Archive

Archive for July 19, 2024

Ephemeris: 07/19/2024 – SpaceX’s Falcon 9 has the first failure in many years

July 19, 2024 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Friday, July 19th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 6 minutes, setting at 9:21, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:16. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 4:45 tomorrow morning.

A week ago yesterday a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was unable to put a batch of 20 Starlink satellites into the proper orbit due to a failure in the second stage. The problem seems to be an oxygen leak that prevented a second burn of the engine to circularize the orbit leaving the orbit perigee or low point to be 135 kilometers high, which though in orbit, that orbit would soon decay, having the satellites burn up on reentry after a few orbits. The Falcon 9 fleet has been grounded pending an investigation. However, there are two immediate planned flights of the Falcon 9 utilizing the Crew Dragon, the first is at the end of July which is a private mission called Polaris Dawn and in August the Crew 9 transfer to the International Space Station. It remains to be seen how long those missions will be postponed.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT–4 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

A frame of the video from one of the two cameras at the base of the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket showing the build up of ice near the engine
This is a frame of the video from one of the two cameras at the base of the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket showing the build up of ice near the engine and the destruction of one of the pieces of ice in the exhaust to the lower left of the engine bell. The Sun is right behind the plume of gas from that piece, really lighting it up . Credit SpaceX via space.com.
Categories: Commercial space flight, Ephemeris Program Tags: , ,