SpaceX F9 : ANASIS-II : July 20, 2020

[PM3]

Discussion thread for the ANASIS-II launch.

NSF Threads for ANASIS-II  launch: Discussion

Successful launch July 20, 2020 at 5:30pm EDT (21:30 UTC) from LC-40 on Falcon 9 booster 1058.2 to GTO.  ASDS landing on JRTI was successful.  Both of the new fairing halves were caught by Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief.


The ANASIS-II mission was published on May 22 or 23 at https://www.spacex.com/missions with this information:

- Florida launch site
- Falcon 9 launcher

[PM3]

March 7, 2019
South Korea to launch own military satellite in November

South Korea will launch its first military satellite in November, as part of offset arrangements with Lockheed Martin in purchasing F-35A stealth fighter jets, a spokesman at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said Thursday.

"Lockheed Martin is going to provide a military communications satellite to the South Korean government as an offset offering for the South's introduction of its F-35A Lightning II jets," he said.

The satellite for the Republic of Korea (ROK) Army will be launched in November from an airbase in Florida.

The military has so far shared the use of Korea's Mugunghwa-5 civilian satellite launched in 2006, under a military communication system named ANASIS that enables communication for a 6,000 kilometer radius around the Korean Peninsula.

"An airbase in Florida" would bei SLC-40, but SpaceX listed it today only for "Florida launch site", which as well could be LC-39A.

[Skyrocket]

The Anasis-2 satellite was known formerly as "KMilSatCom"

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/kmilsatcom-1.htm

[Norm38]

Is this one of the 5-8 unlisted missions Shotwell was talking about?

(SpaceX needs to add 5-8 missions to the 2019 manifest to launch "18-21 times without Starlink")

[scr00chy]

Is this one of the 5-8 unlisted missions Shotwell was talking about?

Yes

[gongora]

"An airbase in Florida" would bei SLC-40, but SpaceX listed it today only for "Florida launch site", which as well could be LC-39A.

If a flight isn't for Commercial Crew or launching on Falcon Heavy, then it's probably going to launch from SLC-40.

[Nehkara]

According to Gunter's Space Page, this satellite is based on Eurostar 3000 design.  Most of those satellites are 5000-6000 kg.

[vaporcobra]

"An airbase in Florida" would bei SLC-40, but SpaceX listed it today only for "Florida launch site", which as well could be LC-39A.

If a flight isn't for Commercial Crew or launching on Falcon Heavy, then it's probably going to launch from SLC-40.

39A is gonna spend a lot of time unused if it's relegated to Crew and Heavy launches alone. Unlikely that it would ever get above ~6 launches annually, which would mean that 39A is only operating at ~1/4th its actual capacity. Given that it apparently takes only a few days to a week at most to change configurations and that the Crew config can probably support non-Dragon F9 launches, there's no good reason to assume that SpaceX wont use both pads somewhat interchangeably.

Plus, just from a practical perspective, Crew Dragon's failure means that 39A will have at least 3-6 months of downtime this year, if not more.

[Robotbeat]

39A is for government and heavy launches primarily.

[ZachS09]

39A is for government and heavy launches primarily.

Yet there were a handful of commercial launches. Most of them were because of SLC-40 being destroyed during the AMOS 6 static fire failure. And two others were conducted from LC-39A for some reason I'm not aware of.

[Thorny]

And two others were conducted from LC-39A for some reason I'm not aware of.

There was talk of international satellites using 39A because getting foreign visitors access to KSC is easier than it is access to CCAFS. I'm not sure how true that ended up being.

[PM3]

It is pure speculation from which pad this launch will go. SpaceX listed it as "Florida launch site", unlike many other launches, which means that the pad is not determined yet. Note that SpaceX added all these three missions to the manifest yesterday:

- Anasis-II / "Florida launch site"
- Dart / Vandenberg
- AFSPC-52 / KSC LC-39A

Unlikey that they forgot to insert the launch pad just for Anasis-II.

LC-39A may be needed to ramp up Starlink.

[russianhalo117]

"An airbase in Florida" would bei SLC-40, but SpaceX listed it today only for "Florida launch site", which as well could be LC-39A.

If a flight isn't for Commercial Crew or launching on Falcon Heavy, then it's probably going to launch from SLC-40.

39A is gonna spend a lot of time unused if it's relegated to Crew and Heavy launches alone. Unlikely that it would ever get above ~6 launches annually, which would mean that 39A is only operating at ~1/4th its actual capacity. Given that it apparently takes only a few days to a week at most to change configurations and that the Crew config can probably support non-Dragon F9 launches, there's no good reason to assume that SpaceX wont use both pads somewhat interchangeably.

Plus, just from a practical perspective, Crew Dragon's failure means that 39A will have at least 3-6 months of downtime this year, if not more.

End of TEL has to be swapped out from the normal end for Dragon v2 launches at either pad (All flights: Crew and Cargo). Luckily all HVAC and purge connections are plug and play quick disconnects.

[PM3]

ANASIS (Korean transcription: 아나시스) is short for "Army/Navy/Air Force Satellite Information System". The formal designation seems to be "URC-700K". It is a "군위성통신" (military satellite communication system).

Here is a technical paper on the next generation ANASIS network, including info on the current system which is running on Koreasat 5:

http://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/JAKO201809454742042.page

[scr00chy]

Any word on launch date? This was supposed to fly in November but I haven't seen any news since then.

[starbase]

SpaceflightNow has listed it in the late April timeframe. https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

[Comga]

SpaceflightNow has listed it in the late April timeframe. https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/

That link now has it labeled "TBD" after a Soyuz labeled "April 25" between an Angara labeled "2nd Quarter" and another Soyuz labeled "May".
That doesn't exclude April but it's not specific to it.

[crandles57]

Meanwhile, Pietrobon,
http://www.sworld.com.au/steven/space/uscom-man.txt

lists it as 4th week of April.

Suspect that could be quite tentative, so don't blame me if it is wrong.

[Steven Pietrobon]

Meanwhile, Pietrobon,
http://www.sworld.com.au/steven/space/uscom-man.txt

lists it as 4th week of April.

Suspect that could be quite tentative, so don't blame me if it is wrong.

That would be me. I got my information from this thread!

[scr00chy]

I think you guys are reading too much into the placement of a TBD date on the overall schedule. It could just be a placeholder and doesn't mean we should expect the launch around late April. If SFN thought that's the planned date, they'd just write that instead of TBD.