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Japan Launches the World's Smallest Satellite-Carrying Rocket (nasaspaceflight.com)
Japan has launched the world's smallest satellite-carrying rocket. Long-time Slashdot reader hey! writes:
Last week Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully placed a three-kilogram cubesat into an 180 x 1,500 kilometer orbit at 31 degrees inclination to the equator. The payload was launched on a modified sounding rocket, called the SS-520-5. The assembled rocket weighed a mere 2600 kilograms [2.87 tons] on the launchpad, making the SS-520-5 the smallest vehicle ever to put an object into orbit.
Note that the difference in the SS-520's modest orbital capacity of four kilograms and its ability to launch 140 kilograms to 1000 kilometers on a suborbital flight. That shows how much more difficult it is to put an object into orbit than it is to merely send it into space.
Note that the difference in the SS-520's modest orbital capacity of four kilograms and its ability to launch 140 kilograms to 1000 kilometers on a suborbital flight. That shows how much more difficult it is to put an object into orbit than it is to merely send it into space.
Make it small Japan!
Kim Jong Un would like to buy some
... miniaturization.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The Japanese satellite contained a 27-room luxury capsule hotel -- with a spectacular view of Japan, every 92 minutes.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Scott Manley is a great youtube commentator on space stuff. Last year he made a video on the smallest orbital rockets.
Since then, Electron and now SS-520 have orbited satellites, so it is a little out of date. He starts with the Electron and talks about the previous SS-520 launch is covered at 4m40s. Numerous other rockets get a mention.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
That rocket is seriously tiny for what it accomplished.
Pretty impressive.
Why not to design the satellite as some sort of long cilindre and to use a militar converted jet to carry it "near" the atmosphere limit and just to send it the remaining distance as a missile? You can take a lot of decisions, even to return home if the conditions are not optimal, and the sending device is 100% reusable without almost no effort.
Fire up KSP with Realism Overhaul/Real Solar System and you will become intimately familiar with why it is so difficult to get stuff into orbit.
You are right, there must be a different motivator in the sub-orbital range.
I hear they have a lot of little rockets over there, so I would expect them to hold the record...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
4 kg sounds like a rounding error. Is there typically some kind of safety margin on these max payload numbers? For something advertised to be able to lift thousands of kgs, having a payload come under that value would seem be intuitively safer - if the rocket was built 10kg heavier than mean, or some nozzle gives 1% less thrust than expected, you'd still have confidence the payload would reach it's intended orbit.
But 4 kg? How tightly do they have to control the manufacturing and system output before any production errors/weather/butterfly-flapping-its-wings ends up overwhelming any orbital delivery capacity?
While I can understand some approximation error, the math should still stand unharmed!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
North Korea has a launch platform (the Hwasong 15) which can move a tonne and weighs over 71 tonnes.
Japan has something that can drop 140Kg objects on Pyong-Yang and weighs 2.6 tonnes. That's something you could build into a launch platform on the back of a semi-trailer. (mobile, difficult to identify until in launch mode, etc.)
If the Japanese can make one - they can also make lots.
This is something that - if a military weapon (just conjecture here) North Korea could not block from getting through. Kind of a non-deterrent deterrent. here is no need to drop massive weapons on NK - it would create too much of a mess and any fallout would spread over Japan and its allies in the region. Something small enough to target a nuclear plant or other military target would be enough.
$500K to launch a 3U cubesat into space? Too expensive. Be re-usable or bust.
Suborbital just means 2000 km/h or so. Orbital means 27,000 km/h - that is more than 10 times as fast. When Bezoz launches suborbital he goes vertical, a missile is launched mostly upwards, and when an orbital rocket/spaceshuttle goes up it tips almost horizontal within a minute of launch - most of the velocity is going eastward (or southward from polar orbits), not upwards. Watch the speed and height numbers in any SpaceX launch.
Thatâ(TM)s 2.6 tons you imperialist weirdos.
"The assembled rocket weighed a mere 2600 kilograms [2.87 tons]" You meant 2600kg = 2.6 ton, clearly?
Really, JAXA has done something cool here, and the only context people can think of it in is nukes?
Nukes are the elephant in the room when it comes to orbital class and ballistic missiles. The reason people freaked out about Sputnik wasn't because people were saying "wow, look at the new options for communications!" No, it was because a missile that can launch a comsat can also carry a warhead and put it anywhere on the globe under an hour. It's dual use technology so we HAVE to consider the military applications whether we want to or not. If Japan can build one of these then (theoretically) so can North Korea or ISIS or some other group that currently lacks a warhead delivery system. And that is a BIG problem because the more nation states or terrorist groups that have these the more likely it is that some lunatic will actually put a warhead on one and use it. It's bad enough when it was just a few large nation states in a Mexican standoff.
...they change shape into that of tiny robots! "Orbitbots, TRANSFORM!" Khee khah hkah khoo khoo...
Although to be honest, the Vanguard rocket was heavier, and the satellite smaller.