One goes up, one stays on the ground and one gets ready: It's a week in space

There was European joy, Russian frustration and a bit of a tease from the Falcon Heavy last week. And while the Pi 4 is the new shiny, spare a thought for the computers on the ISS. Arianespace fires up another Ariane 5 It was a busy week for big rocket fanciers as the hulking Ariane 5 lobbed the T-16 and EUTELSAT 7C satellites …

[harmjschoonhoven]

Pictures or it didn't happen

https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/s/spektrg-srg I.p. Figure 7.

[hatti]

not enough space

Should the title not read, a week in spaaaaaace?

[Kurgan]

Raspberry Pi that does not crash?

A Pi that works in space? That's quite incredible, considering that the Pi usually crashes quite often down on Earth, because of file system corruption on the SD card.

[rsole]

Re: Raspberry Pi that does not crash?

You should try shutting it down instead of just cutting the power.

[phuzz]

Re: Raspberry Pi that does not crash?

And make sure it's a good quality PSU. A crappy phone charger doesn't provide enough juice to boot properly.

[Spherical Cow]

TEPCE

If this tether thing works out, will satellites be able to stay up forever without getting slowed by traces of atmosphere? The power would come from solar panels, presumably.

[MyffyW]

Re: TEPCE

It's a good question my fellow bovine. I suspect forever might be pushing it - solid state electronics (including the solar panels) would degrade with time but an awful lot longer than a few years would be most welcome.

[A K Stiles]

Congratulations to SpaceX

On the successful launch of another Falcon Heavy, the return of the two side-boosters to the landing site, and the successful capture of one of the payload fairing sections, with the other recoverable from the ocean nearby. Just a shame the central first stage didn't make it on to the drone-ship, though it looked like it was pretty close.

[asphytxtc]

Re: Congratulations to SpaceX

> Just a shame the central first stage didn't make it on to the drone-ship, though it looked like it was pretty close.

Indeed that was the only tarnish on an otherwise perfect mission! I'd personally count the failure to land as more of a success that a failure as it seems they've now managed to find the edge of the envelope for recovery. According to Elon, reentry heating actually burned through the base of the rocket and caused the thrust vectoring to fail on the center engine which explains the kaboom.

Still, at 20% more velocity during reentry than the previous FH center core (and if my calculations are correct) it should have had 16 times the heating the previous one had. It's insane it made it that close!!