First image of the Earth and moon in a single frame by a spacecraft, acquired by NASA’s Voyager 1 on 18th September 1977. Image courtesy of NASA.
We’re looking at the three life events for different satellites this week, we have birth with the launch of a Chinese satellite, death with the loss of an American satellite, and an anniversary for the world’s most travelled satellite.
Chinese Satellite Launch
China launched its latest Earth Observation (EO) satellites on Sunday, when a trio of Yaogan-39 satellites were put into a 495 kilometre orbit onboard a Long March 2D rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
Like all the Yaogan satellites, there are limited details about their instruments. The Yaogan-39 satellites are thought to have optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments, and the data is available to the military.
American Satellite Loss
Rocket Lab had a launch failure on Tuesday this week, when there was an anomaly during the upper stage, with telemetry data showing the Electron rocket’s velocity decreasing resulting in the end of the mission. The rocket was carrying an Acadia SAR EO satellite for the United States firm Capella Space, and unfortunately the satellite was lost. This was Rocket Lab’s second mission with an Acadia satellite, following a successful launch on the 23rd August. Capella is hoping to create a 30 strong constellation of these 2nd generation satellites.
No further details are currently available on the cause of the failure, with Rocket Labs indicating an investigation is underway, and said that it was likely to delay its next mission. Rocket Lab’s share price fell about 8% following the failure announcement.
NASA Voyager 1 Photograph Anniversary
This week also see’s the forty-sixth anniversary of the NASA’s Voyager 1 capturing the first photo image of the Earth and the moon in a single frame by a spacecraft. The image was taken on the 18th September 1977, two weeks after the satellite’s launch, and was taken at a distance of 7.25 million miles. Despite this first, arguably, it was a test run for Voyager 1’s most famous picture was its final picture which was acquired 12 years later on the 13th February 1990. Carl Sagan had persuaded NASA to turn Voyager’s cameras around one last time, at a distance of approximately 6 billion kilometers, and it took a picture of all the planets in the solar system, with the Earth appearing as a tiny dot, causing the image to be referred to as the Pale Blue Dot.
Ten years ago, on 12th September 2013, Voyager 1 became the first man-made spacecraft ever to leave the solar system. It is still going today and is estimated to be almost 15 billion miles from Earth, travelling at a speed of over 38,000 miles an hour. It is currently in an area known as interstellar space, this is often known as the space between the stars, or more accurately, the region between our Sun’s heliosphere and the astrospheres of other stars. NASA has a tracker of Voyager 1’s progress over on the mission website.
Summary
Space is an amazing industry; with its unique challenges and its losses. It has the potential to amaze, particularly, to borrow the iconic Star Trek phrase, to boldly go where no satellite has gone before!
