Screenshot from SpaceX Webcast of the launch of EROS-3C. Watch out. I fly against the stream
Mission Rundown: SpaceX Falcon 9 - EROS-3C
Written: December 30, 2022
Let’s take a closer look
SpaceX will be launching the Earth Resources Observation Satellite (EROS) for ImageSat International. ImageSat is a company jointly founded in 1997 by Israeli Aircraft Industries, EI-Op, and Core Software Technology (CST).
As of July 2021, Israeli Aircraft Industries is now partnered with “e-GEOS,” a company owned by the Italian Space Agency and Telespazio, which will allow for combined satellite assets, including COSMOS-SkyMed.
The Falcon 9 Block 5 carrying EROS-C3 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at the Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) located on the west coast of the United States and fly opposite Earth’s rotation, hence “retrograde” low Earth orbit.
Retrograde flight path: EROS-3C is flying on a 141 degree compass course against Earth's rotation
After boosting the satellite and second stage to the desired altitude, B1061-11 will right after stage separation do a boost back burn and land on Landing Zone 4.
SpaceX will also recover both fairing halves in the Pacific Ocean with the recovery vessel NRC Quest, leased for the fairing and booster recovery operations.
SpaceX is the first entity ever that recovers and reflies its fairings. After being jettisoned, the two fairing halves will use cold gas thrusters to orientate themselves as they descend through the atmosphere. Once at a lower altitude, they will deploy drogue chutes and later a parafoil to help them glide down to a soft landing for recovery.
Falcon fairings halfs have been recovered and reused since 2019. Improved design changes and overall refurbishment procedures have decreased the effects of water landings and led to an increased recovery rate of fairings.
The fairings are a new or refurbished pair with no known joint mission. Both fairings are expected to survive the landing. Active fairings are equipped with four pushrods to separate the two fairing halfs.
Fairings have evenly spaced venting ports that have been redesigned a number of times by having first ten, then eight and now having their venting ports built as close pairs along the fairing edge. This prevents saltwater from the ocean from flooding and sinking the fairing, and makes refurbishment toward the next flight easier.
B1061-11 will have made its eleventh flight after launching its next mission:
B1061-11 didn’t perform a static fire test after refurbishment while waiting for an east coast launch out of Cape Canaveral. SpaceX has omitted this safety precaution many times so far. It isn’t required to perform a static fire test on inhouse missions like Starlink as to save time. Only a few other missions have omitted the static fire test.
B1061-11 was intended to support the Starlink 2-4 mission in November, however, that launch was delayed following a static fire test. It is unclear what issue or issues SpaceX saw during the test fire of the nine Merlin-1D engines.
The delay was taken to “take a closer look at data.”
This mission saw B1061 perform a Return to Launch Site (RTLS) landing. This marked the first time this particular booster has landed at Landing Zone 4 (LZ-4), which is located a short distance away from the launch pad at VSFB. When the booster landed successfully, B1061 became the only booster to land on all but one of SpaceX’s different landing zones and drone ships.
The booster has previously completed an RTLS landing at LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida. B1061 has also landed on all three of SpaceX’s Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ships (ASDS), landing on Just Read the Instructions and A Shortfall of Gravitas in Florida, and Of Course I Still Love You in California.
The only location the booster has not landed is LZ-2 at CCSFS, which so far has only ever seen five booster landings, four of which were Falcon Heavy side boosters.
The EROS-3C Payload
The main purpose of the satellite from the start was to film activity from space and return the video to customers on Earth. In the past some of these customers included the Ministry of Defense of Israel, the Taiwan Defense Ministry, India, and media organizations who wanted footage of the War in Afghanistan.
The EROS NG program is a currently active program, which already has two satellites in orbit. There is minimal publicly available information on the EROS-C1 and -C2 satellites which are already in orbit. This is possibly due to Israeli national security concerns.
By the mid to late 2020s, there will be a complete constellation of four EROS NG satellites and two synthetic key radar (SAR) satellites in low Earth orbit. The constellation is being developed with the company e-GEOS, owned by the Italian Space Agency and Telespazio.
The EROS-C3 satellite has a resolution of 30 cm (~ 1 foot) for panchromatic imagery (single band, greyscale) and 60 cm (~ 2 ft) for multispectral, colored imagery. It has a designed lifetime of 10 years and has two deployable solar arrays to provide power.
EROS-C3 is based on the OPSAT 3000 class satellite platform, the satellite has a mass of 400 kg and will be able to photograph a swath of 11.5 km with a 30 cm image resolution. EROS-C3 also offers 60 cm resolution for multi-spectral imaging. The spacecraft itself comes in at a size of 4.58 m by 4.6 m by 1 m.
The satellite was launched into a retrograde low Earth orbit, although the exact parameters of its destination orbit are unknown at this time. Launch hazard zones indicate a most likely inclination of approximately 140 degrees.
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