2022 – Page 64 – Spaceflight Now

SpaceX’s first launch of 2022 will deploy more Starlink internet satellites

January 2, 2022 Stephen Clark

SpaceX plans to kick off its 2022 launch schedule with a Falcon 9 rocket flight Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center with the company’s next group of Starlink internet satellites. In a change from previous Starlink missions, the Falcon 9 rocket will fly southeast from the coast of Florida on a course just north of the Bahamas to place the new batch of internet satellites into low Earth orbit a few hundred miles above Earth.

Engineers taking more time to assess Webb’s behavior in space before continuing deployments

January 2, 2022 William Harwood

Engineers activating the James Webb Space Telescope decided Sunday to hold off tightening up the observatory’s critical sunshade to allow more time to check out the performance of its power systems and overall behavior now that several major deployments are complete.

Webb telescope unfurls diamond-shaped sunshield

January 1, 2022 Stephen Clark

Flying outbound from Earth at a distance of more than 400,000 miles, the James Webb Space Telescope extended two booms Friday and unfurled the mission’s five-layer sunshield to the size of a tennis court, notching a major milestone for the observatory after a nail-biting New Year’s Eve for astronomers and engineers on Earth.