Delta II launches one last time and Japan brings a space elevator to the ISS.
Okay, that one is maybe a little clickbaity but it's real.
It's just that it's, well, tiny.
It's still important and I tell you why now on kNews.
Hey guys Lukas here, welcome to kNews for week 37/2018 and as always a big shout out
to my kNews boosters on Patreon.
If you like what I do you can help me over at funding.kNews.space.
Thanks for your thrust!
This week began with a delayed Falcon 9 launch which I covered in the last episode already
but I'll link you the replay in case you missed it.
Japan's H-IIB is next on September 13th from Tanegashima.
Wait, it got delayed and a new date is not set yet.
Sure is it will head to the ISS so it will follow the ISS orbit which is inclined at
51.6° degrees.
Up top is Japan's cargo spaceship Kounotori or HTV which will re-supply the ISS with just
over 6 metric tons of cool stuff.
There are for example fresh batteries, scientific hardware, cubesats and of course yummy food
for the astronauts.
What stands out to me the most though are two things.
One, it will carry a small capsule which will demonstrate a reentry and parachute landing
so that HTV will be also able to bring cargo back to earth safely similar to SpaceX Dragon
in the future.
And two, among those cubesats is one that will test a tiny space elevator called the
Space Tethered Autonomous Robotic Satellite or STARS for short.
The experiment involves two cubesats that will stretch out a string between them, along
which a small climber will drive from one side to the other.
The most popular of space elevators is of course the one connecting earth to space but
there are also many other uses in space only.
You could for example connect two sides of a spinning station or mount a satellite to
an asteroid using a harpoon.
The satellite could stay in contact with earth while a small climber would collect valuable
samples from the surface.
Tethers are incredibly useful and especially Japan uses them more and more often.
They for example also deployed a 700m long cable to deorbit their rocket's upper stage
using the earth's magnetic field.
They basically run a very weak current from the stage to a small counter weight that generates
a magnetic field along the cable.
Now because the counter weight is in another orbit than the stage itself the tether stays
stretched while it experiences a weak force that slows both vehicles down until they reenter.
That's an incredibly interesting solution I must say but I'm not 100% sure if they
use it on every rocket or if this was a so far one of a kind test on a previous mission.
Konichiwa my Japanese friends, feel free to share more information about that in the comments!
But next to launch on my list is India's PSLV on September 16th from the Satish Dhawan
Space Center.
A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle will as usual fly South towards a 580 km high sun synchronous
polar orbit.
Up top the 4 staged rocket are two primary satellites, one for the United Kingdom's
Space Agency and another for the company Surrey Satellite Technology.
SSTL-1 here on the left uses a telescope to make pictures of the ground and the on on
the right is NovaSAR-S. SAR stands for Synthetic Aperture Radar which is itself also short
for Radio Detection and Ranging.
Acroception right there.
I talked about this in a past video already, what such a synthetic aperture does is to
simulate a bigger antenna than it actually has, by recording the reflected radio wave
over a longer period of time.
This is particularly suited for satellites that orbit earth really closely and fast.
The advantage of a bigger antenna is a higher resolution ground.
You can think of it as a bigger telescope lens that can zoom in further only with radio
waves instead of light.
Small ground features simply have a smaller radio footprint and the bigger the antenna
the more sensitive it gets.
Next to the primary payload PSLV will also carry some secondary cubesats one called Centauri-1
for the Australia based company fleet space.
Their goal is to build a small cubesat fleet to enable cheap low bandwidth connectivity
of ground sensors distributed all around the globe.
So this is right for you if you don't need 24/7 connectivity but instead can wait a day
or so for the satellite to fly by your sensor's location again to then upload a couple bytes
worth of data to it.
The data will then get send back to a ground station once it passes over it.
And the final rocket launch I want to cover this week is of course the last Delta II launch
ever on September 15th by the United Launch Alliance from Vandenberg.
Target is a usual launching from the US west coast a polar orbit.
Up top is ICESat 2 which is of course an acronym.
It stands for Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite 2 and is going to map and track
the global elevation using a LIDAR or Light Detection and Ranging which is essentially
a RADAR using light instead of radio waves.
This is especially important to track the ice coverage on the south pole.
While the north pole swims and doesn't affect ocean levels when melting, the south pole
is supported by a giant continent the Antarctic.
As the ice melts it actually spreads out into the sea and actually looks bigger from up
top so it is incredibly important to also track the overall elevation.
A bigger white surface reflects more light back to space so there could be some kind
of self-regulating effect where melting ice would lead to cooler temperatures and more
ice again.
In order to really figure this all out we need more data and thus more satellites and
other experiments.
As mentioned in my clickbait title this was Delta II's final take off and I really hope
you were able to watch it.
If not I will as always link you the replay in the video description.
I have to end this particular episode a little sooner than because there are some news on
the SpaceX front and I will work on a quick video for Monday about that.
Stay tuned!
If you want to support me and my channel to become a self sustaining colony on YouTube
please consider contributing to my Patreon campaign.
Every dollar helps, thanks!
Okay, that shall conclude this video and I hope to see you in the next one if you like.
Auf Wiedersehen and thank you for watching!
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