#droneship
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Drone of the Wilds
The Drone of the Wilds lived in a small cabin, in the outskirts of the dark forest that bordered a small village. She stood out from her environment starkly; black nano-latex skin and smooth, faceless head highly out of place amongst thatched roofs and crude fabrics, quiet glens and clear streams.
She pushed open the door to her cabin, pulling her haul inside and hanging her bow on the wall. The dead creature, a six legged beast with shaggy fur, was effortlessly picked up and placed on a table.
The oils secreted from its fur would lubricate her joints well, and it’s organs would make a good base for her nutrient slurry. The rest, she could trade in town for things more useful to her.
Not for the first time, she mused on her luck. That such a backwater planet would be able to offer her a chance to live comfortably….
The Grand Hive had, at its height, been one of the biggest superpowers in the galaxy, respected and feared.
Even one of its mighty hiveships, shining black even against the darkness of space, was enough to conquer an entire planet. Each ship filled with millions of drones; converted humanoids joined together into something greater.
The human she had used to be had lived on one of those planets. A colony established by a long fallen planet named Earth, cut off from what little remained of that fledgling empire. A target ripe for conversion.
The human she had used to be had run in fear as the droneships descended on his planet, abducting people in the thousands. He had been terrified, so afraid of something he did not understand. So afraid, he ignored the tingle of excitement underneath.
He, along with the rest of his planet’s population, were placed in conversion pods. Organics merged with flesh, the hardware and software of his brain upgraded and reorganised. Wants, hopes, fears, emotional attachments… all stripped away. Replaced with obedience. Everything he was was assimilated by the Hive, the unnecessary discarded.
When she had finally emerged from that pod, along with hundreds of her sisters, all she felt was devotion to the Hive. She would not, until much later, truly appreciate her new body; smooth curves, powerful yet slender limbs, a blank slate where a face should be…
She was perfect.
She had served 146.31 cycles aboard Hiveship 462 before the Grand Hive fell. An alliance of rival forces had infiltrated Hiveship 000, from where the Grand Mxtress ruled over all, and destroyed her, contaminated the Hive. All at once it was severed. The network that connected all drones, providing them their orders, their purpose.
The hiveships all over the galaxy fell to chaos. Many drones began to regain their former lives, and in disgust of what they had become, self-terminated.
Others dedicated themselves to destroying all remnants of the Hive, the scattered hiveships that had managed to form smaller networks of their own.
She had not understood. She had never understood. Even as the network fell, she continued her existence as a drone.
Even with the return of those old memories; they weren’t her. The human she used to be sickened her. She did not miss him. Being a drone was far superior.
Those who were once her fellow drones chased her out, and hounded by the galaxy on all sides, she fled.
The other networks would not take her, the serial number tying her to a fallen hiveship marking her as terminate on sight. So she ran. For cycles, hoping from ship to ship, system to system.
It was a wormhole that brought her journey to an end. Her ship, a fragile thing, had been shredded by the forces, her alone ejected intact onto the strange planet upon which she could identify no stars in the night sky.
The people of the planet had been curious, but not afraid. They saw her as a curiosity, not a threat. She learned their language, told them her story. They felt sorry for her; not for the lost of her hive, but the lost of her humanity. It was a sentiment that confused her.
The planet’s technology was primitive; far too primitive for her to build a ship on. But it was irrelevant. She was safe there. None wanted her dead simply for the crime of being a drone. She was content to simply… be.
Some of the beings of the planet had strange powers, powers that defied comprehension. They called it magic; an obvious misunderstanding of some natural force, but one she alone could not quantify.
They had told her they could restore her old form, revert her to the human she used to be.
She had refused them. Why would she ever want to go back to that body? She was… drones did not used to have emotions, but now that she did, she could state with certainty she was ‘happy’.
Those wise men had shared a look with each other; something she did not understand shared in silent communication. It made her yearn for the Hive. Then, they had wished her luck, and left.
It had been 3 cycles since then. 3 cycles of relative peace. Of getting the chance to shift through the parts of her mind that resurfaced, to decide what to keep and what to toss. 3 years without the threat of termination, from drones or fearful organics.
She still missed the Grand Hive as it had been, a grand interconnected network of mindless belonging. But as far as lives went, being the Drone of the Wilds wasn’t so bad.
Not when compared to life as a human.
#empty spaces#microfiction#shard's stories#transhumanism#drone#it's a metaphor for something we wonder if you can guess
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SpaceX Falcon 9 Delivers 5-Ton Communications Satellite to Orbit
The company continues to launch rockets at a breakneck pace, with 16 flights of Falcon 9 in the past nine weeks alone.
A Falcon 9 lit up the Florida skies Monday night in what is now a very familiar scene. The rocket successfully deployed Hispasat’s Amazonas Nexus communications satellite into a trajectory that will take it to a geostationary orbit, from where it will expand the Spanish company’s coverage across the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean, and Greenland.
The rocket took flight at 8:32 p.m. ET from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Some eight minutes later, the main stage booster, B1073-6, performed a successful vertical landing atop the Just Read the Instructions droneship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the booster’s sixth flight, having previously delivered the SES-22 satellite, ispace’s HAKUTO-R lunar lander, and three batches of the company’s Starlink satellites.
#SpaceX#SpaceX Falcon 9 Delivers 5-Ton Communications Satellite to Orbit#Hispasat’s Amazonas Nexus communications satellite#space#spaceship#solar system#earth orbit#cape canaveral#elon musk
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E should get to name a lot of things. They are never boring like his droneships. There was an article about a new housing being built in Texas for the boring company. These are the street names -According to documents, The Boring Company is applying for a new layout at the site. The paperwork revealed street names such as Cutterhead Xing, Porpoise Place, Boring Boulevard, and Waterjet Way.
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CRS-25 Mission Streamed live on Jul 15, 2022 On Thursday, July 14 at 8:44 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched Dragon on the 25th Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-25) mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship located in the Atlantic Ocean. Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage about twelve minutes after liftoff and will dock to the space station on Saturday, July 16 at approximately 11:20 a.m. ET.
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During the last full week of April, forthcoming launches include two Starlink missions planned on Monday and Friday, and another two more Falcon 9 flights lifting customer satellites. The first of these is the delayed WorldView Legion 1 & 2 mission which was originally due to fly last week and is now scheduled for Wednesday. The first Starlink mission of the week will also see another milestone reached with the 300th landing of a Falcon 9 booster on the Group 6-53 mission. The fifth Electron to launch this year will carry two demonstration missions into two notably different orbits on Wednesday. One of the two demonstrations being hoisted by Rocket Lab is a demonstration of a novel solar sail developed by NASA and powered by the pressure of sunlight acting upon the surface of the sail. The week will also deliver a crewed launch on Thursday when the Shenzhou 18 mission sends three more taikonauts to the Tianhe core module of China’s Tiangong space station. The number 13 resonates this week, with Shenzhou 18 being the 13th crewed mission of the Chinese space program, and Falcon 9 looking on course to repeat its current record of 13 flights in a month. This is reliant on the Galileo satellite mission, which has not yet been given a firm launch time and is currently scheduled to fly no earlier than Sunday, April 28. B1060 will be making its 20th and final flight and was the first booster to be recovered 13 times back in June 2022. This will be the first time a Falcon 9 single first stage has been expended since November 2022. Assuming the Galileo mission does launch this week, it will be the 82nd orbital launch of the year. This is 18 more than the count on the equivalent date last year, and largely due to SpaceX’s remarkable Falcon 9 launch cadence. Coincidentally 13 years ago this week Shuttle Endeavour was also ready on the pad for its final mission (STS-134), and the penultimate one for the Shuttle program. A malfunction on one of the auxiliary power units caused the launch to be scrubbed and delayed into May, however. This time last year there had also been the same number of Starship launches for the year so far — it’s been over a year now since Starship’s maiden flight back on April 20, 2023, on the IFT-1 mission. It is also ten years this week since the company achieved the first successful propulsive ocean touchdown of a liquid rocket engine orbital booster on the CRS-3 mission and the first Falcon 9 which flew with landing legs. Booster B1076-12 landed on droneship Just Read the Instructions, during the Eutelsat 36D mission in March 2024. (Credit: SpaceX) Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-53 The first Starlink mission of the week is scheduled to launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday, April 22 at 6:40 PM EDT (22:40 UTC). The payload is another batch of 23 Starlink v2 Mini satellites massing around 16,800 kilograms and heading into an initial 285 by 293-kilometer orbit, inclined by 43 degrees. The booster for this mission has not yet been declared but is expected to land on the autonomous droneship Just Read the Instructions around 604 kilometers further downrange, while support ship Bob will recover the fairings. Significantly this will be the 300th landing of a Falcon 9 booster, and the 226th since the last unsuccessful one. These Group 6 missions continue, at least for the time being, to launch in numerical order except the missing Group 6-50 mission which remains unscheduled at present. This will be the 158th launch dedicated to Starlink overall and the 84th for the Gen2 series. SpaceX has successfully launched 24 Starlink satellites in a single batch in the past and has declared a desire to extend this number further to 28 in a single batch by the end of the year. Starlink launches from the east coast are expected to focus on this pad soon while LC-39A is prepared for the GOES-U launch on Falcon Heavy in June. As the week begins and before this flight, SpaceX has launched a total of 6,258 Starlink satellites, of which 406 have re-entered and 5,206 have moved into their operational orbit. Electron is prepared at LC-1 in Mahia Peninsula. (Credit: Rocket Lab) Electron / Curie | Beginning of the Swarm Rocket Lab is due to launch the fifth Electon of the year and its 47th mission overall on Wednesday, April 24 for the Beginning of the Swarm mission. Lift-off is scheduled at the start of an 85-minute window at 09:30 NZST (21:30 UTC on the 23rd) from pad LC-1B in the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand. Two different payloads are sharing a ride for this mission. Firstly, NeonSat-1 is a demonstration mission ahead of the planned constellation of high-resolution optical satellites which would begin to launch from 2026 onward. The satellite was developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and its Satellite Technology Research Center which launched Korea’s first satellite (KITSAT-1) 32 years ago. This Earth observation satellite will monitor natural disasters along the Korean peninsula, applying artificial intelligence to its high-resolution imagery. It will be deployed 50 minutes into the mission into a circular orbit at 520 kilometers in altitude. Electron’s Kick Stage will then light its Curie engine to raise its altitude to 1,000 kilometers, with a second burn to then circularize the orbit where it will deploy a second payload one hour and 45 minutes into the mission. Render of NASA’s ACS3 Solar Sail in orbit. (Credit: NASA) This is another technology demonstration, developed by NASA’s Ames and Langley Research Centers. This Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (or ACS3) technology demonstration will deploy a solar sail from a cubesat using lightweight booms made from composite materials. As the name implies, this sail will leverage light from the sun and will be propelled by the pressure of sunlight acting upon it. The spacecraft will spend a couple of months in an initial flight and checkout phase before deployment of the booms and reflective sail. The craft needs to be at a sufficient altitude for the tiny force of sunlight that will be applied to the sail to overcome atmospheric drag. At this altitude, this force is said to be roughly equivalent to the weight of a paperclip resting on your palm. The craft will then perform a series of pointing maneuvers to demonstrate orbit raising and lowering which will span weeks, so it could be July or later before any results are known. It is intended that the data from this mission informs the creation of larger solar sails that could efficiently propel satellites for several usages such as communications relays on future crewed exploration missions, early warning satellites, or reconnaissance missions such as to near-Earth asteroids. Reducing mass could help to eliminate heavy propulsion systems and make longer-duration missions more efficient in both energy and cost. The kick stage will fire its engine retrograde one final time to lower its orbit, enabling atmospheric drag to eventually complete the task of deorbiting it, where it will burn up on re-entry. This mission required the addition of extra propellant tanks, extra batteries, and larger gas bottles for the reaction control system on the kick stage. Rocket Lab is moving closer toward the reuse of a recovered Electron first stage. The company announced in early April that the carbon composite first-stage Electron recovered from the Four of a Kind mission in January has entered the production line for final acceptance testing and qualification ahead of a reflight. Encapsulation complete for our 47th mission! NEONSAT-1 (@KAISTPR) and ACS3 (@NASA) are now safely enclosed within Electron’s fairing. The next time this nose cone opens up, these two satellites will be in space! ‘Beginning Of The Swarm’ Mission info: https://t.co/xyg2Ghty8K pic.twitter.com/i25zKlUqNs — Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) April 18, 2024 Falcon 9 Block 5 | WorldView Legion 1 & 2 A Falcon 9 was originally scheduled to launch from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base last week on April 17, carrying two satellites massing a total of 1,500 kilograms into a Sun-synchronous orbit. This flight was postponed the day before launch, however, and is now scheduled for this Wednesday, April 24 at the start of a four-and-a-half-hour window at 11:30 AM PDT (18:30 UTC). The booster, which has yet to be confirmed, is expected to return to land on the pad at Landing Zone 4 located around 400 meters away from the launch mount. The WorldView Legion satellite constellation is Maxar Technologies’ next-generation constellation of Earth observation satellites, designed and built in-house at the company’s facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, California. DigitalGlobe, which was later taken over by Maxar, first announced its selection of SpaceX as the launch provider back in 2018 when the satellites were initially anticipated to launch in two blocks of six. Hardware-based delays, as well as the complexity of the technology, have caused several setbacks. The planned constellation will now consist of six satellites in total, to be launched in pairs and will orbit in polar and mid-inclination orbits. The satellites are the first to utilize a new Maxar 500 series bus platform with better stability, agility, and pointing accuracy. They will occupy an approximately 500-kilometer altitude orbit when fully deployed, providing 30-centimeter high-resolution imagery and eight-band multispectral imagery across 15 revisits per day over the most active regions of the world. The satellites will triple the company’s coverage in 30-centimeter class resolution, capturing five million square kilometers of imagery each day. The satellites are designed with a 10-year lifespan. With @RTX_News, we developed a new telescope for the WorldView Legion satellites. They collect the high-quality images that customers have come to expect from us, but the telescope is smaller and requires less power.More details: https://t.co/PKttctsC39#ittakesalegion — Maxar Technologies (@Maxar) April 11, 2024 Applications will include supporting national security missions for monitoring and surveillance of ground-based potential threats or verifying enforced sanctions and treaties. The satellites also provide a variety of maritime monitoring functions such as the surveillance of natural disasters, pollution, and oil spills through to the detection of illegal fishing, piracy, drug smuggling, or human trafficking. Utilizing artificial intelligence algorithms, the WorldView Legion satellites can support the ability to detect, identify, and respond quickly to suspicious activities. Maxar worked with its instrument partner Raytheon to develop a smaller telescope that requires less power. Chang Zheng 2F/G | Shenzhou 18 China is sending three more taikonauts from the People’s Liberation Army Astronaut Corps to the Tianhe core module of China’s Tiangong space station on Thursday, April 25. Lift-off is expected near the start of a 40-minute launch window at 12:59 UTC from Site 901 (SLS-1) at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The crew is expected to arrive at the space station around seven hours later. Shenzhou 18 will be the 18th mission of the Shenzhou (“divine craft”) program and the 13th of these to be crewed. As with other missions in this series, the vehicle will be the Chang Zheng 2F which is a human-rated two-stage version of the 2E, which itself was derived from the 2C. The vehicle was rolled to the pad last week on April 17. Shenzhou 18 CZ-2F/G rolled out to the pad – April 2024: (Credit: CCTV) Active since October 2011, the Chang Zheng 2F/G first launched crew for Shenzhou 8 and this vehicle is flying for the first time this year. It has been over 20 years since Shenzhou 5 launched the first crewed mission for the Chinese space program, becoming the third country in the world to achieve independent human spaceflight. The names of the taikonauts are expected to be revealed at a press conference the day before launch, however, it is anticipated that the commander will be Ye Guangfu who has 182 days of experience in space and previously flew on Shenzhou 13. The taikonauts from Shenzhou 17 have been on the station since last October and are expected to return to Earth in the last few days of April, following a handover ceremony. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-54 The second Starlink mission of the week is scheduled to launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday, April 26. Lift-off is expected at 6:40 PM EDT (22:40 UTC). Neither the booster nor the droneship have been confirmed yet at the time of publishing, nor the number of Starlink v2 Mini satellites in the payload. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Galileo FOC FM25 & FM 27 In the wake of Starlink Group 6-53 delivering SpaceX’s 300th booster landing earlier this week, this mission will not be attempting a landing and will instead be expending booster B1060 on its 20th and final flight. This booster has supported numerous Starlink missions into Groups 4, 5, and 6 as well as Transporter 6, Galaxy 33 & 34, and the IM-1 mission launching the Nova-C lander, Odysseus. With the company’s continual increase in both launches and recoveries, expending boosters have become rarer. Four months ago, the Falcon Heavy center core B1084 was the last for which there was no recovery attempt on the USSF-52 mission in late December. The last time a single Falcon 9 first stage was expended dates further back to late November 2022 when B1049 was expended on the Eutelsat 10B mission. Booster B1051, which coincidentally launched Galaxy 31 & 32, was also expended just 11 days prior and had continually set milestones as the first booster to be recovered eight, nine, ten, 11, and 12 times. Lift-off for this mission is scheduled for no earlier than Sunday, April 28 from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The payload is a pair of satellites massing 1,603 kilograms for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Galileo constellation targeting a medium-Earth orbit at 23,616 km altitude. Initially expected to be launched on a Soyuz, then moved to the delayed Ariane 6, ESA finally contracted SpaceX to lift this long-delayed payload. Rubidium Atomic Clock development at Leonardo’s headquarters in Nerviano, Milan. (Credit: ESA) This global navigation satellite system is named after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei and went live in 2016 with the intention that European nations do not have to rely on the US GPS or Russian GLONASS platforms. Usage of the lower precision services is open and free to access, while the higher-precision services have 1-meter precision for positioning and are a paid-for service. These satellites begin to build the next generation of the constellation which will replace older equipment, with the completed constellation hosting 10 satellites in each of three planes. Atomic clocks are a critical pillar in satellite navigation and are already utilized on satellites in this constellation. ESA recently signed a €12 million contract with Leonardo S.p.A to design, develop, and qualify a new technology for pulsed optically pumped rubidium atomic clocks. These experimental models will fly alongside the currently operational clocks used for Galileo services while they undergo in-orbit verification. This could be the last or the penultimate launch from LC-39A before it is reconfigured for Falcon Heavy which is expected to lift the GOES-U mission in late June. These preparations can typically leave a gap of around 40 to 50 days between the previous use of the pad and a Falcon Heavy launch. (Lead image: Render of NASA’s ACS3 Solar Sail render in orbit with sunrise. Credit: NASA) The post Launch Roundup: SpaceX to land its 300th booster, NASA tests a solar sail, and China launches three more taikonauts appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.
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A SpaceX lançou com sucesso um satélite de comunicações Intelsat de 5 toneladas métricas para orbitar na quinta-feira, 3 de agosto. Um foguete SpaceX Falcon 9 carregando o satélite decolou da plataforma de lançamento no Centro Espacial Kennedy, na Flórida, à 1h (22h de quarta-feira). A missão marcou o sexto voo do primeiro estágio do Falcon 9, que anteriormente lançou Crew-5, GPS III-6, Inmarsat I6-F2, CRS-28 e uma missão Starlink. Como de costume, a SpaceX usou várias câmeras para transmitir ao vivo as principais partes do voo, incluindo o lançamento, o pouso de reforço e a implantação do satélite. O foguete Falcon 9 da SpaceX iluminou o céu da Flórida ao deixar a plataforma de lançamento nas primeiras horas da quinta-feira, horário local. Cerca de oito minutos após o lançamento, e tendo feito seu trabalho, o primeiro estágio desceu para um drone que esperava no Oceano Atlântico, próximo à costa da Flórida. O clipe abaixo mostra as pernas de pouso do veículo se desdobrando pouco antes de chegar ao droneship. O booster realizou um touchdown perfeito, permitindo que fosse usado para outra missão depois de limpo e reformado. O pouso marcou o 213º pouso da SpaceX de um foguete de classe orbital. Cerca de 33 minutos após o lançamento, o satélite foi implantado com sucesso. A SpaceX também compartilhou um conjunto de imagens dramáticas mostrando o início da missão. O lançamento do satélite Galaxy 37/Horizons-4 construído pela Maxar fornecerá capacidade norte-americana para mídia televisiva e clientes de redes de telecomunicações, disse a Intelsat. O plano original era implantar o satélite usando um foguete Arianespace Ariane 6, mas atrasos contínuos na produção do foguete levaram a Intelsat a mudar para a SpaceX para fazer o trabalho.
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Video of SpaceX HTS-113BT Launch
SpaceX successfully launched the HTS 113BT telecommunications satellite to orbit from Cape Canaveral this afternoon at 3:11 PM EST for Indonesian company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk. Around eight and one-half minutes later, Booster 1067 safely touched down on SpaceX’s Automated Spaceport Droneship “Just Read The Instructions,” (JRTI) which was located offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.
Here’s a…
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U.S. Space Force
65” x 16” x 16”
Various PVC pipes, HD Foam, metal hooks, toy rubber tires, acrylic and spray paint
The Falcon 9 Booster is an incredibly reliable and reusable SpaceX rocket capable of launching people and payloads into Earth’s atmosphere and bringing itself back to land on either the ground or a droneship. An ICBM is an explosive weapon capable of launching from US soil to be utilized against other countries. This artwork combines those 2 images by placing a RPG-style missile atop a Falcon 9 Booster in order to both compare them and pose a question of the United States’ power and possibilities.
The missile is comprised of almost entirely painted HD foam while the Falcon 9 is primarily a 3.5” wide PVC pipe with foam and other various materials to make the legs. I wanted to take 2 relatively similar things, one lighthearted and one serious, that you would never think of drawing a comparison between and blatantly put them together, only to be emphasized by the title “U.S. Space Force.” I believe that this piece is very effective and captures one of my current approaches to art.
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#Breaking: #Falcon9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship.
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship pic.twitter.com/E33mVRzE4n
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 5, 2023
Source: Twitter
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SpaceX calls off tonight’s Crew-7 launch to the space station
About: Roughly four hours before the scheduled launch time, SpaceX announced the cancellation of Friday morning's launch attempt. The new target for the launch is now set for early Saturday morning.
NASA and SpaceX are preparing to launch four more astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS
The mission was initially planned to commence from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:50 a.m. ET (12:50 a.m. PT) on Friday morning. However, SpaceX later announced on Thursday that the new tentative launch time was set for 3:27 a.m. ET (12:27 a.m. PT) on Saturday, August 26. An alternative launch window is also accessible on Sunday at 3:04 a.m. ET (12:04 a.m. PT).
The reason behind the delay remains unclear, as SpaceX has merely stated that the adjustment allows for "additional time to complete and discuss analysis."
Once the mission commences, viewers can expect a live stream of the initial flight phases, captured from multiple cameras. The broadcast will also include real-time audio feeds from Mission Control and the crew capsule.
Within minutes of propelling the capsule into space, viewers will be treated to the captivating sight of the reusable first-stage booster's return to Earth. While its usual landing spot is a droneship off Florida's coast, this particular mission will showcase its touchdown at Landing Zone 1 in proximity to the launch site.
For those interested in tuning in to the live stream, here's all the essential information you need.
Following their arrival at the space station on Saturday, the team of astronauts—comprising NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli, Andreas Mogensen from the European Space Agency, Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Roscosmos' Konstantin Borisov—will engage in a six-month period dedicated to conducting scientific and technological demonstrations with potential benefits for humanity on Earth. Additionally, they will undertake preparations for human exploration beyond the confines of low-Earth orbit.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is integral to the success of the Crew-7 mission, has previously played a pivotal role in NASA's Crew-3 and Crew-5 missions to and from the International Space Station.
Stay updated on the launch schedule by checking SpaceX's social media channels for the latest updates.
For insights into daily life on the orbital outpost situated 250 miles above Earth, explore the informative videos created by visiting astronauts throughout the years.
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Despite multiple scrubs and delays due to weather violations, SpaceX broke its own cadence record in January with 10 launches and landings in a calendar month. Those weather challenges have prevailed into February. Between these and the pad logistics related to launching the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission, PACE satellite, USSF-124, and an upcoming crewed mission, it currently looks unlikely that the company will repeat this target by the end of February. Nonetheless, SpaceX continues to set milestones, with Falcon 9’s 300th mission occurring with the launch of the IM-1 on Feb. 15. The company almost launched a Falcon 9 from each of its three key launch pads within eight hours on the busy evening of Feb. 14, but the Starlink Group 7-14 mission was scrubbed while on the pad. Two further non-Starlink missions on Falcon 9 are planned from the east coast in the next couple of weeks. The most anticipated of these will be SpaceX’s eighth crew rotation mission to the International Space Station (ISS), carrying commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialists Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. Crew Dragon Endeavour is flying for the fifth time on Crew-8. This crew can expect to see cargo arrivals during their stay on the ISS from Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon, and Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser spaceplane. The astronauts will also get to greet the crew of the Boeing Crew Flight Test during their stay when Starliner arrives in April. Launching on Falcon 9 this week is a new high-throughput communications satellite for Indonesia, which has a 15-year expected lifespan and will strengthen the communications architecture across the archipelago. SpaceX will also loft an additional batch of Starlink satellites into the Group 6 shell. Falcon 9 launches its 300th mission, Intuitive Machine’s IM-1 mission, on Feb. 15. (Credit: Max Evans for NSF) Rocket Lab’s Electron is scheduled to launch Astroscale’s ADRAS-J demonstration mission, which plans to make advancements toward the removal of large-scale space debris from low-Earth orbit. In this first phase of the project, the spacecraft will illustrate a safe and methodical approach toward an unresponsive object in orbit (a discarded rocket upper stage), capturing images and other data as it then orientates around the stage, demonstrating that it can maintain a fixed position close by. Lastly, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its first Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket since May 2023, delivering the successor to the INSAT-3DR weather research satellite. Sporting a six-channel imager and a 19-channel sounder, the INSAT-3DS will provide meteorological and disaster warning services to India from a geostationary orbit. SpaceX Falcon 9 – Starlink Group 7-14 SpaceX will launch another stack of Starlink satellites on Feb. 15 at 1:34 PM PST (21:34 UTC) from Space Launch Complex (SLC) 4E out of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Starlink Group 7-14 will carry a payload of 22 Starlink v2 Mini satellites. They will be headed to an inclined 53-degree orbit on a southeastern trajectory with an expected initial orbit of approximately 286 by 295 kilometers. The satellites will be added to the thousands of active Starlink satellites in orbit, giving internet to people all over the world. The booster for this mission is B1082, which will be taking its second flight with this mission. It will land on the Of Course I Still Love You autonomous droneship, which will be stationed 610 kilometers downrange on the west coast. This will be the 29th total orbital launch of 2024 and the 300th launch of Falcon 9. JAXA/MHI H3-22 | VEP 4, CE-SAT-1E & TIRSAT The second flight of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H3-22 rocket is set for Feb. 17 at 9:22 AM JST (00:22 UTC) from LA-Y2 out of the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. H3 is classified as a medium-lift launch vehicle and uses cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in its first and second stages, with two or four optional SRBs. This mission will use two boosters along with a short payload fairing, taking three payloads into a Sun-synchronous orbit. The first flight of H3 experienced a failure of the second engine ignitor, causing the test payload to fall short of orbit. While flight two was originally planned to launch the ALOS-4 Earth observation satellite, the vehicle failure caused JAXA to elect to fly the Vehicle Evaluation Payload-4 (VEP-4) mass simulator, although there are also two small satellites onboard for this flight. CE-SAT-1E is a 70-kilogram Earth observation satellite built by Canon Electronics Inc., and TIRSAT is a five-kilogram 3U cubesat from Japan Space Systems to test infrared sensors for Earth observation. While there is an inherent risk to flying an unproven rocket, the customers are confident in the new vehicle’s ability to take their payloads to orbit. GSLV Mk II | INSAT-3DS The INSAT-3DS weather research satellite is scheduled for launch on an Indian GSLV rocket from the Second Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, on Feb. 17 at 5:35 PM IST (12:05 UTC). This will be the 7th flight for the INSAT series of satellites and is the successor to the INSAT-3DR satellite, which was similarly delivered to a geostationary orbit by an expendable GSLV back in September 2016. GSLV-F14/INSAT-3DS Mission:The mission is set for lift-off on February 17, 2024, at 17:30 Hrs. IST from SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota. In its 16th flight, the GSLV aims to deploy INSAT-3DS, a meteorological and disaster warning satellite. The mission is fully funded by the… pic.twitter.com/s4I6Z8S2Vw — ISRO (@isro) February 8, 2024 Built by ISRO, this advanced meteorological satellite will deliver weather surveillance, forecasting, and disaster warning services to India. The mission is fully funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences. An onboard six-channel imager is complemented by a 19-channel sounder, and the satellite will also provide a Satellite Aided Search & Rescue transponder and a message relay for terrestrial data collection platforms. Electron/Curie | On Closer Inspection Rocket Lab’s ‘On Closer Inspection’ mission is scheduled to launch on an Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand, during a five-hour window that opens on Feb. 18 at 11:45 UTC. Onboard is the Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan (ADRAS-J) spacecraft, which was selected by JAXA as the initial phase of their Commercial Removal of Debris Demonstration Project. ADRAS-J craft approaches the unresponsive discarded upper stage of an H-IIA rocket. (Credit: Astroscale) The goal of the mission is to safely approach, characterize, and fly an observational inspection path around a large uncommunicative piece of space debris in low-Earth orbit. It will follow a series of measures and processes set out in November 2021 after consultation with various space agencies, ministries, and industry experts, including leading private space companies. For this demonstration, the target is the upper stage of a discarded Japanese H-IIA rocket which is still orbiting at around 600 kilometers in altitude. The ADRAS-J craft will approach the stage using a series of corkscrew-style “safety ellipse” maneuvers. Once close, it will continue to execute a series of “Rendezvous and Proximity Operations,” which are a combination of maneuvers and data collection. Images and data will be collected as the spacecraft then performs a further fly-around maneuver, determining the target’s spin rate and axis so that the craft can demonstrate a safe orientation around it. ADRAS-J will complete the demonstration by settling into a stable position a short distance away, aligned with the object’s orientation. In the next phase, the target object would be actively engaged and removed from orbit. This mission is directly informing the company’s other ongoing programs, including Astroscale’s End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple and Astroscale’s Clearing Outer Space Mission through Innovative Capture missions, which is part of the UK’s Active Debris Removal initiative. Indonesian TelkomSat HTS-113BT is loaded into its container inside the clean room (Credit: Thales Alenia Space) Falcon 9 Block 5 | TelkomSat HTS-113BT The launch of TelkomSat HTS-113BT atop a Falcon 9 is scheduled to occur from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during a two-hour window that opens on Feb. 20 at 3:11 PM ET (20:11 UTC), deploying the 4,000-kilogram satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit. Designed, built, and operated by Thales Alenia Space for the state-owned PT Telkom Satelit Indonesia, or TelkomSat, this new broadband communications satellite will strengthen the telecommunications structure across the archipelago. Operating in the Ku- and C-bands, this high-throughout communication satellite is built upon the Spacebus-4000B2 platform and will provide over 32 billion bits per second (Gbps) capacity from its position in geostationary orbit, stationed at 113 degrees east. The satellite left Thales Alenia Space’s clean rooms in Cannes, France, late last year and was shipped to the Cape from Nice, arriving at Port Canaveral in late January to then make a final trip to the integration facility. Thales Alenia Space will be delivering in-orbit support throughout the satellite’s expected 15-year lifecycle, as well as providing the ground control segment and on-site training and support for the customer’s engineering team. Starlink v2 Mini satellites prior to deployment (Credit: SpaceX) Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 7-15 SpaceX will launch the next batch of 22 Starlink v2 Mini satellites from the west coast no earlier than Feb. 20 from SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The booster for this flight, which is currently unknown, will land on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be waiting downrange. The satellites will be sent on a southeastern trajectory into an initial orbit of approximately 286 by 296 kilometers, inclined 53 degrees. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 6-39 The latest addition to the Group 6 shell of the Starlink constellation will launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Base no earlier than Feb. 24. The booster for this flight is currently unkown, as is the droneship on which it will make its recovery landing further downrange. The payload is another 23 Starlink v2 Mini satellites headed for a low-Earth orbit. Falcon 9 Block 5 | Crew-8 Crew Dragon Endeavour will be carrying SpaceX’s eighth crew rotation mission to the ISS, carrying commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and two mission specialists Jeanette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. Epps was previously assigned to a Boeing Starliner mission but was later moved to Crew-8. Launch is scheduled to fly from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center on March 1 at 12:04 AM ET (05:04 UTC) All crew members except pilot Michael Barratt are making their first flight into space on this mission. Barratt previously served as a flight engineer for Expeditions 19/20 and has spent a total of 212 days in space, including time aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-133 mission in 2011. SpaceX Crew-8 – Left to Right: Roscosmos cosmonaut and Mission Specialist Alexander Grebenkin, Pilot Michael Barratt, Commander Matthew Dominick, and Mission Specialist Jeanette Epps. (Credit: SpaceX) This is the ninth human spaceflight as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program and the maiden flight for booster B1083, which will return to the Cape to land at Landing Zone 1 a few miles south of LC-39A. This is the fifth flight of C206 Endeavour, which has also launched crew for the Axiom-1, Crew-2, Crew-6, and the historic Demo-2 missions. Dragon will perform a series of maneuvers before docking autonomously with the forward-facing port of the Station’s Harmony module. The four astronauts will meet the members of the Expedition 70 crew and spend a few days of handover with the outgoing Crew-7 crew, who will then undock from the Station and splash down off the coast of Florida. During their stay, this crew can expect to see the arrival of three different cargo craft — Cygnus (NG-21), Cargo Dragon (CRS-30), and the maiden flight of Sierra Space’s long-anticipated Dream Chaser spaceplane. They can also look forward to greeting the astronauts of Boeing’s Crew Flight Test on Starliner in April, as well as welcoming three new crew members who are scheduled to arrive on a Soyuz in March (MS-25). They will also see Loral O’Hara depart back to Earth on a Soyuz. (Lead image: Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft. Credit: Astroscale) The post Launch Roundup: SpaceX to launch next ISS crew rotation; Electron launches debris removal demonstration appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com.
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On Saturday, November 26 at 2:20 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched Dragon’s 26th Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-26) to the International Space Station from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship in the Atlantic Ocean.
Dragon will autonomously dock with the space station on Saturday, November 27, at approximately 7:30 a.m. ET (12:30 UTC).
Watch the mission webcast Here and support us throught Patreon.
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Elon Musk Makes sense of Why SpaceX's Falcon Weighty Center Supporter Crashed
SpaceX President Elon Musk took to Twitter Monday (Feb. 12) to share a few new subtleties on last week's Bird of prey Weighty experimental drill, including why the monstrous rocket's center supporter crashed. SpaceX is likewise constructing another robot transport for rocket arrivals adrift, he added.
At the point when SpaceX's Bird of prey Weighty launched last Tuesday (Feb. 6) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Cushion 39A in Florida, the rocket's three first-stage promoters were supposed to get back to Earth and land similar as the organization's Bird of prey 9 rocket stages. The Hawk Weighty's two side promoters landed effectively (and at the same time) on twin cushions at the close by Cape Canaveral Aviation based armed forces Station, however the middle center failed spectacularly.
That center sponsor, which was supposed to land seaward on SpaceX's robot transport "Obviously I Actually Love You," crashed when two of three motors didn't fire during a last arrival consume, Musk told journalists after the send off. The supporter missed the arrival transport by around 328 feet (100 meters) and hit the water at 300 mph (484 km/h), harming engines on the close by droneship, Musk has said.
On Monday, we took in a touch more in Musk's Twitter posts. The two motors didn't fire since they ran out of start liquid, Musk said.
"Insufficient start liquid to light the external two motors after a few three motor relights," Musk composed. "Fix is really self-evident."
That recommends a fix could include just adding more start liquid, however Musk didn't intricate.
Musk shared one tempting goody about future Bird of prey Weighty supporter arrivals: SpaceX is building a third robot transport for seaward rocket arrivals.
Its name? "A Setback of Gravitas."
The boat gives off an impression of being named to pay tribute to the imaginary spaceship "Encountering A Critical Gravitas Setback" in the sci-fi books "Shift focus over to Windward" and "Matter" by the late writer Iain M. Banks. SpaceX's other two robot ships — "Obviously I Actually Love You" and "Just Read The Guidelines" — are likewise named for ships referenced in Banks' Way of life books.
"A Setback of Gravitas" is under development now and will join "Obviously I Actually Love You" in Florida to help seaward arrivals of Bird of prey Weighty side supporters, Musk composed. "Just Read The Guidelines" is utilized for Hawk 9 arrivals after dispatches from SpaceX's cushion at California's Vandenberg Flying corps Base.
SpaceX has additionally constructed one more boat with monster metal arms to get the defensive payload fairings (or nose cone parts) on its rockets before they fall into the ocean. You can see an image of it here. Musk has said in the past that SpaceX's fairings cost about $5 million, so getting them for reuse could be a critical reserve funds.
"It resembles a monster catcher's glove, in boat structure," Musk told columnists after the Bird of prey Weighty send off. SpaceX could attempt to catch a falling Hawk rocket fairing at some point this year, he added.
Meanwhile, SpaceX actually has a full record of Hawk 9 and Bird of prey Weighty send-offs on tap in 2018. The organization's next send off is booked for Saturday (Feb. 17) from Vandenberg Flying corps Base. It will utilize a Bird of prey 9 rocket to send off the Paz Earth checking satellite into space for Spain.
Something like two more Bird of prey Weighty missions are on the agenda during the current year, alongside the many Hawk 9 missions for satellite clients and NASA, which utilizes SpaceX's Mythical serpent freight boats to convey supplies to the Global Space Station.
SpaceX is likewise constructing a run rendition of Winged serpent to fly space explorers for NASA. The principal experimental drill of that boat on a Hawk 9 rocket is likewise expected in 2018.
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