Local News has just reported that a SpaceX supplier falsified inspection reports on key components for at least 10 misssions.
The new news is that a long-running investigation has ground along the pathway to a federal court filing against the lone individual accused of forgery and falsification. Reading between the lines of the Wall Street Journal version of the story:
which you may or may not be able to read through the pay wall, it seems the matter has been known for many months and one presumes that mitigation and containment are long since in place.
So far so good. First stage landed near the center of the barge. Second stage did the 3 second circularization burn. Satellite deployment is scheduled for just past the half hour, about 11 or so minutes from now. They have said they intend to show deployment in the live broadcast.
They did indeed show the satellite release. But to me it was not much of a slow. Just a blob of shapes slowly drifting away, and very slowly starting to separate slightly from each other. My personal guess that they would spin up and then fling them in pairs was pretty far from the truth.
The site is a bit slow to load, and you have to scroll down and later hit the arrows to see some pictures, but the pictures are interesting at:
In particular, the satellites are remarkably thin and flat, with the solar array extending from travel stacking into a perpendicular extension at right angles to the main plate. The animation of the panel extension seen on that site is fun.
If you would like to see the train of satellites flying overhead, you probably need either to be very lucky in looking up, or to find a time when they will pass over your location little enough after sunset or before sunrise so the satellites are illuminated by the sun but your surroundings are dark.
The one viewing prediction website which seems perhaps to work for me is
satflare.com
Of course, it needs to know where you are, but it will make a guess, which in my case was off by about ten miles. To get a better estimate of your viewing opportunities (especially of azimuth and elevation), you can zoom in on the map and click your actual location (maybe it was double-click). I've got a close pass scheduled for Albuquerque for about 10:30 p.m. local this evening, which is a nice high elevation (in other words it is passing close overhead) but is probably too long after sunset for the satellites to be usefully illuminated (sun is to be almost 20 degrees below the horizon--which the web site tells you).
Lots of people have seen these things in several countries. Most did not know to look for them and just saw a remarkable apparition in the sky.
I think the chain is lengthening with passing hours, and pretty likely it will soon spread laterally, as I doubt they intend to insert them all into the same plane.
Some brightness estimates have put them in the range of stars in the Big Dipper. Given the large flat surfaces of the satellite main body and the solar panel, that surely will depend a lot on orientation.
Another viewing prediction website seems to my taste to have a handier user interface.
n2yo.com
Again to get better accuracy than their geolocation guess you need to specify your location. I'm promised a "barely visible" pass at 8:48 p.m. (too low to the horizon) and a "good visible" pass at 10:25 p.m. Then the next two evenings each advertise an "excellent visible" pass.
Of course, the ion engine burns are working steadily to falsify these predictions, not even mentioning atmospheric drag.
Both n2yo and SatFlare forecast a good viewing opportunity with nearest approach to zenith about 9:41 p.m. at about 86 degrees.
I went to my roof with a pair of 10x42 image-stabilized binoculars of excellent optical quality and was very glad I had them.
I'm about ten miles from the city center, and the satellites rose just about over the city, so in a bright part of the light pollution. I scanned the except emergence location above the SW horizon back and forth with the binoculars, and first saw three dots travelling fast in perfect train. For a surprising number of seconds I could only see those three through the binoculars, and nothing with naked eye. As the train approached zenith I saw many more--eventually about thirty, with my "bright three" mixed in with many other dimmer ones.
The time of nearest approach to zenith was quite close to the n2yo and SatFlare forecast, within a minute or two. The "bright three" were moderately dimmer than the stars of Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) and the others were much dimmer. Even near zenith not many were naked eye visible here beyond the bright three.
Today was windy, so seeing was probably a bit dust impaired. Also the city is close enough to impose appreciable light pollution. For reference, while I could easily locate all of the primary stars of the Big Dipper, I could only confidently locate Polaris in the Little Dipper.
The two dominant features were fast movement relative to the stellar background (or even airplanes), and movement in near-perfect train. The brightness varied a lot from satellite to satellite, but I did not observe glints, flashing, or other obvious short-term brightness variation.
The mission name is STP-2. A primary goal is to work through the preliminaries to getting permission for Falcon Heavy to be used for U.S. Air Force missions. The payload is a bit of a grab bag of birds going to rather diverse orbits, down to a cubesat the Planetary Society hopes will demonstrate a bit of light-saiiling effect.
As planned the two side boosters should return to adjacent landing sites at the Cape, and the center booster should land on the usual barge very far down-range.
As to the ongoing effort to work toward fairing recovery and re-use, the vessel formerly named Mr. Steven, built as an unusually fast oil field services vessel, but in continuous SpaceX use for fairing catching development for many months now has completed brief sea trials after getting arms replaced after a previous casualty, and a new (blue) net. She also has a new name--GO Ms. Tree (yes everyone has noticed you might pronounce this "mystery"). She is also downrange, so seems very likely once again to try to get a fairing half into the net. A success would be the first.
The center booster landing barge is much farther downrange than ever before. The fairing recovery ships are also really "out there". Compared to the others, which tend to noodle along at under 10 knots, Ms. Tree really banged on out there at about 17 knots, which still took her a couple of days.
Nominal launch window opens at 11:30 p.m. EDT June 24, or 3:30 a.m. UTC on June 25, and closes at 3:30 a.m. EDT on June 25, or 7:30 a.m. UTC. The weather forecast is incompletely hopeful, so a delay for weather or vehicle reasons would not be surprising.
The entire launch window is in darkness, local time, so the videos will differ from the glorious simultaneous daytime booster landings that caught the imagination of so many on the first Falcon Heavy launch.
Local News has just reported
)
Local News has just reported that a SpaceX supplier falsified inspection reports on key components for at least 10 misssions.
robl wrote:Local News has
)
The new news is that a long-running investigation has ground along the pathway to a federal court filing against the lone individual accused of forgery and falsification. Reading between the lines of the Wall Street Journal version of the story:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacex-rockets-were-imperiled-by-falsified-reports-prosecutors-say-11558576047?mod=hp_listb_pos1
which you may or may not be able to read through the pay wall, it seems the matter has been known for many months and one presumes that mitigation and containment are long since in place.
So far so good. First stage
)
So far so good. First stage landed near the center of the barge. Second stage did the 3 second circularization burn. Satellite deployment is scheduled for just past the half hour, about 11 or so minutes from now. They have said they intend to show deployment in the live broadcast.
They did indeed show the
)
They did indeed show the satellite release. But to me it was not much of a slow. Just a blob of shapes slowly drifting away, and very slowly starting to separate slightly from each other. My personal guess that they would spin up and then fling them in pairs was pretty far from the truth.
The site is a bit slow to load, and you have to scroll down and later hit the arrows to see some pictures, but the pictures are interesting at:
www.starlink.com
In particular, the satellites are remarkably thin and flat, with the solar array extending from travel stacking into a perpendicular extension at right angles to the main plate. The animation of the panel extension seen on that site is fun.
Someone in the Netherlands
)
Someone in the Netherlands has posted a vimeo video he says is the train of Starlink satellites passing over, mostly in close order.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/338361997
Elon Musk has tweeted that the thrusters are working and that a 90 minute interval orbit raise has been initiated.
If you would like to see the
)
If you would like to see the train of satellites flying overhead, you probably need either to be very lucky in looking up, or to find a time when they will pass over your location little enough after sunset or before sunrise so the satellites are illuminated by the sun but your surroundings are dark.
The one viewing prediction website which seems perhaps to work for me is
satflare.com
Of course, it needs to know where you are, but it will make a guess, which in my case was off by about ten miles. To get a better estimate of your viewing opportunities (especially of azimuth and elevation), you can zoom in on the map and click your actual location (maybe it was double-click). I've got a close pass scheduled for Albuquerque for about 10:30 p.m. local this evening, which is a nice high elevation (in other words it is passing close overhead) but is probably too long after sunset for the satellites to be usefully illuminated (sun is to be almost 20 degrees below the horizon--which the web site tells you).
Lots of people have seen these things in several countries. Most did not know to look for them and just saw a remarkable apparition in the sky.
I think the chain is lengthening with passing hours, and pretty likely it will soon spread laterally, as I doubt they intend to insert them all into the same plane.
Some brightness estimates have put them in the range of stars in the Big Dipper. Given the large flat surfaces of the satellite main body and the solar panel, that surely will depend a lot on orientation.
Another viewing prediction
)
Another viewing prediction website seems to my taste to have a handier user interface.
n2yo.com
Again to get better accuracy than their geolocation guess you need to specify your location. I'm promised a "barely visible" pass at 8:48 p.m. (too low to the horizon) and a "good visible" pass at 10:25 p.m. Then the next two evenings each advertise an "excellent visible" pass.
Of course, the ion engine burns are working steadily to falsify these predictions, not even mentioning atmospheric drag.
Starlink sight report from
)
Starlink sight report from Albuquerque, NM.
Both n2yo and SatFlare forecast a good viewing opportunity with nearest approach to zenith about 9:41 p.m. at about 86 degrees.
I went to my roof with a pair of 10x42 image-stabilized binoculars of excellent optical quality and was very glad I had them.
I'm about ten miles from the city center, and the satellites rose just about over the city, so in a bright part of the light pollution. I scanned the except emergence location above the SW horizon back and forth with the binoculars, and first saw three dots travelling fast in perfect train. For a surprising number of seconds I could only see those three through the binoculars, and nothing with naked eye. As the train approached zenith I saw many more--eventually about thirty, with my "bright three" mixed in with many other dimmer ones.
The time of nearest approach to zenith was quite close to the n2yo and SatFlare forecast, within a minute or two. The "bright three" were moderately dimmer than the stars of Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) and the others were much dimmer. Even near zenith not many were naked eye visible here beyond the bright three.
Today was windy, so seeing was probably a bit dust impaired. Also the city is close enough to impose appreciable light pollution. For reference, while I could easily locate all of the primary stars of the Big Dipper, I could only confidently locate Polaris in the Little Dipper.
The two dominant features were fast movement relative to the stellar background (or even airplanes), and movement in near-perfect train. The brightness varied a lot from satellite to satellite, but I did not observe glints, flashing, or other obvious short-term brightness variation.
On current schedule SpaceX
)
On current schedule SpaceX will make their third Falcon Heavy launch about 24 hours from now. The webcast link is currently:
https://youtu.be/WxH4CAlhtiQ
The mission name is STP-2. A primary goal is to work through the preliminaries to getting permission for Falcon Heavy to be used for U.S. Air Force missions. The payload is a bit of a grab bag of birds going to rather diverse orbits, down to a cubesat the Planetary Society hopes will demonstrate a bit of light-saiiling effect.
As planned the two side boosters should return to adjacent landing sites at the Cape, and the center booster should land on the usual barge very far down-range.
As to the ongoing effort to work toward fairing recovery and re-use, the vessel formerly named Mr. Steven, built as an unusually fast oil field services vessel, but in continuous SpaceX use for fairing catching development for many months now has completed brief sea trials after getting arms replaced after a previous casualty, and a new (blue) net. She also has a new name--GO Ms. Tree (yes everyone has noticed you might pronounce this "mystery"). She is also downrange, so seems very likely once again to try to get a fairing half into the net. A success would be the first.
The center booster landing barge is much farther downrange than ever before. The fairing recovery ships are also really "out there". Compared to the others, which tend to noodle along at under 10 knots, Ms. Tree really banged on out there at about 17 knots, which still took her a couple of days.
Nominal launch window opens at 11:30 p.m. EDT June 24, or 3:30 a.m. UTC on June 25, and closes at 3:30 a.m. EDT on June 25, or 7:30 a.m. UTC. The weather forecast is incompletely hopeful, so a delay for weather or vehicle reasons would not be surprising.
The entire launch window is in darkness, local time, so the videos will differ from the glorious simultaneous daytime booster landings that caught the imagination of so many on the first Falcon Heavy launch.
center core in the drink,
)
center core in the drink, missed the ship.