EU-China Einstein Probe set for launch - TWIRL #146

We have a busy This Week in Rocket Launches, one of the notable events will be that of a Long March 2C rocket carrying the Einstein Probe. One of the things that the European Space Agency (ESA) is notable for is its diplomacy and this mission highlights just that.

The Einstein Probe is a wide-field X-ray space observatory named after Albert Einstein. It was developed jointly between the ESA, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Sunday, 7 January

• Who: SpaceX

• What: Falcon 9 B5
• When: 9:00 p.m. - 1:31 a.m. UTC
• Where: Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will be launching 23 Starlink satellites into a low Earth orbit. This batch of satellites is called Starlink Group 6-35, it does not include any direct-to-cell Starlink satellites that were recently launched.

Monday, 8 January

• Who: SpaceX

• What: Falcon 9 B5
• When: 5:00 a.m. - 9:25 a.m. UTC
• Where: Vandenberg AFB, California, US
• Why: SpaceX will use this launch to send up 21 Starlink satellites to a low Earth orbit. This group of satellites is known as Starlink Group 7-10 and you’ll be able to use this identifier on websites and apps that let you track satellites.

• Who: United Launch Alliance
• What: Vulcan VC2S
• When: 7:18 - 8:03 a.m. UTC
• Where: Cape Canaveral, Florida, US
• Why: This mission will be carrying the Peregrine Mission One (PM1), a lunar lander made by Astrobotic for NASA’s CLPS program. The PM1 mission will carry 2 payloads for various entities such as NASA, Carnegie Mellon University, Spacebit, the Mexican Space Agency, and more. NASA’s nine payloads will include experiments with regolith, solar power, radiation, and magnetic fields.

Tuesday, 9 January

• Who: Orienspace

• What: Gravity YL-1
• When: 4:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Yellow Sea
• Why: This mission will launch three Jilin satellites for the Jilin 1 constellation. It will take off from a ship in the Yellow Sea. The satellites being launched include Langfang Kongjina 1, Taian, and Jilin Gaofen 05.

• Who: Chinese Academy of Sciences
• What: Long March 2C
• When: 7:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Xichang Satellite Launch Centre
• Why: This rocket will launch the Einstein Probe, a wide-field X-ray space observatory named after Albert Einstein. The probe is a joint effort by the ESA, MPE, and CAS. Using its wide-field X-ray telescope, the probe will be able to view X-ray events and provide more details about black holes, magnetars, active galactic nuclei, red shifted gamma-ray bursts, and interactions between comets and solar wind ions.

Wednesday, 10 January

• Who: Chinese Academy of Sciences

• What: Space Kinetica 1
• When: 2:00 - 8:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre
• Why: In this mission, five MinoSpace satellites will be launched into orbit. Not too much else is known about the purpose of these satellites.

Thursday, 11 January

• Who: Japanese Ministry of Defense

• What: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA
• When: 4:00 - 6:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Yoshinobu Launch Complex LP-1
• Why: This mission will launch the IGS-Optical 8 reconnaissance satellite for the Japanese Ministry of Defense. The Information Gathering Satellite is a third generation Japanese optical reconnaissance satellite. While not many details are public, it’s believed the satellite can snap high-res images up to 40 centimetres.

Recap

• The first launch we got last week was a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Indian space agency ISRO. It was carrying the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite. The XPoSat is ISRO’s first dedicated scientific satellite to study space-based polarisation measures of X-ray emissions for celestial sources.

• Next, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying Starlink satellites to a low-Earth orbit where they will provide internet connectivity.

• SpaceX was also responsible for the following launch where a Falcon 9 orbited the Ozvon 3 satellite to a geosynchronous transfer orbit. The first stage of the Falcon 9 also landed at Cape Canaveral ready ro reuse.

• Finally, a Kuaizhou 1A rocket was launched carrying Tianmu 1 meteorological satellites from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. These were satellites 15, 16, 17, and 18. They will be used to provide commercial weather data.

That’s it for this week, check in next time!