SS-520-4 launch Jan 14th; smallest orbital rocket ever

[Kryten]

 Tomorrow at 23:54 UTC, JAXA are set to launch the smallest ground-launched orbital rocket ever, SS-520-4;

A modified version of the SS-520 large sounding rocket, it's about 2.5 metric tons; a fifth the gross mass of the current record holder. The payload is a single 3U cubesat, the University of Tokyo's TRICOM-1, to be placed in a ~180*1500 km orbit. It's unclear if any more launches of this version are planned, but Canon plans to introduce a commercialised version at some point in the future.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Kryten

[Streetwind]

Aww nuts, middle of the night for me Not gonna be able to catch this one live. Looks really neat though.

[The Raging Sandwich]

Cool.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Cool as  for sure, but I wonder, how much commercial value does it have? I have no idea of what the common satellite size is, but I'd guess bigger than a cube sat, right?

As I understand it, it has a 4 Kg payload capacity. Is there any business to be done at that weight range?

 

[magnemoe]

31 minutes ago, Rosco P. Coltrane said:

Cool as  for sure, but I wonder, how much commercial value does it have? I have no idea of what the common satellite size is, but I'd guess bigger than a cube sat, right?

As I understand it, it has a 4 Kg payload capacity. Is there any business to be done at that weight range?

 

Good question, its an thriving cubesat marked but its uses spare capacity as secondary payload as its mostly single experiment stuff who need to be in space. 
 

[Kryten]

There are several companies planning or operating commercial cubesat constellations, e.g. Planet and Spire.

[VaPaL]

@Rosco P. Coltrane There a forum member, don't remember who and didn't find the post, that's opening a company to enter this market, I suppouse he made a research on this.

Anyone remembers who?

 

EDIT: found it!! @Tristonwilson12

 

 

Edited January 9, 2017 by VaPaL

[wumpus]

4 hours ago, Rosco P. Coltrane said:

Cool as  for sure, but I wonder, how much commercial value does it have? I have no idea of what the common satellite size is, but I'd guess bigger than a cube sat, right?

As I understand it, it has a 4 Kg payload capacity. Is there any business to be done at that weight range?

 

A link at a NASA  forum suggested that this was a one-off demonstration and had no bearing on business.

Any idea where it was launched?  Sea level Japan, preferably as south as possible?  I'd have to wonder if somewhere in Equidor (there is a fairly tall mountain next to the capital, but with some populated areas due East) would allow for more payload.

I'd assume any business plan about cube launches would be simply buying bulk secondary payloads in previously contracted birds and simply taking what you get.  Otherwise pay for a full pegasus ride.

[Kryten]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

Any idea where it was launched?  Sea level Japan, preferably as south as possible?

The existing facilities at Uchinoura, near the southern tip of Kyushu.

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

I'd assume any business plan about cube launches would be simply buying bulk secondary payloads in previously contracted birds and simply taking what you get.  Otherwise pay for a full pegasus ride.

Most commercial cubesats are for imaging, you won't get as much value out of them if you accept whatever orbits are available as secondaries. Most will want SSO, and secondary opportunities for SSO are getting quickly booked up as more companies move into the market and existing ones expand. And this expansion is *rapid*. As a case in point, there's a PSLV launch set for later this year where the primary payload only takes about half the capacity; ISRO are selling the rest commercially, and they're now up to 102 sats, almost all nanosats. Only 82 nanosats launched last year, total.

Edited January 9, 2017 by Kryten

[Kryten]

We're not sure if there'll be an official JAXA stream-none has turned up yet, at least-but NVS are doing their own stream here;

 

[wumpus]

36 minutes ago, Kryten said:

The existing facilities at Uchinoura, near the southern tip of Kyushu.

Most commercial cubesats are for imaging, you won't get as much value out of them if you accept whatever orbits are available as secondaries. Most will want SSO, and secondary opportunities for SSO are getting quickly booked up as more companies move into the market and existing ones expand. And this expansion is *rapid*. As a case in point, there's a PSLV launch set for later this year where the primary payload only takes about half the capacity; ISRO are selling the rest commercially, and they're now up to 102 sats, almost all nanosats. Only 82 nanosats launched last year, total.

For cubesats (and even the smaller "regular" satellites) I can't believe it would be harder to latch on to "any available flight to LEO" and provide your own power to a preferred orbit (inclination angles are a completely different animal).  Obviously you have to balance efficiency of delta-v vs. time your investment is in position and returning on investment and just how long it can stay up there.

Hitching a ride on a pegasus (or even the smaller rockets NASA is incubating) has to be painfully expensive compared to attaching a tiny stage to a satellite and lumping it on another flight.

[Kryten]

Putting useful propulsion onto your sat means you're very unlikely to get a secondary slot; the increased risk to the primary is too great. Apart from that, SSO orbits only exist at a few very specific inclinations.

[VaPaL]

http://spaceflight101.com/ss-520-4-smallest-orbital-rocket-set-for-launch/

A little bit more info about the rocket and the sat. Also a brief comment of possible market.

[Tristonwilson12]

Just a bit smaller then Cloud Aerospace's CloudOne rocket. SS-520 is 9m in height and 0.52m in width, CloudOne is 11m in height and 1.08m in width

[wumpus]

On 1/9/2017 at 5:00 PM, Kryten said:

Putting useful propulsion onto your sat means you're very unlikely to get a secondary slot; the increased risk to the primary is too great. Apart from that, SSO orbits only exist at a few very specific inclinations.

Depends, you might be stuck with a PVC/ion system.  The inclination issue is wildly harder.

If that is the case then you will need to add propulsion and put an entire constellation up at a go.  Hope insurance will cover all the birds in one basket!  Just let the propulsion let the orbits drift into reasonable spacing and return.

In cases like this, aerodynamic losses become a huge hurdle.  The most obvious and well known solution is "use a bigger rocket and bring a bigger payload", but there are certainly others.  Pegasus pioneered air launch, and I'm fairly surprised none of the various microlaunch groups have tried to follow (I'm assuming they don't think there's enough money in cubesats either, and want to "graduate" to full sized satellites as soon as they can).  "Find a country with the right inclination and a high mountain" (and likely few regulations as I suspect all available areas have populated areas downstream - maybe you can develop a carbon fiber rocket that after self-destruct doesn't make it to the ground (I've heard that carbon driveshafts in cars have similar "failsafe" properties - a failure means bits of fabric all over the road as opposed to the shrapnel of steel/aluminum drive shafts)).

[Kryten]

The stream has started, launch is in just over half an hour.

[insert_name]

Spaceflight now says that the launch window ends in 5 min 6:50pm EST

And scrubbed

[Ultimate Steve]

Darn. Does anyone know what for and when they will try again? I don't really speak Japanese.

EDIT: According to the chat it is either wind or an electrical problem.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Ultimate Steve

[Graveworks]

Too bad it was scrubbed, thanks for posting the livestream Kryten, I looked everywhere for it - should have known I'd find it here!

 

[Stef Morojna]

4 minutes ago, Graveworks said:

Too bad it was scrubbed, thanks for posting the livestream Kryten, I looked everywhere for it - should have known I'd find it here!

 

So when will they launch then?

[Graveworks]

Looks like they haven't set a new launch date yet - postponed due to weather, so I would imagine it could be tomorrow, or whenever the weather improves

 

[Kryten]

Launch is back on, at the same time as the last attempt. It should be roughly three hours after I'm making this post;

 

[SaturnianBlue]

Sadly the launch appears to have failed. Telemetry was lost 20 seconds into the firing of the first stage for a planned 31 second burn. http://spaceflight101.com/ss-520-4-rocket-launches-on-experimental-mission/

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, SaturnianBlue said:

Sadly the launch appears to have failed. Telemetry was lost 20 seconds into the firing of the first stage for a planned 31 second burn. http://spaceflight101.com/ss-520-4-rocket-launches-on-experimental-mission/

Aww.

I saw this one live, though. It looked a bit funny going up, but I don't speak Japanese, so I couldn't tell whether it was going right or wrong.

Still, it's only a failure if you don't learn from it.

[Scotius]

Too bad I wanted to see this midget reach space. I mean, it is seriously tiny for an orbital launcher. Better luck next time