India set to launch its first polarimetry mission this week - TWIRL #145

We don’t have many launches coming up This Week in Rocket Launches with it being the new year, however, there are a lot of videos to watch in the recap section. This week, India will be launching its first polarimetry mission to study X-ray sources.

Monday, 1 January

• Who: NewSpace India Limited (NSIL)
• What: PSLV DL
• When: 3:40 a.m. UTC
• Where: Dhawan Space Centre
• Why: NSIL will be launching the XPoSat satellite in this mission. The satellite is India’s first polarimetry mission that will study bright astronomical X-ray sources. The satellite will be carrying two scientific payloads called POLIX and XSPECT.

Wednesday, 3 January

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9 B5
• When: 2:13 a.m. UTC
• Where: Vandenberg AFB
• Why: SpaceX will be conducting a launch that should have taken place last week but got delayed. A Falcon 9 will be carrying Starlink’s first direct-to-cell satellites which means that the internet can be directly delivered to devices. The other 15 satellites will be standard Starlink satellites.

Recap

• The first launch last week was on Christmas Eve. SpaceX used a Falcon 9 to launch the SARah-2 and SARah-3 reflector satellites before landing the Falcon 9 first stage back on the pad.

• Next, private Chinese space firm ExPace launched a Kuaizhou 1A rocket carrying four Tianmu 1 meteorological satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The satellites were numbers 11 to 14. They will be used to provide commercial data services.

• On Christmas Day, the Chinese National Space Administration launched a Long March 11 rocket carrying three Shiyan-24C satellites from a sea-based platform. These satellites will be used for space science and technology experiments.

• On Boxing Day, a Long March 3B was launched carrying two backup BeiDou-3 navigation satellites. These backup satellites will operate in a medium Earth orbit and are the second and third satellites to act as backups for the BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System (BDS-3).

• Following this, ExPace launched another Kuaizhou 1A carrying four more Tianmu 1 satellites, these were number 19 to 22.

• Probably the most interesting launch of the week was a SpaceX Falcon Heavy carrying the Boeing X-37B spy plane for the US government. We don’t get that many Falcon Heavy launches so they’re nice to watch.

• Finally, SpaceX launched more Starlink internet satellites before landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket.

That’s all for this week, check back next time.