The Falcon 9 and Starlink payload are raised at LC 39A, but will need to wait a bit longer to fly. SpaceX has adjusted launch date, now set for September 3, 2020. Photo: Theresa Cross, SpaceFlight Insider.
SpaceX has officially shifted Tuesday’s planned launch of 60 Starlink internet satellites from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Representatives from SpaceX wrote on Twitter, “Now targeting Thursday, September 3 at 8:46 a.m. EDT for launch of Starlink from Launch Complex 39A, pending Range acceptance — team is using additional time for data review.” Prior to the flight schedule change being made and published on Monday, members of the media had been out at the remote camera setup event at LC 39A. It is unclear whether there will be any need for additional
This is the second scrub for this mission in as many days; Sunday’s planned launch, the first in what was planned to be a back-to-back double launch day, pushed to Tuesday September 1 due to inclement weather during pre-flight operations.
Beyond this mission, Starlink 12 and Starlink 13 are currently scheduled for September 12 and 13 respectively, launch times TBD.
The Falcon 9 and Starlink payload, seen here raised at LC 39A on August 31, will need to wait a little bit longer to fly. SpaceX adjusted the planned launch date to September 3, 2020. Photo: Theresa Cross, SpaceFlight Insider.
Theresa Cross grew up on the Space Coast. It’s only natural that she would develop a passion for anything “Space” and its exploration. During these formative years, she also discovered that she possessed a talent and love for defining the unique quirks and intricacies that exist in mankind, nature, and machines.
Hailing from a family of photographers—including her father and her son, Theresa herself started documenting her world through pictures at a very early age. As an adult, she now exhibits an innate photographic ability to combine what appeals to her heart and her love of technology to deliver a diversified approach to her work and artistic presentations.
Theresa has a background in water chemistry, fluid dynamics, and industrial utility.
Chileno glacial lake, located in the Patagonia region of Chile, is seen in an undated handout photo. Meltwater from shrinking glaciers is creating vast new lakes that could eventually pose a massive flooding threat, says newly published research.
Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Stephan Harrison
August 31, 2020 - 9:00 PM
CALGARY - Meltwater from shrinking glaciers is creating vast lakes that could eventually pose an enormous flooding threat, says newly published research.
"Unsurprisingly, we found those lakes are growing," said Dan Shugar, a geographer at the University of Calgary. "What was surprising was how much."
The fact that glaciers around the world are shrinking due to climate change is well-established. What hasn't been so well studied is where all that water is going.
In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, Shugar and his colleagues provide the first global assessment of how much water is contained in so-called glacial lakes and how quickly that volume is increasing.
That assessment wasn't possible until a few years ago, when computers finally became powerful enough to work through a world's worth of data and 250,000 satellite images.
Glacial lakes form when meltwater from glaciers is prevented from draining by the ice itself. They form on top, in front, beside or even underneath a glacier.
They are growing at a rapid pace everywhere glaciers are found. Shugar and his colleagues estimate that the amount of water those lakes hold has increased by almost 50 per cent since 1990.
The total volume is calculated to be an almost-unimaginable 158 cubic kilometres of water. That's a cube of icy cold water almost 5.5 kilometres long, wide and high.
Many glacial lakes are located in thinly inhabited locales such as Greenland. Others are in places like the Himalayas, where they sit alongside villages and communities.
Canadian glacial lakes are swelling as well.
Their volume across the country, including those in the High Arctic, has increased about 20 per cent and they hold about 37 cubic kilometres of water, Shugar said. The lakes in British Columbia and Yukon have increased even more quickly, almost doubling in volume over the last 30 years to 21 cubic kilometres.
They can present a hazard. Because the water is only held back by ice, glacial lakes are prone to sudden events called glacial lake outburst floods.
"In western North America, the risks aren't as high (as the Himalayas), but they certainly aren't zero," said Shugar.
And when they go, they go "absolutely gargantuan," Shugar said.
In 1996, an outburst flood in Iceland created what was for a couple of days the second-biggest river in the world. A 1930s outburst from the Chong Khumdan glacier in the Karakoram range sent a wall of water, mud and debris nearly 26 metres high down the Indus River for about 1,500 kilometres.
Shugar said he's not able to tell yet if GLOFs, as they are known, are becoming more frequent.
But he warns that water managers are going to have to keep an eye out for them as climate change continues to melt glaciers and fill lakes.
"Even here in the Rockies we may see increased development of these lakes," Shugar said.
"This is an evolving hazardous landscape. This is something that needs to be constantly revisited."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 31, 2020
— By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow @row1960 on Twitter
SpaceX has pushed the launch of its next big batch of Starlink internet satellites back two days, to Thursday (Sept. 3).
A Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled to loft the 60 Starlink satellites on Tuesday morning (Sept. 1) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But those plans have changed, SpaceX representatives announced today (Aug. 31).
"Now targeting Thursday, September 3 at 8:46 a.m. EDT for launch of Starlink from Launch Complex 39A, pending Range acceptance — team is using additional time for data review," SpaceX said via Twitter this afternoon. ("Range" refers to the Eastern Range, the U.S. Space Force entity that oversees launches from the East Coast.)
Now targeting Thursday, September 3 at 8:46 a.m. EDT for launch of Starlink from Launch Complex 39A, pending Range acceptance — team is using additional time for data reviewAugust 31, 2020
SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9 first stage on a ship at sea during Thursday's Starlink mission. You can watch all of Thursday's action live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly via the company.
SpaceX has already launched 600 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. But the constellation will get far bigger than that, if things go according to plan: SpaceX has approval to loft 12,000 Starlink spacecraft and has applied for permission to launch about 30,000 more on top of that.
The upcoming Starlink launch was originally targeted for Sunday (Aug. 30), but bad weather scuttled that attempt.
Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
NASA's Curiosity rover snapped the images in this GIF that show a dust devil moving acros the martian landscape.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
It's been blustery lately in the Gale Crater on Mars, home to NASA's Curiosity rover.
The Curiosity team has been snapping landscape views to keep an eye on the wind activity. Their efforts paid off with a scenic GIF of a dust devil acting up in the distance.
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Spotting dust devils on Mars can be tricky, requiring a lot of image processing.
"But this dust devil was so impressive that -- if you look closely! -- you can just see it moving to the right, at the border between the darker and lighter slopes, even in the raw images," wrote atmospheric scientists Claire Newman, a Curiosity team member with Aeolis Research, in an update last week.
Curiosity takes "dust devil movies" where it observes a section of the crater, taking multiple images over a period of time. The researchers are looking at the formation, size, direction and duration of the whirlwinds. The dust devil in the GIF performed its dance earlier in August.
Curiosity is doing its part to give scientists a more complete picture of the wind and dust that can scour the red planet. "The dust measurements will help us to track the regional dust activity on Mars that has been seen from the surface and orbit in recent sols," said Newman. A "sol" is a day on Mars.
Mars is known for impressive dust storms, including the global storm in 2018 that knocked out NASA's long-lived Opportunity rover. Unlike Opportunity, Curiosity doesn't rely on solar panels to stay alive. A bit of dust and wind won't phase it, and we can safely enjoy the views back here on Earth.
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CALGARY — Meltwater from shrinking glaciers is creating vast lakes that could eventually pose an enormous flooding threat, says newly published research.
"Unsurprisingly, we found those lakes are growing," said Dan Shugar, a geographer at the University of Calgary. "What was surprising was how much."
article continues below
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The fact that glaciers around the world are shrinking due to climate change is well-established. What hasn't been so well studied is where all that water is going.
In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, Shugar and his colleagues provide the first global assessment of how much water is contained in so-called glacial lakes and how quickly that volume is increasing.
That assessment wasn't possible until a few years ago, when computers finally became powerful enough to work through a world's worth of data and 250,000 satellite images.
Glacial lakes form when meltwater from glaciers is prevented from draining by the ice itself. They form on top, in front, beside or even underneath a glacier.
They are growing at a rapid pace everywhere glaciers are found. Shugar and his colleagues estimate that the amount of water those lakes hold has increased by almost 50 per cent since 1990.
The total volume is calculated to be an almost-unimaginable 158 cubic kilometres of water. That's a cube of icy cold water almost 5.5 kilometres long, wide and high.
Many glacial lakes are located in thinly inhabited locales such as Greenland. Others are in places like the Himalayas, where they sit alongside villages and communities.
Canadian glacial lakes are swelling as well.
Their volume across the country, including those in the High Arctic, has increased about 20 per cent and they hold about 37 cubic kilometres of water, Shugar said. The lakes in British Columbia and Yukon have increased even more quickly, almost doubling in volume over the last 30 years to 21 cubic kilometres.
They can present a hazard. Because the water is only held back by ice, glacial lakes are prone to sudden events called glacial lake outburst floods.
"In western North America, the risks aren't as high (as the Himalayas), but they certainly aren't zero," said Shugar.
And when they go, they go "absolutely gargantuan," Shugar said.
In 1996, an outburst flood in Iceland created what was for a couple of days the second-biggest river in the world. A 1930s outburst from the Chong Khumdan glacier in the Karakoram range sent a wall of water, mud and debris nearly 26 metres high down the Indus River for about 1,500 kilometres.
Shugar said he's not able to tell yet if GLOFs, as they are known, are becoming more frequent.
But he warns that water managers are going to have to keep an eye out for them as climate change continues to melt glaciers and fill lakes.
"Even here in the Rockies we may see increased development of these lakes," Shugar said.
"This is an evolving hazardous landscape. This is something that needs to be constantly revisited."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 31, 2020
— By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow @row1960 on Twitter
Meltwater from shrinking glaciers is creating vast lakes that could eventually pose an enormous flooding threat, says newly published research.
“Unsurprisingly, we found those lakes are growing,” said Dan Shugar, a geographer at the University of Calgary. “What was surprising was how much.”
The fact that glaciers around the world are shrinking due to climate change is well-established. What hasn’t been so well studied is where all that water is going.
In a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, Shugar and his colleagues provide the first global assessment of how much water is contained in so-called glacial lakes and how quickly that volume is increasing.
That assessment wasn’t possible until a few years ago, when computers finally became powerful enough to work through a world’s worth of data and 250,000 satellite images.
Story continues below advertisement
Dramatic video captures kayakers near-miss of glacier collapse
Dramatic video captures kayakers near-miss of glacier collapse
Glacial lakes form when meltwater from glaciers is prevented from draining by the ice itself. They form on top, in front, beside or even underneath a glacier.
They are growing at a rapid pace everywhere glaciers are found. Shugar and his colleagues estimate that the amount of water those lakes hold has increased by almost 50 per cent since 1990.
The total volume is calculated to be an almost-unimaginable 158 cubic kilometres of water. That’s a cube of icy cold water almost 5.5 kilometres long, wide and high.
Many glacial lakes are located in thinly inhabited locales such as Greenland. Others are in places like the Himalayas, where they sit alongside villages and communities.
Story continues below advertisement
Canadian glacial lakes are swelling as well.
Their volume across the country, including those in the High Arctic, has increased about 20 per cent and they hold about 37 cubic kilometres of water, Shugar said. The lakes in British Columbia and Yukon have increased even more quickly, almost doubling in volume over the last 30 years to 21 cubic kilometres.
Footage captures moment 40m tower of ice splits from Antarctic glacier
Footage captures moment 40m tower of ice splits from Antarctic glacier
They can present a hazard. Because the water is only held back by ice, glacial lakes are prone to sudden events called glacial lake outburst floods.
“In western North America, the risks aren’t as high (as the Himalayas), but they certainly aren’t zero,” said Shugar.
And when they go, they go “absolutely gargantuan,” Shugar said.
In 1996, an outburst flood in Iceland created what was for a couple of days the second-biggest river in the world. A 1930s outburst from the Chong Khumdan glacier in the Karakoram range sent a wall of water, mud and debris nearly 26 metres high down the Indus River for about 1,500 kilometres.
Shugar said he’s not able to tell yet if GLOFs, as they are known, are becoming more frequent.
But he warns that water managers are going to have to keep an eye out for them as climate change continues to melt glaciers and fill lakes.
“Even here in the Rockies we may see increased development of these lakes,” Shugar said.
“This is an evolving hazardous landscape. This is something that needs to be constantly revisited.”
The total volume is calculated to be an almost-unimaginable 158 cubic kilometres of water. That’s a cube of icy cold water almost 5.5 kilometres long, wide and high.
Many glacial lakes are located in thinly inhabited locales such as Greenland. Others are in places like the Himalayas, where they sit alongside villages and communities.
Canadian glacial lakes are swelling as well.
Their volume across the country, including those in the High Arctic, has increased about 20 per cent and they hold about 37 cubic kilometres of water, Shugar said. The lakes in British Columbia and Yukon have increased even more quickly, almost doubling in volume over the last 30 years to 21 cubic kilometres.
They can present a hazard. Because the water is only held back by ice, glacial lakes are prone to sudden events called glacial lake outburst floods.
“In western North America, the risks aren’t as high (as the Himalayas), but they certainly aren’t zero,” said Shugar.
And when they go, they go “absolutely gargantuan,” Shugar said.
In 1996, an outburst flood in Iceland created what was for a couple of days the second-biggest river in the world. A 1930s outburst from the Chong Khumdan glacier in the Karakoram range sent a wall of water, mud and debris nearly 26 metres high down the Indus River for about 1,500 kilometres.
Shugar said he’s not able to tell yet if GLOFs, as they are known, are becoming more frequent.
But he warns that water managers are going to have to keep an eye out for them as climate change continues to melt glaciers and fill lakes.
“Even here in the Rockies we may see increased development of these lakes,” Shugar said.
“This is an evolving hazardous landscape. This is something that needs to be constantly revisited.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 31, 2020
— By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow @row1960 on Twitter
In early 2019, Toyotajoined forces with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to develop a six-wheeled rover capable of transporting two astronauts and their gear on the moon. Development work is ongoing, the process is expected to take nearly a decade, but the partners have already agreed on a name.
It's an off-roader, albeit not one Toyota is used to developing, so it earned the name Lunar Cruiser. The Japanese firm explained it chose that name because the vehicle's basic mission is the same as the original Land Cruiser's: to bring its passengers home alive. FJ Cruiser-like trim on the front end creates another link to Toyota's SUVs.
While the Land Cruiser was designed to effortlessly cross some of the most treacherous terrain on the planet, the 20-foot-long Lunar Cruiser will need to take two astronauts on a 6,200-mile exploration trip (or, in Instagram influencer-speak, #vanlife) while relying on both a giant solar panel and a hydrogen fuel cell for power. As we reported in 2019, it will reach the Moon before the crew, and it will drive autonomously to greet them when they arrive. Once aboard, they'll head towards the lunar poles in search of frozen water.
Toyota explained the rover will be pressurized, so astronauts will be able to remove their spacesuits when they're in the vehicle's 140-square-foot passenger compartment. Interestingly, the firm is also studying how the pressurized rover could help a growing group of companies named Team Japan create a lunar surface-based society, and it's making a list of the many hurdles that need to be cleared before humans can colonize the Moon.
We're not there yet, and the Lunar Cruiser isn't scheduled to blast off until 2030. As of writing, engineers are using computer simulations to study its power and heat dissipation properties. They're also assessing the type of tires or wheels needed, and they're using both virtual reality-based software and scale models to find the best interior layout. None of the Lunar Cruiser's tech will find its way into the next-generation Land Cruiser, which should ditch its V8 and adopt a twin-turbocharged V6, but Toyota may choose to hide an Easter egg or two in the truck.
SpaceX performed a milestone first polar orbital launch of a satellite from its East Coast launch facility at Cape Canaveral on Sunday. The Falcon 9 mission carried three payloads, including a SAOCOM-1B synthetic aperture radar satellite which was flown on behalf of the Argentine space agency, and two small satellites for clients Tyvack and PlanetiQ.
The launch took place at 7:18 PM EDT from Florida, and used a first stage booster that SpaceX previously flew on two separate commercial resupply missions on behalf of NASA for the international Space Station, as well as one of SpaceX’s recent Starlink internet satellite launches. SpaceX also recovered the booster again with a controlled landing back at their landing site at Cape Canaveral.
This was originally set to be one of two launches that SpaceX was going to perform on Sunday – both from the same launch facility, though at different pads. That would’ve been a historic first, but weather earlier in the day meant that the first mission on the schedule, a Starlink launch, was cancelled and will be rescheduled.
SpaceX would ultimately like to be launching at a cadence that would include multiple launches per day, and this would’ve been a great test of its ability to operationalize that ambition. Considering how aggressive the company has been with its Starlink launches, however, it seems likely we’ll encounter another opportunity for a double launch day at some point in the future.
A new series of images sent to Earth by NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars show a spinning 'dust devil' as it skirts across the surface of the Red Planet.
NASA Curiosity Rover has been moving across the Gale crater for the past eight years, conducting experiments and sending sending stunning still images to Earth.
Gale crater is going through its 'windy season', stirring up dust devils - caused by vortices of fast wind raising dust from the ground - captured by Curiosity.
According to NASA researchers, being able to study weather phenomena on Mars that we can also see on Earth can help us understand seasons on the Red Planet.
NASA hasn't confirmed the size of the dust devil as it was too far away for accurate measurements, but orbiting spacecraft have seen some reaching 12 miles high.
Top is a moving image shared by NASA showing the dust devil - highlighted with a red circle. Below is the Curiosity rover that sent the images of the spinning vortex back to Earth
It’s almost summer on Mars and because of this the surface of the Gale crater is heating up - this heating runs from early spring through to the Martian mid-summer.
When the surface warms enough, it causes convection and in turn vortices made up of fast winds that whip around low pressure cores - much like on Earth.
When the wind is strong enough - as has happened this year - they can pick up soil from the surface and create dust devils that can be seen across multiple still images sent back to Earth by the Curiosity rover.
'We often have to process these images, by enhancing what’s changed between them, before dust devils clearly show up,' wrote NASA scientist Claire Newman.
'This dust devil was so impressive that - if you look closely - you can just see it moving to the right, at the border between the darker and lighter slopes, even in the raw images.'
Dust devils happen the same way on Earth as on Mars and form best when the terrain is relatively flat and dry and the air is warmer at the surface than above it.
They are actually very common on Mars - but actually seeing on in motion is rare as they are relatively short-lived and Curiosity only sends back still images.
We know about them because Curiosity and orbiting spacecraft have spotted the tracks these dust devils leave behind them - rather than one in motion.
To capture a dust devil movie the team had to get Curiosity to take a lot of images of the same region for between five and 30 minutes.
Then back on Earth the team worked to stitch the images together to creation a moving video that allowed them to track its path.
Monitoring their motion can provide information about a dust devil's movement, where they initiate and how they evolve.
'Looking at how fast they’re moving and in what direction also tells us about the background wind speed and direction at their location,' said Newman.
'We also made sure to take meteorological measurements with throughout each movie, in case we image a vortex that’s close enough for us to also measure its pressure drop, impact on local temperatures, or even UV radiation if it’s dusty enough to partially block out the Sun.'
NASA has captured images of spinning dust devils on the Red Planet from space - but this is a still image rather than showing it in motion. This one reached 12 miles high
Dust devils also form on Earth. This is the moment a team of workers in Java, Indonesia, tried to 'kill' one with tools after it started wreaking havoc in the flour at a food processing plant
Monitoring dust devils isn't the primary mission of the atmospheric team, their goal is to drill and sample material as part of a 'wet chemistry' experiment.
This involves transforming less volatile organic chemistry into forms that can be detected by the equipment onboard the Curiosity rover.
While drilling and checking the samples, cameras on Curiosity could be used to monitor and capture images of the dust devil.
They also examined the dust seen above the rover in the crater.
'The dust measurements will help us to track the regional dust activity on Mars that has been seen from the surface and orbit in recent years,' Newman wrote.
Curiosity is currently the only moving rover on the Red Planet, but Perseverance is currently in flight between the worlds and is due to land on Mars early in 2021.
THE NASA MARS CURIOSITY ROVER WAS LAUNCHED IN 2011 AND HAS IMPROVED OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE RED PLANET
The Mars Curiosity rover was initially launched from Cape Canaveral, an American Air Force station in Florida on November 26, 2011.
After embarking on a 350 million mile (560 million km) journey, the £1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) research vehicle touched down only 1.5 miles (2.4 km) away from the earmarked landing spot.
After a successful landing on August 6th, 2012, the rover has travelled about 11 miles (18 km).
It was launched on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft and the rover constituted 23 per cent of the mass of the total mission.
With 80 kg (180 lb) of scientific instruments on board, the rover weighs a total of 899 kg (1,982 lb) and is powered by a plutonium fuel source.
The rover is 2.9 metres (9.5 ft) long by 2.7 metres (8.9 ft) wide by 2.2 metres (7.2 ft) in height.
The Mars curiosity rover was initially intended to be a two-year mission to gather information to help answer if the planet could support life, has liquid water, study the climate and the geology of Mars an has since been active for more than 2,000 days
The rover was initially intended to be a two-year mission to gather information to help answer if the planet could support life, has liquid water, study the climate and the geology of Mars.
Due to its success, the mission has been extended indefinitely and has now been active for over 2,000 days.
The rover has several scientific instruments on board, including the mastcam which consists of two cameras and can take high-resolution images and videos in real colour.
So far on the journey of the car-sized robot it has encountered an ancient streambed where liquid water used to flow, not long after it also discovered that billions of years ago, a nearby area known as Yellowknife Bay was part of a lake that could have supported microbial life.
Mars may have only a thin atmosphere compared to other Solar System planets, but boy does it make the most of it. Water ice can rise high in the sky to form thin clouds. Wild winds can whip up into uncontrolled dust storms that shroud the entire planet, or create dust towers that extend almost into space.
So it should come as no surprise that NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, beavering away in the Gale Crater, sometimes lays its electronic eyes on Martian weather phenomena – and now, it's spotted a dust devil spinning across the rocky crater floor.
Seeing weather phenomena on Mars that we also see on Earth isn't just interesting, though - it can also tell us a lot about seasonal atmospheric changes on the Red Planet.
It's coming into Martian summer in the planet's southern hemisphere, where the Gale Crater can be found, and the atmosphere in the region is heating up. Just as uneven heating of the atmosphere on Earth generates atmospheric movement, so too is the Martian atmosphere affected.
"Stronger surface heating tends to produce stronger convection and convective vortices, which consist of fast winds whipping around low pressure cores," writes atmospheric scientist Claire Newman of Aeolis Researchon the Mars Exploration blog.
"If those vortices are strong enough, they can raise dust from the surface and become visible as 'dust devils' that we can image with our cameras."
Dust devils are pretty well understood, and they come about the same way on both Earth and Mars. They form best in relatively flat, dry terrain, when the air at the surface level is warmer than the air above it.
This hot surface air rises through the cooler, denser air, creating an updraft. This causes the cooler air to sink. If a horizontal wind then blows through this vertical circulation, a dust devil whips into action.
They're extremely common on Mars, but we only know this because, as they move across the ground, they sweep up the dust in their path, leaving tracks behind them. Actually seeing them in action on the Red Planet is quite rare, since our observational capabilities are limited, and dust devils themselves are relatively short-lived.
The dust devil above, seen in the top centre of the image, was captured by Curiosity's Navcam on Sol 2847, and covers a span of about 5 minutes, Newman says. Even though it seems ghostly, the fact that we can see it means it was pretty powerful.
"We often have to process these images, by enhancing what's changed between them, before dust devils clearly show up," she writes. "But this dust devil was so impressive that - if you look closely! - you can just see it moving to the right, at the border between the darker and lighter slopes, even in the raw images."
Studying these movies can reveal a lot about dust devils on Mars - where they form, for instance, how they evolve, how long they last, the type of dust they pick up, and how they vary from location to location.
They can also reveal wind speed and duration, which, in combination with meteorological readings, can help scientists learn more about Martian weather, and how dust devils fit into it.
Curiosity is the only operational rover on Mars at the moment (InSight is a stationary lander), so whatever surface information can be gleaned on Martial dust devils is very limited. Mars also has operational orbiters, though, which cover a lot more ground.
A Falcon 9 rocket climbs away from pad 40 Sunday at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Credit: SpaceX
Vaulting away from Cape Canaveral on an unusual southerly trajectory, a Falcon 9 rocket dodged stormy weather and successfully placed an Argentine radar observation satellite into an orbit over Earth’s poles Sunday on SpaceX’s 100th launch.
Scattered thunderstorms across Central Florida threatened to prevent the launch from happening Sunday, but weather criteria were acceptable as the countdown ticked through the final minutes before liftoff of the 229-foot-tall (70-meter) Falcon 9 rocket at 7:18:56 p.m. EDT (2318:56 GMT).
SpaceX aimed to launch two Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral Sunday — a feat unmatched since 1966 — but preparations for the other flight fell behind schedule due to poor weather. That rocket is loaded with 60 Starlink broadband satellites, and is now scheduled to take off at 9:29 a.m. EDT (1329 GMT) Tuesday from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
Nine Merlin engines flashed to life seconds before launch, and clamps opened to allow the 1.2-million-pound rocket and Argentina’s SAOCOM 1B radar remote sensing satellite to climb away from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Instead of launching toward the northeast or east, the Falcon 9 darted through a cloudy sky and arced to the south-southeast from Florida’s Space Coast, then made a right turn to fly along the east coast of Florida over Fort Lauderdale and Miami on the way to a polar orbit.
The launch Sunday was the first from Cape Canaveral to fly on a southerly track since 1969. Since then, most U.S. launches into polar orbit have departed from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which has an open range over the Pacific Ocean that does not require rockets to make an in-flight turn, or “dogleg” maneuver, to avoid flying over land.
The nine Merlin engines on the Falcon 9’s first stage shut down about two-and-a-half minutes after launch, then the booster — reused from three previous missions — separated and flipped around to begin thrusting back toward Cape Canaveral.
After firing engines to slow down, the booster extended landing legs and returned to Landing Zone 1 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station about eight minutes into the mission, touching down as a powerful sonic boom rippled through an atmosphere thick with humidity.
It was the 18th time SpaceX has landed a Falcon 9 booster at Cape Canaveral since 2015, and the 59th successful recovery of a Falcon 9 first stage overall, including landings on SpaceX’s ocean-going drone ships.
The successful return of the Falcon 9 first stage marks the 18th landing of a SpaceX-built reusable booster to Cape Canaveral.
During the booster’s descent, a single Merlin engine on the Falcon 9’s upper stage injected the 6,724-pound (3,050-kilogram) SAOCOM 1B satellite into orbit roughly 380 miles (610 kilometers) above Earth.
The Argentine-built satellite, equipped with a sophisticated radar imaging instrument, separated from the Falcon 9’s upper stage about 14 minutes into the mission. Two smaller rideshare payloads — named GNOMES 1 and Tyvak 0172 — deployed from the Falcon 9 about 45 minutes later.
The GNOMES 1 microsatellite is the first of a planned fleet of around 20 small spacecraft being developed by a Colorado-based company PlanetiQ to collect radio occultation data by measuring the effects of the atmosphere on signals broadcast by GPS, Glonass, Galileo and Beidou navigation satellites. The information can yield data on atmospheric conditions that are useful in weather forecasts.
Tyvak 0172 is a small spacecraft built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. Details about its mission have not been disclosed by SpaceX or Tyvak.
SpaceX launches first polar orbit mission from Cape Canaveral since 1969
The rideshare payload separations wrapped up the first launch into polar orbit from Florida’s Space Coast in more than 50 years. Before Sunday, the last polar orbit launch from Cape Canaveral was on Feb. 26, 1969, when a Delta rocket launched the ESSA 9 weather satellite.
After skirting South Florida, the Falcon 9 rocket flew over Cuba and Central America, then soared over the Pacific Ocean west of South America. The bend in the rocket’s track a few minutes after launch ensured the instantaneous impact point — where debris might fall of the launcher failed — did not cross over Florida after departing Cape Canaveral.
By the time the rocket reached Cuba, it was flying too high to be a safety concern, according to officials from the U.S. Space Force’s 45th Space Wing and the Federal Aviation Administration, which are charged with ensuring public safety during rocket launches from Cape Canaveral.
This approximation of the SAOCOM 1B flight path is an estimate derived from downrange hazard areas and the satellite’s known target orbital parameters. Credit: Spaceflight Now
Range safety officials studied whether the the southerly launch trajectory from Florida might be resurrected after wildfires at Vandenberg Air Force Base — the primary U.S. polar orbit launch site in California — threatened launch and payload processing facilities in 2016.
It turned out SpaceX’s ability to return first stage boosters to controlled landings — rather than having them plummet unguided back to Earth downrange — and the Falcon 9’s use of autonomous flight safety system made the polar launch trajectory from Cape Canaveral feasible.
“What we came up with after we analyzed is SpaceX should be able to do it because of two things,” said Wayne Monteith, associate administrator of the FAA’s office of commercial space transportation. “No. 1, booster flyback, and No. 2, even more important, is autonomous flight safety because going south, the way the architecture of the command destruct systems are set up terrestrially, you’d be looking right up the plume, and you get signal attenuation, and you may not be able to … send command destruct.
“So with autonomous flight safety and booster flyback, we were able to provide for them what appeared to be a notional safe corridor from a safety perspective,” said Monteith, a former commander of the 45th Space Wing.
The State Department is charged with notifying other countries of a rocket flight over their territories. Those notifications were made for the SAOCOM 1B mission, according to Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess, the current commander of the 45th Space Wing.
A satellite launching from Cape Canaveral targeting a polar orbit in 1960 suffered an in-flight failure and spread debris over Cuba, reportedly killing a cow and prompting protests at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
SpaceX elected to use the southerly polar launch trajectory on the SAOCOM 1B mission to allow the company to reduce staffing levels at Vandenberg during a period with few launches there, Gwynne Shotwell, company’s president and chief operating officer, told reporters last year.
The company plans another launch from Vandenberg in November with the Sentinel 6 Michael Freilich oceanography satellite, a joint project between NASA, NOAA, the European Space Agency, and other European institutions.
Another Falcon 9 launch into a polar sun-synchronous orbit is planned from Cape Canaveral in December on a rideshare mission with numerous small satellites.
Scott Higginbotham, a mission manager from NASA’s Launch Services Program, confirmed the mission — which SpaceX calls Transporter-1 — is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral. NASA has booked a small payload to fly on the Falcon 9 rideshare launch.
SAOCOM 1B joins twin in orbit
Developed by Argentina’s space agency, CONAE, and the Argentine aerospace contractor INVAP, the SAOCOM 1B satellite joins a twin radar imaging spacecraft that launched on a previous Falcon 9 flight in October 2018.
The SAOCOM 1B spacecraft will scan the Earth with an L-band steerable synthetic aperture radar, enabling all-weather imagery of the planet day and night. Radar imagers can see through clouds and are effective 24 hours a day, but optical cameras are hindered by clouds and darkness.
Argentina’s 6,724-pound (3,050-kilogram) SAOCOM 1B radar remote sensing spacecraft has deployed from the Falcon 9’s upper stage after reaching a roughly 380-mile-high (610-kilometer) orbit.
Among other objectives, the SAOCOM satellites are designed to measure soil moisture and collect data for users in Argentina’s agricultural and forestry sectors.
The SAOCOM 1B satellite weighs around 6,724 pounds (3,050 kilograms) and is identical to SAOCOM 1A, according to Raúl Kulichevsky, executive and technical director of CONAE.
Kulichevsky said the Falcon 9 will place SAOCOM 1B into a 385-mile-high (620-kilometer) orbit, where it will double the observing capacity of SAOCOM 1A. The SAOCOM satellites work in tandem with Italy’s COSMO-SkyMed satellites to survey the same regions with L-band and X-band radar imagers.
“One of the main targets of the SAOCOM satellites is to provide information for the agriculture sector because one of the things we develop is soil moisture maps, not only of the surface, but taking advantage of the L-band capabilities, we can measure the soil moisture 1 meter the surface of the land,” Kulichevsky said. “This is very important information.”
The entire SAOCOM project cost about $600 million, including two satellites, two launches, a new ground tracking station, and industrial improvements, Kulichevsky told Spaceflight Now in an interview.
Team members pose with the SAOCOM 1B radar imaging satellite before it was shipped from Argentina to Cape Canaveral earlier this year. Credit: CONAE
SAOCOM 1B was previously scheduled for launch in March, but Argentine officials called off the mission due to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. Engineers placed SAOCOM 1B in storage at Cape Canaveral until early July, when engineers returned to Florida from Argentina to finish readying the spacecraft for liftoff.
The launch of SAOCOM 1B was again delayed from late July because the range was not available for the launch, according to SAOCOM 1B team members. Sources said the delay was caused by range safety and overflight concerns with the classified payload mounted on top of United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4-Heavy rocket at a neighboring launch pad.
The southerly trajectory required for the SAOCOM 1B mission took the Falcon 9 rocket on a track closer to the Delta 4 pad than for a typical launch toward the east.
The overflight range safety concerns associated with the Delta 4’s NRO payload appeared to suddenly evaporate without explanation Saturday, when range safety officials agreed to permit the SAOCOM 1B launch to go ahead.
