NASA InSight Study Provides Clearest Look Ever at Martian Core

 

NASA - InSight Mission patch.

April 26, 2023

A pair of quakes in 2021 sent seismic waves deep into the Red Planet’s core, giving scientists the best data yet on its size and composition.

Image above: This is one of the last images ever taken by NASA’s InSight Mars lander. Captured on Dec. 11, 2022, the 1,436th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, it shows InSight’s seismometer on the Red Planet’s surface. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

While NASA retired its InSight Mars lander in December, the trove of data from its seismometer will be pored over for decades to come. By looking at seismic waves the instrument detected from a pair of temblors in 2021, scientists have been able to deduce that Mars’ liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought.

The findings, which mark the first direct observations ever made of another planet’s core, were detailed in a paper published April 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Occurring on Aug. 25 and Sept. 18, 2021, the two temblors were the first identified by the InSight team to have originated on the opposite side of the planet from the lander – so-called farside quakes. The distance proved crucial: The farther a quake happens from InSight, the deeper into the planet its seismic waves can travel before being detected.

“We needed both luck and skill to find, and then use, these quakes,” said lead author Jessica Irving, an Earth scientist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “Farside quakes are intrinsically harder to detect because a great deal of energy is lost or diverted away as seismic waves travel through the planet.”

Irving noted that the two quakes occurred after the mission had been operating on the Red Planet for well over a full Martian year (about two Earth years), meaning the Marsquake Service – the scientists who initially scrutinize seismographs – had already honed their skills. It also helped that a meteoroid impact caused one of the two quakes; impacts provide a precise location and more accurate data for a seismologist to work with. (Because Mars has no tectonic plates, most marsquakes are caused by faults, or rock fractures, that form in the planet’s crust due to heat and stress.) The quakes’ size was also a factor in the detections.

Image above: This artist’s concept shows a cutaway of Mars, along with the paths of seismic waves from two separate quakes in 2021. Detected by NASA’s InSight mission, these seismic waves were the first ever identified to enter another planet’s core. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland.

“These two farside quakes were among the larger ones heard by InSight,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “If they hadn’t been so big, we couldn’t have detected them.”

One of the challenges in detecting these particular quakes was that they’re in a “shadow zone” – a part of the planet from which seismic waves tend to be refracted away from InSight, making it hard for a quake’s echo to reach the lander unless it is very large. Detecting seismic waves that cross through a shadow zone is exceptionally difficult; it’s all the more impressive that the InSight team did so using just the one seismometer they had on Mars. (In contrast, many seismometers are distributed on Earth.)

“It took a lot of seismological expertise from across the InSight team to tease the signals out from the complex seismograms recorded by the lander,” Irving said.

A previous paper that offered a first glimpse of the planet’s core relied on seismic waves that reflected off its outer boundary, providing less precise data. Detecting seismic waves that actually traveled through the core allows scientists to refine their models of what the core looks like. Based on the findings documented in the new paper, about a fifth of the core is composed of elements such as sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.

“Determining the amount of these elements in a planetary core is important for understanding the conditions in our solar system when planets were forming and how these conditions affected the planets that formed,” said one of the paper’s co-authors, Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich.

That was always the central goal of InSight’s mission: to study the deep interior of Mars and help scientists understand how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.

More About the Mission

JPL manages InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission.

A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. The Marsquake Service is headed by ETH Zurich, with significant contributions from IPGP; the University of Bristol; Imperial College; ISAE (Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l’Espace); MPS; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.

Related links:

National Academies of Sciences: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217090120

InSight Mars Lander: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/insight/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/Karen Fox/Alana Johnson/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Retires Mineral Mapping Instrument on Mars Orbiter

 

NASA - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) patch.

April 26, 2023

One of six instruments aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, CRISM produced global maps of minerals on the Red Planet’s surface.

Image above: CRISM data was superimposed onto an image of Mars’ Alga Crater captured by another MRO instrument, HiRISE. Each color represents a different material: blue for pyroxene, red for olivine, and green for impact glass, which forms in the heat of a violent impact that excavates a crater. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPL/Univ. of Arizona.

NASA switched off one of its oldest instruments studying Mars on April 3, a step that’s been planned since last year. Riding aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, CRISM, or the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, revealed minerals such as clays, hematite (otherwise known as iron oxide), and sulfates across the Red Planet’s surface for 17 years.

Led by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, CRISM produced high-resolution mineral maps crucial in helping scientists understand how lakes, streams, and groundwater shaped the planet billions of years ago. The instrument’s two detectors saw in visible and infrared light, spotting the chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of minerals that form in the presence of water.

“Shutting down CRISM marks the end of an era for us,” said Rich Zurek, MRO’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission. “It’s revealed where and how water transformed ancient Mars. The CRISM data products will be mined by scientists for years to come.”

Image above: This image shows six views of the Nili Fossae region of Mars captured by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), one of the instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The varying colors represent minerals on the Martian surface seen in diffenrent wavelengths of light. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU-APL.

NASA has also relied on CRISM maps to figure out where the most scientifically interesting landing sites are, as with Gale Crater, which Curiosity has been exploring since 2012, and Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Perseverance rover recently collected its 19th sample.

In order to study infrared light, which is radiated by warm objects and is invisible to the human eye, CRISM relied on cryocoolers to isolate one of its spectrometers from the warmth of the spacecraft. Three cryocoolers were used in succession, and the last completed its lifecycle in 2017.

The CRISM team then looked for ways to continue producing data without the use of cryocoolers, deciding to create two new, nearly global maps. The first of these relied on data previously collected by the infrared spectrometer and by the second spectrometer on the instrument, which viewed a more limited range of minerals in visible and near-infrared light. This first map of water-related minerals, containing 5.6 gigapixels, has a spatial resolution of 600 feet (180 meters) per pixel and covers 86% of Mars. Scientists began releasing it in sections last year.

Image above: This impact crater in south Syrtis Major was captured by the HiRISE instrument on NASA’s MRO. Afterward, CRISM data was layered on top to reveal which minerals were present. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHU-APL/University of Arizona.

For the second map, CRISM’s remaining spectrometer gathered data at an even higher spatial resolution (300 feet, or 90 meters per pixel). This map is slated for release in September.

“With these new maps, researchers can easily tie mineral deposits observed in high-resolution images to regional scale trends, landscape features, and geology,” said Kim Seelos, CRISM’s deputy principal investigator at APL. “Even though the CRISM investigation is formally coming to a close, I hope and expect to see many future scientists taking advantage of CRISM data for their research.”

NASA’s JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages MRO for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Related links:

Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM): https://civspace.jhuapl.edu/destinations/instruments/crism

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO): https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Karen Fox/Alana Johnson/JPL/Andrew Good.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

SOHO chases asteroid's tail

 

NASA / ESA - SOHO Mission patch.

April 26, 2023

The ESA/NASA SOHO observatory has overturned 14 years of thinking about the strange Sun-skirting ‘rock comet’ known as Phaethon that could reopen the mystery of how the Geminid meteor shower was born.

Every December, the Geminid meteor shower lights up Earth's skies as our planet plunges through a vast cloud of dust in space. For years, the parent body of this meteor shower was unknown. Most of the annual meteor showers are associated with comets, which leave clouds of dust trailing behind them in the form of their tails. But the Geminids were different: no parent body was obvious.

When Phaethon was discovered in 1983 by the joint US/UK/Netherlands IRAS satellite, astronomers thought the mystery was solved. This small 5.8 km-wide object circled the Sun in an orbit very similar to that of the Geminid dust cloud, providing near-certain proof that Phaethon was the meteor shower's parent body even though Phaethon was an asteroid not a comet.

Phaethon shines and vanishes

Each orbit of Phaethon, lasting 524 days, consists of an unusually close approach to the Sun. At a closest approach (perihelion) distance of 21 million km, Phaethon is hidden from observatories on Earth by the blinding glare of the Sun. Therefore, solar observatories provide the only way to capture vital images to study the extreme activity of the asteroid at perihelion.

Since 2009, the NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) has observed a sudden brightening of the asteroid a few hours after perihelion. At this close approach, Phaethon also sports a tail, hundreds of kilometres in length, facing away from the Sun. This activity was originally thought to be caused by the release of small dust grains from the cracking of the asteroid’s surface as it passes the Sun. This led to Phaethon being dubbed a ‘rock comet’.

Now, new observations from SOHO recorded in May 2022 have shown for the first time that, contrary to 14 years of previous thought, the emission of sodium atoms is likely responsible for this activity.

Phaethon’s journey at perihelion

As part of a special observing plan devised by Qicheng Zhang and Karl Battams, long-exposure, filtered images were taken by SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) telescope. Phaethon and its tail are absent from images taken with LASCO’s blue filter, which can detect dust. But, it is bright in the sodium-sensitive orange filter, offering compelling evidence that sodium emission is occurring. The emission is caused by fluorescence, when sodium atoms get excited by the Sun and glow orange, similar to a street lamp.

“Our unique observing plan found the mysterious asteroid Phaethon for the first time in SOHO data,” says PhD student Qicheng Zhang, who led the study. “The distinctive filters of the 27-year-old LASCO camera were used in a special interruption to the regular observing schedule to uncover these hidden secrets. By digging in the treasure chest of SOHO, we showed that Phaethon is visible in LASCO images from 18 different orbits back to 1997.”

SOHO spots Phaethon at perihelion

Phaethon is not the only object near the Sun to be releasing sodium. The planet Mercury also exhibits a bright sodium tail that peaks around two weeks after perihelion – something that the joint ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission will investigate once in orbit around Mercury. Observations of Mercury’s sodium tail from the STEREO H1-1 heliospheric imager were used as a calibration standard, like a standard lamp, to study this emission from Phaethon to support Zhang’s theory.

SOHO has observed hundreds of tiny Sun-skirting objects that are classified as comets – icy bodies which appear to brighten when very close to the Sun. These can be hard to distinguish from asteroids like Phaethon which shine temporarily. However, the sodium identified in this study has opened the possibility that perhaps the so-called comets discovered by SOHO are more like rocky asteroids similar to Phaethon.

This study shines more light on the events which could have formed the Geminid meteoroids, which range in size from sand-grains to pea-sized. Sodium activity on the surface is not enough to lift these particles and contribute to the stream. Instead, an unobserved and unknown disruption of Phaethon, perhaps over two thousand years ago, is assumed to have created the shower.   

The fresh layers of volatile sodium which contribute to the brightening observed today suggest that another mass-loss event may have resurfaced Phaethon more recently, perhaps less than 1000 years ago. Therefore, the exact origin of the Geminids meteoroids may be better understood by studying Phaethon.

SOHO’s comet encounters

There is great interest in Phaethon due to its distinctive activity and mysterious history, which make it an essential and intriguing source of up-close future study. Hence, JAXA is preparing to send a flyby mission called DESTINY+ to image the surface of Phaethon in 2028 and uncover more about its history.  
In addition to future missions, citizen scientists can play their part in revealing new discoveries using SOHO. Over 4500 Sun-skirting objects have been identified in SOHO images, the majority with the help of the Sungrazer Project. Citizen scientist ‘comet hunters’ can sift through SOHO and STEREO data to identify new objects.

Karl Battams, principal investigator of both LASCO and the Sungrazer project, explains, “SOHO is the most prominent comet hunter in history, with a huge catalogue of discoveries still awaiting detailed analysis. Both SOHO and STEREO are uniquely placed to be able to routinely observe objects extremely close to the Sun. The future of asteroid and comet studies is bright thanks to these and future encounter missions that will help us uncover more about these dynamic objects.”

“Since its launch in 1995, SOHO and its instruments continue to deliver exciting science, using the mission in different ways to study asteroids and comets in addition to its primary target, the Sun,” adds Bernhard Fleck, ESA’s SOHO project scientist.

Notes for editors

‘Sodium Brightening of (3200) Phaethon Near Perihelion’ by Q. Zhang et al. is published in The Planetary Science Journal here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/acc866

Related links:

SOHO: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/SOHO_overview2

STEREO: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Animations, Images, Text, Credits: ESA/NASA/Q. Zhang/ESA/NASA/USNRL/K. Battams/ESA/NASA/R. Pickard.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Astronauts Gearing Up for Friday Spacewalk

 

ISS - Expedition 69 Mission patch.

April 24, 2023

Two astronauts on the Expedition 69 crew are gearing up for a spacewalk at the end of the week. Meanwhile, two cosmonauts are standing down after their spacewalk planned for Tuesday was postponed.

Flight Engineers Stephen Bowen of NASA and Sultan Alneyadi of UAE (United Arab Emirates) are preparing for a spacewalk scheduled for 9:15 a.m. EDT on Friday. The duo in their Extravehicular Mobility Units, or spacesuits, will spend about six-and-a-half hours in the vacuum of space continuing to upgrade the orbital outpost’s power generation system. International Space Station managers will appear on NASA TV, on the agency’s app and website, at 2 p.m. today to discuss Friday’s spacewalk.

Image above: Astronaut Stephen Bowen is pictured waving during the seventh spacewalk of his career on March 2, 2011. Image Credit: NASA.

The two astronauts spent the day checking their spacesuits for leaks and proper fit verification with assistance from NASA Flight Engineer Woody Hoburg. Hoburg, along with NASA Flight Engineer Frank Rubio, will assist the astronauts in and out of their spacesuits and monitor their spacewalk. Alneyadi also wore a set of virtual reality goggles and trained for a variety of unlikely spacewalking rescue scenarios.

International Space Station (ISS). Animation Credit: ESA

Meanwhile, another spacewalk that was planned for Tuesday has been postponed until early May. Commander Sergey Prokopyev and Flight Engineer Dmitri Petelin , with assistance from European robotic arm operator and Flight Engineer Andrey Fedyaev, were due to move an experiment airlock from the Rassvet module to the Nauka science module. That work has been pushed back several days while ground controllers study the procedures planned for the spacewalk.

Related article (NASA):

NASA Sets Coverage of Spacewalk, News Conference for Station Upgrades
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-sets-coverage-of-spacewalk-news-conference-for-station-upgrades

Related links:

NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

Expedition 69: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition69/index.html

Rassvet module: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/rassvet

Nauka multipurpose laboratory module: https://www.roscosmos.ru/tag/nauka/

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Webb Reveals Early-Universe Prequel to Huge Galaxy Cluster

 

NASA / ESA / CSA-ASC - James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) patch.

April 24, 2023

Every giant was once a baby, though you may never have seen them at that stage of their development. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun to shed light on formative years in the history of the universe that have thus far been beyond reach: the formation and assembly of galaxies. For the first time, a protocluster of seven galaxies has been confirmed at a distance that astronomers refer to as redshift 7.9, or a mere 650 million years after the big bang. Based on the data collected, astronomers calculated the nascent cluster’s future development, finding that it will likely grow in size and mass to resemble the Coma Cluster, a monster of the modern universe.

Image above: The seven galaxies highlighted in this James Webb Space Telescope image have been confirmed to be at a distance that astronomers refer to as redshift 7.9, which correlates to 650 million years after the big bang. This makes them the earliest galaxies yet to be spectroscopically confirmed as part of a developing cluster. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, T. Morishita (IPAC). Image processing: A. Pagan (STScI).

“This is a very special, unique site of accelerated galaxy evolution, and Webb gave us the unprecedented ability to measure the velocities of these seven galaxies and confidently confirm that they are bound together in a protocluster,” said Takahiro Morishita of IPAC-California Institute of Technology, the lead author of the study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The precise measurements captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) were key to confirming the galaxies’ collective distance and the high velocities at which they are moving within a halo of dark matter – more than two million miles per hour (about one thousand kilometers per second).

The spectral data allowed astronomers to model and map the future development of the gathering group, all the way to our time in the modern universe. The prediction that the protocluster will eventually resemble the Coma Cluster means that it could eventually be among the densest known galaxy collections, with thousands of members.

“We can see these distant galaxies like small drops of water in different rivers, and we can see that eventually they will all become part of one big, mighty river,” said Benedetta Vulcani of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Italy, another member of the research team.

Galaxy clusters are the greatest concentrations of mass in the known universe, which can dramatically warp the fabric of spacetime itself. This warping, called gravitational lensing, can have a magnifying effect for objects beyond the cluster, allowing astronomers to look through the cluster like a giant magnifying glass. The research team was able to utilize this effect, looking through Pandora’s Cluster to view the protocluster; even Webb’s powerful instruments need an assist from nature to see so far.

Exploring how large clusters like Pandora and Coma first came together has been difficult, due to the expansion of the universe stretching light beyond visible wavelengths into the infrared, where astronomers lacked high-resolution data before Webb. Webb’s infrared instruments were developed specifically to fill in these gaps at the beginning of the universe’s story.

The seven galaxies confirmed by Webb were first established as candidates for observation using data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Frontier Fields program. The program dedicated Hubble time to observations using gravitational lensing, to observe very distant galaxies in detail. However, because Hubble cannot detect light beyond near-infrared, there is only so much detail it can see. Webb picked up the investigation, focusing on the galaxies scouted by Hubble and gathering detailed spectroscopic data in addition to imagery.

The research team anticipates that future collaboration between Webb and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a high-resolution, wide-field survey mission, will yield even more results on early galaxy clusters. With 200 times Hubble's infrared field of view in a single shot, Roman will be able to identify more protocluster galaxy candidates, which Webb can follow up to confirm with its spectroscopic instruments. The Roman mission is currently targeted for launch by May 2027.

“It is amazing the science we can now dream of doing, now that we have Webb,” said Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Los Angeles, a member of the protocluster research team. “With this small protocluster of seven galaxies, at this great distance, we had a one hundred percent spectroscopic confirmation rate, demonstrating the future potential for mapping dark matter and filling in the timeline of the universe’s early development.”

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Related link:

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/main/index.html

Image (mentioned), Animation (NASA/ESA), Text, Credits: NASA/Isabelle Yan/GSFC/Laura Betz/STScI/Christine Pulliam.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Tianwen-1’s global map of Mars

 

CNSA - Tianwen-1 (天問-1) Mission to Mars logo.

April 24, 2023

Tianwen-1’s global map of Mars

A global map of Mars composed from images captured by the Tianwen-1 orbiter was released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) on 24 April 2023. 

Tianwen-1’s global map of Mars

Tianwen-1 (天问一号) is China’s first Mars exploration mission with an orbiter, a lander and a rover named Zhurong (祝融).

Related article:

UAE Mars orbiter creates stunning new map of the Red Planet
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2023/03/uae-mars-orbiter-creates-stunning-new.html

Related links:

China National Space Administration (CNSA):  http://www.cnsa.gov.cn/english/index.html

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS): https://english.cas.cn/

Image, Video, Text, Credits: China National Space Administration (CNSA)/Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)/China Central Television (CCTV)/China Global Television Network (CGTN)/SciNews/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Starship pad damage; Elon says 1-2 months until next flight

 

SpaceX - Starship Super Heavy Test Flight patch.

April 24, 2023

While Thursday’s inaugural flight of Starship brought excitement, incredible images, and a roar to South Texas, it also tossed concrete miles away (and at vans). Numerous leaked images, aerial photos, and ocean-based photos have revealed the extensive damage to Stage 0. Everything you need to see has been compiled into one article.
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Base on just one video from LabPadre, one can assume that extensive damage was caused as a result of the test launch of the world’s most powerful rocket. A Virtual Reality (VR) camera placed on a truck showed one of the remote camera sites getting blasted with concrete. This included the NASA Space Flight camera van getting hit in the rear windshield by a piece of concrete.

Video above: Footage taken from a LabPadre camera shows a minivan getting owned by debris spewing out from the launch site. Video Credits: Lab Padre/Gizmodo.

This video was featured on The Weather Channel, ABC, and other national news outlets, oftentimes more than the launch itself. Additionally, this view showed all of Everyday Astronaut‘s and Cosmic Perspective‘s cameras getting toppled over after some of the dust cleared.

Remote Site One

There were two different sites for remote cameras, one inside the fence near Hoppy, and another in the employee parking lot across the road. Reports have indicated that there are no cameras lefts on the railings to Pad A, the location near Hoppy. The area was so dust obscured during launch, that there likely would not have been any photos from that location.

RGV Aerial Photography on Twitter

Remote Site Two

The other camera site was located on the other side of Highway 4 in a SpaceX employee parking lot. This is where the media was allowed to live stream from. Some cameras appeared to be torn to shreds, while others survived with scrapes and bruises.

However, the story of this site came from the NASA Space Flight van that was being used as a camera and live streaming platform. It took a direct hit from a piece of concrete shot out from underneath the orbital launch mount.

As shown via the LabPadre VR camera, rocks and concrete were hurled at the site, and in all directions, when the engines ramped up to full thrust colliding with cameras and other gear. When liftoff occurred, the pressure waves knocked over many cameras, including the full suite of audio and video gear placed at the bottom of the frame.

Stage 0 Damage

It is without a doubt that Stage 0 received a heavy amount of damage. As shown in a leaked image, the area under the orbital launch mount (OLM) is now a big crater. Part of the OLM structure is gone, leaving only the rebar to stand. The area around the OLM is now dirt, where concrete once stood.

Area underneath the OLM

The tank farm also received a heavy amount of damage. A concrete slab that was broken off and thrown from underneath the OLM is now laying on top of the helium tanks. The protective shells for the propellant tanks are also heavily dented.

Tank farm damage. Image Credits: Theresa Cross/Space Explored

The OLM piping received exterior damage from the pressure waves, concrete, and heat blasts. Additionally, some of the shieldings on the stairs and other parts are no longer in place. Some of these pieces, including a door/hatch pictured in the gallery below, were blown hundreds of meters into the sand dunes.

Surrounding Area

To close out the view into the damage caused by Starship’s inaugural launch, the area surrounding the pad was beaten as well. As shown by NSF’s Jack Beyer, the area outside SpaceX property, the dunes, is covered in rocks in what looks to be a Martian landscape. Large chunks of concrete litter the ground and have created large craters. 

Images above: Orbital launch mount after Starship’s first flight: toasty. Image Credit: Jack Beyer.

The Gulf of Mexico also received some concrete. In a video posted by SpaceX, the Gulf appears to showcase many splashes as concrete gets hurled hundreds of meters out when liftoff finally occurs. The fishies definitely thought the world was ending.

Elon’s Prediction

It’s safe to say that Starship may have caused more damage than expected. On Twitter, Elon mentioned that there was work being done on a water-cooled steel plate, which would be placed under the OLM, but was not able to be completed in time. If this was in place, would there be significantly less damage? Elon seems to think so.

Initially after launch, in a conversation with Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, and others from NASA Space Flight, the general census was that it could be a year before Stage 0 is ready to host another Starship launch. The next Ship and Booster are nearing completion, but the ground support equipment may be behind.

Eric Berger and Elon Musk on Twitter

However, Elon is never one to be pessimistic when it comes to Starship timelines. He stated on Twitter that Stage 0 could be ready again in “1-2 months”. Only time will tell if this prediction is true, or if it lines up with the “two weeks” he stated in July 2021.

Related articles:

SpaceX Super Heavy booster had five engines out and powerful launch damaged the pad
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2023/04/spacex-super-heavy-booster-had-five.html

SpaceX - Starship Super Heavy first launch, explodes in 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2023/04/spacex-starship-super-heavy-first.html

Related links:

SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/

SpaceX Starship: https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: SpaceX/Space Explored/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch