SpaceX successfully launches NASA new exoplanet telescope
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully placed NASA’s new explanet space telescope, TESS, into orbit.
The first stage, which was making its first flight, successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic. They hope to reuse this booster on a future Dragon launch.
Update: TESS’s solar arrays have successfully deployed.
The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:
11 China
8 SpaceX
4 ULA
3 Japan
3 Russia
3 Europe
3 India
The U.S. is now ahead of China, 12 to 11, in the national list.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully placed NASA’s new explanet space telescope, TESS, into orbit.
The first stage, which was making its first flight, successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic. They hope to reuse this booster on a future Dragon launch.
Update: TESS’s solar arrays have successfully deployed.
The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:
11 China
8 SpaceX
4 ULA
3 Japan
3 Russia
3 Europe
3 India
The U.S. is now ahead of China, 12 to 11, in the national list.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The drone ship video cut out just before landing — as usual — but the stage one downward video rocketcam uplink kept running all the way through landing (this might have been because the ASDS was closer to shore than typical) and they continued to show that view for 25 seconds after the landing.
The grid fins looked a little busier than normal during the first two-thirds of the landing burn (as if they were hunting), but quieted down as the legs deployed.
The landing burn starts at about T+07:50 (27:45 in the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY-0uBIYYKk&t=1665
Kirk–
I’d admire your linking-skills and numerous factoids!
:)
Can someone explain “instantaneous launch window?”
I believe Russia’s launch total is 5. Here’s a link http://www.russianspaceweb.com/2018.html. This site claims 6 Russian launches, however the second manned launch was either never publicized or it didn’t happen.
Jason: Neither the website or mine is wrong. The problem is where you wish to assign the Soyuz launches for Arianespace from French Guiana. I assign them to Arianespace, or Europe, Russianspaceweb assigns them to Russia.
My thinking is that if Arianespace was not there to obtain the customers, the Russians would not have this business. Thus, I decided to put these launches in the European category.
Thanks Wayne. After reviewing a few other launch videos, I’m no longer sure that the grid fin motion was all that unusual. It had been so long since they recovered a stage — last one was the Falcon Heavy launch over two months ago, with four cores expended since then — that I must have forgotten what it was supposed to look like. ;^) I’m really looking forward to the Block 5 debut with Bangabandhu-1 in the first week of May. I sure hope it meets their reusability goals.
Regarding instantaneous launch windows, that is when the launch window is so short — for whatever reason — that there is no time to recycle the clock and still launch on the same day in case of a hold. Yesterday’s window was 30 seconds — 18:51:31 – 18:52:01 EDT — so at some point leading up toward launch they picked one specific time in that window with the knowledge that any hold would result in a scrub.
Linked below is a stackexchange discussion on the subject which mentions that at times the reason may be as mundane as range concerns, where authorities may want to close an airspace for only a short period of time. I haven’t seen the question addressed specifically for TESS, but I assume it had more to do with the target orbit. When targeting an inclined orbit with a specific plane, a vehicle will have to conduct an expensive dogleg maneuver if they miss the optimal launch time, so the size of the launch window can be determined by how much excess performance the vehicle has to work with. It can also be that mission planners may want to work only a limited set of numbers for trajectory, and when there is a large window, it is actually a series of instantaneous windows, for each of which a trajectory is precomputed for loading into the vehicle’s guidance. Also, sophistication of guidance varies, with some vehicles touting advanced RAAN Steering (RAAN = Right Ascension of the Ascending Node, the parameter which defines the orbital plane), so they can just be told their desired destination, and they figure out the trajectory on the fly.
It was mentioned that the TESS’s 30 second launch window “wiggle room” was for collision avoidance concerns. I assume this means that a few hours before launch they run a final check with an orbital debris tracking database, and if necessary choose a point in that 30 second window which maximizes their clearance from other objects.
Disclaimer: Not only am I not a rocket scientist, I haven’t even played Kerbal Space Program! Corrections and elaborations to my attempted explanation are encouraged.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13086/what-decides-if-a-launch-has-to-be-done-instantaneously-or-during-a-window
Kirk–
You do an excellent job with the rocketry factoids!
(I do have Kerbal Space but haven’t touched it since last Fall. Highly recommend videos from a Scott Manley on running KSP.)
Ok. thanks. instantaneous-launch window… essentially means what it says.
“Orbital mechanics” blows my mind–too much 3-dimensional geometry for me– you never want me piloting a spacecraft. I’d rather (attempt to) handle Penrose space-time diagrams & particle physics.
–The fins did appear to be reacting “more than usual,” I just assume it was windy.
(They make it look, so easy… )
pivoting– (I watch this at least once a week)
America’s Thermonuclear Strike
Trident 3 launch animation
https://youtu.be/S-V6MZlyCqE
(2:22)
This Russian launching service tailoring off sounds political. Thanks for keeping abreast of their situation.
Just watch! Our government will send them more launch contracts to keep them in the game of rockets launching all over the world, somehow, someway, somewhere, sometime.
And our government would do this… why, exactly?
NASA’s New Exoplanet Hunter is Using A Clever Orbit
Scott Manley
april 16, 2018
https://youtu.be/rhHP6-GGeuI
6:58
“The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is launching on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and some clever work by the designers has enabled it to reach an ideal orbit with almost no work by the spacecraft. Instead much of the work is carried out by the Falcon 9 upper stage with only small adjustments made by the spacecraft’s attitude control thrusters. By doing this they were able to make the spacecraft even cheaper and fit it into the small budget available.”