CubeSat Launch Visible Around U.S. East Coast Tonight

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Brad Lendon reports at CNN that 29 satellites, the most ever launched at one time, will be aboard a single Minotaur I rocket scheduled to lift off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia Tuesday night at 7:30 pm. The main payload will be the Air Force's Space Test Program Satellite-3, plus 28 tiny satellites called CubeSats about 4 inches on each side, weighing about 3 pounds and with a volume of about a quart. The cubesats will include Ho`oponopono-2 from the University of Hawaii to continue a long-existing radar calibration service for the 80 plus C-band radar tracking stations distributed around the world. It will also have CAPE-2 from the Cajun Advanced Picosatellite Experiment, to give students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette the opportunity to research, design, develop, and maintain a low earth orbiting satellite, and SwampSat from the University of Florida to advance the TRL (Technology Readiness Level) of CMGs (Control Moment Gyroscopes) appropriate for smallsats. Among the CubeSats is the TJ3Sat, the first satellite made by high-schoolers to go into space, built by the students of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. It will give students and other amateur radio users the opportunity to send and receive data from the satellite. Approved text strings will be transmitted to the satellite, and the resulting voice interpretation will be relayed back to Earth over an amateur radio frequency using the onboard Stensat radio. Orbital says the 29 satellites should achieve orbit in a little less than 12½ minutes after the rocket ignites. NASA says the launch may be visible from northern Florida to southern Canada and as far west as Indiana. Live coverage of the launch is available via UStream beginning at 6:30 p.m. EST on launch day."

Rocket sighted from New Jersey

[j_presper_eckert]

Clearly visible from my selected seashore town in southern New Jersey. I could not make out the exhaust trail due to some ultra-local light pollution (fortunately not TOO overpowering), but the engine glow itself was visible the entire time. I had a cloudless night here that was just too good to waste by not going for a drive this evening to "be there in person".

From a distance of roughly 80 miles from Wallops Island, the light was a visible circle (not a mere point-source) and strongly resembled the somewhat faint orange glow of a lit cigarette in a darkened room. From this vantage point, it did not shrink to a point until nearly 2 to 2.5 minutes after my first sighting

While the rocket was on its way, It was really nice to be talking to a friend on the phone who was viewing the live webcast on his computer. This gave me basically realtime intel on when each engine stage was shut down and the next one was ignited -- I could actually see the glow temporarily darken, then brighten again several seconds later. All in all, a very enjoyable experience despite my inability to be any closer to the launch site.

I'm extremely impressed that it was clearly visible from Toronto, eh! :)