Rocket(s) launching live

[orbitingpluto]

There's a Ariane 5 launch coming up in a half-hour, but what it is carrying is two comsats, so it's seemingly not the type of thing to tip off anyone's radar- it's not like the Ariane 5 is new or untested, and what it's launching today isn't cool in and of itself.

Still, it's a rocket launch, and in my experience Arianespace puts on a good webcast, though I don't know if they have a low bandwidth version.

Webcast starts in just over 10 minutes at this address: http://www.arianespace.tv/

[Eternal_Freedom]

Thanks for the link, I love watching launches

[orbitingpluto]

Your welcome.

Also, just to keep from cluttering up the board, the reason there's an (s) in the thread title is because any live launch that isn't important enough to deserve it's own thread can go here.

The webcast has started, by the way. Less than two minutes to launch!

[Eternal_Freedom]

Clean launch, clean booster and fairing jettison. Looks good so far.

You know what, I'm adding "see a rocket launch in person" to my bucket list

EDIT: It's really quite awesome that a satellite launch to GEO is a relative non-event

[orbitingpluto]

While this Ariane 5 is still burning on it's upper-stage engine, I think I should point out that for the next launch, I'll try to get a post in at least the day before.

Around 20 minutes into the flight, the upper stage is traveling near enough to Libreville in Africa to be communicating with a tracking station there, and it's around 350km above the Earths surface and travel around 9 thousand kilometers a second.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Around 20 minutes into the flight, the upper stage is traveling near enough to Libreville in Africa to be communicating with a tracking station there, and it's around 350km above the Earths surface and travel around 9 thousand kilometers a second.

You mean 9 thousand metres per second

Anyways, second stage cutoff and the upper satellite has separated, secondary fairing has separated, lower satellite about to be released.

[Thanas]

Jeez they are really sticking it to the russians per proxy.

[orbitingpluto]

Around 20 minutes into the flight, the upper stage is traveling near enough to Libreville in Africa to be communicating with a tracking station there, and it's around 350km above the Earths surface and travel around 9 thousand kilometers a second.

You mean 9 thousand metres per second

I also forgot an apostrophe with 'Earth's' and I also used 'travel' where I meant 'traveling'.

And just now, the second satellite has been jettisoned. Another successful launch for the Ariane 5 and the launch team in Kourou.

[orbitingpluto]

Well, let's look at our near-term rocket forecast.

The next rocket to launch should be a Soyuz out of Russia's northern Cosmodrome, Plesetsk, on June 5th. Since Plesetsk is a military launch site, and it's launching a Persona military reconnaissance satellite, there might not be a webcast*. So if there's no webcast for that, the next launch you or I could watch live is an Arianspace Vega from Kourou, French Guiana on June 22nd, carrying a Earth-observing satellite for the ESA. There's two more rockets, a Indian PSLV and a SpaceX Falcon 9, set to launch on the 25th and 26th of June, though given things like unforeseen problems with hardware or just some bad weather, these dates(all of them) may be delayed.


I'm thinking an update two days before a launch would be a good plan, along with update on the day of launch as well.

Anyway, there's a video on Youtube of the Ariane 5 flight today, which goes almost to 5 minutes after launch- enough to see the fire, smoke and sounds of the rocket, til it got far enough from Kourou to be out of sight.

[Prannon]

Excellent idea for a thread! I like it.

[orbitingpluto]

Last time i posted, I forgot that the recent accident with the last Progress cargo mission to the ISS had put a hold on all Soyuz rocket flights. So, while I don't know if there is going to be any rocket launch June 5th(webcast or not), at least I can tell you the investigation is over.

The pages I linked have a detailed look at what is known about the accident, but a quick summery of the prevailing theory is the pyrotechnics blew in such a way as to cause the third stage's tanks to rupture, which caused a change in orbit and damage to the Progress M-27M. While it's claimed that this accident is specific to the configuration found on a Progress launch, and can't happen with other payloads, like a Persona reconnaissance satellite, it's doubtful there's going to be a launch on June 5th for us to watch.

The next possible launch, putting aside possible Soyuz launches, is a European Vega carrying a Earth observation sat for the ESA on June 23rd, from Kourou in French Guiana. I'll try to keep you guys informed with a post two days prior to launch, and launch day links to the webcast.

[Thanas]

Thank you for doing this.

[orbitingpluto]

This slipped under my radar, but I just found out there's a test of the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator(LDSD) today, and it will be broadcast live through NASA TV in about 20 minutes. The link is here, and I'm sorry finding out about this pretty late.

[orbitingpluto]

Since I have the the materials at hand(and some spare time), I'm going to post the stuff for the upcoming Vega launch now, rather than wait to launch day minus two days like I originally planned.

First off, an introduction to Vega. Lightweight by comparison to other common rockets, Vega was designed to lift payloads of around a ton and a half(metric) to polar and sun-synchronous orbits, intended to serve the ESA's need for a launcher for scientific and Earth resources satellites. Vega has four stages: a P80 solid motor for stage one, a Zefiro 23 solid motor for stage two, for stage three, a almost half-sized version of the stage two motor called the Zefiro 9, and at the top the is the AVUM, which has a hypergolic liquid propellent engine in addition to holding most of Vega's avionics. Vega, in part because it's payloads don't launch too often, has a flight rate of one to two a year. Arianespace has a neat video showing the stages coming together in this video(at youtube), intended to show a typical launch campaign.

The particular satellite for this launch campaign is Sentinel 2-A, a Earth resources satellite for the ESA. Launching into a sun-synchronous orbit, Sentinel 2-A will be working with the previously launched Sentinel 1-A to monitor a whole host of things about the Earth- from moisture in the soil to land temperature and more. The ESA has a video on Sentinel 2-A, which in addition to talking about the satellite, shows it both during launch prep and in computer renders.

Sentinel 2-A's flight is planned to be the fifth flight of Vega; see you on June 21st for updates as launch day gets closer and closer.

[orbitingpluto]

Since I have the the materials at hand(and some spare time), I'm going to post the stuff for the upcoming Vega launch now, rather than wait to launch day minus two days like I originally planned.

First off, an introduction to Vega. Lightweight by comparison to other common rockets, Vega was designed to lift payloads of around a ton and a half(metric) to polar and sun-synchronous orbits, intended to serve the ESA's need for a launcher for scientific and Earth resources satellites. Vega has four stages: a P80 solid motor for stage one, a Zefiro 23 solid motor for stage two, for stage three, a almost half-length version of the stage two motor called the Zefiro 9, and at the top the is the AVUM, which has a hypergolic liquid propellent engine in addition to holding most of Vega's avionics. Vega, in part because it's payloads don't launch too often, has a flight rate of one to two a year. Arianespace has a neat video showing the stages coming together in this video(at youtube), intended to show a typical launch campaign.

The particular satellite for this launch campaign is Sentinel 2-A, a Earth resources satellite for the ESA. Launching into a sun-synchronous orbit, Sentinel 2-A will be working with the previously launched Sentinel 1-A to monitor a whole host of things about the Earth- from moisture in the soil to land temperature and more. The ESA has a video on Sentinel 2-A, which in addition to talking about the satellite, shows it both during launch prep and in computer renders.

Sentinel 2-A's flight is planned to be the fifth flight of Vega; see you on June 21st for updates as launch day gets closer and closer.

[orbitingpluto]

In just over 23 hours, on June 22 or 23, depending on where in the world you are, there will be a launch of the Vega rocket, broadcast live on Arianespace.tv. Scroll a bit further back in the topic if you want a bit of info on the rocket and it's passenger, and here's the hope we'll see a neat show as Vega delivers Sentinel 2-A it's targeted orbit.

Next flight will be a SpaceX Dragon flying a cargo mission to the ISS, though the date has slipped two days since last mention here, it's now set to launch on the 28th; that may or may not be the last launch for June, I'm not sure. While June has been pretty slow in terms of rockets thundering off the pad, July has over seven rockets due to lift off, though I'm not quite sure about the webcast arrangements for all of them. At the very least five of them will be English language, though if people are cool with it I'll put up links to webcasts that are only in the launching countries language, like Chinese for example.

[orbitingpluto]

Forgot I had this, but here's this time-lapsed video of the Sentinel 2-A being put into it's fairing and them set up atop the Vega. Really wish I remembered it before the edit window ran out.

[orbitingpluto]

I almost forgot to keep an eye on the clock- the webcast has already started, it's less than 6 minutes to launch.

[orbitingpluto]

I got waylaid by a wasp, and had to discover how he bastard got into my house- while I helped fix a window, Vega flew through stages one through three and as of now the fourth stage still has the Sentinel 2-A attached, as(I'm guessing) the two coast upwards towards apogee.

[orbitingpluto]

With the separation of Sentinel 2-A confirmed and this launch over, I'm wondering what people think of this topic. Should I just leave links to the webcast and not bother writing a little bit about the rocket and it's passenger?

[Borgholio]

I downloaded the app to my ipad and watched it live. It was a flawless launch. I couldn't help but be amazed that it was going over 5 miles per second by the time it left the atmosphere...

[orbitingpluto]

It's about 2 days from the launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9, where in this mission the Falcon 9 will send a Dragon into LEO for a resupply mission to the ISS, and also make another attempt at landing it's first stage at sea. You can watch it via Livestream at SpaceX's website here, or at NASA TV's online stream. SpaceX's Twitter posts about the launch as it happens, so if you can't watch the either stream, there is that. The launch time is 10:21am EST. Here's an overview for the mission, highlighting a few experiments being ferried up this flight and how much all that junk in the trunk(and capsule) weighs.

Let's hope for a successful launch, and also hope that third time is the charm for landing a rocket on a barge.

[orbitingpluto]

Since there is just over three hours left til launch, I thought I remind everyone that everything is still moving towards liftoff. The barge "Of Course I Still Love You" is on station, and has been for about 14 hours; at least, it was at the landing point 14 hours ago when this picture was snapped from a drone helicopter. The landing won't be live, but SpaceX's Twitter account might tweet about it first, or retweet the news from Elon Musk. If you don't want to distract yourself from the webcast with Twitter though, keeping an eye on the folks in SpaceX's control center can clue you in to what might be going on with the first stage. I heard that the barge landing can take place sometime after eight minutes from launch, so unless the commentators talk about it, that's as good a time as any to look.

[orbitingpluto]

I composed a T -5 minute post, but never sent it.

It's already two minutes past liftoff.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Launch failure at T+2 minutes. Looks like it blew itself to pieces.