SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission set to break records with crewed launch - TWIRL #180

The TWIRL logo in front of Dragon interior

This Week in Rocket Launches (TWIRL) we have a pretty interesting week coming up with not one, but two crewed missions. The first will be SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission which keeps being delayed and is now scheduled for Monday. The second one will be done by Roscosmos where two cosmonauts and one astronaut will blast off to the International Space Station (ISS).

Monday, 9 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.

Wednesday, 11 September

Who: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
What: H-IIA 202
When: 04:00 - 06:00 UTC
Where: Tanegashima, Japan
Why: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will launch an H-IIA rocket carrying the IGS-Radar 8 recon satellite for the Japanese Ministry of Defense. The satellite will be operated by the Cabinet Satellite Information Center and serve the country's national defense and perform civil natural disaster monitoring.

Who: Roscosmos
What: Soyuz 2.1a
When: 16:22 UTC
Where: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
Why: Roscosmos will launch a crewed Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station with cosmonauts Alexei Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner, and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit aboard. The capsule will remain at the station for about six months and act as an escape pod if needed.

Thursday, 12 September

Who: SpaceX
What: Falcon 9
When: 08:52 UTC
Where: Florida, US
Why: SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 carrying the first set of BlueBird Block 1 satellites for AST SpaceMobile. These satellites are capable of providing direct-to-cell satellite broadband service meaning they can connect directly to smartphones on Earth.

Friday, 13 September

Who: Galactic Energy
What: Ceres 1
When: 04:30 UTC
Where: Jiuquan, China
Why: Galactic Energy's mission will be called "On Your Shoulders" but the payload is not known.

Recap

The first launch we got last week was a Long March 4B carrying the second group of Yaogan 43 satellites. The satellites will be used for testing new technology.

On 5 September, we got the final launch of the Vega rocket. It carried the Copernicus Sentinel 2C Earth observation satellite to a Sun-synchronous orbit from French Guiana. Vega has been superseded by the Vega C rocket.

Next was a Falcon 9 launch from SpaceX carrying more Starlink satellites into space. These will join the Starlink constellation and provide internet service to customers on Earth.

On Thursday, China launched a Long March 6 rocket carrying 10 Geely 03 satellites. They will provide satellite communication services for global users and 24-hour coverage across 90% of the planet.

Finally, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 on the NROL-113 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office. It launched new imaging satellites that will make up the NRO's Proliferated Architecture, a constellation of intelligence satellites. There were 21 satellites expected to be launched on this mission. The first stag of the rocket also performed a landing.