It's been a while since we've had a launch from ISRO!

Mission info

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-08-16, 03:47 | |

|

| | Scheduled for (local) | 2024-08-16, 09:17 (IST) | | Launch site | First Launch Pad, Satish Dhawan Space Centre, India | | Launch Vehicle | SSLV | | Payloads | EOS-08 and Space Rickshaw-0 | | Payload mass | 175.0 kg | | Mission success criteria | Successful delivery of payloads to LEO |

Webcasts

| Stream | Link | |

|

| | ISRO | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRmxoAb6vlo | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o12UhwZY4gQ | Spaceflight Now | | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfmC4Z9Ms9U | The Space Devs |

Stats

Sourced from NextSpaceflight:

☑️ 1st SSLV mission this year, 3rd overall

☑️ 3rd ISRO mission this year, 94th overall

Mission details

• ISRO mission page
• NextSpaceflight mission page

Earth observation micro-satellite for ISRO designed to test new technologies for building an Earth observation satellite in a micro-satellite bus. The satellite hoists an Electro-Optical Infrared Payload (EOIR) for Earth observation, a Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry payload (GNSS-R) for weather studies, and an UV Dosimeter to measure UV radiation in low Earth orbit.

Other payload includes the cubesat Space Rickshaw-0.

Unfortunately it does not seem to work with piped.video…

Another three months, another Progress resupply to the International Space Station.

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-08-15, 03:20 | |

|

| | Scheduled for (local) | 2024-08-15, 08:20 (ALMT) | | Docking scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-08-17, 05:56 | | Mission | Progress MS-28 | | Launch site | Site 31/6, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan | | Launch vehicle | Soyuz 2.1a | | Spacecraft | Progress | | Mission success criteria | Successful launch and docking to the ISS |

Livestreams

| Stream | Link | |

|

| | Roscosmos | (launch) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4vduv4qMpc | | Roscosmos | (docking) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4vduv4qMpc | | NASA TV | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg | | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKvHTVQIhHo | | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6WxYuRuUxw |

Mission Details

• NASA
• NextSpaceflight

This community just turned 1 year old!

Thank you to everyone who has posted, commented, and voted in this community! The community would not exist without you! We’ve grown from zero to over 800 monthly active users!

Just wanted to shoutout two users in particular:

• MVP (most valuable poster): @llamacoffee@lemmy.world
• MVC (most valuable commenter): @burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Thank you both for your contributions, and thanks to everyone who has contributed over the past year!

I thought that this would also be a good opportunity to review the current state of things and suggest changes going forward.

• What would people like to see from this community in the coming year?
• Anything the mod team could be doing better?
• Any other suggestions?

I would be interested in adding a couple more moderators, at the very least as backup to improve the bus factor.

Thank you all for participating in this community, and I can’t wait to see what the next year brings! New Glenn, Dream Chaser... maybe Neutron?

A Youtuber called Ellie in Space claims that a NASA source sent her the following message. It was in response to a question about when NASA knew that the Boe-CFT mission's Starliner vehicle would not be able to undock and return to Earth autonomously without being reconfigured.

So if you want to know when??? Well always, but it wasn't a reasonable consideration to retain the unmanned Starliner capsule software to work in the manned version of the capsule as a contingency. Would you call that a mistake?? Maybe, but let's think about the need to really ever plan to send folks up to space and leave them there with no way to fly home... they would always chose to risk the ride vs having no way home.

No one really considered this very unique and dynamic situation would happen.

Background

I believe this issue was first brought to light by Eric Berger.

Regardless, sources described the process to update the software on Starliner as "non-trivial" and "significant," and that it could take up to four weeks. This is what is driving the delay to launch Crew 9 later next month.

A couple of days later, NASA held a press teleconference in which they emphasized that what was needed was merely a "data load", not a software change. But they indicated timelines that do seem consistent with the "up to four weeks" claim by Berger's source.

My questions

Aren't there several realistic scenarios where you'd want to undock a crew vehicle, without its crew (or at least without them being in a fit state to operate the vehicle), in less than 4 weeeks?

Can Crew Dragon do it? Soyuz?

The upper stage from a Chinese rocket that launched a batch of Internet satellites Tuesday has broken apart in space, creating a debris field of at least 700 objects in one of the most heavily-trafficked zones in low-Earth orbit. US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit with a network of radars and optical sensors, confirmed the rocket breakup Thursday. Space Command initially said the event created more than 300 pieces of trackable debris. The military's ground-based radars are capable of tracking objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches). Later Thursday, LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket. The number of debris fragments could rise to more than 900, LeoLabs said. The culprit is the second stage of China's Long March 6A rocket, which lifted off Tuesday with the first batch of 18 satellites for a planned Chinese megaconstellation that could eventually number thousands of spacecraft. The Long March 6A's second stage apparently disintegrated after placing its payload of 18 satellites into a polar orbit.

Space Command said in a statement it has "observed no immediate threats" and "continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain." According to LeoLabs, radar data indicated the rocket broke apart at an altitude of 503 miles (810 kilometers) at approximately 4:10 pm EDT (20:10 UTC) on Tuesday, around 13-and-a-half hours after it lifted off from northern China. At this altitude, it will take decades or centuries for the wispy effect of aerodynamic drag to pull the debris back into the atmosphere. As the objects drift lower, their orbits will cross paths with SpaceX's Starlink Internet satellites, the International Space Station and other crew spacecraft, and thousands more pieces of orbital debris, putting commercial and government satellites at risk of collision.