SpaceX crew prepares to go to space after delay - TWIRL #179

This Week in Rocket Launches (TWIRL) we have a fairly busy week but the most notable mission will be SpaceX's crewed Polaris Dawn mission. The crew will spend several days in space and perform a space walk.

Sunday, 1 September

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 07:38 - 11:10 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 rocket to launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft on the Polaris Dawn mission. The mission will try to fly at the highest Earth orbit ever of 1,400 km. After seven orbits, it'll drop to an altitude of 700 km and the astronauts will perform a spacewalk. The astronauts aboard are mission commander Jared Isaacman, Scott Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon. The spacewalk will last two hours and test SpaceX's Starlink laser-based communication. The mission will perform 35 experiments over five days before the crew returns to Earth.

Tuesday, 3 September

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 01:56 - 06:26 UTC
• Where: California, US
• Why: SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 rocket from California for the NROL-113 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. It will see the launch of a new NRO imaging satellites built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman. It will make up part of NRO's Proliferated Architecture, a constellation of intelligence satellites including imaging and relay satellites. This mission will see 21 satellites launched.

Wednesday, 4 September

• Who: Arianespace
• What: Vega
• When: 01:50 UTC
• Where: French Guyana
• Why: Arianespace will use a Vega rock to launch the Sentinel 2C Earth observation satellite into orbit. The Sentinel 2C will observe land and vegetation. Notably, this is the last time that the original Vega configuration is expected to fly.

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 12:59 - 16:59 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: A week in rocket launches wouldn't be complete without an obligatory Starlink mission. On Wednesday, we will see SpaceX launch 20 Starlink satellites dubbed Starlink Group 8-11. This batch will include 13 direct-to-cell satellites. After the rocket launch and first stage separation, the first stage should perform a landing.

Recap

• The first launch we got last week was a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink Group 8-6 to orbit. Following the launch of these 21 satellites, the first stage of the rocket attempted to land but failed.

• Next up, Chinese company Galactic Energy launched the third Ceres-1S rocket from a sea platform. It was carrying six satellites into a 535 km Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).

• Finally, Blue Origin launched its New Shepard carrying six passengers to the edge of space before landing them back safely on Earth. The passengers included Nicolina Elrick, Rob Ferl, Eugene Grin, Dr. Eiman Jahangir, Karsen Kitchen, and Ephraim Rabin.

That's all for this week, check back next time!