Spot the Space Station

passedpawn said:

Man I enjoy seeing that Falcon 9 first stage landing back on the recovery barge.

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This is cool… Drone ship time lapse.

That was hella cool!

Here's something different for you folks in the western US to check out.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/15/world/nasa-lucy-spacecraft-scn-trnd/index.html

So many awesome - and make-me-feel-even-tinier - images of our universe, courtesy of the Webb...

^^^ Yeah, read about that earlier today. A "star factory", what a concept. Babies, just a couple hundred thousand years old. Wow.

The next Falcon Heavy flight is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:40AM. SpaceX will try to land the two side boosters but the center booster will use all of its fuel helping to get the payload to orbit and will be lost.

Cheers!

https://www.space.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-ussf-44-launch-preview

Watched the one last Thursday here on the West Coast, it was just dark enough you could see the whole thing, but to bright for my camera (phone) to get a good shot.

Another double landing will be awesome!

From all accounts the mission has been proceeding nominally. Both side boosters safely returned...

Stunning

Frigging incredible. Never get tired of that. Thanks for posting video link, @day_trippr

Things like this show how dated NASA really is in it's launch capabilities. They need to stick with exploratory equipment like the MARS helicopter and rovers.

At the risk of jinxing Yet Another Artemis 1 Launch Attempt...

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-sets-coverage-for-artemis-i-moon-mission-launch

Last night we had a good view of the eclipse down here.

Didn't know that boosters expire.

NASA's Artemis rocket, which was hit with Nicole's potentially damaging 100-mph wind gusts - now faces the EXPIRATION of its rocket boosters in December - but the mission is slated for liftoff next week

I'm not surprised, the chemistry that makes a solid rocket work may have a shelf life. Surely moisture ingress over time would be deleterious to nominal performance and I don't know that SRBs have a function like a "throttle" to compensate.

The push out to the 16th is noted...

Cheers!

IF the SRBs are like the Shuttles, then I think once there lit, it's ON until they burn out.

That's been my assumption as well, going from my Estes days...

Cheers!

Reminder of a sad day many years ago.

https://apnews.com/article/challenger-space-shuttle-found-in-ocean-064e47171452894d6494f142fea26126

Artemis 1 launch still scheduled for tonight at 1:04 AM EST. NASA TV is already covering the pre-flight process...

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public

Artemis 1 mission plan on one page

Or a big fireball on liftoff.

They did it!

Yup. So far so good! Heck of a liftoff, too!



Those main engines are massive. Reminds me of the F1 engines on the Saturn-V, but these RS-25 engines used on the Artemis core booster are actually leftovers from the space shuttle program...

So much power to get that thing moving. Wow.

Yep. Pretty much how I remember it from my rocket days. Except I only managed daytime launches.

Orion is a long way from home....

https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-artem...ses-apollo-13-record-distance-from-earth/amp/

It was darn considerate of NASA to schedule the Orion splashdown for 12:40 PM Sunday (tomorrow)

https://www.space.com/artemis-1-orion-spacecraft-splashdown-what-time

Orion live cam stream with 1:33 left before splashdown. The longer it runs the cooler it's gonna get



and mission control live stream...

Seemed like the Orion return went flawlessly - assuming it doesn't sink during the extended ocean soaking (testing thing).
Maybe this will encourage the funding needed to take the next steps in the Artemis program...

First thought was "Cool!"
Second thought was "But what about dust storms burying those samples for eternity? Ain't nobody at NASA seen The Martian?!"

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/world/perseverance-rover-mars-depot-scn/index.html

The stars aligned tonight.
Well, a planet, a moon, and the ISS (and a few more moons if you look closely).

Space is hard to do...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/business/virgin-orbit-uk-satellite-launch-scn/index.html

Like I said on here before, read Liftoff. It's a full treatise on the subject.

I've had Liftoff in my Kindle library since the last time you recommended it. It's only one 6 volume series and one other book away

Lots of spacey stuff going on. We got a comet in the neighborhood, SpaceX has a Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for either the 14 or 15, and one of a bunch of vanilla Starlink missions in January is set to go up on the 15th.

https://news.yahoo.com/stay-watch-rare-green-comet-165455364.html
Cheers!

day_trippr said:

I've had Liftoff in my Kindle library since the last time you recommended it. It's only one 6 volume series and one other book away

Lots of spacey stuff going on. We got a comet in the neighborhood, SpaceX has a Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for either the 14 or 15, and one of a bunch of vanilla Starlink missions in January is set to go up on the 15th.

https://news.yahoo.com/stay-watch-rare-green-comet-165455364.html
Cheers!

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If you have a few minutes to kill, you should look into amateur satellites. Yes, there are many of them in orbit. The ones I'm familiar with are the CubeSAT satellites used for HAM radio communications. They are designed by amateur radio enthusiasts and launched as ballast on commercial space missions. They are only about 10cm cubed. I'm a licensed amateur radio operator. I mostly work in HF frequencies that stay inside our planet's ionosphere. Satellite comm requires VHF. We use these satellites as repeaters to reach distant locations on the planet.

So the Falcon Heavy launch apparently went off without any notable hitches. This video captures the last minute and a half or so of the side booster landings, which did suffer a bit from the late afternoon lighting...



Cheers!

I'm still waiting for the StarLink rocket that was supposed to launch last week and has been put off by weather, It's now rescheduled for later this week.

Starlink launch went off this morning, too early for me

Really good article on the comet here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/spot-circumpolar-comet-ztf-c-2022-e3-in-binoculars/

Cheers!

Ours is scheduled for tomorrow morning (Starlink launch). I've been waiting for the sky to clear up enough to see the comet, but it's still to cloudy and/or hazy to even try.

Ah, didn't even think about a Left Coast launch. Tomorrow morning, 7:24 here...