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01-27-09

GOSAT a.k.a. IBUKI Launched!

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Credits: JAXA

 

After a launch postponement due to a bad weather forecast, IBUKI was finally launched on January 23, 2009.

 

IBUKI was launched aboard H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 15 from the Tanegashima Space Center. Sixteen minutes after liftoff, the separation of IBUKI was confirmed. The satellite was injected into the scheduled orbit: 684.8 km x 667.4 km, with an orbit inclination of 98 degrees.

 

 

IBUKI was not the only satellite launched by flight 15. The payload included several piggyback payloads. It is common practice to include small satellites in the payload that are made by private companies or universities, in the case of an excessive launch capability.

 

Seven micro-satellites, six selected through public tender and one JAXA satellite, were launched by the H-IIA launch vehicle with IBUKI: KAGAYAKI / SORUN CORPORATION (debris detection and Aurora electric current observation mission), STARS / Kagawa University (tether space robot demonstration), KKS-1 / Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology (demonstration of the micro cluster and three axis attitude control functions), PRISM / The University of Tokyo (earth image acquisition by using an expandable refracting telescope), SOHLA-1 / ASTRO TECHNOLOGY SOHLA (measurements of thunder and lightning), SPRITE-SAT / Tohoku University (observations of the sprite phenomenon and gamma radiation of the Earth’s origin), and Small Demonstration Satellite-1 (SDS-1) / JAXA (on-orbit verification of the space wire demonstration).

 

Credits: JAXA

 

For more details on the additional payloads of H-IIA F15, you can check out the piggyback payload web page on the JAXA web site. Some of the links on the page require knowledge of Japanese or hands-on experience with the Google translation tool.

 

IBUKI will undergo a check of the onboard equipment function for about three months before becoming operational.

 

 

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Credits: CNES

 

In 2005, ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team held its first Global Trajectory Optimization Competition (GTOC). The purpose of the competition is to stimulate research of techniques for finding the optimal trajectory for different space missions.

 

What is interesting about this competition is how it has been taken up by the community after its first edition. The winners of the competition become the hosts for the next edition.

 

The first edition of the competition was won by the Outer Planets Mission Analysis Group of JPL. The second edition was won by the Department of Energetic in the Polytechnic of Turin, and the third edition was won by CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales).

 

 

CNES has announced the 4th Edition of the GTOC. We quote this year’s announcers of the competition, Regis Bertrand, Richard Epenoy, and Benoit Meyssignac:

 

“Mission designers generally solve trajectory optimisation problems by means of local optimisation methods together with their own experience of the problem. Even if this way is known to provide good results, it never guarantees to yield the global optimum. On the other hand, global optimisation techniques can offer significant assistance in finding an acceptable solution to a given problem, even though convergence to the global optimum is still not guaranteed. By focusing on a problem with a very large number of locally optimal solutions, the Global Trajectory Optimisation Competition promotes the development of methods that most thoroughly and most quickly search through a large and unconventional design space for optima.”

 

The deadline for registration is February 27, 2009. On March 2, 2009, the competition problem will be disclosed, and March 30, 2009, is the deadline for return of solutions. In September 2009, during a one-day workshop held in Toulouse, France, the teams selected will present their methods and solutions.

 

 

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Credits: NASA

 

Forty years ago, on January 16, 1969, two Russian spacecraft (Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5) carried out the first docking between two manned spacecraft and transfer of crew between the craft.

 

The Soyuz 4/5 mission was a critical milestone for the future of manned space missions, the rendezvous and docking of manned spacecraft being essential for the development of space stations.

 

 

Soyuz 4 was launched on January 14, 1969, with cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov on board. Soyuz 5 was launched one day later. Soyuz 5 had three cosmonauts on board: Boris Volynov, Alexei Yeliseyev, and Yevgeny Khrunov. During the mission, Soyuz 5 acted as the passive ship, while Soyuz 4 was the active chaser craft.

 

The two spacecraft docked at 0820 UT over the Soviet territory. The docking mechanism did not connect the pressurized modules of the Soyuz spacecraft and two of the cosmonauts on board Soyuz 5, Yevgeny Khrunov and Alexei Yeliseyev, performed EVAs in order to transfer to Soyuz 4.

 

Credits: NASA/R.F.Gibbons

 

Soyuz 4 and 5 undocked after three hours and thirty-five minutes.

 

Soyuz 4 fired its retro-rockets on January 17 and landed somewhere near Karaganda, in Kazakhstan.

 

Soyuz 5 had an eventful landing. After the retro-fire, the instrument module failed to separate from the descent module, and the landing could have been catastrophic due to the fact that the heat shield was not oriented properly.

 

However, the re-entry heat caused the propellant tanks in the instrument module to explode and the two modules eventually separated. The parachute had problems deploying properly and a failure of the soft-landing rockets occurred, so the landing was much harder than usual. Apparently, the landing shock was so great that Boris Volynov was thrown across the cabin and broke some of his front teeth.

 

 

Volynov landed far off course, in the Ural Mountains near Orenburg, in Russia. The event was kept secret and it eventually came to light in 1997, when an official history book mentioned the incident.

 

Forty years later, the Soyuz spacecraft is still the workhorse of the Russian space program, and continues to this day to serve as a transfer vehicle to and from the International Space Station (ISS), performing rendezvous and docking maneuvers on each mission.

 

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Credits: SpaceX

 

 

SpaceX has announced that the Falcon 9 launch vehicle was raised to vertical on its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

 

SpaceX was awarded a Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) contract in December 2008. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft will be used as the primary means of transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS) after the Space Shuttle is retired by NASA.

 

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle will provide the lowest cost per kilogram to orbit. The 54.9 m long and 3.6 m wide launcher will be able to lift payloads with a mass of 12,500 kg to a low Earth orbit (LEO) for only $36.75 million. For more details on the pricing of the Falcon 9 missions, you can check out the page dedicated to Falcon 9 on SpaceX’s web site.

 

 

“This entire process has helped us validate key interfaces and operations prior to executing our launch campaign with the vehicle in its final flight configuration,” said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. “We encountered no show-stoppers or significant delays. I am highly confident that we will achieve our goal of being able to go from hangar to liftoff in under 60 minutes, which would be a big leap forward in capability compared with the days to weeks required of other launch vehicles.”

 

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Credits: ESA/CNES/ARIANESPACE-Service Optique CSG 2002

 

Arianespace accounted for 50 percent of all commercial launches to geostationary transfer orbit during 2008 and retained its strong market share, which represented 72 percent of the orders booked in 2008.

 

Arianespace was founded in 1980. Among its 23 shareholders are the French space agency CNES with thirty-four percent and EADS Astrium with thirty percent. With only around 300 employees, the company has generated sales of about one billion euros in 2008.

 

2009 will be the year of the launcher family for Arianespace, as Arianespace Chairman and CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall pointed out during the company’s New Year’s press conference in Paris. The development of the Vega launcher is being finalized, the maiden launch of the medium-lift Soyuz launcher from Kourou in French Guiana will take place this year, and more than six missions are scheduled for Ariane 5.

 

 

“As a result of our launcher family strategy, Arianespace has a sustained agility that allows us to be ever more responsive to our customers,” Le Gall told the journalists. “The agility has been demonstrated with our 28 consecutive mission successes for Ariane 5 and the 21 for Soyuz – and is underscored by launches that are on target, and on time.”

 

With a full range of payload lift capabilities, including Vega, Soyuz, and Ariane 5, Arianespace is able to meet the changing trends in satellite weights, orbiting everything from light weight scientific payloads to heavy telecommunication relay platforms.

 

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01-9-09

IBUKI Closer To Launch

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Credits: JAXA

 

The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite or GOSAT for short, is getting closer to the launch scheduled for late January 2009. The chosen nickname for GOSAT is IBUKI, which means breath or puff.

 

IBUKI was encapsulated in the payload fairing after being mounted on the Payload Attach Fitting (PAF). The PAF is the base that connects the satellite and the launch vehicle. All of the integration operations are performed at the Spacecraft and Fairing Assembly building (SFA) at the Tanegashima Space Center (TNSC).

 

The final integration with the launch vehicle will be carried out at the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).

 

GOSAT is the first satellite to observe greenhouse gases from space. The main contributors behind GOSAT are the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), and the Ministry of Environment (MOE).

 

 

The data collected by the GOSAT satellite will help us make better estimates as to how different areas on Earth contribute to global warming through the emission of greenhouse gases. The data will also help us understand the behavior of the greenhouse gases by combining global observation data collected on orbit with data collected on the ground, and it will also help us improve simulation models.

 

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