will be of Starship. And I said big in the literal sense because it is of course the biggest rocket in the world. And in fact it's going to be even bigger than it was the last few flights. That's because this will be the first launch of a Block 2 ship, which means that this Starship rocket will be 1.8 meters taller than five of the six previous Starships. This will be the seventh launch of Starship and according to Hazard, no notices for this mission. It appears that It'll be another afternoon one with the launch window opening on January 10th at 22:00 UTC. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF and that's your weekly Space Traffic Report. Now back to T minus space.
