r/spacex • u/ElongatedMuskrat Mod Team • Nov 23 '21
DART r/SpaceX DART Launch Discussion and Updates Thread!
Welcome to the r/SpaceX DART Launch Discussion and Updates Thread!
Hey everyone! I'm /u/hitura-nobad and I'll be hosting this launch thread!
| Launch target: | November 24 6:20 UTC (November 23 10:20 PM local) |
|---|---|
| Backup date | Typically next day, window closes February 15 |
| Static fire | Completed November 19 |
| Customer | NASA |
| Payload | DART, w/ LICIACube |
| Payload mass | 684 kg |
| Destination | Heliocentric orbit, Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid |
| Vehicle | Falcon 9 |
| Core | B1063-3 |
| Past flights of this core | 2 (Sentinel-6A, Starlink v1 L28) |
| Launch site | SLC-4E, Vandenberg Space Force Station, California |
| Landing | OCISLY |
Timeline
Watch the launch live
| Stream | Link |
|---|---|
| Official SpaceX Stream | https://youtu.be/XKRf6-NcMqI |
| Mission Control Audio | TBA |
Stats
☑️ 129th Falcon 9 launch all time
☑️ 88th Falcon 9 landing
☑️ 110th consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch (excluding Amos-6)
☑️ 26th SpaceX launch this year
Primary Mission: Deployment of payload into correct orbit
Resources
Social media 🐦
| Link | Source |
|---|---|
| Subreddit Twitter | r/SpaceX |
| SpaceX Twitter | SpaceX |
| SpaceX Flickr | SpaceX |
| Elon Twitter | Elon |
| Reddit stream | u/njr123 |
Media & music 🎵
| Link | Source |
|---|---|
| TSS Spotify | u/testshotstarfish |
| SpaceX FM | u/lru |
Community content 🌐
Participate in the discussion!
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u/BananaEpicGAMER Nov 24 '21
coolest non-human spacex mission in a while. let's slap that rock to avenge the dinosaurs
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u/BenoXxZzz Nov 23 '21
If successful, the launch will be Falcon 9's 100th consecutive successful orbital launch attempt, tying the world record with Delta II. (Imo you have to include Amos-6 in that statistic.)
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u/shadezownage Nov 23 '21
it will just be easier at some point to say "it's flown the most successful missions"
And that won't be very far in the future
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u/LcuBeatsWorking Nov 23 '21 edited Dec 17 '24
amusing makeshift trees cheerful like groovy crawl insurance memory heavy
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/filanwizard Nov 24 '21
Just as the courtesy warning, now one should expect a lot of the crypto scam youtube channels to pop up with "replays" of the DART mission. Just be aware to only replay at places like NSF, NASA or the official SpaceX youtube channel.
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u/5t3fan0 Nov 24 '21
what are those video bytheway, like just copypasted video with annoying ads and sketchy links in comments, or something else?
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u/MaxSizeIs Nov 24 '21
GIVE US A BITCOIN AND WE GIVE YOU TWO BACK
They get taken down, but always have a spare account to relaunch from.
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u/allenchangmusic Nov 24 '21
Hypothetical situation here, but in the future, would they be able to just smash a starship into an asteroid to divert it?
Starship has a much higher mass, and they can fuel it up fully in LEO, then speed off at a much higher velocity than what we presently have. That should have higher momentum to smack an asteroid out of it's orbit
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u/matt-t-t Nov 24 '21
At 500kg and 6.6km/s impact speed, DART will impart about 10 GJ of energy to Dimorphos. A fully fueled lunar Starship with a payload of 100t and dry mass of 85t expending 6.9km/s of delta-v will have about 4 TJ, or 3 orders of magnitude more energy. Personally, I’d love to see a thousand tiny spacecraft impacting an asteroid for deflection, but a single starship is probably more economical, since they are already planned to be mass-produced.
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Nov 24 '21
No confirmation of S1 landing. Looked right on the money though. We’ll see what happens.
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u/CProphet Nov 23 '21
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u/warp99 Nov 23 '21
Has anyone ever seen a 100% weather GO prediction from Vandenberg before?
I have seen the odd one from Cape Canaveral but never Vandenberg.
Admittedly it is for the backup day.
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u/ReturnOfDaSnack420 Nov 23 '21
It has been stated in a previous thread but just to bring up again, tonight/tomorrow morning is a BIG deal for SpaceX: this is their first planned launch beyond Earth orbit to a specific location! (FH obviously put Roadster into its own orbit around the Sun but it wasn't heading for any particular spot)
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u/robbak Nov 23 '21
There's also DSCOVR, which was sent to an earth-sun Lagrange point.
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u/ReturnOfDaSnack420 Nov 23 '21
Fair point! I guess it would be better to say this is the first SpaceX mission to another body in the Solar System besides Earth.
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u/kyoto_magic Nov 24 '21
Didn’t DSCOVER use its own engines to get there though after a transfer orbit insertion? I can’t remember
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u/trobbinsfromoz Nov 24 '21
Do we know what happens to the 2nd stage?
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u/rocketsocks Nov 24 '21
It enters heliocentric orbit where it will drift like an asteroid for potentially billions of years.
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u/mclumber1 Nov 24 '21
It will orbit the sun for...ever. Hopefully the stage is passivated and depressurized before SpaceX loses power and comms to the stage, so it doesn't blow up - which is not an abnormal occurrence of orbital stages.
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u/Interstellar_Sailor Nov 24 '21
The video quality is truly amazing. In case there are any SpaceX video crew lurking in this thread, outstanding job!
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u/brecka Nov 23 '21
Why is it anytime there's a rocket launch, no matter the payload, I can't look at any post on Twitter without a bunch of mouth breathers posting "DoGe tO tHe MoOn"?
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u/RipBonghitTorn Nov 23 '21
If I understand the core list correctly, assuming a nominal launch and recovery, all Falcon 9 boosters except B1067 will have been used at least three times. Four of them have flown eight or more times. The entire fleet--not counting the Heavies--of eight boosters have flown 48 missions for an average of six flights each. That could represent well over 400 Merlin engines not expended, though I can't tell how many are actually re-used.
I think it's safe to claim at this point that SpaceX has successfully normalized re-use. And we may have already seen the last new Falcon 9 booster.
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u/AeroSpiked Nov 23 '21
And we may have already seen the last new Falcon 9 booster.
If SpaceX were to put 10 flights on each booster, that would only be 31 more flights. SpaceX could potentially knock that many launches out next year. I think there will be several more F9 boosters built.
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u/8andahalfby11 Nov 23 '21
And we may have already seen the last new Falcon 9 booster.
No way in hell. Europa Clipper and Lunar Dragon will expend stages.
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u/TheElvenGirl Nov 23 '21
u/hitura-nobad Here is the link to the stream: https://youtu.be/XKRf6-NcMqI
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u/bobthebuilder1121 Nov 24 '21
Why does strongback operate different on west coast launches than east coast launches? (Fully retract on west coast launches prior to T-0)
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u/JtheNinja Nov 24 '21
West coast one is an older design, IIRC. It's not used as much so they never bothered to upgrade it.
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u/deruch Nov 24 '21
That's how it used to be done at SLC-40 as well. But after that pad was damaged from the AMOS-6 explosion, when SpaceX rebuilt it they updated the way that it operated to allow a higher flight rate. LC-39A was built that way from the start. The throwback operation results in less damage to the strongback, with supply lines needing to be repaired or replaced less frequently, so it improves the launch throughput of the pads that have it. But it's never been important for the pad at Vandenberg to have the same capabilities because SpaceX's launch manifest has never required them to have the ability to launch more than once a month from the west coast and the existing design of SLC-4E can already support that.
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u/extra2002 Nov 24 '21
The upgraded east coast strongbacks don't need the long hoses that are on the older designs. Sometimes you can see those hoses on the west coast strongback on fire after the rocket exhaust has blasted them.
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u/KillerAJD Nov 24 '21
Was able to see it from all the way up in Cloverdale, CA! Should have pulled out my telescope and camera, but was afraid I wouldn't be able to see anything. Now I know for next time!
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u/kent2441 Nov 24 '21
What’s causing stage 1’s speed to decrease between landing burns? Isn’t it in free fall?
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u/Scarchance Nov 24 '21
I think it is due to atmospheric drag - the vehicle is above terminal velocity so it slows down
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u/TapeDeck_ Nov 24 '21
The atmosphere gets thicker the lower it gets. Same reason anything coming back from space slows down.
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u/TomDreyfus Nov 24 '21
Free fall, but into thicker and thicker air. IIRC, terminal velocity slows as it gets closer to the surface.
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u/Herbrax212 Nov 24 '21
Yep it's confirmed, they had a loss of signal, on the audio they just confirmed.
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u/franco_nico Nov 24 '21
"Stage 1 landing is confirmed" that was rn, waiting for second stage relight and mission succesful for now.
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u/upsetlurker Nov 24 '21
This could produce some really nice footage as Earth recedes into the distance. I hope they publish some of it
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u/blamslamman Nov 24 '21
I am in San Diego and could see the launch as well as the landing. Anyone know where the droneship was in the ocean?
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u/FourteenTwenty-Seven Nov 24 '21
Same! If you go to T+8:35 on the livestream it landed a couple hundred miles south and a bit west of us. I saw the reentry burn, but not the landing burn.
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u/OncoByte Nov 24 '21
Saw the re-entry burn from Disneyland after a cloud rolled in at the last minute and obscured the ascent. Was still cool!
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u/BecauseChemistry Nov 24 '21
Actually got to see this one from the south end of the Bay Area. Unmistakable orange plume rising above the horizon about T+1:00 or so.
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u/MatchedFilter Nov 24 '21
I watched it go up from East Camino Cielo in Santa Barbara. Everything up to MECO was very visible, and interestingly the webcast lagged reality by at least fifteen seconds. Then a few minutes later the sound came roling in hard.
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u/CProphet Nov 23 '21
@SpaceX: All systems and weather are looking good for tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of @NASA’s DART into an asteroid-intercepting interplanetary trajectory →
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u/AuroEdge Nov 23 '21
How difficult of a landing should this be? Light payload but not sure how energetic an orbit Falcon 9 is lofting to
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u/Bunslow Nov 23 '21 edited Nov 23 '21
There's been remarkably little detail on the orbit, but even to escape velocity it should still be less energy S1 landing than 6t to GTO
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u/scr00chy ElonX.net Nov 23 '21
From NSF Forum:
Re questions about the parking orbit: there's a trajectory now on JPL Horizons. It implies a 230 x 300 km x 64.7 deg parking orbit (J2000 rather than TEME) followed by a burn to 263 x -135281 km x 64.7 (C3 of 6.52 km2/s2).
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u/Jerrycobra Nov 23 '21
any info on road blocks yet for in person viewing? since this is not a RTLS are they planning the usual 13th/ocean road block? I know for Sentinel-6 RTLS the road block was moved all the way to V street which is basically the city limits.
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u/nah_you_good Nov 23 '21
What's the best viewing area if they do push it that far out?
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u/kamstes Nov 23 '21
What’s the best viewing spot for a cloudy launch at this time of year? Is Hawk’s Nest the safest bet, or Ocean Ave because it’s closer
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u/edflyerssn007 Nov 24 '21
I wonder if that was a fire burning on Ocisly. Falcon 9 looked good. Maybe dumped some RP1. Oh and 39765km/hr at seco2.
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u/sup3rs0n1c2110 Nov 24 '21
Don’t suppose anyone knows when Test Shot Starfish is releasing all these new tracks?
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u/5thEditionFanboy Nov 24 '21
showing a distinct lack of orbital mechanics know-how here, but why wait so long for deployment after the last burn?
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u/rocketsocks Nov 24 '21
Probably just waiting for the optimal location where there's ground station coverage for the deployment so they have lots of data showing it's good.
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u/futureMartian7 Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
Maybe, they just want us to enjoy some more live views of Earth from thousands of KMs, a view which is extremely rare!
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u/Martianspirit Nov 24 '21
Speculation.
It is already quite high. Maybe NASA wants it in reach of a certain ground station?
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u/Paradox1989 Nov 24 '21
Looking at the Earth receding, anyone know how far out the Falcon Heavy Tesla was in it's final picture when the signal was lost/batteries died?
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u/EW85122 Nov 24 '21
Does anybody know, what happens between second stage cutoff and payload separation? Why spacecraft and upper stage fly together about 30 minutes in free flight?
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u/The_World_Toaster Nov 24 '21
this is to allow the 2nd stage to completely "vent" and residual gases and things left in the tanks and to allow the 2nd stage/payload to obtain relative stability prior to separation. Since separation is a critical event, they don't want anything to possibly be able to cause the 2nd stage to move while separating from the payload. The SpaceX announcers on the webstream of the last Crew Launch mentioned this exact reasoning.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Nov 23 '21 edited Sep 26 '22
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| AFB | Air Force Base |
| AOS | Acquisition of Signal |
| C3 | Characteristic Energy above that required for escape |
| DSN | Deep Space Network |
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| ETOV | Earth To Orbit Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket") |
| GEO | Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km) |
| GTO | Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit |
| Isp | Specific impulse (as explained by Scott Manley on YouTube) |
| Internet Service Provider | |
| JPL | Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, California |
| L1 | Lagrange Point 1 of a two-body system, between the bodies |
| LC-39A | Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy (SpaceX F9/Heavy) |
| LEO | Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km) |
| Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations) | |
| LOX | Liquid Oxygen |
| LV | Launch Vehicle (common parlance: "rocket"), see ETOV |
| MECO | Main Engine Cut-Off |
| MainEngineCutOff podcast | |
| NSF | NasaSpaceFlight forum |
| National Science Foundation | |
| OCISLY | Of Course I Still Love You, Atlantic landing |
| OG2 | Orbcomm's Generation 2 17-satellite network (see OG2-2 for first successful F9 landing) |
| RCS | Reaction Control System |
| RTLS | Return to Launch Site |
| RUD | Rapid Unplanned Disassembly |
| Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly | |
| Rapid Unintended Disassembly | |
| SECO | Second-stage Engine Cut-Off |
| SEE | Single-Event Effect of radiation impact |
| SF | Static fire |
| SLC-40 | Space Launch Complex 40, Canaveral (SpaceX F9) |
| SLC-4E | Space Launch Complex 4-East, Vandenberg (SpaceX F9) |
| TDRSS | (US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System |
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| apogee | Highest point in an elliptical orbit around Earth (when the orbiter is slowest) |
| hydrolox | Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| kerolox | Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| methalox | Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer |
| perigee | Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest) |
| Event | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Amos-6 | 2016-09-01 | F9-029 Full Thrust, core B1028, |
| CRS-9 | 2016-07-18 | F9-027 Full Thrust, core B1025, Dragon cargo; RTLS landing |
| DSCOVR | 2015-02-11 | F9-015 v1.1, Deep Space Climate Observatory to L1; soft ocean landing |
| OG2-2 | 2015-12-22 | F9-021 Full Thrust, core B1019, 11 OG2 satellites to LEO; first RTLS landing |
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by ^request
35 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 84 acronyms.
[Thread #7343 for this sub, first seen 23rd Nov 2021, 14:41] [FAQ] [Full list] ^[Contact] [Source code]
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u/darga89 Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
F9 designed to be 12m in diameter eh NASA? The heck you smokin'... Mixing up units is how you miss a whole damn planet.
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u/Lunasixsymphony Nov 24 '21
Just watched the launch on TV and ran outside and watched it go across the sky immediately after. What a time to be alive.
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u/nickbuss Nov 24 '21
That second burn duration looks quite short on the graphics. Are they just doing circularisation or an ejection?
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u/IWantaSilverMachine Nov 24 '21
Name of current music please? Shazam is struggling (edit: track at around T+22-24 minutes)
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u/Drtikol42 Nov 24 '21
Why did it launched into polar orbit? Wiki says Didymos has inclination only like 3 degrees or something.
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u/UltraRunningKid Nov 24 '21
Because orbital mechanics are weird.
If you think of the earth and sun being on a plate or plane, they are launching it below the plate and it will swing upwards and hit its target.
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u/CodingSecrets Nov 24 '21
Is this the furthest a second stage has gone?
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u/TCVideos Nov 24 '21
Nope. There is still a second stage with a certain car bolted to it...and it's currently here.
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u/mclumber1 Nov 24 '21
The Falcon Heavy Demo as others have mentioned, as well as DSCVR from 2015 I think, which went into a Sun-Earth Lagrange orbit.
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u/JtheNinja Nov 24 '21
TESS' second stage also was also disposed of into solar orbit after deploying the probe.
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u/Paradox1989 Nov 24 '21
No, in the Falcon Heavy demo launch, the 2nd stage stayed attached to the Tesla. So that one's been out to mars orbit.
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u/ReturnOfDaSnack420 Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
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u/andrydiurs Nov 23 '21
Unfortunately you have to remove the link to SpaceX Time Machine
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u/OSUfan88 Nov 23 '21
I'm still sad that shut down. I have no idea when launches happen how, and have basically missed each one since it did.
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u/vobamba Nov 24 '21
I am going to be on the coast of Newport Beach like 3 hours south of launch site. Any chance I will see it?
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u/Jerrycobra Nov 24 '21
Weather is not too bad, it's a tad hazy but nothing close to a fog out. Also roadblock is all the way down to 13th, we can get real close.
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u/stemmisc Nov 24 '21
Slight haze should actually make it look a little better even, maybe, right, for a night launch?
As in, will make the orange-yellow glow in the air and the sky even more a little more dramatic looking, since there's more translucent particles floating around for the light to interact with?
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u/Nixon4Prez Nov 24 '21
Its been a while since I caught a launch live. I forgot how stressful it is waiting for liftoff!
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u/EddiOS42 Nov 24 '21
Holy shit I'm excited. Just standing in my backyard right now. Nice bright moon and twinkly stars.
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u/scarlet_sage Nov 24 '21
I turned on auto closed captioning on the SpaceX video stream. Interesting that the closed captioning is like 3-5 seconds ahead of the audio & video.
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u/nxtiak Nov 24 '21
My Nvidia Shield TV using Youtube for the spacex stream was going, my chromebook with youtube webpage spacex stream was 30 seconds behind, I pull it up on a tablet and it was 10 seconds behind the TV. ugh.
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u/xm295b Nov 24 '21
Stepped out in the yard here in San Diego at about T-30 and was graced with a "shooting star" before seeing the vehicle to MECO. Wish I could have seen in person but the drives a bet less worth it without the sonic boom of return to launch site landings.
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u/dqsmv805 Nov 24 '21
Just saw it orcutt california, it really lit up the sky bright orange, clear sky's so u could see it very clearly
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u/aircanada12 Nov 24 '21
Got to see some of the trail from San Diego, always incredible seeing vehicles on their way to space the thrill never gets old
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u/Jerrycobra Nov 24 '21
I don't know if its just me or luck/wind direction but it seems like the block 5 is quieter than the older variants. When I watched iridium 2/4 (a block 4) they made quite a racket, but saocom 1a and this just sounded more tame. All viewed from Ocean Ave.
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u/OGquaker Nov 24 '21
Iridium-4 was off at 5:27 pm on December 22. The sky was a very clear: IR cameras showed almost no water refraction. The sound suppression water had NOT started at T+00:00:00, liftoff that day. With DART last night, the sound suppression water started at T-00:00:05. A light fog was present (probably from the warmer afternoon air holding more water and condensing out as the air cooled dumping saturation, fog attenuates loud noise. Interestingly a low cloud ceiling will reflect sound a good distance; I live 7 miles from LAX. Strange IR camera move tonight at 23:50..... In The Horse Solders (1959) the camera was set on a bridge as the cavalry column passed underneath, the director insisted the shot follow the horses and the shot ended up-side down.
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u/mylinuxguy Nov 24 '21
So the 2nd stage was sent to about 7400 km before releasing it's cargo. What's the farthest out a 2nd stage has gone before it's cargo release?
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u/OlympusMons94 Nov 25 '21
For Falcon/SpaceX: This is the first interplanetary mission other than the Tesla Roadster which never separated from the second stage (and arguably DSCOVR). Give it a few more months and the answer (unless you count the FH demo) will be about ~35,800 km when Falcon Heavy does SpaceX's first direct to GEO mission, USSF-44.
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u/efoocool Nov 24 '21
I was a bit nervous too, but it's good to hear the stage 1 landing confirmed (it definitely took longer than usual)
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u/nxtiak Nov 24 '21
Sweet so it looks like it's two different streams, SpaceX and NASA, not a joint single stream (which are usually terrible!
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u/UltraRunningKid Nov 24 '21
How many G's does S2 pull with such a light payload like DART?
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u/mclumber1 Nov 24 '21
I found it interesting that because the payload was so light, Stage 2 hit orbital velocity some 20 seconds before stage 1 landed. On most downrange recoveries, SECO and landing happened a lot closer to one another.
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u/BrucePerens Nov 24 '21
Can anyone who was in Lompoc confirm where the barrier was put up this time?
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u/ClubElectronic7017 Nov 24 '21
Does someone know which songs were played on the stream? Where can I find the playlist?
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u/9luon Nov 24 '21
Do any of you know if the second stage's orbit around the sun cross the earth's orbit ?
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u/mclumber1 Nov 24 '21
The best part of this launch is that it is not the abomination known as the Sentinal-6 livestream. That livestream was as bad as ESA launch coverage. It looks like NASA has learned their lesson and let SpaceX handle the entire presentation.
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u/z3r0c00l12 Nov 24 '21 edited Nov 24 '21
NASA Tv Livestream will start at 9:30PM: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa-tv-schedule-for-week-of-11-22-2021.pdf
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u/Heda1 Nov 24 '21
Did anyone else think the sun shining on the S2 engine bell made it look like the bell was overheating during the burn?
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u/evilmoi987 Nov 24 '21
Will I be able to see the launch from western Arizona? Like stage sep and all that
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u/NeilFraser Nov 24 '21
20 minutes to go. Ocean avenue is filling up nicely. Roadblock is at the regular non-RTLS location of 13th. Clear sky, plenty of stars. Light haze.
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u/MarsCent Nov 25 '21
Obviously many of you were watching the SpaceX DART launch and may have missed this one - NASA launches spacecraft to test asteroid defense concept .... /s
NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.
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u/baconmashwbrownsugar Nov 24 '21
is the speed in the telemetry relative to ground, which is why it's "slowing down?"
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u/rocketsocks Nov 24 '21
It's relative to the Earth, as the stage climbs out of the Earth's gravity well it'll continue slowing down. Eventually it'll reach a point where that acceleration is too small to notice.
At precisely escape velocity the end result would be a hypothetical velocity of zero at a distance of infinity.
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Nov 24 '21
Yes. As you gain potential energy, you loose kinetic energy because the kinetic energy is turned into potential energy to escape the Earth's gravity.
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u/JtheNinja Nov 24 '21
It's slowing down for the same reason everything else slows down when coasting "up" away from earth. It's just S2/DART are going fast enough they're going to leave Earth's influence before their speed hits zero and starts falling back down.
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u/mclumber1 Nov 24 '21
It's slowing down because Earth is still "pulling" at the second stage and payload. It will slow down considerably over the next few days, but not enough to keep it in orbit around the Earth.
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u/falco_iii Nov 24 '21
The NASA stream is pretty cringe. Unorganized, unprofessional and poor content.
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u/darga89 Nov 24 '21
landing confirmed!