Main Engine Cut Off - T+265: Headlines, featuring Starship IFT-2, Dragonfly, and Ariane 6

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

A special (free!) airing of this week’s episode of MECO Headlines. Starship IFT-2, Dragonfly, Ariane 6, ISS happenings, launches, and more.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 35 executive producers—Donald, Pat from KC, David, Theo and Violet, Dawn Aerospace, Steve, SmallSpark Space Systems, Jan, Chris, Bob, Tyler, Stealth Julian, Kris, Russell, Pat, Fred, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Will and Lars from Agile Space, Lee, Warren, Harrison, Brandon, Joonas, The Astrogators at SEE, Matt, Ryan, Joel, Frank, Benjamin, and four anonymous—and 835 other supporters.TopicsAfter upgrades, Starship achieves numerous successes during second test flight - NASASpaceFlight.comStarship/Super Heavy lifts off on second flight - SpaceNewsAriane 6 completes long-duration static-fire test - SpaceNewsESA sets mid-2024 date for first Ariane 6 launch - SpaceNewsNASA’s Dragonfly to Proceed with Final Mission Design Work - NASA ScienceNASA postpones Dragonfly review, launch date - SpaceNewsSpace Station – Off The Earth, For The EarthDragon Kicks Off Robotics and Science Activities on Station – Space StationRobotics Activities Continue; Crew Completes an Array of Research – Space StationAging, Human Research Studies Ahead of Next Cargo Mission – Space StationChina launches new-gen Haiyang ocean monitoring satellite - SpaceNewsLaunch Roundup: Starship, Falcon 9, and Chang Zheng-2C this week - NASASpaceFlight.comSatTrackCam Leiden (b)log: North Korea successfully launches the Malligyong-1 reconnaissance satelliteChina conducts launch to test satellite internet capabilities - SpaceNewsLaunch Roundup: SpaceX on pace to hit 100 launches in 2023, Soyuz to launch Bars-M - NASASpaceFlight.comThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by NASAWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo, and I've got a special treat here in the podcast feed for you this week. Every once in a while, I like to do a free preview, really, of MECO headlines. You hear me mention it all the time when I'm talking about everyone who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com support there are 870 of you supporting every single month i'm super thankful uh for your support and this episode produced by 35 executive producers thanks to donald pat from kc david theo violet don aerospace steve small spark space systems yon chris bob tyler stealth julian chris russell pat fred craig from space Steve, SmallSparkSpaceSystems, Jan, Chris, Bob, Tyler, StealthJulian, Chris, Russell, Pat, Fred, Craig from SpaceHabbyHabby.com, Tim Dodd, TheEverDashNut, Will and Lars from AgileSpace,

Lee, Warren, Harrison, Brandon, Eunice, TheAstrogators at SCE, Matt, Ryan, Joel, Frank, Benjamin, and four anonymous executive producers. They made this show possible, and them, along with all the other supporters that are at $3 a month or more get access to a special RSS feed where I do a new show for them every week to 10 days, depending on how things land on the schedule. But I run through all of the stories that you need to care about in Space News. I do my best to filter out the ones that don't matter, the things that really matter float to the top, and I try to keep you up to date as best as possible. So I think it's a great way to support the show and stay up to date. But I also think it's probably helpful if you just get a

listen of this and kind of feel what the show is like to see if it's something that you're interested in having in your life. So I try to do this once a year. I feel like I don't think I've done it for three years. I scrolled back through the podcast feed and I thought I've done it more recently than that. But I guess the time warp from November 2020 to now is real. So without further ado, this is the episode that is running in the headlines feed right now. I wanted to talk about some of these stories on the main feed anyway, and I have about a headlines show worth of content about each of them anyway. So I figured this is a good time to give you a look inside what everyone's getting over on the special feed.

So once again, managingcutoff.com slash support is where to get access to more of this if you like it. Without further ado, roll it. Hello and welcome to headlines for November 30th, 2023. A lot has happened in the last two weeks. Schedule got a little shuffled around there with the US holiday, but we've got a lot to talk about because of that. The number one story that you probably are aware of if you're listening to this is that Starship once again flew. This was the Integrated Flight Test 2. I've seen it referred to under different names, but IFT2 seems to be the one that was most popular. But whatever it is, the second flight of Starship here, I didn't really know what to expect, to be honest, coming out of the flight back in April, which was a chaotic mess, really,

from ignition onward. I didn't know what to expect here, and I was just blown away at how clean this flight looked. The moment it cleared the dust cloud and you saw all the engines running, it's accelerating at what looks like a visually normal rate. It wasn't really slow, lumbering with engines out. It was just a really clean ascent, spectacular to look at. Everything seemed to be going so well. They made it through hot staging. That was the big change on this test of where they would actually start running the upper stage engines and then separate the booster and the ship so that you're limiting gravity losses there and you're providing better separation between the ship and the booster. That did seem to flip the booster a little too much. Booster went for its boost back. And then at that point, they started having problems with the booster. And that exploded

a couple of seconds after separation. The ship continued on its way well downrange. By the time they lost telemetry on the ship, just to cut a long story short, because you've probably seen this, like I said. The ship was 148 kilometers high, 24,000 kilometers per hour. It was almost to the end of the burn, and they lost telemetry with the vehicle. And it seems like the autonomous flight termination system kicked in then, because we did see the signs of an explosion. It was confusing for a couple seconds there, but this made it almost all the way through that profile. And that is a huge win. You know, you know, flight alone is amazing. You look down at the launch pad, which is the major issue on the first launch, and things seem to go really well with the new systems they have on the pad there. all in all, I'm not sure if SpaceX could have asked for a bigger success than this, coming out of the chaotic mess that was the flight in April, to have this clean of a flight, obviously with the issues of losing the booster and losing the ship. But when you are looking at it in terms of what a SpaceX development cycle looks like, this is an amazing second test for

the stack. And we'll see how quickly they get flying again. It looks like, you know, talk I'm seeing is early next year, a couple months away. They've got a bunch of ships and boosters in production as always and ready to fly. So we'll see exactly how that all comes together schedule wise based on what the review of this is, if there's any other change items they need to make before they actually go fly again. But all in all, an amazing flight for Starship, really thrilled to see it go as well as it did, and can't wait to see, you know, what they do on the next flight. Some news out of Arianespace on the other new launcher that's coming online in the next few months. Arian6 was going for its long-duration static fire test,

and this was the big gating test that they had before they were able to set a launch date for Ariane 6. The test itself went pretty well. They were aiming for 470 seconds of a firing. This is the Vulcane 2.1 engine that's on the first stage of Ariane 6. They were going for a flight duration burn here. It did end 426 seconds instead of 470.

And they have chalked this up now to having very conservative thresholds on the test because they're operating this all on the launch pad. They wouldn't really be doing this on a real launch. So they always kind of cramp down on the constraints on a test so that things get shut off early if there's going to be any damage done to the facilities around there. It's kind of cramped down on the constraints on a test so that things get shut off early if there's going to be any damage done to the facilities around there. It's kind of what it sounds like. So I wouldn't say super concerning. They have now come out and said that their launch period is June 15th to July 31st. We're still a ways off from the first launch of Ariane 6 here.

Obviously, we're hoping to get this up, you know, for years now. But June 15th to July 31st is the window they're giving us right now. There's still a couple more tests coming up. They've got an upper stage test in December in just about a week in Germany to test some additional performance of the upper stage. And then they're going to be doing a fueling test of Ariane 6 itself a couple of maybe a week or so after that down in French Guiana. And then the flight hardware is going to be transported by ship. That'll arrive in February at the site, and then they're going to go through a wet dress rehearsal of the flight hardware itself. So they've got a lot to go between here and there, but it seems like we're about half a year away from seeing Ariane 6 take flight for

the first time. NASA's posted some updates on the Dragonfly mission. This is the Quadcopter 2 Saturn's Moon Titan, a really ambitious mission that I'm particularly excited for. It looks really awesome. This is kind of a confusing update, so stay with me as best as you can. The mission itself has been authorized to proceed with work on final mission design, fabrication, everything that leads up to uh launch really that's phase c of this mission they've been authorized to proceed with that for fiscal year 2024 in the u.s that started on october 1st and is in progress right now um usually this moment comes with the agency nasa uh officially confirming the total cost and schedule that the mission is set for. They're postponing

that part of this review until about six months from now, after the Biden administration releases the budget request for the following fiscal year, 2025. And they're blaming this on the budgetary uncertainty right now in the US, where there's generally political chaos we don't really know what nasa's budget is going to look like how impacted um the budget cuts are going to be on nasa itself how it really is going to shake out with what um more sample return takes of the planetary science budget what else is available elsewhere um so all these reasons they're saying you know it's hard to actually plan for the budget on Dragonfly and its run up to launch. They only requested $327 million for this fiscal year, which was 18% less than what it received in 2023.

Now, the intention there was to keep it on track for June 2027 launch. That is now slipping into July 2028. They've replanned over the summer, given the shakeup of the budget situation here. And they're not really going to fully confirm this until about six months from now. And even then, it's contingent on what's going on with the budget. So, you know, they're saying that there's still a lot of support within the agency for this mission, but there is this shakeup going on on how the budget is going to impact a mission like this. It's apparently cost-wise kind of slipping into flagship territory, which is the highest level of budget and importance that NASA gives to a planetary

science mission. This is kind of drifting in that direction, given it's a quadcopter on a moon of Saturn. It is a pretty ambitious mission overall. So, you know, I think let's check back again in, you know, springtime and we'll talk about this again. Keep it in mind that, you know, Dragonfly is working its way towards launch, but still has a pretty big gate to get through before it's fully cleared. Up on the ISS, there was a lot of activity going on with the Dragon cargo spacecraft that had arrived a couple weeks back. Now, the i talked to you basically it just arrived and hadn't really begun uh the unpacking of it yet well that happened uh shortly before thanksgiving here in the u.s they were unpacking science supplies hardware from inside the spacecraft um the the interesting thing here is that there were uh some there were some hardware

pieces to extract from dragon's trunk so ground controllers were using canon arm 2 to extract from Dragon's trunk. So ground controllers were using Canadarm2 to extract. There was a laser communications experiment that was attached to the Kibo laboratory module, the Japanese module. And then there was the atmospheric waves experiment, AWE, all payload that was pulled out. And that's going to be mounted to the exterior of the station as well. So those things happened under the command of ground controllers while inside they were unpacking the pressurized cargo that was brought up. And the only other real thing going on here is that there's the, on the Russian end of the station, some cargo ship shuffling going on as well. So

Progress MS-23 headed back down this week. That was docked to the Poisk module for six months. That headed out and re-entered Earth above the South Pacific Ocean, making way for Progress MS-25 that should be launching about 12 hours from when I'm recording this. So it'll be launching very, very early Friday Eastern time, and that'll take two days to get up to the station and dock to the Poisk module on Sunday, bringing a whole fresh set of supplies to the Russian side of the station. On to the launches that happened. There was quite a lot going on. So the first up out of China on a Long March 2C out of the Jukwan Satellite Launch Center, the Haiyang-3 No. 1 satellite. This is the first of a new series of

Haiyang Ocean Observation Satellites. They've got a couple different things on board. They've got an X-band synthetic aperture radar payload. They've also got some sensors that are monitoring water color, temperature, sea ice, some things like that. And the planned mission lifetime here is eight years. This was launched into about a 770 kilometer sun synchronous orbit, just slightly elliptical, but that's up there successfully. Then on to the first of several Starlink launches that happened, Starlink 628. This is launching on a Falcon 9 at a Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying 23 Starlink satellites. The Group 6 launches are all going to the 43 degree inclination group. And these on 628 here flew on top of booster B1069,

making its 11th flight landing downrange on just read the instructions. Then there was a Starlink launch from the other coast out of Vandenberg Space Force Base. A Falcon 9 climbed out of there with 22 Starlink satellites on board heading to the 53 degree inclination band. So in this case, it heads southeast out of Vandenberg, kind of skirts past LA down Baja, California, and it's a bit of a dogleg to get over to 53 degrees from there, but it is totally doable. The booster on this one, B1063, is making its 15th flight, landing downrange on, of course, I Still Love You. Then over to North Korea, where there was an orbital launch attempt that went successfully for the first time in this

series. This was the Cholima-1 rocket, a three-stage rocket based on the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile that they've been testing a whole bunch. Obviously, major source of international drama here. But in this case, this is a derivative of that three-stage vehicle. I'm mentioning three-stage for a reason. Uh, if you look at the link in the show notes that I have to SatTrakCam, um, there's a map of how this thing got to orbit. It did a double dogleg. Uh, so it launched south out of North Korea and the first stage headed, uh, south off

the coast a little bit. Second stage headed then more easterly out towards the, you know, more central part of the Pacific Ocean to kind of swing over and avoid dropping stages on China and Taiwan. And then the third stage dog-leg back again westerly so that it was heading, you know, straight onto the orbital track where it needed to go. So a very bizarre launch pattern here, but that successfully launched the Malayong-1 No. 3 satellite up to about a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. A military reconnaissance satellite. Seems to be imaging-based, but obviously we don't know too much else about that satellite. Back to Florida for Starlink-629, nearly identical from

the 628 launch that you heard about. So Falcon 9 out of Space Launch Complex 40, launching 23 Starlink satellites to the 43 degree inclination band, flying on top of booster B1067, making its 15th flight that landed successfully on a shortfall of Gravitas. Back to China, there was a Long March 2D out of the Sichong Satellite Launch Center, carrying a number of satellites. We can't really figure out how many. I haven't seen the tracking data on this yet be posted. But it most likely was carrying satellites for the National Satellite Internet Constellation Project, the Guoyang, Guowang, I think it was, constellation that China is developing. But we don't really have any details on that one either. And to keep the theme, there was a launch out of Russia that I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what actually got launched on this,

because I've seen so many different things theorized. I saw that it was a Bars-M satellite, which doesn't really track, considering the fact that this is at a different altitude than previous Bars satellites. I've seen Cosmos 2571 as the name of this satellite. I've seen Cosmos 2572. No one can figure out what this was or what to call it. But what I do know is it was a Soyuz 2 something launching out of the Pleseks Cosmodrome. And it ended up, whatever the payload was, ended up about a 300 kilometer sunsink at its orbit. So it's probably doing some sort of imaging, but you know, I can't figure out what the real information is there. Obviously some sort of classified situation from the Russian military,

as is often the case out of the Pleseks Cosmodrome. So if anyone knows what's going on there, I'd love to have some additional info. And then rounding us out for the week, Starlink 630, another identical Group 6 launch. Falcon 9 out of Space Launch Complex 40, carrying 23 Starlink satellites to the 43 degreedegree inclination band,

and this one was flying on top of booster B1062, making its 17th flight, landing again successfully on a shortfall of Gravitas, and that brings us to the end of headlines for the week. Looking ahead to next week, as I mentioned, we got the Progress flight coming up tomorrow, a couple of Falcon 9 launches, and there should be a Falcon Heavy launch in about 10 days carrying the X-37B for the United States Space Force. And that should be an interesting one. And then a little bit beyond that, looking in the middle of December now, Electron should be making its return to flight for Rocket Lab out of New Zealand.

So a couple of things to keep your eyes peeled for as we head into the holidays. And obviously Vulcan coming up under a month until that's on the schedule for ULA. So lots of good stuff coming up in the launch department. Keep your eyes peeled for those of you listening on the main feed. If you like this, mainenginecutoff.com support. You can join the crew of people hearing this on their special podcast feed, who I thank so much for your support. Thanks for making this all possible. I appreciate you listening and hope you had a great holiday

if you're here in the US. Otherwise, I hope you had a good regular week towards the end of November there. And with that said, I will talk to you next week. Bye.