Frida Space

Yes, I was watching Roscosmos' stream - much better quality than ESA. And surely ESA could have put a better camera. On a personal note: I have just received from ESA the latest batch with the expected celestial coordinates of the ExoMars probes - will try photographing them later today! Our main window is in Australia, but, as the weather there seems proibitive, we'll probably go with Spain. If we manage to catch it I'll post our results here (once ESA approves, because I have to send it to them first).

Now six hours of *hopefully* boring coast phase until final manoeuvre.

Third burn completed!

Exactly this The Briz-M has enough Delta-V to bring such a heavy payload to Mars (if the mission succeeds, it will be the heaviest mission to ever reach Mars!), but it doesn't have enough power/thrust-to-weight ratio to deliver all the Delta-V required in a single burn. Therefore, the burn will be split in four. This obviously is riskier (more reignitions -> more chances of failure), but the Briz-M is rated for something like 8 reignitions, so it should be fine. Furthermore, as the tanks get emptied, they are expelled, meaning that after every burn the engine is somewhat even more efficient.

A nice launch replay in HD from Tsenki (the ESA webcast was very poor quality)

Second Briz-M burn started ten minutes ago, 8 minutes left. New orbit will be 270 x 5800 km roughly (different sources = slightly different numbers). Gotta say, as an European myself, I'm pretty ashamed of how the webcast was structured. Good info for people that had never heard of the mission, but very few live updates on the launch status. Even SpaceX, which is a private company, does much, much better. Hope landing day will be better!

Exactly an hour to second burn start (11:09 UT).

Briz-M first burn is successful! Now more than an hour of passive coasting before second burn.

Separation of the Briz-M upper stage on a balistic suborbital trajectory, now approx. 90 seconds to S5.98 ignition.

A few minutes ago:

Check here

A useful blog post from ESA: blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2016/03/13/why-exomars-ride-to-space-takes-the-time-it-does Main info: Separation of the first, second and third stage will occur, respectively, at 43 km, 1716 m/s; 129 km, 4503 m/s; and 153 km, 7230 m/s. The first and second stages and the payload fairing will all fall back to Earth, less than 2000 km downrange from launch site. The third stage will crash into the Pacific, 8000 km downrange. The first Briz-M manouvre will transform the suborbital ballistic trajectory into a preliminary, circular parking orbit at 175 x 175 km of height, 51.55° of inclination. The second burn will raise it to 250 x 5000 km, period of 2 hours. The third burn will further raise it to an apogee of over 21000 km, period of 6 hours. Fourth and last burn will achieve Earth escape. After TGO separation, Briz-M will perform two manoeuvres to avoid colliding with the probes.

From RussianSpaceWeb.com: The liftoff of the Proton-M rocket with a Briz-M upper stage is scheduled on March 14, 2016, at 12:31:42 Moscow Time (09:31 GMT, 5:31 a.m. EDT) from Pad 39 at Site 200 in Baikonur Cosmodrome. The launch vehicle will be carrying the Trace Gas Orbiter, TGO, and the Schiaparelli lander for theExoMars-2016 project. During the initial phase of the powered flight, the three booster stages of the Proton rocket will follow a standard flight path to match an orbit with an inclination 51.55 degrees toward the Equator. The first stage propelled by six engines will separate around two minutes into the flight, followed by thesecond stage five and a half minutes after launch. The payload fairing will split in two halves and drop off five minutes 45 seconds into the flight, during the operation of the third stage. Nine minutes 42 seconds after launch, the Briz-M upper stage with the TGO/Schiaparelli combo will separate from the third stage of the launch vehicle, still flying on a ballistic suborbital trajectory. One minute 34-seconds after separation, Briz-M will fire its engine for the first time over Siberia. The maneuver lasting nearly four and a half minutes will insert the stack into an initial parking orbit. The spacecraft will then fly passively for more than an hour, almost completing a revolution around the Earth before restarting its engine over Southern Russia. The maneuver extending over most of Asia will push the spacecraft into an intermediate elliptical (egg-shaped) orbit. The spacecraft will pass an apogee (highest point) over the Pacific Ocean around three hours after launch and will then begin accelerating back toward its home planet for another hour. Around four hours into the flight, as the vehicle crosses the coast of Portugal, Briz-M will initiate its third firing. This time, the maneuver will send the stack into a transfer orbit. Shortly after completing the third firing, Briz-M will jettison its doughnut-shaped external tank. To reach its new, much higher apogee, Briz-M with ExoMars will coast passively for nearly three hours until the Earth's gravity pulls it back yet again. Finally, more than 10 hours after leaving Baikonur, Briz-M will initiate its fourth and final engine firing to break itself from the Earth's gravitational field and enter a Mars-bound trajectory. The maneuver will be taking place, while the spacecraft crosses the Great Lakes, Eastern Canada and the Atlantic Ocean. Less than 14 minutes later, the TGO/Schiaparelli stack will separate from the Briz-M upper stage more than 5,000 kilometers away from Earth. The nearly empty upper stage will then perform two small braking maneuvers to make sure it never crosses path with its former passengers. In the meantime, the TGO spacecraft should attain a stable orientation relative to the Sun and begin the deployment of its two solar panels. The deployment of the high-gain antenna is expected within first 24 hours after launch, however its use is not expected until more than two weeks after launch. According to ESA, the 4.3-ton TGO/Schiaparelli stack would be the heaviest spacecraft launched on a path to Mars, however the claim probably counts only successful missions. The ill-fated Mars-96 and Phobos-Grunt probes, which never left the Earth's orbit, had a mass of 6.8 and 13.5 tons respectively.

As long as the winds hold, it should be fine... after all, delays or abort on Russian rockets are pretty rare (except for yesterday)

Current situation in Baikonur, with 23.5 hours to go...

It's a thermal cover that gets removed before flight

More pics from today:

The Proton rocket is now vertical on the launchpad!

A Juno Science Team Meeting and Jupiter Auroral Workshop is happening this week - Juno's arrival is getting closer and closer!

The Proton rocket with both probes has been transferred to the refuelling station on the way to the launchpad. The Briz-M upper stage has been fully fueled.

We are go for launching in 2018! JPL will redesign and rebuild (from scratch?) the leaky seismometer. www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-targets-may-2018-launch-of-mars-insight-mission

The flight plan below has been updated, check new post on this thread (page 2). The JOI (Jupiter Orbital Insertion) Phase begins four days ahead of the actual JOI burn. If things haven't change since I last checked, TIG (Time of Ignition) is scheduled for just before 2:30 am GMT on July 5th, so early July 4th in the US. The burn will be performed at perijove, some 4500 km above the 1-bar level (referred to as the "surface" of the planet, although obviously it's not solid). The JOI burn will last slightly over 30 minutes and result in a Delta-V of about 480 m/s. At JOI, there will be a 48.3-minute delay (one-way) in the communications due to Juno's distance from Earth. The Capture Orbit has an inclination of 90 +/- 10 degrees and a period of 107 days. Approx. 50 hours after JOI, instruments are powered up and decommissioned. Approx. 7.6 days after JOI, a small correction manoeuvre will take place to set up the Period Reduction Manoeuvre (PRM). The PRM burn will take place around October 19th, 2016, and lower the apojove. The burn will last 37 minutes and provide a Delta-V of about 540 m/s. The PRM will allow Juno to settle into its first Science Orbit, with an apojove of 39 Jupiter radii, a perijove of 1.06 Jupiter radii (4600 km above cloud tops), and a period of 10.9725 days. Personally, what I'm most looking forward from this mission is finally understanding if Jupiter has a solid core or not - knowing the answer to this question would allow us to place significant constraints to our models of the formation of the entire solar system. Current models featuring only hydrogen (even in its liquid metallic state) and helium don't work, and the heavy elements seen by Galileo, despite being much more abundant than in our sun (hinting that Jupiter was formed from enriched materials) still aren't enough to explain its missing mass. The question is whether this missing mass is dispersed all around the planet or if it forms a solid, well-defined core. Can't wait to know! Obviously, it will be interesting to know more about Jupiter's magnetic field, for e.g. by studying its auroras. (Plus, because the field is generated by the liquid metallic hydrogen layer, it will give us some insights on the internal structure too). And also we might finally understand whether the Galileo probe actually dived into a dry spot or if water vapour is actually globally scarse. Lots of things waiting to be discovered!

Schiaparelli and TGO (now attached to the Briz-M and encapsulated inside the fairings, see previous updates on this thread) have been transferred by train to the assembly building and have been installed on top of the Proton that, less than a week from now, will launch them towards the Red Planet!

The mountaintops of Cthulhu Regio, probably Pluto's most ancient region, correspond perfectly to some of the strongest spectral signatures of methane ice. www.nasa.gov/feature/methane-snow-on-pluto-s-peaks