SpaceX F9 - Starlink 7 - SLC-40

[ecarfan]

On the webcast they said only one of the sats in this batch had the sun visor.
Good to know I did not miss a great pass!

Thanks. So now I really am puzzled as to why I could not see the sats Thursday evening. Perhaps the findstarlink.com website info was incorrect.

 

[mongo]

I wonder why some fairings are badly damaged and others aren’t? Is it indeed the water and waves that cause damage or is it different re-entry effects?

The weather was not great, so I'd vote for that. If it failed on re-entry I'd expect worse damage/ smaller pieces. May also depend on amount of water they collect before recovery.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Thanks. So now I really am puzzled as to why I could not see the sats Thursday evening. Perhaps the findstarlink.com website info was incorrect.

For this batch, they also changed the angle of the sats and/or solar arrays while orbit raising to lessen sun reflections. Apparently it is working.

 

[Nikxice]

The findstarlink.com website showed that last night in my area the new sats would be visible (details below) but neither I nor my wife and neighbor could see them. Skies were clear, I could easily see Ursa Major and Arcturus but there was a full moon so maybe that combined with the new sunshade is the explanation

The full moon is a big inhibitor to Starlink viewing. A quick lookup reveals that when the moon is full it's a crazy 28,000 times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. I've found the threshold for viewing is either with no moon at all or perhaps only a crescent.
Last night we were able to catch the Starlink 6 satellite train. Although they were extremely dim (approximate magnitude 6.0, typically the naked eye limit is 6.5), there was also no moon to interfere. Usually standing outside in darkness for 10 minutes or so prior to viewing also helps. Unfortunately it doesn't appear as though the northeast has a good opportunity to view Starlink 7 until around June 20th.

 

[Grendal]

Landing leader B-1049 arrived back in port today.

 

[e-FTW]

Great pics of 1049.5 coming in to port: https://twitter.com/gregscott_photo/status/1269976475672948740?s=21

 

[ICUDoc]

Those titanium grid fins are a crazy-good piece of engineering....

 

[Cosmacelf]

Those titanium grid fins are a crazy-good piece of engineering....

have you been noticing that they don’t seem to do much rotating now with the newer landings? They seem pretty static. Now, that might still be massively useful for stabilization, but they don’t seem to be being used for dynamic corrections.