From: mailto: Jonathan's Space Report

No 829 2024 Feb 3 Somerville, MA

Note: this issue marks 35 years since the publication of JSR issue no 1

International Space Station

Expedition 70 continues

Cygnus NG-19 was deorbited on Jan 9 The NASA blog says reentry was 1 22pm EDT (1722 UTC) but presumably they mean EST, so 1822 UTC But TLEs suggest actually 1922 UTC for a pass over the S Pacific

Axiom Ax-3 was launched on Jan 18 using Dragon capsule C212 on its third flight The ship carries Lopez-Alegria (341, Axiom, CDR), Villadei (654, Italian Air Force, PLT), Gezeravci (676, Turkish Air Force, MS1) and Wandt (677, European Space Agency, MS2) Ax-3 docked with IDA-2 on ISS at 1042 UTC Jan 20

Progress MS-24 fired its engines on Jan 27 at 1139 UTC to boost the ISS orbit by 1 2 m/s

On Jan 30 the Northrop Grumman Cygnus mission NG-20 cargo ship, the S S Patricia Hilliard Robertson, was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral The Canadarm-2 grappled Cygnus at 0959 UTC Feb 1 and berthed it at the Unity nadir port at 1214 UTC that day

Chinese Space Station

On Jan 7 the Tianzhou-6 cargo ship fired its engines to raise the station orbit with a 4 4m/s burn

Tianzhou-6 undocked from the station (Tianhe module aft port) at 0802 UTC on Jan 12 It was deorbited over the Pacific at 1237 UTC Jan 19 The 12U Dalian-1-Lianli cubesat was deployed from it a day earlier, 0643 UTC Jan 18

On Jan 16 the station used its own propulsion to raise its orbit with a roughly 3m/s burn

The Tianzhou-7 cargo ship was launched on Jan 14 at 1427 UTC and docked with Tianhe at 1746 UTC

Starlink launches

Group 6-35 (23 sats) launched from Canaveral on Jan 7 Group 7-10 (22 sats) launched from Vandenberg on Jan 14 Group 6-37 (23 sats) launched from Canaveral on Jan 15 Group 7-11 (22 sats) launched from Vandenberg on Jan 24 Group 6-38 (23 sats) launched from Kennedy on Jan 29 Group 7-12 (22 sats) launched from Vandenberg on Jan 29

EXPACE launches

CASIC/EXPACE launched four more Tianmu-1 GNSS-RO satellites on a KZ-1A on Jan 5 to 1740 LTDN SSO

Vulcan

The first ULA Vulcan was launched on Jan 8 V-001 used the VC2S model with two GEM-63XL strapons, the Vulcan core with two BE-4 methalox engines, a Centaur V with two RL-10-C-C1 hydrogen/LOX engines, and a standard (S) Vulcan fairing The Centaur made one burn to 493 x 498 km x 30 0 deg parking orbit, a second burn which delivered Astrobotic's Peregrine lander to a translunar trajectory of 490 x 382895 km x 30 1 deg, and then a third burn to send the Centaur itself, with an attached Celestis burial payload, to solar orbit (Peregrine also carried a Celestis capsule)

A propulsion system leak caused an early end to the Peregrine mission, with a landing ruled out Peregrine reentered the Earth's atmosphere over the Vanuatu area at 2059 UTC Jan 18

Bill Gray calculates the ecliptic solar orbit parameters of the Centaur as 0 88 x 1 02 AU x 0 01 deg; C3 was 4 67 km^2/s^2

CALT launches

CALT launched a CZ-2C from Xichang on Jan 9 with the Einstein Probe X-ray astronomy observatory EP has a wide field 'Lobster Eye' X-ray telescope to locate transient sources and a narrow-field Wolter I telescope for following them up in detail

CALT launched a CZ-2C from Xichang on Feb 2 with eleven Geely Constellation 2 satellites to be used to support autonomously-driven cars

Orienspace

Orienspace launched the first Yinli-1 solid fuel launch vehicle from the Dongfeng Hangtiangang
barge on Jan 11, placing three Yunyao-1 satellites in orbit The satellites carried GNSS radio occultation meteorology payloads

EXPACE

EXPACE launched a KZ-1A with the Tianxing-1 02 satellite to low orbit on Jan 11

Qaem-100

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Eslami) launched the third Qaem-100 vehicle on Jan 20 The first Qaem-100 was a suborbital test and the second one an orbital launch failure; this third flight appears fully successful and placed the Soraya (Suraya) satellite in a 750 km orbit The success was announced by the Ministry of Communications and Information Tech, but it is not clear whether the satellite is for imaging or communications

CAS Space

CAS Space launched the third Lijian-1 (Kinetica-1) rocket from Jiuquan on Jan 23, placing five satellites for Minospace in a 1030 LTDN sun-sync orbit The upper stage was not cataloged and was presumably deorbited, possibly west of Chile

Simorgh

On Jan 28 the Iranian Space Agency carried out the first successful orbital flight of the Iranian Space Agency's Simorgh, placing three satellites in elliptical low Earth orbit The satellites' ground track passes over the Khomeini Space Center launch site at 0007 UTC; allowing for the slower velocity of the lower stages actual launch time is a few minutes earlier, perhaps 0004 UTC Bob Christy estimates 0002 UTC, also plausible

The main payload of the Simorgh rocket was the 32 kg Mehda test sat carrying launch vehicle environment monitoring and space component qualification payloads It was built by the Iran Space Research Center

Also on the Simorgh launch were two 3U cubesats from Iran Electronics Industries (Sairan): Hatef 1 with an Internet of Things comms payload and Kaihan 2 which carries an attitude control system and some kind of navigation test payload

This Simorgh variant is reported to be a two stage liquid-propellant vehicle It was the seventh Simorgh launch following a suborbital test and five orbital launch failures The 3rd flight in 2019 was reported to have three stages, so there is some uncertainty about the rocket's configuration on previous flights

Electron 43

Rocket Lab launched an Electron from Mahia on Jan 31 placing four 16U Spire Lemur satellites in a 540 km sun-sync orbit with 1857 local time orbital plane The satellites carry a space surveillance (i e satellite cataloging and tracking) optical imaging payload

SLIM

Japan's SLIM lunar lander technology mission achieved a lunar soft landing near Shioli (13S 25E) on Jan 19 SLIM was launched along with XRISM on H2A-47 from Tanegashima on 2023 Sep 8 The H2A upper stage delivered SLIM to a highly elliptical 341 x 98613 km x 30 3 deg Earth orbit SLIM's own propulsion put it on a translunar trajectory on Sep 30, and it made a lunar flyby on Oct 4 Apogee on Nov 5 was at 1 37 million km from Earth; SLIM then fell back towards the Moon for a `weak capture' in early December and a full lunar orbit insertion on Dec 25 to an elliptical orbit of 682 x 3929 km x 89 8 deg A series of burns on Jan 14, Jan 17 and Jan 19 lowered the orbit to 15 x 600 km The main descent began at 1500 UTC 2024 Jan 19, with touchdown near Shioli at 1519:52 UTC JPL gives the location as 25 2249E, 13 2955S; A Phillips estimates 22 2508E 13 3154S from the released images The tiny LEV-1 and LEV-2 robots were ejected at 1 8m altitude to land on the surface beside SLIM; both returned data

After landing, the solar panels on SLIM were not providing electricity It was able to return some data while the batteries lasted, but fell silent at 1757 UTC (LEV-1 transmitted until 1710 UTC) With improving solar illumination, SLIM started to transmit again on Jan 28, but fell silent again upon lunar nightfall on Jan 31

The main goal of the mission was to test the landing technology and that seems to have been a success; the accuracy achieved will be evaluated in the coming weeks

Table of Recent Orbital Launches

Date UT Name Launch Vehicle Site Mission INTL Catalog Perigee Apogee Incl Notes Jan 1 0340 XPoSAT PSLV-DL Satish Dhawan FLP Astron 01A 638 x 653 x 6 0 POEM-3 Tech 01B 342 x 353 x 9 7 Jan 3 0344 Starlink Group 7-9 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 02 335 x 344 x 53 2 Jan 3 2304 Ovzon-3 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 03A 266 x 47367 x 26 8 Jan 5 1120 Tianmu 1-15 Kuaizhou-1A Jiuquan Meteo 04A 517 x 531 x 97 5 Tianmu 1-16 Meteo 04B 516 x 530 x 97 5 Tianmu 1-17 Meteo 04C 516 x 529 x 97 5 Tianmu 1-18 Meteo 04D 514 x 529 x 97 5 Jan 7 2235 Starlink Group 6-35 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 05 285 x 288 x 43 0 Jan 8 0718 Peregrine Mission 1 Vulcan VC2S Canaveral SLC41 Probe 06A 548 x 393476 x 29 7 Celestis Burial 06B 740 x -184090 x 27 0 Jan 9 0703 Einstein Tanzhen Chang Zheng 2C Xichang Astron 07A 580 x 596 x 29 0 Jan 11 0352 Tianxing-1 02 Kuaizhou-1A Jiuquan Imaging? 08A 290 x 349 x 95 1 Jan 11 0530 Yunyao-1 18 Yinli-1 DFHT, South China Sea Meteo 09A 478 x 498 x 50 0 Yunyao-1 19 Meteo 09B 478 x 498 x 50 0 Yunyao-1 20 Meteo 09C 478 x 498 x 50 0 Jan 12 0444 IGS O8 H-2A Tanegashima Imaging 10A 450?x450? x 97? Jan 14 0859 Starlink Group 7-10 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 11 285 x 294 x 53 2 Jan 15 0152 Starlink Group 6-37 Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Comms 12 283 x 290 x 43 0 Jan 17 1427 Tianzhou-7 Chang Zheng 7 Wenchang LC201 Cargo 13A 376 x 385 x 41 5 Jan 18 0643 Dalian-1 Lianli TZ-6, LEO Tech 23063C 370 x 383 x 41 5 Jan 18 2149 Axiom Ax-3 Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Spaceship 14A 211 x 296 x 51 6 Jan 20 0628 Soraya Qaem-100 Shahroud Comms? 15A 744 x 760 x 64 5 Jan 23 0403 Taijing-1 03 Lijian-1 Jiuquan Imaging 16 524 x 542 x 97 5 Taijing-2 02 Imaging 16 Taijing-2 04 Imaging 16 Taijing-3 02 Imaging 16 Taijing-4 03 Radar 16 Jan 24 0035 Starlink Group 7-11 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 17 285 x 296 x 53 2 Jan 28 0004? Mehda Simorgh Khomeini SC Tech 18A 456 x 1117 x 58 7 Hatef 1 Comms 18B? Kaihan 2 Tech 18C? Jan 29 0110 Starlink Group 6-38 Falcon 9 Kennedy LC39A Comms 19 283 x 291 x 43 0 Jan 29 0557 Starlink Group 7-12 Falcon 9 Vandenberg SLC4E Comms 20 285 x 294 x 53 2 Jan 30 1707 S S Patricia Robertson Falcon 9 Canaveral LC40 Cargo 21A 242 x 251 x 51 7 Jan 31 0634 Lemur / Northstar Skylark 1 Electron Mahia LC1B SpSurv 22A 520 x 540 x 97 5 Feb 2 2337 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 01 xing Chang Zheng 2C Xichang Nav 23A 595 x 605 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 02 xing Nav 23B 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 03 xing Nav 23C 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 04 xing Nav 23D 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 05 xing Nav 23E 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 06 xing Nav 23F 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 07 xing Nav 23G 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 08 xing Nav 23H 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 09 xing Nav 23J 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 10 xing Nav 23K 594 x 607 x 50 0 Geely Xingguo 02 zu 11 xing Nav 23L 594 x 607 x 50 0

Table of Recent Suborbital Launches

Virgin Galactic flight Galactic 06 occurred on Jan 26, carrying two crew (Sturckow, Pecile) and four passengers (Borozdina, Vaughn, Haider, Kornswiet) Drop from White Knight 2 was at 1742:05 UT Apogee 88 8 km Exact landing time not avalable

Dec 19 1642 NS-24 New Shepard West Texas Micrograv 107 West Texas Jan 26 1742 Galactic 06 Spaceship Two Spaceport America Tourist 89 Spaceport America

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