Launch Stuff

[Yazata]

You would almost believe that they know how to do this stuff!

This was the 89th successful landing of an orbital class booster. All by SpaceX, nobody else has even done it once.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...4699346949

[Yazata]

OCISLY has arrived at the Port of Long Beach where SpaceX now occupies the former Sealaunch pier. That will be its base in providing booster recovery support for Falcon 9 launches from Vandenberg.

It seems that OCISLY didn't make the whole trip being towed by a tug. It was towed to a point off Freeport Bahamas where it was picked up by Mighty Servant 1, a heavy lift ship. This vessel transported OCISLY through the Panama Canal and up the long west coast of Mexico to Long Beach.

Photo taken this morning of OCISLY atop Mighty Servant 1 in Long Beach harbor, taken by Jack Beyer.

All in a day's work for Mighty Servant 1, which has experience in carrying big things. Compared to some of the things it has carried, OCISLY is nothing.

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[Yazata]

The launch contract for the Europa Clipper mission, slated to launch in 2024, has been awarded to SpaceX. The first space probe to investigate Jupiter's icy moon Europa will launch atop a Falcon Heavy from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

Press release

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-...er-mission

Europa Clipper page

https://www.nasa.gov/europa

This won't be a landing on Europa. It will be a radiation-hardened spacecraft in an orbit around Jupiter designed so that it makes repeated close fly-bys of Europa. It will carry cameras and spectrometers to look at Europa's surface. There will be an ice penetrating radar to determine the thickness of Europa's ice crust and map out whatever liquid layer is underneath. Magnetometers and gravity measurements will provide more information.

Jupiter's an impressive thing, getting up towards brown dwarf size. Its largest moons are like little planets in their own right.

nasa artist's conception

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[Yazata]

Firefly Aerospace is set to make their first attempt to launch their smallsat launcher rocket on Thursday Sept 2 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Another rocket in the Rocketlab Electron space.

They have teamed up with Tim Dodd to produce a livestream of the event. This is noteworthy since almost no liquid fueled orbital rocket has ever succeeded on its first attempt. So Firefly's openness is praiseworthy.

https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/statu...6471161859

https://twitter.com/Firefly_Space

Here's Tim's writeup on the launch attempt and its payload -- a collection of little 1-u amateur cubesats from the Libre Space Foundation in Athens Greece and a bigger 3-u commercial cubesat. (A 1-u cubesat is a cube 10cm by 10cm by 10cm and a 3-u cubesat is three of these cubes)

https://everydayastronaut.com/flta001-dream-alpha/

Firefly photo

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The 1-u cubesats (Libre Space photo)

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[Yazata]

Firefly is set to go at 01:00 UTC Friday. 6:00 PM PDT Thursday (tomorrow), 9:00 PM EDT. That is, if it isn't scrubbed, which can easily happen on the first flight of new rockets.

It will launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. And Tim Dodd will be streaming it for them.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/-HfHAazNM3Q

[Yazata]

First try today aborted just a few seconds short of launch.

Sounds like they are recycling for another try.

They have quickly recycled and launch time is now 6:59 PM PDT (01:59 UTC, 9:59 PM EDT)

[Yazata]

Rocket got off well

But as it approached stage separation, a fatal problem appeared and the first stage exploded

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...2264337410

As far as I know, all liquid fueled orbital class rockets have failed on their first attempts.

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[Yazata]

Even though Firefly is still conducting their postmortem, videos taken by others provide a pretty good idea what the fatal problem was late in the first stage burn.

Here's a video by Jack Beyer and Michael Baylor that includes multiple views, high-res telephoto closeups and slo-mos. Watch in full screen with the sound off because wind noise is terrible. Late in what looked to be a nominal first stage burn there was what appears to have been an explosive engine failure with a puff of vapor and what appear to be many metal fragments coming off the rocket. Loss of attitude control was immediate and the rocket started tumbling as the remaining engines continued to run. Then the whole thing exploded in a fireball, presumably the result of a destruct command to the flight termination system. Luckily it had pitched downrange and was out over the Pacific at the time.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/NisZvIs4SKk

Here's another good video with much better sound by Justin Foley that shows the same events

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/rPhc4sfzVqI

Photo by Michael Baylor showing the rocket out of control after the apparent engine failure and before what probably was a range-safety detonation

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The Space Force suggests that the rocket was indeed destroyed by Flight Termination explosive charges and imply that they ("Space Launch Delta 30") were the ones that commanded it. Which would make sense since Firefly were launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base on the military range.

The Space Force also has a warning out about debris from the flight. It seems that while it did detonate out over the ocean, the structure of the rocket is light carbon composite and small fragments were blown back to land by strong offshore winds.

https://www.vandenberg.spaceforce.mil/Ne...ed-launch/

A local who recovered some bits. The Space Force sounds very paranoid about them and are telling people to stay 50 feet away from any debris. I have no idea why. Toxic chemicals? I can imagine guys in full hazmat suits picking up this guy's recovered rocket bits. They don't look very hazardous to me.

https://twitter.com/wanzong/status/1433637810943135749

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[C C]

Perhaps not unlike the original Firefly getting aborted long before the culmination of its mission.

[Yazata]

Perhaps not unlike the original Firefly getting aborted long before the culmination of its mission.

Firefly (the rocket company) is well aware of Firefly (the defunct tv show). The engine that doomed the rocket Thursday was a Reaver engine. (Which might explain its behavior.)