Author Topic: LIVE: Rokot/Briz-KM - Sentinel-3B - Plesetsk - April 25, 2018  (Read 30163 times)

Offline Nicolas PILLET

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People on Twitter not happy about "Rokot" and "Briz". Insisting it's "Rockot and Breeze" as that's what everyone else says. Give me ammunition ;)

They should ask Vladeemeer Puteen in the Ckremlin about his opinion on this subject...
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Online jacqmans

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Press Release

N°08-2018

Paris, 25 April 2018


Seventh Sentinel satellite launched for Copernicus

The second Sentinel-3 satellite, Copernicus Sentinel-3B, was launched today, joining its identical twin Sentinel-3A in orbit. This pairing of satellites increases coverage and data delivery for the European Union’s Copernicus environment programme.

The 1150 kg Sentinel-3B satellite was carried into orbit on a Rockot launcher from Plesetsk, Russia, at 17:57 GMT (19:57 CEST; 21:57 local time) on 25 April.

Rockot’s upper stage delivered Sentinel-3B into its planned orbit..

Just 92 minutes after liftoff, Sentinel-3B sent its first signals to the Kiruna station in Sweden. Data links were quickly established by teams at ESA’s operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany, allowing them to assume control of the satellite.

During the three-day launch and the early orbit phase, controllers will check that all the satellite’s systems are working and begin calibrating the instruments to commission the satellite. The mission is expected to begin routine operations after five months.

“This is the seventh launch of a Sentinel satellite in the last four years. It is a clear demonstration of what European cooperation can achieve and it is another piece to operating the largest Earth observation programme in the world, together with our partners from the European Commission and Eumetsat,” said ESA Director General Jan Wörner.

With this launch, the first set of Sentinel missions for the European Union’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network are in orbit, carrying a range of technologies to monitor Earth’s land, oceans and atmosphere.

ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Josef Aschbacher, said, “With Sentinel-3B, Europe has put the first constellation of Sentinel missions into orbit – this is no small job and has required strong support by all involved. It allows us to get a very detailed picture of our planet on a daily basis and provides crucial information for policy makers.

“It also offers lots of opportunities for commercial companies to develop new innovative services. And, the free and open data policy allows every citizen to have updates for their own use.

“When we designed such a satellite constellation 20 years ago not everyone was convinced Europe could do that. I am glad to see this has become reality and that it is now a large European success story.”

Copernicus relies on the Sentinels and contributing missions to provide data for monitoring the environment and for supporting civil security activities. Sentinel-3 carries a series of cutting-edge sensors to do just that.

Over oceans, it measures the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice. These measurements are used, for example, to monitor changes in Earth’s climate and for more hands-on applications such as marine pollution.

Over land, this innovative mission monitors wildfires, maps the way land is used, checks vegetation health and measures the height of rivers and lakes.

Data from the Copernicus Programme are used worldwide and are free of charge.
« Last Edit: 04/26/2018 10:53 am by jacqmans »
Jacques :-)

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Press release, 26 April 2018


Launch of Sentinel-3B – twin satellites united in space - Copernicus programme Earth observation mission explores the climate impact of the oceans

Full article with images: http://www.dlr.de/dlr/presse/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10172/213_read-27031/year-all/#/gallery/30327

The Sentinel-3 satellite pair, one of the principal components of the European Copernicus programme, is now united in space. On 25 April 2018 at 19:57 CEST (20:57 local time) the Earth observation satellite Sentinel-3B lifted off on a Russian Rockot
launcher from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. "The twin satellites will now monitor Earth together," explains Michael Nyenhuis, responsible for the Sentinel-3 mission at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Space Administration.
"Once Sentinel-3B has been successfully commissioned in orbit, the system will be fully operational and we will receive valuable additional data."

Optimised orbit allows additional ocean observations

Sentinel-3B is now orbiting Earth at an altitude of approximately 815 kilometres, in the same polar orbit as its identical twin, Sentinel-3A, which was launched in February 2016. At the start of their joint mission, the satellites are flying in tandem,
just 30 seconds apart, to calibrate their many sensors. Later, they will move apart, to a separation of about 40 minutes, to ensure the best temporal coverage of Earth's surface. Based on the findings obtained with Sentinel-3A, the orbit of Sentinel-3B
was optimised to allow more frequent measurements of sea level. The satellite will send data to Earth for at least seven years. The oceans are the focus of the mission, but large-scale changes in land areas will also be recorded.

Oceans store and transport heat

The water masses on Earth, which cover about 70 percent of the planet's surface, store and transport large amounts of energy and heat. As a result, they have a strong influence on Earth’s climate and weather systems. The extensive data on water temperature,
sea level and ocean ice thickness, which the two identical Sentinel-3 satellites will transmit in near real time, are therefore of interest to more than just the maritime transport industry. Most importantly, they provide the basis for accurate weather
forecasting and climate research – for example, to produce models of climate change that are as realistic as possible. In addition, the data allow monitoring of marine pollution and the amount of biomass produced in the oceans.

Over land, the Sentinel-3 mission aims to detect active forest fires and burnt areas in order to assess carbon emissions, but also to provide large-scale information on disaster risks. In addition, the satellites will investigate different types of
land use and the state of vegetation on Earth's surface. These data will be used for the creation of maps as well as in modern agricultural management. Other tasks for the twin satellites include, for example, the detection of what are referred to
as heat islands – that is, localised temperature increases that occur over large cities. Their influence on the regional climate and the impact of climate change on these cities are still largely unexplored.

DLR is an important partner in the ground segment

Three Processing and Archiving Centres (PACs) receive, process and store Sentinal-3 data. One of them is DLR's Earth Observation Center (EOC) in Oberpfaffenhofen. The raw data received by the ground station in Svalbard, Norway, reaches the site via
the Copernicus high-performance data network. Here, information products are created and made accessible to scientific users and the public in the long-term archive. The first test data is expected a few days after the satellite launch. Calibrated
and corrected data is expected to be available in September.

The Sentinel-3B data will continue to expand the Copernicus database in the German Satellite Data Archive (Deutschen Satellitendatenarchiv; DSDA). Together with the data from the Sentinel-1 radar mission, over 3.6 million data sets and a data volume
of more than 7200 terabytes (7.1 petabytes) have been stored in just three-and-a-half years. Burned onto CDs, this would create a tower around 1800 metres high – five-and-a-half times the height of the Eiffel Tower. "Processing and analysing this vast
amount of data is the new challenge for Earth observation. Thanks to our many years of experience in handling enormous amounts of data – for example, in the context of the TanDEM-X mission – we are now able to use our methods to carry out Big Data
analyses in Earth observation," says Stefan Dech, one of the two directors of the EOC.

With the launch of Sentinel-3B, the Copernicus programme's seventh satellite is in orbit and the first four satellite missions of the Copernicus space segment are now complete. In addition to Sentinel-3, these include Sentinel-1's two radar satellites
– which observe Earth day and night and through cloud cover – Sentinel-2A and -2B, which focus on landmasses, and Sentinel-5P for measuring air pollutants, greenhouse gases and aerosols. The next launch of a Copernicus satellite is scheduled for 2020.

Sentinel-3 – a European cooperation

The Sentinel-3 mission is part of the Copernicus programme, a partnership between the European Union (EU) and ESA. Following the commissioning of the satellites in orbit, the mission will be jointly conducted by ESA and the European Organisation for
the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) on behalf of the EU. ESA is responsible for creating data products for land surfaces, while EUMETSAT provides the ocean and atmospheric products. The two Sentinel-3 satellites were built by a
consortium of approximately 100 European companies under the leadership of Thales Alenia Space (France). The DLR Space Administration manages the German contributions to the programme on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure
(Bundesministerium für Verkehr und digitale Infrastruktur; BMVI) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium fuer Wirtschaft und Energie; BMWi).

The EU and ESA Copernicus programme

The EU and ESA are creating a powerful and sustainable Earth observation infrastructure for Europe with Copernicus – formerly known as Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). The EU operates satellite-based information services for Earth's
surface, oceans and atmosphere, as well as for disaster management, climate change and security. These services are based on six satellite families called Sentinels. They are developed by ESA in the Copernicus Space Component (CSC) programme and operated
on behalf of the EU. Satellite data from third parties are also included in Copernicus, such as data from the German satellites TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X and RapidEye. The Sentinels complement the existing satellite missions to create the world’s most comprehensive
and powerful civilian Earth observation satellite system.
Jacques :-)

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Offline Stan Black

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People on Twitter not happy about "Rokot" and "Briz". Insisting it's "Rockot and Breeze" as that's what everyone else says. Give me ammunition ;)

Rockot is technically correct - as long as you also use "Soyouz". And if you're going to use "Breeze", you'll have to start calling Soyuz "Union".

It is just Rokot. A Rokot is made up of several parts including a Briz-KM upper stage. There is also a 14С76 fairing, launch tube 15С300, a former RS18 missile amongst other parts.

Briz is pronounced like breeze. So when people use Breeze, are they trying to spell it phonetically or trying to translate? If you use Breeze don’t think of the English word ‘breeze’.

Also explains the use of ‘ck’ for a ‘k’ sound. Confusion for me is that a ‘c’ in some slav languages, that use the latin alphabet, is used for a ‘ts’ sound. Like the Germans use a ‘z’ for ‘ts’.

A Rockot type launch vehicle was launched with a Briz (pronounce like the word Breeze) upper stage, something like that? Sloppy.

Stick with Rokot and Briz.
« Last Edit: 04/27/2018 01:25 pm by Stan Black »

Offline nsn

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It is actually "Рокот" and "Бриз", nothing more. The way Russian names are written in Latin alphabets is up to the speakers of languages that use Latin script. It may vary for different languages.
« Last Edit: 04/27/2018 01:18 pm by Chris Bergin »

Offline Chris Bergin

I blame Europe for putting "Rockot" on the side of it ;D

« Last Edit: 04/27/2018 01:20 pm by Chris Bergin »
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Offline Nicolas PILLET

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Kosmonavtika : The French site on Russian Space

Offline zubenelgenubi

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With the success of this launch, does Eurockot Launch Services dissolve?

The three remaining Rokot launches are all Russian government payloads.
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Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Their web site is still going, but the manifest is empty.

http://www.eurockot.com/missions/manifest/
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

Offline russianhalo117

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With the success of this launch, does Eurockot Launch Services dissolve?

The three remaining Rokot launches are all Russian government payloads.
Their web site is still going, but the manifest is empty.

http://www.eurockot.com/missions/manifest/
Eurockot also post government launches so i don't expect the site to retire until Rockot formally does.

Offline russianhalo117

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With the success of this launch, does Eurockot Launch Services dissolve?

The three remaining Rokot launches are all Russian government payloads.
Their web site is still going, but the manifest is empty.

http://www.eurockot.com/missions/manifest/
Eurockot also post government launches so i don't expect the site to retire until Rockot formally does.
On a side note:

I'm told that the Strela Launch vehicle is un-affected by the geo-political outcome. There is a consensus to also retire Strela but that has not officially happened yet. Strela can be deployed from the Rockot launch site if needed albeit with a performance hit.
« Last Edit: 06/01/2018 02:47 pm by russianhalo117 »

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