In Baikonur the crew is not supposed to see their rocket before launch, but this is a tradition we don’t have here! We arrived
@NASAKennedy at the time the @SpaceX rocket was erected into the vertical position on the launch pad. Always impressive to see it from up close...
https://twitter.com/Thom_astro/status/1383357737690562561
J-5: À Baïkonour, l'équipage n'est pas sensé voir sa fusée avant le jour du décollage... mais ici la tradition est différente ! Nous avons eu la chance d'arriver au @NASAKennedy au moment précis où le @SpaceX Falcon 9 était verticalisé sur le pas de tir. #MissionAlpha
https://twitter.com/Thom_astro/status/1383360070239485953
Visual mission profile by ElonX.net
This is interesting as always, but has anyone calculated where and when the vehicle will emerge into the sunlight (assuming an on-time pre-dawn launch as scheduled on Wednesday)?
Will it be before MECO and staging?
European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet — a former spacecraft engineer and airline pilot — compared his experience training to fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft later this week to his previous mission on a Russian Soyuz capsule.
https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/1384267497092780049From this video (at 21:19):
Apologies if this has been asked and answered already elsewhere...
The recently published pictures of the Crew-2 Dragon on the launch pad show that it's missing the silver-colored "aprons" that protect the capsule from SuperDraco exhaust. All previous crew capsules - including Resilience on-orbit now, and Endeavour in its previous Demo-2 configuration - had the silver aprons, but this time around Endeavour just has the same white surface there as covers the rest of the capsule's backshell. The silver coating can still be seen on the edge of the main heat shield that protects the base of the craft, but no longer on the SuperDraco "exhaust pans".
Picture for example:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1383295895043600384/photo/1Does anyone know what the deal is with this?
I'm assuming the white surface now coating the SuperDraco "exhaust pans" is the same SPAM (SpaceX Proprietary Ablative Material) that covers the rest of the backshell. Is it known what was there before? Was the silver coating just a layer on top of the SPAM for additional protection, or was it covering PICA-X like on the base of the craft?
I can think of several reasons why they might have made this change, but it's mere speculation unless someone else has a positive answer. Given that Dragon was originally designed for propulsive landing, I can imagine the silver coating being intended to prevent the SuperDraco exhaust from damaging the vehicle beyond refurbishability. But now that propulsive landing is out, the SuperDracos would only be used in an abort scenario, after which reuse is not a major priority (they didn't reuse C205 after the in-flight abort test, which suggests an abort scenario may be harder on a capsule and "use up" more of its wear-and-tear margins than a typical flight). So they might've decided they don't need the same level of protection any more. Alternatively, the change may stem from the fact that they've settled into replacing the SPAM for every flight, which IIRC wasn't the originally envisioned plan. (That may have something to do with the fact that the capsule is now landing in water instead of on land.) Or perhaps the original design was just too conservative and operational data (e.g. from the IFA) has since confirmed that the SPAM is tougher than they thought. Etc., etc...
Edit: fixed Twitter link so that it doesn't embed in the middle of a sentence.
Hawthorne ground control conducting comms checks on the ISS UStream feed
Edit, the comm checks were apparently with Dragon with umbilical tear down now underway...
The sentences read out to test comms were, strange, "a pencil with black lead writes the best"...
See
Harvard Sentences, List 23, Sentence 1:
"A pencil with black lead writes best."
Wikipedia:
Harvard sentencesThe Harvard sentences are a collection of sample phrases that are used for standardized testing of Voice over IP, cellular, and other telephone systems. They are phonetically balanced sentences that use specific phonemes at the same frequency they appear in English.
IEEE Recommended Practices for Speech Quality Measurements sets out seventy-two lists of ten phrases each, described as the "1965 Revised List of Phonetically Balanced Sentences (Harvard Sentences)." They are widely used in research on telecommunications, speech, and acoustics, where standardized and repeatable sequences of speech are needed.
Is it possible to such huge change time of launch for Crew-2:
1st prediction: 11:10:45 UTC;
2nd prediciton: 11:10:35 UTC?
Is it possible to such huge change time of launch for Crew-2:
1st prediction: 11:10:45 UTC;
2nd prediciton: 11:10:35 UTC?
Source? Was that from a new conference today?
Last I heard was 10:11:46 UCT (06:11:46 EST) from one last week.
(Are you still thinking US Eastern Time is UTC-5, or are you suggesting a one hour shift?)
(Or did you just transpose your "10" and "11"?)
Sorry, my typo should be 10:11:?5 UTC (source from NASA, not conference)! PM from me for source!
Some photos from Thomas Pesquet via Flickr:
1) Thomas Pesquet Suit!
Image 2021-04-15 at
23.57.012) Breakfast at Kennedy
Image 2021-04-16 at
17.00.373) Space Shuttle cutlery
Image 2021-04-16 at 17.05.50
Credits: ESA–T. Pesquet
Any information about the weight summaries of spacecraft (total mass) and payload (experiments, materials and crew supplies)?
NASA’s next Crew 2 event in 5 hours:
The countdown to #LaunchAmerica is in its final hours! At 8:30 a.m. EDT (12:30 UTC), join acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk and officials from NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) live from Kennedy Space Center, for a preview of NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 mission, set for liftoff on Thursday, April 22 at 6:11 a.m. EDT. Astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur of NASA, Thomas Pesquet of ESA, and Akihiko Hoshide of JAXA will launch aboard the Crew Dragon 'Endeavour' spacecraft to the International Space Station.
Any information about the weight summaries of spacecraft (total mass) and payload (experiments, materials and crew supplies)?
Here's the Crew-2 Press Kit from NASA. Its just the Crew-1 Press Kit with the biographies of Crew-2 added. Unfortunately very little technical information is given for Dragon. The only numbers are for the cabin temperatures.
https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/index.html
Crew-2: As expected, launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying 4 astronauts to the ISS has been delayed 24 hours, from Thursday to Friday, at 5:49 EDT (0949 UTC), due to offshore weather; station crew has been informed
https://twitter.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1384825049102884864Not surprising, the weather looked pretty nasty and was a large section that wasn't favourable.
Next day is astronomically better though. Literally no wind or waves of concern along the entire abort zone
So we have now:
(GMT/UTC)
launch: = = = = = docking with ISS:
April 23 April 24
9:49:02 9:10
and for future?
According to:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/a backup opportunity available on Monday, April 26 at 4:
38 a.m. EDT, 8:
48 UTC!
April 26 April 27
8:?8 8:??
Looks like a 9:49 UTC launch would have sunrise over the second stage about 4 minutes after launch. Should be visible from Florida up to the US East Coast.
I wonder why Megan is the only one with a valsalva maneuver plug [
1] in her helmet?
edit: Derp, was informed that not all people can equalize with just jaw.
