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Jonathan's Space Report
No. 831 draft                                                     2024 Mar  14   Somerville, MA
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Chandra X-ray Observatory
-------------------------

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched in 1999. In a hair-raising
event-filled launch on Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-93, Eileen
Collins and her crew risked their lives to deploy this ground-breaking
scientific instrument. Since then Chandra has provided a series of
scientific discoveries, notably (in combo with optical weak lensing
measurements) the best evidence for the reality of dark matter. Demand
for the observatory remains high and the rate of scientific publications
from it continues steady. Engineers expect Chandra is capable of
continuing to operate effectively for up to another decade, although
thermal insulation issues have complicated mission planning (requiring a
1% increase in the operating budget to keep everything healthy, rather
than a small budget decrease that might otherwise have been possible).
Chandra is considered by the astronomy community as one of the most
scientifically effective missions per dollar.

Nevertheless, NASA has decided that Chandra should be shut down to
address the overall budget cuts faced by the agency. Although the
official FY2025 President's Budget Request language says the proposed
reductions are for a 'minimum mission', the reality is that reducing the
annual budget of $60M in FY2023 to $41M in FY2025 and $27M in FY2026
means shutting down the mission and firing most of the staff. (Conflict
of interest disclaimer: I am one of those staff.) The remaining money
would be used for wrapping up the archive and so forth - the public data
archive is used repeatedly for lots of additional science papers.

This decision is not yet final, since the president's budget is followed
by revisions made by Congress before it is enacted. Nevertheless at the moment
that is the plan, and it would mean that scientists using Hubble and JWST
would no longer be able to complement those observations with similarly sharp
images in the X-ray. (For example, you see a glowing gas cloud in JWST,
but without the Chandra data you can't see the compact binary star that is
responsible for pumping energy into that cloud).

No replacement for Chandra is in the works anywhere in the world.
China's Einstein Probe (just launched), the Japan-US XRISM mission
(recently operational), Europe's XMM-Newton and its proposed (but also
budgetarily threatened) replacement Athena are fantastic X-ray
observatories but none of them can take the sharp images that can be
used for comparisons with HST and JWST. The plan implies a gap in
astronomy's capability for a generation or more, and the end of a US
dominance in X-ray astronomy that has for the most part lasted since the
discovery of Sco X-1 in 1962. 


International Space Station
---------------------------

Expedition 70 continues. 

Dragon Crew-8 was launched on Mar 4 with M. Dominick, M. Barratt, J. Epps and A. Grebyonkin.
It docked with IDA-2 at 0728 UTC Mar 5.

On Mar 10 A. Mogensen transferred command of Expedition 70 to Oleg Kononenko.

Crew-7 undocked from IDA-3 at 1520 UTC Mar 11 with J. Moghbeli, A. Mogensen, S. Furukawa and
K. Borisov. It splashed down in the Pensacola recovery area (87.5W 29.8N) at 0947 UTC Mar 12.

On Mar 14 at 1311 UTC Progress MS-26 raised the ISS orbit with a 1097s burn of 1.6m/s.

Chinese Space Station
---------------------

Astronauts Tang H. and Jiang made the second spacewalk of their ZR6 expedition on Mar 1.
The spacecraft lasted about 8 hours and the hatch was open from around 2130 UTC Mar 1 
to 0532 UTC Mar 2.

Starship
--------

The third Starship flight test was launched from Starbase (Boca Chica, Texas) at 1325 UTC Mar 14
using Booster 10 and Ship 28. Booster and Ship successfully separated at T+2:49 at an altitude
of 72 km.  Booster reached an apogee of 106 km and made a controlled flight down to an
altitude of 1 km before attempting to restart engines for a soft-water-impact landing burn.
However the engines did not successfully restart and the booster was lost at this point.

Ship continued ascent to targeted engine cutoff at T+8:35 at an altitude of 150 km,
reaching an orbit of -50 x 234 km x 26.5 deg. Apogee of 234 km was reached at 1350 UTC
over the mid-Atlantic Ocean. A Raptor restart had been planned around 1406 UTC over
Namibia, which would have been prograde and raised perigee to around +50 km. However
this did not occur. Entry began around 1411 UTC southeast of Madagascar and at T+49:35,
1414:35 UTC, contact was lost with the vehicle at an altitude of 65 km, probably near 70E 26S.
It seems likely that Ship broke up and was destroyed at that point.

Starlink launches
------------------

Starlink Group 6-41 (23 sats) was launched from Canaveral on Mar 4.
Starlink Group 6-43 (23 sats) was launched from Canaveral on Mar 10.
Starlink Group 7-17 (23 sats) was launched from Canaveral on Mar 11.



Transporter-10
--------------

SpaceX launched the Transporter-10 rideshare mission from Vandenberg on Mar 4.

The payloads are:
 Imaging:  Rose (Aerospacelab, Belgium);  HORACIO (Satlantis, Spain);  GHOST-4, 5  (Orbital Sidekick, US);
   Hammer (Open Cosmos, UK); NewSat-44 (Satellogic, Uruguay/Argentina); PYXIS (Axelspace, Japan);
   RROCI-2 (Orion Space/USSF, US);  Musat-2 (Muon Space, US)
  
 Radar Imaging:   ICEYE-X36 X37 X38 (Iceye, Finland/US)

 Sigint:  Loulou, Riri, Fifi (Aerospacelab, Belgium);  BRO-12, BRO-13 (Unseen Labs, France)

 Other remote sensing:  AEROS/MH-1 (CEIIA, Portugal); Lemur-2 x 2 (Spire, US); Veery-0E  (Care Weather, US); 
  MethaneSat (EDF, US)

 Comms:  Hubble 1,2  (Spire/Hubble Networks, US); TIGER-7, 8  (OQ Tech, Luxembourg);  OWL-1,2  (Ondo Space, Mongolia);
  IRIS-F1 (Satoro Space and NCKU, Taiwan);   Lynk Tower 5,6 (Lynk, US)

 Tugs:  Optimus-2 (Space Machines, Australia)
  
 Prox ops tests  Jackal X-1L-001/002 (True Anomaly, US);  Quark/Gluon  (Atomos Space, US);  
  Pacific Lace A, B (NIWC-P, US);  PY4 SV1 to SV4  (NASA Ames, US);  Pony Express 2 SV1, SV2 
  (Terran Orbital/Lockheed, US)

 SSA payloads:  Sentry/Scout-1, (Quantum Space, US )

 Other technology verification:  SONATE-2 (U Wurzburg, Germany);  M3 (Missouri U.ST, US)  

 Misc hosted payloads  YAM-6 (Loft Orbital, US);  LizzieSat-1 (Sidus Space, US);  Aries 1 (Apex Space, US);
  OrbAstro-TR2 (Orb.Astro, UK)

Spacevan
---------

The Exotrail Spacevan tug, launched on Transporter-9 last year, ejected a 8U cubesat (EXO-1) on Feb 28.

Strix-3
--------

The Strix-3 radar satellite for the Japanese company Synspective was launched on Mar 12 by Rocket Lab's
Electron from New Zealand.

DRO-A/DRO-B
-----------

On Mar 13 China launched two experimental spacecraft from Xichang on a CZ-2C/YZ-1S. The
spacecraft were intended to test out lunar direct retrograde orbit
navigation - presumably similar to the US CAPSTONE mission. However the YZ-1S upper stage failed
to fire. Two objects have been cataloged in low orbit. One is the CZ-2C second stage. The other
is presumably the YZ-1S with the DRO-A and DRO-B craft still attached.

It is now clear that the DRO-L satellite launched by JL-3 in February is part of the same
program and was intended to test comms between the lunar bound DRO-A/B and the DRO-L in LEO.
 

KAIROS
------

SpaceOne's KAIROS rocket made the inaugural launch from Kii Spaceport in Wakayama province, Japan, on Mar 13,
but was destroyed 5 seconds into flight.


Table of Recent Orbital Launches
 ----------------------------------

Date UT       Name			     Launch Vehicle	 Site		 Mission  INTL.  Catalog  Perigee Apogee  Incl	 Notes
Feb 17 0022   VEP-4                             H3 22S                    Tanegashima Y2    Tech    32   664 x 670 x 98.1
              CE-SAT-1E                                                                    Imaging  32A?
              TIRSAT                                                                        Tech    32B?
Feb 17 1205   INSAT-3DS                         GSLV Mk II                Satish Dhawan SLP Meteo   33A  158 x 38264 x 19.5
Feb 18 1452   ADRAS-J                           Electron                  Mahia LC1B        Tech    34A  533 x 597 x 98.2
Feb 20 2011   Merah Putih 2                     Falcon 9                  Canaveral LC40    Comms   35A  316 x 54924 x 20.8
Feb 23 0411   Starlink Group 7-15               Falcon 9                 Vandenberg SLC4E  Comms    36   284 x 294 x 53.2
Feb 23 1130   TJS 11                            Chang Zheng 5            Wenchang          Sigint?  37A  218 x 35800 x 16.5
Feb 25 2206   Starlink Group 6-39               Falcon 9                 Canaveral         Comms    38   273 x 283 x 43.1
Feb 28        EXO-0                                                    Spacevan-001, LEO   Tech  23174DK 513 x 529 x 97.5
Feb 29 0543   Meteor-M No. 2-4                  Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat        Vostochniy        Weather  39A  812 x 824 x 98.6
              Pars-1                                                                       Imaging  39B? 486 x 511 x 97.4
              Marafon-D GVM                                                                Tech     39V? 731 x 751 x 89.0
              Zorkiy-2M No. 2                                                              Imaging  39C? 486 x 511 x 97.4
              SITRO-AIS-29 to 36                                                           Comms    39   486 x 511 x 97.4
              SITRO-AIS-49 to 52                                                           Comms    39   486 x 511 x 97.4
              SITRO-AIS-25 to 28                                                           Comms    39   503 x 747 x 95.4
Feb 29 1303   HWGGW 01                          Chang Zheng 3B            Xichang          Comms    40A 236 x 35830 x 27.7
Feb 29 1530   Starlink Group 6-40               Falcon 9                 Canaveral         Comms    41A  273 x 283 x 43.1
Mar  4 0353   Dragon Crew-8                     Falcon 9                 Kennedy LC39A    Spaceship 42A 191 x 215 x 51.6
Mar  4 2205   Transporter-10                    Falcon 9                 Vandenberg SLC4E  Rideshare 43  508 x 529 x 97.5
Mar  4 2356   Starlink Group 6-41               Falcon 9                 Canaveral         Comms    44   273 x 283 x 43.1
Mar 10 2305   Starlink Group 6-43               Falcon 9                 Canaveral         Comms    45   273 x 283 x 43.1
Mar 11 0409   Starlink Group 7-17               Falcon 9                 Vandenberg SLC4E  Comms    46   284 x 294 x 53.2
Mar 12 1503   Strix 3                           Electron                 Mahia LC1B        Radar    47A  553 x 579 x 97.6
Mar 13 0201   KAIROS TUGKE                      KAIROS                   Kii               Imaging  F01  -6378 x 0 x 97
Mar 13 1251   DRO-A/DRO-B                       Chang Zheng 2C/YZ-1S     Xichang           Lunar    48A  263 x 277 x 28.2
Mar 14 1325   Starship 28                       Starship                 Starbase OLP1     Test     U01  -54 x 234 x 26.5

Table of Recent Suborbital Launches 
-----------------------------------

Date UT       Payload           Rocket              Site                 Mission       Apogee    Target

Feb 15 1442   TEXUS 60          VSB-30              ESRANGE              Microgravity  264       ESRANGE
Feb 27 0727   MAPHEUS-14        Red Kite/IM         ESRANGE              Microgravity  265       ESRANGE
Mar  1        Yars RV           Yars                Plesetsk             Op. test      1000?     Kura
Mar 11        RV x 3?           Agni 5              Kalam Island         Test          800?      Indian Ocean
Mar 12 0515   REXUS 32          Orion               ESRANGE              Microgravity   80?      ESRANGE
Mar 14 1200   REXUS 31          Orion               ESRANGE              Microgravity   80?      ESRANGE

.-------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|  Jonathan McDowell                 |                                    |
|  Somerville MA 02143               |  inter : planet4589 at gmail       |
|  USA                               |  twitter: @planet4589              |
|                                                                         |
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