Jonathan's Space Report

No 784 2020 Oct 7 Somerville, MA

[Revised version: Unicode chars in previous version annoyed some mail programs]

International Space Station

Expedition 63 continues with Chris Cassidy (commander) and Anatoliy Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner (flight engineers)

On Oct 3 Northrop Grumman launched the Cygnus NG-14 cargo ship, the S S Kalpana Chawla The Chawla arrived at the ISS on Oct 5 Canadarm-2 grappled it at 0932 UTC and berthed it at Unity nadir at 1201 UTC The Antares second stage rocket reentered on Oct 7

CZ-11 Sea Launch

The second sea-launched Chang Zheng 11 flight took place on Sep 15 from a barge called Debo-3 in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Haiyang It placed nine imaging satellites in orbit for Chuangguang Satellite Technology: six Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B pushbroom imager satellites and three Jilin-1 Gaofen 03C video satellites

Haiyang 2-03

A CZ-4B placed the Haiyang 2-03 oceanographic satellite in orbit on Sep 21 The satellite has a radar altimeter, a scatterometer and a microwave imager

Huanjing Jianzai 2A/2B

Another CZ-4B placed two HJ-2 (Huanjing Jianzai, `Enviroment and Disaster Management') satellites in sun-synchronous orbit on Sep 27 The satellites carry low resolution imagers and hyperspectral instruments

Soyuz rideshare launch

On Sep 28 Roskosmos launched a Soyuz from Plesetsk with a cluster of small satellites The primary payload was a cluster of three 225-kg Gonets-M communications satellites, launched to a 1484 x 1504 km x 82 5 deg orbit Gonets-M are used for low-bandwidth message relay They used to fly on the Rokot launch vehicle but that has now been retired Flying on Soyuz gives a lot of spare capaciity, hence the rideshare The Fregat made a 16 degree plane change and lowered the orbit by 950 km before deploying the cubesats

The small satellites were: ICEYE X6 and X7, X-band radar imager sats from ICEYE/Finland;
SALSAT, an experiment from Tech Univ Berlin (TUB) to monitor global radio emissions;
NetSat 1 to 4, a formation flying experiment from Zentrum fur Telematik e V of Wurzbrug (ZfaT) Antilles and Amidala, the first two Gen1 sats from Toronto's Kepler Communications for IoT data relay (amazingly, I think this is the first time satellites have been named after anything StarWars, although DARPA's R3D2 may have at least been an allusion) LacunaSat-3, another IoT data relay prototype from Lacuna Space of Harwell (Oxfordshire), built by NanoAvionics of Lithuania MeznSat, a 3U cubesat built by students at AURAK (American University of Ras Al-Khaimah) and Khalifa U of Sci and Tech in the UAE, with a greenhouse gas monitoring experiment; Four more so-far-unnamed satellites from SpireGlobal with GNSS-RO meteorology and air/ship tracking payload Yarilo-1 and 2, solar physics cubesats from Bauman MSTU, Moscow Norbi, space weather measurement cubesat from Novosibirsk State University, Dekart (Descartes), a cubesat from MGU (Moscow State U) with space physics and ADS-B payloads

I made a speculative reconstruction of the flight based on the fact that a burn at the descending node of the Gonets deployment orbit allowed me to intersect the cubesat TLEs in both time and space Later, the actual profile became available via ZfT, but I've included my reconstruction here so you can see how well it's possible to do just from the post deployment TLEs (the 1500 km and 540 km circular orbits respectively) Also because I put a lot of effort into it!

Speculative reconstruction: 1120 Launch 1130 Soyuz Blok I orbit : 65? x 212 km x 82 5 deg, 1131 Fregat burn 1: 375 m/s to 191 x 1500 km x 82 5 deg 1210 Blok I reentry over Pacific E of NZ 1220? Fregat burn 2: 330 m/s to 1487 x 1506 km x 82 5 deg 1221? Gonets deploy 1350? Fregat burn 3: 1840 m/s to 535 x 1500 km x 97 7 deg, 75 deg yaw, at descending node 1437? Fregat burn 4: 290 m/s to 535 x 540 km x 97 5 deg 1500? Minisats and Cubesats deployed 1510? Fregat burn 5: 140 m/s to 50? x 540 km x 97 5 deg 1555? Fregat entry over Antarctic?

Actual data: 1120 Launch 1130 Soyuz Blok I orbit : 48 x 191 km x 82 5 deg, 1131-1136 Fregat burn 1: 190 x 1468 km x 82 5 deg 1221-1224 Fregat burn 2: 1487 x 1506 km x 82 5 deg 1304 Gonets deploy 1346-1352 Fregat burn 3: to 578 x 1507 km x 94 2 deg 1441-1443 Fregat burn 4: to 535 x 540 km x 97 5 deg 1446-1452 Minisats and Cubesats deployed Unk Fregat burn 5: to -200 x 582 km x 97 7 deg

I think I did pretty well except for the Fregat deorbit burm, which wasn't constrained by the data

Starlink retirements

SpaceX is retiring the V0 9 constellation of 60 prototype satellites launched in May 2019 As of Oct 7, 39 of the 60 satellites have reentered

This is a new kind of reentry: it's not a normal impulsive deorbit and not a normal orbital decay, but something inbetween The Starlink satellites are, apparently, retired by continuously lowering their orbit with electric propulsion Reentry occurs in a way similar to uncontrolled reentry - eventually the satellite is low enough and the ambient density is high enough that the vehicle heats, breaks up and is destroyed The crucial point here is that the location of the breakup on the Earth is unpredictable and uncontrolled, in contrast to an impulsive deorbit where the rapid elliptical-orbit descent from a relatively high apogee means that reentry location is determined relatively precisely by the orbital parameters These Starlink retirements should perhaps be termed `propulsion-assisted orbital decay' - they are more like normal uncontrolled orbital decay but speeded up by the thrusters

Starlink launch 13

The 13th Starlink launch (the 12th of the V1 0 series) took off from KSC on Oct 6, deploying another 60 satellites The Falcon 9 first stage (B1058, on its third mission) landed on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You The second stage was deorbited southwest of Australia

As of Oct 7, 775 Starlinks have been launched and 728 remain in orbit

Kosmos-2535/2536

Kosmos-2536 returned the the vicinity of Kosmos-2535 on Aug 18 and has remained within 1 km of it for the past month One can't tell from the TLEs whether the two are docked, or just stationkeeping But to stay that close for that long, I suspect they are in fact physically connected, i e docked

Parker Solar Probe

Parker passed through Perhelion 6 at 0916 TDB on 2020 Sep 27, at a record close distance of 0 095 AU to the Sun and a record heliocentric velocity of 129 6 km/s Parker's orbit is 0 095 x 0 817 AU x 3 4 deg

Tianwen-1

On September 11, Tianwen-1 ejected a small camera (like Hayabusa-2's DCAM) to take a picture of the probe It was referred to as a `separate measurement sensor' (fenli celiang chuangan)

ION-SVC

D-Orbit's ION-SVC satellite, launched on Vega VV16 on Sep 3, has begun to deploy the Planet cubesats inside it Three were cataloged as of Oct 3

Vega launch

The number of cataloged objects from the Vega launch does not match the number of satellites aboard reported in the press kit There are two remaining tracked objects without IDs (46284 and 46294) and four satellites remaining to be identified: TTU100, Dido 3, and two of the eight Lemur satellites It is possible that the press kit was in error, or that two of the satellites failed to separate from their deployers (but Arianespace reported that the separations were successful)

Erratum

In the launch table in JSR 783 there were some errors in the names of Starlink satelites launched on Sep 3 I omitted Starlink 1652 and incorrectly included Starlinks 1708 and 1709 which have not been launched yet In JSR 779 and 782, Starlinks 1435 and 1609 should also be omitted Thanks to Steven Pietrobon for pointing out the mistakes

Table of Recent Orbital Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes

Sep 4 0730? Chongfu Shiyong Sh Han Qi Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 63A S46389 331 x 348 x 52 0 Sep 7 0557 Gao Fen 11-02 Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 64A S46396 247 x 694 x 97 3 Sep 11 Separate measurement sensor TW-1, solar orbit Imaging 49 D01044 1 02 x 1 60 AU x 1 05 Sep 12 0320? Astra Test Payload Astra Rocket 3 1 Kodiak LP3B Test F07 F01569 -6378?x 2? x 86 Sep 12 0502 Jilin-1 Gaofen 02C Kuaizhou 1A Jiuquan Imaging F08 F01572 -5000?x 100??x 97 5 Sep 15 0123 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B 01 xing) Chang Zheng 11 Debo-3,Yellow Sea Imaging 65A? S46454 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B 02 xing) Imaging 65B? S46455 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B 03 xing) Imaging 65C? S46456 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B 04 xing) Imaging 65D? S46457 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B 05 xing) Imaging 65E? S46458 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03B 06 xing) Imaging 65F? S46459 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03C 01 xing) Imaging 65G? S46460 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03C 02 xing) Imaging 65H? S46461 538 x 550 x 97 5 Jilin-1 Gaofen 03C 03 xing) Imaging 65J? S46462 538 x 550 x 97 5 Sep 21 0540 Haiyang 2-03 Chang Zheng 4B Jiuquan Imaging 66A S46469 930 x 949 x 66 0 Sep 27 0323 Huanjing Jianzai 02A) Chang Zheng 4B Taiyuan Imaging 67A S46478 600 x 655 x 98 0 Huanjing Jianzai 02B) Imaging 67B S46479 600 x 655 x 98 0 Sep 28 1120 Gonets-M No 27 ) Soyuz-2-1b/Fregat Plesetsk LC43/4 Comms 68A S46486 1487 x 1506 x 82 5 Gonets-M No 28 ) Comms 68B S46487 1487 x 1506 x 82 5 Gonets-M No 29 ) Comms 68C S46488 1487 x 1506 x 82 5 ICEYE-X6 ) Radar 68 ICEYE-X7 ) Radar 68 MeznSat ) Sci 68D S46489 544 x 568 x 97 7 Dekart ) Sci 68 Norbi ) Sci 68J S46494 545 x 568 x 97 8 Yarilo-1 ) Sci 68E S46490 544 x 568 x 97 7 Yarilo-2 ) Sci 68F S46491 544 x 568 x 97 7 NetSat-1 ) Tech 68 NetSat-2 ) Tech 68 NetSat-3 ) Tech 68 NetSat-4 ) Tech 68 SALSAT ) Sigint 68K S46495 546 x 568 x 97 7 Antilles ) Comms 68 Amidala ) Comms 68 LacunaSat-3 ) Comms 68 Lemur-2-Slicers ) Com/Meteo 68Q S46500 552 x 568 x 97 7 Lemur-2-Nichol ) Com/Meteo 68T S46503 553 x 568 x 97 7 Lemur-2-Unnamed ) Com/Meteo 68 Lemur-2-Unnamed ) Com/Meteo 68 Sep 30? Flock 4V-15 ) ION-SVC, LEO Imaging 61BE S46528 516 x 521 x 97 5 Flock 4V-16 ) Imaging 61BD S46527 516 x 521 x 97 5 Oct 2? Flock 4V-17 ION-SVC, LEO Imaging 61BF S46529 516 x 521 x 97 5 Oct 3 0116 S S Kalpana Chawla Antares 230+ MARS Pad 0A Cargo 69A S46530 185 x 238 x 51 6 Oct 6 1129 Starlink 1531 ) Starlink 1644 ) Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Comms 70A S46532 262 x 277 x 53 0 Starlink 1648-1650 ) to S46591 Starlink 1659-1660 ) Starlink 1663-1664 ) Starlink 1668 ) Starlink 1671-1672 ) Starlink 1674-1685 ) Starlink 1687 ) Starlink 1692-1694 ) Starlink 1696-1702 ) Starlink 1705-1706 ) Starlink 1708-1709 ) Starlink 1712 ) Starlink 1714 ) Starlink 1728-1730 ) Starlink 1732-1733 ) Starlink 1735-1737 ) Starlink 1740-1741 ) Starlink 1743-1744 ) Starlink 1746-1749 ) Starlink 1753-1755 )

Table of Recent Suborbital Launches

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

Sep 8 1800 DUST-2 Black Brant IX White Sands Physics 346 White Sands Oct 1 Black Dagger Boosted Zombie Fort Wingate? Target 100? White Sands

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