UNLIMITED SPACE!

Will one ever get tired of streaming rocket launches on YouTube?

I think 2020 has been such a huge year for the space industry, especially the American space industry. NASA definitely got it right by allowing private commercial companies to play in the segment. That opportunity has been the game changer. Although a few companies have thrown in the towel, the USA appears to have gone well ahead of most countries in space development, research and exploration. Hats off!

These are some familiar companies:

• Astra
• Blue Origin
• Rocket Labs
• SpaceX
• ULA
• Virgin Galactic

Some of these companies are still developing their capacity to do what they believe they can do while the others are blazing the trail already.

Besides these however, there are lots of activities currently happening by the Russians, Chinese, Japanese and Arabians in the space segment.

At least three of the companies listed above have completed a successful launch to orbit between June and August 2020. This does not even include the crewed demonstration mission to and from the ISS (International Space Station) aboard a SpaceX crew dragon vehicle named Endeavour that started on May 30 2020 and ended August 2nd 2020.

Most of these launches have been to low earth orbit — LEO (I think low earth orbit is won and defeated already). Apart from the well celebrated successful crewed mission to the ISS, another very significant one is the mission to explore the Martian surface launched by ULA.

Let me do a brief roundup of some of the launches that have taken place in the past few weeks.

ULA

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the Mars 2020 mission with the Perseverance rover for NASA, lifted off from Space Launch Complex-41 on July 30 at 7:50 a.m. EDT.

The Atlas 5 rocket launched NASA’s Mars 2020 rover to the Red Planet. After landing in February 2021, the rover, named Perseverance, will study Martian geology, search for organic compounds, demonstrate the ability to generate oxygen from atmospheric carbon dioxide, and collect rock samples for return to Earth by a future mission.

Rocket Labs

Rocket Labs named their most recent mission as ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. The company’s Electron rocket was used in the mission and it took off from their launch complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand at 05:12 UTC, 13 June 2020.

This was a rideshare (Molue — in Nigerian parlance) mission that launched several small satellites, including the ANDESITE (Ad-Hoc Network Demonstration for Extended Satellite-Based Inquiry and Other Team Endeavors) satellite created by electrical and mechanical engineering students and professors at Boston University.

SpaceX

• On Friday, August 7 2020 at 1:12 a.m. EDT, 5:12 UTC, SpaceX launched its tenth Starlink mission, which included 57 Starlink satellites and 2 satellites from BlackSky, a Spaceflight customer. Another molue mission. lol!
• On July 20 2020, 2130 GMT (5:30 p.m. EDT), A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Anasis 2, or KMilSatCom 1, communications satellite for the South Korean military. The spacecraft (satellite) was built by Airbus Defense and Space under contract with Lockheed Martin.
• On June 13 2020, A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the ninth batch of approximately 60 satellites for SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network, a mission designated Starlink 8. Three SkySat Earth-imaging satellites for Planet launched as rideshare payloads on this mission.

Emirates Mars Mission

A Japanese H-2A rocket launched the Emirates Mars Mission for the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates Mars Mission, also called “Hope,” is a Mars orbiter that was developed by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai in partnership with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado.

I’m a bit curious why we haven’t had a need for anything that will require us as a nation to build or even buy (and launch) a satellite in 2020. These things have become so common place these days that one wonders how we’re so absent from the events.

I’m not even talking about building rockets. I think that’s well beyond Nigeria at the moment. But, with the numerous and cheap means to produce and deploy satellites into orbit in 2020, I expect that we should be represented.

The question then arises; what will we be needing the satellite for? Our needs haven’t grown to that level. Shebi we’re not looking for anything that’s not lost/missing.

So, let’s hope that covid-19 disappears quickly so we can at least get back to our Owanbe’s.