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I'm Alicia Siegel for nsf and this is your weekly Space Traffic Report for T Minus Space. This week there were a number of launches, including Starship. So get ready because this is going to be a long one. The first launch of the week was with a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg lifting off on August 22nd at 17:04 UTC. The rocket was carrying 24 Starlink V2 mini satellites into sun synchronous orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1081, was flying for a 17th time and it successfully landed on Of Course I Still Love youe. After that, we had an electron from New Zealand with the mission Live Laugh Launch liftoff happened on August 23rd at 22:42 UT, with Electron carrying five different payloads into sun synchronous orbit. The customer and payloads for this mission remained confidential, but we think one of them is the Lyra 2 satellite for EchoStar's Internet of Things Constellation Lyra. Back in the United States, another Falcon 9 launched SpaceX's 33rd cargo Dragon resupply mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff took place on August 24 at 6:45 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. Dragon was carrying about 2,300 kg of supplies, experiments and hardware to the orbiting outpost. The mission is the third one for capsule C211, which previously flew on the CRS 26 and CRS 29 missions. C211 docked the ISS Front docking port about 28 hours after launch on August 25th at 1105 UTC. The exciting thing about this mission is that for this flight, Dragon carried a boost kit in its trunk. This boost kit consists of multiple propellant and pressurization bottles, as well as two extra Draco thrusters attached to the inside of the trunk. This will allow the spacecraft to reboost the station during its four month stay at the iss. During this time, it'll take over the duties of reboosting the station from Progress, allowing the Progress spacecraft on the Russian side of the station to instead use that propellant to fill up the onboard propellant tanks on the ISS service module. This extra reserve of propellant will later be used to control the ISS attitude and orbit once the station's deorbit is carried out. A few years from now. The station's Canadarm inspected this boost kit after docking and the first Reboost is set for next week on September 3rd at 18:15 UTC. The Reboost is expected to add about half a meter per second to the station's velocity. For this mission, SpaceX used booster B1090 on its seventh flight and due to the extra mass on Dragon's trunk, it landed on the drone ship, a shortfall of gravitas out in the Atlantic Ocean. This week we also had the launch of a Changjung 8A from Launch Complex 1 at the Commercial Wencheng Spaceport in China. The liftoff occurred on August 25 at 1908 UTC, with nine Guawang satellites riding on board into a low Earth orbit. The third Falcon 9 launch of the week came from Vandenberg on August 26th at 18:53 UTC. The mission was carrying the NAOS satellite for Luxembourg as well as seven other rideshare missions into a sun synchronous orbit. Naos, which stands for National Advanced Optical System, is a military reconnaissance satellite for Luxembourg built by OHB Italia. Along for the ride were also Planet's Pelican 3 and Pelican 4 satellites, Capella Space's Acadia 6 satellite, Pixel's Firefly 1, 2 and 3 satellites, as well as Druva Space's Leap 1. The booster for this mission was SpaceX's oldest booster in the fleet, B1063, which was flying for a 27th time on this mission, it successfully returned to Earth landing on space landing zone 4 at Vandenberg after three failures in a row earlier this year and a ground explosion during testing in June, SpaceX's Starship finally broke the curse this week, achieving all the goals set for the rocket during its 10th test flight. Booster 16 and Ship 37 lifted off on August 26 at 23:30 UTC from Launch Pad 1 at SpaceX's Starbase launch site. The mission plan for Flight 10 was to carry out many of the goals and experiments that were never achieved on previous flights. The launch followed two previous scrubs on the 24th and 25th due to a liquid oxygen leak on the ship's quick disconnect arm and a violation of the Anvil cloud weather rule, respectively. Much better weather on the 26th provided us with great views of Starship's flight, including an amazing vapor cone around the point of max Q. Booster 16's ascent went well, with the only mishap being that one of the Raptor engines in the middle ring of engines cut off early at around 90 seconds into flight. But with Super Heavy's engine out capability, this wasn't an issue with and everything continued as planned, with hot staging occurring about two and a half minutes into flight. Super Heavy once again performed a controlled flip just like we saw on Flight 9, and performed its Boostback Burn. Booster 16's main goal during return was to simulate an off nominal scenario during landing. It would ignite all 13 inner engines for landing as usual, and then disable one of the three center engines as if it were lost. At the same time, the Booster would use one of the engines in the middle ring of 10 engines to serve as a backup to the disabled one. Booster 16 carried carried out all of this even while missing one engine on the middle ring of 10 engines. The end of the landing burn also featured two of the three center engines lit as planned and then cut off at a high altitude so the booster could drop into the water and explode into bits, unlike booster 13, which landed in one piece, with parts of it staying floating in the water for several hours. Of course, the Booster's return was more of a side experiment. After all, SpaceX has already demonstrated that it can not only return Super Heavy for a catch at the launch tower, but also reuse it. The bigger deal here was the ship, because after Flight 7, 8 and 9 plus Ship 36's ground explosion, all hopes were on Ship 37 to break the curse and actually perform as intended. Ship 37's ascent didn't seem to have any issues, and the vehicle completed it as planned. Unlike the previous flight with ship 35, ship 37 was able to maintain attitude control and reoriented itself for the first deployment test of Starlink simulators from its payload bay. This test also went well with the payload bay door opening and all eight Starlink simulators deploying from Starship's PEZ dispenser. The very first time that this mechanism was tested in flight, the eight satellites were stacked in four pairs, with the mechanism first releasing the one closest to the door and then the one in the back before continuing on with the next pair. The ones on the front seemed to leave the payload bay nominally, while the ones in the back seemed to rotate a bit after deployment. We even saw one of them hitting the top of the payload bay opening on its way out. Now, this probably isn't a huge deal for at least two reasons. The first is that while these are mass simulators for real Starlinks, they probably don't have the same mass distribution, something that would change the way in which they rotate as they're flung out from the dispenser. The second reason is that a small ding on the way out like that is probably nothing compared to what the Starlink satellites already go through when they're deployed from Falcon 9. During that process, there's no fancy dispenser. Instead, they're all piled up in one massive stack and are let go during deployment. By releasing the retention rods once they start flying away, they all pretty much just bump into each other anyway. So they're built to survive low speed impacts just like that. With the simulated satellites deployed, ship 37 then prepared for the other test during its coast phase, the relight of one of its sea level Raptor engines in space. This was a test that was successfully carried out by ship 31 on Starship 6 flight last year, but had yet to be performed on one of the block two ships. Ship 37 was able to do the relight taking off another major milestone for Flight 10. The last, but certainly not least important milestone was the test of the ship's RE entry. Now, this was the first time that a Block 2 ship reached this point while being in the right attitude. So it was also the first time that many of the new modifications to the heat shield were tested. This includes, for example, the relocation of the forward flaps further lured and closer to the tip of the nose cone to prevent plasma from hitting directly on the gap between the flap and vehicle. Ship 37 demonstrated that indeed this design change works and the forward flaps were nowhere near as damaged as what we saw on the three successful reentries of Block 1 vehicles back in 2024. The ship also tested a number of changes to the side of the vehicle that will eventually be used for ship catches. This includes the ship catch pins that survived Ship 37's re entry. SpaceX also added protective ramps on delicate parts of the side of the vehicle, tapered the edge of the heat shield with the leeward side, and installed a blade of material beyond this heat shield edge to prevent damage to the steel in those areas. And all of this also worked during RE entry. Now, one rather interesting thing that occurred during this flight was the damage to the aft flaps. See on those three successful reentries of Block 1 vehicles that I mentioned earlier. They seem to not have had much damage to the aft flaps. Rather, the damage occurred on the forward flaps, hence the redesign for Block 2. But Ship 37's aft flaps had actually been damaged already, well before the thick of reentry. For example, the starboard aft flap had visible damage as seen from the ship's cameras at T40 minutes, when the ship was still quite high up at 131 km in altitude and nowhere near reentry. Then, at around T47 minutes, when entry had just started, but still far from peak heating, a quite energetic event occurred on the skirt of the ship that damaged the bottom of the other aft flap. Now, this is interesting because it's in those areas where the ship's engine chill pipes are located. Before the engines are ignited, they're conditioned by flowing methane and oxygen through the fuel and oxidizer pumps. This creates gaseous oxygen and methane that have to be vented out in flight through those engine chill lines. On Block one, they were located separately and further lured on the skirt. But for Block two, they were tucked into the aft flap aero covers. It wouldn't be surprising if this change in design is what led to that early damage of the bottom of the aft flaps, which of course got worse as the heat of RE entry started melting these places earlier in the flight. We can see oxidation marks on the bottom of the flaps. You can see them because there's a lot of discoloration in that area. These marks are likely from the venting of the oxygen through those engine chill pipes. Now, you might think that this could be from hot staging, but if we go to Flight 9's footage, we can see that this is a discoloration that's not present shortly after hot staging, but is there later in flight. Unfortunately, on Flight 10, they just didn't show the aft flaps until after SECO, so we got to go by Flight 9's footage instead. The discoloration is also present on previous flights like Flight 6 with Ship 31. However, in that case, the discoloration is located further out from the vehicle, likely because on Block one ships, the engine chill line was further lured and therefore further away from the flap. In the case of ship 31, the aft flaps didn't suffer any damage like the ones on ship 37 as a result of this discoloration, so this alone wouldn't explain the issue. In other words, there's something else going on here that's probably something that SpaceX will eventually figure out. As always. Thankfully, ship 37's aft flaps endured the heat of reentry quite well despite that early damage, and were able to guide the vehicle down to the splashdown site. Ship 37 also carried out the planned stress test of these aft flaps later during its reentry, about 66 and a half minutes after launch, Ship 37 conducted its flip and landing burn and splashed down into the waters of the Indian Ocean, right next to SpaceX's own buoy. After the flight, SpaceX released footage from the buoy and a drone that was placed in the area, which showed not just the landing itself, but also the state of the heat shield tiles after the reentry. Yes, it's orange. The tiles are still there, but they were covered in a layer of orange material that makes them look like that. SpaceX was flying several different metallic tiles near the area where the orange patch starts. One of them, which also had active cooling. Elon, later confirmed that indeed the orange was from some of those metallic tiles that oxidized and deposited their rust onto the rest of the tiles. He also said that the white near the nose cone is from the insulation where SpaceX deliberately removed the tiles. The landing footage also shows the damage on the port aft flap and skirt from the little explosion at T47 minutes. It's amazing the ship was still able to make it down to the water in one piece after having gone through all of that. SpaceX also says the ship landed within 3 meters of the target spot, which is quite the precision given that it went about two thirds around the world. Now the big question is what will happen on the next flight? Flight 11, which will also be the last flight of Block 2. With all the great data gathered on Flight 10, SpaceX will no doubt implement all of the lessons that they've learned from it into Flight 11 and we can't wait to watch. Following starship, we had two more Falcon 9 missions from Florida to wrap up the week. The first one took place on August 26th at 18:53 UTC from Space Launch Complex 40 carrying 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission, B1095, was flying for just its second mission. Oh, they're so cute when they're young. And it successfully made it back to the deck of SpaceX's drone ship. Just read the instructions. The other Falcon 9 launch occurred on August 28th at 8:12 UTC from Launch Complex 39A. It carried 28 Starlink V2 mini satellites into low Earth orbit. The first stage for this mission was none other than B1067, which broke its own record for most flights of any Falcon booster by flying for a thirt time on this mission. Yes, 30 flights. This booster debuted all the way back in June 2021 on the CRS 23 mission, and since then it's launched over 600 satellites to mark this feat. Before launch, SpaceX painted a crown above the booster number to indicate that it's the queen of the fleet. The booster not only successfully launched for a 30th time, but also landed successfully for a 30th time, returning to SpaceX's drone ship. A shortfall of graviton with the three Starlink satellites this week, SpaceX has now launched a total of 9,498 Starlink satellites into orbit, of which 1,251 have re entered and 7,102 have moved into their operational orbit. This week, StarLink also crossed 7 million users worldwide. So all those new satellites launched this week will surely be very helpful for all of those users. Next weekend, launches will be dominated by Falcon 9 and Starlink, with up to five different Starlink missions potentially taking place between now and our next space report. One of those missions from Vandenberg will be making use of a brand new Falcon 9 booster. So that'll be a bit of a rare occurrence. But the much more interesting event next week might be in deep space. ESA's JUICE spacecraft is set to perform a flyby of Venus on August 31. The spacecraft will use the planet's gravity to change its orbit so that it leads to an encounter with Earth next year in September, the second in a series of three flybys of Earth needed for it to arrive at Jupiter in 2031. I'm Alicia Siegel for NSF, and that's your weekly space traffic Report now back to T minus space.
