SpaceX launching Starlink satellites live now!

Watch for the rat!

More ice sliding around the turbopump exhaust manifold. Didn't look enough like a mouse this time for the conspiracy theorists to latch onto it though. They'll deliberately ignore it this time since it destroys their narrative.

Great. Fill the skies with a bunch of AI to make it harder for human astronomy to go the way of the dodo.

Did I hear her correctly??? 60 SATS payload to be deployed per launch????

We ARE SCREWED !!!!

SOB's

Looks like the landing burn failed. Smoke could be seen just to the side of the droneship. First time they've had a landing failure in a while. I believe it was this booster's fourth flight.

There was some debris coming off the first stage before entry burn. Saw that?

What's next?

When can I get some 1gbps from Starlink?

missed it live, but caught the replay.

thanks astro

Yeah, it just looked like ice of some kind to me. Maybe it was more meaningful though, I think it might have come from the fuel vent. Also, I may be reading too much into it but the very last video frame the first stage delivered during the entry burn was rotated by a couple degrees from the previous frame. The frames immediately before that did not show any significant rotation. Might have been frames delivered out of sequence conveying more rapid rotation than really happened, but I do wonder if there was starting to be a problem with the thrust vector control system on one of the engines.

Meh, they diagnose it and try to see if it's something they can fix for the future. Landing the Falcon 9 isn't critical for the primary mission, whether that's launching satellites or launching people. A failed landing here and there isn't a showstopper, but with as many launches as they're doing in-house to launch their own satellites they need re-usability to be pretty reliable from a financial perspective.

Whatever the source of the problem, the booster is designed to deliberately miss the drone ship unless the computer sees all of the systems working properly for landing. That looks like the case here, so at least the drone ship doesn't appear to have been damaged by the mishap.

Last Edited by Astromut on 02/17/2020 10:28 AM

Thanks for the heads up. I have to get up there one of these days to watch it in real time...

Skynet

SpaceX news: Starlink satellites ruining night sky as shown in this photograph
SPACEX is facing even more criticism from the astronomy community over its Starlink satellites, and a new image has revealed just how bad the situation is.

However, astronomers have said the 180 satellites are already ruining their view, so when the full 42,000 are in orbit, the night’s sky could be completely ruined.

Now one photographer has revealed just how much of a nuisance the satellites are to astronomers in one picture.

Ulrich Beinert, an astrophotographer, was flying across the US-Canada border when he saw a stream of white lights appear across the sky.

The image shows the satellites moving rapidly across a backdrop of the cosmos, which is bound to interfere with astronomy.

Mr Beinert told Space Weather: "From the cockpit of an Airbus A380, I witnessed a train of Starlink satellites pass in their eerie formation.

-50%
[link to www.express.co.uk (secure)]

SpaceX launch LIVE STREAM: Watch SpaceX launch next batch of controversial satellites
SPACEX is planning on launching more of its Starlink satellites today, much to the dismay of astronomers.

...
Just 180 of the planned 42,000 small satellites have been sent into orbit but astronomers are already complaining Mr Musk has ruined their view of the stars.

Last year, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) said in a statement: “The scientific concerns are twofold. Firstly, the surfaces of these satellites are often made of highly reflective metal, and reflections from the Sun in the hours after sunset and before sunrise make them appear as slow-moving dots in the night sky.

“Although most of these reflections may be so faint that they are hard to pick out with the naked eye, they can be detrimental to the sensitive capabilities of large ground-based astronomical telescopes, including the extreme wide-angle survey telescopes currently under construction.

“Secondly, despite notable efforts to avoid interfering with radio astronomy frequencies, aggregate radio signals emitted from the satellite constellations can still threaten astronomical observations at radio wavelengths.

-50%
[link to www.express.co.uk (secure)]

What?
Is this the second time?
Anyways, hundreds of thousands more are planned.

Look at the sky, it's already filled with moving lights.
Some are moving behind the stars.
It don't make sense.

I've observed hundreds of satellites countless times over the last 15 years, I've written my own software for tracking satellites with my telescope. I have never seen evidence of a satellite passing "behind" stars.

???
What? you don't like internet??????

How many star sausage links are they going to launch ?

Are they becoming lazy or is that horizon line changing after 20 Km intentional?

The horizon line wasn't visible on the aft facing camera until 20 km. Are you stupid?

You're right; she even said as much.

That was cool, Astro. Sorry I missed the live show, but the replay was great!

This is more than just an issue of visual access to space; this program and others added to the already 500,000 pieces of space debris may well become a limiting factor for future (safe, efficient) human and payload launches. So short-sighted!

You do realize you're a mod on a fucking conspiracy website???

Sometimes, a duck is just a duck.

When you’re talking quantity of items, size of said items and the size of their destination are also things to consider .

These satellites won’t do fuck all to impact density of earth’s orbital plains.

Thanks Astro!