Souped-up sounding rocket lifts off from Japan with tiny satellite
A modified sounding rocket originally designed to loft science instruments on high-altitude suborbital arcs blasted off Saturday from the Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan and soared into orbit to become the world's smallest satellite launcher.
[...] Standing just 31 feet (9.5 meters) tall and spanning around 20 inches (52 centimeters) in diameter, the SS-520-5 rocket was modest by launcher standards. With Saturday's successful flight, the solid-fueled booster became the smallest rocket to ever put an object in orbit around Earth.
A student-built shoebox-sized CubeSat named TRICOM 1R — weighing in at about 10 pounds (3 kilograms) — was mounted on top of the SS-520-5 rocket for liftoff from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan's Kagoshima prefecture.
[...] The SS-520 is designed to propel more than 300 pounds (140 kilograms) of science research instrumentation to an altitude of nearly 500 miles (800 kilometers) for a few minutes of exposure to space before falling back to Earth. Engineers added a third stage on top of the basic SS-520 booster to give it the capability to reach orbital speeds of more than 17,000 mph (27,000 kilometers per hour).
Also at The Verge.
Related: Rocket Lab's Second "Electron" Rocket Launch Succeeds, Reaches Orbit
Related Stories
After a failure to reach orbit last year and several delays, Rocket Lab has successfully launched an Electron rocket into orbit:
Rocket Lab has returned to action with the second launch of its Electron rocket from the Māhia Peninsula from the North Island of New Zealand's eastern coast. Several attempts to launch at the end of last year were scrubbed before regrouping for a new attempt – which was also scrubbed, due to a wayward boat, a technical issue and then the weather – before finally launching at 01:43 UTC on Sunday and appears to have been a success.
Much like Vector Space – which is currently in small-scale suborbital testing with aims to enter the launch market next year – Rocket Lab caters to much the same market, offering small satellite users a dedicated launch system to eliminate ride-sharing requirements on the larger, more established launchers.
According to the company's website, Rocket Lab lists its launch services with Electron as costing $4.9 million (USD) per flight.
Rocket Lab has two more upcoming launches planned for Q1 2018, including a lunar lander for Moon Express. The Electron rocket will deliver the Moon Express payload into low-Earth orbit, where the lander will use its own thrusters to get to the Moon:
Once in low-Earth orbit, the MX-1E will need to complete a translunar injection (TLI) burn, cruise through space, conduct a breaking[sic] burn to enter lunar orbit, and finally complete descent and landing burns—all by itself. It would be an unprecedented accomplishment, a single-stage spacecraft that can make it all the way to the surface of the moon from low-Earth orbit.
How will a cheap disposable rocket fare against reusable rockets?
Also at Wired.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday February 05 2018, @07:09AM (4 children)
- missile.
I don't recall what that kind of missile was but it had to be small enough to have fit under the deck of a ship while standing vertically.
The cover story was that the wayward satellite's hydrazine would be quite dangerously toxic should it survive reentry. I never believed that, not even a little bit.
Not long before that the PRC shot down one of its own satellites. Without a doubt the US shot down that satellite to convey a diplomatic message.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by aim on Monday February 05 2018, @09:04AM
You want to look up ASAT [wikipedia.org], and specifically the ASM-135 [wikipedia.org] missile. You were thinking of the RIM-161 [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday February 05 2018, @05:28PM
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 05 2018, @06:07PM
> Not long before that the PRC shot down one of its own satellites. Without a doubt the US shot down that satellite to convey a diplomatic message.
The rest of the world was very happy when the dick-measuring contest stopped after those two samples.
"Before you to the Moon and Mars" targets are a lot less disruptive to actually useful LEO sats.
(Score: 3, Informative) by darkfeline on Tuesday February 06 2018, @06:12AM
Getting to "orbit" "height" is much easier than getting to orbit speed.
It's quite trivial to get something to "orbit" "height".
Obligatory xkcd What If? https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ [xkcd.com]
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 05 2018, @07:20AM (1 child)
Can I buy such a rocket from a toy store?
(actually I wonder what the cost for the launch may be? How does it compare with launching heaps of nanosats from a heavy rocket?)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05 2018, @10:59AM
Nanosats... ouch... just the ticket for someone who wants to take out satellites... just steer a nanosat into its path.
(Score: 1) by mmlj4 on Monday February 05 2018, @12:39PM (1 child)
"A student-built shoebox-sized CubeSat named TRICOM 1R — weighing in at about 10 pounds (3 kilograms)". Apparently a Japanese kilogram is 3.3 pounds? Good to know. I wonder if I can figure out how to short-sell and make a bundle.
Need a Linux consultant [joeykelly.net] in New Orleans?
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday February 05 2018, @02:22PM
That conversion makes sense if the reporter (or whoever made the conversion) used a well-versed conversion system, a libra (lb) (the original pound) is about 329g which would make it (3 / 0.329) ~ 9.11 pound, and then add some agressive rounding away from zero...