Meanwhile, with three missions already achieved in January, the Falcon 9 assigned to the CSG-2 flight was rolled out of the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) and put through a Static Fire Test on Sunday, 23 January. Two more satellites-CSG-3 and CSG-4-were added to the Thales contract in December 2020.Īstonishing ground-based view of the B1052 core stage falling away from the Falcon 9 stack, as the Merlin 1D+ Vacuum engine of the second stage glows white-hot. The second generation passed its Critical Design Review (CDR) in 2015 and wrapped up its Mission-Critical Design Review (M-CDR) in November 2017. Initial contracts between ASI and Thales to execute the program were signed in August 2014, with a follow-up deal inked in September 2015 to specifically complete CSG-2. Falcon 9 launches Cosmo CSG-2 mission on its’ 4th attempt. ![]() ![]() Thales described the second generation as “a quantum leap in terms of technology, performance and service life”, with an expectation that each of the new satellites will remain operational for a baseline of seven years. Leading the CSG program and developing the satellites is Thales Alenia Space, with Telespazio responsible for the Ground Segment and Integrated Logistics & Operations (ILS&Ops) services. Additionally, they benefit from an improved Payload Data Handling and Transmission (PDHT) architecture, which doubles their on-board data-storage capacity and space-to-ground data-transmission throughput over the first generation.ī1052 and sister B1053 are seen here alighting at Landing Zones (LZ)-1 and 2 in April 2019, following their first Falcon Heavy launch. It is expected that the four-strong second-generation COSMO-SkyMed network will achieve higher and much finer imaging resolutions with a more advanced X-band (9.6 GHz) SAR payload suite. Nebulousness from interaction of first stage boost-back burn (top) and second stage engine burn (lower right).Notably, the satellites provided detailed imagery of Central Italy during the 6.5-magnitude earthquake in October 2016 and observed the violent reawakening of the Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island in December 2020. Their 18.7-foot-long (5.7-meter) phased arrays enabled the acquisition of up to 450 daily images and their radar imaging achieved resolutions as fine as 3.3 feet (1 meter) over a 6.2 x 6.2-mile (10 x 10-kilometer) area. The second-generation COSMO-SkyMed fleet benefits from a more advanced X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) than its predecessor. NROL-87 is one of three classified missions contracted out to SpaceX in February 2019, under a $297 million deal which also includes NROL-85 and USSF-44 for the U.S. Its Falcon 9 completed a satisfactory Static Fire Test of its nine Merlin 1D+ first-stage engines at Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex (SLC)-4E last Wednesday. Coming up after Starlink, SpaceX hopes to return its focus to the West Coast, with NROL-87 set to launch for the National Reconnaissance Office on Wednesday, 2 February. Having successfully boosted the second member of a planned four-strong fleet of COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG-2) Earth-observation satellites to Sun-synchronous orbit tonight, another Falcon 9 will fly from historic Pad 39A at the neighboring Kennedy Space Center (KSC) as early as Tuesday afternoon, laden with another batch of Starlink low-orbiting internet communications satellites. The first member of the second-generation COSMO-SkyMed constellation entered orbit in December 2019.
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