A nice video of a news conference with the 2 astronauts of the DM-2 mission and with Jim Bridenstine and Elon Musk.
A lot of praise for SpaceX. They said on a test mission like this a number of anomalies are expected. But the mission went smooth way beyond the most optimistic expectations, nearly flawless.
They said they usually experienced more anomalies even on the last Spaceshuttle flights despite the fact they improved operations over more than 100 flights.
The short presentation of Elon Musk. He was extremely happy to have flown the first humans to space after 18 years of work.
"don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence"
The scramble for space at Earth’s outer limits
Good link ... SpaceX, Amazon, Facebook satellites scramble for space at Earth's outer limits - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Next launch of almost 60 sats for the Starlink constellation in a few minutes.
Will write a little more about it soon. The Kessler syndrome is a real risk though people have different opinions on the likelihood. Starlink is coming online for customer service very soon and is exciting for those who can not get good service now in remote areas.
BTW this was the fifth flight of this Falcon 9 booster and it s fifth successful landing. So it can be used for the sixth time again. Waiting for the fairings to come down and hopefully be caught in the nets of 2 recovery ships.
Jules Verne, so many foreseeing and enlightening reading, whilst not boring (langweilig). Do the present youth know something about him?
Some info on Starlink
SpaceX is designing and deploying a constellation of satellites to bring internet access to every location on Earth. They have been working on it for over 2 years now and received the license from the FCC, the US authority for use of frequencies, on Earth and in space.
One photo of the latest set of satellites launched just a few days ago.
This is how I saw it this night myself. The satellites will spread out in their orbit over the next few weeks.
The first beta test of operations has begun with some selected people, mostly SpaceX employees. A wider beta test is coming in a few month. Maybe already by end of this year the first operational service will be provided. Initially in the northern US and in Canada. With more satellites deployed service will become available worldwide. They are presently at app. 500 satellites. Their planned first constellation is going to be 12,000. Possibly extended to over 50,000 when there is sufficient demand, quite likely IMO.
Initially SpaceX is planning to serve individual non commercial end users. SpaceX has developed and is now building the user terminals. Experts say such terminals may cost $5000 or more, not less. Elon Musk has said they aim for an end user price of 300 or less.
A picture of antenna and internet router from an early beta user. This was not supposed to become public. SpaceX tried to recall them but of course once they are out in the open that is impossible.
In her hand the internet router, produced for SpaceX in Taiwan. What looks like a small table is the antenna. Developed and built by SpaceX. It is the secret sauce, they don't want to give it out of their hand. It is a phased array antenna. It can receive and transmit spot beams tracking a satellite that moves fast overhead without being mechanically moved, all electronic steering. Once a sat gets out of reach, it can switch to another satellite so fast that the user does not experience any service interruption. This kind of antenna makes the new LEO Low Earth Orbit satellite constellations possible.
Some more info coming from a conversation between SpaceX and the FCC.
Within 2 years SpaceX has designed the satellites, built a factory and is presently producing 120 satellites per month.
They have designed and built the antenna and is presently producing several thousand a month in their factory in Hawthorne, Los Angeles. They are in the process of ramping up production to much higher output. They have a license for operating 1 million of them in the US and requested upgrading the license to 5 million in the US alone. To go worldwide they will need to produce millions of them every year. They have hired the development team for the electronics from another company. That company had attempted to design phase shift arrays but had given up on it. That team of specialists was not fired but they felt out of place and, knowing SpaceX needed that tech, applied for a job there. At least that is the official story. The company sued SpaceX for poaching the team but was rejected for the above reason.
Almost shocking, SpaceX has spent less than $1 billion on the project yet and are already close to offering initial service. I don't think anybody else can copy that for $2 billion, not only because SpaceX has access to cheap launch.
Last edited by Takeovers; 08-08-2020 at 11:32 PM.
There are plans for a number of other constellations.
For sure China is planning one.
Amazon has very recently received a FCC license for their constellation called Kuiper. They plan to invest at least $10 billion.
Greg Wyler has started the One Web constellation but recently went bankrupt after spending over $3 billion and was nowhere near ready to offer service. He too had announced to service private end users but gave up that plan because he was not able to develop suitable user terminals and then wanted to concentrate on commercial users. After going chapter 11 bankrupt it was bought for $1 billion from an Indian telecom company and the British government in equal parts. GB wants to model it into a GPS system after they were pushed out of the european GPS consortium. Never mind that the british space agency told the government this will not work. Of course we can assume that it is a sheer coincidence that the government minister who pushed the purchase through against advice and without consulting parliament is British Citizen but of Indian descent. Somewhat ironic that the rule they were pushed out under was introduced by GB when they were EU member, a rule that members have to be EU members.
Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is an "ocean world" with a big reservoir of salty water under its frigid surface, scientists said in findings that raise interest in this dwarf planet as a possible outpost for life.
Research published Monday based on data obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which flew as close as 35 kilometres from the surface in 2018, provides a new understanding of Ceres, including evidence indicating it remains geologically active with cryovolcanism — volcanoes oozing icy material.
The findings confirm the presence of a subsurface reservoir of brine — salt-enriched water — remnants of a vast subsurface ocean that has been gradually freezing.
"This elevates Ceres to 'ocean world' status, noting that this category does not require the ocean to be global," said planetary scientist and Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond. "In the case of Ceres, we know the liquid reservoir is regional scale but we cannot tell for sure that it is global. However, what matters most is that there is liquid on a large scale."
Ceres has a diameter of about 950 kilometres. The scientists focused on the 92-kilometre-wide Occator Crater, formed by an impact about 22 million years ago in Ceres's northern hemisphere. It has two bright areas — salt crusts left by liquid that percolated up to the surface and evaporated.
The liquid, they concluded, originated in a brine reservoir hundreds of kilometres wide lurking about 40 kilometres below the surface, with the impact creating fractures allowing the salty water to escape.
The research was published in the journals Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience and Nature Communications.
Space News thread
Maybe a refueling stop to the outer planets someday.
They could build a sort of "Space Motorway Services" there with crusty sandwiches, cold coffee, a tobacconists and filthy toilets with broken locks on the doors.
And a McDonalds. Oh and a gift shop selling traditional tartan shortbread and witty "I've seen Uranus" keyrings.
Spare a thought for the ISS staff, confined to the Russian bit for the weekend while they try and narrow down a leak. Like a space Bortsch and Tears.
ISS Crew Temporarily Confined to Russian Module as Engineers Hunt for Pesky Air Leak
It is a very minor issue, unlike the hole in a Soyuz. It has actually been known for over a year but they were too busy to do anything about it. Right now they have found the time. They close all hatches in the ISS confine themselves in one module and wait, in which of the modules the air pressure drops. They chose a module close to the 2 Soyuz capsules which act as life boats in case of a real emergency.
Presumably prior to flying to the ISS all are tested for any virus infections?
A beautiful video of catching a fairing half after coming down from space. It almost looks like bad CGI, too smooth to be real. But it is real.
It is still hard and the successrate is not high. This time they caught 1 out of 2. They fished the second one out of the water and it can be reused too, but after more work on it.
Right in the sweet spot as well.
Jesus that fucking lift music though...
The confinement has ended. The result is inconclusive. None of the isolated modules has registered unusual losses. So either the loss was due to false measurements or it is the result of adding up a number of extremely small losses over all modules. After all the ISS and all those seals are not getting any younger over the years.
BTW when the unmanned test vehicle of SpaceX, the DM-1 Dragon docked to the ISS, the Russian instruments documented a rise in some chemical compound, I believe methanol. They made some fuzz out of it over the safety of Dragon. A short time later that instrument failed. It was now replaced and no trace of that compound can be found.
An update on the Mars missions. The probes are all on their way and quite close together on interplanetary scale. Still huge distances.
All 4 probes are in the magenta square.
Some course corrections have been made. There are several course corrections during flight. Early corrections require less delta-v for the same total correction but are less precise. So a few more corrections while getting closer to Mars for the most precise injection into their target trajectory.
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