A lot of the bloom has gone off Musk's rose for me. I really don't wish him any harm and I really admire his accomplishments with SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla, et. al. but I've just grown tired of the "Look at me! I'm Elon Musk!" deal, not to mention, the more stuff that comes out on his personal life, the less admirable he seems to be. While I reiterate, I don't wish him any harm, I will take some amusement at watching him squirm, especially as he tries to wiggle out of the corner into which he painted himself with Twitter.
SpaceX and Jared Isaacman (of Inspiration 4 fame) are reported to be volunteering to cover the cost of a SpaceX mission to reboost and possibly service the Hubble Space Telescope, which should keep it running through the end of the decade. https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1575585052963966977
Nicole Mann will become first Native woman to go to space with latest SpaceX mission Launch is scheduled for today and also has a Russian cosmonaut onboard.
SpaceX has had to scrub their launch for today and things might be getting a bit uncomfortable on the ol' ISS. Two of the Soyuz capsules currently (or recently, not sure if they're still there or not) have lost all their coolant and so are useless. The Russians just sent up a replacement but if it were me, I'd probably not want to ride that thing home.
Tomorrow's the next launch attempt. https://twitter.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1630902576584486912?s=20
It went well, only anomaly was a primary hatch hook motor wasn't working right, so they successfully switched to its backup. The hatch hooks not only keep the hatch shut (for launch and reentry), they're also part of the docking system.
Satellite Swarms Like SpaceX’s Starlink Are Increasingly Spoiling Hubble Telescope Images Don't make the space nerds angry, Elon. You wouldn't like them when they're angry.
Starship may launch in a week or two. https://arstechnica.com/science/202...ady-to-fly-just-waiting-for-a-launch-license/
Watch Live as SpaceX Attempts First Launch of Starship Megarocket Scheduled from about 5 hours from now.
The best news is that it didn't blow up on the pad. But boy did it do a lot of damage on the way up. It excavated a LARGE crater underneath the launch mount (hey Elon, maybe rethink the lack of flame trench), the flying concrete from which did severe damage to multiple water tanks, and punctured the outer insulation jacket on a LOX tank. I don't think they'll be flying from there for months. They're going to not only need to rebuild, but to make sure that excavation doesn't happen again. There were 3 engines out initially and 2 more shut off in flight (the fact that it could launch and not hit the tower on the way up, with 3 unbalanced engines out, is a testament to SpaceX's engineers' skill). It's not clear whether the 2 subsequent engines failed or were turned off; could be either one. Then it lost both hydraulic power units. That's believed to be why stage separation didn't happen. Then the flight termination system engaged and it blew up. The good news is that the next boosters have eschewed hydraulics for electrics, so those systems should be less failure-prone. Starship also survived max Q, albeit probably a lower max Q than if it had had all 33 engines firing.
A friend from the local paper was there covering it. Screenshots from Instagram, so the quality isn't all that great. 800mm Canon lens.
As a NASA official, Lueders also selected Starship for a $2.89 billion contract to use the megarocket in landing humans on the Moon for the Artemis 3 mission, and then again for Artemis 4 in 2028, under a separate $1.15 billion contract signed last year. This doesn't seem like a conflict of interest at all...
The Euclid Telescope was launched on a Falcon 9, which has now had over 200 booster landings over 240 flights (most of the boosters that didn't land were before they were trying to land them or were intentionally expended; there have only been a handful of landing failures).
