SARAL; SAPPHIRE; NEOSSat; 3 cubesat - PSLV-CA C20 - 25.02.2013 12:31 UTC

[Salo]

http://www.space.aau.dk/aausat3/index.php?n=Main.LaunchInformation

AAUSAT3

Launch Information

... counting down for launch

Latest news is launch 28. January 2013

More information when available

We will be lifted up in orbit by ISRO's polar launch vehicle PSLV C-20

[Salo]

http://spaceref.ca/isro/launch-of-canadian-satellites-by-india-delayed-until-mid-february.html

Launch of Canadian Satellites by India Delayed Until Mid-February

    By Marc Boucher
    Posted December 21, 2012 11:38 AM

The launch of several critical Canadian satellites has once again been delayed. Scheduled for a January 12th launch, the new target date is mid-February according to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). During thermo-vacuum testing an issue came up with the primary payload on the launch, the joint Indian-France satellite SARAL.

The Canadian satellites are part of a secondary payload set to launch on India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C20.

NEOSSat will be the first space telescope dedicated to the search for near-Earth asteroids. NEOSSat is the result of a university-industry collaboration and will spend half the time looking for these small interplanetary objects that could potentially impact the Earth and cause great damage. NEOSSat will spend the other half of its time searching for satellites and space debris in orbit around the Earth in a research project sponsored by a DND agency, Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC).

Sapphire is the Department of National Defence (DND) first dedicated military satellite and will upgrade Canada's space surveillance capabilities.

Also launching on the PSLV-C20 rocket are the Canadian built CanX-3b (aka TUGSAT-1) and CanX-3a (aka UniBRITE) nanosatellites. Both of these nanosatellites we're built by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory.

[Salo]

http://smsc.cnes.fr/SARAL/

February 11, 2013

[Salo]

25 февраля в 16:25 ЛМВ.

[Salo]

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=29894.msg1009071#msg1009071

input~2 пишет:

NOTAM for 3rd stage drop zone

A0024/13 - DUE TO LAUNCHING OF POLAR SATELLITE VEHICLE (PSLV C-20) FROM INDIA (19 43.9N 080 14.2E) AND THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPACT (...) TEMPO DNG ZONE EST WI AN AREA BOUNDED BY FLW COORD: 3000S 07400E, 3100S 07700E, 4100S 07400E AND 4000S 07100E. SL - UNL, DLY BTN 1200 TO 1415, 11 FEB 12:00 2013 UNTIL 12 MAR 14:15 2013. CREATED: 01 FEB 00:06 2013

[Salo]

http://trishul-trident.blogspot.com/2013/02/highlights-of-aero-india-2013-expo-part.html

[Salo]

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c20/c20-status.aspx

PSLV-C20 to launch SARAL along with six commercial payloads on Feb 25, 2013 at 17:56 hrs (IST) from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota

    PSLV-C20 is the 23rd PSLV Mission of ISRO and Ninth 'Core-Alone' (without solid strap-on motors) variant.

    SARAL (Satellite with ARGOS and ALTIKA ) is an ISRO-CNES(France) joint Venture for oceanographic studies

    Other six auxiliary payloads are from Canada (2), Austria (2), Denmark (1) and Britain (1)

Брошюра:
http://www.isro.org/pslv-c20/pdf/brochure.pdf

[Salo]

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1302/23neossat/#.USoaQze55eE

Canadian asteroid-hunting satellite to launch Monday
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 23, 2013

A small satellite built in Canada is stowed for liftoff fr om India on Monday on a mission to spot asteroids, especially the kind posing a hazard to Earth.


Artist's concept of the NEOSSat spacecraft in orbit. Credit: University of Calgary
 
The Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, or NEOSSat, is the first spacecraft designed for asteroid detection, and its launch will come barely one week after a meteor exploded over Russia.

The Russian meteor, which blasted out windows and injured more than 1,000 people, occurred the same day a larger 150-foot-wide asteroid narrowly missed Earth. Scientists determined the two events were not related.

The launch of NEOSSat was supposed to be in 2010, but a series of delays pushed back the mission until 2013. Now the launch is occurring at a time when asteroids have reached the pinnacle of public consciousness.

"It just happened that way. It's just the effect of coincidence," said Alan Hildebrand, a professor at the University of Calgary and lead scientist for NEOSSat's asteroid search mission.

NEOSSat will launch Monday with six other satellites on India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The PSLV will lift off at 1226 GMT (7:26 a.m. EST), or 5:56 p.m. local time at the Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sriharikota Island, India's primary launch site on the country's east coast.

Спойлер

The rocket's other passengers include a French-Indian ocean research satellite, a Canadian military satellite, two Canadian-Austrian nanosatellites with tiny telescopes, a small British satellite powered by a smartphone, and a CubeSat built by students in Denmark.

The four-stage rocket, flying in a stripped-down "core-alone" configuration without strap-on boosters, will release all the satellites in a 487-mile-high sun-synchronous orbit within 22 minutes after liftoff, according to the Indian Space Research Organization.

NEOSSat is small - only about the size and shape of a suitcase. It weighs about 160 pounds, and the satellite has a cylindrical telescope sticking out of one side.

The telescope is also modest by professional standards. It measures 5.9 inches in diameter, but it is sensitive enough to spot objects as faint as magnitude 20.

[video]http://youtu.be/iVNO6mUMR1Q[/video];
Animation of NEOSSat's observing techniques. Credit: Canadian Space Agency
 
Jointly funded by the Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research and Development Canada, a research arm of the Canadian military, NEOSSat will collect up to 288 images per day, ultimately covering the entire sky.

Half of NEOSSat's observing time will be devoted to asteroid-hunting, and Canadian military researchers will use the rest of the time experimenting with the craft's ability to spot and track other satellites in high-altitude Earth orbits.

Equipped with a precise pointing system to keep the images steady, NEOSSat will resolve satellites and asteroids as they dart across a matrix of stars. Each NEOSSat image will have an exposure time of 100 seconds, according to scientists.

"We believe that, if successful, this project will deliver great science," said Guennadi Kroupnik, director of satellite communications and space environment projects at the Canadian Space Agency. "It will help to discover and to monitor asteroids and comets in the inner solar system, wh ere there are a lot of challenges for observations from the ground."

Besides making tangible discoveries, NEOSSat is a pathfinder for future asteroid-hunting telescopes. It is the first space mission specifically designed to search for asteroids, according to Canadian officials.

The B612 Foundation, a non-profit organization, is raising funds in hopes of building and launching a more ambitious telescope to fly in the inner solar system and look away from the sun toward Earth, catching the glint of asteroids from a more favorable perspective.

Space missions can observe the sky 24 hours a day, dodging the day-night cycle and inclement weather inhibiting ground telescopes.

"Being able to predict, well ahead of time, potential close encounters is a very important part of space surveillance, and we hope to contribute to that very important objective," Kroupnik said in an interview.

NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, originally built to observe stars and galaxies, scanned the sky for asteroids in 2010 and 2011, finding nearly 130 new near-Earth asteroids. The WISE satellite carried a larger telescope than NEOSSat, and its infrared detectors made the telescope more sensitive to dark-colored asteroids.

NEOSSat's advantage lies in its ability to sweep through slivers of the sky close to the sun, allowing the telescope to pick out Earth-crossing asteroids on trajectories shadowing or leading our planet on its path around the sun.


This diagram shows an edge-on view of our solar system. The dots represent a snapshot of the population of near-Earth asteroids and potentially hazardous asteroids that scientists think are likely to exist. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
 
The mission's top objective to find Aten-class asteroids, objects which orbit the sun mostly within Earth's orbit. Another focus of NEOSSat's mission is asteroids which spend all of their time inside of Earth's orbit.

Such asteroids have been elusive to ground-based telescopes and other space observatories.

Engineers installed a baffle in NEOSSat's telescope to shield the instrument's detectors from intense sunlight.

Most telescopes avoid pointing near the sun, which can damage sensitive telescope components. The WISE mission, for example, never pointed within 90 degrees of the sun as it orbited Earth.

NEOSSat's objectives require it to regularly point within 45 degrees of the sun, and sometimes as close as 20 degrees.

"Our search strategy is optimized to find those guys," Hildebrand said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "It means we're looking forward and behind the Earth as close to the sun as we can, along the ecliptic plane. We cover a relatively small chunk of sky as faint as we can to discover those asteroids."

Kroupnik said NEOSSat could discover between four and 12 asteroids per month larger than 500 meters, or 1,640 feet, in diameter, depending on their albedo, or reflectivity. Scores of smaller asteroids could be found by NEOSSat, which is due to operate at least one year.

"It all depends how close an asteroid is to the Earth when it passes through the NEOSSat field of view," said Paul Chodas, a researcher in the near-Earth object program office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a member of the NEOSSat science team.

Some of NEOSSat's discoveries could be ideal targets for future robotic or human exploration, Hildebrand said. Asteroids in orbits closely matching Earth's are easiest to reach with space missions.

NEOSSat will also conduct follow-up observations of known asteroids.

"[NEOSSat] doesn't cover very much sky per day, so it isn't very useful for detecting small asteroids on a collision [course] with Earth," Hildebrand said. "I think that the most useful thing that we might do there is to provide astrometry on an incoming object - if it were in a difficult part of the sky for ground based telescopes вЂ" to establish its impact location on the Earth."


NEOSSat enters a thermal vacuum chamber at the David Florida Laboratory in Ottawa, Ontario. Credit: Janice Lang/DRDC
 
Canadian scientists first proposed building a microsatellite to hunt for asteroids in 2000, but the project did not become a reality until 2005.

"At the time, Canada was building another microsatellite with a small space telescope," Hildebrand said. "The question was asked, what could we do with this technology? So we explored what could be done in terms of asteroid searching, and we identified the highest value was being able to look near the sun."

In order to keep costs down, officials reused a proven telescope and spacecraft design used on Canada's MOST space telescope, and NEOSSat's detectors were spares left over from the MOST mission.

NEOSSat's total cost, including development and operations, is estimated to be about $24 million, according to Kroupnik. Its prime contractor is Microsat Systems Canada Inc.

The cost was evenly split between the Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research and Development Canada, which will use the spacecraft to test space surveillance technologies.

"The unique aspect of NEOSSat is not that we will be conducting space surveillance from space, but rather that we will be conducting it from a microsatellite platform," said Brad Wallace, principal investigator for NEOSSat's military mission. "Thus, as part of our research and development goals, we will be using NEOSSat to test and demonstrate the ability of this small, inexpensive platform to support a range of space surveillance applications."

[свернуть]

[Salo]

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c20/Imagegallery/launchvehicle.aspx#0

[Salo]

http://www.isro.org/pslv-c20/Imagegallery/satellite.aspx

[Salo]

Видео:
http://www.isro.org/video-pslv-c20.aspx

[instml]

http://isro.org/pslv-c20/c20-status.aspx

Feb 24,2013                                              

[/li]
• Preparation for Propellant filling operation of Second Stage (PS2) is under progress.
  
• Preparation for Mobile Service Tower (MST) withdrawal is under progress.
  

Feb 23, 2013                                                    

[/li]
• Propellant filling operations of Fourth Stage (PS4) and Reaction Control Thrusters (RCT) of First Stage (PS1) are completed.
  
• Propellant filling operations of Fourth Stage (PS4) and Reaction Control Thrusters (RCT) of First Stage (PS1) are under progress.
  
• The 59 hour Countdown of PSLV - C20 / SARAL Mission commenced at 6:56 Hours (IST) today (Feb 23, 2013) at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota, India.
  

Feb 22, 2013       

[/li]
• Launch Authorisation Board (LAB) for PSLV - C20 / SARAL mission has cleared the launch on Monday, Feb 25, 2013.
  
• The 59 hour Countdown will commence at 6:56 Hours (IST) on Feb 23, 2013.
  

Feb 21, 2013                            

[/li]
• The launch Rehearsal of PSLV - C20 with the primary satellite SARAL and six other satellites has been completed satisfactorily at SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota.
  
• Mission Readiness Review and meeting of Launch Authorisation Board are scheduled on Feb 22, 2013.
  

[DMLL]

NEOSSat, весьма актуально.
Астероиды-убийцы городов теперь будут бояться

Ожидаем плановое начало трансляции "матча" в 16-00 МСК (полдень UTC).

[mark200000]

http://news.mail.ru/society/12112630/?frommail=1

Канада запустит на орбиту спутник-охотник за астероидами

Сегодня из Индии будет запущен канадский спутник, предназначенный для отслеживания астероидов, пишет The Globe and Mail. Возможно, спутник NEOSSat оказался бы очень полезным, если бы был запущен раньше — до того, как над Уралом взорвался метеорит, из-за которого пострадали более тысячи человек.
                             Глава Microsat Systems Canada Дэвид Купер говорит, что спутник будет следить за атонами — группой околоземных астероидов, чьи орбиты пересекают земную с внутренней стороны. Такие астероиды вращаются вокруг солнца по эллиптической орбите. К сентябрю 2012 года было известно о 711 астероидах из группы атонов — девять из них имеют собственные имена, а 109 присвоены порядковые номера. Купер полагает, что массивный «пришелец» из космоса, нанесший значительный ущерб Челябинской области, вероятно, входил в группу атонов.
«Нам очень повезло, что он выгорел в земной атмосфере и взорвался, а не двигался по такой траектории, которая предполагала бы прямое столкновение с Землей. Кроме того, если бы метеорит упал в середине Нью-Йорка, он наделал бы куда больше проблем», — рассуждает Купер.
По его словам, NEOSSat разработан специально для наблюдения за астероидами группы атонов, которые не видно с поверхности земли из-за рассеивания солнечного света в атмосфере. «После того, как мы их обнаружим и проследим, то сможем спроецировать орбиту таких астероидов и спрогнозировать их движение в будущем — иногда на несколько лет вперед. Орбитальный телескоп поможет нам узнать много новой информации об этих астероидах, которые в настоящее время еще не достаточно изучены», — рассказывает Купер. Ученые надеются, что если им удастся понять траекторию движения «пришельцев» из космоса, это поможет принять меры для защиты Земли.
Спутник NEOSSat размером с чемодан и стоимостью в 15 млн долларов будет облетать вокруг Земли каждые 100 минут на высоте около 800 километров над поверхностью планеты. Он станет первым телескопом, призванным искать потенциально опасные астероиды. Вместе с ним индийская ракета выведет на орбиту военный спутник Sapphire.
В середине февраля вице-премьер Дмитрий Рогозин призвал создать систему обнаружения и нейтрализации опасных для Земли космических объектов. В середине января 2012 года глава Роскосмоса Владимир Поповкин заявлял, что выступает против создания такой системы, так как вероятность падения на планету астероида крупных размеров, способного повредить Земле, довольно мала.
                       

[Кир]

Процесс выведения
http://isro.org/pslv-c20/pdf/brochure.pdf

[DMLL]

Вызывает удивление и недоумение задержка с выведением колонией Великобритании столь необходимого к 15 февраля 2013 г. спутника-элемента наблюдения за астероидами.

[Salo]

http://isro.org/pslv-c20/c20-status.aspx

Feb 25, 2013
All Propellant filling operations are completed.

Mobile Service Tower (MST) withdrawal to parking end (160 m) is completed.

[Salo]

Видео о NEOSSAT:

[Space Alien]

Извиняюсь, если не увидел, но время пуска изменили на 16:31 ЛМВ  ?

[Salo]

Трансляция возможна тут:
http://webcast.gov.in/live/
http://www.ndtv.com/video/live/channel/ndtv24x7
http://ibnlive.in.com/livetv/
http://live.indiatimes.com/