welcome back my friends to another exciting week of space news if you are new here thanks for joining me where we break down the highlights of the week and pack them into a dense data burst right into your brain it has been another crazy week plagued with a few weather delays but that didn't hold back the news for long so yes let's jump into it okay NE we can see you coming down the ladder now hey hey marus house with you here and as always we've got a bunch of intriguing Starship related updates for you as Elon recently mentioned at the next phase of Starship development should be called The Two Towers and more progress has been seen this week on that goal last week we left you with these four Starship Tower sections moving to the turn Basin at Kennedy Space Center that was all in preparation to be transported over to Starbase the excitement continued this week when the barge made its way into park at the dock the tower sections began moving across onto the platform each one carefully rolled on board and before we knew it all four of them were tightly squeezed together and prepared for transport with these strap down lines with these four on their way to Star base the only sections that remain in Florida are the two remaining Tower sections still sitting at the Roberts Road facility with just the two left the next barge is going to have some space free I wonder if we'll see any other equipment such as some more tanks to be loaded on for the next run just as a quick side note to this we know that they've got another orbital launch Mount table hidden away I wonder if they would attempt to bring that down to Texas but transporting that massive thing is no easy task in the meantime work on the second tower continues at Starbase as well remember they are constructing other Tower segments here at the Sanz area more columns were moved over here and some of them were propped up onto the footings using that Grover crane these columns are shorter compared to the full-sized ones that we've seen at Kennedy Space Center so that means that this segment will be one of those for the top of the tower before the last pillar was up the teams were already installing the horizontal braces between those columns at the launch site work continued at the orbital tank farm especially in the areas where the heat exchanges and the cryo pumps are housed this week brought to the delivery of another new cenic storage tank to the launch site this one was placed on the last remaining spot in the horizontal tank area we shouldn't be seeing any more of these for quite some time again having some more of these storage tanks is vital to increase the effectiveness of the tank farm system especially like the new pumps and the subers the new concrete barrier to Shield that subul area was still being worked on as well as the new layer of shielding that encases the bottom portion of the launch tower now you may recall I talked about all of the pipeline work going on around the sub Chiller nitrogen gas exhaust lines a few weeks back but you want to go and check out the latest from RGV aial photography because captured in the latest flight you can now see how they've reconfigured all of those on the liquid oxygen side to feed over that barrier wall there are two sub chillers feeding into each of the larger pipes that's eight sub chillers feeding in and four larger pipelines dumping all of that nitrogen gas out the end now we figure that this has been done to limit how cold it was getting around the tank farm we know that they've had lots of issues with frozen valves on this side of the farm during testing in the past the launch Mount has been busy as well with a purge test of the booster quick disconnect occurring as well as two Purge tests of the Raptor quick disconnects remember they provide the spin up gases just to the outer 20 Raptor engines on the booster test 3 still appears to be planned late this month although as shared by Adrien with NASA space flight SpaceX had yet to submit all necessary information for the launch license modification and that was reported mid this week over here the scaffolding is still up on the ship quick disconnect arm and the launch Mount and the booster quick disconnect continues to have more work done to it it seems like it's going to be a little longer but saying that remember that the ship and the booster have already been through their main test regimes so we may find that the final preparations happen a lot faster than they did for Flight 2 onto the suborbital side the SpaceX crane that we have seen under repair and rejigging for the last few weeks has been reassembled and raised back up once again that is good news for any ship testing on the suborbital pad which could kick off again at any time at the build site booster 13 has finally finished stacking we saw its two separate parts the liquid oxygen tank and the methane tank in the photos released by SpaceX just last last week this week though the mega Bay crane attached to the methane section lifted it over and down it came all ready to be welded together there are now four fully stacked boosters in that one Bay it was certainly getting very cramped in there just take a look at how close some of those grid fins are in the earlier photo from space x no worries though because they had a plan to help clear some space this booster transport stand entered the bay at the start of the week and then on Thursday booster 10 was lifted onto that stand and it left the mega Bay just take a close look at the after section here there are some new weld marks on the bottom which we didn't see on booster 9 for the previous flight during that flight we still think that the booster most likely failed during the Boost back due to the liquid inside the tank sloshing around too much and damaging the pipework I think there's a chance that what we're seeing here with these new welds is an improved SLO baffle design to limit the liquid movement inside booster 10 it was a beautiful day for some neat shots of that Behemoth as it rolled down to Highway 4 to begin its parade over to the launch site yes it was finally moved over and it was expertly lifted up onto the orbital launch Mount very early on Friday morning it is great to have booster 10 back on the orbital launch Mount hopefully it is here to stay for the flight now but what about its partner ship 28 had a vacuum engine taken out just recently but we are not sure why at this stage with any luck this is just inspection work that will hopefully not require another static fire also that ship has had some more work being done around the thermal protection system tiles on the flap there looks to be either an inspection or replacement because about 4 hours later the tiles were filled back in now speaking of heat shield tiles look what was waiting for me in my post box this week this was sent to me by Ron Parker who found it washed up in Mexico this is a real heat shield tire from the first integrated flight test with ship 24 I'm just blown away by that it's one thing to see these in images but the tactile feel of it is actually quite bizarre it almost feels like a combination of chalk or polyarene or something like that and they're really light too this one is only about 190 G or a bit under half a pound what has been even more interesting for me to see from Ron's photos of a pretty vast collection is that they vary so much in thickness depending on the location of the vehicle anyway thank you for having some of these up on eBay and whatnot he's even found toils from ship 25 in St Martin that survived re-entry which is just crazy I've got a link to his YouTube channel in the description where he shares these Adventures finding the so help him out there with a subscribe if you have just a second that would help him out tremendously with all his efforts retrieving all sorts of crazy Starship stuff just like it does right here thanks for being here subscribed so that we get to share stuff like that now another neat story this week is that NASA has finally released the footage of the second Starship test flight from the WB 57 plane now that was done I believe as part of a freedom of information request submitted just a few days after the flight and it was worth the wait I will say unfortunately there was no hot staging footage in any of the clips with NASA saying that it had been redacted for trade secret concerns that is a bit confusing that one as we've seen hot staging footage directly from SpaceX themselves they also supplied some full ground camera shots as well and I've got a link to all of these in the description if you want to pick up a copy of any of this raw footage now there has been a real buzzaround news stories reporting on spacex's Starship being flown as a Department of Defense controlled vehicle right now I've had a lot of questions from you around this and I chose not to talk about it last week really just for one reason government departments wanting to use Starship is pretty obvious at this point isn't it they've always had an interest in it and the news article been copied and pasted all over the place suggested that requests were made to not just contract SpaceX for payload delivery with Starships but to own and fully control one or more with minimal SpaceX involvement that seemed to set off a load of panic around the space Community but honestly this is just chatter from individuals with the Department of Defense just as a query as far as we know that is it there is no public response to this by SpaceX at all remember their entire goal is to make Humanity multiplanetary as far as I've ever seen and they haven't shifted from that ethos probably a little early for any speculation at all on such a story let alone it being front page space news still I would love to know what you think so the most interesting launch event and the mission of the week surely goes to NASA's Pace satellite being launched here with Falcon 9 more on that in just a moment but first a huge thank you to delit me the sponsor of today's video in a world where data is the new gold your personal information is a treasure for data Brokers these corporations skim your data from wherever they can and then sell it to who knows what company this can be a significant risk to your privacy your personal details your family's information all traded without your consent this information down the track can be used for identity theft harassment or even doxing given that social media is the industry I'm in I am super careful with any of my personal information online I don't share anything like that anywhere and I'm usually using dummy accounts that I can just replace if I need well delete me reached out to see if I would try their service and at first I didn't think they would find anything but I gave it a try around 7 Days Later here was the comprehensive privacy report from delete me experts sure enough they did find my personal information with a bunch of data Brokers that surprised me but my mobile phone number address email date of birth was now all being scrubbed clean now one may argue that it is possible to do all of this yourself but I don't know the ins and outs of this industry and how to keep up to dat with it frankly I don't want to either so this service is great for me every 3 months delete me scans and removes any new data that they can that appears and I am pretty sure that I'm already seeing less spam in my inbox and fewer nuisance calls give it a try using my link join delet me.com Marcus for a 20% discount on all consumer plans with delete me privacy is a choice and it's yours to make thank you delete me so back to Pace Pace stands for Plankton aerosol Cloud ocean ecosystem and that gives a lot of immediate hints on the details about this Mission it aims to observe various different ecosystems in and around the oceans land and even the cloud layer to better understand how they depend on and influence each other that will I'm sure extend our existing data sets and maybe even discover something new in the process the amazing Falcon 9 lifted off there booster 1081 punched through the atmosphere screaming right up to Stage separation and the always beautiful fairing deployment showing Pace there perched on top that is a fairly small payload really at 1,694 kg just a little over 3 m tall and one and a half wide now that of course meant that there was loads of propellent margin for this indeed the booster had turned around around for another return to launch side flight only the fourth launch for this Beast would it make it to touchdown I was on the edge of my seat wondering if SpaceX could land a fully orbital class rocket something that no other launch provider has ever done before of course they landed it it is so routine now that it would be odd if they didn't I think it is so cool that we are able to say that these days so it was time to deploy the satellite soon after so it can begin its Mission the amount of useful Insight that we get from observing the planet from space is actually insane from getting to know how rainfall clouds weather and climate work to observing changes in our biosphere this here is a really interesting map showing the changes in concentration of land vegetation and psychop planktons in the ocean over the past two decades I love how you can see the North and South Pole expand and contract with the changing of the seasons in each hemisphere almost like the heartbeat of the planet so cool the ocean color instrument or oci will look at the oceans in a wide electromagnetic Spectrum range to assess ocean Health by simultaneously observing the oceans across the UV visible and near infrared spectrums the oci can fill in a lot of the blind spots that most current sensors have to top all of that off Pace has got two different polarimeters to measure the angle of polarized light they can see how sunlight gets polarized after interacting with particles in our atmosphere that in particular is Handy to help us learn more about how the different kinds of tiny particles present in Aerosoles interact with with the atmosphere knowing more about all of this means we can make better and more efficient climate models and that could help us predict weather events more accurately The Styling flights were just a little quieter this week for a change from vandenbberg space force base in California first a 1071 launching here for the 14th time roaring off the pad this was the group 713 Mission if you are confused about the numberings of these in general you are probably not alone this means that it was the 13th mission to send a b of styling satellites into the seventh orbital shell the Wiki page actually keeps a pretty good track of the shell or the group information if you want to understand this better but essentially the first four groups used the first generation satellites and groups 5 to8 are for the version 2 Minis and the full version 2os to be launched with Starship as soon as possible spacex's laser engineer Travis brashers recently shared that the starlink laser system is able to pass data from one satellite to another at a distance of around 5,00 ,400 km that connection by the way is so long that the laser passes through the upper atmosphere apparently as low as 30 km above the surface before the connection breaks that's pretty amazing remember this sort of infrastructure is breaking new ground all the time with the satellites in orbit that are equipped with multiple laser links there are more than 9,000 laser links active already starlink says that they are right now pushing around 42 petabytes or over 43,000 terabytes of data each day across these networks that is just crazy I mentioned in our last video that almost every week there is a new technology being built up around the gigantic styling Network it has become much more than a service for general consumers now they've gone from the initial dishes being installed on the homes or even moving vehicles and boats to now being able to set up something as large as a community Gateway I guess you could sort of draw some parallels to this idea with what Tesla does with the power wall which originally was installed in homes and then Tesla started rolling out and installing Mega packs to service an entire Community or support the local power grid well SpaceX are now offering this with starlink and in the case of the starlink community Gateway the center price is Hefty it's about $1.25 million up front but we are talking about SpaceX building out an entire facility to receive up to 10 gbits per second that would be a great option for a remote Community with very limited connectivity in fact SpaceX has a setup like this at Starbase so it's obviously proving very useful for them anyway to conclude that mission we have the booster screaming down through the cloud layer for its Landing because this was a Californian launch the only drone ship out there is the awesome of course I still love you now I have been a little mesmerized by all of the updates recently with Sierra space and this week certainly has been no exception in the latest cool updates they've held a media event at NASA's Neil Armstrong test facility in Ohio and they shared some pretty cool footage of the Dreamchaser vehicle if you are not hugely familiar with the mission here this is the first dc00 space plane named tenacity it was selected by NASA to provide not only cargo delivery but also disposal of garbage and the return of Science and cargo to the surface for this event Dreamchaser was stacked in its launch configuration for the very first time ever on the shooting star module this essentially adds extra cargo and trash disposal ability to a mission it can take up to around four added tons of cargo to low earth orbit and it is designed to be discarded before re-entry while at the International Space Station they can put important cargo to return to Earth in Dreamchaser and then they can fill the shooting star module with junk which will then burn up in the atmosphere that is great because signus can't return anything to the surface as the entire thing just burns up in fact right now spacex's dragon is really the only active vehicle that can return stuff from the ISS back to USA so it's going to be great to see Dreamchaser as another option now some of the heat shield tiles are obviously still missing here in a lot of places as they conduct some of this final testing but they will be filled in when the time comes it's really cool to see the flip Wing design up close here too it is the first winged commercial space plane designed for cargo and in the Future Crew transport to low earth orbit as well it is going to be incredible to see another crew capable vehicle from the USA hopefully one that is not plagued by quite so many problems now similar to space six goals Sierra space Also want it used for more than just a NASA and government missions with any luck we'll be seeing it used in missions by private customers the next big milestone for Dreamchaser is when it moves to NASA Armstrong's in space propulsion facility where they can use the large inground vacuum chamber to put it through its Paces this move will take place in the next week or two now while on the topic of cargo and crew delivery the amount going on right now with spacex's crew dragon is pretty nuts after a few weather related delays the axiim 3 mission was finally ready to make its way back home they had ended up with a few awesome bonus days stay at the station which I guess is great for Axiom after spending a couple more days in Orbit on board crew Dragon Freedom they kicked off the deorbit burn and reentered the atmosphere finally returning to Earth parachute deployment there and as usual a very smooth looking Splashdown it is getting busy as well for the commercial crew program NASA and SpaceX together plan to launch crew 8 in under two weeks the four crew are going to be gearing up right now for this event you've always got to remember the families Behind These missions too these are more than just assignments they are missions of a lifetime with so much writing on them imagine for a second you being selected for this what a dream it would be the dedication and the Relentless Chase of this go would have been a lifelong commitment all so that you could help expand Humanity's reach and the knowledge of space related Science and Industry what an amazing privilege this would be interestingly the four selected crew n astronauts have also just been announced this week too we have NASA astronauts Commander Zena Cardman Nick ha as pilot and Mission Specialists Stephanie Wilson along with Ros Cosmos Cosmonaut Alexander goov that mission should be sometime in August to take over from Crew 8 so yeah looking forward to both of these missions now it has been just a little while since I've covered some amazing and fun updates with the James web Space Telescope recently we got to see 19 different spiral galaxies and I could just look and talk about these all day really just the amount of detail alone in each one of these images is just breathtaking everywhere we look here we can see main sequence Stars Stellar nurseries and of course the super massive black holes hiding in the center of those spiraling collections of stars each one beautiful and unique in its own way this one here is Galaxy IC 5332 and as you might already guess the James web image of it is in the top right there and the bottom is the Galaxy as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope I think the contrast between the two image halves is very fascinating isn't it again this is because of the different wavelength ranges of light being observed by both these different telescopes Hubble makes observations in the visible and UltraViolet Spectrum wavelengths the gases present in galaxies absorb most of those wavelengths so that's why all you can see of them in Hubble images are these light brownish spirals when you actually transition to the James web image which measures the infrared it is a striking contrast now obviously when rendering these out for us to see they need to shift those wavelengths into the visible range so that our old Mark 1 eyeballs can make any sense of it the added benefit to being able to shift them all like this is that since web has different filters to image specific elements and molecules we can assign different visual colors to these filters making the images even more data Rich than you might realize at first glance these spirals are very clearly visible here in the chosen radi orange color this is because that Galactic dust reflects most near and far infrared light here you can see Galaxy NGC 1365 and 7496 some of these galaxies actually have a defraction effect going on which apparently could be a sign for the presence of a super massive black hole another interesting feature that you can observe here are these blue spots right near the center of the Galaxy these are old Stars outward are these blue spots which are believed to be young and new forming stars and then the bright red and orange spots are active star forming regions again I could look at these all day and if you would like to as well I've got a link for that in the description so I hope you enjoyed this video if you did don't forget to whack that subscribe button so I get to keep making them gigantic thanks to all those listed here supporting us as well if you would like to continue with more space goodness the added watch time there is another awesome way to help me out if so you could check out this one here or one of the deep Dives there on the right thanks for watching all this way through as always and I'll see you all in the next video
2024-02-17