Fifth Avenue Forum

Core 1046 looking a little dirty. I'm going to be disappointed if "wash me" is not written on there somewhere.

Nice tracking-camera shots of the core landing. For this launch, the core was perfectly capable of doing a RTLS landing, but doing so would have required the core flying near to Vandenberg SLC-6, which currently has a Delta IV Heavy sitting on it in preparation for a December 7 launch of a billion-dollar spy satellite for the NRO. So instead the droneship was parked just a few miles offshore, and that's why the landing was within the view of the tracking cameras.

The SpaceX CRS-16 mission has been delayed to Wednesday due to the discovery that some of the food bars that were to be loaded for the launch were moldy. SpaceX can move its vehicles pretty quickly between the assembly building and the pad, which means that food and other perishable items can be added to the Dragon at the last minute. It looks like some of that last-minute food was contaminated. The 24-hour delay gives the launch team time to make a grocery run, or whatever they do.

Turns out the moldy food bars were not human food, but rather food for mice that are on the ISS for experiments. This is the first time I'm aware of that a space launch was delayed for moldy pet food.

Maybe the space mice should build their own rocket, and fill it with their own food.

Successful launch of the Dragon vehicle to the ISS. The first stage recovery went awry. According to Elon, the hydraulic pump for the grid fins got stuck, which left the first stage spinning. Despite the pump failure, the stage managed to execute a soft landing in the water. For RTLS landings, the stage is programmed to head for the water offshore, and it only shifts over to target the landing pad at the last moment and if everything is nominal, so a water landing is the failure mode. The stage is seemingly still intact after tipping over in the water, so it may be possible for SpaceX to fish it out of the ocean, although it almost certainly would not fly again after going for a swim.

Elon posted a video of the splashdown:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1070399755526656000

Of course it's supposed to be shtty weather for the Geminids this week.

If you want to follow the Virgin Galactic test today on FlightRadar24 or whatever, WhiteKnightTwo's callsign is N202VG. Currently about to cross over Death Valley.

Moved here, because..... well, because.

Video from a guy who was out to film the (scrubbed) Delta IV heavy launch:



It's a high-altitude contrail of some sort being lit up by the setting (or even set) sun. As the guy notes in the video, it's much brighter than other jet contrails.

My wild-ass guess: a fighter pilot flying at high altitude briefly lit up the afterburners, which produced a denser/smokier contrail that caught more light.

Turns out this was probably a noctilucent cloud formed by a meteorite burning up. Dashcams and weather station cams as far up as Sacramento and Tahoe (which does not normally have a view of anything atmospheric as far south as Vandenberg) caught the thing.

Mars Express beams back images of ice-filled Korolev crater

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... are_btn_tw

Sploosh

Catalogue of Manmade Material on the Moon

https://history.nasa.gov/FINAL%20Catalo ... 20Moon.pdf

Hey, the Chinese made it to the dark side of the moon. Pretty cool stuff.

Catalogue of Manmade Material on the Moon

https://history.nasa.gov/FINAL%20Catalo ... 20Moon.pdf

Document proclaiming “University of Michigan Alumni of the Moon”

Ugh.

Also,

Hey, the Chinese made it to the dark side of the moon. Pretty cool stuff.

It's unfortunate that the Chinese choose to be fairly secretive about their space program (even the non-military stuff), because they're doing some neat stuff. They're progressing nicely on their manned/space-station program and are developing several new families of launch vehicles, including a proposed super-heavy lifter (the Long March 9).

The reporting on the Chang'e-4 landing has been pretty bad, IMO. I've seen a number of reports saying things like "First ever pictures from dark side of moon!" which makes it sound like we've never seen that side before. Those are the first pictures from the far side's surface. The entirety of the moon was imaged and mapped decades ago.

Go Blue!

I've seen too many comments about the lack of sunlight on the "dark" side in the last few hours.

Catalogue of Manmade Material on the Moon

https://history.nasa.gov/FINAL%20Catalo ... 20Moon.pdf

Defecation Collection Device

No matter where we go, humans always leave their sh!t behind.

"There's a turd floating through the air."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -be-aliens

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... -be-aliens

*ahem*

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46811618

here are a number of theories about what could be causing them.

They include a neutron star with a very strong magnetic field that is spinning very rapidly, two neutron stars merging together, and, among a minority of observers, some form of alien spaceship.