Only a couple of rockets have launched since we last presented. Two of them were from China, a Kuaizhou 1A and Long March 2D, launching payloads we don’t know much about. Both launches were successful.

The third launch this week was an Ariane 5 carrying the Eutelsat Konnect VHTS satellite into Geostationary Transfer Orbit. Eutelsat VHTS, or Very High Throughput Satellite, is a huge 6.4 metric ton communication satellite, so it was launched solo on the Ariane 5. The Ariane 5 usually launches a medium and a small satellite together.

Once in orbit, VHTS will have a Ka-band capability of 500 gigabits per second of Ka bandwidth for fixed broadband and in-flight internet. That’s fast enough to download the entire contents of my computer – one terabyte – in sixteen seconds. Ka, or Kurz-above, is a standard frequency for satellite communications. Starlink and That Telescope, among others, use Ka-band for downlink.

This bandwidth is enabled by the most powerful digital processor ever launched, according to manufacturer Thales Alenia Space. The satellite has an expected lifetime of 15 years, but most last much longer.

The Ariane 5 rocket is nearing its retirement, with only a handful of payloads left to launch including the European Space Agency‘s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, launching next year. It will explore Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa from 2029 to 2035. NASA’s Europa Clipper will join it a year later, in 2030, to explore just Europa.

NASA’s DART mission, which will impact the moon of asteroid Didymos in two weeks on September 26, has caught its first glimpse of the asteroid right on schedule. Or it did back on July 27 of this year and announced now in September.

This image is a composite of 243 images taken by the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation, DRACO. At the time, DART was 20 million miles from the asteroid. DART depends on DRACO to ensure it hits Dimorphos, the moon of Didymos, through several thruster burns up to two minutes before impact. Dimorphos is also called Didymoon unofficially.

More Information

China launches new test satellites via Kuaizhou-1A carrier rocket (Xinhua)

Eutelsat press release

Launch video

NASA press release