Science
Watching a SpaceX booster landing never grows old, so here’s Wednesday’s – Digital Trends
Sandwiched between Monday’s satellite launch for the Italian Space Agency and Thursday’s launch of Starlink internet satellites, SpaceX on Wednesday undertook a mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
Performing so many launches in such a short space of time used to be unheard of, but a busy schedule has always been SpaceX’s target as it utilizes its reusable rocket system for a range of companies and organizations seeking access to space.
Wednesday’s mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:18 p.m. PT, carrying a U.S. government spy satellite — listed as payload NROL-87 — into orbit for the NRO.
As usual, SpaceX livestreamed the mission, though due to the classified nature of the payload, the private spaceflight company refrained from sharing footage of the satellite’s deployment into orbit.
We were, however, treated to some awesome views of the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch and landing, which we’ve embedded below.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/pvsB7IqKSj
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 2, 2022
Falcon 9’s first stage has landed pic.twitter.com/E22NvEiKe0
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 2, 2022
Below is a longer clip of the landing, which shows the booster descending from an altitude of just over 400,000 feet (about 120,000 meters).
Commenting after the launch, Colonel Chad Davis, director of NRO’s Office of Space Launch, said: “This launch demonstrates our ability to build the best-in-class systems to protect the United States and our allies from threats in and from space.”
Davis added: “Our partners at SpaceX and U.S. Space Force were vital to the success of this mission today, and their outstanding capabilities make these highly technical missions look routine.”
This was SpaceX’s fourth orbital mission in what’s set to be a record-breaking year for the company in terms of launches. At least 40 missions are already planned for the next 12 months, ensuring it’ll breeze past 2021’s total of 31 launches.
SpaceX will now turn its attention to Thursday’s launch of another batch of Starlink internet satellites from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida as it continues to build out its constellation and increase its broadband coverage from space.
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Science
NASA Celebrates As 1977’s Voyager 1 Phones Home At Last
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Voyager 1 has finally returned usable data to NASA from outside the solar system after five months offline.
Launched in 1977 and now in its 46th year, the probe has been suffering from communication issues since November 14. The same thing also happened in 2022. However, this week, NASA said that engineers were finally able to get usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems.
Slow Work
Fixing Voyager 1 has been slow work. It’s currently over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, which means a radio message takes about 22.5 hours to reach it—and the same again to receive an answer.
The problem appears to have been its flight data subsystem, one of one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers. Its job is to package the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth. Since the computer chip that stores its memory and some of its code is broken, engineers had to re-insert that code into a new location.
Next up for engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is to adjust other parts of the FDS software so Voyager 1 can return to sending science data.
Beyond The ‘Heliopause’
The longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history, Voyager 1, was launched on September 5, 1977, while its twin spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched a little earlier on August 20, 1977. Voyager 2—now 12 billion miles away and traveling more slowly—continues to operate normally.
Both are now beyond what astronomers call the heliopause—a protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the sun, which is thought to represent the sun’s farthest influence. Voyager 1 got to the heliopause in 2012 and Voyager 2 in 2018.
Pale Blue Dot
Since their launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard Titan-Centaur rockets, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have had glittering careers. Both photographed Jupiter and Saturn in 1979 and 1980 before going their separate ways. Voyager 1 could have visited Pluto, but that was sacrificed so scientists could get images of Saturn’s moon, Titan, a maneuver that made it impossible for it to reach any other body in the solar system. Meanwhile, Voyager 2 took slingshots around the planets to also image Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989—the only spacecraft ever to image the two outer planets.
On February 14, 1990, when 3.7 billion miles from Earth, Voyager 1 turned its cameras back towards the sun and took an image that included our planet as “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Known as the “Pale Blue Dot,” it’s one of the most famous photos ever taken. It was remastered in 2019.
Science
NASA hears from Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, after months of quiet
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA has finally heard back from Voyager 1 again in a way that makes sense.
The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data last November. Flight controllers traced the blank communication to a bad computer chip and rearranged the spacecraft’s coding to work around the trouble.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California declared success after receiving good engineering updates late last week. The team is still working to restore transmission of the science data.
It takes 22 1/2 hours to send a signal to Voyager 1, more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away in interstellar space. The signal travel time is double that for a round trip.
Contact was never lost, rather it was like making a phone call where you can’t hear the person on the other end, a JPL spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Launched in 1977 to study Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 has been exploring interstellar space – the space between star systems – since 2012. Its twin, Voyager 2, is 12.6 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) away and still working fine.
Science
SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites from Florida (photos)
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SpaceX sent yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites skyward today (April 23).
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 23 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 6:17 p.m. EDT (2217 GMT).
The Falcon 9’s first stage came back to Earth for a vertical landing about 8.5 minutes after launch as planned. It touched down on the SpaceX droneship Just Read the Instructions, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
It was the ninth launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Five of its previous eight liftoffs were Starlink missions.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage will continue carrying the 23 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO) today, deploying them about 65 minutes after liftoff.
This evening’s launch was the 41st of the year for SpaceX, and the 28th of 2024 dedicated to building out the huge and ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation. There are nearly 5,800 operational Starlink satellites in LEO at the moment, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
The Starlink launch ended up being the first half of a spaceflight doubleheader: A Rocket Lab Electron vehicle launched two satellites, including a NASA solar-sailing technology demonstrator, from New Zealand today at 6:33 p.m. EDT (2233 GMT).
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6:30 p.m. ET on April 23 with news of successful launch and first-stage landing.
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