Has anyone been up early to see this?
Hope the skies behave for y’all tomorrow night! (3/28)
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Saturn decided not to come.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll head to my local park, which is set on a hill.
Pro tip for “science” “news” outlets: One I read noted the time – 8:00PM Eastern Time – for when the optimal viewing would be. So,… 5PM my time? Then I wondered about the extremely wide EDT zone. Wouldn’t the optimal time be different in Lou’vull than in Bang-Gor?
Should use relative time difference, say, 30 minutes after your local sunset or something like that.
Anyway, Uranus is not visible to the naked eye at this time (yeah, cuz you got pants on, har-har). And, every time I buy binoculars, the first thing I do is drop them.
Was cloudy by me. Bummer!
Look to be clear tonight - so I will take another look for sure
me too.
We tried to check it out Monday but were only able to see Venus and Mars. It was raining Tuesday
Should we have a separate thread for spaceflight? We did start a JWST specific thread.
Today, ESA’s JUICE mission launched today, and has successfully hit its early milestones (separation from Ariane 5 launch vehicle, communication established, solar panel deployment). It will take over 7 years to get to its target, Jupiter and its inner moons.
Monday is the earliest possible launch for SpaceX’s Starship. Pending FAA permission, the launch will be the most powerful rocket to ever be launched, or the biggest explosion in TX since that cow massacre in Lubbock.
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Permission granted. 2.5 hr launch window opens 7 am CDT 4/17.
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Launch attempt currently set for 9:20 EDT.
Fuel loading in progress.
Fuel loading seems to have paused. Commentators on nasaspaceflight.com have not noticed yet. Spacex feed to start at 7:35 CDT.
Fuel loading resumed, still on for 9:20 EDT. Spacex feed up.
Countdown will go to T -0:10 and then scrub. 1 issue. Minimum 48 cycle time due to large fuel requirements.
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T -0:14 currently to today’s launch. So far so good.
Hold at t- 0:00:40. Can hold there for up to 15 min and still launch
Back on!
Issues with stage separation, fts (flight termination system) activated about 4 min in
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Loss of several of the first stage engines seemed to be a problem in advance of time of stage separation, ultimately losing control before stage separation was scheduled.
RIP Starship
I read that since they launched from Texas, they couldn’t abort the mission.
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Booster 7 and Ship 24. RUD and RIP. Both were planned to not be recovered. Mission plan had B7 with a soft touchdown in the Gulf, to demonstrate boost-back and relight. Ship 24 was supposed to go suborbital but nearly orbital and reenter north of Hawaii. It appears FTS was activated as directional control was lost.
Next mission will likely use B9 (I think). Not sure about which Ship, since a couple of the next iterations don’t have heat shield, and testing that is important. Intermediate goals for SpaceX include using this rocket to launch starlink v2 satellites.
I liked their description of the ending of the test flight, “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
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Reminds me of The West Wing pilot:
C.J.: Is there anything I can say other than the President rode his bicycle into a tree?
Leo: He hopes never to do it again.
C.J.: Seriously, they’re laughing pretty hard.
Leo: He rode his bicycle into a tree, C.J., what do you want me - the President, while riding his bicycle on his vacation in Jackson Hole, came to a sudden arboreal stop.
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