Roman and Meteosat advance to launch as Chang'e-7 misses its window
Roman and MTG-I2 entered final preparations in the same week, while China's Chang'e-7 lunar south-pole mission was postponed over unspecified launch conditions.
Science··Evening
Roman is cleared for an August 30 launch
NASA, the Roman project and SpaceX completed the Flight Readiness Review at Kennedy Space Center. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch no earlier than 07.26 EDT on August 30 aboard Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A. The encapsulated observatory is moving to SpaceX's hangar before integration with the rocket. After commissioning at the Sun-Earth L2 point, Roman will investigate dark energy's history, search for exoplanets through microlensing and survey much wider areas of sky at Hubble-class resolution.[1]
MTG-I2 prepares for Ariane 6's farthest flight
ESA scheduled MTG-I2 to launch on Ariane 6 from French Guiana on August 27. The satellite will join MTG-I1 at an altitude of thirty-six thousand kilometres, completing a new imager pair for Europe and northern Africa. Its Flexible Combined Imager will scan Europe every 2.5 minutes, while the Lightning Imager will provide continuous space-based lightning observations for the continent. Flight VA270 will be Ariane 6's ninth launch and its first mission to geostationary transfer orbit.[2]
No new date has been set for Chang'e-7
China's space agency said Chang'e-7 did not meet the conditions required for its August 23-25 launch window. No new date was given for the mission, which is intended to travel aboard Long March 5 and search for water ice near the Moon's south pole. The agency did not identify the unmet conditions and did not connect the postponement to the Long March 7A that broke up after launching from the same Wenchang site two weeks earlier. The mission objective remains, but its schedule is now open.[3]
