Launch Roundup: China returns to the moon, SpaceX keeps up high launch cadence

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This week, China returns to the Moon with the Chang’e-6 mission, making the first-ever attempt to collect samples from a site on the far side, near the lunar South Pole.

SpaceX also plans to keep up its high cadence with the launch of the long-delayed WorldView Legion satellites from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) in California. Additionally, two further Starlink missions are scheduled to launch this week, with the second Starlink mission possibly completing a record-breaking sub-three-day turnaround for Vandenberg.

Lastly, no launch permit was issued for Gilmour Space’s Eris 1 orbital rocket, previously expected to make its maiden flight on May 4, this launch is now on hold.

Falcon 9 Block 5 | WorldView Legion 1 & 2

Originally scheduled to launch from SLC-4E at VSFB on April 17, a Falcon 9 was set to carry two satellites massing a total of 1,500 kilograms into a Sun-synchronous orbit. This first launch attempt was postponed the day before launch and rescheduled for Wednesday, April 24, before being postponed again. SpaceX has not commented on the reason for the delays, but liftoff is now scheduled for Wednesday, May 1, at 11:30 AM PDT (18:30 UTC), at the start of a 54-minute launch window. The booster, which has yet to be confirmed, is expected to return to land on the pad at Landing Zone 4 located around 400 meters away from the launch pad.

Falcon 9 vertical on SLC-4E. (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF)

The WorldView Legion satellite constellation is Maxar Technologies’ next-generation constellation of Earth observation satellites, designed and built in-house at the company’s facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, California. DigitalGlobe, which was later taken over by Maxar, first announced its selection of SpaceX as the launch provider in 2018 when the satellites were initially anticipated to launch in two blocks of six. Hardware-based delays, as well as the complexity of the technology, have caused several setbacks. The planned constellation will now consist of six satellites in total that will be launched in pairs and will orbit in polar and mid-inclination orbits.

The satellites are the first to utilize a new Maxar 500 series bus platform with better stability, agility, and pointing accuracy. When fully deployed, they will occupy an approximately 500-kilometer altitude orbit, providing 30-centimeter high-resolution imagery and eight-band multispectral imagery across 15 revisits per day over the most active regions of the world. The satellites will triple the company’s coverage in 30-centimeter class resolution, capturing five million square kilometers of imagery each day. The satellites are designed with a 10-year lifespan.

Applications will include supporting national security missions for monitoring and surveillance of ground-based potential threats or verifying enforced sanctions and treaties. The satellites also provide a variety of maritime monitoring functions such as the surveillance of natural disasters, pollution, and oil spills through to the detection of illegal fishing, piracy, drug smuggling, or human trafficking. Utilizing artificial intelligence algorithms, the WorldView Legion satellites can support the ability to detect, identify, and respond quickly to suspicious activities. Maxar worked with its instrument partner Raytheon to develop a smaller telescope that requires less power.

Long March 5 Y8 | Chang’e-6 lunar sample return

A Long March 5 launch vehicle is scheduled to lift the Chang’e-6 mission from pad LC-101 at the Wenchang Space Center, China, on Friday, May 3, between 07:00 and 13:00 UTC.

Render of Chang’e-6 landing on the Moon. (Credit: VCG)

Following the success of Chang’e-5 in 2020, China is sending Chang’e-6, which was manufactured as a duplicate backup copy of Chang’e-5, to undertake the first sample return from the far side of the Moon. Chang’e-5 previously returned 1,731 grams of samples, including a one-meter-deep core from a site in the Moon’s northern hemisphere, on the “near side.”

The proposed landing site is located in the southern portion of Apollo crater, which itself lies within the larger South Pole-Aitkin (SPA) impact basin on the lunar far side. It is hoped that samples collected from the target area may include lunar mantle material ejected by the original impact that created the SPA basin. The Apollo crater was named in 1970 following the landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. Robert Grant Aitken was an astronomer whom the large impact basin was named after. These craters were used as navigational identifiers by the crew of Apollo 17.

The Chang’e-6 spacecraft is a four-part vehicle with a launch mass of 8,200 kilograms. An orbiter forms the core structure and carries the main engines, lander (descent and ascent modules), return capsule, and four payloads. Once the spacecraft reaches the Moon and enters a lunar orbit, the lander will separate from the orbiter portion of the spacecraft and descend to the Moon’s surface to make a soft landing. It is hoped that the lander will collect approximately two kilograms of surface soil and rocks (using a scoop) and subsurface samples (using a drill). After collection, the small ascent stage will carry the samples into lunar orbit and will autonomously dock with the orbiter. The samples will then be robotically transferred to the re-entry capsule that will be returned to Earth orbit aboard the orbiter. Finally, the capsule will separate and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on the 53rd day of the mission.

Render of Chang’e-6 in lunar orbit. (Credit: CGTN)

Chinese authorities opened up this mission to international partners, and four further payloads are aboard the vehicle. The first is the Bajisitan Lifang (Pakistani CubeSat), also known as SJTU Siyuan-2. The design and development of ICUBE-Q are a collaborative effort between the Pakistan Institute of Space Technology’s faculty and students, Pakistan’s national space agency SUPARCO, and China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). The cubesat will be used to detect traces of ice on the lunar surface.

Next is the DORN (Detection of Outgassing Radon) instrument, which is a French instrument designed to study the transportation of lunar dust and other volatiles between the lunar regolith and the lunar exosphere, including the water cycle. The third instrument is an Italian instrument called the Instrument for Landing-Roving Laser Retroreflector Investigations (INRRI), consisting of a passive laser retro-reflector to be used for laser range-finding of the lander, similar to those used on the Schiaparelli, InSight, and recent lunar landers, such as IM-1 and SLIM.

The Swedish Negative Ions on Lunar Surface (NILS) instrument will detect and measure negative ions reflected by the lunar surface.

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-55

SpaceX launch operations will switch focus to the east coast for the launch of another batch of Starlink V2-mini satellites to low-Earth orbit. Falcon 9 is set to launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Thursday, May 2, at 9:17 PM EDT (Friday, May 3, at 01:17 UTC) with a 4-hour, 31-minute launch window.

The currently unknown booster will perform a landing on one of the two available autonomous droneships located approximately 640 kilometers downrange along the southeasterly flight path.

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 8-2

Starlink Group 8-2 is expected to launch no earlier than Friday, May 3, at 7:59 AM PDT (Saturday, May 4, 02:59 UTC), at the opening of a 4-hour, 29-minute window from SLC-4E at Vandenberg. This would be a very quick turnaround for the teams at Vandenberg to process — less than three days since the WorldView mission earlier this week, which was a return-to-launch-site mission, increasing the time available to turn around the autonomous drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, the sole droneship available on the west coast.

Falcon 9 will lift a further 22 V2-mini Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit with this launch.

The launch of Group 8-2 will be SpaceX’s 45th Falcon 9 launch of the year, which extrapolates to a total of 130 launches for the year, slightly below the cadence needed to reach the targeted total of 144 launches.

SpaceX Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 6-56

A further batch of Starlink V2-mini satellites will be launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 to low Earth orbit. Currently expected no earlier than 11:34 AM EDT (15:34 UTC) on Monday, May 6, from either LC-39A or SLC-40 at the Cape in Florida.

The launch window extends to 16:05 PM EDT (20:05 UTC). No further information at this time.

(Lead Image: A Long March 5 rocket rolls out with Chang’e-6 in China. Credit: CNSA)

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