Welcome to Rocket Report Release 6.46! It looks like next week we’ll be covering the crew test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket. All of this is happening while SpaceX maintains its rhythm of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are Ars’ copy editors, who help make sure our stories don’t use the wrong names.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not display on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small, medium and heavy rockets, as well as a quick look at the next three launches on the calendar.
Another failed shot by North Korea. North Korea’s latest attempt to launch a missile carrying a military intelligence satellite ended in failure due to the rocket’s mid-air explosion during the first stage of the flight this week, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. Video captured by Japan’s NHK news organization appears to show the North Korean missile disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country’s northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the failed launch and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite called Malligyong-1-1.
Russia’s role? … Experts initially thought the upcoming North Korean launch, which was known in advance by warning messages over international airspace, would use the same Chŏllima 1 rocket used in three flights last year. But North Korea’s statements after Monday’s launch indicated the missile used a new propulsion system burning a petroleum-based fuel, possibly kerosene, with liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. The Chŏllima 1 rocket design used a toxic mixture of hypergolic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide as propellant. If North Korea’s statement is true, it would be a remarkable leap in the country’s missile technology and raises the question of whether Russia played a significant role in the launch. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged more Russian support for North Korea’s missile program in a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (submitted by Ken the Bin and Jay500001)
Rocket Lab houses a small NASA climate satellite. Rocket Lab is in the midst of back-to-back launches for NASA, carrying identical climate research satellites into different orbits to study heat loss to space in Earth’s polar regions. The polar radiation energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) satellites is about the size of a shoebox, and NASA says data from PREFIRE will improve computer models that researchers use to predict how Earth’s ice, seas and weather will change. change through a warming world. “The difference between the amount of heat Earth absorbs in the tropics and that radiated from the Arctic and Antarctic is a key influence on the planet’s temperature, helping to drive dynamic climate and weather systems,” NASA said in a statement.
Two times in the week… NASA chose Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle to deliver the two PREFIRE satellites into orbit on two dedicated trips, rather than launching on a lower-cost rideshare mission. That’s because scientists want the satellites flying in the right alignment to ensure they fly over the poles a few hours apart, providing the data needed to measure how the rate at which heat is radiated from the polar regions changes in time. The first launch of PREFIRE took place on May 25, and the next is scheduled for May 31. Both launches will take off from Rocket Lab’s base in New Zealand. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
A missile launch comes to Rizhao. Over the past decade, China has diversified its launch sector to include new families of small satellite launch vehicles and new spaceports. One of those relatively new small rockets, the solid-fuel Ceres 1, lifted off Wednesday from a floating launch pad located about 2 miles (3 km) off the coast of Rizhao, a city of roughly 3 million people in China’s Shandong province. The Ceres 1 rocket, developed by a quasi-commercial company called Galactic Energy, has previously flown from land-based launch pads and a sea platform, but this mission originated from a location extremely close to shore, with the skyline of a major metropolitan area as a backdrop.
Range safety … There is no obvious reason from orbital mechanics to position the floating missile launch pad so close to a major Chinese city, except perhaps to gain a logistical advantage by launching near the port. The Ceres 1 rocket has a pretty good reliability record – 11 successes in 12 flights – but for safety reasons, there is no Western spaceport that would allow members of the public (let alone several million) to get so close to a rocket launch. For decades, Chinese rockets have routinely dumped rocket boosters containing toxic fuel onto farms and villages downwind from the country’s domestic spaceports.