Upcoming Launches

Capt'n Midnight

https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/


Monday/Tuesday it's Falcon Heavy
Launch window: 0330-0730 GMT on 25th





July 14GSLV Mk.3 • Chandrayaan 2 Launch time: 2121 GMT
India's big rocket is going to the moon , with a rover.


TBC Virgin will be trying their version of Pegasus from a Boeing 747


September will have US testing the CST-100 Starliner and Japan will be launching for the ISS

Later on China will be doing a sample return from the Moon. Chang’e 5

Capt'n Midnight

ESA going to Jupiter

The European Space Agency has reserved an Ariane launcher to send a spacecraft toward Jupiter in May 2022, and the mission’s project manager said Tuesday officials could assign the probe to Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, assuming the vehicle has a successful debut by the end of 2020.

MayoForSam

SpaceX STP-2 (Falcon Heavy) successful take-off and satellite deployment this morning, however they lost the centre core booster just as it was about to touch down on the drone ship.

Capt'n Midnight

MayoForSam wrote: »

SpaceX STP-2 (Falcon Heavy) successful take-off and satellite deployment this morning, however they lost the centre core booster just as it was about to touch down on the drone ship.

But they caught one of the cover things that cost a couple of million.

Capt'n Midnight

GSLV Mk.3 • Chandrayaan 2 July 22 Launch time: Monday 0913 GMT

- India are send up a Moon rover

Chandrayaan 2 will consist of an orbiter, the Vikram lander and rover launched

sKeith

Boeing Starliner Update

Despite launching successfully at 6:36 a.m. EST Friday on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is not in its planned orbit. The spacecraft currently is in a stable configuration while flight controllers are troubleshooting.

Capt'n Midnight

sKeith wrote: »

Despite launching successfully at 6:36 a.m. EST Friday on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner is not in its planned orbit. The spacecraft currently is in a stable configuration while flight controllers are troubleshooting.

There is no easy fix for burning too much fuel when you are in an low orbit.

Maybe like Apollo 1 or Soyuz 1 some good may come out of this if they go back and do a full safety walk-through of the whole project including SLS.

sKeith

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There is no easy fix for burning too much fuel when you are in an low orbit.

Maybe like Apollo 1 or Soyuz 1 some good may come out of this if they go back and do a full safety walk-through of the whole project including SLS.

The Starliner capsule failed to start the engines to put it into the correct orbit after Atlas separation. It will thus not dock with the ISS.
The ground crew observed the issue but were unable to remedy in time due to communicate delays from being between 'between communication satellites' at the critical time.


They have said that if there was crew onboard then the crew could have taken over and started the orbital insertion burn.
They'll land at white sands in 2 days.

Capt'n Midnight

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft fails to reach ISS due to a broken clock
With GPS, GLONASS, GALIEO, BEIDOU and SBAS ground stations and regional Indian and Japanese satellite systems and broadcasters like BBC radio 4 as backups ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/boeings-starliner-flies-into-wrong-orbit-jeopardizing-trip-to-the-international-space-station.html

“Because that timing was a little bit off, what ended up happening is the spacecraft tried to maintain a very precise control that it normally wouldn’t have tried to maintain and it burned a lot of [propellant] in that part of the flight.”

Ah well, they'll throw more money into that money pit and the Russians will probably get to sell them at least one more taxi ride to the ISS.

Itssoeasy

The starliner mess seems to be how they decided to do the staging. The second stage it appears doesn’t go all the way into orbit with the capsule. It’s an abort issue so as to not have the crew make a hard abort return which is fair enough and if there had been a crew they’d have reacted and fired the engines.

Timmaay

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft fails to reach ISS due to a broken clock
With GPS, GLONASS, GALIEO, BEIDOU and SBAS ground stations and regional Indian and Japanese satellite systems and broadcasters like BBC radio 4 as backups ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/boeings-starliner-flies-into-wrong-orbit-jeopardizing-trip-to-the-international-space-station.html

Ah well, they'll throw more money into that money pit and the Russians will probably get to sell them at least one more taxi ride to the ISS.

The comical thing is the whole commercial crew was setup because each seat on the soyuz had gone from 20 million to 86million, and after what, 9years of messing about Boeings per seat cost is gonna costs 90million (and where will that price stop at given the current issues). Why did NASA even decide it needed two different commercial crew options, if it just had spacex crew dragon would that of not been enough competition to force back down the prices of the soyuz seats.