After a few days of delays, it appears that SpaceX is set to launch on Thursday, January 7, for the first of several dozen Falcon 9 launches planned for 2021.
The Turksat 5A communications satellite launcher from SpaceX, which was originally scheduled to launch on January 4, was launched on January 1 ‘TBD due to a mission insurance’ – an unfortunate euphemism often used by launch providers instead of any actual explanation for delays. Either way, Next Spaceflight reports that Turksat 5A will be the fourth launch of Falcon 9 B1060, a milestone that reached the first phase (booster) only six months after its first flight.
Despite the slight delay, SpaceX’s current target of four launches this month is still well within reach, although the strip is an example of the uphill battle the company is facing, as it wants the goal of CEO Elon Musk reach 48 launches in 2021. The weather is currently 60% favorable for SpaceX’s first launch of the year, and Turksat 5A will launch on January 7 (08:28 UTC, January 8) no earlier than 20:28 EST.
Also a good timing – the 45th said that SpaceX’s next launch of Turksat ‘was placed on TBD due to mission insurance’.
– Emre Kelly (@EmreKelly) 1 January 2021
New forecast (60% favorable) and danger area: pic.twitter.com/cEapdSd2DP
– Emre Kelly (@EmreKelly) 5 January 2021
Unfortunately, SpaceX’s first launch of the new year was drenched in unprecedented controversy for the company, including the very first case of mass protests at the factory and headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The reason: Turksat 5A, although partly intended for civilian communication, will also support the Turkish army, which supported Azerbaijan after the country re-established a long provocative conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in September 2020.
Due to events that have taken place over the past few centuries, the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and the Turkish involvement are extremely complicated and confusing. In the 1910s and 1920s, Turkey (then the Ottoman Empire) committed notorious atrocities against Armenian, Assyrian and Greek communities within its occupied territory in a process of “Turkification”, which systematically killed 1-3 million people in what eventually became a would become genocide. . In a separate but related conflict, Turkey finally chose to support Azerbaijan’s claim to the ethnic (75-90%) and historically Armenian territory, and to support the country against Armenia in the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the nineties.
Azerbaijan redesigned the conflict in 2020, leading to the deaths of at least 6,000 fighters and civilians on both sides and eventually securing a significant portion of the Nagorno-Karabakh territory as part of a ceasefire agreement in November 2020. to some extent Nagorno-Karabakh’s borders are now more or less back to where they were before the first war in the 1990s. Although a inevitable loss of life is inherently regrettable, it is extremely difficult to say whether Azerbaijan was justified, but it and Turkey’s history of systematic and discriminatory hostility towards Armenians do not leave much doubt.
Ultimately, the cloud of ambiguity makes it difficult to blame SpaceX directly for choosing to launch Turksat 5A or for its contracts to launch Turksat 5B and future domestic satellites. Furthermore, as SpaceX must criticized for willingly launching the satellite, Airbus – which was contracted by Turkey to build Turksat 5A – is at least as critically worthy, but should not be included in protest talks at all, despite the fact that Turkey’s production contract in 2017 was publicly announced.
In the history of spaceflight, a satellite completed but never launched is unheard of, as the inherent bureaucratic and financial inertia behind a launch campaign just months away from the scheduled lifting is, of course, enormous. Even if SpaceX accepted large financial penalties and withdrew from its contract, Arianespace, Roscosmos or ULA would certainly accept any replacement contract.
For protesters who still want to make an impact, the shrewd move to draw attention to future Turkish satellite projects such as Turksat 5B, 6A, and beyond, with the aim of killing contracts in the cradle – is a much more sustainable goal.
Stay tuned for more launch details as SpaceX approaches its first 2021 mission.