Third time’s the charm (of sorts) for SpaceX’s Starship, which soared over the Gulf of Mexico Thursday morning during its third flight test.
Category: space travel – Page 54
Voyager 1 Sputters Back to Life
Posted in space travel
An engineer with the Deep Space Network figured out a way to decode a mysterious “new signal” coming from NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft.
SpaceX is continuing to make progress on the development of Starship, the largest rocket ever built, with the third test flight Thursday accomplishing considerably more than the previous two tests.
The 400-foot-tall Starship rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southeastern Texas at 8:25 a.m. local time. Although SpaceX has been developing Starship for years, this is only the third time the company has attempted an orbital mission.
After liftoff, Starship proceeded through a nominal — aerospace speak for normal — ascend. All 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster performed as designed, and the two stages separated around 2 minutes 45 seconds into the mission. Critically, the launch vehicle nailed a novel stage separation technique called “hot staging,” where the upper stage (also called Starship) lights its engines to push away the Super Heavy booster. The hot-staging technique was performed for the first time, ever, during the second Starship test flight last November.
[TIME SUBJECT TO CHANGE] This is the third fully integrated full stack test flight of Starship and the mighty Super Heavy booster, the largest and most powerful rocket to ever fly. It produces over twice as much thrust as the Saturn V that took humans to the moon.
The goal of the test is to get further along than IFT-2 in November, 2023, which didn’t see either the ship or the booster make it to reentry. If all goes well, Starship will re-enter in the Indian Ocean about 65 minutes after it lifts off from Starbase, TX, on a suborbital trajectory.
This test features a few new things like opening and closing a small payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration and a Raptor engine relight demonstration.
Want more information? Check out our Prelaunch Preview written by Austin Desisto — https://everydayastronaut.com/starship-superheavy-integrated-flight-test-3/
Want to know where to watch this live? I made a video on how to visit Starbase and where to watch a launch from — https://youtu.be/aWvHrih-Juk.
Learn more about Everyday Astronaut Mission Control by Guinn Partners! — http://guinnpartners.com.
SpaceX is targeting Thursday for the third flight of Starship. The license from the FAA was acquired. The flight will feature several upgrades to Booster and Ship, as well as a modification of the flight path to the Indian Ocean, instead of Hawaii. In space, SpaceX plans to demonstrate the payload dispenser door, and the capability to relight a Raptor in Space. Additionally, SpaceX wants to demonstrate the capability of in-space cryogenic propellant transfer.
The mission will attempt a soft splashdown of Booster 10 in the Gulf of Mexico, and a splashdown of Ship 28 in the Indian Ocean.
Window Opens: March 14th at 7:00AM CDT (12:00 UTC)
Window Closes: March 14th at 9:00AM CDT (14:00 UTC)
Mission: Starship’s third fully integrated test flight.
Vehicles: Booster 10 and Ship 28
Booster Recovery: Booster will attempt a soft splashdown ~20km offshore simulating a landing back on the chopsticks.
Ship Recovery: Ship will not be recovered but will attempt a controlled reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Stats:
· SpaceX’s 26th launch of the year and the 7th launch of the month.
· SpaceX’s 3rd space launch from Starbase.
Forum link: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/ind…
SpaceX’s launch page: https://www.spacex.com/launches/missi…
NSF Starship merch: https://shop.nasaspaceflight.com/coll…
⚡ Become a member of NASASpaceflight’s channel for exclusive discord access, fast turnaround clips, and other exclusive benefits. Your support helps us continue our 24/7 coverage. ⚡
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is teaming up with Larry Ellison’s Oracle to help farms plan and predict their agricultural output using an AI tool.
Larry Ellison said on Oracle’s earnings call on Monday that it’s collaborating with Musk and SpaceX to create the AI-powered mapping application for governments. The tool creates a map of a country’s farms and shows what each of them is growing.
The Oracle executive chairman said the tool could help farms assess the steps needed to increase their output, and whether fields had enough water and nitrogen.
SpaceX will launch Starship early Thursday after receiving the green light from U.S. regulators.
Do we have enough fuel to get to our destination? This is probably one of the first questions that comes to mind whenever your family gets ready to embark on a road trip. If the trip is long, you will need to visit gas stations along your route to refuel during your travel.
NASA is grappling with similar issues as it gets ready to embark on a sustainable mission back to the moon and plans future missions to Mars. But while your car’s fuel is gasoline, which can be safely and indefinitely stored as a liquid in the car’s gas tank, spacecraft fuels are volatile cryogenic liquid propellants that must be maintained at extremely low temperatures and guarded from environmental heat leaks into the spacecraft’s propellant tank.
And while there is already an established network of commercial gas stations in place to make refueling your car a cinch, there are no cryogenic refueling stations or depots at the moon or on the way to Mars.
The third orbital test flight of the 400-foot-tall megarocket could launch at around 8 a.m. EDT.