3 kg highly eccentric orbit sat.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:arocket-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of Nathan Bergey
Sent: zaterdag 3 februari 2018 18:35
To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [AR] Successful Launch Of SS-520
It worked!
Launch occurred at 0503 UTC February 3rd (local time: 1403 JST).
Launch video from the spectator area:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58jTBvhtwq0
It's a tiny rocket so not much could be seen after the first few seconds.
Second stage ignition was around L+180 seconds and about 90 km downrange. I
doubt there was much chance of seeing it. There was no official word on success
until a press conference several hours later (a cliffhanger!)
New objects in spacetrack:
43201/2018-016A: 187 x 2012 km x 30.90°
43202/2018-016B: 189 x 2003 km x 30.90°
This is the most interesting development in the very long running question of
"What's the smallest rocket that could put something in orbit?"
I've updated my launch vehicle comparison and SS-520 overview page:
https://open-aerospace.github.io/SS-520/
As you can see SS-520 is by a wide margin the smallest (publicly
confirmed) rocket to reach orbit. A full 6.75 meters _shorter_ than Lambda-4S
and only 2.6 tonnes at liftoff. It's tiny.
It's only payload was a single 3U cubesat. If you want to know what a minimal
cubesat launcher design might look like, this is it.
-Nathan