It's Star Wars Day and SpaceX Just Launched Its Own 'Falcon' Into Space - Space.com

It may not be the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, but a SpaceX "Falcon" launched into space today just in time for Star Wars Day. 

The Falcon 9 rocket (which SpaceX CEO Elon Musk named in honor of the fictional Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars") launched a Dragon resupply ship filled with NASA cargo from Florida's Cape Cape Canaveral Air Force Station this morning. By coincidence, the mission launched on May 4, or May the Fourth, as fans of the "Star Wars" film franchise call it.

"May the Fourth be with you," SpaceX manufacturing engineer Jessica Anderson said while signing off the company's live launch commentary, a callback to the "May the Force be with you" phrase of the Jedi in the "Star Wars" films. NASA spokesperson Jennifer Wolfinger also echoed those words in the space agency's own broadcast.

Related: The Best 'Star Wars Day' Deals for May the Fourth!

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship for NASA lifts off from Space Complex 40 at Cape Canveral Air Force Station in Florida on May 4, 2019.

(Image: © NASA/Kim Shiflett)

SpaceX has developed three types of Falcon rockets over the years: the small Falcon 1, the workhorse Falcon 9 and the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy. And while they don't look anything like the iconic Millennium Falcon flown by Han Solo and his Wookie pal Chewbacca in "Star Wars," there are some striking similarities between the two space vehicles.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship for NASA streaks into the predawn sky after launching from Space Complex 40 at Cape Canveral Air Force Station in Florida on May 4, 2019.

(Image: © NASA/Kim Shiflett)

A Reusable Cargo Freighter

Just as the Millennium Falcon is a Corellian freighter haul payloads (and sometimes passengers) across the galaxy, SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters are built haul payloads into orbit. (SpaceX no longer flies Falcon 1 rockets. The last one flew in 2009.)

The first stages of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are also reusable, just like the Millennium Falcon. In the "Star Wars" universe, Han Solo and other characters regularly refuel and fly their Falcon over and over again. 

Related: The History of Lego's Millennium Falcon: A Photo Timeline

During today's Falcon 9 launch, SpaceX returned the booster's first stage to Earth with a pinpoint landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean about 12 miles (19 kilometers) off the coast of Florida. The booster will eventually fly again, launching more NASA cargo to the station on at least one more mission, and possibly a third, said Kenny Todd, NASA's manager for international Space Station operations and integration, after the successful launch.

Elon Musk has said that eventually, SpaceX hopes to fly a Falcon 9 rocket twice within  24 hours. That would put SpaceX's rockets on par with the Millennium Falcon, which appears to have made the trip from Tatooine to the Death Star (near the former site of Alderaan), only to escape the Empire and reach the Rebel base on Yavin 4 all in the same day in "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope."

Related: Our Favorite 'Star Wars' Ships from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

The Millennium Falcon isn't the only fictional object SpaceX has named its vehicles after. The Dragon spacecraft, for example, are named after Puff the Magic Dragon, Elon Musk has said. The company's drone ship landing pads, "Of Course I Still Love You" and "Just Read The Instructions," are named after the giant sentient starships of "The Culture" series by science fiction author Iain M. Banks.

It's only sheer coincidence that SpaceX's Falcon 9 launched the Dragon cargo mission for NASA on "Star Wars Day." 

The mission was originally scheduled to launch April 26, but was delayed several times to allow time for extra vehicle checks, await optimal orbital mechanics conditions for flight, as well as fix a minor helium leak at the launchpad and electrical issue on the drone ship. 

Dragon is carrying  more than 5,500 lbs. (2,495 kilograms) of experiments and supplies for astronauts on the International Space Station. It will arrive at the orbiting lab early Monday (May 6). 

You can watch Dragon's arrival live here, courtesy of NASA TV, beginning at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT) on Monday.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook.  

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2019-05-04 10:47:00Z
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SpaceX launches latest mission after ISS solves electrical problems - CNN

A Falcon 9 rocket, carrying an uncrewed Dragon 1 spacecraft stuffed will cargo, took of from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Saturday just before 3 a.m. ET.

This is usually a routine task for SpaceX. But the latest launch, originally scheduled for earlier this week, was plagued by unusual hangups on its path to the launch pad, including a rare electrical issue aboard the space station.

SpaceX's launch was rescheduled for a Friday morning as the ISS team solved its issues. But there was another setback, also involving electrical problems — this time for SpaceX. The company said in a tweet that its droneship, a seafaring platform used to land rocket boosters after flight so they can be reused and save SpaceX money, suffered an "electrical issue" and it forced the company to push launch back by another 24 hours.

After liftoff, the first-stage rocket booster — the largest piece of the launch vehicle that gives it the initial thrust — detached from the second-stage of the rocket and steered itself back to an upright landing on a seaborne platform, called a droneship.

The spacecraft is currently maneuvering through space on its own, unattached to the rocket, and is scheduled to dock with the ISS on Sunday.

This was SpaceX's 17th mission of its kind for NASA. The Dragon 1 capsule is carrying about 5,500 pounds of luggage, including hardware that will map carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere, a piece of equipment that could help communicate with deep-space exploration probes, and a host of science experiments.

There were a couple of hiccups before SpaceX could launch, though. One had to do with old electrical equipment and power issues aboard the space station.

The reason SpaceX couldn't do the mission earlier this week was because a piece of ISS hardware failed Monday, which left the station running on about 75% its normal power supply. NASA said it wouldn't be safe for SpaceX to launch its cargo mission until full power was restored. That fix was successful.

The other issue: where to land the first-stage booster. It was supposed to land on a ground pad, but that spot was out of commission after another SpaceX spacecraft used it last month and was destroyed. Landing the booster on a droneship was a convenient backup option.

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2019-05-04 07:00:00Z
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Updates: SpaceX launches Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral to ISS, sticks drone ship landing - Florida Today

Emre Kelly and Antonia Jaramillo Florida Today

Published 3:18 AM EDT May 4, 2019

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 2:48 a.m. Saturday, hurtling a Dragon spacecraft on a trajectory to the International Space Station. The rocket's first stage landed on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship just after liftoff.

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2019-05-04 03:40:00Z
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CRS-17 Dragon mission scrubbed, teams to try again May 4 - SpaceFlight Insider

Derek Richardson

May 3rd, 2019

The Falcon 9 with CRS-17 before being raised to the vertical position in the hours before its May 3 launch attempt. Photo Credit: Scott Schilke / SpaceFlight Insider

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX’s early-morning launch of its CRS-17 Dragon cargo resupply spacecraft was called off because of several technical issues.

While weather was the main concern for the May 3, 2019, Falcon 9 launch attempt, it was ultimately an issue with SpaceX’s drone ship, stationed about 17 miles (28 kilometers) off shore that prompted a “hold, hold, hold” call. However, there was also a helium leak on the ground side of the rocket that also needed to be addressed.

Standing down today due to an electrical issue on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship. Teams will also address the ground side helium leak before tomorrow's backup launch opportunity at 2:48 a.m. EDT, 6:48 UTC.

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 3, 2019

Initially, SpaceX was targeting May 1, 2019, for the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket with the CRS-17 Dragon spacecraft bound for the International Space Station, but a power failure aboard the outpost prompted a launch postponement to May 3 to give ground teams time to troubleshoot and replace the failed component, a Main Bus Switching Unit.

Flights to the International Space Station are timed for when the orbital plane of the outpost crosses the launch site. This effectively means there is no time to wait for better weather or to work technical issues as the window to get off the ground is essentially instantaneous.

With the scrub officially called at about 3 a.m. EDT (07:00 GMT), SpaceX teams are expected to attempt to solve the technical issues before trying again in about 24 hours. The next launch attempt is expected to be at 2:48 a.m. EDT (06:48 GMT) May 4.

The forecast is more favorable for the May 4 attempt with the 45th Weather Squadron predicting only a 30% chance of a weather-related rule violation.

SpaceX’s CRS-17 Dragon mission is slated to fly 5,500 pounds (2,500 kilograms) of supplies, equipment and experiments to the space station’s Expedition 59 crew.

Assuming a May 4 liftoff, Dragon should arrive at the outpost on May 6 and remain attached to the Harmony module until late May or the first part of June.

Tagged: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station CRS-17 Dragon Falcon 9 Lead Stories NASA Space Launch Complex 40 SpaceX

Derek Richardson

Derek Richardson has a degree in mass media, with an emphasis in contemporary journalism, from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. While at Washburn, he was the managing editor of the student run newspaper, the Washburn Review. He also has a blog about the International Space Station, called Orbital Velocity. He met with members of the SpaceFlight Insider team during the flight of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket with the MUOS-4 satellite. Richardson joined our team shortly thereafter. His passion for space ignited when he watched Space Shuttle Discovery launch into space Oct. 29, 1998. Today, this fervor has accelerated toward orbit and shows no signs of slowing down. After dabbling in math and engineering courses in college, he soon realized his true calling was communicating to others about space. Since joining SpaceFlight Insider in 2015, Richardson has worked to increase the quality of our content, eventually becoming our managing editor. @TheSpaceWriter

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2019-05-03 07:36:33Z
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SpaceX Delays Dragon Cargo Ship Launch for NASA Due to Drone Ship Glitch - Space.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX’s next cargo mission to the International Space Station has been delayed by at least 24 hours due to technical issues.

The company's two-stage Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch a robotic Dragon cargo capsule from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 3:11 a.m. EDT (0711 GMT) today (May 3).

However, as fueling procedures were underway and with less than 15 minutes left in the countdown, the launch managers called a hold. They cited a helium leak on the quick disconnect on the rocket’s second stage, as well as an electrical issue with the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which will serve as a landing platform for the booster's reusable first stage when it returns to Earth.

Due to the instantaneous launch window, crews had to stand down from today’s attempt to try and work through the issues.

Related: How SpaceX's Dragon Space Capsule Works (Infographic) 

Standing down today due to an electrical issue on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship. Teams will also address the ground side helium leak before tomorrow's backup launch opportunity at 2:48 a.m. EDT, 6:48 UTC.May 3, 2019

The next attempt is scheduled for Saturday (May 4) at 2:48 a.m. EDT (0648 GMT). There’s a 70% chance of good weather on that day, according to the Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron.

Today's delay is the latest in a series of slips that saw the launch move from April 26 to (now) May 4. 

If the Falcon 9 cannot get off the ground on Saturday, the next attempt will come no earlier than May 12 or May 13. That's because of a previously planned weeklong stand-down of the Eastern Range, which supports launches from Cape Canaveral and nearby Kennedy Space Center, NASA officials have said.

When it does launch, the Dragon will carry more than 5,500 lbs. (2,495 kilograms) of cargo, crew supplies, and research experiments for the space station. One of the payloads is an experiment called the Photobioreactor, which will test the cultivation of microalgae to someday serve as both food and a source of oxygen on the space station. 

Also on board are a series of investigations involving tissue chips. Tucked inside the Dragon cargo hold are four different varieties: a lung and bone marrow chip, a cartilage and bone chip, a chip that simulates the blood-brain barrier, and one that cultivates kidney cells. Researchers say that the chips will help astronauts monitor simulated organs' reactions in space. 

Another exciting tool is nestled inside the Dragon’s trunk. Once unpacked, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 instrument will be attached to the space station’s exterior via a robotic arm, where it will measure atmospheric carbon dioxide and map sources and sinks of the gas.

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.  

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2019-05-03 07:35:00Z
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Dragon was destroyed just before the firing of its SuperDraco thrusters - Ars Technica

Enlarge / It is not clear when we will see crewed flights of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX

During a news conference Thursday in advance of a SpaceX supply mission to the International Space Station, the company's vice president of mission assurance, Hans Koenigsmann, provided some additional details about a failure with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft 12 days ago.

In the company's most expansive comments to date, Koenigsmann said the "anomaly" occurred during a series of tests with the spacecraft, approximately one-half second before the firing of the SuperDraco thrusters. At that point, he said, "There was an anomaly and the vehicle was destroyed."

During the activation phase, the SuperDraco thruster system is pressurized, and valves are opened and closed. Since the accident there has been speculation that there may have been some issue with the composite overwrap pressure vessels, or COPVs, which store rocket fuels at extremely high pressures. The COPVs on Crew Dragon are different from those on the Falcon 9, and they would not have been overly stressed at that moment, Koenigsmann said. "I'm fairly confident that the COPVs are going to be fine," he said.

Investigative teams from SpaceX and NASA are carefully reviewing telemetry data and high-speed imagery, Koenigsmann said, and soon they will begin analyzing pieces of the spacecraft recovered at the test site near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Because this was a ground test, there is ample data for engineers to consider. He admitted the failure did come as "a shock" to some of the company's engineers.

It is too early to determine a probable, or root, cause, but Koenigsmann expressed confidence in the SuperDraco thruster system. He noted that SpaceX has tested these powerful thrusters more than 600 times at its test facilities in McGregor, Texas. Moreover, they have performed well in hover tests as well as a launch pad abort test in 2015. "We have no reason to believe there’s an issue with the SuperDracos themselves," he said.

SuperDracos

SpaceX has been developing SuperDraco thrusters for the better part of a decade to enable human flights on board Dragon. There are four "pods" of two engines each situated around the Crew Dragon capsule, and each SuperDraco engine has a thrust of 16,000 pounds. Testing of the SuperDracos began in early 2012 using various thrust cycles on a test stand at SpaceX's rocket development facility in McGregor.

The lost spacecraft is the same one that successfully flew a demonstration mission to the International Space Station in March. (During that Demo-1 mission, the SuperDracos were not activated.) After the March flight, the Dragon spacecraft was being prepared for a launch abort test this summer.

During this launch abort test, the Dragon would have launched from Florida on a Falcon 9 booster and then fired its powerful SuperDraco engines to show that the Dragon could pull itself safely away from the rocket in case of a problem with the booster before or during flight. It is not clear what vehicle SpaceX will now use for that launch abort test, which will be all the more scrutinized due to the accident on April 20.

• Four pairs of SuperDraco engines power the Crew Dragon spacecraft's escape system.

  SpaceX

• SpaceX has been working on the SuperDraco thruster for the better part of a decade. Back in June 2012, Elon Musk tweeted this photo, saying, "Just fired our SuperDraco escape rocket engine at full thrust! Needed to carry astronauts on Dragon."

  SpaceX

• A propulsive hover test of Crew Dragon demonstrates how the engines operate in four pairs distributed about the spacecraft.

  SpaceX

• Another view of the propulsive hover test.

  SpaceX

• This is a mosaic of images from a pair of SuperDraco thrusters undergoing a full test firing. Each engine is tested more than 300 times.

  SpaceX

• During a pad abort test in 2015, the eight thrusters fired simultaneously, quickly reaching a maximum thrust, to lift Dragon off the pad.

  SpaceX

• After half a second of vertical flight, the Dragon pitched toward the ocean and continued its controlled burn. The Dragon traveled from 0-100 mph in 1.2 seconds, reaching a max velocity of 345mph.

  SpaceX

• Shortly after, the trunk was jettisoned and the spacecraft began a slow rotation with its heat shield pointed toward the ground.

  SpaceX

• The Crew Dragon has solar arrays built into the spacecraft's trunk. The SuperDraco engine pods can be seen above the service module.

  SpaceX

Before this accident, SpaceX and NASA had been targeting early October for the first crewed Dragon mission to the station. Now, that will almost certainly be delayed by at least several months into 2020. At Thursday's news briefing, Koenigsmann said the schedule impact will depend on what the investigation turns up. "I hope this is a relatively swift investigation at the end of the day," he said. "I don’t want to completely preclude the current schedule, but certainly this is not good news for the schedule."

Although NASA has stood by SpaceX after the accident, there are hints of future political problems. One of the sharpest critics of SpaceX, Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, said Wednesday that NASA should conduct an independent investigation of the accident. He appeared unhappy with NASA's decision to conduct a side-by-side investigation with SpaceX. "Can you be independent, and reach independent conclusions, if you're doing something jointly with somebody?" he asked during a Senate committee hearing. "That's not the norm, I think, and it's something we'll check out."

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2019-05-02 16:15:00Z
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News - Hubble Astronomers Assemble Wide View of the Evolving Universe - HubbleSite

Astronomers have put together the largest and most comprehensive "history book" of galaxies into one single image, using 16 years' worth of observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

The deep-sky mosaic, created from nearly 7,500 individual exposures, provides a wide portrait of the distant universe, containing 265,000 galaxies that stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the big bang. The faintest and farthest galaxies are just one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see. The universe's evolutionary history is also chronicled in this one sweeping view. The portrait shows how galaxies change over time, building themselves up to become the giant galaxies seen in the nearby universe.

This ambitious endeavor, called the Hubble Legacy Field, also combines observations taken by several Hubble deep-field surveys, including the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the deepest view of the universe. The wavelength range stretches from ultraviolet to near-infrared light, capturing the key features of galaxy assembly over time.

"Now that we have gone wider than in previous surveys, we are harvesting many more distant galaxies in the largest such dataset ever produced by Hubble," said Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, leader of the team that assembled the image. "This one image contains the full history of the growth of galaxies in the universe, from their time as 'infants' to when they grew into fully-fledged 'adults.'

No image will surpass this one until future space telescopes are launched. "We've put together this mosaic as a tool to be used by us and by other astronomers," Illingworth added. "The expectation is that this survey will lead to an even more coherent, in-depth, and greater understanding of the universe's evolution in the coming years."

The image yields a huge catalog of distant galaxies. "Such exquisite high-resolution measurements of the numerous galaxies in this catalog enable a wide swath of extragalactic study," said catalog lead researcher Katherine Whitaker of the University of Connecticut, in Storrs. "Often, these kinds of surveys have yielded unanticipated discoveries which have had the greatest impact on our understanding of galaxy evolution."

Galaxies are the "markers of space," as astronomer Edwin Hubble once described them a century ago. Galaxies allow astronomers to trace the expansion of the universe, offer clues to the underlying physics of the cosmos, show when the chemical elements originated, and enable the conditions that eventually led to the appearance of our solar system and life.

This wider view contains about 30 times as many galaxies as in the previous deep fields. The new portrait, a mosaic of multiple snapshots, covers almost the width of the full Moon. The XDF, which penetrated deeper into space than this wider view, lies in this region, but it covers less than one-tenth of the full Moon's diameter. The Legacy Field also uncovers a zoo of unusual objects. Many of them are the remnants of galactic "train wrecks," a time in the early universe when small, young galaxies collided and merged with other galaxies.

Assembling all of the observations was an immense task. The image comprises the collective work of 31 Hubble programs by different teams of astronomers. Hubble has spent more time on this tiny area than on any other region of the sky, totaling more than 250 days, representing nearly three-quarters of a year.

"Our goal was to assemble all 16 years of exposures into a legacy image," explained Dan Magee, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the team's data processing lead. "Previously, most of these exposures had not been put together in a consistent way that can be used by any researcher. Astronomers can select the data in the Legacy Field they want and work with it immediately, as opposed to having to perform a huge amount of data reduction before conducting scientific analysis."

The image, along with the individual exposures that make up the new view, is available to the worldwide astronomical community through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). MAST, an online database of astronomical data from Hubble and other NASA missions, is located at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Hubble Space Telescope has come a long way in taking ever deeper "core samples" of the distant universe. After Hubble's launch in 1990, astronomers debated if it was worth spending a chunk of the telescope's time to go on a "fishing expedition" to take a very long exposure of a small, seemingly blank piece of sky. The resulting Hubble Deep Field image in 1995 captured several thousand unseen galaxies in one pointing. The bold effort was a landmark demonstration and a defining proof-of-concept that set the stage for future deep field images. In 2002, Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys went even deeper to uncover 10,000 galaxies in a single snapshot. Astronomers used exposures taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), installed in 2009, to assemble the eXtreme Deep Field snapshot in 2012. Unlike previous Hubble cameras, the telescope's WFC3 covers a broader wavelength range, from ultraviolet to near-infrared.

This new image mosaic is the first in a series of Hubble Legacy Field images. The team is working on a second set of images, totaling more than 5,200 Hubble exposures, in another area of the sky. In the future, astronomers hope to broaden the multiwavelength range in the legacy images to include longer-wavelength infrared data and high-energy X-ray observations from two other NASA Great Observatories, the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The vast number of galaxies in the Legacy Field image are also prime targets for future telescopes. "This will really set the stage for NASA's planned Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST)," Illingworth said. "The Legacy Field is a pathfinder for WFIRST, which will capture an image that is 100 times larger than a typical Hubble photo. In just three weeks' worth of observations by WFIRST, astronomers will be able to assemble a field that is much deeper and more than twice as large as the Hubble Legacy Field."

In addition, NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will allow astronomers to push much deeper into the legacy field to reveal how the infant galaxies actually grew. Webb's infrared coverage will go beyond the limits of Hubble and Spitzer to help astronomers identify the first galaxies in the universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

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2019-05-02 14:00:00Z
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