I love that they showed more of the booster landing footage, but I still wish we could see it hit the water and tip over!
Firefly Alpha Launch Photo from SF Bay Area
I shot this from up on a hill in Fremont with my old Canon G15. This is a stacked image of four 6-second exposures. In my previous post I messed up the distance: it is actually ~335km away from the launch site according to Google Maps.
I know my stuff isn't professional, but it is so much fun and I highly recommend "rocket hunting" to anyone who can!
Firefly Aerospace launched 8 NASA-sponsored cubesats on the first flight of its Alpha rocket since an upper stage malfunction more than half a year ago.
While on-orbit servicing (OOS) is becoming increasingly feasible, there is not a clear path to market for the technology.
Ventures racing to replace the International Space Station are forging new partnerships that echo the cooperation of the ISS era
NASA has selected SpaceX to launch a small gamma-ray astronomy mission on a Falcon 9 in 2027.
As NASA plans the Artemis 3 mission in September 2026, its own alnalysis estimates a nearly 1-in3 chance the lander will be at least a year and a half late.
Did OHB really not test the satellite antennas on the ground?
China’s first planetary defense test is taking shape. The ambitious mission will use a single launch to observe and impact a near-Earth asteroid.
Orbit Fab completes ground test of satellite fueling payload
"For our base design, we're designing around return to launch site propulsive landing."
SpaceX continues record-breaking year with Starship's full success and Falcon milestones
SpaceX continues to break records with its Falcon rockets during 2024 completing to date a…
H3 launches ALOS-4 advanced Earth observation satellite Japan’s H3 rocket successfully launched an Earth observation satellite Sunday on its third flight.
Chinese rocket static-fire test results in unintended launch and huge explosion A rocket stage test firing by Chinese commercial company Space Pioneer ended in catastrophic failure and a dramatic explosion Sunday.
Webb finds never-before-seen structures above Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Using the joint NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) James Webb…
Military space trackers to keep public informed on Starlink satellite reentries
Eumetsat has shifted the launch of a weather satellite from an Ariane 6 to a Falcon 9, a move that surprised and frustrated European space officials.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17064621
Eumetsat has shifted the launch of a weather satellite from an Ariane 6 to a Falcon 9, a move that surprised and frustrated European space officials.
Ground-based telescopes ignore “a huge swath” of the inner solar system because the sky is simply too bright.
Pretty sad that the coolest part of the whole video is what user effi on the NSF forum spotted:
Even in the Raptor room behind the Mega bay they watch NSF :D .A Screenshot from 46:14:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=60962.0;attach=2294746;image
I would also like to see more collaboration, and there are many nuanced reasons why the US would rather not. Just one of them is that this launch resulted in this:
https://x.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1804542638034661522
I can't imagine being one of the scientists designing and cheering on this mission and then realizing my country's funds caused that scene. Thank goodness the US doesn't drop empty stages (containing extremely dangerous chemicals in this case) on populated areas, this kind of behavior cannot be tolerated.
I am so hyped to follow Stoke's development. They may just be the competition we need! Them and perhaps some Chinese companies?
I am team space, and cheap access to orbit is what makes more space stuff possible. The teams working towards that future get me very excited! I don't think organizations not looking seriously at reusability are going to survive.
Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch.
I still can't believe that happened! Gives me so much confidence on their in-space propellant storage too, for some reason.
I am beyond excited for this! Hope it goes off on the first attempt :)
Dare I say magical? So cool this is happening. Crazy that it's barely in the mainstream news (at least in my experience).
That's a lot of confidence! I hope they can start flying and testing it soon. I would LOVE for them to start kicking SpaceX into even higher gear.
I agree with everything you said and especially with the hope for competition (which in some ways there is, SpaceX is just miles ahead), but I just wanted to point out that basically every rocket ever developed was done with government funding :)
SpaceX can likely build and launch a fully expendable version of Starship for about $100 million. Most of that money is in the booster, with its 33 engines. So once Super Heavy becomes reusable, you can probably cut manufacturing costs down to about $30 million per launch.
This means that, within a year or so, SpaceX will have a rocket that costs about $30 million and lifts 100 to 150 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
Bluntly, this is absurd.
For fun, we could compare that to some existing rockets. NASA's Space Launch System, for example, can lift up to 95 tons to low-Earth orbit. That's nearly as much as Starship. But it costs $2.2 billion per launch, plus additional ground systems fees. So it's almost a factor of 100 times more expensive for less throw weight. Also, the SLS rocket can fly once per year at most.
The renders for Starship V2 have a dramatically redesigned hot stage mechanism. My guess is as good as any, but it's possible the current HSR is so bulky and has nothing in common with the future version that they feel it's actually more representative to throw it away.
So no in-space engine relight just as we heard recently, but the interesting addition of jettison of the hot stage ring. I really hope that's temporary!
I also LOVE to see that they want to attempt to relight the raptors and do the flip of Starship survives entry! I wonder how confident they are that it will.
Also in an update, SpaceX noted that both booster engine issues and RCS on IFT-3 were caused by filter blockages and clogged valves. Kind-of fascinating that's still happening, but I have high hopes they will solve that soon!
What an embarrassment. This vehicle will probably finally fly at some point, but all these delays are humiliating to America's space program. Incompetence on the part of Boeing.
Beautiful launch, gorgeous jellyfish, perfect landing :)
I can't wait to see this lift off! I've been following closely, but I'm still not sure what was their main hold-up. I really thought they could make early May before, but now late May or early June seem like the closest NET dates.
Either way I hope we're just a week or two away!