Weekly Space Report: Test Flight 13 Success!

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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Weekly Space Report: Test Flight 13 Success!

Highlights:

  • Review of abort/scrub a week ago.

  • Weather scrub this Thursday. Fantastic clear weather yesterday.

  • Deliberate extra stress on ascent. Moving much faster at 1-minute compared to TF12.

  • Hot stage and flip nominal, but not clearly shown in stream. Post-flight video released.

  • Boostback had all engines participating as expected, but SpaceX reported it ended slightly early.

  • Hard spashdown, missing some engines on landing burn.

  • Second stage engines behaved nominal throughout.

  • Starlink V3 sacrificial satellites deployed. Some with spotlights and cameras to inspect Ship 40 heat shield status.

  • All satellites deployed their solar panels and tested their thrusters.

  • Engine relight success.

  • Ship did NOT explode after splashdown!

  • Next flight might be soon!

  • Falcon 9: Northrup-Grumman MRV-MEP (with expended stage 1), Starlink 17-39

  • Blue Origin pad salvage progress/update.

  • India’s new private Skyroot Aerospace Vikram-1 Aagaman mission. A bit bigger than Rocket Lab’s Electron. Complete success.

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With the exception of the booster engine relights, which I’m sure they will solve, this test flight was a huge success and big fun to watch!

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