6 мКА (для Alba Orbital), 1 мКА (Spaceflight для ALE) - Electron - Mahia, LC1 – 24/25.11 - 06.12.2019, 08:18 UTC

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Факультативно

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 Rocket Lab‏ @RocketLab 6 мин. назад

LC-1 teams are moving into position for our tenth Electron mission, #RunningOutOfFingers. It's almost time for the payloads from @ALE_StarAle and @AlbaOrbital to go to space! Target lift-off is no earlier than 07:56 UTC.

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/11/28/japanese-company-to-launch-artificial-meteor-shower-satellite/

Japanese company to launch artificial meteor shower satellite
November 28, 2019 | Stephen Clark


Artist's concept of shooting stars from the ALE-2 satellite. Credit: ALE Co. Ltd.

A small Japanese satellite scheduled for launch Friday on a Rocket Lab Electron booster will release hundreds of colorful sky pellets to fall into the atmosphere next year, creating an artificial meteor shower that could be visible to millions.

The satellite, built and owned by Tokyo-based Astro Live Experiences, will launch into a 250-mile-high (400-kilometer) polar orbit to prepare for next year's sky spectacle. On-board thrusters will help target re-entry over a specific region for the artificial shooting stars.

ALE has not announced the location or exact time for the meteor shower demonstration.

"I'm excited for the upcoming launch of our second satellite, ALE-2," said Lena Okajima, ALE's chief executive. "I'm delighted to have an earlier launch date than I expected. With this launch, we are a step closer to realize the man-made shooting star."

The 165-pound (75-kilogram) ALE-2 satellite measures 2 feet by 2 feet by 2.6 feet (60 x 60 x 80 centimeters). It's the biggest of seven spacecraft scheduled for launch on Rocket Lab's 10th Electron rocket Friday

The launch window opens at 2:56 a.m. EST (0756 GMT) Friday at Rocket Lab's privately-run launch base on New Zealand's North Island. Liftoff time is set for 8:56 p.m. local time in New Zealand.

The launch of the ALE-2 satellite follows the deployment of ALE's first microsatellite earlier this year during a flight of a Japanese Epsilon rocket.


A technician from ALE Co. Ltd. works on the ALE-2 microsatellite. Credit: Rocket Lab

ALE said the initial operations of the ALE-1 satellite became "prolonged," and the company decided to prioritize technology verification and the flight experience with the first satellite before lowering its orbit and jettisoning numerous pea-sized pellets to burn up in the atmosphere.

The pellets on the ALE-1 satellite were designed to burn in four colors — white, green, pink and orange — and the ALE-2 satellite adds blue as a fifth color for the artificial shooting stars. The particles will fully burn up in the atmosphere, according to ALE.

The artificial shooting star satellites are part of ALE's "Sky Canvas" project. The company says tracking the re-entry of the shooting star particles will help scientists predict the path of satellites and other objects as they fall into the atmosphere, and could also contribute to meteorological and climate research.

Spaceflight, a Seattle-based company, procured launch capacity on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket for the ALE-2 spacecraft.

"Our experience offering end-to-end launch services across multiple launch vehicles continues to be highly valued by organizations — regardless if they're a newer customer like ALE, or an experienced constellation developer," said Curt Blake, CEO and president of Spaceflight. "Our expertise and long-standing relationships provide reliability, flexibility, and the confidence that we'll get customers to space as efficiently as possible. We're really looking forward to taking ALE on our third Electron launch this year."

Spaceflight has flown customer missions on two previous Rocket Lab missions this year, one in June and another in August.

The ALE-2 satellite and six other tiny payloads on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket will deploy into a 250-mile-high orbit. Officials have downplayed concerns about space debris from the artificial meteor shower because the spacecraft will fly below the orbit of the International Space Station, and atmospheric drag will naturally bring the objects back to Earth.

The other six satellites aboard the Electron rocket are 2-inch (5-centimeter) PocketQube picosatellites from the Scottish satellite manufacturer and mission management provider Alba Orbital.

Alba Orbital arranged the launch of all six PocketQubes, which are smaller and cheaper than most CubeSats, for customers in the United States, Spain and Hungary.

Two of the PocketQubes were built by Alba Orbital for Stara Space, a Miami Beach startup, as a proof-of-concept for an eventual constellation of tiny satellites to provide high-speed data connection, storage and computation. The NOOR 1A and 1B satellites each weigh less than 2 pounds and carries equipment to demonstrate inter-satellite data links, encrypted communications, and an active pointing system, according to Alba Orbital.

Alba is handling launch services for four other PocketQubes.

"This will be the biggest deployment of PocketQubes in history, with the goal to provide a regular service for the PocketQube community, servicing startups such as Stara, universities and space agencies," Alba said in a statement.

The first four PocketQubes launched in 2013. Alba says it is arranging the launch of another cluster of PocketQubes after the six tiny satellites launching Friday.

Here's how Rocket Lab describes the other four PocketQubes on Friday's launch:

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• ATL-1: A payload from Advanced Technology of Laser (ATL) from Hungary designed to test a new thermal isolation material in space, conduct a thermal insulator material experiment, and DVB-T band spectrum monitoring.
  
• Fossasat-1: FossaSat 1 is a picosatellite developed by Spanish non-profit organization Fossa Systems. The spacecraft, which fits in the palm of a hand, is a communications satellite that uses low power RF to provide IOT connectivity.
  
• SMOG-P: A novel spectrum monitoring payload built by students at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary. Smog-P features a spectrum analyzer to measure man-made electromagnetic pollution from space.
  
• TRSI Sat: ACME AtronOmatic is a US-Germany based software application development company that provides flight tracking services to the aviation community and to mobile applications such as MyRadar, a weather radar application for mobile devices.
  

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https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/11/29/rocket-lab-electron-flight-10-mission-status-center/

11/29/2019 03:11 Stephen Clark

Today's launch is scheduled for 8:56 p.m. local time in New Zealand (0756 GMT; 2:56 a.m. EST).

The two-stage, 55-foot-tall (17-meter) Electron launcher will power off the launch pad on Mahia Peninsula, located on New Zealand's North Island, with nearly 50,000 pounds of thrust from nine Rutherford main engines. After heading south from the launch pad over the Pacific Ocean, the Electron rocket will shut down and jettison its first stage before igniting a single Rutherford upper stage engine at T+plus 2 minutes, 42 seconds.

The launch vehicle's carbon composite nose fairing will jettison at T+plus 3 minutes, 13 seconds, once the Electron climbs above the dense lower layers of the atmosphere.

A few minutes later, two battery packs that power the Rutherford engine's turbopumps will separate after the rocket completes an in-flight "hot swap" to a new battery set. Shutdown of the Rutherford engine is planned at T+plus 8 minutes, 54 seconds, after placing the Electron in a preliminary transfer orbit.

Seven seconds later, at T+plus 9 minutes, 1 second, the Electron's second stage will release a Curie kick stage to begin a coast period lasting more than 51 minutes. The Curie's liquid-fueled thruster will ignite at T+plus 50 minutes, 21 seconds, to place the mission's seven payloads into their planned 250-mile-high (400-kilometer) orbit.

The Curie kick stage's burn will last around 96 seconds, and deployment of the seven micro-payloads should be completed about an hour after liftoff.

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11/29/2019 03:21 Stephen Clark

Rocket Lab is introducing several changes to the Electron rocket's first stage on this mission prepare for an eventual attempt to recover the booster with a helicopter on a future flight.

Rocket Lab announced in August plans to retrieve and reuse Electron first stages, primarily to achieve a planned cadence of one launch per week.

Rocket Lab determined production bottlenecks were a major factor inhibiting such a rapid launch rate. Reusing rockets could ease the burden on Rocket Lab's factories in New Zealand and California, the company says.

The company installed a data recorder on an Electron rocket launched in August to collect information on the environments the first stage sees when it comes back to Earth, before eventually breaking apart in the atmosphere.

Beck told Spaceflight Now in a recent interview that the data obtained during the August launch showed that designing the Electron first stage to survive re-entry will be difficult.

"We knew it's hard, but we certainly learned that it is hard," Beck said. "We did get some good initial data fr om the flight (in August), but really Flight 10 is where it's all going to happen. That's wh ere we're pushing really deep with the stage. That stage has a full telemetry system, there's RCS (reaction control system thrusters) to guide it into the entry corridor. We expect to go quite deep (into the atmosphere) with that flight."



Today's Electron launch will not carry a decelerator or a parachute. Those systems will be installed on later rockets to enable a recovery of the booster first from the ocean, then via helicopter, Beck said.

"It's purely to just punch it into the atmosphere, fully guided, as deep as we can and gather data," he said. "Flight 10 is about pushing it deep into the atmosphere and really understanding the hypersonic flow and the heating regime."

SpaceX uses cold gas thrusters to re-orient its Falcon 9 first stages, then reignites a subset of the Falcon 9's Merlin engines to slow down for propulsive landings, using thrust and grid fins to steer it back to a drone ship at sea or toward an onshore recovery site.

Rocket Lab will also use cold gas thrusters, but the company is taking a different approach for recovery.

Because the Electron rocket is much smaller than the Falcon 9, there's not enough leftover propellant to attempt a propulsive landing.

"We don't intend to use grid fins," Beck said. "We have other types of measures. The most important thing on this (next) one is the active guidance with the RCS and making sure we maintain a really tight corridor with the base heat shield first, and just push it as deep as we can go."

The first stage on today's mission also carries additional guidance and navigation hardware, including S-band telemetry and on-board flight computer, to live-gather data during the booster's scorching-hot re-entry, according to Rocket Lab.

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 Rocket Lab‏ @RocketLab 3 мин. назад

Electron is vertical on the pad for today's #RunningOutOfFingers launch

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 Rocket Lab‏ @RocketLab 10 мин. назад

Today's target lift-off time has been adjusted slightly for Collision Avoidance (COLA) windows. Now targeting:
UTC: 08:20
NZDT: 21:20
PST: 00:20
EST: 03:20

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 Rocket Lab‏ @RocketLab 2 мин. назад

Today's mission will take us a step closer to reusable Electron rockets. We're not recovering Electron from this mission, but the 1st stage has new guidance and navigation hardware, plus a reaction control system to orient the stage during re-entry.




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Today the focus is on monitoring the stage as it comes back to Earth so we can better understand the reentry environments it needs to survive. The data from today will help to inform our first efforts to recover a stage next year.

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 Rocket Lab @RocketLab 2 мин. назад

We've put cameras on stage 1, so today's webcast *might* have video footage of the stage's re-entry, though we are expecting telemetry drop-outs. Since we're running out of fingers, we have our toes crossed for some footage of reentry.

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 Alba Orbital‏ @AlbaOrbital 10 мин. назад

Its launch day for Alba Cluster 2! We will be launching 6 customer pocketqube satellites into orbit via Albapod v2! Go unicorn, go albapod, go electron! #RunningOutOfFingers

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 Rocket Lab‏ @RocketLab 2 мин. назад

With just over two hours until target lift-off, LOX fill operations are underway at LC-1. Set a reminder to tune into the live webcast! http://www.rocketlabusa.com/live-stream

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Трансляция пуска

на сайте RocketLab

rocketlabusa.com/live-stream

или

на ТыТрубе

youtube.com/watch?v=-sp-HFiSBk8

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