The SpaceX Falcon 9 has launched. All conditions are good. Second stage engine has fired. The rocket fairing has deployed. It looks like another good launch.
First stage has successfully landed.
Stage 2 is in good orbit.
They will need to relight the second stage for deployment of the various satellites.
The SpaceX Webcast has started. Less than 9 5 launched.
If there is a successful launch today it will take the small and weak rocket engine almost two months to get the Israeli lander to the moon. It will have to circle out in larger orbits to get captured by the moon’s gravity. Lunar landing would be April 11, 2019.
SpaceX is targeting Thursday, February 21 for launch of the Nusantara Satu satellite from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The 32-minute launch window opens at 8:45 p.m. EST, or 1:45 UTC on February 22. Falcon 9 will also deliver the Beresheet lunar spacecraft and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) S5 spacecraft to orbit. Deployments will occur at approximately 33 and 44 minutes after liftoff.
SSL will provide broadband connectivity for Indonesia with the Nusantara Satu satellite.
A 32-minute backup launch window opens on Friday, February 22 at 8:41 p.m. EST, or 1:41 UTC on February 23.
Falcon 9’s first stage for the Nusantara Satu mission previously supported the Iridium-7 mission in July 2018 and the SAOCOM 1A mission in October 2018. Following stage separation, SpaceX will attempt to land Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
T-30 minutes until Falcon 9 launch of Nusantara Satu. Launch webcast will go live about 15 minutes before liftoff → https://t.co/gtC39uBC7z
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 22, 2019
The SSL built Nusantara Satu satellite was encapsulated in Falcon 9’s fairing last week and is go for launch pic.twitter.com/m3YevKkg01
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 22, 2019
SOURCES – SpaceIL, SpaceX, Twitter
Written By Brian Wang.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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>> The only significance Muslims attack to the Moon…
Freudian slip?
(This article being about a lunar lander that is going to orbit the Earth to save energy on its way to the moon, there is probably a nice pun that could be made about your ‘parapraxis’ and ‘periapsis’ ‘apoapsis’.
But I just flew to Europe and had such a long day, it just doesn’t pop up.)
The desert moon goddess is sacred and not to be trodden upon. This is blasphemy.
Israel is the only space capable country that launch its satellites towards the west rather than east due to the fact that every country to the east used to be an enemy state (most of them still are)
That’s why Israel is the queen of miniaturization, it’s also why when it comes to civilian launches commercial available launchers are preferable due to differences in energy costs to orbit.
The Muslims only care about territory on Earth – that’s the only land they consider holy. The only significance Muslims attack to the Moon is that they have to watch for its position in the sky to know how to pray.
Mel Brooks covered this long ago https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31r1xm
They developed everything except the rocket to deliver it to orbit. So it’s still impressive if it succeeds in inserting itself in the correct moon orbit, landing, and performing a hop. But I agree it’s not comparable to what USA, Russia and China have achieved.
The beauty of division of work and friendly commercial relationships.
With SpaceX and other recent advances in space, no one in good terms with the USA will need to develop rocket launchers from scratch, focusing in what they actually want to accomplish.
This will allow a big part of the world to be on the Moon (and Mars) shortly after the road there is open.
The amount of new technology coming out of Israel is impressive enough given their population. They don’t need to dominate every field.
Nice.
We should expect more commercial traffic to the Moon in the short term (a couple of years). Commercial landers taking experiments and cargo there, as a prelude of the big landers that could take people.
The market so far has been unresponsive to the existence of Falcon Heavy and its interplanetary potential. But I feel that will be over soon.
The Israeli lunar lander was developed as an X-Prize contestant in a competition which exceeded the mandated date. The contest requirements specified a demonstrated capability to reposition by flight to a secondary landing site after achieving the primary. It’s a prototype hopper for conducting lunar survey operations.
It’s not like Israel developed the technology to get there either though, is it… They just paid someone else to do it for them.
Sounds funny, Jews on the moon.
Bet Arabs will be grumbling about this.
Iran, Hezbollah and Gaza have plenty of rockets, in the hundreds
of thousands of them. It’s a pity they didn’t set their mind to doing
something like this – and embracing industry, science, exploration
and co-operation instead of using rockets to kill.