SpaceX Starship Test Flight 4: Jaw-Dropping Moments Explained!

right so this week needs no introduction Starship flight test 4 flu and my goodness was it one of the most astounding events that I've ever seen a lot of other stuff outside that happened too but I'll get to that let's just jump into it okay we can see you coming down the lad now hey hey Marcus house with you here this has been obviously an epic week for spacex's Starship program first let's just catch up on the preparation work to get the flight 4 vehicles ready to launch you might remember from last we that we saw the flight termination explosives being installed on both booster 11 and ship 29 the latter of which had been moved away from the Launchpad now with those ready to go and final checkouts seemingly complete it was time for it to be stacked onto the booster ship 29 was shifted over to the arms they were hooked up and the vehicle was once again in the air as usual it followed the typical and now smooth routine of the lift the pivot over the booster and then down to slide securely into place Bas X posted some incredible shots of the integrated vehicle with the sun low in the sky the flight for stack was back again ship 29's transport stand was moved away from the arms and over towards what used to be the suborbital area of the pad interestingly Starship gazer managed to catch this image of the heat shield on the ship SpaceX confirmed that the missing two tiles and this third ablative version that they might use as a backup beneath the current tiles were simply test points to measure how hot things got in the those locations keep in mind that they most likely still want to get data on what might happen if a tile happens to fall off during the flight a little over a week ago Elon had commented saying that right now Starship is not resilient to loss of a single tile in most places is the secondary containment material will probably not survive indeed this entry phase is critical to understand and this is a great location to test it after all the ship after skirt area doesn't have propellant tanks or the payload Bay Barrel which are obviously more structurally vital and fully enclosed that said there is a raptor vacuum engine placed right behind these patches any re-entry damage however shouldn't matter too much for those because the landing flip and the soft splash down only requires the sea-level engines now strangely SpaceX decided to bring the ship down one last time the ship quick disconnect was detached and afterward they covered the ports with a tape to prevent debris making its way inside again here was ship 29 returning to the ground less than 48 hours ahead of the first scheduled launch attempt I assumed that they had destacked this so that they could slap on The Branding and the s29 decals like we've seen on past flights but no they must have just been tweaking or testing something small because it was lifted back onto booster 11 soon after so what about flight 4 itself in last week's video we were still expecting a June five launch date but just after publishing SpaceX posted an update saying that the target date had moved to Thursday the 6th that was a little more time for the preparation work and Regulatory steps so a quick 24-hour shift wasn't going to hurt now for flight three the FAA only released the launch license 15 hours before the launch so we were expecting to see this come quite close to flight but this time around it was quite a lot faster in fact here it was on Tuesday about 40 hours before the flight now the FAA added a statement alongside the license saying what I think is a critical point for this launch SpaceX proposed three scenarios that should not require any mishap investigation the first scenario would be the failure of the thermal Shield during High heating the second for if the flap system is unable to provide sufficient control under high Dynamic pressure and the third to cover a failure of the Raptor engine system during a landing burn the great thing is is that the FAA accepted this proposal and said that indeed if any of those three things occur no mishap investigation would be required provided of of course that there was no injury or unrelated property damage involved so this is pretty big for SpaceX as those investigations take a lot of time and effort it's great to see a bunch of that red tape being cut in that regard they have also even improved Mission profiles for both controlled and uncontrolled re-entries of Starship in the future so SpaceX has that choice looking at you there ship 26 so with every little piece of the puzzle in place it was now just a matter of time before the road closed right on time at midnight and not just at the usual location but further away too everything proceeded nicely and while I joined NASA space flights live stream and chatted away in there the tank farm was slowly conditioning itself thanks for the hospitality there guys the tower arms started to move into the launch position but there must have been some sort of snag because some cars returned to the pad whatever that was there was nothing to worry about because we were continuing right into the count before we knew it the Chimes on the booster started to vent indicating that the CO2 was being loaded and right at T-minus 2 hours all of the cars had left the pad SpaceX gave an updated launch time of 7:50 a.m. local time this tiny delay was later confirmed on stream to be a small ground service equipment issue at this point I was chatting away with the lab Padre and space flight now teams right through the event and it was crazy awesome when SpaceX started their live stream the count was truly on wow some of these visuals on the stream were simply mindboggling too take this awesome view of the booster forward section right when the ship engine chill starts up anyway regardless with zero holds or any issues the countdown screams towards liftoff now in this flight one outer Raptor boost engine flamed out right after liftoff but it did not stop a super smooth Ascent they can of course get by missing a few engines if needed right as it passes out of the cloud layer just to check out those shock waves ripping through and the ascent right up to the intricate choreography of the hot staging was there at 2 minutes 52 seconds showing three camera views of this event this all looked very similar to flight three and off went the ship to continue its Journey the big question where we going to see big improvements on the boosters return this time well the Boost back of the 13 Raptor engines looked absolutely Flawless they all cut off at the same time without the issue seen with flight 3 then bam would you look at that as I had hoped a glorious never-before seen view of the hot staging ring being jettisoned SpaceX on stream by the way confirmed that this is being done to decrease the mass of the burster and this would be done as a temporary solution I know a lot of people have been curious about that one it was now time to head back for a hopefully Pinpoint Landing burn and soft splash down sweet views of the forward Dome of the booster here by the way notice the grid fin actuator moving if you also look closely right in the background you can even see the hot staging ring flying past we also had this view looking straight upwards from the booster as it screams into the upper atmosphere you can even see the grid fins doing those small corrections as it approaches 10 km in altitude as booster 11 started to get much lower into the dense atmosphere some debris was seen flying off for just a moment it didn't look like the landing burn was even going to start at all but there it was with only one Raptor missing yes at its maximum thrust it was pulling what looked to be a little over 5 GS of deceleration it was was then pretty much just hovering as it gently kissed the ocean followed by a graceful fall into the water below exactly what we wanted to see and we have BL [Applause] down interestingly right as all this was happening in real time at the launch site the tower arms also closed in as the booster performed its Landing burn this is great because I was really hoping that we would see them try to simulate a catch at the same time I think it's also worth noting that the arms were actually fine to do this so if they took any damage from the launch this time it can't have been anything too severe right with that epicness out of the way let's hop over to the ship it once again successfully made it all the way to its intended trajectory just shy of orbital velocity SpaceX had for some reason lost the external camera feeds but after a quick fix the views were back again check this out it looks like the fixes for the attitude control have gone perfectly to plan because ship 29 was Nic positioned for re-entry fun fact this was all happening before our eyes exactly 1 year after ship 29 was fully stacked in the highway that is quite fitting isn't it now we didn't have to wait too much longer for that re-entry with the early signs of the plasma quickly appearing could ship 29 Brave the astounding re-entry heating better compared to ship 28 oh yes it could you just need to go and replay all of this in real time because the entire entry was an astounding spectacle the ship had survived Peak entry heating seemingly perfectly with no visible damage appearing at that point you could really see that the upward angle of the ship was allowing it to almost hang at the same altitude for quite some time before actually dropping further that allows them to spread out the entry phase of the heating much more evenly this is the exact control that we wanted to see however as the density of the atmosphere started to increase some troubling signs started to emerge from the camera looking at the forward flap yeah over a nail biting minute or so the lower portion of the flap was eventually melted right through you can even see the support framing underneath glowing as part of the outer steel covering is eaten and whipped Away by the violent hell of that flow this entire entry was almost completely uninterrupted and we have never in history witnessed something like this live Starship is just so massive that it punches a hole in the plasma behind it so that it can still send data out via stying so what a demonstration of that new communication Tech technology at the same time did that stop ship 29 not at all down it continued and through the now damaged cameras we could still make out the Ford flap actually moving not only that controlling the vehicle it was incredibly still alive and moving now just to make this event even more crazy the ship simply continued its descent and was quickly below 10 km there was just no way that it had survived well enough to do the flip and Landing burn though right well think again because look at this the remains of the forward flap here were moving right on Q to initiate the flip and my goodness The Landing burn had started with the three flashes on screen that shows that all three Raptors ignited for this Landing burn I had no words left at that point with the attitude control data on screen we got to see the ship was now positioned perfectly vertical and basically had zero velocity yes not just booster 11 but ship 29 had made their way back down to their respective ocean locations and softly splashed down absolutely bananas of course the ship promptly toppled over and with its job now done the flap simply couldn't hold on any longer breaking off as the ship fell into the ocean so yeah to summarize it all booster 11 had a near perfect descent and also a near perfect descent followed by a soft splash down ship 29 meanwhile had a perfect descent showed off the full capabilities of the attitude control and followed that somehow managing to make make its way through the re-entry intact too what a day it is already worth noting as mentioned by Elon that the next versions of Starships will have the forward flaps shifted more Leeward so that that will help stop the plasma flow getting in underneath and melting it up he also came right out after this to say that he thinks that SpaceX should try to catch the booster with the tower for flight five I cannot wait for that mission so how was everything looking over at the launch site after that Madness well for one the tower arms had already made their way back down into their resting position within 2 hours of the launch and the first crew were returning to the pad there is a bit of a pattern emerging with a ship quick disconnect once again looking a little wonky now surprisingly though it doesn't look like there was any major damage to the launch site so was that all of the action of the week well of course not because here we were watching another booster being created again I'll jump into that in just a moment but first a big thank you to EXA sponsoring this video my wife and I have been using their slim minimalist wallets for years now and this is the last wallet you 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added discount thank you exra so this week booster 15's after two section was moved into the ringyard as was nicely confirmed by Mary from NASA space flight after a quick tour inside the mega Bay to remove the stiffener ring on top the installation of the temporary leadin could start these are used to fully align the two barrels ahead of being welded together one by one they went inside the mega Bay to be stacked sadly these days we don't really get to see the stacking events due to the doors staying closed most of the time but we should see the after Barrel make an appearance once done to confirm that progress now over at the massis test site we had quite an awesome turn of events this week yes it was once again time for ship 26 to be loaded with propellant but this time methane as well they were going for a static fire as we had hoped a lot more liquid oxygen was loaded into ship 26 than we saw the previous week and before we knew it yes that was the first static fire on top of the new Mass's flame trench and it was quite an intriguing one too if we play back the earliest moments of the static fire frame by frame we can actually quite clearly see that unlike the static fires on suborbital pad B they now first ignite the three Raptor vacuum engines and only later ignite the sea level engines this is a great thing because it looks like the ship engine testing stand over at masses can now truly simulate the startup sequence scene in white with the hot staging ring I think it is crazy that at the start of the year the work on the tank farm had barely begun in fact right around when the second Starship flight test happened the foundation work for the pad had itself barely even started SpaceX just truly makes even these huge projects happen in the blink of an eye also we've seen the team start work on adding some more foundations here right next to the liquid oxygen tank now that should ensure that there is plenty of propellers here for the static fires going forward heading all the way over to Florida at the Kennedy Space Center turnbas and more excitement yes the last two segments for the second orbital pad at Starbase was soon staged here and not long after that the tower arm Carriage as well as the arms themselves met up right here with a barge already present they soon started to load the different pieces on board just think of this as a huge upscaled version of Tetris first on board one of the two Tower sections and then in a sideways motion The Carriage was moved on too I've got to say the skills of these dver is getting those self-propelled modular Transporters maneuvered in the correct way just blows my mind it looks like they used every available inch to get in there and somehow also get back off again with everything loaded on the shipment was ready to send down to the Gateway To Mars for Tower two so there is obviously still one big piece missing the ship quick disconnect arm itself I'm assuming that this will come on a future delivery on a barge but we are also waiting to see if the orbital launch Mount that they have been working on over at Hangar m may be shipped as well alternatively perhaps that will stay here and a new one will be constructed at Starbase itself time will tell now it seems like a terrible week for this to be included with all the excitement going on but just as our video last week was uploading the news broke about the dear moon mission being completely cancelled this has been an absolutely heartbreaking moment for the crew that were planned to go on that mission and I'm sure you've seen plenty of individual viewpoints around the place I don't think that team could have really conveyed his thoughts any better than right here unfortunately this was something that was to a degree sort of predicted I didn't want to say anything at the time because I don't want rumors flying around with any solid evidence but what we had noticed was that Elon had suddenly unfollowed yaku mayawa on X around the end of March now that seemed very odd but we were just hoping that this was some sort of mistake or something less severe as it turned out Dear Moon had posted Just A Week Ago officially cancelling the project now the reason given behind this decision was due to the length of time that it has taken to get Starship ready initially dear moon was planned to fly in 20203 but obviously a year later we are really still in the early phase of testing before anything like a dear moon mission SpaceX needs to na re-entry but the rapid reuse orbital refilling and at some point a crew rating that will be acceptable for such a mission the 2023 timeline has always been far-fetched for a crew mission especially of course over the past few years watching the struggles that SpaceX have had with the orbital launch site these are not complaints obviously these are very real and unprecedented challenges to solve if every step went perfectly to plan right through all of the development process perhaps 20123 wouldn't have been such an unrealistic timeline but let's face it almost every rocket development that you can think of has been delayed and delayed for various reasons SpaceX is really no exception to that I'm sort of surprised that they didn't wait another year or two but yeah it is sad for the crew that could have been one of the first to fly around the moon in over 50 years so the saga continues with the Starin crude flight test we were back on Saturday almost a week ago watching the lengthy live stream with all of the preparation work screaming ahead Butch and sunny were suited back up having not left quarantine after all of this time they made their way back into Starliner once again perched on top of United launch alliances Atlas 5 everything seemed good to go the weather was perfect and even the poles were looking great they got all the way down this time to tus 3 minutes and 35 seconds and another scrub this time it wasn't for the rocket itself or Styer either but the ground systems according to NASA and Ula a card which is part of the Rocket's ground system wasn't behaving properly and it needed to be replaced that had the mission pushed to Wednesday morning sunny and Butch were back again suiting up and boarding sty for the third time time on this day though we were good to go with ignition and liftoff terrific shots here by the Amazing Greg Scott the atlas 5 sha does provide terrific exhaust plume views sadly most of the coverage was these animated screens without any live views I did expect them to make a bigger production out of it in that regard anyway great news that they were finally in orbit and tracking down the International Space Station late into Wednesday evening though they were diagnosing a helium leak problem which we did not want to see luckily they were able to at least temporarily close those leaks off so the issue wasn't serious enough to stop them continuing on to the ISS about 24 hours after the launch here we were at the station Styer successfully docked to the forward Port of the harmony module and shortly after they were joining the crew on board they are going to remain at the station for about 9 days assuming that all goes to plan and then they will head back to complete the mission now some absolutely brilliant news with the Chang 6 moon landing here with were watching the footage of the event showing the Lander performing its long Landing burn for the big event and it was so fun to watch after all if this touchdown would be a success China would have landed on The Far Side of the Moon not once but twice these onboard views of the Lander making its way through the Descent phase and then transitioning into the landing itself was really spectacular to watch what you are seeing here is obviously highly sped up but you know me I do love a good time lapse and there we go touchdown there Landing successfully with within the giant South Pole atken Basin remember this entire vehicle is actually four different modules the Orbiter separated earlier in the mission to remain circling the moon the Lander with the Ascender module performs the mission on the surface takes the samples from the Moon loads them into the Ascender the Ascender then launches back to autonomously meet up with the Orbiter and then the samples are transferred into that yeah this is a complex Mission the Orbiter then departs Luna orbit to fly back to Earth and sends the returner back into the atmosphere for a skip entry so how did it go well the spacecraft landed somewhere around here which is predicted to be around 16.7 km away from the planned site thanks to the obstacle avoidance and guidance systems that helped select the best landing Zone to avoid any risk of a crash we got a lot of great footage of the progress too the Lander was hard at work collecting samples and drilling into the lunar surface this was done all with the help of two instruments a mechanical drill that is capable of collecting materials from about 1 M under the surface then it also has a robotic arm that can scoop in lunar soil from the surface directly these collected samples were about 2 kg worth and we got to see so much of this action happening before we knew it the samples were picked up transferred to the Ascender module on top of the Lander and on Monday the sampling operations were completely done the Ascender module used the Lander as a Launchpad and launched itself to orbit as you can see right here its next step was to Rondevu and dock with the return module the returner should have these samples back to Earth in about 3 weeks I believe this smooth Mission so far may even seem a little surprising given that we have seen a few recent moonland emissions failing entirely or just partially successful keep in mind though that the technology used for this Mission has largely been proven in action before given that Chang A6 is mostly the same spacecraft as Chang a 5 remember they are also using Q2 as a communication relay satellite which is also based on the Chang 4 missions q1 I just think it is so exciting to see all of this going on landing on the far side of the moon means getting access to samples that have never been analyzed before so I'm looking forward to seeing what we find Now Rocket lab's electron lifted off from New Zealand for the second of the two pre-fire missions known as the polar radiant energy in the far infrared experiment this one was ascending on Tuesday morning to complete the second n a requirement there was a bunch of cloud cover in this one giving us quite unique views below as it blasted all the way up to Stage separation the second stage did its job beautifully as the second pre-fire satellite was deployed about an hour later now this mission was scrubbed last Friday but if you want to know more about this Mission I went into all of that in last weekend's video so check that out if you missed it NASA's launch Services Program also confirmed rocket lab's Mission success and they are expecting to have the first scientific results from the two satellites in about 60 days or so the total Mission time for pre-fire overall is about 10 months so it'll be interesting to see what they've learned sometime next April so we had another record smashing observation announced by the James web Space Telescope team over this last week over the last two years the international team of astronomers have used web to study galaxies through the Jades program using web's near infrared spectrograph they obtained a spectrum from a Galaxy that existed just 290 million years after the big bang potentially making it the most distant and also the youngest Galaxy ever observed the near cam onweb was instrumental in selecting Galaxies for deeper spectroscopic analysis this galaxy named Jade's gsz14 was actually found to be at a red shift of 14.32% billion years before getting here giving us an unprecedented glimpse into a Time less than 300 million years after the universe's Inception not only is this discovery a huge scientific achievement it is also feeding back into our current scientific models each time we find the newest most distant Galaxy we are inching closer and closer to the border of the edge of the universe's Dark Age and the beginning of the reionization era the cool thing is is that not only are these galaxies a bit larger and brighter than expected they also exhibit a huge number of metal Rich stars that means that at this point there had been ample time for many generations of massive stars to have already formed and died now just to add to all of that there is an extra James web Space Telescope treat here you might have already seen this picture floating around NGC 4449 also known as Coldwell 21 this is a well-known Starburst Galaxy sitting about 12 million light years away from us it is a Super Active Star formation region in fact this galaxy is experiencing the ultimate peak in its star formation due to the recent interactions with other nearby galaxies our own Milky Way galaxy is due to become one of these in a few billion years as it collides with Andromeda now this image was taken by hubbler and released way back in 2007 but the James web Space Telescope has observed this galaxy in amazing detail in the Hubble image we can clearly see the galactic center with many bright regions of star formation all over the place but a lot of the collapsing gas and dust that makes this galaxy interesting also hides what we are interested in observing in web's version thanks to the mid infrared camera we can actually see the true nature of this Galaxy with hot regions of star formation happening just about everywhere through those creeping tendrils of gas and dust although this galaxy has been creating a steady supply of stars for many billions of years and would have happily continued to do so due to this event its star forming gas supply will be totally used up over the next billion years so yeah this ultimate Peak is also a last Harrah so there you have it my friends an epic week that one I hope you enjoyed this video if you did don't forget to hit subscribe so we get to keep making them if you want to continue with more space awesomeness check out this video here next or maybe these videos thanks for watching all this way through and I will see you for the next video

Channel: Marcus House

Views: 353,329

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Id: ObulHCfaODU

Length: 27min 32sec (1652 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024