Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Spaceflight's Rocket Full Of SmallSats Delayed Until December

The upcoming busload of small satellites--being launched into space in by Seattle's Spaceflight--has just been delayed due to the storm system that has been moving into the West Coast. According to SpaceX late Tuesday, it is delaying ithe Spaceflight SSO-A: SmallSat Express until December, due extreme high altitude winds that violate Range requirements for launch. Those winds are from an incoming weather system. The mission had been scheduled to launch on Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, along California's Central Coast. The storm system--the same one dropping rain on Washington and Oregon--is expected to bring high winds to the launch site in California, which affect rocket launch conditions. The Spaceflight SSO-A: SmallSat Express is expected to launch 64 "cubesat" satellites, collected together by space ride arranger Spaceflight, for over 35 customers. The payload includes University of North Carolina-Wilmington, NovaWurks, Ghalam, Helios Wire / Sirion Global, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB), Astrocast, Honeywell Aerospace, HawkEye 360, Nevada Museum of Art, Fleet Space Technologies, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Audacy, Capella Space Corporation, University of Colorado Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and many others. The mission is the first dedicated rocket contracted by Spaceflight to deliver small satellites into space; the company has arranged a long list of secondary payloads for small satellite and Cubesat delivery in the past.