HomeThe Aerospace Corporation
Reentry Predictions
COSMOS 482 DESCENT CRAFT (ID 6073)
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Reentry Prediction
Predicted Reentry Time
10 May 2025 06:12 UTC ± 3 hours
Orbit Epoch
09 May 2025 19:55:03.226 UTC
Prediction Ground Track
COSMOS 482 DESCENT CRAFT (ID 6073) Reentry Prediction Image
Yellow Icon – location of object at midpoint of reentry window
Blue Line – ground track uncertainty prior to middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Yellow Line – ground track uncertainty after middle of the reentry window (ticks at 5-minute intervals)
Pink Icon (if applicable) – vicinity of eyewitness sighting or recovered debris
Note: Possible reentry locations lie anywhere along the blue and yellow ground track. Areas not under the line are not exposed to the debris.

If you go through most of your days without worrying about space junk falling on you, there's little reason for serious alarm now. The Aerospace Corporation says any one individual on Earth is "far likelier" to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482. The US government's safety threshold for uncontrolled reentries requires the risk of a serious injury or death on the ground to be less than 1 in 10,000. The Aerospace Corporation projects the risk of at least one injury or fatality from Kosmos 482 to be 0.4 in 10,000 if the descent craft reaches the surface intact.

Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archeologist and university lecturer on space situational awareness, wrote on his website that the risk of public injury from Kosmos 482 is lower than that from the reentry of a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage. One of those came down uncontrolled over Poland in February, scattering some debris but causing no injuries.

Langbroek said the reentry analysis suggests the Kosmos 482 descent capsule will impact the ground or water at about 150 mph (242 kilometers per hour), assuming it makes it to the surface in one piece. The lander carries a parachute that would have slowed its final descent to Venus, but it's not likely that the parachute deployment system still works after 53 years in space. //

But what happens in the unlikely event that Kosmos 482 winds up in your yard? "If Kosmos defies the odds and does land in your yard, please don’t touch it!" the Aerospace Corporation said. "It could potentially be hazardous, and it is best to notify your local authorities.

"As for keeping it, don’t get your hopes up," Aerospace says. "There is a United Nations treaty that governs found debris—the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It states that countries keep ownership of objects they launch into space, even after those objects reenter and return to Earth. The country that launched the object in this case is Russia, which could request the return of any parts that survived reentry. "It is also worth noting that the treaty says that the launching country is also internationally liable for damages." //

Cthel Ars Tribunus Militum
5y
7,663
Subscriptor
SimonRev said:
Technically wouldn't that have been the Soviet Union. Admittedly Russia is the obvious successor state, but couldn't one of the former republics conceivably attempt to make a claim if they felt they had a connection to it
Fun fact - the sections that deorbited in 1972 included several titanium alloy pressure vessels that landed intact (and very hot) in New Zealand; however the USSR formally disclaimed ownership so they ended up property of the farmers whose land they crashed into.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/new-light-on-mysterious-space-balls/VYQ6S2QIC4QREO55ERXWVIKNSI/

Plans were well underway to launch the Space Shuttle at Vandenberg in the early 1980s. The shuttle was what a rocket could never be: A flying aircraft with a human pilot. //

After the Challenger disaster, the entire program underwent an audit, and it was discovered that the SLC-6 launch pad — recycled from previous canceled Air Force projects like the never-launched Manned Orbital Laboratory — would be destroyed by the force of the first shuttle launch. The effect would have been similar to the April 2023 SpaceX Starship launch in Texas that hurled concrete powder miles from the launch site and damaged the launch vehicle. //

That was all in the future as a Boeing 747 jet carried a Space Shuttle to Vandenberg (then an Air Force base) for a promotional look at what was hoped would be a West Coast base of operations for the shuttle. If my recollection is correct, there has never been a manned flight launched from Vandenberg. In a full circle moment, SLC-6 launch pad is now leased for an expansion of the SpaceX Falcon program. The Falcon is a smaller rocket, carrying about 25% of the shuttle’s maximum. //

Reporters and photographers line up to watch and photograph the space shuttle and 747. The plane and cargo circled over Santa Maria and Lompoc before landing on time at the base. The brand new space shuttle Discovery visited Vandenberg Air Force Base on Nov. 6, 1983. Tony Hertz Telegram-Tribune file //

The newest orbiter will leave Vandenberg on Tuesday for Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where it will fly at least three missions before returning for the first Vandenberg launch. Between five and 10 annual missions may be launched from Vandenberg. The craft weighs 148,000 pounds empty and will weigh about 210,00 pounds in flight. It is 122 feet long and 78 feet wide; about the size of a DC-9 commercial airliner. It is removed or placed aboard the 747 with a bridge-like crane called a mating facility. The Air Force has spent $2.5 billion to build the space shuttle launch complex. Construction included the pouring of 250,000 cubic yards of concrete — enough to build a 25-mile four lane freeway — the use of 9,000 tons of steel reinforcing bar and 15,000 tons of structural steel. The latter would build a 120-story office building. Shuttles launched from Vandenberg will be put on polar, or south to north, orbits; Florida launches are put on equatorial orbits.

Read more at: https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/photos-from-the-vault/article297956698.html#storylink=cpy

Stratolaunch has finally found a use for the world's largest airplane.

Twice in the last five months, the company launched a hypersonic vehicle over the Pacific Ocean, accelerated it to more than five times the speed of sound, and autonomously landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Stratolaunch used the same vehicle for both flights.

This is the first time anyone in the United States has flown a reusable hypersonic rocket plane since the last flight of the X-15, the iconic rocket-powered aircraft that pushed the envelope of high-altitude, high-speed flight 60 years ago. //

Zachary Krevor, president and CEO of Stratolaunch, spoke with Ars on Monday afternoon. He said the Talon test vehicle advances the capability lost with the retirement of the X-15 by flying autonomously. Like the Talon-A, the X-15 released from a carrier jet and ignited a rocket engine to soar into the uppermost layers of the atmosphere. But the X-15 had a pilot in command, while the Talon-A flies on autopilot.

"Why the autonomous flight matters is because hypersonic systems are now pushing the envelope in terms of maneuvering capability, maneuvering beyond what can be done by the human body," Krevor said. "Therefore, being able to perform flights with an autonomous, reusable, hypersonic testbed ensures that these flights are exploring the full envelope of capability that represents what's occurring in hypersonic system development today."

Stratolaunch's Talon-A is a little smaller than a school bus, or about half the size of the X-15. //

Engineers know less about the conditions of the hypersonic flight regime (in excess of Mach 5) than they do about lower-speed supersonic flight or spaceflight. The only vehicles that regularly fly at hypersonic speeds are missiles, rockets, and spacecraft reentering the atmosphere. They spend just a short time flying in the hypersonic environment as they transition to and from space.

There are two things you should know about hypersonic missiles. First, rockets have flown at hypersonic speeds since 1949, so when officials talk about hypersonic missiles, they are referring to vehicles that operate in the hypersonic flight environment, instead of just transiting through it.

Second, hypersonic vehicles come in a couple of variations. One is a glide vehicle, which is accelerated by a conventional rocket to hypersonic speed, then steers itself toward its destination or target using aerodynamic forces. The other is a cruiser that can sustain itself in hypersonic flight using exotic propulsion, such as scramjet engines. //

The Pentagon's emphasis on hypersonic weapons is relatively new. After the X-15's final flight in 1968, the government lacked any major hypersonic flight test programs for several decades. NASA flew the autonomous X-43 test vehicle to hypersonic speed two times in 2004, and the Air Force demonstrated an air-breathing scramjet engine at Mach 5.1 with the X-51 Waverider aircraft in 2013. While some of the X-43 and X-51 test flights failed, they provided early-stage data on hypersonic propulsion systems that could power high-speed aircraft and missiles.

But these were expensive government-led programs. Together, they cost nearly $1 billion in 2025 dollars, with only a handful of flight tests to show for it. The military now wants to lean heavier on commercial industry.

Since its founding 14 years ago, Stratolaunch has pivoted its mission from the airborne launch of satellites to hypersonic testing. //

Stratolaunch's founder, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, died in 2018, putting the company's future in doubt. Stratolaunch flew its huge carrier aircraft, named Roc, for the first time in April 2019 but ceased operations the following month. Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm, purchased Stratolaunch from Allen's heirs later that year and redirected the company's mission from space launch to hypersonic flight testing.

Through it all, Stratolaunch continued flying Roc, a twin-fuselage airplane with a wingspan of 385 feet (117 meters). For a time, it appeared Roc might share a fate with Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose" flying boat, which held the record as the airplane with the widest wingspan, until Roc (officially designated the Scaled Composites Model 351) took off for the first time in 2019. The Spruce Goose flew just once after its business prospects faded in the aftermath of World War II.

Now, the Pentagon's hunger for hypersonic weapons seems likely to feed Stratolaunch's coffers for some time to come. //

David Mayer Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
5m
1,241
I'm uncertain how big a "game changer" endoatmospheric, maneuverable, hypersonic weapons will be. They should be relatively easy to detect, track, and target using existing systems, even if they have an incredibly low radar cross section, simply because they will be hot as all hell, appearing clearly to any infrared sensors.

Interception is another story, it all depends on how maneuverable the weapon is and if it can reliably detect interceptors. Available reaction time is going to be substantially lower than many other systems, just because of how fast the weapon is moving. Your interceptor doesn't need to match the speed, but it does need to deal with the maneuverability of the weapon. A 15° change in trajectory is a 7 kilometer difference in actual position vs expected position after 15 seconds. Lots of existing interceptors are going to have trouble coping with that.

If the weapon is regularly changing direction then the effective range of your interceptors is significantly reduced, meaning that any interception will have to be launched from closer to the defended area and will have to be launched later in the weapons flight. Launch too soon and the weapons maneuvering will exhaust the interceptors fuel.

If the weapon can detect the interceptor then it may chose an alternate target, heck, they might be maneuverable enough to come in for a second or even third approach.

You see, SpaceX’s plans for Starship are demonstrably stupid. In fact, it is so stupid in so many different ways a lot of us, myself included, struggle to get a big-picture view and articulate why this moronic giant phallus will never work. I want to correct that with this article. So, come with me as I will lay out in glorious detail the 7 Deadly Sins of Starship and why this project is destined for the scrap heap. ///

Starts off with demonstrably false statements...

Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy
·
The U.S. commercial space industry is an inspiring project which showcases American ingenuity and exceptionalism. But the last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.”

The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam, but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.

Blue Origin @blueorigin
We just completed our 11th human spaceflight and the 31st flight of the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez.

To date, New Shepard has flown 58 people to space. Read more:
6:55 PM · Apr 17, 2025. //

Jeff Bezos's "Blue Origin" rockets are, in my opinion, something that could and should be an absolute banger of a space project. The idea that we could have some billionaire creating rockets for the express purpose of ferrying civilians into the black is something I actually think is needed.

Normalizing space travel, even if in the mind, is something we should definitely be promoting in the zeitgeist.

But then, as Bonchie wrote on Monday, Blue Origin created a PR stunt that was so stupid, I'm surprised no one stopped to think about the negatives for even a few minutes. //

Bezos's rich, leftist, elitist friends are probably not feeling him too deeply right now, and he needed to make it clear that he was still with the agenda by launching the "all-female crew" and making history for women. //

Putting on something so ridiculous as a clear PR stunt that ended up being so cringe-worthy and stupid that it's being widely and roundly mocked sets things back a bit in the minds of the public. Bezos could have put anyone in that rocket including scientists, astronomers, hell, even a regular family who never would have dreamed something like this could happen to them.

Instead, we get self-absorbed celebrities who just chose to use it as a platform to virtue signal, making this all worse. I can't see how this endears space travel to anyone. //

This gets even more infuriating when you look at SpaceX, which utilizes its ever-advancing rocket tech to actually move humanity forward in a way that moves us forward. The spectacle of SpaceX isn't in celebrities, it's getting the job done. It's making science fiction a reality. SpaceX literally rescues astronauts stranded in space.

It's a company that is advancing itself with the clear intent of advancing humanity.

Blue Origin feels like a vanity project meant to elevate one man.

This all-female crew wasn't even a crew. These women were just pawns dressed as explorers, form-fitting suits that accentuated their figures in all the right places.

Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not mad that this flight didn't contain any scientific research or exploration. Civilians going up and coming back down is actually a fantastic idea that I think could really get people excited about the prospect of seeing the stars just a little bit closer.

But this just felt like a stupid virtue signal meant to make one man look good to people who are, frankly, regressive in their views and contribute little to nothing to our society. To do all this with a technology that already is being eyed by a chunk of the public as wasteful and selfish is, in my opinion, irresponsible.

In the last week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk's space company the Pentagon's leading launch provider, and then it assigned the vast majority of this year's most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX. //

The reason Bruno can say Musk's involvement in the Trump administration so far hasn't affected ULA is simple. SpaceX is cheaper and has a ready-made line of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets available to launch the Pentagon's satellites. ULA's Vulcan rocket is now certified to launch military payloads, but it reached this important milestone years behind schedule.

The Pentagon announced Friday that SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin—Jeff Bezos' space company—won contracts worth $13.7 billion to share responsibilities for launching approximately 54 of the military's most critical space missions from 2027 through 2032. SpaceX received the lion's share of the missions with an award for 28 launches, while ULA got 19. Blue Origin, a national security launch business newcomer, will fly seven missions.

This comes out to a 60-40 split between SpaceX and ULA, not counting Blue Origin's seven launches, which the Space Force set aside for a third contractor. It's a reversal of the 60-40 sharing scheme in the last big military launch competition in 2020, when ULA took the top award over SpaceX. Space Force officials anticipate Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will be certified for national security missions next year, allowing it to begin winning launch task orders. //

So, why did ULA only get 22 percent of this year's task orders instead of something closer to 40 percent? It turns out ULA was not eligible for two of these missions because the company's West Coast launch pad for the Vulcan rocket is still under construction at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Space Force won't assign specific West Coast missions to ULA until the launch pad is finished and certified, ... //

A decade ago, ULA was the sole launch provider to deploy the Pentagon's fleet of surveillance, communication, and navigation satellites. The Air Force certified SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for national security missions in May 2015, opening the market for competition for the first time since Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged their rocket divisions to create ULA in 2006.

ULA's monopoly, which Bruno acknowledged, has now eroded into making the company a niche player in the military launch market.

"A monopoly is not healthy," he said. "We were one for a few years before I came to ULA, and that was because no one else had the capability, and there weren’t that many missions. There weren’t enough to support many providers. There are now, so this is better.". //

"They tend to be more efficient at the LEO drop-offs, I’ll be honest about that," Bruno said. "That means there’s a competitive space in the middle, and then there’s kind of these end cases. So, we’ll keep winning when it’s way over in our space, they will win when it’s way over in theirs, and then in the middle it’s kind of a toss-up for any given mission."

tigas Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
21y
7,000
Subscriptor

SomewhereAroundBarstow said:
And that's as close as you're going to get an active astronaut to saying that what some people call the Deep State is actually where the heroes that keep everything from falling apart work.

What actually makes you a "steely-eyed missile man" isn't bravery, mojo, having XY chromosomes or white skin, it's to

sit in their cubicle for decades studying their systems, and knowing their systems front and back. And when there is no time to assess a situation and go and talk to people and ask, 'What do you think?' they know their system so well they come up with a plan on the fly

Three weeks ago, NASA revealed that a shipping container protecting a Cygnus spacecraft sustained "damage" while traveling to the launch site in Florida.

Built by Northrop Grumman, Cygnus is one of two Western spacecraft currently capable of delivering food, water, experiments, and other supplies to the International Space Station. This particular Cygnus mission, NG-22, had been scheduled for June. As part of its statement in early March, the space agency said it was evaluating the NG-22 Cygnus cargo supply mission along with Northrop.

On Wednesday, after a query from Ars Technica, the space agency acknowledged that the Cygnus spacecraft designated for NG-22 is too damaged to fly, at least in the nearterm.

Darkness fell over Mare Crisium, ending a daily dose of dazzling images from the Moon. //

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost science station accomplished a lot on the Moon in the last two weeks. Among other things, its instruments drilled into the Moon's surface, tested an extraterrestrial vacuum cleaner, and showed that future missions could use GPS navigation signals to navigate on the lunar surface.

These are all important achievements, gathering data that could shed light on the Moon's formation and evolution, demonstrating new ways of collecting samples on other planets, and revealing the remarkable reach of the US military's GPS satellite network.

But the pièce de résistance for Firefly's first Moon mission might be the daily dose of imagery that streamed down from the Blue Ghost spacecraft. //

Dtiffster Ars Praefectus
9y
3,725
Subscriptor
TylerH said:
Given the amount of fuel needed to return to Earth, probably somewhere around the middle.

The prop to lift back off is at least 1.1 times the dry mass + up mass, but 78% of that is LOX which goes in the bottom tank. We don't know if the liftoff prop will just be in the tanks or in some kind of a really large header in the tank (as a boil off mitigation), but I would assume if there are headers they will be at or near the bottom of the of their respective tanks. Thus atleast 41% of the landed mass would be LOX and be very near the bottom. The legs and engine section will also be fairly substantial and very low. The methane for liftoff would be another 11% and only about a third of the way up the rocket. Much of the rest of the mass is tankage, but that center of mass is also probably no more than a third of the way up. The habitat section and equipment is high up, but it's less than 15% of that lift off mass. The CoM of the whole thing on landing/liftoff is probably only 25-30% up from the surface. It is much less tippy than your initial intuition would lead you to believe. //

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2P-z_cXsOs

https://youtu.be/IpA9DORDkeE?si=oNmwnzJs6_UwzjPb

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fireflyspace/albums/72177720313239766/with/54395270843

"Every single thing was clockwork... We got some Moon dust on our boots." //

Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to make a picture-perfect landing on the Moon early Sunday, touching down on an ancient basaltic plain, named Mare Crisium, to fulfill a $101 million contract with NASA.

The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon's surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A few dozen engineers in Firefly's mission control room monitored real-time data streaming down from a quarter-million miles away.

"Today, around 9:20 a.m., we received information from employees of one of the companies from Komornik near Poznań that, after starting work, they noticed an unspecified object resembling a reservoir on its premises," said Łukasz Paterski of the Poznań Police, according to a website that provides news for the city. "No one was affected as a result of this incident."

Jonathan McDowell @planet4589
·
The Falcon 9 second stage from the Starlink 11-4 launch failed to deorbit itself on Feb 2. It reentered over Northern Europe last night, with entry over the Irish Sea at 0343 UTC Feb 19 and the reentry track extending to Poland and Ukraine a couple of minutes later
11:45 AM · Feb 19, 2025

The math that makes refueling from the Moon appealing is pretty simple. "As a rule of thumb," write the authors of the new study on the topic, "rockets launched from Earth destined for [Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1] must burn ~25 kg of propellant to transport one kg of payload, whereas rockets launched from the Moon to [Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1] would burn only ~four kg of propellant to transport one kg of payload." Departing from the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point for locations deeper into the Solar System also requires less energy than leaving low-Earth orbit, meaning the fuel we get there is ultimately more useful, at least from an exploration perspective. //

the researchers decided to focus on isolating oxygen from a mineral called ilmenite, or FeTiO3. It's not the easiest way to get oxygen—iron oxides win out there—but it's well understood. Someone actually patented oxygen production from ilmenite back in the 1970s, and two hardware prototypes have been developed, one of which may be sent to the Moon on a future NASA mission.

The researchers propose a system that would harvest regolith, partly purify the ilmenite, then combine it with hydrogen at high temperatures, which would strip the oxygen out as water, leaving behind purified iron and titanium (both of which may be useful to have). The resulting water would then be split to feed the hydrogen back into the system, while the oxygen can be sent off for use in rockets.

(This wouldn't solve the issue of what that oxygen will ultimately oxidize to power a rocket. But oxygen is typically the heavier component of rocket fuel combinations—typically about 80 percent of the mass—and so, is the bigger challenge to get to a fuel depot.). //

The team found that almost all of the energy is consumed at three steps in the process: the high-temperature hydrogen reaction that produces water (55 percent), splitting the water afterward (38 percent), and converting the resulting oxygen to its liquid form (5 percent). The typical total usage, depending on factors like the concentration of ilmenite in the regolith, worked out to be about 24 kW-hr for each kilogram of liquid oxygen. //

Obviously, we can build larger arrays than that, but it boosts the amount of material that needs to be sent to the Moon from Earth. It may potentially make more sense to use nuclear power. While that would likely involve more infrastructure than solar arrays, it would allow the facilities to run around the clock, thus getting more production from everything else we've shipped from Earth.

On any given day, SpaceX is probably launching a Falcon 9 rocket, rolling one out to the launch pad or bringing one back into port. With three active Falcon 9 launch pads and an increasing cadence at the Starbase facility in Texas, SpaceX's teams are often doing all three.

The company achieved another milestone Friday with the 25th successful launch and landing of a single Falcon 9 booster. This rocket, designated B1067, launched a batch of 21 Starlink Internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. //

But SpaceX's accomplishment of 25 flights offers an opportunity to step back and take in some context. The newest and final iteration of the Falcon 9 design, known as Block 5, debuted in 2018. At the time, SpaceX officials said they planned to fly each booster 10 times before standing down for more thorough refurbishment.

SpaceX now plans to launch each Falcon 9 booster up to 40 times. Engineers temporarily removed two Falcon 9 boosters from SpaceX's launch rotation in 2023 for in-depth inspections after their 15th flight. That allowed SpaceX to extend each booster's certification to 20 flights, and last year, officials announced they were going for 40. //

SpaceX is also recovering and reusing payload fairings, the shell that encloses satellite payloads during their initial climb through the atmosphere. Last month, the company confirmed it flew a fairing shell for the 22nd time, another new record. SpaceX's factory in Hawthorne, California, must also churn out new upper stages for each Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy flight. That's 135 of these multimillion-dollar stages for each Falcon mission in the last 365 days, or one flight (and one new upper stage) every 2.7 days. //

Imagine, for a moment, the sprawling footprint and bloated headcount of SpaceX's factory if it had to manufacture a new Falcon 9 booster, nine engines, and a payload fairing set every 2.7 days. How cost-effective could that be? Would it even be possible? It's mind-boggling enough to visualize the blistering production pace for Falcon 9's upper stages in Hawthorne or SpaceX's Starlink satellites in Redmond, Washington. //

Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, has suggested that his company must produce 100 or more Starships per year to fulfill his Mars settlement ambitions, even with full reusability. //

While SpaceX's competency with reusing Falcon 9 boosters gets a lot of attention—landing a rocket is still incredible, even after seeing it nearly 400 times—its manufacturing prowess with Falcon 9 upper stages suggests that building 100 Starships each year just might be doable someday.

Starship will test its payload deployment mechanism on its seventh test flight. //

blackhawk887 Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
8y
18,175
Keith Tanner said:
2.7 megawatts of electrical power! It's running the computers, the gimbal actuators and the flaps. Anything else?
Mostly flaps. They need to apply a lot of torque at a high speed, which means lots of power.

2.7 MW isn't really that much, though, except for the fact that it's electric power. Each Raptor turbopump puts out 75 MW of shaft power, and each Raptor combustion chamber puts out 7,000 MW of thermal power.

During boost, Starship's thermal power output is roughly equal to half the entire United States' average electric generation power output.

Since those initial reports were published in Western media, a small band of dedicated space trackers have been using open source data to try to identify precisely which space object fell into Kenya. So far, they have not been able to identify the rocket launch to which the large ring can be attributed.

Now, some space trackers believe the object may not have come from space at all. //

However, an anonymous X account using the handle DutchSpace, which despite the anonymity has provided reliable information about Ariane launch vehicles in the past, posted a thread that indicates this ring could not have been part of the SYLDA shell. With images and documentation, it seems clear that neither the diameter nor mass of the SYLDA component matches the ring found in Kenya.

Additionally, Arianespace officials told Le Parisien newspaper on Thursday that they do not believe the space debris was associated with the Ariane V rocket. Essentially, if the ring does not fit, you must acquit.

So what was it?

The first human mission to land on the Moon is one of the only NASA mission patches that does not include the names of the crew members, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. This was a deliberate choice by the crew, who wanted the world to understand they were traveling to the Moon for all of humanity.

Another NASA astronaut, Jim Lovell, suggested the bald eagle could be the focus of the patch. Collins traced the eagle from a National Geographic children's magazine, and an olive branch was added as a symbol of the mission's peaceful intent.

The result is a clear symbol of the United States leading humanity to another world. It is simple and powerful. //

With the space shuttle, astronauts and patch artists had to get more creative because the vehicle flew so frequently—eventually launching 135 times. Some of my favorite patches from these flights came fairly early on in the program.

As it turns out, designing shuttle mission patches was a bonding exercise for crews after their assignments. Often one of the less experienced crew members would be given leadership of the project.

"During the Shuttle era, designing a mission emblem was one of the first tasks assigned to a newly formed crew of astronauts," Flag Research Quarterly reports. "Within NASA, creation of the patch design was considered to be an important team-building exercise. The crew understood that they were not just designing a patch to wear on their flight suits, but that they were also creating a symbol for everyone who was working on the flight."

In some cases the crews commissioned a well-known graphic designer or space artist to help them with their patch designs. More typically they worked with a graphic designer on staff at the Johnson Space Center to finalize the design. //

In recent years, some of the most creative patch designs have come from SpaceX and its crewed spaceflights aboard the Dragon vehicle. Because of the spacecraft's name, the missions have often played off the Dragon motif, making for some striking designs.

There is a dedicated community of patch collectors out there, and some of them were disappointed that SpaceX stopped designing patches for each individual Starlink mission a few years ago. However, I would say that buying two or three patches a week would have gotten pretty expensive, pretty fast—not to mention the challenge designers would face in making unique patches for each flight.

If you read this far and want to know my preference, I am not much of a patch collector, as much as I admire the effort and artistry that goes into each design. I have only ever bought one patch, the one designed for the Falcon 1 rocket's fourth flight. The patch isn't beautiful, but it's got some nice touches, including lights for both Kwajalein and Omelek islands, where the company launched its first rockets. Also, it was the first time the company included a shamrock on the patch, and that proved fortuitous, as the successful launch in 2008 saved the company. It has become a trademark of SpaceX patches ever since.

Taking stock of spaceflight one-quarter of the way through the 2000s. //

2. Ingenuity flies on Mars
   Almost everyone reading this article remembers the seven minutes of terror associated with the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars in 2012. A similar thing happened nine years later when the Perseverance rover landed on Mars (this time, with some amazing video of the dynamic experience). Yet as cool as these landings were, and as impressive as the capabilities of Curiosity and Perseverance are, a tiny payload named Ingenuity carried by Perseverance stole the show on Mars. //

3. Falcon Heavy launch, dual rocket landing
   By popular demand, this mission in February 2018 ranks in the top spot. The visuals were irresistible. The rocket launch itself was impressive, with the combination of 27 Merlin rocket engines generating a brightness that one almost had to look away from. Then the twin boosters separated and returned to Earth, landing like a pair of synchronized swimmers. Finally, there was the arresting view of a cherry red Tesla (and Starman) flying away from Earth in the general direction of Mars.

It was a spectacle that understandably captured the public’s attention. But the new rocket was more than a spectacle. By designing, building, and launching the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX demonstrated that a private company could independently fund and fly the largest and most powerful rocket in the world. This showed that commercial, heavy-lift rockets were possible. By providing competition to the Delta IV Heavy, the Falcon Heavy saved the US government billions. It's likely that the US government will never design and develop a rocket ever again.

A successful engine relight demonstration would pave the way for future Starships to ascend into stable, sustainable orbits. It's essential to test the Raptor engine's ability to reignite in space for a deorbit burn to steer Starship out of orbit toward an atmospheric reentry. //

The second change SpaceX will introduce on this test flight involves the vehicle's heat shield. These modifications will allow engineers to gather data before future attempts to return Starship to land at SpaceX's Starbase launch site in South Texas.

Perhaps as soon as next year, SpaceX wants to bring Starship back to Starbase to be caught by mechanical arms on the launch tower, similar to the way the company recovered the rocket's Super Heavy booster for the first time last month. Eventually, SpaceX aims to rapidly reuse Super Heavy boosters and Starships.

"The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials and will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles," SpaceX wrote on its mission overview page.

SpaceX installed catch fittings on the Super Heavy booster to allow it to be captured by the launch tower's catch arms. The ship will need similar fittings jutting out from its heat shield.

"The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles," SpaceX said. //

SpaceX seeks to fly Starships as many as 25 times next year, so cutting down the turnaround time between flights is fundamental to the company's plans. Making Starship capable of sustained orbital operations—something the in-space engine relight should enable—is a prerequisite for launching Starlink satellites or refueling Starships in orbit.