Usuario:Rjelves/JSR807
International Space Station
Expedition 67 continues.
Crew-3 (Chari, Marshburn, Maurer, Barron) undocked in Dragon Endurance at 0520 UTC May 5. Dragon splashed down at 0443 UTC May 6 in the Tampa recovery zone in the Gulf of Mexico at about 83.9W 28.1N. With Marshburn's departure, Oleg Artem'ev assumed command of ISS.
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft 2 was launched on orbital flight test mission OFT-2 on May 19. The ULA Atlas V Model N22, serial AV-082, took off from Cape Canaveral at 2254:47 UTC; the Centaur upper stage entered a 73 x 181 km x 51.6 deg orbit at 2306:37 UTC. Starliner separated three minutes later; Centaur reentered at first perigee around 0009 UTC May 20, SW of Australia, while Starliner made a 45s duration orbit insertion burn with its OMACS thrusters at 2325:45 UTC, reaching a 187 x 367 km orbit. The Starliner cabin carries an anthropomorphic test dummy dubbed 'Rosie the Rocketeer' and about 200 kg of cargo. Mass of Starliner was around 13000 kg but the exact launch mass has not been made public.
After a series of tests, and some delays, Starliner docked with ISS IDA-2 at 0028 UTC May 21. It undocked at 1836 UTC May 25; the deorbit burn was made at 2205 UTC followed by service module jettison at 2208 UTC. Starliner landed at White Sands at 2249 UTC the same day. Following the troubled mission of OFT-1, the largely successful flight of OFT-2 marked important and positive progress in the Starliner program. The main problems on this mission were with two failed thrusters, but this did not prevent Starliner completing its main mission objectives.
Chinese Space Station
On May 9 CALT launched the Tianzhou-4 cargo ship from Wenchang. It docked with the aft port of the Tianhe module at 0047 UTC May 10. The CZ-7 second stage reentered over Tunisia on May 25.
Other CALT launches
On Apr 29 CALT launched two high resolution imaging satellites, Siwei 1-01 and 1-02, from Jiuquan.
On Apr 30 China's CALT carried out the third sea launch of a CZ-11 from the Tai Rui barge in the Yellow Sea. Five Jilin-1 imaging satellites were placed in orbit.
On May 20 CALT launched a CZ-2C/YZ-1S to place two Changguang-built communications satellites in orbit, along with a smaller CAST/DFH-Shenzhen communications test satellite.
SAST launches
China's SAST launched a CZ-2D on May 6 [edit: May 5] placing the Jilin-1 Kuanfu-01C satellite in orbit, along with six smaller Jilin-1 Gaofen 03D sats.
Starlink
Starlink Group 4-16, with 53 satellites, was launched on Apr 29. Group 4-17, also with 53 satellites, was orbited on May 6. Group 4-13 was launched from Vandenberg on May 13, Group 4-15 was launched from Canaveral on May 14. Group 4-18 from KSC on May 18.
Angara-1.2
The first Krunichev Angara-1.2 rocket was launched from Plesetsk on Apr 29 at 1955 UTC. It placed small satellite, Kosmos-2555, into low sun-synchronous orbit. The satellite is thought to have been an EMKA-class imaging satellite (although it is possible that it was just a dummy satellite, given the failure to manuever noted below).
The second stage fired from about 1957 to 2000 UTC and reached a marginal orbit of about -40 x 294 km, flying over Vancouver at about 2017 UTC and impacting the Pacific near 132W 13N at 2026 UTC. The low-thrust third stage, called the AM or Agregatniy Modul', made the orbit insertion burn and separated into a 279 x 294 km x 96.5 deg orbit at about 2018 UTC, again near Vancouver. It completed a further one-and-a-half orbits before making a deorbit burn somewhere over W Africa circa 2245 UTC (or possibly as late as circa 2258 UTC over France/UK) to lower perigee into the atmophere for reentry in the North Pacific about 2321 UTC. Despite making multiple orbits, the AM was not cataloged.
Kosmos-2255 had a similar orbit to the Kosmos-2251 satellite (which failed), and was in the same 11:30 local time orbital plane. Like Kosmos-2251, it failed to make any orbital manuevers; Kosmos-2255 reentered on May 18.
Electron 26
Rocket Lab's Electron mission 26 'There and Back Again' was launched on May 2 and placed a cluster of small satellites in orbit. The first stage, descending on a parachute, was briefly captured in mid-air by a helicopter but then released and splashed down to be recovered from the ocean.
- The main passengers on this flight were three E-Space demo satellites. E-Space is planning an extremely (excessively) large internet constellation. Based on the animation shown in the launch webcast, I estimate that each satellite is a box about 0.15 x 0.6 x 0.6m (very roughly) and probably with mass in the 30 to 60 kg range.
- 16 Swarm-US SpaceBEE and 8 Swarm-NZ Spacebee-NZ satellites for IoT data relay were deployed. Each satellite is 0.25U in size and about 0.3 kg.
Other payloads: - BRO-6 for Unseen Labs (France) and AuroraSat 1 for Aurora Propulsion Tech (Finland); - Unicorn-2 for Alba (Scotland); TRSI-2/3 for TRSI (Germany); MyRadar-1 for ACME AtronOmatic (US). - Copia, a payload attached to the Electron kick stage to test an inflatable solar array.
SQX-1
Beijing Interstellar Glory Co (Xingji Rongyao Kongjian Keji YG) launched an Shuang Quxian 1 (Hyperbola-1) rocket on its fourth orbital attempt on May 13. It failed to reach orbit; reports indicate the second stage failed to ignite.
Bars-M
The Russian Defense Ministry launched its third Bars-M mapping satellite on May 19. The satellite was given the cover name Kosmos-2556. The initial orbit was 337 x 556 km x 97.7 deg with a 23:47 local time orbital plane. From May 20 to 23 the orbit was raised to 565 x 578 km.
Transporter-5
SpaceX launched the Transporter-5 rideshare mission at 1835 UTC on May 25 to a 13:10 local time sun-sync orbit. Transporter-5 made two burns to a 520 x 535 km orbit, deployed the payloads, and made a deorbit burn for reentry over the Pacific around 2034 UTC.
Three of the T5 payloads were themselves satellite dispensers:
Momentus Vigoride VR-3, thought to be carrying Orbit-NTNU (Norway)'s 2U SELFIESAT, CareWeather's 1P Veery FS-1 weather sat, and seven Fossa Systems 2P FOSSASAT-2E imaging satellites; Spaceflight Sherpa-AC1, carrying two hosted payloads but no deployables; D-Orbit ION SCV-006, with Aistech's Guardian 1 and Brown U./CNR's SBUDNIC Other T5 payloads are: Comm satellites - Varisat-1C (Varisat, US); Connecta T1.1 (Plan S, Turkey), Spark-2 (OmniSpace, US); Centauri 5 (Fleet, Australia) Imaging satellites - 4 Newsat (Satellogic, Argentina/Uruguay); Urdaneta (Satlantis, Spain); Sejong-1 (Hancom, Korea/Spire) Radar satellites - 5 ICEYE (Finland/US); Umbra 03 (US) Radio spectrum monitoring satellites - Hawk 5A/5B/5C (Hawkeye 360, US) GNSS-RO satellites: Cicero-2 V1/V2 (Geooptics, US) Climate study: GHGSAT C3/C4/C5 (GHG, Canada) Shared/hosted payloads: SharedSat-2141 (Endurosat, Bulgaria); 3 Lemur-2 (Spire, US/UK with Myriota, Australia) Test satellites: Planetum-1 (Planetum, Czechia); SPIN-1 (Spin, Germany); Broncosat (U Cal Pomona, US); Foresail-1 (Aalto, Finland); CPOD-1/2 (Tyvak/NASA Ames); CNCE V4/V5 (US Missile Defence Agency); AMS (MIT-Lincoln Lab, US)