Weekly Rocket & Launch Update

It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s time for a round up of all things rocket related. China sends up (and then down) Ziyuan-2D, then they’ll be sending
Zhuhai-1 andBeiDou-3. Roscosmos is sending up Soyuz-MS-15, and Bigelow Aerospace tests their inflatable habitat.

Links

Things that launched: China’s Ziyuan-2D mission, with co-passengers BNU-1 and Taurus 1

• Liftoff video (Twitter)
• Science experimental satellite BNU-1 to be transported to launch site (ECNS.cn)
• Liftoff video (RocketLaunch.Live)
• Ziyuan Satellite (Wikipedia)
• What star is Taurus Naxing? (Spacefans.cn Chinese site)
• Long March 4B • Resource No. 1 02D, Jingshi No. 1 (BNU-1) satellite, Taurus Naxing • Successful recovery after the failure in May this year
  (Spacefans.cn Chinese site)
• Taurus 1 (Jinniuzuo 1) (Gunter’s Space Page)
• Unidentified objects fall into Pingtung territory and are confirmed as satellite fairing wreckage (m.xfjw.net Chinese site)
• Wreckage post, photos and comment thread (Weibo Chinese site)

Thing that will be launching: China’s Zhuhai-1 (OVS-2B, 4x OHS-2)

• Launch Schedule (Spaceflight Now)
• Zhuhai-1 (OVS-2B, 4x OHS-2) (RocketLaunch.Live)
• OVS 1A, 1B (Zhuhai-1 01A, 01B / CAS 4A, 4B)
  (Gunter’s Space Page)
• OHS 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E, 2F, 2G, 2H
  (Gunter’s Space Page)
• Zhuhai-1 Constellation (Obtdata.com)

Things that will be launching: China’s BeiDou-3 M19 & M20 (BD-3)

• BeiDou-3 M19 & M20 (BD-3)
  (RocketLaunch.Live)
• BeiDou (Wikipedia)
• List of BeiDou satellites (Wikipedia)
• International Cospas-Sarsat Programme
  (Wikipedia)

Things that will be launching: Roscosmos’ Soyuz MS-15 (Expedition 61/62) on Soyuz-FG

• List of International Space Station expeditions
  (Wikipedia)
• International Space Station Structure (Wikipedia)
• Soyuz MS-15 (Wikipedia)

The Things that would Keep Humans Alive: Bigelow Aerospace’s B330 habitat

• NASA Puts Bigelow Aerospace’s Giant Inflatable Space Habitat Prototype to the Test (Photos) (Space.com)
• Inflatable Space Stations of Bigelow Aerospace (Infographic)
  (Space.com)
• Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships NextSTEP-2 (Wikipedia)
• Bigelow Expandable Activity Module
  (Wikipedia)

Transcript

Things that launched:

The Ziyuan-2D mission launched, with co-passengers BNU-1 and Taurus 1 on a Long March 4B on September 12 at 03:23 UTC.

We talked about BNU-1 as a payload last week, so I’m going to chat a little bit about the other two payloads. BNU-1 is a Polar Observation Small Satellite; the first remote sensing small satellite for polar observation.

The ZY-1 02D is a remote sensing satellite that will acquire high-resolution panchromatic and multispectral imagery for things like land resource surveys, disaster monitoring and monitoring of forests and other ecosystems.

Taurus 1 is a 3U CubeSat that really isn’t going to be in space for very long.  It will be used to test a 2.5 square meter drag sail to accelerate deorbiting. This will be useful for helping to clear space debris out of orbit — especially cubesats with short missions.

Also on board is an amateur radio system that provides telecommand and telemetry.

Things that will be launching: 

First up on September 19th at 06:37 UTC, a Chinese Long March 11 rocket will launch a group of Zhuhai 1 remote sensing satellites.  This will be the third group of satellites for a commercial constellation owned and operated by Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Science and Technology Co. 

Next up, on September 24th, China will launch a pair of 3rd generation BeiDou navigation satellites.  After this pair is safely in orbit, there will be 12 more BeiDou satellites launched — all third generation.

This pair (and a future pair) have an additional payload: Cospas-Sarsat.  The International Cospas-Sarsat Programme supports search and rescue operations by detecting and locating emergency beacons.  The location of the distress beacon is then forwarded to authorities who go out to rescue the people that activated the beacon.  Between September 1982 and December 2017, over 46,000 people were rescued with the help of this program. The best part? This service is provided AT NO COST to the distress beacon owners or the countries the signal is forwarded to.

The last launch for this coming week has humans on it!  Bright and early at 03:00 UTC on September 26th, a Russian government Soyuz rocket will launch the crewed Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft to the International Space Station with members of the next Expedition crew. The capsule will remain at the station for about six months, providing an escape pod for the residents. The rocket will fly in the Soyuz-2.1a configuration, the first use of the Soyuz-2 variant on a crewed launch.

For those of you keeping score at home: once MS-15 is docked at the ISS, there will be 9 humans and 5 toilets in space.  That count will change in early October once MS-12 returns to Earth.

The things that would keep humans alive:

NASA has started ground tests on Bigelow Aerospace’s B330 habitat!  This is the last of the six prototype space stations to be evaluated in the second round of NASA’s NextSTEP program.

The B330 habitat is an expandable module that boasts — wait for it — 330 cubic meters of internal volume .  That’s about a bit more than a third of the pressurized volume on the International Space Station.

Bigelow is known for their expandable habitats.  At launch, their habitats would be compressed to fit inside of a 5m wide payload fairing.  (The expanded diameter is 6.7 meters.)

It will have not one, BUT TWO SPACE TOILETS!