Electron's 50th Launch and Falcon 9's Operational Return - Chinese, Commercial, European, Featured, International, Other, Science, SpaceX, casc, Chang Zheng, Chang Zheng 2C, CNES, CNSA, Curie, Electron, Falcon 9, LC-1B, Mahia Peninsula, Rocket Lab, SLC-40, SLC-4E, Starlink, Xichang

17Jun

Electron’s 50th Launch and Falcon 9’s Operational Return

After a week filled with weather delays and an uncommon T-0 abort after Falcon 9 had already ignited its engines, SpaceX looks to get back on its feet with the launch of Astra 1P/SES-24. This mission has already been delayed by one day due to bad weather at Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Now scheduled for launch no earlier than June 18 at 5:35 PM EDT (21:35 UTC), and launching with a currently unknown booster, Falcon 9 will loft the Astra 1P/SES-24 television satellite into an inclined 19.2-degree geostationary orbit on an eastern trajectory from the same launch pad. It will then land around 648 km downrange on SpaceX’s autonomous droneship Just Read The Instructions.

SES-24/Astra 1P was built in Europe by Thales Alenia Space for the European television market and will provide updated capabilities of reliability and image quality to Germany, Spain, and France. SES-24/Astra 1P is a wide-beam satellite with 80 transponders. This gives it the ability to broadcast up to 500 HDTV channels.

Clean room photo of Astra 1P/SES-24 before shipping to Cape Canaveral. (Credit: Thales Alenia Space)

This will be SpaceX’s first time launching an Astra satellite, with previous launches performed by Atlas V, Proton M, and Ariane 5. Once in orbit, this satellite will deploy its 45-meter-wide solar array, producing 20 kW of power — making it one of the most powerful satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

With the first Group 9 Starlink satellites about to head to orbit, four different types of Starlink Groups are now actively being added. After this launch was postponed from June 13 to June 14 and now to June 18, the official launch time is set for the night of June 18 at 8:00 PM PDT (03:00 UTC on June 19).

Falcon 9 will be taking what is believed to be 20 Starlink v2 Mini satellites with Direct-to-Cell capabilities to an inclined 53-degree orbit on a southeastern trajectory. Launching out of Space Launch Complex-4E in Vandenberg, California, a presently unknown booster will take these satellites to an initial orbit of 286 by 295 km where they will be put into orbit by the second stage and deployed. Then, using the Starlink satellite’s Hall-effect thrusters, they will head to the final orbit, likely just over 500 km in altitude, to add even more support to the over 6000 active Starlink satellites already in orbit.

View of a stack of 21 Starlink v2 Mini satellites before being enclosed in their fairing. (Credit: SpaceX)

After the booster completes its mission, it will attempt the 246th consecutive landing on the autonomous droneship Of Course I Still Love You, which will be parked 642 km downrange in an identical landing position as the Starlink Group 8-7 and 8-8 missions. This will be Falcon 9’s 62nd flight of 2024, putting SpaceX 43% of the way to the goal of 144 launches in one year, although the year has progressed 46%, leaving SpaceX just behind schedule by only a slim margin.

Electron is vertical for its 50th launch to complete the No Time Toulouse mission carrying the first-ever batch of five Kinéis 1-5 nanosatellites. After a two-day weather delay, Electron will take off in an instantaneous launch window on June 21 at 6:13 AM NZT (June 20, 18:13 UTC) from LC-1B in Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand. Electron will launch inclined at a 98-degree angle to the equator where it will deliver the payload to low-Earth orbit (LEO).

After Electron reaches LEO, Rocket Lab’s Curie kick stage will circularize the orbit with an eight-second burn to a 635-km orbit. It will then release the satellites into their specific sequence, where they will move up to the final 650-km orbit under the satellite’s own power. After Curie successfully releases the five satellites, it will conduct a lowering burn to safely deorbit the spacecraft into the Pacific Ocean.

Delivery of Kinéis nanosatellites to Rocket Lab for final testing before Integration. (Credit: Kinéis)

Kinéis is a French Internet of Things satellite operator and connectivity provider operating out of Toulouse, France. These satellites are Kinéis’s first in-house satellites to launch on Electron, with four more missions already planned for the future to launch 20 more nanosatellites. Kinéis already utilizes the Argos system of satellites that have been in orbit since 1978. Using these satellites and the new Kinéis nanosatellites, they will be able to create a constellation to greatly reduce the revisit time between satellite passes.