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Today I’ll explain to you, what kind of solution Elon Musk has found for future Starship landing,
what you need to know about upcoming Perseverance landing, and where you can watch it.
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
SpaceX has broken quite a few records with their Starship program already.
The first ever flown full flow staged combustion engine.
The largest second stage ever flown.
The first freefall rocket approach controlled by four giant flaps.
To get to orbit and beyond though, SpaceX will need to add a few more missing puzzle pieces.
They will need to perfect their Starship design, build a Super Heavy booster,
construct a heat shield and they want to produce as much of the needed fuel on site as possible.
What you’re looking at here are some of the deliveries, SpaceX has received for their on site O2 refinery.
Large compressor motors, possibly for methane compression.
This is an air chiller unit. SpaceX is not messing around.
This refinery will be capable of producing sufficient amounts of O2, nitrogen and possibly even Methane.
The setup is growing every day and it shouldn’t be long anymore until we see first test runs on site.
Doing a quick jump to Florida, where SpaceX used to have a second Starship construction site, we have John Winkopp in the air showing us,
the latest progress at the Coco site.
And what you can see here is a setup that I've been talking about before.
It's not completely clear, what exactly it is for, but what I wanted to show you today is this elongated object on the ground.
It could possibly be part of a refinery.
If you have any idea, what this could be, please do tell us in the comments!
By size, it would fit into a Starship.
At the Boca Chica launch site Starship test tank SN7.2 was put through its paces for a second time.
After passing an initial pressure test on January 26th, SpaceX raised the pressure once more by filling it up with liquid nitrogen.
This time the tank gave in.
Looking back at Test tank 7.1 back in September of last year shows us what this can look like.
A spectacular blast of white nitrogen vapor caused by the forward dome rupturing at high pressure.
On Test tank 7.2 though things went differently.
There was a small leak on the right side which got bigger.
No huge white fountain of nitrogen vapor.
Keeping in mind that SpaceX has been testing a thinner 3 millimeter steel on this tank it tells us that likely one of the welds failed between the ring segments.
This theory can be confirmed by looking at this picture from Mary for NASA Spaceflight.com.
Always there and always watching she doesn’t miss a thing.
Thank you, Mary! SpaceX is constructing a scaffolding on Test Tank 7.2.
They’re fixing it. Improving the welds and likely going for another pressure test is the most plausible reason for this work being performed on
the tank. There’s no official word from Elon Musk or SpaceX as to how high SN7.2 was able to go,
but it likely wasn’t what SpaceX was looking for.
7.2 is not done yet.
Right next to SN7.2 Starship SN10 is still sitting on the test stand,
waiting to be the first Starship to possibly stick a landing for the first time.
Raptor Engine SN39 has been installed in preparation for a first pressure test and a static fire.
If everything goes as planned, Starship SN10 might set a new record for time between two Starship flights.
Now, you might be asking, why I am so confident that a flight will be happening soon?
Because it looks like SpaceX workers have already begun installing the Flight termination system on Starship Serial Number 10.
It’s not armed yet of course, but this is fast progress.
The two recent flights of Starship SN8 and SN9 both had one problem.
They did not have a perfect finish.
Both landing attempts ended in so called anomalies.
Both didn’t make it. On SN8 it was a faulty header tank pressurization and on SN9 it was an engine relight problem.
Musk has already stated,
that it was foolish to not relight all three engines and just shut down the one with the least leaver arm before attempting to land.
So, that seems to be the new plan for Starship SN10.
Relight all three and immediately shut down the engine closest to the center of mass as it has the least amount of force to push the starship over. This way,
SpaceX is a bit more on the safe side and if one of the engines needed for a landing burn doesn’t relight another one can just jump in instead.
The center of construction efforts right now seems to be the orbital launch mount and the surrounding infrastructure.
Work is progressing fast. New piling work has been spotted by Mary.
The fuel Terminal close to the orbital launch mount, which will connect the mount itself with the new fuel farm, is taking shape quickly as well.
And it already looks much more permanent than the old fuel farm close to the test pads.
The orbital launch mount itself has not seen any progress for months now.
It’s unclear whether SpaceX is just waiting for other milestones to be hit or if they’re rethinking the construction and planning something different
now. Musk has pointed out before that not including a flame diverter into the initial design might have been a mistake.
Finally jumping back to the construction site and into the High Bay once more, Starship Serial Number 11 has received its nose cone.
Aft flaps are still missing and there’s likely some more work to be done, but it shouldn’t be long anymore,
before it should be ready for its test campaign.
Being asked by Everyday Astronaut on Twitter, what currently feels like the most urgent problem to solve,
Elon Musk responded by naming three problems.
Orbital Launch Tower that can stack
Enough Raptors for orbital booster
And Improve ship & booster mass.
All of those are not only mayor obstacles in the way,
they’re also things that no rocket construction project had to face in a way that SpaceX’s Starship has to.
Depicted in several of my episodes before, the launch tower for Starships has to be very special.
It’s a complex machine of its own.
Crew and cargo access to the Starship, Fueling, stacking.
All those are operations normally performed in different ways.
Musk saying that overall mass still needs to be improved shows that there still is a lot of engineering work to be done.
Removing the legs from the booster.
Catching it by its fins. All this seems to be needed in order for Starships to be able to operate as intended.
Not just a nice addon, but mandatory.
Musk also names Raptor production speed.
They will need at least 28 of them for each booster.
There’s no official information as to how fast exactly SpaceX is producing them by now, but there are indicators.
Remember this from earlier. Mary from NASA Spaceflight took some awesome footage of a Raptor being installed under Starship SN10.
And it’s engine serial number 39.
Back in January, when SpaceX did the triple static fire with Starship SN9 and damaged two of the engines,
Starship SN10 had to donate engines to make the SN9 flight happen.
Since Raptor engine 44 was already more advanced than 39,
which is now being used on Starship SN10 it sems like SpaceX is not having a large stock of Raptor engines left.
Back in June of 2019,
so one and a half years ago Musk teased that Raptor engine production would reach a volume of one engine every 12 hours which obviously doesn’t seem to have happened.
It’s unknown as to what’s holding back the production speed,
but the development seems to have been much more difficult than expected back in 2019.
It’s going to be very interesting to see, how exactly SpaceX will achieve solutions to all these problems.
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Perseverance Landing Preparations
Next up we have another historic event you do not want to miss in the coming days.
Perseverance,
the latest NASA Mars rover is on final approach to the red planet and you’re going to get all the information you need today to be prepared and
not miss this great opportunity to watch the events unfold live.
Perseverance is searching for signs of ancient life on Mars and it’s the first rover to be full equipped for the challenge.
Where Curiosity for example was still just investigating, if life could have been possible, Perseverance is actually going to look for it.
The Rover is landing in a place with a high potential for finding these signs of past microbial life.
Jezero Crater is a 45-kilometer-wide basin located in the Martian northern hemisphere.
Sometime around 3.5 billion years ago, a river there flowed into a body of water about the size of Lake Tahoe,
depositing sediments in a fan shape known as a delta.
If there ever was life on Mars, there’s an extremely high chance, that there was some here too.
3 and a half billion years ago Mars was very similar to Earth in several important ways.
It had a substantial atmosphere, lakes and rivers and it had habitable environments, where organisms that we know on Earth today could have thrived.
Today, Mars looks different, but Perseverance is going to look into the past to see, if there ever was more on Mars than just red soil and dust.
Perseverance will also prepare sample capsules for an incredible first in space flight history.
Those capsules are supposed to be returned back to Earth on a future Mission to take place towards the end of this decade.
And the best thing for us as spectators comes last.
Perseverance will film everything it can.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission carries more cameras than any interplanetary mission in history,
with 19 cameras on the rover itself and four on other parts of the spacecraft involved in entry, descent, and landing.
If all goes well,
the public will be able to experience in high-definition what it’s like to land on Mars – and hear the sounds of landing for the first time with
an off-the-shelf microphone affixed to the side of the rover.
Because of how long it takes for radio signals to get back from Mars all the way to Earth,
NASA won’t be able to help the Rover while it attempts a landing.
It will use Radar and terrain relative navigation, an image recognition-based system, to determine where it is.
And this will be needed too. Jezero crater is a dangerous place to land in.
There are steep cliff sides running directly through the landing site.
There’s sand, there are boulders and Impact craters.
All these obstacles would mean a bad day for the Rover and for NASA.
Curiosity wouldn’t have been able to safely land here as it was missing the new technology added to Perseverance to make it possible.
NASA has actually tested the terrain relative navigation in Death Valley in the United States before.
Here you can see the system mounted on the nose of a helicopter.
What it does is it compares images taken with a high-resolution camera with an internally stored map image.
By performing image recognition, the system is able to find out where it currently is without any help from something like a GPS system,
which currently isn’t available on Mars.
This way Perseverance will be able to narrow down the landing spot dramatically.
It will be the most precise landing ever done on another Planet.
So, how are you going to be able to see this historic moment?
On my channel of course.
NASA has tons of events planned starting on February 16th and leading up to the landing and the post landing activities.
The important time for you,
if you don’t want to miss this and watch it together with the WAI family is starting on February 18th at 2 15 pm eastern time or 19 15 UTC.
That’s when NASA starts their live broadcast for us to witness this extraordinary event.
I’ll likely start my stream early again, as I always do.
We’re going to do a QA session for you to get the latest info and then we’ll follow the NASA descent and landing team closely as they get ready
to land Perseverance on Mars. This will likely take a few hours, so get your favorite snacks out and clear out the daily schedule.
At 5 30 pm eastern time or 22 30 UTC NASA will hold the Post-Landing News Briefing, which will conclude the broadcast for the day.
It will be one of the biggest events of this year for Team Space, so set your timers and get ready.
We want to watch it together with you!
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Todays team shout out goes to Mikko Koskelin, for being there, whenever we need you.
He and a few other members of the WAI Family has recently started their own multi-weekly podcast called Total Space, and there is a reason,
why I am a regular guest there.
Deep dives into all sorts of space related topics, make it a joy to listen and watch and I'm happy every time I'm invited.
Thank you so much for extending the effort, you and the whole Total Space team rock!
A link to the latest podcast I was part of can be found in the description.