From: mailto: Jonathan's Space Report

No 820 2023 Jun 1 Somerville, MA

International Space Station

Expedition 69 continues

On May 18 at 1643 UTC the Progress MS-22 cargo ship, docked to Zvezda, fired its engines for 353s and raised the ISS orbit by 1 km

On May 21 SpaceX launched Dragon capsule C212 on mission Axiom Ax-2, carrying Axiom Space astronauts Peggy Whitson and John Shoffner and Saudi Space Commission astronauts Ali Al-Qarni and Rayyanah Barnawi Ax-2 docked with IDA-3 on the ISS at 1312 UTC May 22 The Ax-2 crew undocked at 1505 UTC May 30 and landed near 86 2W 29 7N in the Gulf of Mexico at 0304:24 UTC May 30

On May 24 Roskosmos launched cargo ship Progress MS-23 from Baykonur The ship is factory no 453, on ISS mission 84P It docked with the Poisk module at 1618 UTC May 24, 3h 22 min 34s after launch

Chinese Space Station

Shenzhou 16 was launched on May 30 Crew are commander Jing Haipeng, space flight engineer Zhu Yangzhu, and payload specialist Gui Haichao The launch marked a new record population of 17 humans in orbit Shenzhou 16 docked with the nadir port of Tianhe at 0829 UTC May 30

Starlink

Starlink Group 5-9 (56 satellites) was launched from Canaveral on May 14 Starlink Group 2-10 (52 satellites) was launched from Vandenberg on May 31

Iridium OneWeb

On May 20 SpaceX launched a set of Iridium and OneWeb communications satellites The satellites are on-orbit spares OneWeb SL0721 (JoeySat) carries experimental hardware for next-generation OneWeb satellites

CALT launches

CALT launched a CZ-3B with the Beidou DW56 navigation satellite, also called Beidou-3 GEO-4 It will be an on-orbit spare

CALT launched a CZ-2C on May 21 with the Macao Science Satellite 1A and 1B spacecraft (Aomen Kexue 1A/1B in Chinese) A Wuhan University radar satellite, Luojia-2 01, was also carried on the flight

Nuri

The third flight of South Korea's Nuri rocket successfully reached a sun-sync orbit on May 25 The 180 kg NEXTSAT-2 technology test sat carries an X-band radar and a radiation detector The four 10 kg SNIPE/Doyosaet 6U cubesats from Korea Astronomy and Space Sci Inst have space weather instruments and a gamma-ray-burst detector; however, SNIPE 3 failed to eject from its deployer JAC from Justek Inc is a 3U cubesat from JUSTEK Inc (Pyeongtak) with an Earth observation camera KSAT3U is a 3U cubesat from Kairo Space (Seongnam) with a weather imager The 6U cubesat LUMIR-T1 from LUMIR (Seoul) has a test of a microprocessor board with a radiation-error correction system Orbits are 540 x 550 km x 97 5 deg with 18:00 LTDN orbital plane

XR 1

The XR 1 radar satellite was launched in Jan 2021 on the Transporter 1 mission It was like the Finnish ICEYE satellites but owned by the Michigan-based company R2 Space According to an FCC filing on May 20, ICEYE's US subsidiary, ICEYE US, is now taking over operations of the satellite from R2 Space

Virgin Galactic

On May 25 VG's Spaceship Two made its first spaceflight since 2021 VSS Unity carried six people to an apogee of 87 2 km Aboard were six VG employees: pilot Mike Masucci, copilot CJ Sturckow, chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses, astronaut instructor Luke Mayes, and mission specialists Chris Huie and Jamila Gilbert

The launch marked, briefly, a record population of 20 humans in space simultaneously

TROPICS

The final two TROPICS cubesats from MIT Lincoln Labs were orbited by Rocket Lab Electron from New Zealand on May 26

Kondor-FKA

The Kondor-FKA No 1 S-band radar satellite, built by NPO Mashinostroenie for Roskosmos, was launched on May 26

Badr-8

Arabsat's Badr-8, also called Arabsat 7B, is a 4500 kg Airbus Defense and Space Eurostar-NEO C/Ku-band communications satellite with electric propulsion, launched by SpaceX to supersynchronous transfer orbit on May 27

NVS-01

On May 29 ISRO launched the first of a second generation of NavIC navigation satellites (formerly IRNSS) NVS-01 has a mass of 2232 kg and uses the I2K bus; the GSLV Mk II flight GSLV-F12 placed it in geotransfer orbit

North Korean spy satellite

North Korea made its first attempt to launch a spy satellite on May 30 The Cheonlima-1 rocket first stage flew correctly and fell in the sea 200 km west of Eocheong, but the second stage failed and the rest of the vehicle apparently fell in the same location The spy satellite payload is called Manli-gyeong-1 Cheonlima-1 (also transliterated Chollima-1 in phonetic schemes) appears to be based on the Hwasong-15 first stage

Erratum

The Cygnus NG-18 was deorbited at 0229 UTC Apr 22 and reentered over the Pacific ot 0304 UTC Thanks to C N for the data which I forgot to include last issue

Table of Recent Orbital Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes May 1 0026 Viasat-3 Americas Falcon Heavy Kennedy LC39A Comms 60A 34569 x 34646 x 0 1 Arcturus Comms
G-Space 1 Com/SSA May 4 0240 VKD-57 jettison bundle ISS, LEO Junk 98067VJ 412 x 420 x 51 6 May 4 0731 Starlink Group 5-6 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 61A 297 x 338 x 43 0 May 8 0100 TROPICS SV05 Electron Mahia LC1B Sci 62A 538 x 555 x 32 7 TROPICS SV06 Sci 62B 535 x 553 x 32 7 May 10 Zeus-1 VR-5, LEO Tech 23001DD? 513 x 529 x 97 5 May 10 1322 Tianzhou 6 Chang Zheng 7 Wenchang Cargo 63A 199 x 317 x 41 5 May 10 2009 Starlink Group 2-9 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 64A 221 x 332 x 70 0 May 14 0503 Starlink Group 5-9 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 65A 298 x 336 x 43 0 May 16? LLITED-A VR-6, LEO Tech 23054AU 488 x 509 x 97 4 LLITED-B Tech 23054AT 488 x 509 x 97 4 May 17 0249 Beidou DW56 Chang Zheng 3B Xichang LC3 Nav 66A 198 x 35822 x 28 4 May 17 1800? IRIS-C VR-6, LEO Tech 23054AV 488 x 509 x 97 4 May 18 2219 DISCO-1 VR-6, LEO Tech 23054AW? 488 x 509 x 97 4 May 19 0619 Starlink Group 6-3 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 67A 314 x 321 x 43 0 May 20 1316 Iridium 174 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 68A 613 x 627 x 86 7 Iridium 177
Iridium 178 Iridium 179 Iridium 181 OneWeb SL0561,0668,0676-0684 OneWeb SL0686,0694,0696,0703 OneWeb SL0721 (JoeySat) May 21 0800 Aomen Kexue 1A Chang Zheng 2C Jiuquan Science 69A? 453 x 497 x 41 0 Aomen Kexue 1B Science 69B? 453 x 496 x 41 0 Luojia-2 01 Radar 69C? 453 x 494 x 41 0 May 21 2137 Axiom Ax-2 Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 70A 210 x 302 x 51 7 May 24 1256 Progress MS-23 Soyuz-2-1a Baykonur LC31 Cargo 71A 187 x 224 x 51 6 May 25 0924 NEXTSAT-2 Nuri Naro Tech 72A 540 x 550 x 97 5 Doyosaet 1 Sci/Ast 72 Doyosaet 2 Sci/Ast 72 Doyosaet 3 Sci/Ast 72 Doyosaet 4 Sci/Ast 72 LUMIR-T1 Tech 72 JAC Tech 72 KSAT3U Tech 72 May 26 0346 TROPICS 03 Electron Mahia LC1B Science 73A 538 x 556 x 32 7 TROPICS 07 Science 73B 539 x 555 x 32 7 May 26 2114 Kondor-FKA No 1 Soyuz-2-1a/Fregat Vostochniy PU1S Radar 74A 509 x 512 x 97 4 May 27 0430 Badr 8 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 75A 403 x 61203 x 27 8 May 29 0512 NVS-01 GSLV Mk II Satish Dhawan SLP Nav 76A 208 x 40040 x 19 3 May 30 0131 Shenzhou 16 Chang Zheng 2F Jiuquan Spaceship 77A 189 x 534 x 41 6 May 30 2127 Manligyeong-1 Cheonlima-1 Sohae LC2 Imaging F06 -5700? x 150? x 93? May 31 0602 Starlink Group 2-10 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 78A 222 x 333 x 70 0

Table of Recent Suborbital Launches

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

May 3 1830 SDO EVE Cal 9 Black Brant 9 White Sands Solar EUV 290? White Sands May 22 0500 MAPHEUS 13 IM/IM Kiruna Micrograv 225 ESRANGE May 25? RV Kheibar Unknown, Iran Test 300? Iran? May 25 1623 Unity 25 Spaceship Two Elephant Butte P3 Spaceship 87 Spaceport America

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