SpaceX is 'go' to launch astronauts to space station on Halloween.

Cheers.

"Unfavorable weather conditions" have delayed Crew-3's Halloween launch.

SpaceX Crew-3 launch of NASA astronauts delayed.

The launch is now scheduled for 10:10 p.m. PT on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

Cheers.

Another delay.

SpaceX Crew-3 launch delayed due to astronaut's medical issue.

The launch was originally set to happen early in the morning on Halloween but "unfavorable weather conditions forecast along the flight path" initially pushed the flight back to Nov. 2. That has been scrubbed because of the medical issue involving one of the crew members. In a blog post on Monday, NASA said the issue is "not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19" and the crew will remain in quarantine until the mission is ready to launch.

NASA says the earliest the launch window will open now is 8:36 p.m. PT (11:36 p.m. ET) on Saturday, Nov. 6.

Cheers.

"Unfavorable weather conditions" have stuck again.

SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA delayed again by bad weather (and a possible Dragon landing).

The U.S. space agency and SpaceX have pushed the launch of the Crew-3 mission, which will send four astronauts to the International Space Station, from Saturday (Nov. 6) to Monday (Nov. 8) at the earliest, because of anticipated bad weather over the coming days.

Cheers.

Crew-2 blazes through the night sky:


SpaceX Boca Chica 9th Nov 2021


Spectacular!

Enjoy!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Crew-3 has reached the ISS.
Tullio

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The Falcon 9 rocket, B1058, has now successfully completed its 9th flight and makes it the 87th successful landing of a Falcon 9 1st stage.

SpaceX launches 53 Starlink internet satellites and lands rocket in foggy flight.

Cheers.

An astronomy disaster. How can we watch the stars with all those satellites in the sky? I've read that they are developing Artificial Intelligence programs to cancel the images of the satellites, but they cancels also stars and galaxies.
Tullio

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We are far from a disaster...

The various satellites are many but they are all 'far flung' and sparse.

The times that a constellation of satellites are a problem are soon after launch when they are closely (densely) bunched together, and during their passes through the terminator where their illumination by the sun is most noticeable.

Both adverse conditions are only brief and are unlikely to unduly affect astronomy.

More of a problem might be the much larger and lumbering aircraft lingering overhead... And tourists with mobile phones!

At least we still have Antarctica largely unspoilt...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

A busy time to be had at SpaceX.

SpaceX's busy Saturday will see rocket launches on both coasts.

SpaceX plans to start and end its Saturday with a Falcon 9 launch.

The next batch of SpaceX Starlink satellites leaves this planet via Falcon 9 from California in the early morning hours, and another of Elon Musk's rockets is set to loft a Turkish communications satellite from Florida less than 20 hours later.

SpaceX has previously pulled off two launches within about 48 hours of each other, but this would set a new mark for busy days for the company.

The company was previously targeting Friday morning for the Starlink launch but announced late Thursday that launch is now planned for 1:24 a.m. PT on Dec. 18. The mission will deliver 52 flying routers to low Earth orbit....

....The launch of TurkSat 5B, which will expand broadband coverage for Turkey and parts of the Middle East and Africa, is scheduled for 7:58 p.m. PT (10:58 p.m. ET) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

But that wont be the end of pre-holiday launch activity for SpaceX.

Early Tuesday, a Falcon 9 will send a Dragon capsule loaded with supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station.

Both of Saturday's launches will be streamed live via SpaceX. Coverage typically starts about 10 minutes before launch.

Cheers.

CRS-24 resupply mission to the ISS launched. It should dock tomorrow to the ISS.
Tullo

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I watched the latest launch of the starlink satellites tonight here in chilly central Florida. It was a perfectly clear night so I timed my dog's evening walk to concur with the launch. Was able to watch it all the way to the first stage cut off. Hard to believe they can pack 49 individual satellites in that nose cone.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

According to Przemek Mroz, a Polish astronomer who was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology , about one fifth of the images taken by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a camera attached to the Samuel Oschin Telescope in Calfornia shows streaks of light due to Starlink satellites. There are 1800 of them but Elon Musk wants to launch 10000 by 2027 and Starlink is not the only project sponsored by firms with similar plans. I remember reading of the launch of a Soyuz vector by Arianespace, which hosts a Soyuz launch facility in Kourou, French Guyane.
Tullio

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After 7yrs of floating about astronomers predict SpaceX space junk will hit the Moon.

A chunk of a SpaceX rocket that blasted off seven years ago and was abandoned in space after completing its mission will crash into the Moon in March, experts say.

The rocket was deployed in 2015 to put into orbit a NASA satellite called the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).

Since then, the second stage of the rocket, or booster, has been floating in what mathematicians call a chaotic orbit, astronomer Bill Gray told AFP Wednesday.

It was Gray who calculated the space junk's new collision course with the Moon.

The booster passed quite close to the Moon in January in a rendezvous that altered its orbit, said Gray.

He is behind Project Pluto, software that allows for calculating the trajectory of asteroids and other objects in space and is used in NASA-financed space observation programs.

A week after the rocket stage whizzed close to the Moon, Gray observed it again and concluded it would crash into the Moon's dark side on March 4 at more than 5,500 miles per hour (9,000 kilometers per hour).

Gray appealed to the amateur astronomer community to join him in observing the booster, and his conclusion was confirmed.

The exact time and spot of impact may change slightly from his forecast but there is widespread agreement that there will be a collision on the Moon that day....

Cheers.

Well another Falcon 9 has successfully completed another mission and returned.

Just waiting on the 2nd stage's final burn now.

Cheers.

The folks at NASASpaceflight give excellent coverage on their stream:


SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch & Landing | CSG-2 Mission


Fantastic display and fantastic stuff, and all very enthusiastically clearly presented. Very good work from their camera people for tracking the launch and the sunset RTLS.

Beautiful to see. Well worth a view.

Good work by the people at SpaceX also!

There's also quite a joke about a cruise ship... I wonder if the captain will get a penalty...?


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

3 out of 4 ain't bad, but all 4 would be better.

NASA and SpaceX say lagging parachutes on Dragon capsule are not a problem.

NASA and SpaceX say they are looking into a recurring issue with lagging parachutes on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule — critical features the spacecraft needs to land when it returns from orbit. However, the two spaceflight partners are downplaying the seriousness of the problem, claiming that the parachutes are still behaving safely despite the behavior.

The parachute issue cropped up during the two most recent landings of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. During each of those descents to Earth, one of the four main parachutes on the spacecraft was slower to fully inflate than the other three. The lagging parachute was clearly visible during a livestream of a November landing, in which the Crew Dragon carried four astronauts home from the International Space Station. A January landing, which returned cargo from the ISS, was not livestreamed, but a report in Space News revealed that one of the Dragon’s parachutes lagged there as well.

Today, personnel from both NASA and SpaceX held a press conference to discuss the parachutes ahead of SpaceX’s next crew launch on the Dragon. NASA and SpaceX claimed that they are reviewing the data to understand the behavior better.
“You could have one parachute fully missing and still be certified to land.”

During the November landing, the fourth parachute took 75 seconds longer to inflate than the other three, while the sluggish parachute on the January landing took 63 seconds longer to inflate. Despite that, NASA said the vehicles descended at a rate that was considered normal. NASA and SpaceX also claim that the Dragon can land just fine even if the fourth parachute never inflated at all. “You could have one parachute fully missing and still be certified to land,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which oversees Dragon, said during the press conference.....

Cheers.

The slow inflation of the redundant last parachute indeed can be expected and is completely natural and benign...

Note that the first parachutes to open are designed to be able to take the full load and so they do take the full load of the capsule. That then leaves no loading to pull on the last parachute to pull it open and so it flops around in the slipstream until it eventually gets enough airstream to inflate.


To ensure synchronised inflation of all four parachutes (for the sake of aesthetics) might well involve some dangerous complications to actively throw all the parachutes out and perpendicular clear of the capsule...

Aesthetics? Or stay with simply robust safety?


Stay safe folks!
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

SpaceX says a geomagnetic storm just doomed 40 Starlink internet satellites

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched 49 Starlink satellites on Thursday (Feb. 3) from NASA's historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A day later, a geomagnetic storm above Earth increased the density of the atmosphere slightly, increasing drag on the satellites and dooming most of them. 

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Ah, some good news at last about Starlink - in my book all planned launches should be cancelled and all the current plague of Starlink satellites should be de-orbited asap.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?