Space Stuff - New Zealand Rocket Launch, Comet Wirtanen

[Margret]

Hi, all.

I got an email today about a couple of things in space, and I thought I'd share the details here, since I know we have a lot of members who are interested in these things.

The first thing was the launch of a rocket by New Zealand yesterday. Here's what my friend had to say about this:

It was New Zealand’s third orbital mission. They successfully launched thirteen itty-bitties (otherwise called Cubesats) into a Sun-synchronous orbit up around 300 miles (it was stated as 500 km).

Here’s a link to the recorded video; I think they’ll leave it up for a day or two.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/12/13/electron-elana-19-mission-status-center/

Electron is a little rocket. It stands 56 feet tall, and you get a good idea of its size from the guardrails around the launch platform. First stage does what first stages normally do, while the second puts itself, the kick-stage, and the payloads into an orbit with a low enough perigee that the second stage is guaranteed to burn up at or near perigee. The kick-stage circularizes the orbit, deploys the payloads, and then does a retro-burn to remove itself from orbit. Is this neat, or what?

It was interesting to watch the jettison of the main battery pack during the second-stage burn. This rocket uses battery power to pump fuel, rather than using a traditional turbo-pump, and partway into the second-stage burn, two-thirds of the batteries go flat. They’re jettisoned, rather than carrying the dead weight uselessly into orbit—same weight-saving notion as throwing away the nosecone when it’s no longer needed to shield the payload from the atmosphere.

The New Zealanders mean business in space. This launch had NASA as its sole customer; they had 13 cubesats to send up. Although this is a business venture, the NZ people have a sense of humor about their missions. The first one (which didn’t make orbit) was called “It’s a test!” Second one was “Still Testing.” Third one, sent up last month, was “It’s business time!” Tonight’s was “This one’s for Pickering,” meaning William Pickering of JPL, who was born in New Zealand, and who headed the team that built the Explorer 1 satellite back in 1958.

The second item is a comet which should be visible with some decent binoculars for a few more days, preferably in a location with little or no light pollution:

I also periodically checked the sky--there is a comet making a close approach to Earth right now. Around 2 a.m., I found the clouds had cleared away from the area around Taurus, which is where Comet 46P/Wirtanen now is. I had no trouble finding the comet with my 15x70 astronomy binoculars; it was squarely between the Pleiades and Aldebaran. It was a little smudge in the binoculars; it ought to be easily visible in any binoculars larger than opera glasses. Tonight, it will have moved a couple of degrees; it's following a path taking into Gemini.

Wirtanen is a periodic comet with a six-year orbital period; this is its closest approach to Earth in many years. It's also the brightest comet of 2018.

Because the comet is moving quickly and will likely fade, I thought I'd give y'all a heads-up now.

Margret

 

[Furballsmom]

Thank you for posting this !

 

[doomsdave]

Wow, never heard that NZ even had a space program.