HISTORIC FIRST LAUNCH OF CHINESE PRIVATE METHANE-FUELED ROCKET ENDS IN FAILURE - Chinese launch company Landspace suffered failure Wednesday in what was the world’s first attempt to achieve orbit with a methane-fueled rocket. The Zhuque-2 methane-liquid oxygen rocket lifted off from newly-constructed facilities at the national Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Dec. 14. Apparent spectator footage posted on Chinese social media showed the rocket ascending into clear skies, trailed by white exhaust. While the first stage is understood to have performed well, separate apparent leaked footage suggests that issues affecting the rocket’s second stage resulted in the failure of the mission. More (Source: SpaceNews - Dec 15)
RUSSIAN ENGINEERS ASSESSING LEAK FROM SOYUZ CREW SPACECRAFT - A Russian Soyuz crew ferry ship docked to the International Space Station spewed particles of an unknown substance, presumably coolant fluid, into space Wednesday night, forcing two Russian cosmonauts to call off a planned spacewalk as engineers on the ground scrambled to determine the source and the effects of the leak. Mission controllers first observed the leak around 7:45 p.m. EST Wednesday (0045 GMT Thursday), according to Rob Navias, a NASA spokesperson providing commentary on NASA TV. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 15)
ARIANE 5 ROCKET LAUNCHES NEW EUROPEAN METEOSAT SATELLITE, TWO INTELSAT COMSATS - A European Ariane 5 rocket fired off a launching stand Tuesday in tropical South America with the vanguard of a modernized series of weather satellites to improve storm forecasts for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and two Intelsat television broadcasting satellites to cover the United States, a heavyweight payload totaling more than 24,000 pounds (about 11 metric tons). After a smooth on-time countdown, the 185-foot-tall (56.4-meter) Ariane 5 lit its hydrogen-fueled, French-built Vulcain 2 engine when the countdown clock struck zero at 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT) Tuesday. After the engine passed an automated health check, the rocket’s twin solid-fueled boosters ignited seven seconds later to propel the launcher off the pad at the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern coast of South America. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Dec 14)
LATEST INTERNATIONAL WATER SATELLITE PACKS AN ENGINEERING PUNCH - et for a Thursday, Dec. 15 launch, the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite promises to provide an extraordinary accounting of water over much of Earth’s surface. Its measurements of fresh water and the ocean will help researchers address some of the most pressing climate questions of our time and help communities prepare for a warming world. Making this possible is a scientific instrument called the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn). Years in development, the instrument has been designed to capture very precise measurements of the height of water in Earth’s freshwater bodies and the ocean. More (Source: NASA - Dec 14)
TINY SATELLITE TESTS AUTONOMY IN SPACE - In May 2022, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Transporter-5 mission into orbit. The mission contained a collection of micro and nanosatellites from both industry and government, including one from MIT Lincoln Laboratory called the Agile MicroSat (AMS). AMS's primary mission is to test automated maneuvering capabilities in the tumultuous very low-Earth orbit (VLEO) environment, starting at 525 kilometers above the surface and lowering down. More (Source: Phys.org - Dec 13)
NEW EUROPEAN SATELLITE WILL BETTER PREDICT VIOLENT STORMS - A new European satellite launches on Tuesday that will greatly enhance forecasting of sudden, violent storms so that we can better prepare for them. An Ariane rocket will lift the Meteosat-12 weather satellite into the sky to watch over the European continent, the Middle East and Africa. It is the first spacecraft in a new, multi-billion-euro observing system. Arguably this year's most important European space launch, it replaces technology now more than 20 years old. More (Source: BBC - Dec 13)
SPACE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY AGAIN DELAYS INAUGURAL SATELLITE LAUNCH - The Space Development Agency’s first major satellite launch, planned for this month after being rescheduled from October, has been delayed again after technical issues arose during testing. An SDA spokesman told C4ISRNET on Dec. 10 that “after careful analysis and input from our performers,” the agency chose to further delay the launch until March. Space News first reported the schedule change, citing a technical issue that arose during testing. York Space Systems, one of the companies building data relay satellites for SDA, discovered a power supply problem that will require a hardware change and additional testing. More (Source: Defense News - Dec 13)
TOKYO STARTUP PLANS TO LAUNCH JAPAN’S 1ST COMMERCIAL SPACE STATION - A Tokyo-based startup is planning to build a commercial space station in what will be the first project of its kind by a Japanese company, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. The move by DigitalBlast, Inc., which aims to launch the station’s first module by 2030, comes at a time when several U.S. companies have already announced their own space station projects. More (Source: Asia News Network - Dec 13)
EUROPE’S NEXT GENERATION OF WEATHER SATELLITES SET FOR LAUNCH - The first of a new generation of European weather satellites is to launch on Tuesday, aiming to provide 50 times more data than is currently possible so that meteorologists can increase the accuracy of their forecasts, particularly of imminent storms. The €4.3bn Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) system will consist of three satellites in geostationary orbit positioned 36,000km above the equator over Africa. They will provide images of Europe every two and a half minutes, including the first comprehensive observations of lightning from space. More (Source: Financial Times - Dec 12)
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