A couple of interesting launches coming up, but I'll start with an "already happened" item.
Lucy's Engine Burn/Course Correction Went as Planned
Coincidentally, this was covered in Roundup 28 last Tuesday, but Space.com is reporting that Lucy is headed back to Earth for a Christmas of '24 flyby after a successful firing of its engines. This was the first firing of those engines since the probe was launched.
NASA's asteroid-hopping Lucy spacecraft is on its way back to Earth for a Christmas-time rendezvous this year, before continuing its mission to investigate space rocks left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
The long journey home for Lucy began when it performed the largest blast of its main engine planned for its entire 12-year mission. The spacecraft, which launched in October 2021, fired its main engines on Saturday (Feb. 3) for more than 36 minutes. The operation followed the first blast of Lucy's main engines on Jan. 31, which lasted for just 6 minutes.
The December flyby isn't just a visit, it's absolutely essential to the mission because it's a gravitational assist using the angular momentum picked up from the maneuver to help Lucy get to Jupiter's L4 Trojan asteroids by the summer of 2027.
SpaceX to Launch NASA's PACE Science Mission
Thursday morning at 1:33 AM EST (06:25 UTC), SpaceX is set to launch NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) ocean science satellite from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's SLC-40. It's an instantaneous launch window, but into a polar orbit which is still unusual from CCSFS.
It was only a few years ago, August of 2020, that we had the first launch into a polar orbit from Cape Canaveral since 1960. It's an odd story, a cold war story, that comes down to Fidel Castro complaining that fragments of a booster hit a cow on Cuba, and since our guys couldn't prove with absolute certainty that we didn't hit that cow, despite all the progress in vehicles and infrastructure, it wasn't until that launch of an Argentine satellite by SpaceX that a flight out of CCSFS went into a polar orbit. Like that launch, the path will be toward the south and a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning the satellite will see a given spot on Earth at the same time every day.
After stage separation, Falcon booster B1081-4 is to conduct a boostback burn with its Merlin engines, followed by a return-to-launch-site landing onto the concrete pad at Landing Zone 1, while the fairings will splash down in the ocean to be retrieved by SpaceX’s support ship Bob.
The second stage will take PACE to a circular orbit of 676.5 kilometers at a 98-degree orbital inclination, with spacecraft separation occurring roughly 13 minutes after launch.
Space Force weather squadron is predicting a 50/50 chance of good enough weather to launch. A backup launch window is 24 hours later at the same time.
SpaceX Targeting Valentine's Day for Next Private Lunar Landing Mission
A mission that has gotten considerably more column space here than PACE is Intuitive Machines' IM-1 lunar landing mission, as we keep track of private company missions attempting to do a soft landing on the moon. This mission has been delayed a few times already, but has now reached a possible launch date on the rotation.
IM-1 is scheduled to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket from CCSFS on Wednesday morning, Feb. 14, at 12:57 a.m. EST (0557 UTC), sending the robotic Nova-C lander "Odysseus" toward the moon. There are three days in the launch window to reach the spot on the moon they plan to land, Feb 14, 15 & 16, but if they can't successfully launch, the next three day window is in March.
With a week to go until launch, work continues and a major test is planned for tomorrow, Feb. 7.
"We'll be performing essentially a tanking test, or wet dress rehearsal, for that spacecraft on February 7, and we're tracking well to a February 14 launch," Scheiman said on Monday during a briefing that focused on SpaceX's planned Feb. 7 launch of NASA's PACE Earth-observing spacecraft. [Note: Scheiman refers to Julianna Scheiman, SpaceX's director of civil satellite missions.]
It's too far ahead of Next Tuesday night's/Wednesday morning's launch date to
have a meaningful weather forecast.
Computer rendering showing the Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander on the surface of the moon with Earth in the background. (Image credit: Intuitive Machines)
Interesting plot of Lucy's journey. The distance in the Trojam's from Eurybates to Orus appears to be roughly the diameter of Earths orbit, 2AU. It is a big place.
ReplyDeleteA mind-blowing factoid from a post earlier in the mission came to mind, that I could only find by searching for it:
Delete"Somewhat ironically, although Lucy is visiting the "Jupiter trojans," it will never be closer to Jupiter than when it is on Earth. This is because the Trojans trail Jupiter at a greater distance than the distance that lies between Earth and the Solar System's largest planet. "