ENG: Updates on the Aerospace world + Merry XMAS!
Hello everyone, David here, and I am finally back! It's been a minute, I am aware, mainly because I was busy studying hard for the SAT (which, I am glad to say, that I am officially done with since I got the score I desired on the December exam) and some other things (such as the Brazilian Astronomy Olympiad, which was a fun test, and a little bit of school on the way).
Now, however, I am back with MEEP! Finally, huh? Feels good to open this Wix editor and type away without a care in the world, I missed this.
But anyway, let's get right into today's post. Although I will not continue my Star series in this post, that is not dead - I plan on working on the last post next week. Today we're going to just talk a little bit about some things that happened in the whole aerospace world since the last time I posted - and boy let me tell you, a lot has happened. Let's dive right in!
The return of Bob and Doug
Back on May 30th, Astronauts Robert Benken and Douglas Hurley launched aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavor - a name that was given to the capsule by Bob and Doug themselves - in the first time that NASA launched American Astronauts from American soil in almost a decade. I wrote a bunch of posts about this amazing launch and, well, they are back!
They have been back, actually, for a couple of months now. DM-2 arrived in the International Space Station at 14:16 UTC on 31 May, where they remained in orbit conducting research and testing the spacecraft - after all, that's what this mission was all about, testing - for a total of 62 days, undocking at 23:35 UTC on 1 August. From undocking to splashdown (the fact that it was a splashdown is actually amazing, since it was the first splashdown since Apollo 17 back in 1975), Bob and Doug spent a little over 18 hours in the capsule, where they had a lot of work to do.
On splashdown, the way they retrieve the capsule is quite interesting: before the hatch is opened and the Astronauts are retrieved, a ship called the GO Navigator uses some sort of lifting frame that picks the capsule up and places it on the ship's deck, where the hatch is secured and opened, and the Astronauts retrieved. I remember watching it live on youtube, and the whole operation is extremely complex, but was very well executed - something to be expected, as the men and women working on this had been rehearsing that moment for months before the actual capsule with the actual Astronauts was before them.
I highly recommend watching this on youtube right here, as this is literally history being made before our eyes!
After they egressed from the capsule, they were medically checked and taken back to NASA facilities, where they gave some interviews, were part of some medical studies (probably, that kind of thing always happens to see space effect on them or something), and now they are back in Earth, currently celebrating Christmas! All in all, it was a great mission and I am glad and mind-blown that we could all watch it unfolding before us, especially in a year like 2020, it was definitely a highlight.
The launch of Expedition 64 and the return of Expedition 63
Besides Bob and Doug, more people were in space during this year. You might remember NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy, member of Expedition 63 .He's guy who welcomed Bob and Doug aboard the ISS and, once they left, handed over the American flag brought aboard STS-135. There is a lot to talk about this wonderful human being, but briefly, he is a Navy SEAL turned Astronaut. Talk about accomplishment. Becoming a Navy SEAL is no easy task, but becoming a Navy SEAL AND an Astronaut is absolutely phenomenal.
Anyway, Chris was part of Expedition 63, and they are now back home. On October 21st at 10:54 pm EDT, after a brief 3 hours and 22 minutes since undocking, the crew landed safely in Kazakhstan. Chris did some incredible work aboard, even some spacewalks along fellow Astronaut Robert Benken (yes, from DM-2!), completing a total of 10 spacewalks, one of very few NASA Astronauts to do so.
Besides the departure of Expedition 63, (part of, will explain in a second) Expedition 64 launched. Aboard the Soyuz MS-17, NASA Astronaut Kathleen Rubins and Roscosmos Cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov left earth on October 14th. That is actually Kathleen Rubins' birthday, so everyone joked around that she got a hell of a candle for her birthday. A very interesting fact about this launch is that it only took about 3 hours to rendezvous with the ISS, a much shorter journey compared with the 20+ hours the SpaceX manned flights have taken. This was only possible due to very lucky timing between the ISS's and Soyuz's position, but still very interesting.
This was, as of today, the last scheduled launch for an American Astronaut aboard a Soyuz. This is great news for the Comercial Crew Program, since it does indicate that the American government is putting a lot of hope in it and plans on only launching - at least the next couple - Astronauts from American soil aboard American vehicles. Exciting stuff!
Speaking of Comercial Crew, the launch of DM-2 was just a test for what was to become a regular Commercial Crew Program to the ISS. Well, this was officially kicked off with the launch of...
The Crew-1 Mission
That's right! The Commercial Crew Program is officially started! After DM-2 came to an end, SpaceX's Falcon 9 was certified for human spaceflight, and with it came the opportunity to finally begin constant American presence in space from American soil.
With that said, the Crew-1 mission was scheduled and is currently going on. Just recently, on November 16th, Crew Dragon Resilience (a name that was given, once again, by the crew themselves, but this time announced before launch rather than in orbit) launched at 00:27:17 UTC. This was the first crewed night launch since STS-130 back in February 2010. Aboard were NASA Astronauts Victor Glover, Michael Hopkins, and Shannon Walker, as well as JAXA Astronaut Soichi Noguchi. You can watch the launch coverage here.
I also had the pleasure of watching this one live on Youtube, and boy was it exciting. I had watched night launches before, but not crewed, obviously. It was also very interesting to see four Astronauts aboard Crew Dragon instead of two. The crew also gave us an amazing tour of the capsule, which you can watch here. This was Victor Glover's first spaceflight, and during the live tour the crew gave Glover his golden wings, which apparently is an Astronaut tradition in which you only get your golden wings once you fly for the first time. That must've been an amazing feeling.
After docking with the ISS, the 4 Astronauts joined the other three Astronauts already living in the ISS and formed the complete body of Expedition 64. They are currently living there, doing research and some other fun science stuff, besides floating around, of course.
Finally, another major event occurred quite recently involving SpaceX, which was...
SN8's High Altitude Test Flight
Remember my post about SpaceX's different rockets? You might recall one called Starship, SpaceX's vision of the future of space travel. Well, not Starship is closer to reality than ever!
There is a lot of story behind Starship. It all started when SpaceX bought an entire village in Texas called Boca Chica and built a whole facility over there (they had to buy the place out since Boca Chica was famous for being a great place to live after retirement, which would be kind of ruined with the sound of rocket engines being tested every day, so they had to buy the homes and the neighborhood pretty much). That facility was made the place to build prototypes and test these prototypes of what will at some point become Starship.
These prototypes are also called "Serial Number X, " X being some number. The first one was SN1, then SN2, and so on. Back in August, SN5 was built in order to do the first "hop". This hop is a 150m flight, in which the vehicle ignites its engines, flies up to 150m, hovers around a little bit, then comes back down and lands vertically. This hop was carried out almost flawlessly, a huge success and great news for the development of Starship. At the time, Elon Musk declared that SpaceX would be going all out on Starship to try to expedite its development.
Fast forward to two weeks ago (Dec. 9th) and SN8 was sitting on a launchpad ready for a high altitude test flight. Similarly to the 150m hop, the high altitude test flight would climb up to a certain altitude and then come back. This altitude, however, was about 12.5 kilometers. Another difference is that SpaceX was aiming to try out their "belly flop maneuver, " in which, after the vehicle hits the apogee, it flips into a belly-facing-ground kind of thing. Then, when landing, the engines reignite and the vehicle goes vertical again, extends its landing legs, and lands.
So, how did it go? It went great! The vehicle launched and climbed gracefully into the air, and, just as predicted, it cut its engines and flipped on its belly. After decent, the engines reignited and the vehicle went vertical again in a beautiful execution of the flip maneuver. Unfortunately, due to low pressure on the fuel tanks, SN8 wasn't able to kill its velocity and hit the ground, causing a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (it blew up).
Although SN8 became pieces, the test flight was a tremendous success, as the SpaceX team was able to get all the data they needed to move on with development. Besides, everything went really well until that unfortunate mishap with the fuel tank's pressure. Engines did great, vehicle maneuvered as a graceful dancing bird would, it was an awesome show. This one I wasn't able to catch live, but here is the live stream of the event, and here is a recap by SpaceX themselves.
This was overall an awesome year for SpaceX. Starship saw some great improvements and developments, and the Commercial Crew Program is officially on!
Welp, this was it for this post! Hope you guys enjoyed it. It's good to be back, and next year we will be full power ahead with sweet content for this beautiful blog.
Before I go: Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you have a fantastic end of year and thank you all for the support this year. Have a Merry XMAS and great holidays. Stay safe! Peace!
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