Video of T-Mobile / SpaceX announcement: https://youtu.be/Qzli-Ww26Qs?t=350

SpaceX conducted a successful static fire test on SN24 late this afternoon, using all 6 engines. Unfortunately it ignited a wildfire that has burned more than 15 acres.

https://bocabeacon.com/smoke-on-the-wat ... n-the-sky/

Booster B1058 hit a new milestone for SpaceX tonight, 14th successful launch and recovery of the same booster.

zanl188 wrote:

T-Mobile to provide cell service to existing cell phones thru Starlink satellites. In Beta starting next year.

Can you share more? How does an existing 5G phone talk to satellite in space? Surely the sat cannot have a license to broadcast on the 5G frequencies down to earth?

kitplane01 wrote:

zanl188 wrote:

T-Mobile to provide cell service to existing cell phones thru Starlink satellites. In Beta starting next year.

Can you share more? How does an existing 5G phone talk to satellite in space? Surely the sat cannot have a license to broadcast on the 5G frequencies down to earth?

SpaceX and a coalition of other companies applied for the cross-spectrum license some time ago. Another coalition of existing satellite & 5G providers opposed it. The FCC granted partial permission, with several constraints, and made clear the burden is on SpaceX and others, not to disrupt the existing service providers. The hardware must have the ability to sense a conflict or malfunction, and shut down.

The factor that permits this is beamforming antennas that are able to transmit in the vertical plane, as opposed to cell towers which are mostly in the horizontal plane. The constraints are on how close the vertical signal angle can approach the horizontal signal angle. They are supposed to maintain 10 degrees of separation.

Beamforming from a satellite to a phone I get, but the thing I don’t understand is how a tiny iphone radio with an omnidirectional antenna can send a signal to the satellite, such that it is strong enough to be received/establish a data link.

Bafflingly amazing engineering if it works.

texl1649 wrote:

Beamforming from a satellite to a phone I get, but the thing I don’t understand is how a tiny iphone radio with an omnidirectional antenna can send a signal to the satellite, such that it is strong enough to be received/establish a data link.

Bafflingly amazing engineering if it works.

Yes, good point. It's also important to note that the limited power of cell phones restricts the data rates to low values, sufficient for texting and perhaps low quality voice. And at least for Starlink, the capability will appear on the version 2 satellites, not the current version 1. So limited coverage and not guaranteed to work in all situations. Probably not from inside buildings, for example.

A good analogy might be the GPS receiver in your phone. If you can get GPS, you can probably use the low bandwidth satellite 5G service.

The battles over spectrum usage are only going to get worse, there just isn't enough for all the proposed wireless applications. The next big thing is spectrum sharing technologies that sense and avoid conflicts, using different modulation strategies, each ignored by the other.

texl1649 wrote:

Beamforming from a satellite to a phone I get, but the thing I don’t understand is how a tiny iphone radio with an omnidirectional antenna can send a signal to the satellite, such that it is strong enough to be received/establish a data link.

Bafflingly amazing engineering if it works.

The Apple iPhone 14 will have this satellite connection feature. Their promo video shows a scene, with a text on the phone: "Keep pointing at satellite". It should be a specific antenna, then.

kitplane01 wrote:

Can you share more? How does an existing 5G phone talk to satellite in space? Surely the sat cannot have a license to broadcast on the 5G frequencies down to earth?

Did you watch the video I posted?

flyingturtle wrote:

texl1649 wrote:

Beamforming from a satellite to a phone I get, but the thing I don’t understand is how a tiny iphone radio with an omnidirectional antenna can send a signal to the satellite, such that it is strong enough to be received/establish a data link.

Bafflingly amazing engineering if it works.

The Apple iPhone 14 will have this satellite connection feature. Their promo video shows a scene, with a text on the phone: "Keep pointing at satellite". It should be a specific antenna, then.

The Starlink / T-Mobile capability will work with existing cell phones.

With 5G cell phones, the internal antennas are beamforming. Have to be to get the higher data rates. So the satellite 5G service should work, just at much lower data rates due to the larger distances involved.

Avatar2go wrote:

With 5G cell phones, the internal antennas are beamforming. Have to be to get the higher data rates. So the satellite 5G service should work, just at much lower data rates due to the larger distances involved.

Even if it's just text messages, it would be useful if you are lost in the wilderness.

bt

bikerthai wrote:

Avatar2go wrote:

With 5G cell phones, the internal antennas are beamforming. Have to be to get the higher data rates. So the satellite 5G service should work, just at much lower data rates due to the larger distances involved.

Even if it's just text messages, it would be useful if you are lost in the wilderness.

bt

There are already apps that let you select the kind of emergency you have, and then they try to send an SMS (which can do with a very bad connection) to the rescue organization, along with your coordinates.

Avatar2go wrote:

With 5G cell phones, the internal antennas are beamforming. Have to be to get the higher data rates. So the satellite 5G service should work, just at much lower data rates due to the larger distances involved.

Cell phone antennas can't do beam forming yet. I would be impressed if Apply managed to fit that into the new iPhone. Only 5G cell towers use beam forming to provide higher data rates at greater distances.
The nice thing is that beam forming works for both transmitting and receiving. With the right receivers and antennas, SpaceX might just be able to get enough gain to pick up cell phone 5G signals.

GPS is an incredibly low power, very low data rate service (50 bits per second). It's also only unidirectional, i. e. broadcast. There's no uplink from your phone to the satellite.

mxaxai wrote:

Avatar2go wrote:

With 5G cell phones, the internal antennas are beamforming. Have to be to get the higher data rates. So the satellite 5G service should work, just at much lower data rates due to the larger distances involved.

Cell phone antennas can't do beam forming yet. I would be impressed if Apply managed to fit that into the new iPhone. Only 5G cell towers use beam forming to provide higher data rates at greater distances.
The nice thing is that beam forming works for both transmitting and receiving. With the right receivers and antennas, SpaceX might just be able to get enough gain to pick up cell phone 5G signals.

GPS is an incredibly low power, very low data rate service (50 bits per second). It's also only unidirectional, i. e. broadcast. There's no uplink from your phone to the satellite.

Modern cell phones use MIMO technology, with multiple antennas. Further 5G phones are able to select the antennas with the best signal strength. While I agree this is not the same as beamforming within a large array of antenna elements, it is an elementary form of it.

The analogy with GPS is valid because the satellite signal strength is relatively low, due to the extreme distance, and in the higher frequency bands. You will not be able to get reception inside most buildings, just like GPS, just like other satellite services.

The issue is that the cell phone emits something like 1 watt. I mean, sure, if we work real hard at it we can still get a message sometimes from Voyager II, but that takes a lot of work!

Latest Starlink mission has had a number of scrubs. Weather. Unusual to see a Falcon 9 launch scrubbed…

https://youtu.be/JzWSYJBSAl4

zanl188 wrote:

Latest Starlink mission has had a number of scrubs. Weather. Unusual to see a Falcon 9 launch scrubbed…

https://youtu.be/JzWSYJBSAl4

Scrubtember continues…. This evenings launch attempt has been scrubbed now targeting 2018EDT tomorrow evening…

zanl188 wrote:

zanl188 wrote:

Latest Starlink mission has had a number of scrubs. Weather. Unusual to see a Falcon 9 launch scrubbed…

https://youtu.be/JzWSYJBSAl4

Scrubtember continues…. This evenings launch attempt has been scrubbed now targeting 2018EDT tomorrow evening…

Starlink 4-34 finally launched this evening.

Booster 7 had 7 raptors fire up this am, got good chamber pressure, now back to the high bay for modifications apparently. Next up will be 8, full (wet) dress rehearsal, and then a full static fire.

texl1649 wrote:

Booster 7 had 7 raptors fire up this am, got good chamber pressure, now back to the high bay for modifications apparently. Next up will be 8, full (wet) dress rehearsal, and then a full static fire.

So they have decided to move on to Booster 8? Everyone was wondering if they would. But sounds like Booster 7 will not be retired, just refurbished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6GKB2uMWjI <-- Lab Padre's video.

It was long time since the intensive Starship testing. I'm so happy that the pace is picking up again!

Avatar2go wrote:

texl1649 wrote:

Booster 7 had 7 raptors fire up this am, got good chamber pressure, now back to the high bay for modifications apparently. Next up will be 8, full (wet) dress rehearsal, and then a full static fire.

So they have decided to move on to Booster 8? Everyone was wondering if they would. But sounds like Booster 7 will not be retired, just refurbished.

7 and 8 might trade places several times. They decided it would be more efficient to apply fixes and improvements to one while testing the other.
The static fire was a little disappointing. Single engine fires on the suborbital stands were usually louder and more chest congestion loosening.
All I got was a phone video.
https://youtube.com/shorts/sD1vQI8n8P8?feature=share

Nomadd wrote:

7 and 8 might trade places several times. They decided it would be more efficient to apply fixes and improvements to one while testing the other.
The static fire was a little disappointing. Single engine fires on the suborbital stands were usually louder and more chest congestion loosening.

I saw some chatter online that SpaceX will do a full 33 engine static fire, then another full duration fire using just a subset of the 33 engines, due to infrastructure restrictions. The full duration fire should be impressive.

Avatar2go wrote:

Nomadd wrote:

7 and 8 might trade places several times. They decided it would be more efficient to apply fixes and improvements to one while testing the other.
The static fire was a little disappointing. Single engine fires on the suborbital stands were usually louder and more chest congestion loosening.

I saw some chatter online that SpaceX will do a full 33 engine static fire, then another full duration fire using just a subset of the 33 engines, due to infrastructure restrictions. The full duration fire should be impressive.

I don't think there's any way the stand and surface below it could handle a full duration fire. They never did put in any kind of flame duct. I find chunks of martyte covered concrete 500 feet away just from 6 second, single engine fires on the sub-orbital stands.

Nomadd wrote:

Avatar2go wrote:

Nomadd wrote:

I don't think there's any way the stand and surface below it could handle a full duration fire. They never did put in any kind of flame duct. I find chunks of martyte covered concrete 500 feet away just from 6 second, single engine fires on the sub-orbital stands.

Here is a good video on SpaceX, martyte, and flame trenches.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PTpvoO6x8CA&vl=en

I'm thinking it's a good thing they're in the desert. The only thing that catches fire is dry brush and possibly their own infrastructure.

Lately they seem to have built sand container walls (Hesco barriers / Gabion boxes) around the area to help mitigate. Same solution as the military uses on FOBs around the world.

JetBuddy wrote:

I'm thinking it's a good thing they're in the desert. The only thing that catches fire is dry brush and possibly their own infrastructure.

Lately they seem to have built sand container walls (Hesco barriers / Gabion boxes) around the area to help mitigate. Same solution as the military uses on FOBs around the world.

They've received some pushback from the community on the three wildfires, which have all expanded into the wildlife refuge. Part of the problem is they can't let firefighters access the fire until they complete de-tanking. By that time the fire has been able to spread considerably, while the firefighters watch in frustration. So best to eliminate any possibility of igniting a fire.

Full length episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” where Jay visits Starbase with Elon Musk.

https://youtu.be/goT5gW57Chc

NASA and SpaceX today jointly announced a feasibility study to boost the Hubble Space Telescope using commercial space vehicles such as Crew Dragon or Starship. As well as the potential for future servicing missions.

The study will consider how to grapple or dock with Hubble, as well as if EVA would be safe or effective. An eventual mission would be open to other vehicles such as Cygnus, Starliner, or DreamChaser. But the concept came out of the Polaris mission, which is planning an EVA.

Avatar2go wrote:

NASA and SpaceX today jointly announced a feasibility study to boost the Hubble Space Telescope using commercial space vehicles such as Crew Dragon or Starship. As well as the potential for future servicing missions.

The study will consider how to grapple or dock with Hubble, as well as if EVA would be safe or effective. An eventual mission would be open to other vehicles such as Cygnus, Starliner, or DreamChaser. But the concept came out of the Polaris mission, which is planning an EVA.

link to the article
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... ossibility

If they manage to reboost and service that thing it may will be still working even after the Webb is decommissioned

It's interesting that the focus seems to be on raising the orbit and not really servicing.
EVAs are being looked into but are apparently optional, as is manning the mission at all.

I honestly thought that, beyond maintaining its orbit, Hubble's issues were that its hardware was slowly starting to fail. Could it perform as a scientific instrument for another 15-20 years without any sort of maintenance on it?
Is the cost of pushing it up a bit worth it considering the risk of (further) hardware failure in the near future? I'm thinking gyroscopes, mostly, but also power delivery and control hardware.

It would be amazing to be able to use it for another 20 years however.

Avatar2go wrote:

NASA and SpaceX today jointly announced a feasibility study to boost the Hubble Space Telescope using commercial space vehicles such as Crew Dragon or Starship. As well as the potential for future servicing missions.

The study will consider how to grapple or dock with Hubble, as well as if EVA would be safe or effective. An eventual mission would be open to other vehicles such as Cygnus, Starliner, or DreamChaser. But the concept came out of the Polaris mission, which is planning an EVA.

Article from collectspace.com: http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-0 ... study.html

Would seem to be a good mission for a private Dragon. Need to work out some way for Dragon to latch on to it, either CanadArm capture device or the other device that was installed on last servicing mission.

Dragon has some volume in the trunk for change out hardware. No airlock though - maybe they could do an inflatable job.

Francoflier wrote:

It's interesting that the focus seems to be on raising the orbit and not really servicing.
EVAs are being looked into but are apparently optional, as is manning the mission at all.

I honestly thought that, beyond maintaining its orbit, Hubble's issues were that its hardware was slowly starting to fail. Could it perform as a scientific instrument for another 15-20 years without any sort of maintenance on it?
Is the cost of pushing it up a bit worth it considering the risk of (further) hardware failure in the near future? I'm thinking gyroscopes, mostly, but also power delivery and control hardware.

It would be amazing to be able to use it for another 20 years however.

In the media conference today (which is my source), they talked about the end-of-life factors for Hubble, of which there are many. The one that is the current threat, is the loss of altitude. It has lost 30 km of height in the years since the last boost in 2009. If they can get a third to half of that back, it would add several years to the mission.

However there is still a risk of failure of the gyroscopes, computers, or instruments, as well as exhaustion of consumables. So any boost mission would have to consider that risk in the cost equation.

If the study shows that an EVA is possible from the commercial vehicles, that may be one solution to some of those problems. But then there is the issue of reproducing the existing Hubble hardware, which is all custom made.

In the conference, NASA was emphasizing that this is a zero-cost collaborative study, which may not lead to anything substantial, but was an interesting idea that was worth fleshing out. While SpaceX was talking about developing new capabilities in commercial LEO.

This evening, there are already articles published claiming this is a mission that SpaceX is donating to NASA. But to be clear, SpaceX currently has no ability to do this mission, nor does anyone else. Nor would NASA necessarily approve that mission.

And NASA was also clear in the briefing, that if they decide to develop this capability, it will be vendor agnostic, so they could use it with all the available commercial vehicles. Not just SpaceX.

As it happens, Cygnus and Starliner are better suited for the boost mission, as they are also for the ISS, simply because they were designed for it. DreamChaser is as well. Dragon could undoubtedly be modified by using the trunk space for propulsion. Elon has suggested that option at various times.

In any case, the cognitive dissonance between NASA and SpaceX was clearly on display. I suspect that's why they did the joint conference. SpaceX is touting a new capability, but NASA is saying, let's see what happens with the study.

bajs11 wrote:

link to the article
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... ossibility

If they manage to reboost and service that thing it may will be still working even after the Webb is decommissioned

Link to teleconference: https://youtu.be/LDpERNu-TIk

If memory serves, I want to say HSTs gyroscopes were refurbishable. True? If so are refurbished gyros on hand?

If Isaacman is willing to pay for the mission, or a substantial portion, it may be a low cost way to pick up additional science.

So again, there is no mission, it's a feasibility study. NASA isn't going to let anyone near Hubble without total involvement and supervision, an ironclad plan with redundancies & fail-safes, and extensive training. Nor should they.

An altitude boost mission seems generally possible, but I wonder about an actual servicing mission on any of the capsules (or even Dream Chaser) since the Shuttle provided a large "platform" to anchor Hubble to during the work and I am not sure how suitable any of the current crewed or cargo vehicles are for this.

Avatar2go wrote:

In any case, the cognitive dissonance between NASA and SpaceX was clearly on display. I suspect that's why they did the joint conference. SpaceX is touting a new capability, but NASA is saying, let's see what happens with the study.

The way NASA is very reserved about this proposal while at the same time seeing the news feeds all light up with 'SpaceX is going to save Hubble' headlines certainly leads me to believe that SpaceX is definitely enjoying the publicity this brings them.

I may not go as far as calling this a publicity stunt, but given this is only a back-of-the-napkin proposal which is essentially costing them nothing, and knowing their frontman, I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
As you said, Dragon isn't even the best option for that mission.

At least they didn't pretend they'd send a Tesla Bot up there to do the EVA...

Stitch wrote:

An altitude boost mission seems generally possible, but I wonder about an actual servicing mission on any of the capsules (or even Dream Chaser) since the Shuttle provided a large "platform" to anchor Hubble to during the work and I am not sure how suitable any of the current crewed or cargo vehicles are for this.

Good point. An EVA would induce torques and rates that would need to be compensated for.

The Dragon's look small in the photos, but people can't believe how huge the trunks are when they stand inside one. You could set up a pretty good workshop in there.

How about welding/bolting a Dragon or Starliner to it and install a wireless datalink, so that it can use the spacecraft's own thrusters and instruments to adjust and lift the Hubble telescope. The vehicle would not need any hardware for re-entry, making it lighter and therefore able to take onboard more fuel. It could keep the trunk and the solar panels.

Nomadd wrote:

The Dragon's look small in the photos, but people can't believe how huge the trunks are when they stand inside one. You could set up a pretty good workshop in there.

The Dragon trunk is unpressurized. It would be useful for carrying parts or modules. Or as Elon has suggested, it could be modified to house propulsive elements to assist in the boost.

JetBuddy wrote:

How about welding/bolting a Dragon or Starliner to it and install a wireless datalink, so that it can use the spacecraft's own thrusters and instruments to adjust and lift the Hubble telescope. The vehicle would not need any hardware for re-entry, making it lighter and therefore able to take onboard more fuel. It could keep the trunk and the solar panels.

In the 2009 servicing missions, astronauts attached the Soft Capture Mechanism to the bottom of Hubble. This was needed for eventual disposal.

It doesn't interfere with the electrical connections needed for servicing, which were already there.

Originally the Hubble was to be brought back by the Shuttle, for display purposes, at the end of it's life. But since it outlasted the Shuttle, it needed a docking mechanism for a future spacecraft.

The new study will be looking into how that mechanism could be utilized for boost, or potentially for servicing.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/206046main_SCRS ... 8_12_4.pdf

Avatar2go wrote:

JetBuddy wrote:

How about welding/bolting a Dragon or Starliner to it and install a wireless datalink, so that it can use the spacecraft's own thrusters and instruments to adjust and lift the Hubble telescope. The vehicle would not need any hardware for re-entry, making it lighter and therefore able to take onboard more fuel. It could keep the trunk and the solar panels.

In the 2009 servicing missions, astronauts attached the Soft Capture Mechanism to the bottom of Hubble. This was needed for eventual disposal.

It doesn't interfere with the electrical connections needed for servicing, which were already there.

Originally the Hubble was to be brought back by the Shuttle, for display purposes, at the end of it's life. But since it outlasted the Shuttle, it needed a docking mechanism for a future spacecraft.

The new study will be looking into how that mechanism could be utilized for boost, or potentially for servicing.

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/206046main_SCRS ... 8_12_4.pdf

That's interesting! So it should be technically possible.

Highlights of today's beautiful launch of Crew 5;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHrW2JVdd0g

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Crew-5

Musk tweets video of Falcon 9 2nd stage deorbit burn. View point is from a recently deployed Starlink sat.

Unusual.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/157 ... 28928?s=12

The Intelsat Galaxy 33 + 34 mission today. Gives you an idea how far the drone ship is from the launch site...

flyingturtle wrote:

The Intelsat Galaxy 33 + 34 mission today. Gives you an idea how far the drone ship is from the launch site...

Check out the view of the space jellyfish from the drone ship just prior to and during stage one landing.

https://youtu.be/NIgS3dPAbw0?t=776

Scrubbed for a day due to a Helium leak (as Scott Manley mentioned, not just NASA then), nonetheless Space X continues it's insane launch rate with Intelsat 33/34, 14th flight for the booster, deployment this time captured plus a 'space jellyfish' 5 minutes after launch;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIgS3dPAbw0

Mr & Mrs Tito announce plans for around the moon trip on Starship: https://youtu.be/akRWCov_LSo

You may recall Tito was one of the first space tourists some 20 years ago on Soyuz.

Also SpaceX and NASA have waived off all Crew 4 undock windows for today due to landing site weather.