News, Reviews & Betas which includes large community peer support The next week in space launches certainly looks interesting with a manned mission from Roscosmos carrying tourists to the ISS and a manned mission from Blue Origin carrying Alan Shepard’s daughter.
We’ve got a fairly busy week in space launches next week. Just months after Russia sent an actress and film director to space, it has said it will be delivering one cosmonaut and two space tourists to the International Space Station (ISS). We’ve also got a manned launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard which will carry four paying customers and two honorary members The first launch of the week takes place in New Zealand at 12:40 a.m. UTC. Rocket Lab will launch one of its Electron rockets carrying two BlackSky satellites into orbit. As always, the firm gave the mission a fun title, this time, it’s “A Data with Destiny”. We’ve covered BlackSky’s satellite constellation a number of times on TWIRL but essentially it’s an imaging constellation capable of snapping images of 1-metre resolution. Each satellite has a lifespan of three years if nothing goes wrong and in total, the company plans to operate 60 satellites at once. The second launch of the week will take off from Kazakhstan at 7:38 a.m. UTC. A Roscosmos Soyuz 2.1a rocket will carry Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin and two space tourists, Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano, to the International Space Station.
