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SpaceX fires 60 Starlink internet satellites into orbit, with more set to launch Friday – Spaceflight Now

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A Falcon 9 rocket climbs into a moonlit sky over Cape Canaveral after liftoff at 1:19 a.m. EST (0619 GMT) Thursday. Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

Sixty more SpaceX-owned Starlink internet satellites rocketed through a moonlit winter sky over Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 launcher early Thursday, while another Falcon 9 stood on a different launch pad a few miles away to loft another 60 Starlink payloads Friday.

Nine Merlin 1D engines flashed to life and sent a rumble across Florida’s Space Coast at 1:19 a.m. EST (0619 GMT) Thursday. Hold-down clamps released to allow the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket to climb off pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The Falcon 9’s guidance system steered the rocket northeast from Cape Canaveral to align with planned orbital inclination of the Starlink satellites.

After surpassing the speed of sound, the Falcon 9 soared into the rarefied uppermost layers of the atmosphere and shed its 15-story first stage booster around two-and-a-half minutes into the flight. An upper stage engine ignited to continue accelerating into orbit with the 60 Starlink satellites, while the first stage — designed B1060 in SpaceX’s reusable rocket inventory — descended to an on-target landing on SpaceX’s drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” nearly 400 miles (630 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

The first stage’s landing punctuated the fifth trip to space and back for this booster, and it broke a record for the fastest turnaround between flights of a SpaceX booster, besting the previous mark of 38 days set last month.

The booster on Thursday’s mission last flew Jan. 7 with the Turksat 5A communications satellite, just 27 days ago.

The Falcon 9’s upper stage reached a preliminary orbit with the 60 Starlink satellites about nine minutes after liftoff Tuesday, then reignited its engine for one second to maneuver into a targeted orbit ranging between 155 miles and 180 miles (250-by-291 kilometers) in altitude.

The 60 Starlink satellites deployed from the rocket a little more than an hour after liftoff, while flying over the Pacific Ocean near New Zealand.

With the fresh broadband relay stations launched Thursday, SpaceX’s Starlink fleet appears to have grown to more 1,000 active satellites, according to data gathered by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks global satellite and launch activity.

In total, the company has launched 1,085 satellites to date, including prototypes and failed spacecraft that are no longer in orbit.

Another 60 Starlink satellites are mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket awaiting liftoff from pad 39A, a few miles north of pad 40 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. That launch has been grounded several days to await better weather conditions in the offshore booster landing zone in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX briefly planned to launch both Falcon 9 rockets less than five hours apart early Thursday, but the company said Wednesday afternoon that the mission from pad 39A would be pushed back until Friday morning at 5:14 a.m. EST (1014 GMT) “to allow additional time for pre-launch checks.”

SpaceX has both of its ocean-going rocket landing platforms, or drone ships, deployed in the Atlantic Ocean for the two Starlink missions.

The two missions will be the 18th and 19th dedicated Falcon 9 flights for the Starlink network, which SpaceX is building out to provide broadband internet services around the world. Thursday’s mission was SpaceX’s fourth Falcon 9 launch of the year, and the 107th Falcon 9 flight overall since 2010.

SpaceX says the Starlink network is providing preliminary low-latency internet service to users in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom through a beta testing program. Commercial service will begin after SpaceX has its initial network of around 1,584 satellites in orbit, including spares.

The quarter-ton Starlink satellites are built by SpaceX technicians and engineers in Redmond, Washington.

The initial block of Starlink satellites, including the 60 launched Thursday, fly in mid-inclination orbits tilted 53 degrees to the equator. The new Starlink satellites will unfurl their solar panels and activate their automated krypton ion thrusters to reach their final operating positions in the network.

Once operational, they will orbit at an altitude of 341 miles, or 550 kilometers, to provide broadband coverage over nearly all of the populated world.

SpaceX plans to launch more Starlink satellites into polar orbit to enable global coverage for maritime and aviation customers, including the U.S. military. The company has regulatory approval to launch around 12,000 Starlink satellites.



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Earth’s Second ‘Moon’ Will Take a Final Lap Before Waving Bye-Bye to Us For Good

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Earth’s second moon will make a close approach to the planet next week before drifting off into space, never to be seen again.

“What second moon,” you ask? Astronomers call it 2020 SO – a small object that dropped into Earth’s orbit about halfway between our planet and the moon in September 2020.

 

Temporary satellites like these are known as minimoons, though calling it a moon is a bit deceptive in this case; in December 2020, NASA researchers learned that the object isn’t a space rock at all, but rather the remains of a 1960s rocket booster involved in the American Surveyor moon missions.

This non-moon minimoon made its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 1 (the day before NASA identified it as the long-lost booster), but it’s coming back for one more victory lap, according to EarthSky.org.

Minimoon 2020 SO will make a final close approach to Earth on Tuesday (Feb. 2) at roughly 140,000 miles (220,000 kilometers) from Earth, or 58 percent of the way between Earth and the moon.

Related: The 15 weirdest galaxies in our universe

The booster will drift away after that, leaving Earth’s orbit entirely by March 2021, according to EarthSky. After that, the former minimoon will be just another object orbiting the sun. The Virtual Telescope Project in Rome will host an online farewell to the object on the night of Feb. 1.

NASA learned that the object has made several close approaches to Earth over the decades, even coming relatively near in 1966 – the year that the agency launched its Surveyor 2 lunar probe on the back of a Centaur rocket booster.

 

That gave scientists their first big clue that 2020 SO was man-made; they confirmed it after comparing the object’s chemical makeup with that of another rocket booster, which has been in orbit since 1971.

Godspeed, minimoon 2020 SO. We built you. We abandoned you. And now, you abandon us.

Related content:

The 12 strangest objects in the universe

9 ideas about black holes that will blow your mind

9 strange excuses for why we haven’t met aliens yet

This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.

 

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Science

NASA may change MRO orbit to support Mars 2020

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WASHINGTON — NASA is considering changing the orbit of one of its oldest Mars spacecraft, a move intended to support the Mars 2020 mission after landing but which could affect both its science and support of other missions.

NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in 2005 with a suite of six science instruments, including a high-resolution camera. The spacecraft has increasingly been used as a communications relay, supporting spacecraft on the surface of Mars.

In 2018, concerned about aging components on the spacecraft, NASA proposed a potential change to the spacecraft’s orbit. MRO is currently in a sun-synchronous orbit that passes over surface at midafternoon. NASA proposed shifting the spacecraft into an orbit with a crossing time later in the day to reduce the amount of time in each orbit the spacecraft is in the planet’s shadow. That would reduce the workload on the spacecraft’s batteries and extend their lives.

At the time, NASA said it would defer a decision until after the landings of the InSight mission in November 2018 and Mars 2020 in February 2021. With Mars 2020 now weeks away from landing, that decision on whether to change MRO’s orbit is coming due.

“Our intent is to make a decision following the landing and initial operations of Mars 2020,” Eric Ianson, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said at a Jan. 27 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG).

While the change in orbit is intended to extend MRO’s life, some Mars scientists are concerned it could disrupt science. The different orbit would make it more difficult to compare new observations with earlier ones. It could also affect MRO’s ability to provide support to other missions, such as the Curiosity rover.

“We want to make sure we fully understand the benefits of staying in the current orbit and adjusting the orbit,” Ianson said. “I think people notionally have an idea about that, but I don’t think we’ve fully examined it and had a really in-depth discussion about it.”

Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, said at the MEPAG meeting that a potential change in the spacecraft’s orbit could have “a few other complications,” such as support for both Curiosity and the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission, now scheduled for launch in 2022 after it missed its mid-2020 launch window.

“We’re going to revisit it” after the Mars 2020 landing, he said, “and do what the real trades are, and make a decision on what the best thing is to do for overall Mars science.”

The communications infrastructure at Mars is a growing concern for scientists and mission planners. NASA has relied on orbiters launched primarily for science missions to serve as relays, including MRO as well as Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, and MAVEN, launched in 2013.

Proposals in recent years for new orbiter missions either devoted to communications or with communications as one of their primary roles have made little progress. The most recent concept, presented at meetings in late 2020, called for a network of three satellites with intersatellite links to provide continuous high-bandwidth communications for spacecraft both on the surface and in orbit. Those spacecraft could be developed in some kind of commercial partnership.

That concept is most closely tied to Mars Ice Mapper, a mission still in early development that will fly a radar mapping payload to look for subsurface ice deposits to support future robotic or human missions. That communications network, NASA officials said, would increase the amount of data that mission could return by a factor of 100.

Both Mars Ice Mapper and the proposed communications network will not launch until later in the decade, if approved. Ianson said a decision on changing MRO’s orbit to support Mars 2020 will be made “in the coming months.”

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Astronomers Have Discovered a Star That Survived Being Swallowed by a Black Hole

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When black holes swallow down massive amounts of matter from the space around them, they’re not exactly subtle about it. They belch out tremendous flares of X-rays, generated by the material heating to intense temperatures as it’s sucked towards the black hole, so bright we can detect them from Earth.

 

This is normal black hole behaviour. What isn’t normal is for those X-ray flares to spew forth with clockwork regularity, a puzzling behaviour reported in 2019 from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy 250 million light-years away. Every nine hours, boom – X-ray flare.

After careful study, astronomer Andrew King of the University of Leicester in the UK identified a potential cause – a dead star that’s endured its brush with a black hole, trapped on a nine-hour, elliptical orbit around it. Every close pass, or periastron, the black hole slurps up more of the star’s material.

“This white dwarf is locked into an elliptical orbit close to the black hole, orbiting every nine hours,” King explained back in April 2020.

“At its closest approach, about 15 times the radius of the black hole’s event horizon, gas is pulled off the star into an accretion disk around the black hole, releasing X-rays, which the two spacecraft are detecting.”

The black hole is the nucleus of a galaxy called GSN 069, and it’s pretty lightweight as far as supermassive black holes go – only 400,000 times the mass of the Sun. Even so, it’s active, surrounded by a hot disc of accretion material, feeding into and growing the black hole.

 

According to King’s model, this black hole was just hanging out, doing its active accretion thing, when a red giant star – the final evolutionary stages of a Sun-like star – happened to wander a little too close.

The black hole promptly divested the star of its outer layers, speeding its evolution into a white dwarf, the dead core that remains once the star has exhausted its nuclear fuel (white dwarfs shine with residual heat, not the fusion processes of living stars).

But rather than continuing on its journey, the white dwarf was captured in orbit around the black hole, and continued to feed into it.

Based on the magnitude of the X-ray flares, and our understanding of the flares that are produced by black hole mass transfer, and the star’s orbit, King was able to constrain the mass of the star, too. He calculated that the white dwarf is around 0.21 times the mass of the Sun.

While on the lighter end of the scale, that’s a pretty standard mass for a white dwarf. And if we assume the star is a white dwarf, we can also infer – based on our understanding of other white dwarfs and stellar evolution – that the star is rich in helium, having long ago run out of hydrogen.

“It’s remarkable to think that the orbit, mass and composition of a tiny star 250 million light years away could be inferred,” King said.

Based on these parameters, he also predicted that the star’s orbit wobbles slightly, like a spinning top losing speed. This wobble should repeat every two days or so, and we may even be able to detect it, if we observe the system for long enough.

 

This could be one mechanism whereby black holes grow more and more massive over time. But we’ll need to study more such systems to confirm it, and they may not be easy to detect.

For one, GSN 069’s black hole is lower mass, which means that the star can travel on a closer orbit. To survive a more massive black hole, a star would have to be on a much larger orbit, which means any periodicity in the feeding would be easier to miss. And if the star were to stray too close, the black hole would destroy it.

But the fact that one has been identified offers hope that it’s not the only such system out there.

“In astronomical terms, this event is only visible to our current telescopes for a short time – about 2,000 years, so unless we were extraordinarily lucky to have caught this one, there may be many more that we are missing elsewhere in the Universe,” King said.

As for the star’s future, well, if nothing else is to change, the star will stay right where it is, orbiting the black hole, and continuing to be slowly stripped for billions of years. This will cause it to grow in size and decrease in density – white dwarfs are only a little bigger than Earth – until it’s down to a planetary mass, maybe even eventually turning into a gas giant.

“It will try hard to get away, but there is no escape,” King said. “The black hole will eat it more and more slowly, but never stop.”

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A version of this article was first published in April 2020.

 

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SpaceX Falcon 9 boosts record 143 satellites into orbit on “rideshare” mission

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket boosted a record 143 small satellites into a polar orbit on Sunday in the company’s first dedicated “rideshare” mission, a response to the growing demand for low-cost access to space by smaller, non-traditional companies and institutions.

The “Transporter 1” mission also served as a reminder of the ongoing debate over what role the government should play regulating the increasingly crowded domain of low-Earth orbit where collisions would create high-speed shrapnel threatening other spacecraft.

“No universally accepted ‘rules of the road’ exist for the safety of space operations, much less a regulatory regime for active risk management and collision avoidance,” NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel wrote in its recently released 2020 annual report.

“As the potential for orbital collisions rises with increasing congestion, it is important to recognize that risks to astronauts, critical national security capabilities and global space commerce are also on the rise.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbs away from Cape Canaveral on Sunday, January 24, 2021, carrying a record 143 small satellites.

William Harwood/CBS News


Running a day late because of bad weather, the Transporter 1 mission began with a ground-shaking roar at 10 a.m. ET as the Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral and arced away on a rare southeasterly trajectory toward a 326-mile-high orbit around Earth’s poles.

After propelling the rocket out of the lower atmosphere, the first stage, making its fifth flight, fell away and flew itself to an on-target landing on an off-shore drone ship southeast of Miami. It was SpaceX’s 73rd successful booster recovery and the 51st at sea.

The 143 satellites atop the second stage were the most ever launched by a single rocket, eclipsing the previous 104-satellite mark set by India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in February 2017.

“Excited about offering low-cost access to orbit for small companies!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted Friday.

SpaceX charges a relatively low $1 million to launch a 440-pound satellite and $5,000 for every 2.2 pounds above that base level. The company says Transporter missions will be carried out every four months or so as required.

Sunday’s flight featured a smorgasbord of CubeSats, nanosats and other small spacecraft provided by multiple companies and institutions.

The manifest included 10 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet relay stations, pushing the total launched to date to 1,025, 48 Planet-built SuperDove Earth-imaging satellites and a wide variety of “smallsats” devoted to commercial applications, technology development, scientific research. and education.

Memorial spaceflight company Celestis sent cremains aloft in small containers representing 114 “participants,” including ashes from the late CBS News Radio correspondent Dave Barrett, a lifelong space enthusiast.

Rideshare flights are a recent commercial innovation giving companies and institutions relatively quick, affordable access to space they might not otherwise be able to secure.

Germany-based Exolaunch helps facilitate small satellite launches and had 30 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 1 mission. This artist’s impression shows multiple deployments using the company’s EXOport launch vehicle adapter.

Exolaunch


But critics worry the rapidly increasing numbers of satellites, in the absence of government regulation and control, will translate into an increased threat of potentially catastrophic collisions.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel called space debris “a major safety issue” and the “dominant contributor to calculations of loss-of crew predictions” for SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner astronaut ferry ships and Lockheed Martin’s Orion deep space capsule.

Space debris also contributes to two of the top three risks faced by the International Space Station.

“The hazard persists and continues to grow exponentially,” the report states. “Space is becoming more congested. For example, CubeSats and other small satellites are being launched with increasing frequency, and several companies are now deploying mega-constellations with hundreds, or even thousands, of satellites.”

U.S. Space Force provides satellite tracking, but it is growing increasingly difficult and there is no regulatory framework governing active risk management and collision avoidance.

“Given the recent increase in non-traditional commercial space operations, including satellite servicing, space tourism and the deployment of large numbers of satellites to provide worldwide internet access, updates to the existing roles and responsibilities may be appropriate,” the ASAP said.

“As things stand today, there are no clear lines of authority for directing coherence among the many entities that operate in space.”



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SpaceX Falcon 9 boosts record 143 satellites into orbit on “rideshare” mission

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket boosted a record 143 small satellites into a polar orbit on Sunday in the company’s first dedicated “rideshare” mission, a response to the growing demand for low-cost access to space by smaller, non-traditional companies and institutions.

The “Transporter 1” mission also served as a reminder of the ongoing debate over what role the government should play regulating the increasingly crowded domain of low-Earth orbit where collisions would create high-speed shrapnel threatening other spacecraft.

“No universally accepted ‘rules of the road’ exist for the safety of space operations, much less a regulatory regime for active risk management and collision avoidance,” NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel wrote in its recently released 2020 annual report.

“As the potential for orbital collisions rises with increasing congestion, it is important to recognize that risks to astronauts, critical national security capabilities and global space commerce are also on the rise.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket climbs away from Cape Canaveral on Sunday, January 24, 2021, carrying a record 143 small satellites.

William Harwood/CBS News


Running a day late because of bad weather, the Transporter 1 mission began with a ground-shaking roar at 10 a.m. ET as the Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral and arced away on a rare southeasterly trajectory toward a 326-mile-high orbit around Earth’s poles.

After propelling the rocket out of the lower atmosphere, the first stage, making its fifth flight, fell away and flew itself to an on-target landing on an off-shore drone ship southeast of Miami. It was SpaceX’s 73rd successful booster recovery and the 51st at sea.

The 143 satellites atop the second stage were the most ever launched by a single rocket, eclipsing the previous 104-satellite mark set by India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in February 2017.

“Excited about offering low-cost access to orbit for small companies!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted Friday.

SpaceX charges a relatively low $1 million to launch a 440-pound satellite and $5,000 for every 2.2 pounds above that base level. The company says Transporter missions will be carried out every four months or so as required.

Sunday’s flight featured a smorgasbord of CubeSats, nanosats and other small spacecraft provided by multiple companies and institutions.

The manifest included 10 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet relay stations, pushing the total launched to date to 1,025, 48 Planet-built SuperDove Earth-imaging satellites and a wide variety of “smallsats” devoted to commercial applications, technology development, scientific research. and education.

Memorial spaceflight company Celestis sent cremains aloft in small containers representing 114 “participants,” including ashes from the late CBS News Radio correspondent Dave Barrett, a lifelong space enthusiast.

Rideshare flights are a recent commercial innovation giving companies and institutions relatively quick, affordable access to space they might not otherwise be able to secure.

Germany-based Exolaunch helps facilitate small satellite launches and had 30 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 1 mission. This artist’s impression shows multiple deployments using the company’s EXOport launch vehicle adapter.

Exolaunch


But critics worry the rapidly increasing numbers of satellites, in the absence of government regulation and control, will translate into an increased threat of potentially catastrophic collisions.

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel called space debris “a major safety issue” and the “dominant contributor to calculations of loss-of crew predictions” for SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner astronaut ferry ships and Lockheed Martin’s Orion deep space capsule.

Space debris also contributes to two of the top three risks faced by the International Space Station.

“The hazard persists and continues to grow exponentially,” the report states. “Space is becoming more congested. For example, CubeSats and other small satellites are being launched with increasing frequency, and several companies are now deploying mega-constellations with hundreds, or even thousands, of satellites.”

U.S. Space Force provides satellite tracking, but it is growing increasingly difficult and there is no regulatory framework governing active risk management and collision avoidance.

“Given the recent increase in non-traditional commercial space operations, including satellite servicing, space tourism and the deployment of large numbers of satellites to provide worldwide internet access, updates to the existing roles and responsibilities may be appropriate,” the ASAP said.

“As things stand today, there are no clear lines of authority for directing coherence among the many entities that operate in space.”



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