SpaceX to launch Europa Clipper on Falcon Heavy for mission to Jupiter - TWIRL #184

We have several launches coming up This Week in Rocket Launches, but the most interesting one by far is SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launching the Europa Clipper spacecraft on its long journey to Jupiter. The spacecraft will use Earth and Mars for gravity assists before arriving at Jupiter in 2030.

Monday, 7 October

• Who: Blue Origin
• What: New Shepard
• When: 13:00 UTC
• Where: Texas, United States
• Why: Blue Origin will launch its New Shepard suborbital rocket as part of an uncrewed mission. This is a little bit unusual before New Shepard launches are known for their crewed launches to the edge of space for paying customers. It will fly with tech upgrades to improve the vehicle's performance and reusability.

Some of the 12 payloads include new nav systems for New Shepard and New Glenn, LIDAR sensors for the Lunar Permanence program, and ultra-wide proximity operations sensors as part of NASA's TechFlights grant. The mission is NS-27.

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 14:52 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to launch the European Space Agency's Hera mission to asteroid 65803 Didymos to observe the aftermath of NASA's DART mission on Dimorphos, the other asteroid in the binary system. The Hera mission will demonstrate several new technologies, such as autonomous navigation around the asteroid. Two CubeSats will join the mission as secondary payloads called Milani and Juventas. Juventas will perform a radar probe of the asteroid, while Milani will perform a multispectral mineral survey on the asteroid's makeup.

Wednesday, 9 October

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 06:03 - 06:43 UTC
• Where: California, US
• Why: SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to launch 20 Gen 1 satellites for OneWeb. These will fly in a near-polar orbit at an altitude of 500 km after launch and then raise themselves to an operational orbit of 1,200 km. Similar to Starlink, these OneWeb satellites will beam internet connectivity to Earth for customers.

Thursday, 10 October

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 05:52 - 09:52 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 to launch 22 of its Starlink satellites, which it uses to beam internet down to customers on Earth. This batch is known as Starlink Group 10-10, and you'll be able to locate them after launch on apps like ISS Detector using this identifier. The first stage of the rocket will likely land after launch.

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon Heavy
• When: 16:31 UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will launch a Falcon Heavy rocket carrying the Europa Clipper mission for NASA. The Europa Clipper space probe will study Jupiter's moon, Europa, by doing flybys while in Jupiter's orbit. It will carry nine science instruments and use them to study Europa's icy surface and its subsurface ocean to see whether the moon can support life. Europa Clipper is NASA's biggest-ever planetary exploration spacecraft with a span of 30 meters when its solar arrays are extended. The spacecraft will do a flyby gravity assist of Mars with its closest approach in February 2025. It will then use the Earth to get a gravity assist in December 2026, and then it will enter Jupiter orbit on April 11, 2030, with 45 orbits planned.

Recap

• The only launch we got last week was United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket. It flew on its second certification (Cert-2) mission, carrying an inert payload and experiments and demonstrations associated with future Centaur V technologies.

That's all for this week; check back next time!

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