September 2-8, 2013 / Vol 32, No 35 / Hawai`i Island, USA

Space Age Enterprises: OSC Launches LADEE, SpaceX Launches CASSIOPE
Orbital Sciences Corporation will debut the Minotaur V rocket on September 6 with its launch of Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia between 23:27 – 23:31 EDT. If successful, this launch will accomplish many firsts: 1st launch of Minotaur V rocket, 1st Moon / Planetary mission launched from Wallops, 1st 5-stage vehicle and 1st Moon mission launched by Orbital. Led by NASA Ames Research Center, LADEE will gather information about the structure and composition of the lunar atmosphere and dust while in a 50-km altitude orbit around the Moon’s equator. LADEE includes a dust detector, neutral mass spectrometer, ultraviolet-visible spectrometer and laser communications terminal. On Sep 10 SpaceX is scheduled to launch its Falcon 9 rocket with Canadian Space Agency’s Cascade, SmallSat and IOnospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) satellite from Vandenberg AFB in California. Falcon 9 is a 2-stage rocket which uses Merlin 1D engines and liquid oxygen / kerosene propellants. SpaceX is upgrading the Falcon 9 rocket along with the Dragon capsule to send humans into space under NASA’s CCiCAP. CASSIOPE has 8 science instruments which will observe Earth’s ionosphere and gather data on ...