From Stephen Clark's pre-launch coverage for Spaceflight Now this morning: https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/30/spacex-launch-scrubbed-in-final-minute-of-countdown/ "An NRO spokesperson said Sunday that a commercial company, Ball Aerospace, booked the launch with SpaceX as part of a "delivery in orbit" contract with the NRO. Delivery in orbit typically describes an arrangement where a spacecraft manufacturer - in this case, apparently Boulder, Colorado-based Ball Aerospace - is in charge of all satellite preparations, the launch and in-orbit testing, before handing over control of the payload to the end user once it is operational in space." Initial impression: Ball's BCP 5000 bus seems relevant here: http://www.ball.com/aerospace/Aerospace/media/Aerospace/Downloads/BCP_SC_0916.pdf?ext=.pdf "Our BCP-5000 offers our highest performance, most capable spacecraft - DigitalGlobe's choice for WorldView-1, -2 and -3 space vehicles. This powerful spacecraft accommodates next-generation optical and synthetic aperture radar remote-sensing payloads. The BCP-5000 provides increased power in standard increments; higher agility with control moment gyros (CMGs) - providing rapid retargeting capability with stability for the finest-spatial-resolution payloads. The BCP-5000 is the quintessential choice for firm, fixed-priced spacecraft missions." An SAR version would make sense in a 50-60 deg orbit. This might well be the replacement or follow-on of USA 193. Ted Molczan _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-lReceived on Sun Apr 30 2017 - 15:52:02 UTC
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