Weekly Space Report: Test Flight 10 Success!

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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Two videos from Marcus this week, post-flight and Saturday morning regular show:

Highlights 1:

  • Ground equipment scrub, then weather scrub, then liftoff Tuesday!

  • Perfect liftoff and booster ascent until single engine out @ 1:33

  • Hot staging also perfect, with 2nd determistic flip

  • Boost back conducted without that failed engine

  • Reduced angle of attack on return to avoid excess stress

  • Landing burn also avoided failed engine (autonomously)

  • Perfect hover @ ~100m to finish before splashdown

  • Ship orbital insertion was nominal, but there was an unexplained energetic event seen on a flap cam.

  • Payload bay door opened smoothly, and dummy starlink deployment proceeded as planned.

  • Raptor engine relight successful.

  • Unexplained destruction of part of the aft skirt, lots of debris on camera

  • Interesting damage to aft flap, but not fatal

  • Cool views while flap control authority tests were conducted

  • Ship landing burn and flip were perfect, and on target (near the camera buoy).

  • Interesting colors on exposed heat shield tiles.

  • One more block 2 ship to fly.

Highlights 2:

  • SpaceX In-flight livestream UI changes discussed, including 3-d attitude render

  • Max re-entry g-force was only ~2.4

  • Flap camera shows intact catch fitting after re-entry.

  • No explanation yet for aft energetic event and damage.

  • Lots of video clips released by SpaceX. Fantastic views of ship flip and splashdown from the buoy cam.

  • Orange color from single metallic test tile.

  • White color at nose from exposed under layer.

  • Everyday Astronaut caught booster’s RUD on splashdown. Nothing expected to be recoverable.

  • Speculation on Ship catch

  • New starbase permit application with many details.

  • Pad 1 to be converted to match Pad 2 flame trench design

  • Oxygen liquifaction plants in two places

  • Natural gas to pure methane extraction plant shown

  • Lots of Interior views of star factory released

  • Ground work for Gigabay now showing distinct workstation foundations.

  • Booster 15 to refly for TF11.

  • SHip 38 nearly ready for its final test campaign

  • Cape Canaveral launch tower progress report

  • Falcon 9: Cargo Dragon CRS-33, Luxemburg NAOS with rideshares and relight, Starlink 10-56, Starlink 10-11 (#30 for booster 1067), Starlink 17-7

  • Dragon nosecone modularity, new dragon propulsion kit

  • Extra mass precluded typical Dragon booster return to launch site

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