SpaceX Starship gets Reinforcements, Falcon 9 Breaks New Record, Secret China Launch, Final Ariane V

SpaceX continues expanding starlink super heavy shuffles at Starbase and major ship and launch pad updates the last ever Ariane 5 Mission a mysterious Chinese satellite launch a falcon 9 launch and Landing for the history books and so much more to cover in today's installment of space this week I'll also be looking back at the last six months of Space Station activities as 2023 passes its halfway mark So sit back and enjoy this week's space Roundup the Big Star based news last week was the first major steps towards installing the giant water Deluge system first saw this Beast up close a couple of weeks ago in these shots here captured by Starship Gaza now a lot has happened since these shots were filmed the first component to be transported was the massive Central water-cooled steel plate which was rolled out on Friday and transported down to the launch site to supply the giant water-cooled steel plate and delish system we've been seeing continued pipeworks being lifted into position around the pad such as this y-shaped splitter pipe that will send water to the small and large manifolds before all of this took place though SpaceX performed another night of concrete pouring Madness with over 170 concrete trucks delivering concrete to the site which was then poured into the launch mounts foundations over the course of about 15 hours the three concrete pumping trucks then packed up in the morning after a couple of days of letting the concrete start to cure we started seeing SpaceX move the steel plate mover underneath the pad in rehearsal for installation of the plate shortly after using the lifting strength of two cranes SpaceX raised the central steel plate and placed it on the transporter the reason why it needs to be transported vertically like this is because there's no way it could fit through the gaps in the launch Mount legs once it was rolled underneath the pad the cranes lowered their hooks through the orbital launch ring and carefully lifted the plate before steadily lowering it down big props to the crane operators this looked like an incredibly tricky job the central steel plate is supplemented by three surrounding manifolds which blast water upwards towards the booster but not hitting its engines to serve as the water Deluge system the first of these manifolds was transported to the site last Thursday as well as the largest of the three the following day saw the first of the three water manifolds being lifted into position surprisingly we also saw the arrival of around 20 water tankers to the launch site these are movac trucks and are normally used to pump water out of places rather than fill up water tanks perhaps these are here in preparation of water day loose tests which will require the pumping out of water or maybe they really are here to fill up the water Deluge systems tanks ahead of its initial testing to celebrate the 4th of July SpaceX flew this giant American flag from the launch Tower thanks to Maria pointer for this video as you can see the launch tower now has its shift quick disconnect arm which was missing for quite some time yep we finally saw this reappear at the build site where it was then transported down to the launch area aside from some modifications to its pipework Arrangements not a lot appears to have been changed with this structure it was then lifted and installed onto the QD arm positioned a little bit higher than its original position this is to account for the fact that going forward the first stage boosters are going to be slightly taller to make room for the vent ring required for the Starship hot staging what will the venturing look like well possibly this lab Padres cameras captured This Test Section moved around the build area to tent one the section is labeled hot stage load head which to me sounds like this could well be a Pathfinder test tank for the Starship super heavy interstage do you remember how ship 28's payload bay door was removed a couple couple of weeks ago we suspected that SpaceX wanted to make reinforcements to this as the payload bay doors for ship 20 24 and 25 all needed to be welded shut in the end presumably because structurally it just wasn't up to the job well it looks like SpaceX might have figured things out as we told the arrival of ship 28's new payload bay door which was then installed as you can see it looks substantially more robust than the original door with significant reinforcements around its Edge in a historic first a super heavy booster was rolled out from the build area down to the Macy's test area historically Macy's has only ever been used for testing starships and small test articles but recent infrastructure upgrades mean that super Heavies can undergo testing here which is likely what we'll see with booster 10 since this was the vehicle moved to the site on this occasion here's an obligatory human for scale shot super heavy boost testing will be limited to pressurization and cryo-proofing tests it's highly unlikely we'll see static fires and if we did it would be limited to only a couple of engines since the static fire all 33 well I've spent most of the video so far going through what kind of ground reinforcements are required to facilitate that booster 3 did a triple engine static fire on a sub orbital pad way back in the day though so I guess it's not entirely out for the question for some point in the future though at the same time I'm not really sure if SpaceX have much to gain from single engine tests at this point we saw two Falcon 9 launches since the last episode of space this week and one of them was for the history books we'll save that one for a second while we talk about the first Falcon 9 launch last week which took place on Friday this was mission starlink group 5-13 and saw a falcon 9 liftoff from the Vandenberg space launch Center carrying 48 Starling satellites to orbit after separation of the second stage Falcon 9's first stage successfully touched down on the Drone ship of course I still love you located in the Pacific Ocean this specific first stage be 1063 had been employed in 11 previous missions Sentinel 6 Dart transporter 7 one web 19 and 7 Starling commissions quite a number of launches then for this booster but it's got nothing on the new Champion yep we have a new Falcon 9 Landing record earlier today a falcon 9 booster carried 22 Starling V2 minis to orbit on Mission Starling group 6-5 the first stage blasted off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for the 16th time and following stage separation it once again successfully landed on the just read the instructions drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean the previous 15 missions for this booster were crew demo 2 and NASA's 2 crs-21 transporter 1 and 3 and 10 Starling missions on Wednesday we had a launch that marked the end of an era Ariane space launched the final ever Ariane 5 rocket carrying two communication satellites to geostationary orbit one was a German spacecraft designed to research and Test new communication Technologies while the other was a French satellite fused by the French Armed Forces which would allow the military to remain permanently connected during deployments according to ariane's face the Ariane 5 has been in service for almost a quarter of a century and it has a Legendary list of launches attributed to it a good recent example being the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope but its retirement now leaves Europe without a heavy lift vehicle as the Ariane 6 still isn't ready and we're not entirely sure when it'll be ready the current vehicle at the French Guiana Space Center isn't a flight article it's only there to test the facilities ahead of the real rockets which are still being assembled in Europe we saw a somewhat mysterious launch in China last week on Sunday along March 2C launch vehicle took off from the chican and satellite launch Center in China's Gansu Province carrying a single satellite to low earth orbit not a lot has been disclosed by what the satellite is though only that it's an internet technology test satellite and that it has successfully ended its planned orbit your guess is as good as mine what that could possibly mean what's the latest aboard the International Space Station well now it's July we've crossed this year's halfway mark during the first half of the year a total of 15 individuals from various Nations including Americans emiratis Japanese Russians and Saudis have lived and worked aboard the station let's look back on the last six months of activities just before crew 5 returned home NASA's SpaceX Cruise 6 Mission successfully launched on the 2nd of March carrying four new crew members to the station their primary Mission objective involves pioneering research to ensure astronaut and spacecraft safety during deep space exploration along with studies that could lead to enhanced Medical Treatments for people back on Earth crew 6 continues to remain on board and will return home after approximately six months in space in partnership with Axiom space and SpaceX NASA launched Axia mission 2 the second private astronaut mission to the International Space Station on the 21st of May the crew stayed on the space station for eight days conducting experiments and Outreach activities before returning to Earth this year astronauts continued their work from 2021 by installing the 5th and sixth International Space Station roll out solar arrays through a series of spacewalks these new arrays measure nearly 20 meters long by 6 meters wide and will partially shade the original arrays which are 34 meters long by 12 meters wide the installation of the seventh and eighth rollout solar arrays is planned for future space walks each new array is capable of generating over 20 kilowatts of electricity and once all eight are installed they will increase the station's power production by 30 percent compared to the current arrays this year hasn't solely been about operational activities researchers announced a remarkable 98 water recovery achievement in the U.S segment of the space station which is crucial for life support systems during long duration missions beyond the low earth orbit in March the crew successfully harvested dwarf tomatoes in the station's veggie facility as part of the veg zero five experiment examining the effects of light quality and fertilizer in fruit production microbial safety and nutritional value the station's biofabrication facility also made a comeback this year with upgraded capabilities during its initial space trip in 2019 the facility successfully printed a partial human knee meniscus and a significant amount of human heart cells the improved capabilities aim to advance research in human tissue printing offering hope for patients in need of organ transplants by producing replacement organs and tissues if you think that was impressive get ready for the second half of 2023 which promises more space walks cargo missions and the launches of SpaceX crew 7 and soyuz ms-24 later this year NASA astronaut Frank Rubio accompanied by Russian cosmonaut Sergey prokopiev and Dimitri petalin will reach their 365 day mark on the 21st of September they are scheduled to return home in late September with Rubio set to become the new American record holder for the longest single space flight a huge thank you is owed by patreon and YouTube membership supporters whose kind generosity helps me continue keeping you all in the loop about all things space every single Monday consider signing up to either of these programs if you want to see your name on the left there otherwise there are two videos from my channel listed there that YouTube thinks you'll like hopefully they're good picks thank you all so much for watching this video and I'll catch you in the next one I have a very special video coming this week I can't wait to show you make sure you subscribe so you don't miss that

Channel: Matt Lowne

Views: 75,804

Keywords: ariane v, long march 2C, boca chica, booster, elon musk, flight test, matt lowne space news, matt lowne space this week, mechazilla, nasa, rocket launch, space this week, spacenews, spacex, spacex starship, starbase, starbase boca chica, starship, starship flight test, starship orbital flight test, static fire, united launch alliance

Id: 3lYEw5Ybe4U

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2023