From: mailto: Jonathan's Space Report

No 815 2023 Jan 16 Somerville, MA

Happy new year! This issue marks the 34th anniversary of the first JSR

International Space Station

Expedition 68 continues

On Jan 6 three cubesats were deployed from the J-SSOD-24 deployer: SuryaSat-1 for Surya U in Indonesia, OPTIMAL-1 for ArkEdge Space of Tokyo, and HSKSAT for Harada Seikei Co of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka province

On Jan 9 at 2205 UTC Dragon CRS-26 undocked from IDA-3; at about 0925 UTC on Jan 11 it jettisoned its trunk section and then fired its deorbit engines for splashdown near 83 9W 28 1N off Tampa, Florida at 1019 UTC The trunk remains in a 200 x 320 km x 51 6 deg orbit

The IROSA FSE used in the recent IROSA installation spacewalks remains attached to the MBS POA attachment point on ISS and will be jettisoned at a later date Its estimated mass is around 500 kg

Soyuz MS-22, damaged by a coolant leak, remains docked to the Rassvet module Roskosmos has decided to launch Soyuz MS-23 crewless to dock with the station automatically, and bring Soyuz MS-22 back to Earth, also crewless This has been done before - Soyuz-34 was launched without a crew in Jun 1979 to replace Soyuz-32, which had exceeded its design life while docked to the Salyut-6 station

Transporter-6

SpaceX launched the Transporter-6 mission on Jan 3 placing over 100 satellites in 0930 LTDN SSO The larger ( 30 to 300 kg ) satellites were: Space tugs ION SCV007 (D-Orbit, Como, Italy) ION SCV008 (D-Orbit, Como, Italy) Orbiter SN1 (Launcher, Los Angeles) Vigoride VR-5 (Momentus, San Jose)
Chimera LEO-1 (EPIC Aerospace, San Francisco) Skykraft carrier (Skykraft, Canberra)

Satellite phone service Lynk Tower 3 and 4 (Lynk, Virginia)

Imaging Newsat-32 (Albania-1) (Satellogic, Uruguay/Argentina) Newsat-33 (Albania-2) Newsat-34 Newsat-35 EOS SAT-1 (EOS Data Analytics, San Francisco)

Radar ICEYE X21, X22, X27 (Iceye, Helsinki)

ADS-B aviation tracking Skykraft 1,2,3 (Skykraft, Canberra) (deploy from Skykraft carrier)

Space and missile tracking? Blackjack 1 to 4? (Space Development Agency, US DoD) (unconfirmed)

Smaller satellites (cubesats) were Planet satellites (3U imaging) Flock 4y-1 to 4y-36 (Dove 2415, 24a1, 242e, 24b0, 24b4, 24af, 2417, 24ab, 24a8, 24c3, 24a7, 24cf, 24c7, 24b5, 24b3, 24c9, 24c2, 24ce, 24a9, 24ca, 24ba, 24c1, 24bc, 24b9, 24b2, 24c4, 24c8, 24b1, 24bb, 24c0, 24be, 24b6, 24bf, 24cc, 24c5, 24d0)

Spire satellites: (AIS, meteo, ADS-B; 3U?) Lemur-2-Disclaimer Lemur-2-Emmaculate (L3C-1) Lemur-2-SteveAlbers (AIS-1) Lemur-2-Fuentetaja-01 (AIS-2) Lemur-2-MMolo (GNSS-3) Lemur-2-PhilAri (INCUBED PRO, ESA/Luxembourg)

Radio spectrum monitoring satellites: 6U KSF3-A,B,C,D from Kleos (Luxembourg) 6U BRO-8 from Unseen Labs (Rennes) 6U Huygens and Birkeland from NLR (Amsterdam)/TNO (Den Haag)/FFI (Oslo)

AIS maritime monitoring: 6U Sternula-1 with VDEs payload from Sternula (Aalborg) 3U Kelpie-1 with AIS from AAC ClydeSpace (Glasgow) for Orbcomm, to eject from ION

IoT data relay 3U Connecta T1 2 from Plan-S (Ankara) 0 25U SpaceBee 156 to 167 from SpaceX Swarm (San Francisco) 3U Astrocast-0401, 0402, 0403, 0404 from Astrocast (Lausanne), to eject from ION 2P MDQSAT-1A 1 and 1A 2, from Innova Space (Buenos Aires), aboard Orbiter SN1

Meteorology 12U RROCI (Orion Space, Boulder, for Space Force)

Space science 3U Tausat3 (Tel Aviv U ) with particle detector, aboard ION

Technology satellites: 6U GAMA Alpha with 8 5m solar sail (GAMA, Paris) 6U Menut from OpenCosmos (Barcelona) with imager and onboard processing 6U STAR VIBE from Scanway (Wroclaw) 3U Guardian-alpha from Orbital Astronautics (Harwell) with electric propulsion test 6U NSLSat-2 from NSLComm (Tel Aviv) with experimental comms antenna 3U Pushan Alpha from Digantara (Bengaluru) with space weather test payload

Hosted experiment platform: 6U SharedSat-2211 (Platform-2) from Endurosat (Sofia)

Test and student satellites: 6U STAR SPHERE 1 from Sony and Tokyo U (Tokyo) with cameras for use by public 6U FUTURA-SM2 from SpaceMind (Imola, Italy), aboard ION 3U FUTURA-SM1 from SpaceMind (Imola, Italy), aboard ION 3U Zeus-1 from Qosmosys (Singapore) (eject from VR-5) 2U PolyITAN-HP-30 from KPI (Kyiv) with heat pipe experiment 2U KuwaitSat-1 from Kuwait University (Kuwait) 1U BDSAT-2 from CEITEC (Brno) 1U PROVES-Yearling from Cal Poly Pomona (Pomona, California), aboard Orbiter SN1 1U Skyline Celestial from Skyline Celetial (San Francisco), aboard Orbiter SN1 1U SSSI cubesat from Stanford Student Space Initiative (Palo Alto), aboard Orbiter SN1

The Falcon 9 second stage was deorbited over the Indian Ocean at about 1721 UTC As of Jan 16, TLEs were available for 30 tracked objects from the launch but none had yet been associated with a specific satellite

OneWeb

The second OneWeb Falcon 9 launched placed 40 more OneWeb satellites in a 600 km inital orbit on Jan 10 The Falcon second stage was deorbited over the Indian Ocean at 0723 UTC

CALT launches

On Jan 8 CALT launched a CZ-7A with the SJ-23 (Shi Jian 23) communications technology satellite to geotransfer orbit The CZ-7A third stage remains in a low-perigee geotransfer orbit SJ-23 may have raised its orbit around Jan 13

On Jan 12 CALT launched a CZ-2C The second stage reached LEO and deployed the Apstar 6E (Yatai 6E) satellite with a new attached orbit transfer stage which will raise its orbit

SAST launches

On Jan 13 SAST launched a CZ-2D carrying a satellite codenamed Yaogan 37 to a 43 deg LEO Yaogan 37 is probably the first of a new series of imaging reconnaissance satellites Two subsatellites, Shiyan 22A and 22B, were also deployed A fourth cataloged object may be the CZ-2D second stage

On Jan 15 SAST launched a CZ-2D carrying a cluster of satellites to 500 km SSO with a 10:21 local time orbital plane:

Qilu-2 and Qilu-3, 189 and 186 kg imaging sats for Shandong Inst of Industrial Tech Luojia-3 01, remote sensing satellite for Wuhan U , mass 245 kg with 0 7m resolution Beiyou-1, spaceborne computing experiment for Beijing University of Posts and Telecoms built by Tianyi Probably around 50 kg? Jin Zijing 6, imaging satellite for Hong Kong Aerospace Tech's Shenzhen subsidiary GHK, mass probably 50 to 100 kg, in collaboration with Shandong IIT, for agricultural monitoring
Tianzhi-2D, spaceborne computing experiment for the CAS Institute of Software, mass 19 kg Jin Zijing 3 and 4, imaging satellites for GHK in collaboration with Jiutian Weixing (Shanghai) Possibly small 10 kg cubesats, but it's unclear Six satellites in the Jilin-1 imaging constellation by Chuangguang Sat Tech - Jilin-1 GF03D34, high res imager with 42 kg mass Jilin-1 MF02A03, MF02A04, MF02A07, small imagers with 18 kg mass Jilin-1 HWA08, HWA07 infrared imaging satellites, possibly 40 kg? The latter two are in collaboration with Yunyao Aerospace and have the alternate names Wofuman and Haihe-1 On this flight it appears that the second stage may have been deorbited

Gushenxing-1

On Jan 9 the Xinghe Dongli (Galactic Energy) company launched its fifth Gushenxing-1 (Ceres-1) rocket All five flights have been successful Y5 placed in orbit the Xiamen Science/tech satellite for Xiamen Tianwei and Xi'an Zhongke Xiguang; the Tianmu-1 01 and 02 GNSS radio occultation meteorology satellites for Xiyong Microelectronics Park, the Tianqi-13 IoT comms satellite for Guodian Gaokeji, and the Nantong Zhongxue Hao imaging satellite (named after Nantong Middle School) for Shanghai Satellite Technology The satellites reached a 500 km SSO with 1123 local time orbital plane The upper stage appears to have been deorbited

LauncherOne

Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl carrier plane took off from Newquay Airport, Cornwall, at 2202:24 UTC Jan 9 and flew out over the Celtic Sea At about 2308:49 UTC the plane dropped LauncherOne vehicle R7 over approximately 11 12W 50 74N The rocket ignited to head southwards towards SSO, but at 2315:24 or so a problem occurred during second stage burn at an altitude of 183 km, and the vehicle fell in the ocean Reentry was at around 2319 UTC north of the Canaries at about 17W 32N and was observed from the Canary Is I estimate an orbit of -4580 x 183 km x 97 5 deg Cosmic Girl landed back at Newquay at 2353 UTC

R7 carried the Amber maritime radio monitoring satellite for Catapult, two Prometheus and two CIRCE cubesats for the UK defense research agency DSTL, the DOVER satellite built by OpenCosmos for the RHEA Group to test signals for a new GNSS augmentation system, the ForgeStar-0 test satellite for Space Forge (Cardiff), the STORK 6 imaging satellite for Poland's SatRev, and the AMAN cubesat built by SatRev for the Omani government and Omani company ETCO

RS1

ABL Space Systems launched the first RS1 orbital launch vehicle from Kodiak on Jan 10 The rocket's engines almost immediately shut down and the vehicle crashed back onto the launch pad

No information is available about how many seconds into the flight the problem occurred and what the maximum altitude reached was However, the fact that it hit the pad suggests of order less than 20 seconds flight and 100 metres altitude

USSF-67

SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy 005 on the US Space Force USSF-67 mission on Jan 15 The upper stage is thought to have delivered the CBAS 2 communications satellite (USA 342) and the LDPE-3A experiment platform to a drift orbit just above geostationary The side boosters landed back at Cape Canaveral and the core stage was discarded in the ocean USSF has cataloged the CBAS, the LDPE, the second stage, and two pieces of debris, all presumably in near-GEO

It isn't clear who built the CBAS (Continuous Broadcast Augmenting Satcom) satellites, or what frequency band they use They are operated by the USSF Space Systems Command

Meanwhile, four satellites have been ejected from the LDPE-2 platform launched to above-GEO last November LINUS-A 1/2 are 12U cubesats which will test proximity operations in near-GEO USA 340 and 341 are secret payloads, possibly using the 100 kg-class ESPASat bus At least for now, no orbital data has been released for any of the four

Erratum

On VA259, it was MTG-I1 inside the adapter and the Galaxy satellites on top, and not the other way around as I wrote in JSR 814

Table of Recent Orbital Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes Dec 16 0617 Shiyan 21 Chang Zheng 11 Xichang LC4 Tech? 172A 474 x 493 x 36 0 Dec 16 1146 SWOT Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Sci 173A 856 x 862 x 77 6 Dec 16 2248 O3b mPOWER 1 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 174A 2778 x 6992 x 9 6 O3b mPOWER 2 Comms 174B 2779 x 6990 x 9 6 Dec 17 2132 Starlink Group 4-37 Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Comms 175 231 x 335 x 53 2 Dec 18 0130? Xi Wang 4 CSS, LEO Comms 21035C 386 x 391 x 41 5 Dec 21 0147 Pleiades Neo 5 Vega-C CSG ZLV Imaging F06 -5800 x 110 x 97,8 Pleiades Neo 6 Imaging F06 -5800 x 110 x 97,8 Dec 27 0737 Gao Fen 11-04 Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 176A 245 x 697 x 97 3 Dec 28 0534 Starlink Group 5-1 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 177A 212 x 335 x 43 0 Dec 29 0443 Shiyan 10-02 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang LC2 Sci? 178A 188 x 40096 x 51 0 Dec 29 1205 TJREVERB NRCSD-24/ISS, LEO Edu 98067UV 411 x 418 x 51 6 DANTESAT Tech 98067UU 403 x 405 x 51 6 Dec 29 1215 MARIO NRCSD-24/ISS, LEO Tech 98067UQ 411 x 415 x 51 6 NUTSAT Tech 98067UR 411 x 415 x 51 6 Dec 29 1345 LORIS NRCSD-24/ISS, LEO Imaging 98067US 411 x 416 x 51 6 ORCASAT Tech 98067UT 411 x 416 x 51 6 Dec 29 1355 SPORT NRCSD-24/ISS, LEO Tech 98067UW 413 x 417 x 51 6 PetitSat Sci 98067UX 413 x 417 x 51 6 Dec 30 0738 EROS C3 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Imaging 179A 484 x 502 x 139 4 Jan 3 1456 Transporter-6 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Tug 01A 517 x 537 x 9 7 5 ION SCV007 Tug 01
ION SCV008 Tug 01
Orbiter SN1 Tug 01
Vigoride VR-5 Tug 01
CHIMERA LEO 1 Tug 01
Skykraft 1 Carrier Tug 01
EOS SAT-1 Imaging 01 ICEYE X21 Radar 01 ICEYE X22 Radar 01 ICEYE X27 Radar 01 Umbra-04 Radar 01 Umbra-05 Radar 01 Albania-1 Imaging 01 Albania-2 Imaging 01 Newsat-34 Imaging 01 Newsat-35 Imaging 01 Lynk Tower 3 Comms 01 Lynk Tower 4 Comms 01 YAM-5 Tech 01 Flock 4y-1 Imaging 01 to Flock 4y-36 Imaging 01 KuwaitSat-1 Tech 01 BDSAT-2 Tech 01 SharedSat-2211 Tech 01 LEMUR 2 Emmaculate Comms 01 LEMUR 2 Fuentetaja-01 Comms 01 LEMUR 2 Disclaimer Comms 01 LEMUR 2 SteveAlbers Comms 01 LEMUR 2 MMolo Comms 01 LEMUR 2 PhilAri Sci 01 KSF3A Sigint 01 KSF3B Sigint 01 KSF3C Sigint 01 KSF3D Sigint 01 BRO-8 Sigint 01 GAMA Alpha Tech 01 Menut Tech 01 Birkeland Sigint 01 Huygens Sigint 01 RROCI Meteo 01 PolyITAN-HP-30 Tech 01 Guardian-alpha Tech 01 Sony Sphere-1 Imaging 01 Sternula-1 Comms 01 NSLSat-2 Comms 01 SpaceBEE 156 to 167 Comms 01 Jan 6 0802 SuryaSat-1 JSSOD-24/ISS, LEO Tech 98067 411 x 418 x 51 6 Jan 6 0900 OPTIMAL-1 JSSOD-24/ISS, LEO Tech 98067 Jan 6 0932 HSKSAT JSSOD-24/ISS, LEO Tech 98067 Jan 8 2200 Shi Jian 23 Chang Zheng 7A Wenchang Comms 02A 209 x 35793 x 16 4 Jan 9 0504 Keji-1 Gushenxing-1 Jiuquan Sci 03 494 x 510 x 97 3 Tianmu-1 01 Met-RO 03 Tianmu-1 02 Met-RO 03 Tianqi-17 Comms 03 Nantong Zhongxue Imaging 03 Jan 9 2308 Amber LauncherOne B747, Celtic Sea F01 -4580 x 183 x 97 5 Prometheus 2-1 Prometheus 2-2 CIRCE 1 CIRCE 2 DOVER ForgeStar-0 AMAN STORK 6 Jan ? USA 340 LDPE-2, GEO Drift Tech? 22-144E USA 341 LDPE-2, GEO Drift Tech? 22-144F Jan 10 0450 OneWeb L16 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 04 584 x 601 x 86 5 Jan 10 2327 Varisat 1A RS-1 Kodiak LP3C Comms F02 -6378 x 0 x 97 Varisat 1B Jan 12 1810 Apstar 6E Chang Zheng 2C Xichang Comms 05 228 x 641 x 28 5 Jan 13 0700 Yaogan 37 Chang Zheng 2D Jiuquan ? 06 508 x 522 x 43 2 Shiyan 22A Tech 06 Shiyan 22B Tech 06 Jan ? LINUS-A 1 LDPE-2, GEO Drift Tech 22-144G LINUS-A 2 LDPE-2, GEO Drift Tech 22-144H Jan 15 0314? Qilu-2 Chang Zheng 2D Taiyuan Imaging 07 488 x 504 x 97 4 Qilu-3 Imaging 07 Luojia-3-01 Tech 07 Jilin-1 GF03D-34 Imaging 07 Jilin-1 MF02A03 Imaging 07 Jilin-1 MF02A04 Imaging 07 Jilin-1 MF02A07 Imaging 07 Haihe-1 Imaging 07 Wofuman Imaging 07 Beiyou-1 Tech 07 Jin Zijing 6 Imaging 07 Jin Zijing 3 Imaging 07 Jin Zijing 4 Imaging 07 Tianzhi-2D Imaging 07 Jan 15 2256 CBAS 2 Falcon Heavy Kennedy LC39A Comms 08A 35199 x 35251 x 0 1 LPDE-3A Tech 08B

Table of Recent Suborbital Launches

Date UT Payload/Flt Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission Apogee/km Target

Dec 15 1215? Agni RV Agni 5 Kalam I Test 800? Indian Ocean Dec 18 0217 Imaging payload Hwasong-7? Sohae Test 550 Sea of Japan Dec 18 0255 Imaging payload? Hwasong-7? Sohae Test 550 Sea of Japan Dec 19 1000? RV Unknown missile Jiuquan Test 200? Korla range? Dec 30 0900? Test payload Hyunmoo TLV Anhueng Test 200? Yellow Sea? Dec 30 2305? RV KN missile Chunghwa Test 100? Sea of Japan Dec 30 2310? RV KN missile Chunghwa Test 100? Sea of Japan Dec 30 2315? RV KN missile Chunghwa Test 100? Sea of Japan

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