The Great Ongoing Space Exploration Thread

[Dr.Strangelove]

Beat you to it

Continuing discussion of SpaceX launches [edited title]

Nothing particularly special about this mission, but they had some great ground photography this time: [COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 Mission] I can’t recall ever seeing stage separation from the outside with that level of clarity. Normally you just get a few overexposed pixels. Unfortunately, they cut away the outside shot at the moment of fairing deploy, but you do get to see the fairing halves spinning off.

The photography was amazing this time. I’ve never seen MECO from the outside with that level of clarity.

I did see a launch at Vandenberg, just after dusk, with amazing shots of the plumes–including the rapid-fire pulsing of the RCS thrusters on the booster stage, and then the plume from the boostback. But the stages themselves were just points.

If you look carefully, you can see the stabilization ring on the second-stage engine fly off a few moments after ignition. You can always spot this from the on-board cam, but never from a ground camera.