They just lit up the Starhopper's Raptor engine! It came after a week of frustration that Elon attributed to icing in fuel valves. (The fuel is liquid methane.) Ignition came at 7:56:26 pm CDT (5:56 PDT, 8:56 EDT) Wednesday April 3 (12:56 AM UTC April 4). The engine only ran for a second, which was planned and expected. The Hopper was tied down and didn't fly so it was a static test of the engine ignition, pumps and plumbing. (Which has proven to be cranky.) This is the first-ever firing of a full-flow staged-combustion rocket engine on an actual vehicle and not just an engineering experiment on a test stand. (It's very complicated.) Elon hopes that this engine will take humans to the Moon and Mars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_combustion_cycle It happened after dark, in the fog. Photo below is from six miles away. The small flame on the right is a methane flare stack. The big flame on the left is rocket blast coming out from under the Hopper. Hopefully the Hopper is still there and not the victim of what Elon calls a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. I'll be interested to see photos of it tomorrow morning. Photo from Labpadre's live video feed. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFwMITSkc1Fms6PoJoh1OUQ Short little videos here from the two live webcams: https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1113607173924372480 Elon Musk reacting https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1113613409767964673
Nerves of Steel BocaChicaGal to the rescue! Check this video out that she shot from (relatively) close by in Boca Chica! (I don't believe she is quite as close as it seems, it's a long lens.) Apparently the loud honking sound at the end of the video is really the sound this rocket engine makes when it shuts off. It reportedly made the same sound on the test stand at McGregor.
Lots of space stuff happening today. The Starhopper is still standing, apparently unscathed. Speculation is that they will want to examine it and look at all of their data, before firing it up again. (I want to see it untethered, flying free, rising on a pillar of flame and then gently landing again.) In other news for today (an exceedingly busy space-day)... The Japanese are planning to SHOOT asteroid Ryugu tonight (tomorrow their time) with a large impactor in hopes of creating a crater that reveals what's under the immediate surface. They will be streaming it from their JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) control room and the stream will be dubbed in English! https://twitter.com/girlandkat/status/1113055483907076096 The little Beresheet Israeli lunar lander fired its engines this morning to enter into lunar orbit, apparently successfully. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=47217.msg1931380#msg1931380 SpaceX's impressive Falcon Heavy (last seen launching Elon's red Tesla towards Mars) will be undergoing a static test fire at Cape Canaveral. The planned window for doing it runs from 6:00PM EDT to midnight EDT. Last I heard, the actual launch (carrying a heavy communications satellite for the Middle East to geosynchronous orbit) is scheduled for this Sunday. https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/04/spacex-arabsat-6a-falcon-heavy-static-fire/ NASA Stennis is test firing a big rocket engine intended for the new SLS (Space Launch System). It's live right now. Arianespace should be launching a Russian built (collusion!) Soyuz carrying a British comm-sat from French Guiana. In more Soyuz news, Roscosmos launched another Soyuz this morning from Kazakhstan carrying a supply capsule for the Space Station. Here it is arriving at the Space Station after only two orbits. Here's a beautiful view from Roscosmos of the Soyuz booster engines at launch.
Another Starhopper test firing Friday evening at Boca Chica. Conditions were too foggy to see anything much on the two live webcams, but it definitely seems to have lit up for about a second. https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1114372212717424640 The two webcams are 6 miles away at South Padre Island. Edit: About one minute ago Elon Musk posted this on twitter https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1114390314565787648 It's Elon Musk's mission to make science fiction real. Judging from the little video in this post, he's succeeding admirably.
The live-stream of Israel's Beresheet lunar landing attempt should begin in 2 hours here. (Serving as kind of a warm-up act to the Falcon Heavy launch this afternoon.): Livestream coverage starts at 18:45 UTC (2:45 PM EDT, 11:45 AM PDT). Landing burn begins at 19:05 UTC (3:05 PM EDT, 12:05 AM PDT). Landing is at 19:14 UTC (3:14 PM EDT, 12:14 PM PDT)
The Moon has a new crater. The main engine prematurely shut down during the landing process. They tried to relight it and succeeded, but by then the lander was way too low and going much too fast. At that point the flow of telemetry abruptly ceased.
About 25 minutes from the opening of the Falcon Heavy launch window. The thing is being fueled and lots of vapor is visible venting from it. Live here http://kerbalspaceacademy.com/live
Beautiful launch. Both side boosters have returned and landed simultaneously at Cape Canaveral. The center core has landed successfully on the SpaceX landing barge out in the Atlantic. And the satellite is in orbit! https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1116469974669901829
There has been another story in the news recently, a story about the first photos taken of a black hole. I've scanned the photos but I think the fun story is the science of what they had to do to get the photos. I haven't had a chance to read the stories but I hope to get around to it someday. I don't know if this is true but it seems that the last few years have seen some remarkable advances in the general area of astronomy in the past year. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/science/katie-bouman-black-hole.html
Marsquake https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-24/mars-probe-insight-detects-first-possible-marsquake/11041370
Stratolaunch is closing http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/space-firm-founded-by-billionaire-paul-allen-closing-operations-sources/ar-AACcRpe
take a peek at Jupiter this week https://www.nj.com/news/2019/06/jupiter-is-so-close-this-week-youll-be-able-to-see-its-moons-heres-how-to-spot-our-giant-neighbor.html