Make it rain (7/31/23)

Good morning. On this day in 1964, NASA’s Ranger 7 spacecraft sent back the first high-def photos of the Moon’s surface, paving the way for future lunar exploration.

In today's edition...
🌊 Starbase’s water test
🗑️ ESA takes out the trash
🗓️ The week ahead

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SpaceX Tests its Upside-Down Shower Head

SpaceX completed the first full-throttle test of its water deluge system at Starbase on Friday, setting the stage for a Super Heavy booster static fire on the new system.

“New water deluge system to protect against the immense heat & force of Starship launch,” Elon Musk tweeted after the test.

The system: The water-cooled steel plate was installed underneath Starship’s orbital launch mount (OLM) to diffuse the energy from 33 Raptor engines after the rocket’s first orbital launch attempt this spring did serious damage to the pad and scattered debris for miles.

The operation is straightforward: water is ejected upwards through perforations in the steel plate—think an upside-down shower head—meeting the intense Raptor’s flame during liftoff. The collision should disperse the energy into steam, preventing damage to the OLM.

It is an age-old battle of water vs. fire, and SpaceX is betting water will be crowned champ.

Test results: Friday’s test seemed to work as advertised, with the deluge system spewing out water at incredibly high pressure for ~25 seconds. The water was shot out at a 45-degree angle so as not to damage the engines themselves.

While the test represents a key milestone in Starship’s return-to-flight quest, the system also opens up a new regulatory can of worms.

Wastewater issue: SpaceX has yet to obtain a regulatory permit to discharge wastewater on the protected Boca Chica lands, CNBC reports. While it is unclear whether the resulting water discharge is detrimental to the surrounding environment, or if it even warrants government approval, it does raise another regulatory question before Starship can fly again.

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ESA Brings Aeolus Down to Earth

ESA successfully tested a new tool to safely deorbit defunct satellites that were designed before the development of current guidelines on reducing debris.

On Friday, the agency performed an assisted reentry of its Aeolus wind-monitoring mission, which was not originally designed for a manual deorbit.

“These manoeuvres were complex, and Aeolus was not designed to perform them, and there was always a possibility that this first attempt at an assisted reentry might not work,” ESA’s Director of Operations, Rolf Densing, said in a release. “We have learned a great deal from this success and can potentially apply the same approach for some other satellites at the end of their lives, launched before the current disposal measures were in place.”

Adios, Aeolus: ESA’s Aeolus craft first entered the agency’s imagination ~25 years ago, long before there was a focus on debris-avoidance and deorbiting strategies to keep LEO clutter-free.

• For the last five years, Aeolus has been observing and measuring Earth’s wind patterns using an onboard wind lidar payload called Aladin.

• The EO satellite reached the natural end of its five-year mission, and would have made an uncontrolled reentry in the next few weeks had ESA not intervened.

• The agency took Aeolus’ downward spiral as an opportunity to test out a new, more targeted approach to deorbiting.

ESA with the assist: To bring Aeolus back down to Earth with a more predictable timeline and location, the satellite’s operations team conducted a few targeted maneuvers using the last bits of fuel. Aeolus naturally descended to a 280 km orbit, then the team brought it down manually, first to 150 km and then to 80km, where it burned up in the atmosphere.

In Other News

• China tested a new 10-tonne hydrolox engine design.

• SpaceX launched Jupiter 3 aboard Falcon Heavy.

• ISRO deployed seven Singaporean sats via its PSLV rocket.

• ULA CEO Tory Bruno raised concerns about the Space Force adding a third heavy-lift launcher to the next phase of its national security launch contracts.

The View from Space

Rocket Lab’s next mission, We Love the Nightlife, will have to wait on the pad a little longer after the launch was auto aborted over the weekend.