SpaceX’s Starship launches as seen from South Padre Island near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday (November 19, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX on Tuesday (November 19, 2024) launched another Starship rocket but passed up catching the booster with giant mechanical arms.

Unlike last month’s success, the booster was directed to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The catch was called off just four minutes into the test flight from Texas for unspecified reasons, and the booster hit the water three minutes later.

Not all of the criteria for a booster catch was met and so the flight director did not command the booster to return to the launch site, said SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot. He did not specify what went wrong.

At the same time, the empty spacecraft launched from Texas atop Starship soared across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to October’s test flight. Skimming space, the shiny retro-looking craft targeted the Indian Ocean for a controlled but destructive end to the hourlong demo.

It was the latest test for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket that SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back on the moon and eventually Mars.

SpaceX kept the same flight path as last time, but changed some steps along the way as well as the time of day. Starship blasted off in late afternoon instead of early morning to ensure daylight halfway around the world for observing the spacecraft’s descent.

Among the new objectives — igniting one of the spacecraft’s engines in space, which would be necessary when returning from orbit. There were also thermal protection experiments aboard the spacecraft, with some areas stripped of heat tiles to see whether catch mechanisms might work there on future flights. Even more upgrades are planned for the next test flight.

President-elect Donald Trump flew in for the launch in the latest sign of a deepening bond between him and Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO.

SpaceX wants to eventually return and reuse the entire 400-foot Starship. Full-scale recycling would drive down the cost of hauling cargo and people to the moon and Mars, while speeding things up. The recycling of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets flying out of Florida and California has already saved the company time and money.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade. Musk envisions launching a fleet of Starships to build a city one day on Mars.

This was the sixth launch of a fully assembled Starship since 2023. The first three ended up in explosions.

SpaceX’s Starship launches as seen from South Padre Island near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., on Tuesday (November 19, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Reuters

SpaceX on Tuesday (November 19, 2024) launched another Starship rocket but passed up catching the booster with giant mechanical arms.

Unlike last month’s success, the booster was directed to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The catch was called off just four minutes into the test flight from Texas for unspecified reasons, and the booster hit the water three minutes later.

Not all of the criteria for a booster catch was met and so the flight director did not command the booster to return to the launch site, said SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot. He did not specify what went wrong.

At the same time, the empty spacecraft launched from Texas atop Starship soared across the Gulf of Mexico on a near loop around the world similar to October’s test flight. Skimming space, the shiny retro-looking craft targeted the Indian Ocean for a controlled but destructive end to the hourlong demo.

It was the latest test for the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket that SpaceX and NASA hope to use to get astronauts back on the moon and eventually Mars.

SpaceX kept the same flight path as last time, but changed some steps along the way as well as the time of day. Starship blasted off in late afternoon instead of early morning to ensure daylight halfway around the world for observing the spacecraft’s descent.

Among the new objectives — igniting one of the spacecraft’s engines in space, which would be necessary when returning from orbit. There were also thermal protection experiments aboard the spacecraft, with some areas stripped of heat tiles to see whether catch mechanisms might work there on future flights. Even more upgrades are planned for the next test flight.

President-elect Donald Trump flew in for the launch in the latest sign of a deepening bond between him and Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO.

SpaceX wants to eventually return and reuse the entire 400-foot Starship. Full-scale recycling would drive down the cost of hauling cargo and people to the moon and Mars, while speeding things up. The recycling of SpaceX’s Falcon rockets flying out of Florida and California has already saved the company time and money.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade. Musk envisions launching a fleet of Starships to build a city one day on Mars.

This was the sixth launch of a fully assembled Starship since 2023. The first three ended up in explosions.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a satellite payload on behalf of the Indian Space Research Organization lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Monday (November 18, 2024).
| Photo Credit: AP

India’s GSAT-N2 (GSAT-20) communication satellite was successfully launched by SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket in the early hours of November 19, 2024.

After lifting off at 12.01 a.m. (Indian Standard Time) from the Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Falcon-9 put the GSAT-N2 to a geosynchronous transfer orbit. This is India’s first collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.  

It is a Ka-band high-throughput communication satellite of NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), which is the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). According to the ISRO, the satellite will enhance broadband services and in-flight connectivity across the Indian region.

The satellite offers Ka-Ka band HTS capacity with 32 beams having pan-India coverage, including Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands.

“This satellite, featuring multiple spot beams and wideband Ka x Ka transponders, aims to support a large subscriber base with small user terminals, significantly boosting system throughput through its multi-beam architecture which allows frequency reuse,” the ISRO said.

The GSAT-N2, with a lift-off mass of 4,700 kg, has a mission life of 14 years.

32 user beams

The satellite is equipped with 32 user beams, comprising eight narrow spot beams over the northeast region and 24 wide spot beams over the rest of India. 

These 32 beams will be supported by hub stations located within mainland India. The Ka-Band HTS communication payload provides a throughput of approximately 48 Gbps.

The payload consists of three parabolic 2.5-metre deployable reflectors with multiple feeds generating 32 spot beams over the Indian region using a single feed per beam configuration.

The satellite carries a Sun Sensor, Earth Sensor, Inertial Reference Unit (IRU), and Star Sensor. All sensors provide attitude data in the form of absolute attitude, while the IRU provides attitude rates and incremental angles about all the axes.

The GSAT-N2 is the second demand-driven satellite of NSIL.

It can be recalled that as part of the space sector reforms announced by the Centre in June 2020, NSIL was mandated to build, launch, own and operate satellites in “demand-driven mode” to meet service needs of the user.

As part of this, NSIL successfully undertook its first demand-driven satellite mission, GSAT-24 in June 2022, wherein the capacity-board of the satellite was fully secured by TataPlay.

According to SpaceX, this was the 19th flight for the Falcon-9 first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1, and 13 Starlink missions.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a satellite payload on behalf of the Indian Space Research Organization lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Monday (November 18, 2024).
| Photo Credit: AP

India’s GSAT-N2 (GSAT-20) communication satellite was successfully launched by SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket in the early hours of November 19, 2024.

After lifting off at 12.01 a.m. (Indian Standard Time) from the Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Falcon-9 put the GSAT-N2 to a geosynchronous transfer orbit. This is India’s first collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.  

It is a Ka-band high-throughput communication satellite of NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), which is the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). According to the ISRO, the satellite will enhance broadband services and in-flight connectivity across the Indian region.

The satellite offers Ka-Ka band HTS capacity with 32 beams having pan-India coverage, including Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands.

“This satellite, featuring multiple spot beams and wideband Ka x Ka transponders, aims to support a large subscriber base with small user terminals, significantly boosting system throughput through its multi-beam architecture which allows frequency reuse,” the ISRO said.

The GSAT-N2, with a lift-off mass of 4,700 kg, has a mission life of 14 years.

32 user beams

The satellite is equipped with 32 user beams, comprising eight narrow spot beams over the northeast region and 24 wide spot beams over the rest of India. 

These 32 beams will be supported by hub stations located within mainland India. The Ka-Band HTS communication payload provides a throughput of approximately 48 Gbps.

The payload consists of three parabolic 2.5-metre deployable reflectors with multiple feeds generating 32 spot beams over the Indian region using a single feed per beam configuration.

The satellite carries a Sun Sensor, Earth Sensor, Inertial Reference Unit (IRU), and Star Sensor. All sensors provide attitude data in the form of absolute attitude, while the IRU provides attitude rates and incremental angles about all the axes.

The GSAT-N2 is the second demand-driven satellite of NSIL.

It can be recalled that as part of the space sector reforms announced by the Centre in June 2020, NSIL was mandated to build, launch, own and operate satellites in “demand-driven mode” to meet service needs of the user.

As part of this, NSIL successfully undertook its first demand-driven satellite mission, GSAT-24 in June 2022, wherein the capacity-board of the satellite was fully secured by TataPlay.

According to SpaceX, this was the 19th flight for the Falcon-9 first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1, and 13 Starlink missions.