Latest news with #KateTice
New York Times
19-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Pod of Dolphins Greets NASA Astronauts
SpaceX and the Coast Guard work together to try to keep civilian boaters away from returning spacecraft after astronauts splash down in the water. But on Tuesday night, they could not do anything about a pod of curious dolphins. A handful of the marine mammals swam up to a recovery boat that was set to lift the Crew Dragon Freedom to its deck and surfaced from the clear blue waters. 'Wow, we got a cute little pod of dolphins, it wasn't just one or two,' said Kate Tice, an engineering manager at SpaceX who was commentating on the company's video stream. As the dolphins' dorsal fins bobbed, she said that the team working on retrieving the capsule was 'getting quick assists from the honorary part of the recovery team, those dolphins.' Dolphins are generally social and playful marine mammals and often travel in groups, or pods. The most common species near Florida's Gulf Coast are bottle-nosed dolphins, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, although it was not clear which species was circling the SpaceX crews on Tuesday. It's not the first time wildlife have visited astronauts just after they returned to Earth. In 2021, photographers captured a lone dolphin swimming near the recovery boats headed to pick up the Dragon spacecraft used for SpaceX's Crew-1 mission. But an Orlando news station reported that the animal didn't stick around for the capsule's splashdown.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
SpaceX Starship breaks apart after launch in second failure in a row
SpaceX launched its huge Starship rocket on the program's eighth test flight Thursday, but a malfunction of some sort triggered multiple upper stage engine shutdowns and the vehicle failed to reach its planned sub-orbital altitude, breaking apart in a spectacular shower of debris. It was the second failure in a row for a Starship upper stage, a vehicle critical to NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon in the next few years. "Obviously, a lot to go through, a lot to dig through. We're going to go right at it," said SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot. "The primary reason we do these flight tests is to learn. We have some more to learn about this vehicle, but we're going to be right back here in the not-too-distant future, and we're going to get a ship to space." Added commentator Kate Tice: "We fly to learn, and we're learning a lot. As is the case with developmental programs such as the Starship program, progress isn't always linear." Flights at several Florida airports were temporarily grounded due to the risk of falling debris. Ground stops have now been lifted, but the FAA reported Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport both had departure delays of about 45 minutes, with the cause listed as "space launch debris." Flights at Palm Beach International Airport and Orlando International Airport were also affected. SpaceX said in a statement that after the Starship experienced what it called "a rapid unscheduled disassembly," the company "immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingency responses." Launch began according to plan Three days after a last-minute scrub due to unspecified technical issues, SpaceX fired up the Super Heavy first stage's 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines at 6:30 p.m. EST. Two seconds later, the tallest, most powerful rocket in the world lifted off from the company's launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast. Capable of generating up to 16 million pounds of thrust — more than twice the power as NASA's Saturn 5 moon rocket — the Super Heavy-Starship arced away to the east atop of long jet of bluish flame. After boosting the Starship upper stage out of the dense lower atmosphere, the 230-foot-tall, 30-foot-wide Super Heavy first stage booster flew itself back to the launch site and into the grasp of two giant mechanical arms known as "chopsticks" mounted on the side of the launch tower. The chopsticks closed around the slowly descending booster, locking onto structural capture fixtures on both sides of the rocket. The dramatic launch pad capture, SpaceX's third, is a key element in the company's plan to enable rapid refurbishment and reuse. The 160-foot-tall Starship upper stage, meanwhile, climbed toward space as planned on the power of six Raptor engines, appearing to work flawlessly as it soared skyward toward the planned sub-orbital trajectory. Trouble 8 minutes after liftoff But a little more than eight minutes after liftoff, telemetry shown on SpaceX's live webcast indicated four of the six engines had prematurely shut down. A camera on the Starship showed the spacecraft starting to spin about and several seconds later contact was lost. Multiple videos posted on YouTube showed a dramatic shower of debris arcing back toward Earth after the vehicle broke up. It wasn't immediately clear if the breakup was triggered by the Starship's self-destruct system or by extreme structural loads as it fell back into the lower atmosphere. While SpaceX will no doubt attempt its usual rapid recovery, the Federal Aviation Administration will almost certainly order another failure investigation. Given two destructive breakups in a row, it could take longer to return to flight status this time around. The flight plan called for a battery of tests, including the deployment of four simulated Starlink satellites to test the Starship's payload release system, the in-space restart of one of the rocket's Raptor engines and tests of new heat shield materials and components needed for the eventual pad capture of returning Starships. At the conclusion of the sub-orbital flight, the Starship was expected fall back into the atmosphere belly first. Once past the region of maximum atmospheric heating, the rocket was programmed to flip into a vertical orientation before settling to a tail-first rocket-powered "soft landing" in the Indian Ocean near Australia. But it was not to be. January launch ended in self-destruct During the program's seventh integrated flight test, or IFT, in January, a fire developed just above the Super Heavy first stage engines and contact was lost eight minutes and 20 seconds after launch. Three minutes after that, the rocket's self-destruct system triggered an explosion that broke the Starship apart, producing a spectacular shower of flaming debris that rained down along the flight path. Telemetry indicated the fire broke out after propellant lines leading to one of the Raptors ruptured due to unexpected harmonic vibrations. SpaceX carried out a 60-second engine test firing of the Starship launched Monday, studying responses to various thrust levels. Based on the test results, propellant feed lines were modified, fuel temperatures were changed and thrust levels were adjusted to avoid any such harmonic responses. Additional vents were installed in the area where the fire broke out and a nitrogen purge system was added to minimize the chance of fire. It was not immediately known what went wrong Thursday. Starship program aiming for the moon Working the bugs out of the Super Heavy-Starship is critical to both SpaceX and NASA. SpaceX is under contract to NASA to supply a modified Starship to carry astronauts to landings near the moon's south pole in the agency's Artemis program. To get a Starship lander to the moon, SpaceX must first get it into low-Earth orbit, then launch multiple Super Heavy-Starship "tankers" to refuel the moon-bound Starship for the trip to lunar orbit. The astronauts will launch atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket and fly to the moon aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule. The crew will transfer to the waiting Starship for the descent to the lunar surface. NASA hopes to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in the 2027-28 timeframe, after an unpiloted Starship moon landing. Rapid reusability is a key element of the program given the number of Super Heavy-Starships that will be required for a single moon landing. Multiple successful test flights will be needed to perfect the system and demonstrate the reliability required to carry astronauts. The latest mishap comes amid ambitious SpaceX plans for major upgrades to the company's facilities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, building a 380-foot-tall building where Super Heavy boosters and Starships can be refurbished and processed for launch from one and possibly two Florida launch pads. The towering "Gigabay" facility will provide 46.5 million cubic space for processing with 815,000 square feet of work space. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. Another facility is planned where Starships can be built from scratch in Florida, similar to a facility already in place at Boca Chica. "To enable initial Starship flights from Florida while our Space Coast Starship manufacturing, integration, and refurbishment facilities are being completed, we will first transport completed Super Heavy boosters and Starship upper stage ships from Starbase via barge to build up a Starship fleet in Florida," SpaceX said in a statement Monday. "With production, integration, refurbishment, and launch facilities in Florida as well as Texas, we will be in a position to quickly ramp Starship's launch rate via rapid reusability." Watch: Trump's full address to Congress Ex-Army recruiter flees state with 17-year-old girlfriend after estranged wife's murder Takeaways from Trump's joint address to Congress
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Another SpaceX Starship lost during test flight despite successful booster catch
SpaceX lost contact again in its latest test flight of the Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Texas. The rocket was making its eighth attempt, and SpaceX was able to perform the third-ever catch of the booster back at the tower. The suborbital test flight came just under two months since the last attempt ended explosively over the Atlantic. The rocket lifted off just after 6:30 p.m. EST from SpaceX's Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The flight profile once again called for the Super Heavy booster to fly back to the launch tower caught on the tower's pivoting arms called chopsticks. The upper stage Starship then was supposed to continue halfway around the planet to attempt a water landing in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia. But teams lost contact again over the Atlantic. 'Unfortunately it seems as we lost the attitude control of the ship,' said SpaceX commentator Kate Tice. Fellow commentator Dan Huot said telemetry showed engines going out with only about 20 seconds left in the upper stage's ascent burn. 'We did see the ship start to go into a spin and at this point we have lost contact with the ship,' he said. The failure follows a similar pattern seen during the Jan. 16 launch, which also saw a successful catch of the Super Heavy booster, but the Starship spacecraft blew up after passing over the Gulf of Mexico with scenes of the streaking debris posted to social media from places like the Turks & Caicos. The event grounded the in-development rocket, but the Federal Aviation Administration cleared it to launch again as of Feb. 26. 'After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,' the FAA stated. 'The FAA is overseeing the SpaceX-led investigation.' The flight continues progress for Elon Musk's heavy-lift rocket program. 'Several hardware and operational changes have been made to increase reliability of the upper stage,' SpaceX posted on its website. To support an increased pace of launches in the coming years, SpaceX continues to move forward with a second launch site in Texas and announced $1.8 billion in infrastructure to assist in launch sites from Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It hopes to launch from the KSC site at Launch Complex 39-A before the end of the year. For this test launch, though, the objectives that were not reached during the last attempt are on tap again. That includes a test run of payload deployment and reentry experiments that the company hopes will lead to a future launch with the upper stage landing back at the Texas launch site. Four test payloads will simulate the size of SpaceX's Starlink satellites and follow the same trajectory of the upper Starship stage so they they burn up on reentry. 'Developmental testing by definition is unpredictable,' SpaceX posted. 'But by putting flight hardware in a flight environment as frequently as possible, we're able to quickly learn and execute design changes as we seek to bring Starship online as a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle.' _____
CBS News
07-03-2025
- Science
- CBS News
SpaceX Starship breaks apart after launch in second failure in a row
SpaceX launched its huge Starship rocket on the program's eighth test flight Thursday, but a malfunction of some sort triggered multiple upper stage engine shutdowns and the vehicle failed to reach its planned sub-orbital altitude, breaking apart in a spectacular shower of debris. It was the second failure in a row for a Starship upper stage, a vehicle critical to NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon in the next few years. "Obviously, a lot to go through, a lot to dig through. We're going to go right at it," said SpaceX launch commentator Dan Huot. "The primary reason we do these flight tests is to learn. We have some more to learn about this vehicle, but we're going to be right back here in the not-too-distant future, and we're going to get a ship to space." Added commentator Kate Tice: "We fly to learn, and we're learning a lot. As is the case with developmental programs such as the Starship program, progress isn't always linear." Three days after a last-minute scrub due to unspecified technical issues, SpaceX fired up the Super Heavy first stage's 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines at 6:30 p.m. EST. Two seconds later, the tallest, most powerful rocket in the world majestically lifted off from the company's launch site on the Texas Gulf Coast. Capable of generating up to 16 million pounds of thrust — more than twice the power as NASA's Saturn 5 moon rocket — the Super Heavy-Starship arced away to the east atop of long jet of bluish flame. After boosting the Starship upper stage out of the dense lower atmosphere, the 230-foot-tall, 30-foot-wide Super Heavy first stage booster flew itself back to the launch site and into the grasp of two giant mechanical arms known as "chopsticks" mounted on the side of the launch tower. The chopsticks closed around the slowly descending booster, locking onto structural capture fixtures on both sides of the rocket. The dramatic launch pad capture, SpaceX's third, is a key element in the company's plan to enable rapid refurbishment and reuse. The 160-foot-tall Starship upper stage, meanwhile, climbed toward space as planned on the power of six Raptor engines, appearing to work flawlessly as it soared skyward toward the planned sub-orbital trajectory. But a little more than eight minutes after liftoff, telemetry shown on SpaceX's live webcast indicated four of the six engines had prematurely shut down. A camera on the Starship showed the spacecraft starting to spin about and several seconds later contact was lost. Multiple videos posted on YouTube showed a dramatic shower of debris arcing back toward Earth after the vehicle broke up. It wasn't immediately clear if the breakup was triggered by the Starship's self-destruct system or by extreme structural loads as it fell back into the lower atmosphere. While SpaceX will no doubt attempt its usual rapid recovery, the Federal Aviation Administration will almost certainly order another failure investigation. Given two destructive breakups in a row, it could take longer to return to flight status this time around. The flight plan called for a battery of tests, including the deployment of four simulated Starlink satellites to test the Starship's payload release system, the in-space restart of one of the rocket's Raptor engines and tests of new heat shield materials and components needed for the eventual pad capture of returning Starships. At the conclusion of the sub-orbital flight, the Starship was expected fall back into the atmosphere belly first. Once past the region of maximum atmospheric heating, the rocket was programmed to flip into a vertical orientation before settling to a tail-first rocket-powered "soft landing" in the Indian Ocean near Australia. But it was not to be. During the program's seventh integrated flight test, or IFT, in January, a fire developed just above the Super Heavy first stage engines and contact was lost eight minutes and 20 seconds after launch. Three minutes after that, the rocket's self-destruct system triggered an explosion that broke the Starship apart, producing a spectacular shower of flaming debris that rained down along the flight path. Telemetry indicated the fire broke out after propellant lines leading to one of the Raptors ruptured due to unexpected harmonic vibrations. SpaceX carried out a 60-second engine test firing of the Starship launched Monday, studying responses to various thrust levels. Based on the test results, propellant feed lines were modified, fuel temperatures were changed and thrust levels were adjusted to avoid any such harmonic responses. Additional vents were installed in the area where the fire broke out and a nitrogen purge system was added to minimize the chance of fire. It was not immediately known what went wrong Thursday. Working the bugs out of the Super Heavy-Starship is critical to both SpaceX and NASA. SpaceX is under contract to NASA to supply a modified Starship to carry astronauts to landings near the moon's south pole in the agency's Artemis program. To get a Starship lander to the moon, SpaceX must first get it into low-Earth orbit, then launch multiple Super Heavy-Starship "tankers" to refuel the moon-bound Starship for the trip to lunar orbit. The astronauts will launch atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket and fly to the moon aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule. The crew will transfer to the waiting Starship for the descent to the lunar surface. NASA hopes to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in the 2027-28 timeframe, after an unpiloted Starship moon landing. Rapid reusability is a key element of the program given the number of Super Heavy-Starships that will be required for a single moon landing. Multiple successful test flights will be needed to perfect the system and demonstrate the reliability required to carry astronauts. The latest mishap comes amid ambitious SpaceX plans for major upgrades to the company's facilities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, building a 380-foot-tall building where Super Heavy boosters and Starships can be refurbished and processed for launch from one and possibly two Florida launch pads. The towering "Gigabay" facility will provide 46.5 million cubic space for processing with 815,000 square feet of work space. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. Another facility is planned where Starships can be built from scratch in Florida, similar to a facility already in place at Boca Chica. "To enable initial Starship flights from Florida while our Space Coast Starship manufacturing, integration, and refurbishment facilities are being completed, we will first transport completed Super Heavy boosters and Starship upper stage ships from Starbase via barge to build up a Starship fleet in Florida," SpaceX said in a statement Monday. "With production, integration, refurbishment, and launch facilities in Florida as well as Texas, we will be in a position to quickly ramp Starship's launch rate via rapid reusability."
