SpaceKate

Is it my tired eyes or are there some little bits flapping about just underneath where it says S40 in the side of the ship?

@SpaceGeekSheri Hahah you’re right there!

@SpaceKate Space is hard 😜

It’s been a long day and I was excited to get some sleep, but of course now I can’t sleep until I see how Starship fares on re-entry. But it’s 00:25…

Those three main sites for NASA's Deep Space Network include Goldstone in California and Canberra in Australia. Right now, the DSN Now website shows no communications activity going to or from the Madrid site. eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/d…

Just back home and catching up on launch - also noted the V3 raptor relight issue. Hope they can figure out how to fix that soon.

SpaceX is postponing Starship IFT-13 one day. Now July 24. Same time.

A reminder from @SaxaVord_Space on how launch operations for the upcoming @rfa_space ONE first flight launch window will work. saxavord.com/saxavord-space…

Love this story - bravo @JAXA_en and @haya2e_jaxa! apple.news/AuXdoZHCZQn-cY…

The hatch sticker that went to the Moon is now mounted in the Closeout Crew truck. Every team that rides to the pad on launch day will see this as they are exiting the truck to head up to the rocket.

No Starship launch today. An abort took place as they were starting to light the engines. That means it’s a scrub for today.

So for this flight the thing we're all really watching is the V3 Raptor reliability. They had issues during boostback that led to engines blowing up, and a failed engine on ascent. Reentry and booster catch largely seems to be solved at this point.

STACKING FOR ARTEMIS III HAS BEGUN A NEW SLS RISES

@WSN_WorldSpace @Stuck4ger Yes - I’m intrigued to know also.

@Stuck4ger i’ve never heard of a traditional piano burning ceremony. Could you explain how that began? Thanks.

Yesterday was the memorial service for the Torch11 crew of the doomed B-52. Such an accident touches everyone in the flight test community but especially those at the Air Force Test Wings. The memorial service culminated in traditional piano burnings at Edwards and Eglin AFBs.

@Astro_Clay One on the next flight? Just one? I reckon four would better.

The Artemis III crew announcement—an all-male team of Commander Randy Bresnik, Pilot Luca Parmitano, and Mission Specialists Andre Douglas, and Frank Rubio—has generated some disappointment and debate. I get it. Sure, it's a little ironic for the crew to be absent a female when Artemis is the sister of Apollo and the Goddess of the Moon. But mission selection, for any type of spaceflight, can be a very complicated task. Artemis III is the third in a series of high-risk, technical development flights that hope to enable a Human returning to the Lunar surface. That requires astronauts with highly relevant backgrounds and experiences. Therefore, “the powers that be” want people they believe possess the qualities most relevant to the mission’s task-specific fields. Second, the active astronaut corps continues to be very strong and diverse, with many outstanding women within its ranks. But multiple factors enter the management decision process. Availability matters. Personal life status matters. Willingness to go matters. With many of our talented colleagues already assigned to ISS expeditions, recovering from recent flights, or positioned for later Artemis mission assignments (yes, they do plan ahead!), the “selection pool” can be a bit limited. There just aren’t that many astronauts in the corps these days. So, it makes little sense to pull someone from a critical ISS rotation or delay an entire campaign just to check a demographic box. That would be irresponsible. Spaceflight is the hardest thing we do as a species. Let’s celebrate the professionals chosen to push the frontier forward. And besides, not having a woman on this flight enhances the probability that there will be one on the next flight. And that one, goes down to the Lunar Surface!

Ok, so they are not repairing it in place exactly as I thought. I thought that was odd.

@willguyatt Okay - I’ve just spent a day and a half trying to understand what they have done, what they should have done, what I should have been told, and how I get paid. Individually emailing producers en masse is tiring…

@SpaceKate I’ve been put on a different system to due volume of work - but that was only decided after i had been put on the portal. Neither appear to work as smoothly as what we previously had 🙃

So, it turns out the BBC has introduced a new payments system for contributors but not trained producers and bookers on how to use it. Now I'm chasing around 19 different stations, shows and shifts for payment. Shambolic.

Okay - who can tell me more about the lunar Frankenrover ‘Promise’? “a hybrid engineering development version of the Mars Perseverance and Curiosity rovers”?! nasa.gov/news-release/n…

The latest NASA IG report indicates that Starliner-1 will not occur in 2026. Not a huge surprise. But it sounds like a launch date might not even be set this year.

We're not rebuilding the same pad for New Glenn. We're moving to a horizontal/vertical hybrid configuration to get us flying again this year at 36A.  We were already working on something similar for 9x4 at 36B. Let me explain what that means. We mate the stages horizontally in the Integration Facility (IF). Then we bring the integrated vehicle out to the pad, use a crane to perform the vertical breakover, and mate the payload once New Glenn is vertical. This new ConOps has the added benefit of increasing our flight cadence as well.

@willguyatt Sounds like a huge mess! Did you get the invite to the all important Freelance Payment Portal (that no one thought to mention to me yesterday despite being on the phone for an hour)

@SpaceKate Hi Kate. I’ve some but not all payments. It’s a bit of a mess