Space News thread

[Takeovers]

The Israeli moon lander Beresheet is now approaching their landing




Life coverage of the landing on YouTube right now.

The probe was launched as a secondary payload with a geostationary com sat. It maneuvered itself from GTO - Geostationary Tranfer Orbit - to lunar orbit and will now attempt landing.

Edit: Problems with telemetry and the main engine during final descent. Landing failed.

Pep talk about trying again.

[Takeovers]

So what's up with the falcon heavy launch?

Want a really high resolution picture of Falcon Heavy with a lot of details? No point to putting this into the forum. You need to go to flickr and download the largest resolution

https://www.flickr.com/photos/spiel2001/46672109285/

[Takeovers]

Falcon Heavy has launched Arabsat. Complete mission success with the by far most capable presently existing rocket. Not counting systems that were cancelled.


launch


landing of the side boosters at the cape


landing of the central core almost 1000km downrange on the drone ship. Side info for that, the rocket booster does not target the ship. It targets a point in the ocean where the ship is supposed to be and the ship maintains that position using GPS. They do that precisely enough to land about 2m from the center of the target painted on the deck.



Satellite released into a nominal orbit


A view into the LOX tank

[David48atTD]

^ For who and what was the launched Satellite?

Scratch that request.

Just looked at the high res image and can see it's ARABSAT

[harrybarracuda]

The Israeli moon lander Beresheet is now approaching their landing
Edit: Problems with telemetry and the main engine during final descent. Landing failed.

So is the Beresheet in the woods?

[Luigi]

Whoops-a-Jewsy.

Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crash-lands on the moon

The small robotic spacecraft suffered periodic engine and communications failures during the 21 minutes of the landing sequence.

"We definitely crashed on surface of moon," said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division of Israel Aerospace Industries.

He said the spacecraft had scattered into pieces at the planned landing site.

Mr Doron explained that the spacecraft's engine turned off shortly before landing - and by the time power was restored, the craft was moving too fast to land safely.


https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-s...-moon-11691029

[Boon Mee]

Liked what Bibi said upon hearing the news that the lander had crashed: "Well, if at first you don't succeed, keep trying.
Good attitude. Bet the Jews will get there before the Chinese.

[aging one]

Liked what Bibi said upon hearing the news that the lander had crashed: "Well, if at first you don't succeed, keep trying.
Good attitude. Bet the Jews will get there before the Chinese.

Damn dude you are more brain dead than your hero Trump. China has not only landed on the moon but landed on the far side. Try reading something that is not right wing propaganda.

[DrB0b]

Liked what Bibi said upon hearing the news that the lander had crashed: "Well, if at first you don't succeed, keep trying.
Good attitude. Bet the Jews will get there before the Chinese.

And that was Boon Mee with his Broadcast from 1972. Next week Boon Mee will discuss the prospects of Michael Jackson and Little Jimmy Osmond joining Bob Hope and Ann Margret in this years Xmas Concert.

[Dragonfly]

what's that ????

[harrybarracuda]

And that was Boon Mee with his Broadcast from 1972. Next week Boon Mee will discuss the prospects of Michael Jackson and Little Jimmy Osmond joining Bob Hope and Ann Margret in this years Xmas Concert.

Another exciting Booners prediction to come:

"Nixon will be exonerated"

[Takeovers]

what's that ????

A view in the LOX tank during powered flight. Liquid oxygen.

Here an older photo after engine shutdown during another flight. The LOX starts forming bubbles floating around in the tank.

[Dragonfly]

jesus, they put a camera in the fuel tank?

where is the light coming from?

[OhOh]

^

[Takeovers]

jesus, they put a camera in the fuel tank?

They are crazy that way, yes they do.

where is the light coming from?

If they have a camera they need light. So they put lamps in there too.

[Takeovers]

Some new info on the Falcon Heavy flight. SpaceX has tried for a while to catch fairings in the air with a net but were not successful yet. Not sure if they will keep trying.

But they get the fairing halves down into the water using small gas thrusters for atmosphere reentry and parasails to have them touch the water gently. They have recovered both fairings from the arabsat flight and have announced these fairings will be refurbished and fly again. They will use an internal flight. One where they will deploy Starlink satellites later this year.



Reusing the fairings is worth some effort. Making one fairing costs in the range of $5-6 million.

[Dragonfly]

They are crazy that way, yes they do.
If they have a camera they need light. So they put lamps in there too.

at the bottom of the tank???

[Takeovers]

at the bottom of the tank???

I don't know but I don't think from the bottom. They would be covered with liquid oxygen there which is really cold.

Liquid oxygen has a boiling point of –297°F (–183°C).

Another photo I like. Shortly after the side boosters separate from the central core they fire for the return flight to the launch site. You can see them on this photo firing and also the central core continuing its flight. I hope the forum software does not reduce the size too much.

[HermantheGerman]

https://nypost.com/video/dazzling-meteorite-lights-up-the-night-sky/

Dazzling meteorite lights up the night sky

April 15, 2019

A meteorite crashed through Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of Brazil. The celestial sight, which likely burn up 22 miles over the Atlantic Ocean, was

[BaitongBoy]

apparently headed straight for the reporter...

[Takeovers]

Unfortunately a setback for SpaceX. Their Falcon Heavy center core did land successfully on the Drone Ship. But then very heavy sea prevented them from securing it and it toppled over. We don't have details yet but it seems to be in the water. They still hope to salvage it for evaluation. We will see in the next few days what will come of it.

They are working on methods to secure landed boosters with a new device before people enter the Drone Ship. It works already for Falcon 9 cores but the system still needs to be adapted to Falcon Heavy center cores.

[OhOh]

apparently headed straight for the reporter...

The Russian supplied AAM in Venezuela took it down I here.

[Takeovers]

SpaceX suffered a major setback in their manned Dragon capsule program to bring astronauts to the ISS.




A capsule exploded in a test firing after it has flown and docked to the ISS. This capsule was intended to be used for an abort test in June. We have no statements from SpaceX except it happened and won't get more before they know a lot more about what happened.

Seems they already have determined that the Cargo Dragons they use to supply the ISS are not affected. They are still scheduled to fly cargo to the ISS on April 30, the schedule reconfirmed after the incident.

Boeing also has major troubles but they are more successful in keeping it under cover. At least they avoid those troubles to hit the media.

[OhOh]

At least they avoid those troubles to hit the media.

I don't think Boeing have been very successful recently, myself.

[misskit]

NASA’s InSight lander on Mars has felt its first marsquakes

Mars is shaking. NASA’s InSight lander has detected its first marsquake, a rumbling from the planet’s interior, and it may have felt three more. These quakes could help us learn how much water is hiding deep within the planet.


InSight landed on Mars in November 2018, and in December it placed a seismometer on the surface to monitor for quakes. On 6 April, it felt the ground shake for the first time.


Marsquakes could eventually teach us about the Red Planet’s deep interior, including what its mantle, crust, and core are made of and the thickness of each layer. The seismometer is as sensitive as the best instruments we use on Earth and can detect shifts in the ground of less than the thickness of an atom.

The 6 April quake was very small, so it didn’t provide much insight into the Martian interior. “In the best station on the Earth, a station which is in a seismic vault deep down, you might be able to detect this quake,” says Philippe Lognonné at Paris Diderot University, a member of the InSight team.

InSight’s seismometer is the first ever to be placed on the surface of another planetNASA/JPL-Caltech

The measurement gave us some basic information about how marsquakes compare to earthquakes. “The first surprise we got with the marsquake is that it had more similarity to a moonquake than to an earthquake,” says Lognonné. “On Earth the duration of the signal is a few minutes, on the moon it’s closer to an hour, and on Mars it’s around ten minutes.”


That’s because the rocks on Earth are full of water, which absorbs the shock of seismic activity better than dry ground, shortening the signal. The first marsquake we’ve detected indicates that the shallow subsurface of Mars does not have much water – far less than Earth – but is not quite as dry as the moon.


InSight also detected three even smaller seismic signals in March and April, so weak that even the best detector on Earth would never have been able to spot them. One of these signals may be from wind jostling the seismometer above ground, but the other two seem to be either from marsquakes or from the ground shaking slightly as meteorites hit the surface, Lognonné says.



https://www.newscientist.com/article...st-marsquakes/