[Launch Alert] Vandenberg AFB Launch Schedule
Launch Alert
launch-alert at mailman.qth.net
Tue May 1 22:07:13 EDT 2012
LAUNCH ALERT
Brian Webb
Ventura County, California
launch-alert-editor at earthlink.net
www.spacearchive.info
2012 May 1 (Tuesday) 18:51 PDT
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VANDENBERG AFB LAUNCH SCHEDULE
As of 2012 May 1
Launch
Time/Window
Date (PST/PDT) Vehicle Pad/Silo
-------- ----------------- ------------- --------
MAY 16 To be announced Minuteman III ---
Test launch. The Defense Department may release some details about the
launch a few days in advance.
AUG 2 To be announced Atlas V SLC-3E
Vehicle will launch the classified NROL-36 payload for the U.S.
National Reconnaissance Office. The vehicle will also reportedly carry
the following secondary payloads: CINEMA (Cubesat for Ion, Neutral,
Electron, Magnetic fields), University of California Berkeley; CSSWE
(Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment), University of Colorado at
Boulder; CP5, California Polytechnic University; CXBN (Cosmic X-ray
Background Nanosat) Morehead State University; ORSES (ORS Enabler
Satellite), U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command; Aeneas,
Department of Homeland Security/University of Southern California;
Horus, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Re, Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory; and three Aerocube spacecraft.
DEC 1 06:32:24-06:37:24 Pegasus XL N/A
Vehicle will be air-dropped from an L-1011 jumbo jet flying offshore.
The aircraft will be staged from Vandenberg AFB. Launch occurs shortly
before sunrise and may create a weak Twilight Effect as exhaust at
high altitude is illuminated by the Sun
2012 To be announced Falcon 9 SLC-4E
Vehicle will launch a payload for MDA Corp. (Canada)
2012 To be announced Falcon Heavy SLC-4E
Falcon Heavy demonstration flight
The above schedule is a composite of unclassified information
approved for public release from government, industry, and other
sources. It represents the Editor's best effort to produce a schedule,
but may disagree with other sources. Details on military launches are
withheld until they are approved for public release. For official
information regarding Vandenberg AFB activities, go to
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil.
All launch dates and times are given in Pacific Time using a 24-hour
format similar to military time (midnight = 00:00, 1:00 p.m. = 13:00,
11:00 p.m. = 23:00, etc.).
The dates and times in this schedule may not agree with those on other
online launch schedules, including the official Vandenberg AFB
schedule because different sources were used, the information was
interpreted differently, and the schedules were updated at different
times.
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ANACAPA SCHOOL CLUB TO LAUNCH ITS SECOND NEAR SPACE PROBE
High school students combine homebrew electronics and wireless
communications to send back images and data from the edge of space
ANSEC Media Release
2012 May 1
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. The Anacapa Near Space Exploration Club (ANSEC)
at Anacapa School will reach for the stars once again with its second
near space probe, Anacapa Amateur High-Altitude Balloon 2 (AAHAB-2).
Last year, the high school club sent a payload of sensors and a camera
to 91,122 feet above California's Central Coast and recovered it
successfully. This year, the team has set even more ambitious goals
including a live video downlink, high-definition recording, radiation
sensors and live radio telemetry.
AAHAB-2 was designed and built entirely by Anacapa students Grayson
Baggiolini, Julio Bernal, Alex Carlson, Christian Eckert and
Genevieve Hatfield under the supervision of their faculty advisor
Levi Maaia. The team has been working on the project since the
beginning of the school year. If all goes according to plan, the
students will launch the probe in the early morning hours of Saturday,
May 5th.
"We are hoping the winds will cooperate and we will be able to launch
from West Beach in Santa Barbara," said Carlson, an 18-year-old senior
and the mission's flight director. "However, if the weather models
call for a southerly flow, we may have to use an alternate launch
site near Paso Robles."
Carlson, along with Hatfield, a 15-year-old sophomore, studied for
and passed the Federal Communications Commission exam for their
amateur radio licenses. This certification allows the group access to
special wireless spectrum allocations reserved for radio
experimentation and scientific purposes. By building off ANSEC's
inaugural AAHAB-1 probe, the AAHAB-2 team is hoping to downlink live
video and atmospheric data from the probe throughout its two- to
three-hour flight through the stratosphere and into the freezing,
dark daytime skies of near space.
Despite the diversity of systems and the complexity of the
electronics on board, the budget for the entire project was less than
$2,000, a figure made possible by the students' efficient design and
technical ingenuity. For 11th graders Bernal, 17 and Eckert,16, this
is the second high-altitude probe project they have been part of at
Anacapa.
"Last year, I mainly worked on the capsule design," explained Bernal.
"This year, I really wanted to learn about the electronics, so I built
an electronic Geiger counter to measure and record radiation levels
throughout the flight."
During Saturday's flight, the students, as well as amateur
balloonists and radio enthusiasts around the country, will track the
craft's progress using data received through the Automatic Position
Reporting System (APRS), a worldwide digital wireless system which
can receive digital radio signals in places where cellular phones and
traditional Wi-Fi cannot.
More information, including links to live flight tracking on Google
Maps and the group's Facebook page, can be found online at
www.anacapaschool.org/ansec.
Anacapa School is an independent, co-educational, WASC-accredited,
college preparatory day school for students in grades 7-12. Founded
in 1981 by Headmaster Gordon Sichi, Anacapa enjoys the best
student-teacher ratio of any school, public or private, in Santa
Barbara at its historic campus located in the heart of the Santa
Barbara civic center.
# # #
Editor's Note:
This extreme altitude balloon will use the following amateur radio
frequencies:
144.39 MHz APRS and weather downlink (callsign may be KJ6UGF-11)
2441.5 MHz Live TV downlink
The amateur radio operators involved with this project are Alex
Carlson, KJ6UGF; Genevieve Hatfield, KJ6UGH; and Levi Maaia, K6LCM.
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