Space In General

[coryclifford]

Got the international space station. Zoom in to the small dot. Columbus Ohio 8:10 pm or so

 

[CodeRedR51]

Crew 5 launch stream.

 

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[CodeRedR51]

Booster 7 has returned to the launch facility at Starbase. We are very close to the first orbital flight attempt. Next steps are a full stack wet dress with S24 stacked on top, and a full 33 engine static fire.



Edit: already preparing to lift.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Absolutely EPIC shots from tonight's SpaceX launch. Twilight launches are always a treat and this one did not disappoint. (14th launch for this booster by the way)

2nd stage and launch plume visible from the drone ship.

And the launch plume from the drone ship after the 1st stage landing.

Here's the video if you want to see it in motion:

 

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[CodeRedR51]

Booster 7 was lifted onto the launch mount this morning. Assuming there's no major reason to remove it manually, the next time it leaves should be with a Starship on top on its way to space...

 

[CodeRedR51]

Starship 24 up next.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Lift happening right now as I type this.

 

[EngieDiesel]

A study suspects that the thing that killed the chances of life on Mars... was life appearing on Mars.

Microbes took hold and acted the same way they did on Earth, consuming hydrogen and expelling methane. But as Mars is farther away from the sun and had a higher carbon dioxide content than Earth's atmosphere, replacing the hydrogen with methane reduced Mars' ability to retain heat in the atmosphere and eventually made survival on the surface impossible.

Goes to show just how precise conditions need to be for life (as we know it, anyway) to actually succeed.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Official SpaceX video of the full launch and landing from the drone ship.



Edit:

 

[EngieDiesel]

Operation Swift Kick in the Asteroid is confirmed a success, as the orbit of Dimorphos around its binary partner Didymos has been shortened by over 30 minutes thanks to the trajectory change caused by DART smacking into it.

Picture from Hubble, showing debris streaming off Dimorphos after the impact:

So provided we spot any potential doombringers before they get too close, it's entirely feasible we can bonk them into a less dangerous path without waiting for Bruce Willis to assemble his team of maverick astronauts or president Morgan Freeman to give an inspiring speech about the power of the human spirit.

 

[CodeRedR51]

 

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[CodeRedR51]

Heads up to those in the south east region of the US.

 

[EngieDiesel]

With all the talk about Mars, let's not forget that there are a bunch of other planets with potentially amazing stuff on them. Next year, Venus is the new hotness.

Like, literally. It's 475 degrees Celsius there. And if the theory ends up being true that the phosphine they detected is a sign of microbial life living in the nasty acidic atmosphere out there... well, that'd be some weird, wild stuff right there.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Busiest space launch company in the business brings back 4 astronauts from the ISS today and then promptly completes another successful flight on the same day.



And still the only one landing and reusing boosters...



Next up this month: x2 Starlink launches and a Falcon Heavy! Finally!

 

[EngieDiesel]

In less successful rocketry news, JAXA had to detonate an Epsilon rocket yesterday that went off course during its first stage, taking 8 satellites with it. It's the first failed launch Japan has had since 2003. Officials suspect a "spin motor" (as the Google translated version of the NHK article calls it) went awry during launch.

What was supposed to happen...


And Skyrora, the Scottish startup, had the test flight of its Skylark L rocket end with a malfunction and it went ker-sploosh in the Norwegian sea not far from the launch site. Investigation is ongoing as to what went wrong, though considering Skylark L is basically a sounding rocket meant to test things that will be used on the larger Skylark XL, this isn't exactly a doom and gloom scenario.


A flyover of Skyrora's mobile launch facility, at the time located in Langanes, Iceland

 

[Famine]

Officials suspect a "spin motor" (as the Google translated version of the NHK article calls it) went awry during launch.

It's also what's written in Japanese, in katakana (phonetic alphabet for non-native words): スピンモータ = supinmota. I'm not familiar with Epsilon, but spin motors are pretty much what they sound like, providing rotation to orient or correct orientation of the rocket about the third axis - although from recollection they're usually on second/third stages because orientation doesn't matter so much as two-axis stablisation.

Maybe an upper stage item fired early and incorrectly, making the rocket go all spinny?

 

[EngieDiesel]

It's also what's written in Japanese, in katakana (phonetic alphabet for non-native words): スピンモータ = supinmota. I'm not familiar with Epsilon, but spin motors are pretty much what they sound like, providing rotation to orient or correct orientation of the rocket about the third axis - although from recollection they're usually on second/third stages because orientation doesn't matter so much as two-axis stablisation.

Maybe an upper stage item fired early and incorrectly, making the rocket go all spinny?

The translated article says that the motor was operating just before the seperation was supposed to happen, so I'm guessing that's the case; it either fired off too soon or too much and sent the rocket off course to the point it was unrecoverable.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Starship 24 was destacked from Booster 7 this morning. Likely for booster testing this week.

 

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[EngieDiesel]

McDivitt was also the lunar landing operations manager for Apollo 11, and would also be manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program as a whole for Apollo 12 through 16. He was also instrumental in pushing NASA to design the spacesuits that allowed for the first American spacewalk during the Gemini 4 mission, and the the photographer of said spacewalk giving us this iconic shot of Ed White above the Pacific Ocean:

 

[CodeRedR51]

Starship 25 about to make its way to the launch site here shortly.

 

[CodeRedR51]

SpaceX just lifted Starship 25 onto suborbital pad A, lifted Starship 24 onto Booster 7, and launched 54 Starlink satellites all in the span of a few minutes. Busy morning!

 

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[EngieDiesel]

Remember our old friend Curiosity? It finally made its way to the salt-enriched Mount Sharp region of Mars, setting a blistering pace time of... (checks TAG Heuer watch) ...10 years! Seriously though, it's believed this area had a significant water concentration once, which might give more clues to exactly what happened as the Martian climate changed and cooled off billions of years ago.

A panoramic view of Paraitepuy Pass, a rather tricky bit of Martian terrain to navigate and probably future site of Dakar Rally 2077


Also... mmm, giant space marshmallow...

 

[Joey D]

Remember our old friend Curiosity? It finally made its way to the salt-enriched Mount Sharp region of Mars, setting a blistering pace time of... (checks TAG Heuer watch) ...10 years! Seriously though, it's believed this area had a significant water concentration once, which might give more clues to exactly what happened as the Martian climate changed and cooled off billions of years ago.

A panoramic view of Paraitepuy Pass, a rather tricky bit of Martian terrain to navigate and probably future site of Dakar Rally 2077


Also... mmm, giant space marshmallow...

It's amazing how much Mars looks like the American Southwest. If you adjusted the brightness on that picture, you could probably tell people it was Utah or Arizona and they'd buy it.

 

[Brett]

Remember our old friend Curiosity? It finally made its way to the salt-enriched Mount Sharp region of Mars, setting a blistering pace time of... (checks TAG Heuer watch) ...10 years! Seriously though, it's believed this area had a significant water concentration once, which might give more clues to exactly what happened as the Martian climate changed and cooled off billions of years ago.

A panoramic view of Paraitepuy Pass, a rather tricky bit of Martian terrain to navigate and probably future site of Dakar Rally 2077


Also... mmm, giant space marshmallow...

It does not seem like ten years ago that I watched NASA's landing broadcast.