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SpaceX F9 - DART - SLC-4E
- Thread starter Grendal
- Start date
dazedNconfuzed
Member
2nd stage need not return, having pushed to escape velocity. Space is big, it’s not coming back. Likely in an eccentric solar orbit now, either eventually burn up or not meet another body for a very long time.
Isn't the satellite (payload) and the 2nd stage in the same orbit, with the 2nd stage pretty much following the satellite? Until such time the satellite fires off its own rocket engine for any course correction.
Yes. The satellite does have its own engine and will still be accelerating and maneuvering. Someone who likely knows said the second stage is in a heliocentric orbit. So little need to do anything about it. It's the stuff in LEO to MEO that needs to get cleared out.
FWIW from a pure mass efficiency perspective, staging is almost always the better solution; It would be far more efficient for the "last bit" of the launch stack to not carry around 4T of F9 second stage.
Where reality steps in is with things like cost and complexity and launcher capacity. Cost probably wasn't a huge factor in this one, but certainly a dedicated kick stage costs more than "more propellant" on an existing stage. (Note that DART's prop system is electric and so is impractical for para/hyperbolic orbits). Complexity more of less boils down to the fact that every additional, thing that has to go right is one more thing to go wrong. But...what is most likely in this scenario is that F9 simply had enough additional capacity that it could serve this mission without an additional prop system.
Yep, and practically speaking, its really only the stuff in low LEO. That's starting to change and include high LEO, but anything beyond (including MEO)...those stages aren't coming back for a while...
Impact! It looked dead center. Now they will study the results of that impact and whether it caused a change in direction.
just amazing. What an achievement and how proud the team will be. Everything went as planned. Dead center. And the last one hour was completely autonomous.
I was wondering if they could have sent two probes - joined together - separating at around 1 minute mark, with the first one firing a small thruster and crashes ahead, and the 2nd one captures the video of that crash
Turns out they had another camera in space - possibly much closer than ground telescopes - watching the collision. Atleast that is how I understood this.
NASA’s DART Mission Hits Asteroid in First-Ever Planetary Defense Test - NASA
After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully
www.nasa.gov
It was just amazing they were able to get live video from an object around 50 light seconds away.
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''NASA spacecraft successfully slams into asteroid ten months after SpaceX launch'' by Eric Ralph via TESLARATI
''NASA intentionally crashes DART into Asteroid to test planetary defense technology – the spacecraft was launched by SpaceX'' by Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo via TESMANIAN
Scott Manley mentions the orbital period of the moonlet is approx. 12 hours. Do we know how far is the moonlet from the parent body?
Based on the video, I recon it took 90 seconds after passing the parent body and impact. Given that the satellite was travelling at 14,000 miles per hour, the distance between them is perhaps 350 miles or less. A distance where you cannot see the moonlet from the parent body through naked eye. Or maybe just as a small dot.
Also do we know if this was a head on collision or rear end? For sure it is almost impossible to do a side hit.
What speed was the asteroid travelling?
Based on the video, I recon it took 90 seconds after passing the parent body and impact. Given that the satellite was travelling at 14,000 miles per hour, the distance between them is perhaps 350 miles or less. A distance where you cannot see the moonlet from the parent body through naked eye. Or maybe just as a small dot.
Also do we know if this was a head on collision or rear end? For sure it is almost impossible to do a side hit.
What speed was the asteroid travelling?
Speed relative to what?
