Small Space News Story Roundup 12

The flight of the last Ariane 5

The powerful Ariane 5, the heavy-lift workhorse of the European Space Agency, lifted off today at 6:00 PM Eastern, or 2200 UTC from French Guiana for its final flight ever.  Overly long mission video here (will start about 37 minutes into the video at t-10 seconds - WARNING: a lot of French is spoken - there is commentary in English as well). 

The mission carried two communications satellites, the Syracuse 4B, a communications satellite for the French military, and the Heinrich Hertz for Germany, aimed at experimenting with some new technologies for satellite in space to individual users on the ground.  

Both satellites were said to deployed nominally.  

The Ariane 5 has an impressive history dating back to 1997, including some version upgrades along the way (and excluding the first two missions which "had issues").  Its replacement, Ariane 6 has been having some issues getting started as well. 

Rocket Lab's next launch will include booster recovery

After the HASTE mission from Virginia, Rocket Lab announced the next mission from their Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.  Carrying seven satellites for three different customers, the launch is No Earlier Than July 14th (no time specified, yet).  This will be the seventh mission of this year and their 39th overall.  In commemoration of the attempt at recovering the first stage, the mission is called, "Baby Come Back" - you can stop singing that any time now. 

You can see that they're building up to the launch after this one, their 40th Electron launch.  They're apparently seeking help in coming up with a name for that, with the Twitter hashtag, #WhatShouldWeCallNumber40.

NASA will fly four CubeSats dubbed the Starling mission and will test technologies for future multiple spacecraft missions. This small swarm of satellites will test in-space communications, navigation, and maneuvers between the spacecraft. Proving out this technology will allow NASA to apply these capabilities to future swarm satellite constellations on future missions.

Spire has two 3U CubeSats on board which will carry Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) payloads. These two satellites will be used to replenish the fully deployed constellation of more than 100 multipurpose satellites. The satellites provide global weather intelligence that is used to improve the accuracy of forecasts. Spire is the largest producer of GNSS-RO data.

The final satellite payload on this mission is the Telesat LEO 3 demonstration satellite. Built by Space Flight Laboratory. the LEO 3 satellite will replace the decommissioned LEO 1 satellite and allow Telesat to continue its test campaign of the Telesat Lightspeed constellation.

(I did a double take on Starling instead of Starlink)

Rocket Lab uses a rather different approach to recovering their Electron than SpaceX perfected with the Falcon 9.  After stage separation, the booster will use reaction control thrusters to keep it oriented properly and pointed in the right direction - not grid fins.  There are no additional engine burns like the F9, so no 20 second (-ish) entry burn and no engine burn until touchdown.  Instead, they rely on those thrusters to keep it oriented optimally and then deploy a parachute.  Instead of landing on a drone ship, it will splash into the Pacific and then be retrieved by a ship.