Russia Launches Proton-M with Military Satellite payload

Russia on Sunday successfully launched a Proton-M rocket carrying a satellite into orbit in the first such launch since one of the rockets fell back to Earth soon after liftoff in May.

The Proton-M rocket lifted off on schedule from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:23 am Moscow time (2023 GMT Saturday), carrying a Russian communications satellite, Russia's space agency said in a statement.

"At 09:26 Moscow time (0526 GMT), the satellite separated from the Briz-M upper-stage rocket and reached the set orbit," Roscosmos said.

Russia had suspended launches of Proton-M rockets after one carrying one of the country's most advanced communications satellites failed less than 10 minutes after liftoff on May 16 and burnt up in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The Proton is the workhorse of Russia's space industry, earning tens of millions of dollars a year by launching Western and Asian satellites.

The upgraded M version of the Proton has experienced a string of problems that have threatened Russia's reputation as a reliable and cost-effective alternative to US and European rockets.

This image describes the trajectory of the Luch-M data relay network, a previous Proton launch mission.

Credit: RussianSpaceWeb

Sunday’s payload is a Russian Aerospace Defence Forces' geostationary satellite known as Olimp-K (Luch).

According to a Komersant report, the satellite will serve a dual role: One being electronic intelligence (SIGINT) and the other is providing secure communications for governmental use.

The Luch designation has historically been used for satellites with a data relay role. Therefore, the Olimp-K designation might relate to the ELINT payload while the Luch designation relates to the data relay payload.

The Proton-M was previously grounded in July 2013 when it crashed back to Earth with three Russian-made Glonass navigation satellites.

The Proton-M which lifted off Sunday is making use of a Briz-M fourth stage.

The Briz-M consists of a central propulsion unit with a detachable torus-shaped propellant tank mounted around it.

All four of the Proton’s stages burn unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) fuel, oxidised by dinitrogen tetroxide (N2O4).

This propellant combination is hypergolic, meaning the propellants will spontaneously ignite on contact, however it is also highly toxic which has led to calls for the Proton to be withdrawn from use.

It is expected that the Angara rocket, which is currently undergoing testing, will eventually replace Proton.

SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon spacecraft, successfully launched

The SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon spacecraft loaded with scientific equipment and cargo launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on Sept. 21, 2014.

Image Credit: NASA /Frankie Martin

An eruption of fire and smoke sent a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft skyward laden with 5,000 pounds of scientific equipment and supplies destined for use by the crew of the International Space Station.

"This launch kicks off a very busy time for the space station," said NASA's Sam Scimemi, director of the International Space Station, noting upcoming launches of a Soyuz carrying the next crew of the station and launches of cargo spacecraft within a month.

Lifting off at 1:52:03 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Sept. 21, from Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon etched a yellow and white arc across the sky as it flew on a path roughly paralleling the East Coast of America.

The nine Merlin 1D engines of the first stage shut down as planned about 2 minutes and 41 seconds into flight and the single Merlin engine of the second stage ignited to carry the Dragon the rest of the way into orbit.

Cheers greeted the video from Dragon as the second stage pushed itself away from the orbit-bound spacecraft and a pair of solar array "wings" unfolded to recharge the Dragon's batteries.

"There's nothing like a good launch, it's just fantastic," said Hans Koenigsman, vice president of Mission Assurance for SpaceX. "From what I can tell, everything went perfectly."

Following the launch, the spacecraft starts a two-day chase to catch up with the space station. It is scheduled to complete this pursuit by Tuesday morning.

Once the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft reaches the ISS, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman will reach out with CanadArm-2, the station's robot arm, and maneuver the capsule to latch onto a port of the station.

The station crew later will unload the equipment and supplies inside the Dragon, including a glovebox-sized habitat holding 20 mice that will be used for microgravity research into bone density.

NASA's RapidScat payload

RapidScat's two-part payload is shown in the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

Credit: NASA

NASA's ISS-RapidScat wind-watching scatterometer, which is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station no earlier than Sept. 19, will be the first science payload to be robotically assembled in space since the space station itself.

This image shows the instrument assembly on the left, shrouded in white.

On the right is Rapid-Scat's nadir adapter, a very sophisticated bracket that points the scatterometer toward Earth so that it can record the direction and speed of ocean winds.

The two pieces are stowed in the unpressurized trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Howard Eisen, the ISS-RapidScat project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, said, "Another mission had the idea of a two-piece payload first, but we beat them to the punch."

The RapidScat team designed and built both parts of the science payload in an 18-month-long sprint so as to take advantage of an available berthing space on the space station and a free ride on a resupply mission. The other two-piece payload is still a year and a half from launch.

Each piece of the ISS-RapidScat payload is attached to the space station by a standardized interface called a Flight Releasable Attachment Mechanism, or FRAM.

JPL's Stacey Boland, an engineer on the ISS-RapidScat team, explained, "The space station is almost like a Lego system, and a FRAM is a particular type of Lego block. We had to build on two separate Lego blocks because each block can only hold a certain amount of cargo."

Eisen noted, "We are not only robotically assembled, we are robotically installed." When the Dragon spacecraft reaches the station, a robotic arm will grapple it and bring it to its docking port.

Using a different end effector—a mechanical hand—the arm will first extract the nadir adapter from the trunk and install it on an external site on the Columbus module of the space station.

The arm will then pluck the RapidScat instrument assembly from the trunk and attach it to the nadir adapter, completing the installation. Each of the two operations will take about six hours.

Delta IV rocket blasts off carrying "next generation" GPS satellite

Delta IV rocket blasts off carrying "next generation" satellite

The Delta IV rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a "next-generation" satellite for the U.S. Air Force.

US Air Force's X37B in orbit for more than 469 days

One of the US Air Force's most mysterious projects - an unmanned space-faring plane - has broken its own longevity record by staying in orbit for more than 469 days.

There aren't many details floating around in public regarding the X-37B - a classified project that's seen three launches into space thus far - but a new report by the IDG News Service suggests the plane is being used to test out the Air Force's new space capabilities while also boosting the intelligence community's surveillance capacity.

Launched back in December 2012, the Boeing-designed X-37B has been floating above the Earth ever since.

The plane is only 8.8m long and looks like a smaller cousin to NASA's past space shuttle models, It has been designed with quick turn-around times in mind, so that it can easily be re-launched after landing.

Although few people know exactly what the vehicle is intended for, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told IDG it seems clear one of the big features is the plane's ability to stay in space for extended periods of time.

The US Air Force has two of the Boeing-built robotic vehicles. One of them was launched into space on top of an Atlas 5 rocket on December 11, 2012. It's been up there ever since - but exactly where or why is unknown.

The space plane is able to sustain itself on such a long flight through the solar cells built into its wings which charge internal banks of lithium-ion batteries.

It's only the second time such a craft has been sent into space.

What the reusable space plane carries in its 2.1m by 1.2m cargo bay is classified. So is its mission. So is its course.

This is because it falls under the command of the US Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office - an organisation which, among other things, tests experimental equipment on real operational deployments.

"The Air Force now has a policy of acquiring capabilities rather than missions, so some general somewhere probably thinks it would be spiffy to have a space plane that can launch at short notice," he said.

"It's worthwhile learning lessons from the shuttle and how to do turn-arounds cheaper."

The fact that the project is clouded in secrecy hasn't stopped people from speculating on its goals, however.

Before the X-37B's first launch, officials told the Christian Science Monitor that it would conduct various experiments" involving the transport of "satellite sensors, subsystems, components, and associated technology" into space and back to Earth.

"I believe it's testing some kind of experimental sensor for the National Reconnaissance Office; for example, a hyperspectral imager, or some new kind of signals intelligence package,"McDowell said to IDG.

"The sensor was more successful than expected, so the payload customer asked the X-37 folks to keep the spacecraft in orbit longer."

Russian Rocket launch fails at Kapustin Yar - Weather Satellite payload

A weather rocket launched from Russia's Kapustin Yar launching field crashed in Kazakhstan's western region, according to government reports.

The incident happened early in the morning on March 27, between 1 and 2 a.m., a government source said.

The rocket fell less than one kilometer away from a local village named Shungai with no casualties reported.

According to reports from Kapustin Yar, it was an accident caused by a propulsion system failure, which kept the rocket from reaching its designated destination.

Meanwhile, Kazakhstan's Defense Ministry said it will suspend all Russian missile experiments on leased testing fields in Kazakhstan until the cause of the crash is identified, according to the ministry's website.

"The Ministry of Defense of Kazakhstan has suspended Russia's testing on the leased military grounds in Kazakhstan until the cause of the accident is found," the press office of the Defense Ministry said on Friday.

Kazakhstan's Environmental Regulation and Control Department said soil and air samples will be collected from the crash site to assess the environmental impact.

Kapustin Yar is known to be a launch site for smaller space vehicles. It is also one of Russia's first missile test ranges. During Soviet time a number of intermediate and short range missile projects were tested there.

United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launch carrying NROL-39 payload

A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying the classified NROL-39 payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) lifted off from Space Launch Complex-3 at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on Dec. 5 at 11:14 p.m. PST. 

Designated NROL-39, the mission is in support of national defense.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

A classified U.S. spy payload rocketed into orbit from California on an Atlas 5 launcher Thursday (Dec. 5), joining the nation's eyes and ears in the sky to supply intelligence to the government's national security agencies.

The satellite is owned by the National Reconnaissance Office, but government officials do not disclose the identities of the NRO's spacecraft, only saying the payload will serve national security purposes.

But independent satellite-watchers believe the spacecraft will join the NRO's fleet of spacecraft with radars to penetrate cloaks of clouds and darkness and reveal what adversaries are doing regardless of weather or time of day.

Lynx with Dorsal payload Pod showing ATSA Telescope Payload

Lynx with Dorsal payload Pod showing ATSA Telescope Payload (Lynx Mk. III USA only). 

Credit: XCOR Aerospace

In an old World War II-era hangar here in this blistering-hot town, a passionate group of young aerospace engineers is building a private spaceship called Lynx. 

Developed by XCOR Aerospace, Lynx is the main competitor of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, built by Scaled Composites, also in Mojave.

Commercial flights of the Lynx space plane are expected to commence in 2015, mainly through the Dutch company Space Expedition Corporation.

XCOR's CEO Jeff Greason.

SpaceX Dragon: NASA AMES Space Station Experiments Payload

Two bioscience payloads are scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station Friday, March 1, on the second Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) cargo resupply mission contracted by NASA. 

The experiments, Seedling Growth-1 and the Cell Bio Tech Demo, aim to expand knowledge of how living things respond to the harsh environment of space.

Seedling Growth-1 is the first in a series of joint NASA-European Space Agency (ESA) experiments designed to improve understanding of plant growth in space. The experiment will study how plants adapt to micro- and low-gravity environments.

Researchers hope to determine the ability of vegetation to provide a complete, sustainable, dependable and economical means for human life support in space.

Understanding plant growth also helps on Earth, supporting the development of strategies to optimize light sensing in plants, and modifying plant species to potentially improve crop production, lessen environmental impact and support greater sustainability of agricultural production to benefit human agriculture.

Designed and built at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the unique hardware is mounted to ESA-built experiment containers and is completely self-contained, providing air circulation, water and light for the seeds.

Once on the space station, the experiment containers will be mounted in a centrifuge in ESA's European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) to test the effects of micro- and low-gravity environments on the growth of the seeds.

"The Seedling Growth experiments are an exciting opportunity for international collaboration between NASA and ESA to support critical space flight plant experiments to benefit Earth and Space Life Sciences," said Marianne Steele, project manager for Seedling Growth.

"The data from the experiments will be shared between both NASA and ESA researchers and our team here at Ames is thrilled to be part of this fantastic adventure."

Plant biology experiments on the space station using the EMCS allow scientists to investigate plant growth and the processes within their cells to understand how plant life responds to conditions in space.

The EMCS is a facility in which small organisms can grow in variable gravity conditions using a centrifuge.

Other conditions, such as temperature, atmosphere composition, water supply, illumination and imaging, also are controlled in the facility.

NASA Astronaut Tests SAFER Backpack

Astronaut Mark Lee tests the new backpack called Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), a system designed for use in the event a crew member becomes untethered while conducting an EVA.

The Lidar-In-Space Technology Experiment (LITE) is shown in the foreground. 

The LITE payload employs lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging, a type of optical radar using laser pulses instead of radio waves to study Earth's atmosphere. 

Unprecedented views were obtained of cloud structures, storm systems, dust clouds, pollutants, forest burning, and surface reflectance.

The STS-64 mission marked the first untethered U.S. EVA in 10 years, and was launched on September 9, 1994, aboard the Space Shuttle Orbiter Discovery.

Image Credit: NASA

ESA: Celebrating 10 years of Artemis

Carrying three payloads plus a number of experiments, Artemis (Advanced Relay and Technology Mission Satellite) has been developed to test and operate new telecommunications techniques.

The L-band mobile payload will allow two-way voice and data communications via satellite, between fixed Earth stations and land mobiles - trucks, trains or cars - anywhere in Europe and North Africa.

Artemis carries two payloads for communicating directly between satellites:a laser-optical relay terminal called SILEX, and a double S/Ka-band terminal called SKDR.

Data will be received from low-Earth-orbiting satellites and then transmitted directly to Europe. Artemis was launched the 12 July 2001 from Europe's spaceport in Kourou from an Ariane 5 launcher.

Credits: ESA - J.Huart

Ariane 5 Is Ready: Thales Alenia Space-produced spacecraft: NILESAT 201 and RASCOM-QAF1R

The Ariane 5 for Arianespace's third mission in 2010 is ready to enter the final launch preparation phase, during which this heavy-lift vehicle will receive its dual-satellite payload.

Scheduled for liftoff from the Spaceport on August 4, this Ariane 5 ECA will carry a pair of Thales Alenia Space-produced spacecraft: NILESAT 201 and RASCOM-QAF1R.

Both satellites have been undergoing processing following their June arrival in French Guiana.

The upcoming mission is designated V196, signifying the 196th launch of an Ariane family vehicle. The Ariane 5 for this flight was delivered to Arianespace earlier this month by EADS Astrium, which is the heavy-lift vehicle's industrial prime contractor.

Astrium performed the Ariane 5's build-up in the Spaceport's Launcher Integration Building, and then transferred it to the Final Assembly Building, where it was received by Arianespace.

Riding as the flight's upper passenger for the August 4 mission, NILESAT 201 will be deployed first in the launch sequence - to ultimately be positioned at an orbital slot of 7 degrees West longitude.

The satellite will deliver digital Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV and radio broadcasting - along with high-speed data transmission services - to North Africa and the Middle East at the service of Egyptian satellite operator Nilesat. Utilizing a Spacebus 4000B2 platform, this relay platform is equipped with 24 Ku-band and 4 Ka-band transponders. NILESAT 201 will weigh nearly 3,200 kg. at launch.

NILESAT 201 is to be installed atop the Ariane 5 SYLDA dual-payload dispenser system, positioning it over this mission's lower passenger, RASCOM-QAF1R.