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Rocket Lab Photon
Photon is a satellite bus based on Rocket Lab's kick stage. Development In April 2019, Rocket Lab announced plans to create a new satellite bus, named Photon, to launch small payloads into Earth orbit. Its goal was to reduce the complexity and development time for customers, enabling technology demonstrations without the complexity of developing a full spacecraft. At the same time the company was aiming to broaden its portfolio and diversify its revenue streams. In October 2019, it announced that it aimed to launch its first mission as soon as the fourth quarter of 2020. The company also announced it was targeting lunar orbit as part of its services offered with Photon, enabled by a new bi-propellant propulsion system. The development of Photon included working with a number of potential customers, with significant interest from government agencies. The first few Photon satellites would be technology demonstrators before transitioning to operational launches for customers, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab is a public American aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider, with a New Zealand subsidiary. The company operates lightweight Electron orbital rockets, which provide dedicated launches for small satellites. Rocket Lab also plans to build a larger Neutron rocket as early as 2024. Electron rockets have launched 26 times from either Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand or the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in the United States. Two attempts have been made at recovery of the Electron booster. As of 2022, Rocket Lab is developing the bigger Neutron reusable unibody rocket; Photon satellite buses; and Rutherford, Curie , HyperCurie, and Archimedes rocket engines. The company was founded in New Zealand in 2006. By 2009, the successful launch of Ātea-1 made Rocket Lab the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space. The company then established a headquarter in California in 2013 and developed the expendable Electron rocket. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sun-synchronous Orbit
A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is an orbit arranged so that it Precession, precesses through one complete revolution each year, so it always maintains the same relationship with the Sun. Applications A Sun-synchronous orbit is useful for imaging satellite, imaging, reconnaissance satellite, reconnaissance, and weather satellites, because every time that the satellite is overhead, the surface illumination angle on the planet underneath it is nearly the same. This consistent lighting is a useful characteristic for satellites that image the Earth's surface in visible or infrared wavelengths, such as weather and spy satellites, and for other remote-sensing satellites, such as those carrying ocean and atmospheric remote-sensing instruments that require sunlight. For example, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Near-rectilinear Halo Orbit
A near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) is a halo orbit with slightly curved – or nearly straight – sides between close passes with an orbiting body. The 2022 CAPSTONE mission is the first such orbit in cislunar space, and this Moon-centric orbit will serve as a staging area for future lunar missions. The orbit could be used with other bodies in the Solar System and beyond. A halo orbit is a periodic, three-dimensional orbit associated with one of the L1, L2 and L3 Lagrange points. Near-rectilinear means that some segments of the orbit have a greater curvature than those of an elliptical orbit of the same maximum diameter, and other segments have a curvature less than that of an elliptical orbit of the same maximum diameter (taking maximum diameter as that of the smallest circle that contains the whole of the orbit). In the extreme case all segments have zero curvature with four points with infinite curvature (''i.e.'' a polygon). Such a non-elliptical orbit would require at l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trans-lunar Injection
A trans-lunar injection (TLI) is a propulsive maneuver used to set a spacecraft on a trajectory that will cause it to arrive at the Moon. History The first space probe to attempt TLI was the Soviet Union's Luna 1 on January 2, 1959 which was designed to impact the Moon. The burn however didn't go exactly as planned and the spacecraft missed the Moon by more than three times its radius and was sent into a heliocentric orbit. Luna 2 performed the same maneuver more accurately on September 12, 1959 and crashed into the Moon two days later. The Soviets repeated this success with 22 more Luna missions and 5 Zond missions travelling to the Moon between 1959 and 1976. The United States launched its first lunar impactor attempt, Ranger 3, on January 26, 1962, which failed to reach the Moon. This was followed by the first US success, Ranger 4, on April 23, 1962. Another 27 US missions to the Moon were launched from 1962 to 1973, including five successful Surveyor soft landers, f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CAPSTONE
CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is a lunar orbiter that will test and verify the calculated orbital stability planned for the Lunar Gateway space station. The spacecraft is a 12-unit CubeSat that will also test a navigation system that will measure its position relative to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) without relying on ground stations. It was launched on 28 June 2022, arrived in lunar orbit on 14 November 2022, and is scheduled to orbit for six months. Background The Lunar Gateway is an in-development space station being planned by several national space agencies since at least 2018, including NASA, European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The Gateway is planned to be placed in a novel lunar orbit that has not been used previously, where it is expected to serve as a communications hub, science laboratory, short-term habitation module, and holding area for rovers and other r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Designator
The International Designator, also known as COSPAR ID, is an international identifier assigned to artificial objects in space. It consists of the launch year, a three-digit incrementing launch number of that year and up to a three-letter code representing the sequential identifier of a piece in a launch. In TLE format the first two digits of the year and the dash are dropped. For example1990-037Ais the Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' on mission STS-31, which carried the Hubble Space Telescope1990-037B into space. This launch was the 37th known successful launch worldwide in 1990. The designation system has been generally known as the COSPAR system, named for the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) of the International Council for Science. COSPAR subsumed the first designation system, devised at Harvard University. That system used letters of the Greek alphabet to designate artificial satellites. This was based on the scientific naming convention for natural satellites. For exampl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypergolic Propellant
A hypergolic propellant is a rocket propellant combination used in a rocket engine, whose components spontaneously ignite when they come into contact with each other. The two propellant components usually consist of a fuel and an oxidizer. The main advantages of hypergolic propellants are that they can be stored as liquids at room temperature and that engines which are powered by them are easy to ignite reliably and repeatedly. Common hypergolic propellants are difficult to handle due to their extreme toxicity and/or corrosiveness. In contemporary usage, the terms "hypergol" and "hypergolic propellant" usually mean the most common such propellant combination: dinitrogen tetroxide plus hydrazine and/or its relatives monomethylhydrazine (MMH) and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH). History In 1935, Hellmuth Walter discovered that hydrazine hydrate was hypergolic with high-test peroxide of 80-83%. He was probably the first to discover this phenomenon, and set to work ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bipropellant
The highest specific impulse chemical rockets use liquid propellants (liquid-propellant rockets). They can consist of a single chemical (a monopropellant) or a mix of two chemicals, called bipropellants. Bipropellants can further be divided into two categories; hypergolic propellants, which ignite when the fuel and oxidizer make contact, and non-hypergolic propellants which require an ignition source. About 170 different propellants made of liquid fuel have been tested, excluding minor changes to a specific propellant such as propellant additives, corrosion inhibitors, or stabilizers. In the U.S. alone at least 25 different propellant combinations have been flown. As of 2020, no completely new propellant has been used since the mid-1970s. Many factors go into choosing a propellant for a liquid-propellant rocket engine. The primary factors include ease of operation, cost, hazards/environment and performance. History Development in early 20th century Konstantin Tsiolkovsky pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monopropellant
Monopropellants are propellants consisting of chemicals that release energy through exothermic chemical decomposition. The molecular bond energy of the monopropellant is released usually through use of a catalyst. This can be contrasted with bipropellants that release energy through the chemical reaction between an oxidizer and a fuel. While stable under defined storage conditions, monopropellants decompose very rapidly under certain other conditions to produce a large volume of its own energetic (hot) gases for the performance of mechanical work. Although solid deflagrants such as nitrocellulose, the most commonly used propellant in firearms, could be thought of as monopropellants, the term is usually reserved for liquids in engineering literature. Uses The most common use of monopropellants is in low-impulse monopropellant rocket motors, such as reaction control thrusters, the usual propellant being hydrazine, p. 230 which is generally decomposed by exposure to an iridium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Low Earth Orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never more than about one-third of the radius of Earth. The term ''LEO region'' is also used for the area of space below an altitude of (about one-third of Earth's radius). Objects in orbits that pass through this zone, even if they have an apogee further out or are sub-orbital, are carefully tracked since they present a collision risk to the many LEO satellites. All crewed space stations to date have been within LEO. From 1968 to 1972, the Apollo program's lunar missions sent humans beyond LEO. Since the end of the Apollo program, no human spaceflights have been beyond LEO. Defining characteristics A wide variety of sources define LEO in terms of altitude. The altitude of an object in an elliptic orbit can vary significantly along the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curie (rocket Engine)
Curie is a liquid-propellant rocket engine designed and manufactured by Rocket Lab. A monopropellant is used for the propulsion of the third stage/kicker stage of the Electron rocket, as well as the Photon. The composition of the propellant is a trade secret. The kicker stage rocket produces of thrust, and has a specific impulse of approximately 320 seconds. It was first used on 21 January 2018 during Rocket Lab's first successful orbital rocket launch, and helped to boost two small CubeSats, the weather and ship-tracking Lemur-2 CubeSats built by the company Spire Global, into a circular orbit. Description The Curie engine, named after Polish scientist Marie Skłodowska–Curie, is a small liquid-propellant rocket engine designed to release "small satellites from the constricting parameters of primary payload orbits and enables them to fully reach their potential, including faster deployment of small satellite constellations and better positioning for Earth imaging". It i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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