A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch the Korea 425 mission from the SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Image: SpaceX
SpaceX kicked off December with a Falcon 9 rideshare mission with a payload of 25 spacecraft on board. The launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base was led by the Korea 425 mission.
The rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at 10:19 a.m. PST (1:19 a.m. EST, 1819 UTC). The launch is expected to be the first of two missions that SpaceX plans to launch this weekend. The company plans to launch another batch of 23 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the early hours of Saturday.
The mission booster, B1061, completed its 17th flight, having previously launched the Crew-1 and Crew-2 missions, as well as the fourth and fifth transporter rideshare missions. This launch also marked the first time a Falcon 9 first stage will support a non-Starlink mission with more than 15 previous flights.
After liftoff, the booster landed back in VSFB’s Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4) approximately eight and a half minutes after liftoff.
Heading the list of 25 spacecraft aboard Friday morning’s launch was a satellite from South Korea’s Defense Development Agency (ADD) and its Project 425. It has electro-optical (EO) and infrared (IR) sensors with a resolution of 30 cm .
A spokesman for the agency told the press earlier this month that this would be the country’s first military spy satellite and four more satellites would be launched by 2025.
These additional four SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellites are being developed by Thales Alenia Space in collaboration with Aerospace Industries, LTD. and Hanwha Systems Corporation.
“Thales Alenia Space is honored to have earned the trust of the Korean Ministry of Defense and other agencies involved in this project, who recognized our proven track record in delivering state-of-the-art observation satellites,” said Donato Amoroso, Senior Vice-President, Observation, Exploration and Navigation at Thales Alenia Space, in a 2018 statement.
According to DefenseNews, the contract for the satellites is worth $930 million.
An illustration of one of four synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites being developed by Thales Alenia Space, Aerospace Industries and Hanwha Systems Corporation for the South Korean Defense Development Agency. Graphics: Thales Alenia Space
According to a 2022 report by The JoongAng, the satellite launching on Friday will be launched into an orbit between 600 and 700 km above the Earth’s surface along with the four SAR satellites and is expected to monitor North Korea every two hours.
The mission’s launch follows North Korea’s claims that it successfully launched its own spy satellite on November 21, an action that was condemned by several nations, including the United States. U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said the launch using ballistic missile technology was “a brazen violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions,” adding that it “risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond consists”.
On the journey
In addition to the EO/IR satellite for South Korea, SpaceX says there are 25 other spacecraft riding on the Falcon 9 rocket.
Although there is no complete list, the following payloads are mentioned:
- ISL48 by Space BDs
- SITAEL’s uHETSat
- D-Orbits ION SCV Daring Diego
- The Curse of York Space Systems
- PlanetiQ’s GNOMES-4
SITAEL SpA’s uHETSat is a MicroSat mission supported by the European Space Agency (ESA). It features an electric propulsion system known as a Hall effect thruster and is powered by xenon fuel.
ESA said in a statement that the satellite will launch in an orbit at 550 km altitude and “the goal is to achieve at least 1,000 burn cycles and a single burn lasting more than 600 seconds.”
An innovative compact electric drive system from @SITAELspa was cleared to fly @ESA-supported microsatellite mission to demonstrate µHETSat technology, scheduled to launch by the end of the year https://t.co/rNVFq4nj2G pic.twitter.com/oT8NTTs5qj
— ESA Technology (@ESA_Tech) June 27, 2023
According to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filing dated November 9, 2023, the Satellite Programs and Policy Division granted PlanetiQ permission to deploy its GNOMES-4 satellite at 505 and 545 km altitudes with an inclination between 97 and 98 degrees.
GNOMES-4 is permitted to operate at altitudes from about 525 kilometers down to about 430 kilometers and at an inclination of 97.6 degrees (+/- 0.5 degrees) in a sun-synchronous orbit, allowing for a natural decay of the Orbit makes possible.”
An ESA report on previous GNOMES constellation satellites describes them as “the first commercial constellation of Global Navigation Satellite System-Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) weather satellites.” It is noted that 20 such satellites are planned for the constellation.
GNOMES stands for GNSS Navigation and Occultation Measurement Satellites. The first of these came onto the market in August 2020 and are manufactured by Blue Canyon Technologies in Boulder, Colorado.
Geometry of a typical GNSS-RO event and resulting data products derived from the technique. Graphics: PlanetiQ
Other payloads flying as part of the mission include KOYOH, a MicroSat from Kanazawa University in Japan; Ireland’s first satellite, a 2U CubeSat called EIRSAT-1 (Educational Irish Research Satellite), built by students and faculty at University College Dublin; and a CubeSat for the company Privateer Space called “Pono,” which was described before launch as “an edge computing, storage, machine learning and data transfer module available to satellite operators as a hosted payload.”
Pono was one of the spacecraft stationed on the D-orbit ION satellite launch vehicle named “Daring Diego,” the 13th mission for D-orbit.
A representation of the mission patch for this launch. Graphics: SpaceX