spacex is in the midst of preparing its starship rocket for its inaugural orbital launch
but an apparent explosion of the super heavy booster during tests
at the company's facility in boca chica texas may represent a serious setback
the explosion happened around 5 20 p.m eastern time and it was as unexpected as it was severe
no word yet on the cause of the anomaly or whether anyone was hurt during the incident
the explosion was followed by a significant amount of fire in the vicinity of the giant
booster rocket flames and smoke could still be seen wafting from the launch pad an hour
after the incident but the situation at the test site didn't appear to be worsening
the blaze was unintentional ceo elon musk said via twitter on monday evening
yeah actually not good team is assessing damage musk tweeted the fireball resulted when an
engine spin start test did not go according to plan he explained in another twitter post
a static fire test was not expected today and the launch pad had not been prepared or cleared
for such a test as far as we can tell venting from directly beneath the booster increased
dramatically in the moments prior to the explosion which produced a powerful fireball and shockwave
spacex is currently testing super heavy booster 7 at its bokeh chica facility known as star
base the prototype booster with its 33 raptor engines arrived at the launch mount in late june
a starship second stage will eventually be stacked on top forming a fully stacked starship rocket
musk was hoping for an orbital test flight of the system in july
but that seems unlikely given today's events it's likely that booster 7 experienced some sort of
damage during the explosion whether it be to the dozens of raptor engines or to the booster itself
likely both spacex will need to fix or replace the booster and determine the cause of the anomaly
it's also not clear if the incident damaged the launch mount which is equipped with a
pair of mechanical arms known as chopsticks which lift and hold the booster in place
anyway in our next video i will clarify more about the damages that happened during the explosion
so stay tuned a deep field of distant galaxies some dating back to the first billion years after
the big bang is the first full color image to come from the james webb space telescope the image
released at a white house event on july 11 and called webb's first deep field is a sneak preview
of a broader set of early release observations that nasa and its european and canadian partners
on jwst planned to publish on july 12th the white house event attended by president joe biden and
vice president kamala harris was announced with less than 24 hours notice the image shows a galaxy
cluster called smack 0723 about 4.5 billion light years away the cluster acts as a gravitational
lens bringing into view far more distant galaxies some of which appear in the image as arcs
we're looking back more than 13 billion years said nasa administrator bill nelson at the event
the nasa statement accompanying the image release didn't give specifics on the more distant galaxies
visible in the image which involved 12.5 hours of images taken at several wavelengths
the big bang took place an estimated 13.8 billion years ago meaning those distant galaxies date back
to when the universe was less than a billion years old the detail in the image comes from
a very tiny part of the sky if you held a grain of sand on the tip of your finger at arm's length
that is the part of the universe you're seeing just one little speck of the universe
nelson said biden appeared pleased by what he saw and by the performance of jwst
it symbolizes the relentless spirit of american ingenuity and it shows what we can achieve
what more we can discover he said of the space telescope which finally launched
last december after billions of dollars of cost overruns and years of schedule delays
jwst is now working better than expected at the earth sun l 2.1.5 million kilometers away
these images are going to remind the world that america can do big things
this telescope is one of humanity's great engineering achievements added
harris both she and biden emphasized the role of international cooperation in jwst's development
including how according to harris a scientific endeavor can build upon the international rules
and norms that govern our cooperation in space the white house event started more
than an hour later because biden said he was busy preparing for an upcoming trip to the middle east
media were ushered out of the room and the webcast ended after only about 10 minutes
scientists and others were immediately impressed though with the image this is just a first
glimpse of what webb can do said macarena garcia-marin esa instrument scientist for
a mid-infrared instrument on jwst called miri in an esa statement while we are truly in awe
today of webb's first deep field i can't help but think of what images and science results are just
around the corner in the many years to come the first image from the james webb space telescope
unveiled this evening is an incredible preview of its remarkable technology in scientific power
said representative eddie bernice johnson democrat texas chair of the house science committee in a
statement that featured bipartisan praise of the spacecraft from the committee's leadership
as a steadfast supporter of web and its mission i am elated to see this image today
an image that has been 20 years of hard work in the making the deep field image was originally
scheduled to be released on july 12th with the other early release observations nasa
and its partners will still release those other observations at that event the other observations
announced by nasa on july 8 include the karina nebula and southern ring nebula within our own
galaxy and the galaxy group stefan's quintet about 290 million light years away nasa will
also release spectra of the exoplanet wasp 96b a hot jupiter planet orbiting close to its star
since the space launch system sls and orion returned to the vehicle assembly building
vab at nasa's kennedy space center in florida on july 2nd workers have extended the access
platforms surrounding the rocket and spacecraft to perform repairs and undertake final procedures
before returning to launch pad 39b for the launch of the artemis one mission
technicians are hard at work inspecting testing and fixing equipment associated
with a seal on a quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical that was identified as
the source of a hydrogen leak during the wet dress rehearsal test that ended on june 20th
engineers have disconnected the umbilical and are currently in the process of inspecting
the area where they will replace two seals on the quick disconnect hardware
working in tandem with those repairs engineers also executed the last
remaining engineering test that is part of the integrated testing operations in the vab
in addition teams performed other planned work on aspects of the rocket and spacecraft
engineers swapped out a computer on the interim cryogenic propulsion stage called the inertial
navigation and control assembly unit that was used during wet dress rehearsal activities
with the one that will be used for flight they will test the unit next week the just
installed flight unit includes newly calibrated inertial navigation sensors and updated software
to guide and navigate the upper stage during flight several batteries for the rocket elements
including for the solid rocket boosters and the icps have been activated by technicians
the batteries on the core stage will be activated in the coming weeks
and all the batteries will then be installed the batteries provide power for the rocket elements
during the final portion of the countdown on launch day and through the ascent engineers also
charge the batteries for the secondary payloads located on the orion stage adapter and will work
to install payloads inside the orion spacecraft in the coming weeks and that wraps up today's episode
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