Last year, Nilesat awarded French aerospace giant Thales Alenia Space the contract to manufacture the new communications satellite named NileSat 301. Based on the Spacebus 400-B2 platform, NileSat-301 has a development timeline of 25 months and is expected to last over 15 years in orbit upon launch in January 2022.
The mission is expected to launch from Cape Canaveral in the first quarter of 2022 to place the Nilesat 301 satellite into geostationary transfer orbit, an elliptical loop around Earth, which is standard drop-off orbit for communications satellites heading to geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.
A rocket is going up into space with a drag sail. The goal? For the drag sail to bring the rocket back to Earth, preventing it from becoming like the thousands of pieces of space junk in Earth’s lower orbit. The drag sail, developed by Purdue University engineers, will be on board a Firefly Aerospace rocket expected to launch in November from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.This sail and six other “Dedicated Research and Education Accelerator Mission” (DREAM) payloads are flying on Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha launch, the first flight for the launch vehicle company.
Alpha's customers for the second and third flights have not yet been determined. "We've got a number of competing customers, and we're locking in some details right now," Brad Schneider, Firefly's chief revenue officer, told Space.com. We do know about some payloads that will fly in the more-distant future, however. In February, for instance, Firefly inked a deal with Satlantis to launch a constellation of small satellites around 2022.The second and third Alpha rockets are already under construction for their missions in 2021. The nominal mission sequence calls for each of the first three rockets to fly about three months after its immediate predecessor. Eventually, as Firefly ramps up its supply chain and its customers, the launch pace will quicken, company representatives said.Firefly is also "starting to turn up the heat on the development of Beta vehicle," which is a launcher designed for medium-sized missions, Kulin said. The Cape Canaveral site will be activated fairly soon, allowing the company to aim, eventually, for interplanetary launches and moon missions, since the Cape's low-latitude location provides a boost for rockets headed toward such distant destinations.
SATLANTIS enters into Launch Services agreement with FIREFLY AEROSPACEBeginning in 2022, SATLANTIS will utilize the FIREFLY ALPHA launch vehicle to deploy a constellation of satellites with breakthrough high-resolution multispectral cameras with four bands of 80 cm native resolution.“SATLANTIS efforts are aimed at providing governments, national space agencies, and industries seeking space capabilities with unparalleled access to high-quality Earth Observation data, without the need to develop costly programs of their own. Our partnership with FIREFLY complements SATLANTIS strategy to deliver these products -by providing cost-efficient, on-demand launch services to meet the stringent orbit and revisit requirements of our constellation” said Juan Tomás Hernani, SATLANTIS CEO.
The next SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral will launch the thirteenth batch of Starlink satellites from pad 39A on September 17 at 2:17pm EDT.
Not unexpected, but it didn't make it.Astra@Astra22sSuccessful lift off and fly out, but the flight ended during the first stage burn. It does look like we got a good amount of nominal flight time. More updates to come!twitter.com/Astra/status/1304622467042820105
Quote from: Elthiryel on 09/09/2020 01:49 pmFrom the recently published NOTMARs:Quote<snip>Hazard periods for primary launch day and backup launch days;Primary launch day: 17/1802Z thru 17/1920Z Sep 20 (2:02pm thru 3:20pm local).Preferred T-0 is 1817Z (2:17pm local).Backup launch day: 18/1740Z thru 18/1858Z Sep 20 (1:40pm thru 2:58pm local). Preferred T-0 is 1755Z (1:55pm local).So the primary launch time is September 17 at 2:17 PM local (18:17 UTC).Source for Ben Cooper?:Quote from: Salo on 09/09/2020 04:21 pmhttp://www.launchphotography.com/Delta_4_Atlas_5_Falcon_9_Launch_Viewing.htmlQuoteThe next SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral will launch the thirteenth batch of Starlink satellites from pad 39A on September 17 at 2:17pm EDT.Quote from: Salo on 09/01/2020 03:13 pmScheduled:Date - Satellite(s) - Rocket - Launch Site - Time (UTC)2020Mid- September 17 - Starlink flight 13 (x60) [v1.0 L12] - Falcon 9-094 (B1058.3 S) - Canaveral SLC-40 Kennedy LC-39A - 18:17NET September 5 18 - NROL-44: Orion 10 (Mentor 8 ) (TBD) - Delta IV-H [D-385] - Canaveral SLC-37B - 04:30-07:12Late September - Starlink flight 14 (x60) [v1.0 L13] - Falcon 9-095 (B1051.6 S) - Kennedy LC-39ASeptember 30 - Cygnus NG-14 (CRS-14) - Antares-230+ - MARS LP-0A - 02:26NET September - STP-27RM: Monolith - Electron/Kick Stage - MARS LA-0A (LC-2)October 1 - GPS III SV04 - Falcon 9 (B1062.1 S) - Canaveral SLC-40 - 00:00-04:00Changes on September 1stChanges on September 3rdChanges on September 5thChanges on September 7thChanges on September 9thzubenelgenubi September 9th
From the recently published NOTMARs:Quote<snip>Hazard periods for primary launch day and backup launch days;Primary launch day: 17/1802Z thru 17/1920Z Sep 20 (2:02pm thru 3:20pm local).Preferred T-0 is 1817Z (2:17pm local).Backup launch day: 18/1740Z thru 18/1858Z Sep 20 (1:40pm thru 2:58pm local). Preferred T-0 is 1755Z (1:55pm local).So the primary launch time is September 17 at 2:17 PM local (18:17 UTC).
<snip>Hazard periods for primary launch day and backup launch days;Primary launch day: 17/1802Z thru 17/1920Z Sep 20 (2:02pm thru 3:20pm local).Preferred T-0 is 1817Z (2:17pm local).Backup launch day: 18/1740Z thru 18/1858Z Sep 20 (1:40pm thru 2:58pm local). Preferred T-0 is 1755Z (1:55pm local).
http://www.launchphotography.com/Delta_4_Atlas_5_Falcon_9_Launch_Viewing.htmlQuoteThe next SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral will launch the thirteenth batch of Starlink satellites from pad 39A on September 17 at 2:17pm EDT.
Scheduled:Date - Satellite(s) - Rocket - Launch Site - Time (UTC)2020Mid- September 17 - Starlink flight 13 (x60) [v1.0 L12] - Falcon 9-094 (B1058.3 S) - Canaveral SLC-40 Kennedy LC-39A - 18:17NET September 5 18 - NROL-44: Orion 10 (Mentor 8 ) (TBD) - Delta IV-H [D-385] - Canaveral SLC-37B - 04:30-07:12Late September - Starlink flight 14 (x60) [v1.0 L13] - Falcon 9-095 (B1051.6 S) - Kennedy LC-39ASeptember 30 - Cygnus NG-14 (CRS-14) - Antares-230+ - MARS LP-0A - 02:26NET September - STP-27RM: Monolith - Electron/Kick Stage - MARS LA-0A (LC-2)October 1 - GPS III SV04 - Falcon 9 (B1062.1 S) - Canaveral SLC-40 - 00:00-04:00Changes on September 1stChanges on September 3rdChanges on September 5thChanges on September 7thChanges on September 9thzubenelgenubi September 9th
Confirmation that Escapade has been removed from the flight:https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1305526413257211904QuoteGlaze: The EscaPADE smallsat mission to study the Martian atmosphere has passed PDR, but won’t launch with Psyche as originally planned; will be remanifested on a future flight. #LEAG2020
Glaze: The EscaPADE smallsat mission to study the Martian atmosphere has passed PDR, but won’t launch with Psyche as originally planned; will be remanifested on a future flight. #LEAG2020
One of the initial two orders given to ULA under the NSSL Phase 2 contract. Multiple payloads to (GTO/GEO?).One payload is the 1250kg NTS-3 satellite for testing PNT (positioning, navigation, and timing) technologies.[Space News] Air Force Research Laboratory’s NTS-3 satellite to launch on ULA’s Vulcan
