ULA's Vulcan Centaur hopes to rocket into Christmas
- Reference: 1698255010
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/25/ula_vulcan_centaur_christmas/
- Source link:
The maiden flight is [1]due to take-off on December 24 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Backup opportunities exist on December 25 and 26. The next launch window is in January.
Kuiper delays
ULA's travails are mirrored by those of Arianespace, which also has a contract to launch Project Kuiper satellites aboard its significantly delayed Ariane 6.
Managers for the European Space Agency's (ESA) Galileo program have been forced to look to SpaceX to launch the next satellites in the series.
The European Commission still needs to approve the deal, which is somewhat awkward as it highlights the lack of a domestic launch capability and requires that classified equipment be launched from non-European territory.
Galileo is a satellite constellation for navigation. A driving factor behind its development was to remove the dependency on networks such as the US GPS. It is a shame, therefore, that it now – for the time being – appears to have a dependency on US launchers.
ULA boss Tory Bruno said in an [2]interview that the company expects to complete construction and qualification of the rocket's upper stage in late November ready for the long delayed launch.
Bruno explained that orbital mechanics determined the narrow launch window. The rocket will be carrying Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander, which is targeting a specific location on the Moon and requires both particular lighting conditions and contact with the Deep Space Network.
Also along for the ride will be a non-separating payload for Celestis, containing the ashes of people who wish to be "buried" in space.
[3]
Bruno said he expected "several" launches in 2024, which he anticipates would ramp up to once every two weeks in 2025. Not quite a SpaceX Falcon 9 cadence, but enough to soothe the nerves of jumpy Project Kuiper managers.
[4]Bezos' engineers dream of Blue Ring space platform in orbit by 2025
[5]Falcon Heavy sends NASA probe to metal-rich asteroid Psyche
[6]Two Project Kuiper prototype satellites finally reach orbit
[7]Amazon to launch first Project Kuiper internet satellites
The first Project Kuiper satellites were [8]originally scheduled to fly on the Vulcan Centaur, but delays in the development of the rocket – not least caused by the late delivery of BE-4 engines from Blue Origin, another Jeff Bezos company – resulted in the prototypes [9]being launched on the outgoing Atlas V .
However, problems with the upper stage prevented the launch of the Vulcan Centaur earlier this year. An explosion during testing meant that the company needed to make changes to the stage before the Vulcan Centaur could be launched.
[10]
Should the launch go off without a hitch, the pressure will be on to hit Bruno's promised cadence, which is essential if Project Kuiper is to reach the number of satellites in its constellation as required by the FCC.®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.ulalaunch.com/rockets/vulcan-centaur/countdown-to-vulcan
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/24/ula-ceo-inaugural-vulcan-rocket-launch-slated-for-christmas-eve.html
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZTmQCdyWH7JeCQHDIu1hkgAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/17/blue_origin_ring_station/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/17/falcon_heavy_sends_nasa_probe/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/09/project_kuiper_finally_reaches_orbit/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/project_kuiper_amazon/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/vulcan_centaur_kuiper_peregrine/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/09/project_kuiper_finally_reaches_orbit/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZTmQCdyWH7JeCQHDIu1hkgAAAFA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: New Galilleo Launches
Hmmm, but that is just the civilian side. EU has gained a military GPS that is not subject to the whims of the USA.
Re: New Galilleo Launches
Yuh, uh, no it doesn’t. Galileo has an architectural dependency, requiring US GPS to generate the global master time in the Ground Segment. Yes, really.
Re: New Galilleo Launches
It’s taken so long to get them up there, that the oldest one is 12 years old. The operational design lifetime is 12 years, determined by onboard stationkeeping fuel. In other words, they’re running on fumes already. Also, several of them are half-failed, as they share a common failure mode that causes their clocks to fail. The newer ones have that fixed, but there are still about 5 dodgy ones up there that are held together by string and on their last of 4 clock sources.
Also, you need more satellites than you’d think for coverage, because they are in three separate orbital planes. It’s often quoted that Galileo needs 24 active satellites, of which there are currently just 20 (wiki is wrong, as usual) but “24” is a lying-by-omission figure. What you *actually* need is 8 satellites per plane, plus a spare per plane except they are launched in pairs which must go into the same plane, which means the need is 3x(8 + 1 or 2), which somewhere around 27’ish depending on which ones fail. So, although Galileo currently “works” (to some level of working), you often get terrible Dilution of Precision due to seeing too few Galileo satellites, which is infilled by seeing GPS. Hardly an “independent system”. Additionally, there’s no spare in any plane, so any more failures in Plane B, and you’d get very little positioning at all. Not the sort of “High Availability Service you can use as an aeroplane landing aid” they were trying to sell.
https://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-service-status/constellation-information
That point about separate orbital planes is key. From here on, they’ll fail randomly in-orbit. Let’s say you lose two old satellites, one in Plane B, one in Plane C. Then you need to launch *four* more satellites to replace, two separate launches with two in each.
Space burial?
So these people want to endure as swarms of orbital junk? Is this really a good idea?
Re: Space burial?
GNSS are in a highish orbit (20-25,000km ?), so there is a lot more space in space than for LEO, where all those new 10,000 internet satellite constellations live,
New Galilleo Launches
Seem a little early. What's wrong with the ones that are already up there?
There's a slight problem with the view that Galileo is independent of the US. GPS, Galileo, GLONAS are all basically the same concept, operating in more or less the same spectrum, providing more or less the same service. So all GNSS receivers are set up to use all three. So, whatever in Europe is using Galileo is also using GPS and GLONAS. That's not operationally separate from GPS; that's co-operational. And judging by the outages Galileo has suffered, that's probably a good thing. In effect, Europe is reliant on GPS as a back up for its own system, and has had to use it.
In IT terms it's a bit like having a data store in your data centre supporting the services you sell, but relying on another supplier for data back up having already said that you do not trust that back up supplier despite years of faultless service provision. Weird.
Another problem with all three GNSS systems is that whatever it is that can wipe out, disable, jam or spoof one of them can do the same to all three. For example, one big solar flare and they're all gone. So the only thing Europe has gained is partial political independence (see point about backups above).