Welcome to the 6.46 release of Rocket Report! It looks like we’ll be covering the crew test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX maintains a cadence of several Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors who help make sure our stories don’t use the wrong names.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form won’t appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small, medium and heavy rockets, as well as a quick look at the next three launches on the calendar.
Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea’s latest attempt to launch a rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure after the missile exploded mid-air during its first flight this week, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reports. Video taken by Japan’s NHK news agency appears to show a North Korean missile disappearing in a fireball shortly after launch Monday night from a launch pad on the country’s northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite called Malligyong-1-1.
Russia’s role? … Experts initially believed that the expected North Korean launch, which was known in advance from warning notices in international airspace, would use the same Chŏllima 1 rocket used on three flights last year. However, North Korean statements after Monday’s launch indicated that the rocket used a new propulsion system burning a petroleum-based fuel, likely kerosene, with liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. The Chŏllima 1 rocket design used a toxic mixture of hypergolic hydrazine and nitrous oxide as propellants. If North Korea’s claim is true, it would be a significant leap in the country’s missile technology and raises the question of whether Russia played a significant role in the launch. Russian President Vladimir Putin promised greater Russian support for North Korea’s missile program during a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last year. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)
Rocket Lab to deploy NASA’s small climate satellite. Rocket Lab is in the midst of follow-up launches for NASA, carrying identical climate research satellites into different orbits to study heat loss to space in Earth’s polar regions. The Polar Radiant Energy Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) satellites are each about the size of a shoebox, and NASA says data from PREFIRE will improve computer models scientists use to predict how Earth’s ice, seas and weather will change as the world warms . “The difference between the amount of heat Earth absorbs in the tropics and that radiates from the Arctic and Antarctic has a key effect on the planet’s temperature and helps drive dynamic climate and weather systems,” NASA said in a statement.
Twice a week… NASA chose Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle to deliver two PREFIRE satellites to orbit in two dedicated runs, rather than launch with a lower-cost rideshare mission. That’s because scientists want the satellites to fly in the right alignment to ensure they pass over the poles a few hours apart, which will provide the data needed to measure how the rate of heat radiation from the polar regions changes over time. The first PREFIRE launch took place on May 25 and the next one is planned for May 31. Both launches will take off from the Rocket Lab base in New Zealand. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
A rocket launch is coming to Rizhao. Over the past decade, China has diversified its launch sector to include new families of small satellite launchers and new spaceports. One of these relatively new small rockets, the solid-fuel Ceres 1, launched Wednesday from a floating launch pad located about 3 km off the coast of Rizhao, a city of about 3 million people in China’s Shandong province. The Ceres 1 rocket, developed by a quasi-commercial company called Galactic Energy, had previously flown from land-based launch pads and a sea platform, but this mission originated from a location remarkably close to the coast, with the capital’s skyline in sight. metropolitan area as background.
Range safety … There is no obvious reason for orbital mechanics to place a floating missile launch platform so close to a major Chinese city, except perhaps to gain a logistical advantage by launching near a port. The Ceres 1 rocket has a fairly good reliability record – 11 successes in 12 years – but for safety reasons there is no Western spaceport that would allow members of the public (not to mention several million) to get that close to a rocket launch. For decades, Chinese rockets have routinely dropped rocket boosters containing toxic propellants on farms and villages downstream from the country’s inland spaceports.