SpaceX F9 : Transporter-6 Rideshare : CCSFS SLC-40 : 3 January 2023 (14:56 UTC)

[gongora]

D-Orbit@D_Orbit·
1m
❗️Mission Update❗️ION SCV008 Fierce Franciscus successfully released🎯Sharjah-Sat-1, the 1st #CubeSat mission of
@SaasstSharjah, in collab. w/ ITU-SSDTL and SU, onboard ION through a contract with @isis_space
 
✅https://linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7021122039914577920

[gongora]

❗️Mission Update❗️On Jan.18, 2023, ION SCV008 Fierce Franciscus successfully released FUTURA-SM1, a #satellite by
@NSpacemind, into its operational orbit🎯
✅Acquisition of the signal confirmed
🍀Good luck with your mission and thanks for flying with ION!
https://linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7021771497950130176

[FutureSpaceTourist]

More launch photos from SpaceX

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/D_Orbit/status/1617513175871815680

Mission Update - On Jan. 20, 2023, ION SCV008 Fierce Franciscus successfully released FUTURA-SM3, a #sat by @NSpacemind, into its operational orbit. On the same day, it was also successfully tested SMPOD12XL-3X, a device belonging to the family of NPC Spacemind #CubeSat deployers

[jcm]

Pushan is a guardian deity. I am wondering if Pushan alpha is really Guardian alpha and Digi are just a hosted customer on it...

Of the payloads I haven't assigned to an integrator yet...

RROCI is almost certainly integrated by Maverick and may have been the only thing on that port.

Assigning KuwaitSat-1, GAMA Alpha, Birkeland and Huygens to Exolaunch would match their count of 28 Cubesats.

Looks like Chimera has an Exolaunch separation ring, so would be the 9th microsat in their count.

That leaves Umbra, Lynk, and EOS.  I'm a bit surprised EOS wouldn't be going through someone like ExoLaunch, but I think the others were on their own ports for the previous Transporter launch.

I'm still assuming Pushan Alpha is either on Orbiter or Chimera.

[gongora]

Pushan is a guardian deity. I am wondering if Pushan alpha is really Guardian alpha and Digi are just a hosted customer on it...

Hmmm, that's a possibility.  If so we need to come up with one more payload for the list?

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1618366738566987776

The Jan 3 Transporter-6 launch carried (we think) 114 payloads of which 101 so far deployed;13 still aboard tug satellites. Of the 101,  70 have so far been identified, whch is good progress. But importantly no id yet for  several of the tugs (Skykraft, SCV007, Orbiter, Chimera)

[gongora]

A ground station filing for continued support of Vigoride 5 mentions RROCI not getting deployed (they were supporting both missions).

[gongora]

Space Track is up to 98 objects for this launch, and only 14 of those without names now (it was a lot more without names the last time I looked)

[gongora]

Orbiter failed to deploy any payloads.

Orbiter SN1 Mission Update
Hawthorne
February 16, 2023

On January 3, 2023 at 09:55 ET,  Launcher successfully launched its first spacecraft (Orbiter SN1) to orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 (Transporter-6). Upon successful separation on Launcher’s 24” separation system, the spacecraft powered up and communicated to the ground (command uplink and telemetry downlink) during its first scheduled ground station pass.

We also communicated with the vehicle for the duration of expected battery life. Unfortunately, after that time period, the vehicle stopped operating as we were not able to generate power from our solar panels due to an orientation control issue caused by a fault in our GPS antenna system.

While achieving many internal mission objectives in the development of our Orbiter spacecraft and collecting critical data from the successful on-orbit operation, unfortunately, we failed to deploy our customer payloads.

We would like to sincerely apologize to our customers and their team, partners and end customers. We have been in constant communication with them since launch day, including recovery attempts. We have committed to accommodations beyond our contractual requirements to our customers on this mission.

There were many notable successes to our first mission, including

Building a low-cost, high delta-v capable space tug and hosted platform in just over a year.
Qualifying to fly it on SpaceX Rideshare.
Successfully integrating it onto Falcon 9 on our first scheduled mission.
Successful ascent to space and orbit.
Successful separation using our own low-cost 24” separation system.‍

Fully operational time in orbit during expected battery life, including‍

Two-way S-BAND communication to the ground at every opportunity.
Recorded over 30 minutes of telemetry in five successful passes.
Proved our in-house developed ground software for command uplink and telemetry downlink and integration with our ground station network partner.
Established and maintained attitude control using low-cost custom cold gas thrusters and integrated third-party reaction wheels.
Proved operation of our power bus and battery system.
Proved operation of our high-performance and low-cost flight computer.
Proved operation of our  in-house developed star camera system.
Proved operation of our full flight software, GNC software stack on orbit.

‍Improvements for our next flight:

We have designed an improved GPS radio and antenna subsystem and are also taking steps in software development to ensure that a repeated GPS failure would not have any fatal impact on our mission.

We also have made the following improvements:

Improved GNC software and robust spacecraft safe mode
Fully implemented a backup customer spacecraft separation system
Improved Orbiter’s battery charger to allow charging and recovery in nearly all spacecraft anomalous events as well as doubled the battery capacity

We are incredibly grateful that our current partners and customers are continuing to join us on our next flight. With higher confidence from these hard-learned lessons and improvements, we will be back in space this year with Orbiter SN3 in June 2023 (SpaceX Transporter-8) and again in October 2023 (SpaceX Transporter-9).

[gongora]

The Skykraft satellites finally have their names assigned on space-track.org.  Of the 98 objects currently assigned to this launch only 7 don't have names.  Two more of those (BDSAT-2 and STAR VIBE) have names on Celestrak.

[gongora]

https://spaceref.com/newspace-and-tech/beetlesat-successfully-deploys-leo-satellite-expandable-antenna-in-space/

[gongora]

I'm finally starting to look back at this flight. 

Of the 113 deployable payloads on my list, there are the 98 entries on space-track, and 94 of those have names on Celestrak now.

Between RROCI (assuming it really didn't deploy) and the stuff on Orbiter (Unicorn 2G/2H, MDQSAT-1A/1B, PROVES-Yearling, Sapling-1), that's at least 7 that won't be deployed.

There may still be 5 on ION (Astrocast x4, Kelpie) and 1 on Vigoride (ZEUS-1).

ICEYE never gave a post-launch update that I saw, and only two of their three sats are identified.

Orbiter-1 (now dead) and CHIMERA LEO-1 (presumed dead) should be two of the unnamed tracked objects.

Endurosat said their satellite was being commissioned.

Has anyone seen updates for Guardian Alpha or PolyItan HP-30?

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1631759229982785536

New object cataloged from the Transporter 6 launch:
55107 / 2023-001DC 
Appears to have been deployed from ION SCV007 "Glorious Gratia" around 12h UTC Mar 1.
Hey @D_orbit which sat is this?

Celestrak has an ID:
2023-001DC    55107   AAC-AIS-SAT-1    UK

[Skyrocket]

https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1631759229982785536

New object cataloged from the Transporter 6 launch:
55107 / 2023-001DC 
Appears to have been deployed from ION SCV007 "Glorious Gratia" around 12h UTC Mar 1.
Hey @D_orbit which sat is this?

Celestrak has an ID:
2023-001DC    55107   AAC-AIS-SAT-1    UK

So this is most probably Kelpie-1 (unless we have any other non announced satellites onboard)

[FutureSpaceTourist]

twitter.com/d_orbit/status/1632755431968849921

❗️Mission Update❗️Our flight operations team successfully completed a 120km-orbit raising, positioning ION SCV 007 Glorious Gratia into its new destination orbit ✅ 🎯 Once there, ION successfully released Kelpie-1, a 3U EPIC CubeSat designed and built by @AACClydeSpace

https://twitter.com/d_orbit/status/1632755437069037568

Kelpie-1 will deliver AIS data exclusively to @ORBCOMM_Inc and its government & commercial customers, under an exclusive Space Data as a Service deal. The #sat features: proprietary low-noise bus architecture, multiple SDR payloads, and advanced antenna concept by @OxfordSpace

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/NatReconOfc/status/1635309434858786817

Water-based sat propulsion startup @paleblue_global reports 2 minutes of test ops of its 1.4kg/9x12.1x12.1cm inaugural unit on @Sony -owned Eye satellite launched January. Full ops to start in April to move sat into its target orbit.

[gongora]

I somehow missed this pic from Lynk after the T6 launch.  Looks like they started stacking their sats, which makes a lot of sense given the form factor.

https://lynk.world/news/lynk-launches-worlds-2nd-and-3rd-commercial-cell-towers-in-space/

[gongora]

All of the Spire sats on this launch were 3U.

[Bean Kenobi]

Has anyone news from Astrocast satellites deployed from ION ?