Adrien GALLO’s Post

Every Saiph thruster is thoroughly tested before it is integrated onto our vehicles. 📈 We perform several acceptance tests from our in-house vacuum chamber, focusing on two critical operational modes: 1️⃣ Steady-state burn: Validates Saiph’s ability to perform delta-V burns, enabling precise orbital transfers. 2️⃣ Pulsing burn: Demonstrates fine reaction control with short, rapid pulses, crucial for vehicle rotation in space. Saiph’s success in these tests ensures our vehicles navigate orbits accurately, arriving at our customers’ target destinations in space. 🌌 With over 152,000 seconds of burn time and 108,000 ignitions on the ground at Impulse, each run builds confidence in Saiph’s on-orbit performance for our in-space transportation solutions. 🚀

Watch this. And think about what it took to get here. 🤯 #spacex #spacewalk

Space X is going to present the Starship's fifth flight test. By now we keep a great attention to the fact that the arms of the lanch tower are trying to catch the rocket during the flight, this is the first attempt in the history. It's important to remember that the booster Super Heavy doesn’t have arms such as Falcon 9, so if there will be a problem, it's easy to imagine what would happen. Actually, in this case we should keep attention to Starship's front flaps which give vertical position of the rocket during last 3000 feets before soft landing, infact in the Starship's fourth flight test, one of the great problems which occurred during the reentry phase, was the thermodynamic stress. This is caused by the friction generated by the plasma when the Starship’s speed began to reduce near to 14000 km/h. It was surprising to see from the rocket's external camera, the incandescence of one of the two vertical alignment fins which has guaranteed maximum stability until the landing above all. Musk has immediately stated that the position of the flaps would be changed for the Starship's fifth flight test. We are ready to see how Starship will face this difficulty.

Very important confirmation to prepare next Vega C flight

It was unreal to see the “impossible” become reality today with the booster catch on Starship’s 5th test flight. We lose perspective of the size and complexity in the live video (shared below) but this is a 71m tall, 9m diameter, and about 300-ton vehicle returning from the edge of space after launching a ship to orbit. At the end of its ascent, it allows hot-staging (starting the ship engines while maintaining a push), flips, thrusts back to the launch site, glides through the atmospheric entry using grid fins, and finally executes a propulsive landing with precision. The catch maneuver takes the precision to surgical levels as the margin of error on tilt, position, and velocity is extremely tight even compared to a landing on a drone ship. The tower is not just a passive ground structure but is also equally active in making the catch by its “chopsticks” a success. This is a big deal and not just a parlor trick on a bigger scale. What this technological leap enables is the rapid reusability of rockets. That in turn translates to a lower cost for payload to orbit which could go down from a couple thousand dollars to every kilogram of mass to low Earth orbit (LEO) to some hundreds. In any industry, when we cut down the cost of technology by this much, new use cases emerge. We are just starting to build a space economy and today was a turning point. One other note: I started working on Falcon booster entry in flight F9-6 and we took a while recovering a booster intact with a drone ship landing. With Starship, I’ve been happy to see that we made this goal within the 5th test flight. Goes to show that if you learn from them, failures serve a good purpose. Don’t get deterred if you fail first - just adapt, learn, and move fast toward success. A huge shoutout to all my colleagues with whom I have the privilege of working every day. Onwards to ship recovery and full Starship reuse demos. #starship #spaceX #rockets #spacetechnology

Amazing video from #Spacex #Starship re-entry in atmosphere ! "Data is the payload" 😪 of reading some much “3rd failed test for #Starship” headlines 🗞️ this morning in 🇫🇷 . I prefer choose the #try #fail #learn #repeat approach (think about the improvements in only 3 attempts !) https://lnkd.in/gypkYfRk #spaceX #Starship #Rocket #Space #Data #Learn #Growthmindset

0:41 of awesomeness! As per Nik Cooper, the link to the full 18:49-long YouTube video is in the comments. #SpaceX #Starship #RaptorEngines #CosmicPerspective

What an incredible engineering feat, the #SpaceX #Mechazilla tower catching the 20+ story tall Super Heavy booster on the very first attempt!  Congrats SpaceX on a successful #Starship Flight 5 test. Mars, here we come! "Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to catching the Super Heavy booster. Thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt." SpaceX posted on X: 📽️ Video clip via X (t.co/7rwHnXDk2d) Elon Musk explains exactly how Space X's Mechazilla can catch the Super Heavy booster: "This is a custom-built tower with arms that are designed to catch the largest flying and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it outta the air." "It'll weigh about 250 tons. We'll make that lighter over time." "So you got a couple hundred tons plummeting at more than half the speed of sound. So this thing is still coming in really fast." "When the engines land... it's gonna drop the velocity to basically zero and come in between the arms." "The arms will be wide, and as it's coming in, the arms will, will close, go flush against the side of the vehicle, and the vehicle will be descending through the arms." "The probability is uncertain, but it is above zero." LinkedIn news story: https://lnkd.in/ghf2vcyW

Polaris Dawn Update 1. Altitude of 1400 km achieved 2. The Skywalker at front bulk head is visible 3. Earth rotating in the background 4. DRACO engines firing in vacuum of space. #PolarisProgram #polarisdawn #spacex

#SFL Verifies Successful Deployment of HawkEye 360 Cluster 8 and 9 Geolocation Microsatellites Read more: https://ow.ly/chQz50Rbqpp #sfl #hawkeye360 #cluster8 #cluster9 #satelliteplatform #spacex #defiantbus #satellite #launch #ground