SpaceX’s Starship catch mechanism, aka Mechazilla, has been mounted on the orbital launch site integration tower.
Did it go as planned? Ship 20 is continuing its test campaign.
SpaceX is rapid firing their engines!
Why is SpaceX turning a landing pad into a parking lot and is Lucy, the most complicated Asteroid mission by NASA yet, in imminent danger?
Let’s find out!
My name is Felix, and I am your host for today’s episode of What about it!?
And as always, there’s been a lot going on in the space industry lately, so let’s dive right in!
Starship Updates
And on we go with another installment of how the heck can they be so fast?
Three days since the last episode and again, we have milestones reached by SpaceX and Elon Musk and significant ones too.
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We’re starting this week off with another incredible flyover by Mauricio and from RGV Aerial Photography!
You're looking at booster 5 inside the high bay, and you can also see that the hull assembly is far along now.
It now consists of three main hull parts, and everything is set for the final stacking operation.
Booster 5 will be done soon.
In theory, the rollout would be next after the stacking to get the newly constructed prototype to the launch site and some needed testing activity. But where to.
Looking at the launch site from above, we can see that the orbital launch site currently is busy.
There’s simply no room for a prototype.
Booster 4 even had to be removed from the orbital launch mount to make room for Mechazilla construction.
Cranes are moving around, workers are busy assembling the infrastructure for the craziest rocket catch mechanism in human history.
And the suborbital pads A & B?
We have booster 3 half disassembled and still sitting on Pad A and Starship 20 performing its first engine tests on Pad B. Not much space to play with. Pun intended.
The only thinkable solution right now would be to finally get booster 3 to the scrapyard.
Remove it from Pad A, roll it to the construction site's junk pile and dismantle it.
So, as soon as that happens, a rollout of booster 5 should be imminent.
Since Ship 21 currently is in 5 different parts, three can be found at the low bay and two more at the mid-bay.
It will likely take SpaceX longer to assemble it than booster 5, which is almost completed.
Booster 5 will likely be rolled out first.
The next big-ticket item at the launch site is orbital fuel farm 1. After rolling GSE 8 out to the launch site and placing it on the last empty
foundation, SpaceX is now putting the final cryo shells in place.
Luis was on site every single day again and filmed the placing of the final cryo shell.
So, the GSE tanks largely are done now.
This is a significant milestone the Starbase SpaceX crew has been working on for a long time now.
Liquid oxygen, liquid methane, liquid nitrogen, and water.
The tanks under these shells are 9 meters wide.
The same diameter as a Starship hull.
They’re approximately 27 meters tall, and their capacity can be roughly estimated at around 2 back-to-back orbital Starship launches.
That’s not enough for the Moon or even Mars, as this will require several tanker flights to refuel Starships in orbit,
but SpaceX has already announced that a second orbital fuel farm will be built in the future.
Let's stay at the launch site a bit more for the next milestone.
As said, Luis was on site every single day.
So, he didn't miss a bit. These SpaceX workers are preparing for something big.
Long-planned things are coming together here.
We’re talking chopsticks. We’re talking Mechazilla and maybe one of the craziest aspects of the Starship concept in general.
These two black bars will catch a rocket out of midair.
And not just any rocket either.
The biggest one ever launched.
What you’re looking at here is the beginning of the final assembly step for Mechazilla.
SpaceX’s integration tower swiss knife.
Utilizing Frankencrane, SpaceX’s Liebherr LR 13350 monster crane, SpaceX workers managed to lift the catch mechanism up in the air,
carefully balancing the weight.
The task? To connect the catch mechanism to the integration tower and mount it in place.
You can't just put chains on it and lift it up.
The operation took days of careful planning and resulted in perfect execution.
Slow but steady, the carriage system with the rail carts was positioned in its mounting spot alongside the tower.
Then the most challenging part began.
The catch mechanism had to be aligned with the tower and the guide rails in four different positions to slip the guiding carts into the rail system.
This is a heavy item. Possibly approaching a hundred tons of steel weight.
They managed to pull it off, though, and, in the end, the carriage system was attached to the tower.
In precisely the positions we speculated about before.
It will move up and down utilizing rails on the tower.
Guided by four different carts.
As of recording this episode, the assembly is still not complete.
It’s still attached to the Liebherr crane.
It can’t move on its own yet. Next,
we'll see the SpaceX workforce connect the giant steel cables coming from the drawworks winch onto the top of the carriage.
Then, for the first time, it should be able to move at least up and down.
Actuators are still missing in a few places as well.
Once it’s done, it will be incredible to see a first operational test of Mechazilla and how it all works together.
Keep a lookout on our new sub-channel WAI Plus for the first pictures in the coming days!
It'll be worth it!
Further up on the tower, the upper quick disconnect arm has seen lots of love in recent days as well.
Many electronics, sensors, plumbing, and hydraulic lines have been attached, and it looks much more fleshed out and almost ready for duty.
Only the fuel quick disconnect, expected to be installed on top of the arm, has not been placed yet.
New large tanks have been added to the orbital fuel farm as well.
They are an addition to the already existing GSE tanks, and the purpose is unknown right now.
Two of them are on-site by now.
I am talking about those huge white tanks, one of which can be seen here on top in Mauricio's latest flyover.
They should at least have the capacity of one of the GSE tanks.
They’re reinforced. One possible use case could be detanking.
The propellant and oxidizer would first be routed into these large new tanks, then into the condenser, and then back into the GSE tanks.
What do you think? What’s your idea about those new tanks?
As always, tell me in the comments!
And here’s the next big milestone.
After the recent pre burner tests on SpaceX’s vacuum raptor engine mounted under Starship 20,
they now finally performed the first full static fire.
In fact, they did two of them within one hour, which shows the capability of the newly installed RVac engine.
One, where only the RVac engine was fired.
And the second one, where several engines were fired.
It’s unknown, how many were ignited, but it sure does give an impressive sight!
And on the official SpaceX video something can be observed Luis and I already speculated on the recent Pre burner test.
Starbricks, SpaceX’s TPS heat tiles, fell down.
There are first pictures showing the Starship 20 heat shield after the static fires and there are several tiles missing.
Musk commented that they’re shaking out the problems.
It raises the question again, if the heat shield in its current form is ready for an orbital flight, though.
If a Static fire manages to rattle the ship enough for Starbricks to fall off, what will an orbital flight do to the shield?
One single tile missing or not completely being aligned with the surrounding tiles would likely be enough for the whole shield to fail.
Musk also answered a question I’ve heard from the WAI community a few times now and we do have an answer.
A vacuum engine has a much larger nozzle to make sure that expansion of the exhaust is optimal in the lower ambient pressure of space.
At sea level this can cause problems.
And in the worst case a so-called flow separation at the end of the nozzle can cause the engine to fail and explode.
According to Musk the Raptor already is at a chamber pressure of 270 bar, though.
So, the pressure of the engine is so high, that even at sea level the flow of a vacuum nozzle is still good.
Raptor engines work at such a high pressure that you can use a vacuum engine at sea level.
Impressive!
Next, we'll talk about a strange new parking lot at the launch site and possible new static fire test dates for Ship 20 and Lucy.
A record-breaking asteroid mission by NASA that might be in danger.
So stay tuned! It’s worth it!
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Now, before we get to new possible Starship 20 static fire test dates,
I want to show you one more picture that was taken by Mauricio on his latest flyby.
This is a view of the launch site from above.
More precisely, it shows the Starship landing pad.
This one. You know. The landing pad.
The one all Starship prototypes landed or exploded on.
The pad that brought us things like Boca Bingo!
This pad. With the traditional SpaceX X sign on it.
Epic memories are connected to this slab of concrete.
Now look again at Mauricio’s picture.
Can you see it? Yep. It’s a parking lot now.
Parking your car on a Starship pad is a thing now.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to park my Tesla there one day.
But… it also is a testament to SpaceX's intent to not land Starships there anymore.
Starships don't have legs anymore,
and this newly created parking lot is the last proof we’ll need for SpaceX wanting to go through with the plan of actually catching their rockets.
It doesn't look like SpaceX is going to try and catch them, as Elon stated before.
They’re going to try and perfect it.
We might not see Starships with legs until we see the first Lunar Starships or those intended to fly to Mars in the future.
For now, it's a parking lot. For now, it's catching them, and it will be glorious.
We have new test dates!
Are we lucky? Are we getting even more static fires?
We have road closures scheduled for today from 5 pm to midnight and secondary dates on Monday and Tuesday of next week from 10 am to 6 pm.
It’s great to see SpaceX continuing the tests on Ship 20.
Hopefully with longer burns and more engines!
Lucy in distress
Now, let's talk NASA and one of their most epic missions exploring the solar system and Asteroids.
Lucy.
Lucy is the first mission ever to explore the Trojans.
Asteroids from the beginning of our solar system have been trapped in Jupiter’s gravity field since then.
Never visited and with a possible treasure trove of new insights into how our Solar System formed and how it all began.
These asteroids have been trapped within Jupiter’s sphere of influence for billions of years.
NASA’s Lucy mission is supposed to embark on a voyage to visit seven of them.
12 years mission duration, 7 different asteroids.
Never before has a spacecraft had so many different destinations!
That's incredible, you have to look at the flight path of that thing, like yuu-hee-yuu-yee all over the place.
Named after Lucy, the earliest fossil of a human we’ve ever found and that changed our understanding of humanity forever,
Lucy is supposed to change our understanding of our own solar system forever in the same way.
Bringing us closer to these fossils of planet formation than ever before.
So far, so good. That’s the plan.
And as always, ULA did a fabulous job.
The Atlas V rocket blasted off into the night sky from Kennedy Space Center’s Space launch complex 41 at 5 in the morning.
After the launch and after the craft entered space, it was supposed to deploy its large circular solar arrays.
And this is where the trouble started.
These solar arrays attached to the probe on either side caused difficulty.
One of the two solar array wings fully unfurled and latched after launch,
but NASA says it did not receive confirmation that the other wing locked into place.
And we're not talking about any solar array.
They're costly. The mission comes in at a total of 981 million dollars.
A few minutes after separating from the Atlas 5 launcher,
Lucy began a pre-programmed sequence to unfold the solar arrays like giant Chinese fans.
Fully deployed, the UltraFlex solar wings span about 7.3 meters in diameter.
And they're the crafts only power supply besides some onboard battery power which would quickly be depleted.
But there's good news. One panel latched after fanning out.
There was just no confirmation for the second one actually locking in place.
Joan Salute, associate director for flight programs at NASA’s planetary science division, stated that the mission is not in imminent danger.
The craft is receiving power, and the panels are producing more than 90% of the expected power output, which in total would be 18000 watts.
They do not know yet if it's just a latching problem or if the panel deployed only partly.
When reaching the Trojan asteroids, the panels are expected to put out around 500 watts due to the greater distance to the sun.
The three main instruments needed for the mission objectives only need about 82 watts of power during each asteroid encounter.
So, if there’s no dramatic change, the mission should be safe even without the second panel latching into place.
After visiting the first swarm of trojan asteroids, Lucy will change course, swing by Earth again, and head for the second swarm,
as one swarm is caught in front of Jupiter’s orbit and one behind it.
NASA mission experts are currently working on solutions to maybe even get the panel to latch or at least try and find out what exactly happened
so that they can plan the future of the mission accordingly.
It’s good to know, though, that the mission is not in any imminent danger as of right now.
The Lucy mission is a perfect example of how important NASA actually is.
Exploring the far reaches of our solar system, finding new clues to our very existence, and exploring deep space like never before.
Here’s to the whole Lucy mission team and to their work of expanding our horizon even further.
Fingers crossed for Lucy! God speed!
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