SpaceX F9 : Starlink v0.9 : May 23, 2019 - DISCUSSION

[Mandella]

I imagine Elon watching a dump truck dropping a load a gravel and going, heeeeyyyyy....

 

Congrats SpaceX on making it simple and surprising everyone again!

[tp1024]

It looks like the real deployment happened during the 30 second "expected loss of signal". There was a long brace holding the stack together, that was missing after the stream came back on. I guess SpaceX wants to keep that piece of the mechanism for everybody else to figure out.

[Grandpa to Two]

Welp, nothing at all like my Kerbal Space Program deployment... will have to modify...

Nothing at all like I envisioned, like a deck of cards slowly peeling off one at a time. Instead just a bulk release then slowly separating. I figure once a sat is separated enough then solar wing deployment and ion engine begins to change orbital placement. Simple is smart.

[Dappa]

Wooooow that deployment was something else!! With that rotation giving them all a slightly different speed, it's brilliant in its simplicity. Hats off the SpaceX for being unconventional once again!

[Robotbeat]

So, flat spin for deployment, not barbecue or flip. And like most everyone else not really the deployment I expected, but a very simple (= cheap) release the stack & let 'em drift apart.

SpaceX needs to make so many of these things that even something super "cheap" like a deployment mechanism costing a few thousand dollars and weighing a few kilograms adds up to a lot. Millions of dollars and tons per year, once they get to the full constellation...

[Steven Pietrobon]

Congratulations to SpaceX for the successful first launch of their Starlink constellation!

Attaching screen grabs I missed due to watching last Friday's feed.

[meekGee]

K, so watching this, I need to dig up an old post of mine...

I was predicting that with large constellations, the sats won't even be seriously tested, they'll be treated like TVs.  Probably very little redundancy too.  Expect a 1-2% infant mortality rate and move on.

Those boxes, I bet they don't even have predetermined orbital slots.  They'll work it out over the next 2-3 days, as they find out which ones came alive...

So many satellite conventions, best practices,  and sub-industries died today...

[Robotbeat]

High failure rate isn't great for orbital debris, even at 550km altitude.

But I suspect the failure rate won't be worse than normal and may be even better, considering how much practice they're getting.

[modemeagle]

e]

No this was different.  It was a perfectly timed pulsing of the Mylar cover.  What's even strange is that you could see the same pulsing on the bottom of the sat stack in the video....I've watched a lot of launches from SpaceX...never seen the perfect pulsing before....strange....

Nope. Every single launch has that. Go watch the previous launch videos, you just missed it the previous 50 times.

I saw it live as well.  The pulse is every 2 to 3 seconds and is very noticeable on the satellite views where a "vent behind the mylar engine cover" should not be affecting a payload more than 20 feet ahead of it.  Maybe low frequency POGO?

[ZachS09]

I imagine Elon watching a dump truck dropping a load a gravel and going, heeeeyyyyy....

 

Congrats SpaceX on making it simple and surprising everyone again!

Your envisionment has come true in the party thread.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42585.msg1949640#msg1949640

[Steven Pietrobon]

Starlink ion engine, before solar array deploy, fully deployed (I count 12 panels in each array).

[king1999]

It looks like the real deployment happened during the 30 second "expected loss of signal". There was a long brace holding the stack together, that was missing after the stream came back on. I guess SpaceX wants to keep that piece of the mechanism for everybody else to figure out.

Yes. The convenient loss of signal is a cover-up  No way they could lost the signal like that. That's some trade secret they want to protect!

[Robotbeat]

SpaceX now has 60 satellites deployed (62 if you count the prototypes) vs 6 for OneWeb. The industry consensus not long ago was that OneWeb would handily beat SpaceX to early deployment.

[Pete]

Now all of those need to separate a bit, and deploy their rather large solar sail, and orient themselves, and manage to not run into each other one orbit later, when every single one of their orbits will want to intersect the same point in space.

This may be the first ever actual traffic jam in space?

[Robotbeat]

Now all of those need to separate a bit, and deploy their rather large solar sail, and orient themselves, and manage to not run into each other one orbit later, when every single one of their orbits will want to intersect the same point in space.

This may be the first ever actual traffic jam in space?

Cubesat deployments like this have occurred before.

[ZachF]

SpaceX now has 60 satellites deployed (62 if you count the prototypes) vs 6 for OneWeb. The industry consensus not long ago was that OneWeb would handily beat SpaceX to early deployment.

Probably for less money too...

[mark_m]

High failure rate isn't great for orbital debris, even at 550km altitude.

However, any of the sats that are DOA will never make it to 550km, since they are being deployed at 440km. At that altitude they will reenter MUCH sooner. 

[ZachS09]

Now all of those need to separate a bit, and deploy their rather large solar sail, and orient themselves, and manage to not run into each other one orbit later, when every single one of their orbits will want to intersect the same point in space.

This may be the first ever actual traffic jam in space?

Cubesat deployments like this have occurred before.

An example is when PSLV-C34 launched 104 satellites into orbit. It seemed to me that most of the cubesats were deployed nearly all at once.

[Pete]

Now all of those need to separate a bit, and deploy their rather large solar sail, and orient themselves, and manage to not run into each other one orbit later, when every single one of their orbits will want to intersect the same point in space.

This may be the first ever actual traffic jam in space?

Cubesat deployments like this have occurred before.

Yep.
But not 60 cubesats at once, each with a 10m+ long solar panel to deploy.

[Rocket Surgeon]

SpaceX now has 60 satellites deployed (62 if you count the prototypes) vs 6 for OneWeb. The industry consensus not long ago was that OneWeb would handily beat SpaceX to early deployment.

Never bet against Elon...