A few hours ago, the LINK spacecraft was launched using not a rocket that blasted off from the ground, but a small Pegasus XL rocket launched from an L-1011 Stargazer aircraft that took off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The goal is to raise the orbit of NASA’s Swift Space Observatory to prevent it from falling into Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrating.
A little while ago, SpaceX’s Starfall Demo mission began with the launch of a capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral. The mission has a classified profile, meaning the launch broadcast ended after the first stage landed. Subsequently, the capsule successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and embarked on its course, which should take it into low Earth orbit for a period that wasn’t revealed and then splash down in the Pacific Ocean. This mission aims to demonstrate the feasibility of returning cargo weighing up to 1,000 kilograms produced in orbit to Earth, or even transporting payloads very quickly to other continents.
A confirmation has arrived that three Chinese taikonauts from the Shenzhou 23 mission reached the Chinese space station Tiangong with an automated docking maneuver. They blasted off about 3.5 hours earlier atop a Long March-2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Two of them will remain there for about six months, the standard duration for a mission, while the third taikonaut will conduct a one-year mission.
The three taikonauts, as the Chinese call their astronauts, on the Shenzhou 23 mission are Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying. The identities of the crew members are revealed only at the last minute, but Chinese authorities have recently started releasing more information than they did a few years ago.
It was the afternoon in the USA when SpaceX conducted a new flight test of its Super Heavy rocket and Starship prototypes, launched from its base in Boca Chica, Texas. This is the 12th test involving the entire system of Elon Musk’s company, which is supposed to revolutionize space travel with an unprecedented transport capacity and being totally reusable. They are advanced prototypes with the Super Heavy identified as Booster 19 and the Starship identified as Starship 39 or Ship39 or simply S39. It was the first test of the vehicles in their Block 3 version.
A few hours ago, the Smile satellite was launched from the Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana atop a Vega-C rocket. After about 56 minutes, the Smile satellite separated from the rocket’s last stage and began maneuvers that are scheduled to last approximately 25 days. Eleven burns of the spacecraft’s engines will lengthen its orbit, initially circular at an altitude of approximately 700 kilometers, to approximately 121,000 kilometers above the North Pole and approximately 5,000 kilometers above the South Pole.
