[ad_1]
On its first night launch, Rocket Lab's Electron thruster went into orbit Sunday from New Zealand with a trio of small US military payloads, demonstrating the private sector's ability to respond to demand. increasing US Air Force for small launches.
From a height of 17 meters, the two-stage Electron rocket ignited nine Rutherford main engines at 0600 GMT (2:00 am EDT) on Sunday and took off from Rocket Lab's commercial launch base on the island of North, New Zealand.
The satellite was carrying three small satellites, ranging from a tissue box to a small refrigerator, on behalf of the US Air Force and the US Missile Defense Command. The Space Test Program, a unit based at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, which provides access to space for military experiments, has managed the multi-satellite launch with Rocket Lab.
Sunday's mission was the first of the Rocket Lab for the US Air Force.
Heading east over the Pacific Ocean shortly after sunset in New Zealand, the Electron fully carbon black carbon launcher stopped its first-stage engines about two minutes and a half after the start of the flight and dropped the propeller for it to fall to the sea.
A single Rutherford engine turned on on the second stage of the electronics to place the three small payloads of the mission into a preliminary transfer orbit about nine minutes into the flight. The upper stage Curie of the rocket separates a few seconds later and embarks for nearly three minutes from T + 49 minutes in order to place the three payloads of the mission in a targeted orbit high of 310 km (500 km). from 40 degrees to the equator.
Live video coverage of Rocket Lab ended before curia's launch of Curie's launch scene, but Peter Beck, founder and CEO of the company, confirmed the success of the maneuver and deployment of the three payloads. the rocket in a tweet.
"Perfect flight, complete success of the mission, all the payloads deployed !!" tweeted Beck.
Rocket Lab was planning to launch the mission on Saturday, but authorities postponed the launch to carry out additional payload checks. The total weight of the mission payload – about 180 kg – has made it the heaviest launch of Rocket Lab to date.
The biggest satellite launched Sunday is Harbinger.
Built by York Space Systems in Denver, the Harbinger Mission is sponsored by the US Space Army and Missile Defense Command. The 330-pound spacecraft (150 kilograms) is home to several technology demonstration payloads, including a synthetic aperture radar for all-weather Earth observation and a high-speed data communication link. to transmit radar images to ground users.
The radar imaging instrument of the Harbinger satellite comes from the Finnish company ICEYE, which has built and launched its own commercial radar observation satellites. The Harbinger Radar Imaging Payload "provides commercial access to reliable and up-to-date Earth observation data and is able to take images from any location on the Earth at regular intervals, such as at night, regardless of cloud cover, "says the Army fact sheet on the mission.
A BridgeSat Harbinger high speed laser communication terminal will downlink radar imagery, demonstrating a fast data collection capability that can be used by tactical military forces on the battlefield.
Harbinger joined the launch of Electron with two technical demonstrations, CubeSats, named SPARC-1 and Falcon ODE.
The CubeSat-1 Space Plug and Play architecture research – the size of a briefcase – is a nanosatellite of joint military research in the United States and Sweden.
SPARC-1 will test a miniaturized avionics, a software-defined radio system and a visible camera. The US sponsor of the mission is the Air Force Research Laboratory, which developed it in partnership with the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration.
The main contractor for CubeSat, consisting of six units, was ÅAC Microtecs, a Swedish small-scale manufacturer.
The smallest payload launched on Sunday was the Orbital Debris Experiment Falcon, a CubeSat unit a little larger than a Rubik's cube. The Falcon ODE spacecraft, developed at the US Air Force Academy, will release two orbiting stainless steel ball bearings, which will become calibration targets for ground-based space surveillance radars.
The Air Force reserved Sunday's mission with the Rocket Lab, designated STP-27RD by the Space Test Program, in 2017 as part of the Army's Rapid Agile Launch Initiative (RALI) program.
The STP-27RD mission was the first in the RALI program, which provided launch services to commercial vendors to deliver military satellites more quickly into orbit.
Air Force officials announced last month that five RALI launches were planned before the end of 2019, including the STP-27RD mission with Rocket Lab's Electron launcher and a flight with Virgin Orbit's LaotcherOne vehicle later in the year. # 39; year. The five missions, including the launch of Sunday's STP-27RD, will provide access to 21 R & D satellites, said Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Anderson, head of the Department of Defense's space testing program branch.
The RALI missions "will put DoD experiments into orbit and demonstrate new launchers launched by new commercial vendors," Anderson told reporters during a conference call last month.
Sunday's launch marks the sixth Rocket Lab Electron rocket flight since 2017, and the second this year. Headquartered in the United States, Rocket Lab, with plants in Southern California and Auckland, New Zealand, aims to launch approximately one mission per month until 2019, reaching a pace every two weeks from now until the end of the year.
Rocket Lab charges less than $ 7 million for its launches, and Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne, which has not yet flown from a carrier, sells for about $ 12 million per flight.
These two prices represent a fraction of the cost of launching on a larger rocket. Small satellites using larger boosters usually fly in second-class payloads, with orbits and schedules dictated by the needs of a higher priority spacecraft on the same flight.
"We have a lot for our money for these small launch service providers," said Colonel Bernard Brining, director of the space test program. "We see value for the space test program. As a director, I can put a lot of payloads into orbit at a very low cost. "
Many companies – more than 100 according to some accounts – are developing small-class satellite launchers, but Rocket Lab is the first of a new generation of commercial companies to launch a new orbital class rocket.
The wave of new smallsat private launch companies has left many industry players wondering how many will survive the challenges of fundraising, technical development and a constantly changing market.
"I think the market is still upset and we are trying to get involved," said Colonel Robert Bongiovi, director of corporate launch systems management at Space and Missile Systems Center of the Force. Aerial. "And if the market supports many companies, we support contracts for many because … it will be very useful for us to get the necessary national security payloads in the small launchers category."
Until now, most of the small satellites of the army have been experimental. In the future, small spacecraft could play a larger role in the US Army's communications, navigation and surveillance fleets.
"Although many of the small satellites we have launched so far are R & D satellites, that will change in the future," said Bongiovi.
"What we would really like to see is the ability to start using them not only for experimental launches, which we will continue to do, but also for more operational prototypes and, possibly, operational systems," he said. Bongiovi. "I think there's a lot to be said about these smaller launchers about their ability to provide some of the resilience we all need."
Email of the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
[ad_2]
Source link