Starship Still Lost At Sea, China's Rocket Gets Bent, Rocket Lab's Ghost - Deep Space Updates Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:04 Hello, it's Scott Manley. It's August 13th and I'm in Denver, so I'm recording this from one of the spare bedrooms in the house that we're renting. Um, long story, but I have an even longer story, which is, of course, all the deep space updates, all the news that's happened in the last couple of weeks, and we're going to get right down to it. So we've had five Starlink launches uh four from Vandenberg, one on the 1st, fourth, fifth, uh sorry, 8th and 12th of August.

00:31 And we also had one Starlink launch from the east coast on the 11th of August. On the 30th of July over in China, we had a long march 6A launching from Taiuan launching Tonguian 27 Aenb into low Earth orbit in a 65 degree LEO orbit. Uh there are four objects that have been cataloged and we will no doubt be watching these and expecting them to do something interesting or maybe not because we don't know what they're going to do.

00:59 30th of July we had a Falcon 9 launching out of Slick 40 carrying the USA 619. Uh it was a return to launch site. It launched into low Earth orbit. And uh interestingly the patch for this of course followed the NOL tradition of being awesome. It features a ferret with the phrase, "We are the champions." So, the launch vehicle flew to the north uh and then it turned even further north.

01:26 It performed a dog leg to increase the inclination to 63 and a half°. And you can't do this direct from the Cape because you would end up overflying Canada. So anyway, it turns out that when we looked at the final orbit, these things look like they're in the same orbit as NOSS 3 uh through 7 Duo and that was launched back in 2015. Right? So NOS is the Naval Opera Ocean Surveillance Satellite and these satellites operate in pairs instead of flying close formation and they geoloccate ships by using radio interferometry.

02:01 And so we're pretty sure that that's what these satellites are doing since they're in the same orbital plane and they're probably doing the same thing. Also, interestingly, uh the fairing recovery ship Doug was involved in a distress call at sea. Apparently, it rendered some assistance while returning home. So, good for the Dougs. 4th of August in China there was a long march 8A launch from Wang Chang and it carried uh you know satnet or go wang basically the China Starlink was group number 23 carried into LEO but

02:37 interestingly this was a apparently a verification flight for a number of upgrades to the long march 8A. So it's not really clear what the upgrades were but it does say like there were upgrades. [laughter] So, I think the main thing that I it sounded like that we heard from the the official release was that there's some new capability of like cruising in orbit, coasting in orbit uh longer for the final stage.

03:07 It's a hydrogen oxygen stage, so you know, you're always it's always very temperamental and it's good to be able to have those things sit in orbit for a while before they're used so they can make their ideal injection into whatever orbit they're targeting. Fifth of August in China again we had a Jinong 3 also known as Smart Dragon launching from the uh Dongfang Hang Tiang Yang platform or a boat in the Yellow Sea.

03:28 Uh this flew into sun-synchronous orbit carrying payloads. One was called Lampong one from Indonesia and there was also one called Samuran from Usbekiststan. Actually both of these are Chinese-made hyperspectral imaging satellites built in China, developed in China, launched by China and then immediately sold to these governments uh for use, you know, in hyperspectral imaging surveys.

03:55 Um okay, 5th of August, Falcon 9 out of Slick 40 on the east coast launched Bluebird 1121 13 for Space Mobile. These all went into 520 to 530 degree 503 degree orbits. And interestingly, the booster that launched these three satellites also launched Bluebird 8 through 10. Uh 6th of August, an Electron from Rocket Lab launched out of Mahia, a mission called the grain goddess provide.

04:24 And this launched QPS S13 or Mccur one. It's the sixth of 11th launches for this uh IQPS S constellation and this was the one which had that launchpad abort and that was back in like uh you know June and so it spent basically a whole month before they rolled it back out and it finally launched and launched successfully into a 575 kilometer circular orbit 10th of August.

04:58 Yes, that was an eventful launch. A long march 7 aired when Chang launched a China 4B or rather it was supposed to launch that instead it got a little bit floppy. Uh the vehicle broke up near Max Q and I have a whole video on that and so far we haven't really seen any more updates. We have seen a few pieces of video from other observers from other angles.

05:21 But yeah, this launch vehicle is the the 7A has a third a longer third stage, a shorter second stage so they can have a third stage of hydro you hydrolocks. And apparently while it's flying through max, you know, queue, it's got just gone supersonic. It's pushing hard against that air. There is footage that shows the rocket basically bending in half probably around the interstage between the second and third stage.

05:46 That was not good for the rocket, but thankfully no one was hurt. Um, so yeah, 10th of August, Japan launched uh an H322s out of Teneosima. This was the QKS7 or Mishubiki 7. Um, this is the like so the 22s it indicates that they have two booster or two engines, two solid boosters and it has the short fairing. This goes to a geocynchronous orbit, not geostationary.

06:18 So this is the quasi zenith satellite system and it this one particularly goes into a geocynchronous orbit that takes 24 hours but it's at an inclination of about 44°. So the idea is that it's going to sort of follow this like figure of eight pattern. There's a bit of eccentricity to just keep it over Japan just a little bit longer for for several hours of the day.

06:42 It's going to sit right over Japan moving relatively slowly and it will provide uh you know geoloccation or GNSS capabilities to you know cars and whatever on the ground inside urban canyons right that means that they are surrounded by buildings. They can't see satellites unless they're directly overhead. And so this is going to make sure there is always one satellite directly overhead to provide information to those uh you know to those people that need it.

07:12 But also interestingly this Japanese launch carried an extra payload for the US space force a piece of hardware called Sachi situational awareness camera hosted inter instrument and basically this is on a number of geocynchronous platforms. It's supposed to look for space activity using, you know, sensors, cameras, or whatever. And this is, you know, with partners around the world, the spa, US space force works.

07:38 And so, over to the main news. Starship flight 13 is still out in the Indian Ocean. It has been going back and forth. Initially after it landed the current dragged it westwards and then eventually a ship the Norand Ranger managed to rendevous with it and we watched it get pulled eastwards for a while and then that seems to have disconnected from it and it's drifted again.

08:03 Now we did finally get some photos from SpaceX showing it in the ocean. And first of all the photos they showed more recently it is not in nearly as pristine state as it was after it landed. A lot of the tiles around the outside have been damaged either by the action of the waves or perhaps by the hardware that they were using to try and tow it. Uh I've also heard from sources that some of the the control hardware may have actually been destroyed completely.

08:30 Regardless, uh based on the images, it's fascinating to see the way that they have h coralled this booster. And I literally mean it looks like they instead of actually like hooking onto the starship directly, they've basically put a bunch of these like big Yokohama fenders, these big rubber things that are designed to sit between ships and stop them banging into each other.

08:53 They've just sort of strung a bunch of these around it and tied them in a loop and they're towing that. And those things have been banging up against the hull and smashing all the tiles. So, I'm not sure how good this is going to be once it gets home, but I'm going to say it does appear to still be floating almost 3 weeks later. Now, they did end up having a problem with high seas, heavy seas, like they were getting 3, four, 5 m swells and they cut it loose or they at least disconnected.

09:22 They took away the fenders for a while, but they are still out there and there's still a chance that it could come back elsewhere. Of course, a second stage from a SpaceX uh launch did actually make it somewhere. It made it all the way to the moon. We finally got to see this discarded piece of hardware smash into the moon. And there was a couple of observations from the ground that actually showed the effects.

09:47 A lot of the cameras that people were using pointing at the moon were never going to detect it. They had to like mask out the moon, pump up the gain, and then they barely saw some hint of some dust coming out from behind the moon. But, you know, congratulations to those that actually saw it. And I understand that um you know, SpaceX is already looking to make sure that perhaps they'll they'll they'll reconsider how their their disposals work for these spacecraft because they don't want these hitting the moon if the US

10:17 is going to have a moon base out there. Now, SpaceX also had its first post IPO earnings call and in that they confirmed that the plan for flight 14 is going to be to catch Starship on the tower and potentially catch the booster and uh potentially deploy operational V3 Starlink satellites. And we're starting to see like the airspace closure, like not the actual closures, but we're starting to see hints of this appearing in the various uh you know filings that have to be made.

10:48 This could happen this month, which would be a problem for me cuz I'm stuck in Denver or in various other places, but uh yeah, you know, it is expected to go off sooner rather than later. Now, uh Elon also in that call stated that he thinks the heat shield is a solved problem, and I think there's still a lot of work to do, but I think it's a solved problem in the same way that Falcon 9 getting to orbit was a solved problem.

11:13 But it didn't stop SpaceX making Falcon 9 better until it became the iconic thing that it is today. So yeah, SpaceX in terms of numbers, they made uh $7.8 billion in revenue, which was, you know, numbers. Uh they lost um so so they lost 541 million. Uh the and that's between three different groups. Their space group spent uh made $962 million but uh their expenditures primarily for Starship they lost 542 million.

11:48 Starlink they made 4.29 billion in revenue and uh that ended up as an operating income of 1.66 billion and the AI segment they uh made 2.56 billion on paper and they had a loss of 1.26 26 billion. So yes, you know, SpaceX is three different groups really. They're not all space anymore. Uh it also while we're here, Hughes Corporation that works on satellite internet amongst other things has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections because uh they believe that their satellite broadband business is losing a lot of

12:30 customers. They've lost something like 21% of their customers in the last year to Starlink. uh they don't think that the current you know predictions of whoever for the market are in their favor. So they're going they're filing for bankruptcy chapter 11 that will protect them allow them to restructure and maybe make a ongoing business with what they do have which is your satellites in geostationary orbit that some people still need but they don't need for domestic internet services anymore.

13:00 uh Axiom uh they posted a bunch of cool photos from the neutral buoyancy lab showing lunar training in their suits. So we are obviously paying a lot of attention to these lunar suits which will be required for Arnimmus 4 and hopefully we'll have something flying before then. But it's not astronauts in these suits apparently. It's uh the bunch of people at NASA working on like the human factors of lunar exploration.

13:25 And they're basically testing the prototype geology tools in a mock like lunar payload setting with the whole like low angle illumination in the buoyancy, you know, neutral buoyancy lab. This is like really interesting to look at the way that they're having to work inside the neutral buoyancy lab for lunar surface at the south pole where they have to model the illumination as well as the the neutral the gravity.

13:51 Right. Okay. What else? Uh, Rocket Dine. Yeah, remember Aerogjet, Rocket Dine, they were the biggest thing in rockets until SpaceX came along. Uh, well, Rocket Dine uh has now returned as an independent company. So, what happened is AEI Industrial Partners, who also, by the way, uh, they worked with Firefly to bring them out of their potential bankruptcy back in 2020 22, but they acquired essentially Rocket Dine from L3 Harris.

14:21 And what they have really acquired from them is the propulsion the space propulsion power electronics and it's about you know thousand300 people L3 Harris they are keeping like the missile and defense side and that means that L3 Harris is keeping most of the aererojet stuff the solid rocket motors rocket dy are essentially going to keep all the space stuff and that means the space-based rocket engines things like the RL10 hydrogen upper stage engine which is used on of Of course, the Vulcan, it's also used in Atlas 5.

14:53 It's kind of used on SLS right now, although they are not building any more for that. What is notable, however, is that they are not keeping the RS25 engines, which has that big fat government contract for SLS. So, Aererojet are keeping that despite that really being more a rocket dying kind of thing. So yeah, this was an $845 million deal dollar deal that was done back in January.

15:20 L3 is going to own like 40% of the company. AE Enterprises or whatever industrial partners is going to get 60%. And uh yeah, Rocket Dine is a solo thing. Once again, another earning call for a rocket company. I know this is all like financial stuff, but come on. Where's the cool science stuff? No, you can't not talk about Rocket Labs earning call. So yeah, they have numbers that tell you that they lost a little less money than before.

15:49 But the things that stood out, first of all, um they talked about something called Ghost, the global hypersonic and orbital spaceport technology, a containerized launch system for the Electron so that they can do haste tests. They can stand up a launch system somewhere in the world that is easy to transport. This is a fascinating little thing because sure it does mean that they can in theory build these things in containers, ship them up to Alaska and perform the various haste contracts they're supposed to, but I

16:23 wouldn't put it past some, you know, small countries that want to have their own domestic launch capability to just start buying these from Rocket Lab and launching them. I'm just not saying it's going to happen, but it could happen. One downside of the earnings call at Rocket Lab is sure we got some more images and stuff of Neutron. We saw the complete second stage with its big red COPVs and everything, but uh I'm pretty sure that we're we're hearing that 2026 is not when Neutron is going to launch for the first time.

16:55 Peter Beck has now stated that they expect to get Neutron on the pad by Q4 2026, but that doesn't mean that it is ready launch. It has to undergo a lot of tests there. It has to undergo like static fires, integration tests, all that. I fully expect that this launch is not going to happen until 2027, which is a shame. But I really hope that Rocket Lab, you know, gets the Neutron flying because this has been again a massively long project that's taking way longer than it should.

17:26 Rocket Lab is a different company now than it was when it launched Neutron. was a launch company when it announced Neutron. It is now a multi-purpose space company that does everything. It even has its own communications, you know, network now that it's buying Iridium. Okay, Blue Origin, they didn't have an earnings call because they're a private company, right?

17:50 But what we did get was another few updates. Obviously, cleanup is continuing. Work is happening really fast. satellite photos just showing every single piece of like you know industrial hardware on site moving stuff around. But we got a comment from David Limp about what happened in the BE4 pad failure. So they stated that the anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE4 engines which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections.

18:23 Extensive component level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We're making small modifications to the valve that could be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. So, that doesn't tell us very much. It tells us that the main oxygen valve failed somehow.

18:43 It failed to operate. Maybe it didn't open quickly enough. Maybe it didn't close quickly enough. Maybe it allowed oxygen through when it was supposed to be closed. Or maybe Yeah. I'm and you know I we don't really have much idea of what could have happened. You know, one idea is that the oxygen valve didn't open at all and we just created a big fireball of methane underneath the rocket which eventually exploded.

19:05 I'm not sure that works. Another idea that we've had is that if the fuel valves open, uh, then you get fuel flowing into the pre-burner and if no oxygen flows into the pre-burner and a lot of fuel builds up and then it opens just a little bit later and you introduce oxygen to a much more fuelrich mixture than it was supposed to, you could get a big boom in there.

19:28 You could blow up your pre-burner, blow up your whole thing. There's probably something that is far more subtle than those ideas. Regardless, Blue Origin are working uh on on this. But meanwhile, they're of course looking to their future because the new launch complex 36 and 36A are going to have a different method of standing up the rockets and their payloads.

19:49 And they're starting to do testing and training out at launch complex 11. So they have the self talked about using a uh GS2 Glen stage 2 simulator, a forward dome, and a a fullsize payload fairings. So they conducted like mock vertical stabbing, stacking, lifts, mings. They looked at wind dampening effects. So they're basically figuring out how to work with the cranes to actually stack these things in the environment which they expect to be operating when launch complex 36 comes back online.

20:20 And you know while of course Blue Origin is working hard on this like they are still signing deals. For example, they got another bunch of money from the Department of Defense to continue working on developing rocket cargo capabilities for New Glenn. So, you know, the Department of Defense definitely still believes that New Glenn has a future. Okay, now we go to JPL and this is an image of a lithium hall effect thruster.

20:47 That is a Hall effect thruster using lithium, not the usual noble gases, right? So they they managed to operate it at new power levels exceeding everything that had previously been done for a long time. Uh lithium of course is a metal but you can melt it and vaporize it and inject it in and have it shot out. So they operated it at power levels of 120 kilow which is you quite impressive way more than like uh what psyche is flying around with.

21:17 That's the highest power electric thrusters that are operating on any NASA spacecraft. So, uh, like it it's so hot that the tungsten electrodes in the middle was apparently glowing white hot, reaching 5,000 Fahrenheit or 2800° C if you're a sane individual. Anyway, um, yeah, they aim to reach power levels of 50 kW. The whole whole thing about lithium is that it has uh it has a lower ionization potential than xenon.

21:44 So it's not quite as good as xenon for the initial thing, but it's second stage ionization is way harder. So you're less likely to lose energy to double ionization events. So you lo that's a key inefficiency you get in noble gas thrusters. Also lithium is a whole lot more common than xenon. So yeah, you know, cheap thrusters. I did of course a video on an oxygen hall effect thruster which comes from water electrolysis.

22:14 That is a completely different kind of thing. It has a yellow glow rather than a blue one which is also fascinating. And yes, a spacecraft in orbit right now which is currently making a lot of use of xenon hall effect thrusters is the link spacecraft which is supposed to be chasing down the swift telescope to rescue it. the Catalyst team uh well what had happened was that it ended up in a spin and in the last week or so catalyst have now managed to get control of it reduce the spin by firing the hol effect thrusters

22:45 asymmetrically just firing a couple of those. So uh they've now got it slow enough that they can actually like apply software updates. One of the problems apparently happened is that they lost they lost something happened and it went into safe mode. And as it went into safe mode, it didn't really work and some of the power like uh management stuff for the guide for the reaction wheels apparently set them off and they were not available.

23:16 So they have to update new software which will enable it to work with much more limited your reaction wheels and uh with uh you know gas thrusters that aren't necessarily working. So hopefully they're going to get this thing back under control and get it chasing and I'm maybe going to have a chance to visit those guys uh because they are in Denver. Who knows?

23:39 Okay. Um less ambitious we have Virgin Galactic. So Virgin Galactic, they also had an earnings call. Okay. Yeah, apparently their uh you know $750,000 tickets to space are still selling really really well, although people are only really putting deposits down, but uh there's still lots of customers there who want to fly suborbital flights, but uh they've basically said that now their Delta class launch vehicle or space plane or whatever you call it is not going to fly until February of 2027.

24:08 So they're not flying this year as they had been announcing for a long time. However, as some sort of consolation, they have opened up to the public to pick the name for their next spacecraft. And I know we're not going to see Spacey McPace face because they gave us a list of four. Horizon, Explorer, Ascend, and Aaron. And I think ascend is good because if you think about it, when spaceship one drops uh or spaceship 2 drops and it tries to take off, what what it does is it turns its ass end to the war ground and then

24:44 it ascends, right? It's a great dual meaning. Trust me on this. Trust me. Uh yeah, also we had of course a giant solar eclipse thing going on. A lot of people I knew went to like Spain, Europe, Mediterranean, Iceland. You know, some of them came back with great videos or images. Some of them saw clouds. Um, you know, I didn't get out there. I really wanted to, but I don't know.

25:11 I I kind of I had other commitments out here. I know. Like I was surprised that there was a solar eclipse happening at the same time as this concert I'm supposed to go to. Go figure. Anyway, yes. Um, however, I'm going to say, you know, favorite image is probably James M McCarthy's um, Shadows of the Bleric Sea, I think he calls it. And it just looks like a cover to like a a chill out a Betha Sunset album DJ mix thing, and makes me just kind of want to put together a bunch of tunes from the the Boleric Isles and put

25:44 that on the album cover or maybe actually do something original. Who knows? Uh if you had great photo, if you if you saw it and you experienced it and it was profound, you let us know what the space what the eclipse meant for you. Of course, next year is the big one. That's the one where it flies over the pyramids of Egypt. And at that point, it's going to be like the longest eclipse for, you know, like any for a hundred years or something.

26:11 So, and it's going to be near the pyramid. Who doesn't want to go to that one? I mean, it's going to be really expensive. Over in Japan, they unveiled the hardware for the Martian moon's explorer mission and made the well uh interesting decision to place the lander already upended as if it hadn't landed straight. Uh, of course, they are landing on the Martian moons, so up is more of a suggestion rather than a rule given the low gravity.

26:34 But yeah, the Martian moons explorer or MMX is going to explore Phobos and Deamos. And uh as well as getting close and rendevousing and orbiting with these small moons, they're going to land on one of them and recover material, right? So they have various sampling mechanisms. And that's why, of course, the lander was displayed upside down so that they could show the press the various pieces of hardware which will be used to sample this material.

27:00 Afterwards, the material will be placed into a sample return capsule, which will then be transferred to a return module, an outbound module, which will ultimately bring it back to Earth. The mission also includes a rover, which will land ahead of uh time, and it will also further explore it. So, I'm very much looking to this mission. I'm really glad to see this hardware on display.

27:21 But look, we are looking far too far into the future. For now, I'm looking at the next couple of weeks. There's a few things that could happen. We could see Starship launch again. and we could see a starship catch. I'm not going to be able to get to that because not only am I committed to this trip in Denver, I'm also committed to working on an airplane uh like actually learning to fix planes.

27:40 So, if that happens, it's out. But I will be able to launch uh you know, if you're a fan of international space flight, let's say China is planning to launch the Changa 7 mission to the lunar south pole on the 24th. This is going to obviously be the seventh in their line of very successful lunar spacecraft. I have no reason to suspect that it might fail, but uh we'll be watching that one. I'm Scott Manley. Fly safe.