Falcon 9 B5 • Transporter-14

Falcon 9 B5 • Transporter-14

A SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket will launch several smallsats on the Transporter-14 rideshare mission to Sun-synchronous orbit. One of the main payloads will be the National Advanced Optical System (NAOS) reconnaissance satellite for the LUXEOSys Earth observation program of Luxembourg. Additionally aboard are the ION-SCV 18 (Passionate Paola) CubeSat carrier, which hosts the Early Test, INN3 and Rogue payloads, and the ION-SCV 19 CubeSat carrier by D-Orbit, plus the OSSIE OTV, carrying ERMINAZ 2U, ERMINAZ 2V, ERMINAZ 2X and USAT 1 CubeSats. Also on this flight are IRIDE-MS2-HEO 2–9 for Italy's IRIDE constellation. A first prototype was launched as IRIDE-MS2-HEO 1. Onboard is also Winnebago 4, which is an orbital factory with reentry capsule for Varda Space, and further satellites are ICEYE X54–X57, MuSat 3, Umbra 11, YAM 9 and Otter Pup 2 by Starfish Space. This Transporter mission will also carry The Exploration Company's Mission Possible reentry demonstrator. It is a sub scale test article with a diameter of 2.5m metres, while the full-size Nyx spacecraft will have a diameter of 4m. It will spend three hours in orbit before deorbiting with the Falcon second stage, splashing down off the coast of Hawaii. The capsule will have 300kg of cargo from space agencies and companies seeking to perform science experiments or technology demonstrations on the brief flight. CubeSats on this mission are ARCSTONE (ELaNa 56), DUTHSat 2, ForgeStar 1, FOSSASAT 2E21, GRUS 3α, HORIS 1–2, Hubble 4–7, Hyperfield 1B, MayaSat 1, MOBIUS I, PADRE (PolArization and Directivity X-Ray Experiment), PARUS-T2, Pulsar, QUICK³, RIDU-Sat 1, SATMAR, SkyBee 2, TIDES, Time Flies, TPA 1 and UND ROADS 1–2. The booster is designated B10XX.X for this mission and the second stage will fly with a shortened nozzle. - The 645kg NAOS (National Advanced Optical System) satellite was be built by OHB Italia and is equipped with a very high-resolution optical camera with a ground resolution of 50cm in around 450 km high, Sun-synchronous orbit. Operated by LUXEOPs it allows a global coverage and will have a operational life time of 7 years. NAOS is the space component of Luxembourg's governmental dual-use observation satellite system LUXEOSys (Luxembourg Earth Observation System). Its purpose is to provide high resolution images to national and international organisations such as NATO. Designed for governmental and military purposes, the high-resolution reconnaissance satellite will provide global coverage, being able to capture more than one hundred images per day. By collecting the satellite’s data, Luxembourg intends to participate more actively in the Europe and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense efforts. - YAM (Yet Another Mission) is a series of micro satellites owned by Loft Orbital, which host various payloads for different customers. YAM 9 will probably use the Longbow satellite bus from Airbus, which has a launch mass of 300–500kg. - W-Series (Winnebago) are a series of ~300kg spacecraft designed by Varda Space Industries, which will spend up to three months in orbit to test space manufacturing technologies. At the end of that mission, a reentry capsule will return to Earth the material produced in orbit. Varda contracted with Rocket Lab to provide Pioneer (formerly Photon) spacecrafts as the base for the vehicles which Varda will integrate with space factories to manufacture materials in microgravity. - ION-SVC (InOrbit NOW) CubeSat Carriers, developed by Italian company D-Orbit, are 150kg free flying orbital tugs and technology demonstrators, which will host experiments and CubeSats to be deployed once in orbit. - Finnish firm ICEYE continues to expand its constellation with Generation 3 compact SAR microsatellites, each with a mass of around 90kg. They are Gen3 sats for a constellation of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) equipped microsatellites. ICEYE provides near-real-time SAR imagery and the radar instrument can image through clouds, obscuring weather and darkness. - IRIDE is a space-based observation program initiated under the framework of Italy's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). IRIDE will be unique in its incorporation of a wide range of sensing techniques and technologies, including microwave imaging with Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR), optical imaging at high and medium resolutions, and coverage across panchromatic, multispectral, hyperspectral, and infrared bands. Once operational, IRIDE will include different types of satellites in the mass range of 25kg (IRIDE-MS1-EAGLET2) to 580kg (IRIDE-SAR-NOX), which will be used to track the impacts of climate change and provide data to support startups and SMEs in creating commercial applications. - The MuSat 3 satellite will host the VanZyl-2 payload for Hydrosat to produce daily, high-res, global thermal infra-red coverage. It will deliver four times the imaging capacity of its predecessor VanZyl-1, covering up to 8 million km²/day. Both VanZyl payload carrying spacecraft are equipped with thermal imagers and multispectral cameras, designed to meet many of the same requirements as NASA’s Landsat missions. Hydrosat positions its growing constellation as a commercial complement to Landsat Next. The 70kg satellite was built by Muon Space with the payloads provided by ABB and Simera Sense. - Umbra (Umbra-SAR) are a 65kg satellites and equipped with a X-band SAR (synthetic aperture radar) to capture snapshot imagery with a resolution of 25 centimeters over a 16 square km area. The mission is to test technologies and designs, validate performance, and progress into a fully operational architecture. To collect radar imagery Umbra has developed a proprietary antenna technology allowing for relatively low power operation to achieve high quality SAR images. -Otter Pup 2 is Starfish Space's second demonstration mission, which will establish key technologies for their planned Otter satellite servicing vehicle. Astro Digital manufactured the chassis for Otter Pup 2, which has a mass of 38kg and is about the size of a microwave, and Redwire provided the Argus camera hardware it will use for relative navigation. ThrustMe provided the electric propulsion thrusters. The mission will test the three core technologies: Nautilus, the electrostatic docking mechanism, Cephalopod, the guidance control software and Cetacean, the relative navigation software. Otter Pup is due to dock with an ION-SCV CubeSat carrier with its electrostatic-based capture mechanism Nautilus, before detaching and retreating to a safe distance to conduct other tests. - Delayed from Q4. 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