Artist’s rendition of a satellite – 3dsculptor/123RF Stock Photo
We’re looking at all things SpaceX this week. Firstly, on the 31st January, SpaceX launched the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 (CSG-2) via its Falcon-9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch had been planned to take place a few days before, but three days of bad weather and then, somewhat bizarrely, a cruise ship sailed into the restricted area forcing another postponement.
CSG-2 is an Italian Earth Observation (EO) satellite and was placed into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 619 km. The instrument onboard is the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation Synthetic Aperture Radar (CSG SAR), which is an X-band SAR instrument with a spatial resolution ranging from 35 cm to 40 m depending on which mode it is operating. Similarly the swath width ranges from just over 20 m to 200 km.
The consortium managing the satellite is led by the Italian Space Agency and has a strong Italian space industry focus with Leonardo, Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio all contributing to the mission. It is the second satellite of this type with CSG-1 launched on 18th December 2019, and these both follow on from the original four COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) satellites which were launched between June 2007 and November 2010 and are still collecting data.
The main applications of the high-resolution radar images will include land cover, vegetation monitoring, land topography, glacier topography and motion, soil type & soil moisture, although the data will be used for other purposes. Whilst data will be collected for the whole planet, particular focus will be on the Mediterranean region.
The second SpaceX launch of the week is due to take place a couple of days after CSG-2, with another 49 Starlink satellites launched from Cape Canaveral.
The third piece of SpaceX news this week is not about launches, but more about crashes! It was reported that a SpaceX rocket is likely to crash into the moon at the start of March. The booster rocket was part of the launch of NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory, but the rocket got caught between the gravitational system of the Earth and the moon. It has been on a turbulent orbit since then, and is predicted to hit the far side of the moon at a speed of around 2.5 km per second. Being on the far side of the moon, it is unlikely to be visible from Earth. However, satellites currently orbiting the moon such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and India’s Chandrayaan-2 will be able to collect data on the impact, and any material that is sent up into the atmosphere.
In an interesting coincidence, the film Moonfall is released this week. It is about a mysterious force that knocks the moon from its orbit, and sends it on a collision course with Earth. Thankfully, astronomers believe the SpaceX collision, despite the rocket weighing approximately four tonnes, will have minimal impact on the moon, and more importantly no impact on its orbit!
Once again, the space industry finds itself making the news in the science, technology and entertainment worlds!
