Launch Roundup: New Shepard to simulate lunar gravity, India and Japan to launch navigation satellites.

This week’s schedule has a mix of orbital and suborbital missions launching from seven different sites around the globe. They include an uncrewed New Shepard flight which will conduct experiments for NASA and others in simulated lunar gravity.

In addition to launches from the Florida space coast, India and Japan are both launching navigation satellites. Rocket Lab is launching another batch of satellites for its French customer, Kinéis, while SpaceX is launching a next-generation replacement communications satellite for Spanish operator Hisdesat.

If schedules hold, SpaceX is set to launch four missions, using each of its three active launch sites. These include the first expendable Falcon 9 launch since the Hera mission last October.

The week also closes the month of January which will have seen 23 missions launched around the world in total. If sustained, this is a cadence that would lead to a new annual record for launches by the end of the year. The month saw the debut of Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy lift vehicle, while the maiden launch of China’s Chang Zheng 8A carrier has now slipped from this week into early February.

Booster B1082 completes SpaceX’s 400th landing of an orbital class rocket during Starlink Group 11-8 mission (Credit: SpaceX)

Five days after the second catch of a Starship booster, January also saw the 400th propulsive landing of a Falcon booster. This milestone was reached last week on the Starlink Group 11-8 mission which launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

Three days later, the Starlink Group 11-6 mission from the same site also broke pad turnaround records by 17 hours. SLC-4E’s turnaround record is now set at 2 days, 22 hours, 21 minutes and 10 seconds. The droneship Of Course I Still Love You also set a fleet turnaround record, now under 3 days, with SpaceX’s Kiko Dontchev citing the same statistic of 2 days and 22 hours for this record.

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 12-7

SpaceX started the week with its eighth Starlink mission of the year launching from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff took place on Monday, Jan. 27 at 5:05 PM EST (22:05 UTC), towards the end of a four-hour launch window. A Falcon 9 carried 21 Starlink v2 Mini satellites into low-Earth orbit, including 13 with Direct to Cell capabilities.

Among the Starlink satellite designs being launched now is a new lighter optimized version of the v2 Mini, which masses around 575 kg each. The lighter design will enable more satellites to be carried per mission. Last week’s Group 11-8 mission carried a record 27 of this newer design, while it’s possible that future vehicles may carry as many as 29.

Booster B1076 supported this mission on its 20th flight – the ninth booster to have reached this milestone. It successfully landed on the autonomous droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, which was stationed downrange. This booster has been active since late 2022, beginning with the launch of a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station on its first flight for the CRS-26 mission. It has since lofted a variety of satellites including SXM-9, OneWeb, 03b mPOWER, Intelsat 40e, Ovzon, Eutelsat 36D , Turksat 6A, Worldview Legion 3 and 4 and ten other Starlink missions.

Blue Origin’s latest booster lands during the New Shepard NS-27 mission in October 2024 (Credit: Blue Origin)

New Shepard | NS-29

This week, Blue Origin will fly the third mission of its suborbital New Shepard vehicle in just over three months.  Unlike recent missions, however, there will be no crew on this flight. Instead, 30 payloads will be performing a variety of tests that will take advantage of a simulated lunar gravity.

New Shepard will launch from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. A generous 7.5-hour launch window opens at 10:00 AM CST (16:00 UTC) on Tuesday, Jan. 28. New Shepard will have launched over 175 payloads at the completion of this mission.

NASA is flying 17 technologies on the flight which cover a broad range of experiments from dust mitigation and lunar habitats to in-situ resource utilization. The payloads will experience around two minutes of simulated lunar gravity generated when the capsule is put into a spin. The onboard reaction control thrusters will spin the capsule at around 11 revolutions per minute, simulating the Moon’s gravity, which is around one-sixth of that on Earth.

Simulating lunar gravity allows NASA researchers to test various innovations that form part of the Artemis program and will inform planetary exploration and habitation. Previously, lunar simulations were limited to around 20 seconds on parabolic flights or a fleeting few seconds in a centrifuge drop tower. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp posted a message noting that the company can adapt this capability to closely mirror Mars and other solar system gravity environments in the future.

NASA’s ISRU Pilot Excavator (IPEx) Bucket Drum excavator (Credit: NASA)

One experiment is attached externally to the booster, which recently made its debut as the second active booster in the New Shepard fleet. The Film Evaporation MEMS Tunable Array (FEMTA) is a micropropulsion alternative for small satellites developed by Purdue University. FEMTA uses water surface tension to provide low power but highly tunable attitude control and could enable in-situ resource utilization for its propellant.

A further 29 other experiments will fly internally in the capsule. Honeybee Robotics, part of the Blue Origin family, is focused on excavating and processing lunar regolith and has four payloads on board. NASA’s experiments include the testing of dust-tolerant technology to move lunar regolith particles using dynamic electric fields and other methods to move regolith vertically in vacuum conditions. Others will inform the creation of lunar regolith simulants and test drum technology which could be used for robotic excavation on the lunar surface in reduced gravity.

Additional experiments will test low-mass pneumatic techniques to liberate dust from rocks and planetary surfaces as well as from equipment such as solar panels. They will test how the dust settles in lunar gravity and how it departs from spacesuit fabric. Also taking advantage of the lunar gravity simulation are fluid physics experiments that will inform the thermal management of electronic systems and could improve the management of gases and liquids in space. Also onboard, the Draper Multi-Environment Navigator (DMEN) is a small, light, and low-power solution for providing location and wayfaring data to support entry, descent, and accurate lunar landings.

NVS-02 loading to the Comprehensive Assembly and Test Thermo-Vacuum chamber (CATVAC) for a Thermovac Test (Credit: ISRO)

GSLV Mk 11 | NVS-02 (IRNSS-1K)

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch a regional navigation satellite atop a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark II. The launch, ISRO’s first of the year, was originally scheduled on Sunday, Jan. 26, and has since been delayed to Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 00:53 UTC. The GSLV vehicle will leave the Second Launch Pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in India, heading due East, as is usual for geosynchronous orbits.

The payload, NVS-02 is the ninth satellite in the Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) and the second in the series of five planned next-generation satellites that will complement the existing NavIC base layer. The satellite’s range will extend for around 1,500 km beyond the Indian sub-continent and is both compatible and interoperable with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Galileo systems.

There are two specific payloads aboard the satellite, independently providing ranging and navigation functionality. The satellite’s Standard Positioning Service (SPS) will provide positioning accuracy better than 20 m and a timing accuracy better than 40 ns over the Indian landmass, which is its primary service area. NVS-02 carries an extremely accurate atomic clock that counts the oscillations of rubidium-87 atoms to measure each second. Its predecessor was the first Indian satellite to fly with an indigenous atomic clock. Powered by two solar arrays, the satellite has a projected lifespan of ten years.

Standing 51.7 m tall with a 4 m diameter fairing, the GSLV Mark II shares components with the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The first stage is a solid rocket motor, while the second uses a liquid-fueled Vikas engine. The upper stage is cryogenic, powered by a CE-7.5 engine burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Four liquid-fueled L40H strap-on boosters will assist the first stage on its initial ascent.

Render of SpainSat NG satellites (Credit: Hisdesat)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | SPAINSAT New Generation I

A Falcon 9 will launch the first of two telecommunications satellites to replace the SpainSat and XTAR-EUR satellites currently in orbit. The SpainSat New Generation (NG) satellites will provide coverage for the Spanish Armed Forces across two-thirds of the planet, spanning the American continent to East Asia.

The launch is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 28 at 8:34 PM EST (01:34 UTC on Jan 29), leaving pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A four-hour launch window is available to loft the payload to a geostationary transfer orbit. After launch the spacecraft will move into geostationary orbit where it will replace the XTAR-EUR satellite.

Using a technique known as beam hopping, the satellite can generate and move multiple X-band communication beams at high speed. The European Space Agency (ESA) described the antennas onboard as “the most challenging active antennas to have been developed in Europe so far” when details of the project were announced in the summer of 2023.

SpaceX transport the expendable booster ahead of the Spainsat mission (Credit: NSF Space Coast Live)

The satellites are based on Airbus’ reliable Eurostar Neo platform and will bring updated communications functionality as well as a high level of security and resilience. They have been built by Airbus Space and Thales Alenia together with a consortium of Spanish space companies for operator Hisdesat. With an operational life of around 15 years, the satellites interconnect military X and Ka-band traffic to allow band crossover and also operate in the UHF band.

Hazard notices indicate this mission will be the first expendable Falcon 9 launch since the Hera mission last October. The booster supporting this mission has not been announced but has been seen as it was transported. A second satellite, SpainSat NG II, is also planned to launch atop a Falcon 9 later this year and will replace the current SpainSat in geostationary orbit.

A Falcon 9 on the pad at SLC-40 ahead of a Starlink mission (Credit: SpaceX)

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 11-4

Assuming schedules hold, this will be the second of three Starlink missions this week. Liftoff is expected on Thursday, Jan. 30 at 3:32 PM PST (23:32 UTC) from SLC-4E at the Vandenberg Space Force Station in California. The mission will potentially carry another batch of at least 27 of the new optimised Starlink v2 Mini satellites into low-Earth orbit. The company has launched over 3,000 of the v2 design Starlink satellites to date.

Currently, the booster has not been announced. It is expected to land on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You waiting downrange in the Pacific Ocean.

Starlink users worldwide have reached 4.6 million, spanning 118 countries and territories. This has increased significantly from 3 million just seven months ago. At the start of this week, SpaceX had launched 7,800 Starlink satellites, of which 816 have re-entered and 6,242 have moved into their operational orbit.

The Michibiki 6 (Quasi Zenith Satellite System 6) satellite is revealed by Mitsubishi in late November 2024 (Credit: Mitsubishi Electric)

H3-22S | Michibiki 6

A Mitsubishi H3 rocket is scheduled to launch from pad LA-Y2 at the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on Saturday, Feb. 1 at 08:30 UTC. In the H3-22S configuration, the vehicle has two additional side boosters and a shorter fairing. This configuration has flown four times since its maiden launch in March 2023, conducting three successful missions last year.

The Quasi Zenith Satellite 6 (QZS-6), or Michibiki 6, satellite is part of the Quasi Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) which operates in geosynchronous orbits, providing navigation and positioning services.

The satellite masses around 4,900 kg and will also carry a classified space situational awareness payload for the United States Space Force (USSF). The constellation broadcasts GPS-interoperable and augmentation signals as well as original QZSS signals. The satellite improves on the 5 to 10 m accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS), claiming centimeter-level accuracy, and has a design life of at least 15 years.

Unveiled last November at Mitsubishi’s Kamakura Works, QZS-6 will join four others in the existing constellation. Three of these are in a quasi-zenith orbit and the other is in a geostationary orbit, where this latest satellite is also headed. The constellation will grow to seven by 2026, when it will become operational, with plans to develop an 11-satellite system later.

Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 12-3

The third Starlink mission of the week has been rescheduled to launch from SLC-40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Liftoff is now expected at 3:54 AM EST (08:54 UTC) on Monday, Feb. 3 at the top of a four-hour launch window. The Falcon 9 will head southeast, carrying a batch of Starlink v2-Mini satellites to low-Earth orbit, inclined 43 degrees.

Despite its numbering, this will be the eighth launch into this Group 12 shell of the constellation.
The booster supporting this mission has not yet been confirmed. It is expected to land on the deck of an autonomous droneship waiting in the Atlantic Ocean around eight minutes into the flight.

Mission patch for Rocket Lab’s IoT 4 You And Me mission (Credit: Rocket Lab)

Electron / Curie | IoT 4 You and Me

This mission is the fourth of five planned launches, each carrying five 30 kg Internet of Things (IoT) nanosatellites for customer Kinéis – the first of which flew last June. A Rocket Lab Electron rocket, equipped with Curie upper stage, will carry satellites numbered 16 to 20 to a low-Earth orbit at 650 km altitude.

Liftoff is planned on Monday, Feb. 3 at 20:43 UTC from pad LC-1 at Rocket Lab’s launch site on the Māhia Peninsula. This is an instantaneous launch window with additional opportunities at the same time over multiple days. Rocket Lab launched a record 16 missions last year, which it plans to exceed in 2025. Kinéis is backed by the French government’s space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and international space solutions provider Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), to improve its global IoT connectivity.

Rocket Lab also announced a short-notice contract last week which it has signed with Ororatech for Electron to launch a wildfire detection mission in the coming weeks.

(Lead image: SpaceX launch of two lunar landers to the Moon on the same mission, on Jan. 15, 2025 – Credit: SpaceX)

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