Launch Roundup: Starship, lunar lander, and telescope missions set for launch – NASASpaceflight.com

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The Intuitive Machines-2 (IM-2) mission will explore and analyze the Moon’s subsurface, testing new technologies and paving the way for future lunar missions. NASA is also set to launch its SPHEREx observatory, which will map hundreds of millions of galaxies to study the origins of the universe, uncover “cosmic inflation,” and search for the building blocks of life.In addition to these two Falcon 9 missions, SpaceX will launch two Starlink missions, and Starship’s eighth flight test could launch no earlier than Friday, pending regulatory approval. Blue Origin’s crewed missions resumed on Tuesday when New Shepard launched a crew of six past the Kármán line.Internationally, Roscosmos will launch the MS-30 cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and a navigation satellite. China is also expected to launch two missions this week. New Shepard NS-30 mission patch. (Credit: Blue Origin)New Shepard | NS-30Hot on the heels of Blue Origin’s NS-29 lunar gravity-simulating mission earlier this month, New Shepard’s tenth crewed mission launched on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 9:50 AM CST (15:50 UTC). Lifting off from Launch Site One at the company’s West Texas launch facility, the New Shepard capsule experienced approximately three to four minutes of microgravity as it reached a peak altitude of around 107 km to 110 km during its approximately 10 minute mission.The six crew aboard RSS First Step for this flight included a returning astronaut, cybersecurity founder, and philanthropist Lane Bess, who previously flew on New Shepard for the NS-19 mission in 2021. Joining Bess will be Jesús Calleja, a Spanish TV host and adventurer who has visited the North and South Poles and climbed the world’s Seven Summits.Also onboard were entrepreneur, pilot, and physicist Elaine Chia Hyde; research scientist, pilot, and philanthropist Dr. Richard Scott; and Tushar Shar, head of research at a New York quantitative hedge fund. The final crew member’s name was not disclosed. The booster, also known as Tail 4, landed successfully back at the launch site just over seven minutes into the flight.IM-2 Nova-C lander Athena is encapsulated Falcon 9’s payload fairings ahead of launch. (Credit: SpaceX)Falcon 9 | IM-2A Falcon 9 is set to launch several payloads to the Moon, including the IM-2 mission for Intuitive Machines, from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Liftoff is set for Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 7:17 PM (00:17 UTC on Feb 27). Four payloads will be carried into a trans-lunar injection orbit, including Intuitive Machines’ second Nova C lunar lander, Athena. The IM-2 mission will pave the way for future Artemis lunar missions, focusing on exploring and analyzing the Moon’s subsurface. Athena will be the third lunar lander to have launched this year, all of which have flown on a Falcon 9 from LC-39A.In contrast to the two lunar landers launched a month ago, Athena carries cryogenic propellants and will take a more direct route to the Moon. It is expected to arrive in lunar orbit four days later, on March 2. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, currently in lunar orbit, is on course to land on the lunar surface on March 2. The Hakuto-R Resilience lander, however, is taking a more complex but fuel-efficient route and will enter lunar orbit in May.The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) instrument onboard Athena will demonstrate the extraction of lunar regolith from up to three feet below the surface. The MSolo mass spectrometer will search for the presence of volatiles such as water ice and measure how much is lost to sublimation as it turns from a solid into vapor in the vacuum.Grace, the Micro-Nova lander craft, which will travel to the lunar surface with Athena. (Credit: Intuitive Machines)Grace, A Micro Nova (μNova) deployable lander, will also demonstrate robotic access beyond that of small rovers and into more extreme lunar environments. The propulsive robot will “hop” into and out of permanently shadowed craters and can travel up to 25 km from Athena and hop to 100 m in altitude. The Micro Nova can transport up to 10 kg of payload, depending on the range, and transmits its data via UHF and Nokia’s 4G on the lunar surface, where it is then relayed via Athena back to Earth.Falcon 9 will also carry the 200 kg Lunar Trailblazer (SIMPLEx 5) orbiter, which will endeavor to determine the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the lunar surface and its relation to geology. It will travel from the L1 Lagrange point and spiral down to a roughly 100 km circular polar orbit over six months, where it will then orbit for around one year.This flight will also transport AstroForge’s microwave-sized Odin spacecraft on a trajectory out of the Earth-Moon system, where it will then perform a one-kilometer fly-by of asteroid 2022 OB5 in around 11 months. The company plans to mine asteroids for resources on later missions. Also performing a flyby will be a Sherpa Escape orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), which will utilize the trans-lunar injection to perform a flyby of the Moon.  Following the flyby, the OTV will insert itself into a geosynchronous equatorial orbit, where it will deploy customer payloads as part of the cislunar rideshare mission GEO Pathfinder.The booster supporting this mission has not yet been confirmed. Following launch and stage separation, the booster will continue downrange and land atop SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, which will be stationed downrange in the Atlantic.Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-13The Starlink Group 12-13 mission has been rescheduled twice so far this week. A planned launch on Monday, Feb. 24 was scrubbed after being pushed to the back end of the launch window due to weather, and a second attempt the next day was scrubbed for undeclared reasons, despite 95 percent favorable weather. The next opportunity will begin on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 10:34 PM EST (03:34 UTC on Feb 27). Falcon 9 will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, carrying another 21 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO). The vehicle will head southeast from the launch site, and following deployment, the satellites will then move into their final orbit at an altitude of 559 km, inclined 53 degrees.The booster supporting this mission has not been confirmed, but is suspected to be new booster B1092 on its maiden flight. It is expected to land on SpaceX’s autonomous droneship Just Read the Instructions, which will be waiting downrange in the Atlantic. SpaceX celebrated its 450th mission with last Friday’s Starlink Group 12-14 flight on Feb. 21.At the start of the week, SpaceX had launched 7,929 total Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 899 have re-entered, and 6,264 have moved into their operational orbits.Aerial view of a Chang Zheng 2C on the pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center’s Site 9401 from the PIESAT-2 mission in November 2024. (Credit: CCTV/CGTN)Chang Zheng 2C | Unknown PayloadA Chang Zheng 2C (CZ-2C) rocket is expected to launch from Site 9401 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 07:10 UTC. This mission has a short launch window lasting just under half an hour. The payload is currently unknown.This will be the first launch for this long-serving launch vehicle this year, which recently lofted satellites, including PIESAT-2, SuperView Neo, and Yaogan 43, in the final months of 2024. The two-stage rocket has been in service since 1982 and is powered by the storable hypergolic liquid propellants nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine.Soyuz 2.1a | Progress MS-30A Soyuz 2.1a rocket carrying a Progress cargo resupply vehicle is due to liftoff to the ISS on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 21:24 UTC. Launching from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the vehicle will carry just under 7,300 kg of cargo to the Station. The spacecraft is expected to dock autonomously to the aft port of the Zvezda module of the ISS just over two days later on March 1 at 23:03 UTC.Progress will remain docked to the ISS until August, when it will be deorbited and expended. While this is the 82nd flight of a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, it will be the 183rd mission for a Progress spacecraft.Energia completed work on the Progress spacecraft in its Korelev factory last September. It was then shipped by rail to the Baikonur Cosmodrome for final testing and propellant loading in January. The pressurized component was loaded in mid-February with consumables such as food and research equipment, while the unpressurized component carries water, propellant, and gases, which will replenish supplies aboard the Station after docking. MS-30 was then shipped to the assembly building for final integration ahead of last weekend.Starlink Satellites are deployed during the Starlink Group 12-8 mission. (Credit: SpaceX)Falcon 9 | Starlink Group 12-20This week’s second scheduled Starlink mission is set to launch on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 9:52 PM EST (02:52 UTC on Feb. 28) from SLC-40 at the CCSFS in Florida. The vehicle will head southeast from the launch site, carrying another 21 Starlink satellites into LEO.Despite the numbering, this will be the 15th launch into the Group 12 shell of the Starlink constellation. With the pad at LC-39A being prepared for the IM-2 mission, SLC-40 has served as the launch site for all of February’s Starlink missions from the east coast.The first stage, which is currently unknown, is expected to land approximately eight minutes into the flight on one of SpaceX’s two east coast droneships.Booster 15’s static fire ahead of flight. (Credit: BocaChicaGal for NSF)Starship | Flight 8Starship is preparing to launch once again from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, with an opportunity that opens no earlier than Friday, Feb. 28, between 5:30 PM and 6:39 PM CST (23:30 to 00:39 UTC). This follows the successful static fires of Booster 15 on Feb. 9 and Ship 34 on Feb. 11. Both stages have returned to the production site and have yet to be stacked as refurbishing work has continued on Orbital Launch Pad A.SpaceX has broken records regarding the time between rollout and rollback from testing for both Ship 34 and Booster 15 and may elect not to conduct a wet-dress rehearsal. Other regulatory milestones, however, stand to potentially delay the launch. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mishap investigation into the anomaly with Ship 33 on Flight 7 is ongoing, and the FAA must approve the investigation findings before granting a launch license. While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued SpaceX a launch communications license, the FAA approval will remain the critical bottleneck. Additional launch opportunities exist daily until March 6, should launch delay past Friday.As with Flight 7, this flight will use a combination of a Block 1 Super Heavy booster and a Block 2 ship and is expected to broadly follow the same suborbital mission profile. If Ship 33 had demonstrated a successful reentry and a controlled ocean landing during Flight 7, this mission might have otherwise featured the first Ship catch attempt at Starbase. Currently, FCC documents indicate the potential for a catch attempt on Flight 9, pending the results of Flight 8.This flight will again carry a batch of dummy Starlink satellites to test Starship’s payload deployment mechanisms. As with Flight 8, certain heat shield tiles have been strategically removed in specific positions on the Ship to test different configurations for adhesion and durability.Following liftoff and stage separation, Booster 15 is expected to return to the launch site and be caught by the “chopstick” catch arms on the side of the launch tower at OLP-A. Flight 7 featured the successful catch of Booster 14 after an aborted catch attempt on Flight 6.Render of the SPHEREx observatory in orbit. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Falcon 9 | SPHEREx & PUNCHA Falcon 9 will launch NASA’s SPHEREx observatory on Friday, Feb. 28, at 7:10 PM PST (03:10 UTC on March 1). Lifting off from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Falcon 9 will launch SPHEREx and its accompanying payloads into a Sun-synchronous orbit.The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission will survey and map large portions of the sky over a two-year period. Mapping the distribution of over 450 million galaxies, it is hoped that SPHEREx will shed light on the impacts of “cosmic inflation” — the near-instantaneous expansion of the universe following the Big Bang. Charting these millions of galaxies in three dimensions will provide critical insight into the connectivity between this inflation and the large-scale structure of the resulting universe. It also aims to measure the total collective glow from all galaxies, including those too diffuse or distant for other telescopes to detect, giving scientists a fresh perspective on the major sources of light in the universe.Using near-infrared wavelengths, SPHEREx will map the sky in 102 infrared colors undetectable to the human eye. Splitting that light using spectroscopy will provide insight into their composition and enable the measurement of distance to these cosmic objects. While NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have provided close-up views of galaxies at higher resolutions than ever before, SPHEREx opts out of high-resolution close-ups for broad, expansive surveys. Webb and Hubble could eventually be used to study objects that SPHEREx discovers.Render of the four PUNCH satellites in orbit. (Credit: NASA)Teams hope SPHEREx will provide more information on the distribution of the key ingredients essential for life and galaxy formation. Focusing on our Milky Way galaxy, the observatory will look for water molecules and carbon dioxide frozen in interstellar clouds of gas and dust, from which stars and planets can form.Like Webb, SPHEREx avoids interference from its components and instruments by operating at -210 degrees Celsius. Three cone-shaped photon shields provide novel passive cooling and give the spacecraft its unique, cone-like shape.Also onboard are four small satellites that will make three-dimensional observations of the Sun’s corona to investigate how the Sun’s mass and energy become solar wind. Known collectively as Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH), the mission will complement NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter missions in their studies of the Sun’s influence on our solar system. The satellites will form a coordinated constellation in LEO and observe coronal mass ejections. PUNCH is expected to provide greater insight into space weather forecasting as it provides continuous, wide-field imaging of solar wind.Falcon booster B1088 is supporting this mission on its third flight, having previously carried the NROL-126 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office and the Transporter-12 rideshare mission. Following launch, B1088 will return to SLC-4E and land atop the concrete Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4), located around 400 m from the launch pad.A Gushenxing-1 (Ceres-1) is prepared at Galactic Energy’s facility. (Credit: Galactic Energy)Gushenxing-1 | Unknown PayloadA Galactic Energy Gushenxing-1, also known as the Ceres-1, is due to launch from Site 95A at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gansu Province of China. Liftoff is expected on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 08:10 UTC, during a launch window lasting almost an hour. Details of the payload are currently unknown.This will be the second launch of the year for the Ceres-1. January’s “On Your Shoulders” mission used the first of many rockets to roll out of the company’s new Ziyang factory in the Sichuan Province. This week’s mission will be the 18th for the Ceres vehicle series, including the 1S sea-launch variant. Galactic Energy has claimed it to be China’s most successful commercial vehicle to date, having delivered 63 satellites into orbit thus far. The company plans to launch 14 missions this year, including the maiden launches of the Gushenxing-2 and the new Pallas-1 rocket.Render of the GLONASS-K2 satellite in orbit. (Credit: Russian Space Systems)Soyuz 2.1b | GLONASS-K2 No. 14LA Soyuz-2.1b rocket is scheduled to launch Russia’s latest navigation satellite into medium-Earth orbit on Sunday, March 3, at 22:00 UTC. Liftoff is expected from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia at the start of a two-hour launch window.The radio-based Globalnaya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS) system is similar to the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and provides positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services globally. Civilian accuracy of the existing constellation is around two to five meters, while military users benefit from higher precision. The GLONASS-K design improves on the previous GLONASS-M second-generation satellites, with atomic clocks providing even greater accuracy to potentially sub-meter levels. The satellites also feature a longer 10-year lifespan and improved interoperability with other global systems such as GPS and Galileo.(Lead image: Falcon 9 launches into the Florida skies. 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