Zitat Ship 40 arrives at Christmas Island, Plans Return to Starbase
SpaceX has successfully guided Starship Ship 40 to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island after approximately 24 days at sea in the Indian Ocean. A team of SpaceX engineers is traveling to the site to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before the company attempts to return it to Starbase in Texas.
Unlike previous flights in which the vehicle typically broke apart after tipping over in the water, Ship 40 remained intact and continued floating on the surface. Live SpaceX drone footage scanned the vehicle as it floated, capturing valuable Thermal Protection System (TPS) imagery and data in the critical early post-splashdown window, data that would normally have been lost within minutes if the ship had been swallowed by the ocean. Ship 40, however, remained afloat.
Ship 40 drifted more than 400 kilometers over subsequent days while SpaceX’s recovery vessel GO Australis tracked it closely. Additional vessels, Normand Ranger and Skimmer Tide, joined the effort in the Indian Ocean. Normand Ranger arrived first, followed by Skimmer Tide roughly half a day later. The combined team worked to stabilize and guide the spacecraft amid challenging and increasingly rough sea conditions.
Progress was deliberately slow, often around one to two knots, due to the unique towing arrangement required for the massive, floating vehicle. After weeks of tracking and towing operations, the recovery team brought Ship 40 into the relatively sheltered waters near Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the eastern Indian Ocean. SpaceX released new video and photographs documenting the vehicle floating near the island’s coastline, with recovery vessels nearby under varying light conditions. An exclusion zone has been established around the ship and support vessels.
Engineers will now perform closer inspections in the calmer environment before the next phase of the recovery effort, which aims to transport the vehicle back to Starbase for more comprehensive examination. The successful recovery of an intact flight vehicle after a soft ocean landing provides SpaceX with an unprecedented opportunity to study the effects of the full mission profile on the structure, thermal protection system, and engines under real flight conditions. In-space imagery from the Starlink V3 satellites and post-splashdown drone footage already showed the heat shield largely intact, though the aft section exhibited some tile loss and rim damage that originated earlier in flight, areas the company continues to refine.
Zitat Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️@mercoglianos Some photos released by @SpaceX 1️⃣Video shows Starship40 off the coast of Christmas Island in the eastern Indian Ocean. 2️⃣Next you see Starship from the stern of Normand Ranger. Note the high seas and conditions. You can see that they have retrieved the Yokohama fenders that was used initially to encircle Starship40 as part of the initial tow. 3️⃣Another photo showing the swells including those tossing Starship40. As Starship40 maintained its watertight integrity and is so light compared to its volume, it floats very high on the water. This makes it very susceptible to wind more than current. 4️⃣Final image is Normand Ranger with a tow attached to one of Starship's Raptor engines. This was probably done for the final pull into Christmas Island, as the wind and currents were pushing Starship to the NW. 3:13 PM · Aug 18, 2026
Der Taifun, der Schiff 40 vor 10 Tagen mit bis zu 3 m hohen Wellen kräftig gebeutelt hat und zum Verlust einer der oberen Steuerflossen geführt hat, war Dolphin mit Windgeschwindigkeiten bis zu 205 km/h.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat TheSpaceEngineer@mcrs987 Unknown vessel with their AIS transponder disabled on scene. It's a PSV of some sort (similar to the Normand Baltic, pictured). But I cannot identify it confidently right now. Obviously, cannot determine if this vessel will be involved in the return to the Australian mainland or not. 4:43 PM · Aug 19, 2026
TheSpaceEngineer@mcrs987 Identified. ASV Ocean Protector, operated by the royal Australian navy. Last online 5d ago. Likely to be assisting in some form 4:56 PM · Aug 19, 2026
Zitat Elon Musk@elonmusk Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.
First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.
Zitat Dustin@r0ck3t23·5h Elon Musk admitted he is not sure this one is possible.
Musk: “This absorbs more of my mental energy than probably any other single thing. But it is so preposterously difficult that there are times where I wonder whether we can actually do this.”
Zitat ChromeKiwi@AshleyKillip With no cranes in the port to lift S40 onto a barge safely, the next best option would be semi-submersible ships.
Thankfully, @interstellargw has located such a ship, more than capable of the task.
Starship S40 has a rough size of 52.1 x 9 metres the Forte semi-submersible's cargo area is 177 x 43 metres, meaning you could fit about 12 Starships with 7 metres to spare. It will be interesting to see how they set up the cribbing to cradle S40 and how they tie it down with all the tiles. Forte is due at Christmas island around Sunday 23rd 7:33 AM · Aug 20, 2026
Zitat Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️@mercoglianos 🚀STARSHIP40 Update🚀
⚓It appears @SpaceX is going all out and has hired @beleefboskalis to conduct the salvage and recovery of STARSHIP40. ⚓The heavylift ship MV Forte departed from the anchorage off Singapore on August 20 and is showing her destination as Christmas Island ⚓ @MarineTraffic shows her estimated time of arrival at Christmas Island to be August 23. ⚓Assuming it takes a week to prepare and load STARSHIP40, if the ship departs from Christmas Island on August 30 at a speed of 12 knots and heads to Brownsville, Texas, her arrival will depend on her route. 🚢If Forte goes via Panama Canal (she would have to use the large lane of the Canal), it will take nearly 46 days, with an ETA on October 14. 🚢If Forte goes via Cape of Good Hope, she arrives in 48 days, with an ETA on October 17. ⚓The Suez Canal is unlikely due to the threat of the Houthi and targeting of US ships. I tend to think they will go with the latter route, around South Africa as that avoids tolls and congestion at the Panama Canal and it would only save two days.
Assuming loading takes a week and they are able to maintain 12 knots (weather is always an issue with a semi-submersible and its deck load) expect an ETA in the latter half of October. 7:15 PM · Aug 20, 2026
Die MV Forte ist ein Halbtaucher mit 216 m Länger und 43 m Breite, das Ladedeck mißt 177x43 m, 2012 in Guangzhou gebaut, im Besitz der Reederei Fairstar Heavy Transport mit Sitz in Rotterdem und nach Malta ausgeflaggt. Das Schiff ist heute aus Singapur ausgelaufen.
PS.
Zitat IGW@interstellargw Updated route forecast for Vessel Forte enroute to Christmas Island. 2 Day, 12 Hrs estimated until arrival. 8:15 PM · Aug 20, 2026
Zitat Marcus House@MarcusHouse FORTE is cruising along at over 13 knots as it heads in to pick up Ship 40. We should see it turn shortly. It is a beast, and just a little over 1,100 kilometres away (600nm). 1:27 AM · Aug 21, 2026
Ist noch nicht offiziell bestätigt, läuft aber gerade durch die sozialen Medien. Der Start der chinesischen Mondlandemission Chang'e 7 ist/war für den kommenden Montag, 24. Aug., angesetzt worden. Ziel ist der Krater Shackleton, 160 km vom Mondsüdpol entfernt; der Lander hat einen Rover an Bord.
Zitat Marcus House@MarcusHouse The vessel FORTE moving at around 10 knots should get in to meet Ship 40 in just a little over 12 hours. I hope they wait till morning to do any fun stuff. 4:40 AM · Aug 23, 2026
Zitat von Ulrich Elkmann im Beitrag #209 Jetzt heißt es, daß der Start auf 2027, wahrscheinlich März, verschoben worden sein soll.
Zurzeit ist der Stand: nichts Genaues weiß man nicht.
Zitat China postpones 'Chang'e-7'' lunar exploration launch by a month: NARIT
Thai PBS World
The National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) announced today that China has postponed the launch of the Long March 5 Y14 rocket carrying the Chang'e-7 lunar misssion by about a month.
The launch was originally scheduled for August 25.
NARIT said the postponement is unrelated to Thailand's CE-4 MATCH scientific instrument, which wil be carried aboard the Chinese spacecraft, and that the instrument remains fully prepared for the mission.
NARIT said it will announce the new launch date and time as soon as official confirmation is received.
Zitat At a meeting with international partners1 near the launch site today, August 23rd, officials from the Chinese side informed their counterparts that the launch will be postponed by about a month, into September. The National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand was the first to share a press release about the delay.
The China Manned Space Agency, who manage the mission and the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (中国探月工程) now, has yet to issue a statement. It will be released alongside those from involved enterprises under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.2
That delay is caused by a limitation of the orbital mechanics to send Chang’e 7 to its target orbit (more on that in a moment) in the current launch window, which expires on August 25th. No launches will be allowed to occur from Wenchang by then due to the growth of Tropical Depression Narra in the Gulf of Tonkin, on the East coast of Hainan (海南) province.
Narra started to form in the Gulf around the 19th and has spent a few days winding back and forth from northern Vietnam. Now it is on a path towards Hainan before it heads north to Guangxi (广西) and Guangdong (广东) provinces by the 26th to make landfall.
In the coming days, the Long March 5 launch vehicle will return to its vehicle assembly building, so it and Chang’e 7 will not spend almost a month at Launch Complex 101. In that building, both the launch vehicle and spacecraft can be kept far safer than they would be surrounded by the launch pads’ access platforms. It also allows for a greater ability to inspect both.
Zitat Avid Space@LabPadre The Semi-submersible Ship Forte from Boskalis has arrived at Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Likely to get Ship 40 back to Starbase. 1:29 PM · Aug 23, 2026
Zitat von Ulrich Elkmann im Beitrag #211Zurzeit ist der Stand: nichts Genaues weiß man nicht.
Zitat Wu Lei@wulei2020 #Breaking: Chang'e 7 will not be launched this year.
China Manned Space Agency says the mission has not met launch conditions after a comprehensive review. The launch will not be conducted in 2026. 🌕🛰️ 2:45 PM · Aug 23, 2026
Zitat Due to need for ‘absolute success,’ China delays critical Moon launch to 2027 | “The Chang’e 7 mission does not meet the conditions for launch.”
Eric Berger – 23. Aug. 2026 16:30
China’s “Manned Space” program issued a terse announcement on Sunday regarding its much-anticipated Chang’e 7 lunar exploration mission.
The agency stated: “In keeping with the principle of proceeding prudently and reliably, and ensuring absolute success, after a comprehensive assessment it has been determined that the Chang’e 7 mission does not meet the conditions for launch and therefore cannot be carried out during the planned launch window this year.”
The Chinese message offered no explanation for the cause of the delay from the Wenchang Space Launch Site, located on an island in the South China Sea. Consisting of a lunar orbiter, lander, rover, and a mini-hopper of a probe, the mission was due to launch as early as Sunday on a Long March 5 rocket. It is intended to land at the South Pole of the Moon.
Most likely, Sunday’s delayed launch was due to Typhoon Narra, which has 45-mph winds (equivalent to a moderate Tropical Storm) and continues to meander around in the waterway separating Hainan island, where the spaceport is located, and mainland China.
According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, this storm is expected to continue tracking in this general area for the next two or three days, likely providing inclement weather at the Wenchang launch site. Plausibly, then, Chinese forecasters determined that the weather would not break before the current launch window to reach the lunar pole from Wenchang closes.
Although official Chinese sources have provided no confirmed information, there has been social media chatter indicating that another suitable launch window may not open until next February or March. Why so long? It likely is a combination of factors, including sunlight conditions in polar landing zones as well as the mission plan that requires a 90-day lunar orbit reconnaissance before landing.
Another, lesser possibility, is that some technical issue was discovered at the last minute with either the complex Chang’e 7 payload, or the rocket. The large Long March 5 rocket shares an engine, the YF-100, with the Long March 7A vehicle that was lost during ascent two weeks ago. This engine issue seems unlikely to be the cause of the delay, however, as China had been proceeding toward launch in recent days.
The delay comes amid a tight contest between China and the United States to establish a meaningful presence at the South Pole of the Moon. Robotic missions such as Chang’e 7 are precursor flights for human missions that could follow in the next two to four years. ... Blue Moon was on track to launch this year before the loss of the New Glenn rocket, and its launch pad, at Cape Canaveral, Florida during a static fire test in May. Blue Origin has been hustling to rebuild its Launch Complex 36A facility in Florida, and aims to return New Glenn to flight before the end of this year. That is probably ambitious, but Blue Moon could plausibly launch during the first half of 2027, making for a close race with Chang’e 7 if it were to launch in February, and spend three months in lunar orbit before landing.
Zur Zeit kommt es wirklich dick, rein vom Terminkalender aus betrachtet.
- Blue Moon wird oben erwähnt. - Heute: Chang'e-7 ist auf 2027 verschoben. - Flug 14 des Starship ist gestern (halboffiziell) auf den 15.9. verschoben worden. - Vorgestern hat die ESA sämtliche Ausbaupläne für die Ariane 6 gestrichen, weil die Mitgliedsstaaten nur 42% des vereinbarten Budgets gezahlt haben. - Die NASA hat vor 3 Tagen die Swift-Rettungsmission LINK für gescheitert erklärt. - Die Zhuque-3 ist nach ihrer erfolgreichen Landung vor 4 Tagen 20 Sekunden nach dem Aufsetzen umgestürzt, weil ein Feuer ausgebrochen ist und eins der Landbeine zum Einknicken gebracht hat.
Über den Stand des russischen Sojus-Programms herrscht völlige Unklarheit, nachdem das Werk in Samara am frühen Samstag, den 15.8., von zwei Marschflugkörpern des Typs FP-5 "Flamingo" getroffen worden ist. Ersten Überschlägen nach sind die Montagehalle und der Reinraum für das Testen von Komponenten und Satelliten schwer beschädigt worden.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️@mercoglianos For all those getting ready to watch the loading of STARSHIP40 at Christmas Island by the heavy lift MV Forte, check out maritime pilot @BartGonnissen explanation of how to load a semi-submersible. 5:10 PM · Aug 23, 2026
Zitat Bart 🌊⚓️@BartGonnissen 1/x Today I'm going to try and explain the stability aspects of heavy lift vessels. I'll try to keep it accessible for everyone, so bear with me (it's a bit nerdy, I admit)... a small🧵 (I did use AI to create the graphs based on my explanation)
2/x A heavy transport ship deliberately destroys most of its own stability. Once to pick the cargo up, and again at the far end to set it down. In between it carries 90,000 tonnes across an ocean.
3/x Start with why a ship stands back up at all. G, the centre of gravity, is fixed by where the weight sits. It does not move when she heels. B, the centre of buoyancy, is the centroid of the underwater shape. Heel her and that shape changes, so B slides to the low side.
4/x Now B is off the centreline and G is not. Buoyancy still acts straight up through B. Extend that line until it crosses the ship's centreline, and the point where it does is M, the metacentre. M is not a point on the ship. It only exists once she heels.
5/x You now have two equal and opposite forces, weight down through G and buoyancy up through B, separated by a horizontal distance. That distance is GZ, the righting lever, and GZ is roughly GM x sin of the heel angle. The couple is what stands her back up.
6/x So everything hangs on whether M sits above G. Above, and the couple rights her. Below, and it rolls her further over. GM is simply the distance from G up to M. It is the length of the lever.
7/x GM = KB + BM - KG. Measure the centre of buoyancy up from the keel, add the height from there to the metacentre, subtract the centre of gravity measured from the same keel.
8/x The distance BM is important. BM = I / V V is the displaced volume. I is the second moment of area of the shape the hull cuts at the water surface. Not the hull. The waterline plane. For a rectangle, I = L x B³ / 12.
9/x So if we take Boka Vanguard. Length 275m, breadth 70m (at waterline) gives an I of 7.9 million m4. This would give a BM in the tens of metres. This means she's stiff.
10/x One more important value: TPC. Tonnes per centimetre immersion. TPC = waterplane area x 0.01025. 19,250m² gives about 197 t/cm. To sink her one centimetre you must add 197 tonnes of water.
11/x Now the operation. She floods down from a maximum operating draft of 10.94 m to about 31.5 m, putting 16 m of water over her own deck, so the cargo can be floated on above it. Watch what happens to all three terms of GM on the way down.
12/x First, V grows. A lot. BM = I/V, so a rising denominator pushes BM down before the waterplane has changed at all. BM is becoming smaller and smaller.
13/x Second : (in our favour) The ballast goes into lower situated tanks, so KG falls (G drops down). GM = KB + BM - KG. A falling KG is subtracted from a smaller number, so it gives some of the loss back.
14/x Third, (and against us): free surface. Heel the vessel and the water in a part-full tank runs "downhill". Its weight now acts outboard, shortening GZ. That loss matches a ship whose G sat higher. So it is booked as a (virtual) rise in G, and GM falls by the same amount.
15/x The rise is i / V. i is the second moment of area of the water's surface in the tank, l x b³ / 12. V is her displaced volume. Nothing physically rises. But the GM you may use is smaller, and she really is less stable.
16/x It does not depend on how full a tank is, only that the water can move. One tank the full 70 m beam would cost roughly 5 m of GM. Seven 10 m tanks cost centimetres. Divide by n and the penalty falls as n².
17/x Then the deck edge. Her depth, keel to main deck, is 15.5 m. If the draft is below that, the waterplane is the hull. Over it, the hull is entirely underwater and the waterplane is whatever still pierces the surface. Which is four caissons.
18/x 19,250 square metres becomes something of the order of 1,000. I completely collapses with it. V is still climbing. BM = I/V so BM drops dramatically.
19/x Look at what that does to TPC. About 197 tonnes per centimetre becomes perhaps twelve. The same tonne of ballast now moves her sixteen times further. The same thing happens fore and aft. The same weight shifted now tips her far further.
20/x Which is why nobody submerges level. On a flat deck with zero trim that transition is close to instantaneous. Trim her instead and the deck goes under progressively from one end. For this reason MV Blue Marlin has a standard trim of 4m built in.
21/x And it is also why the caissons stand at the extremities rather than amidships. I is dominated by the parallel axis term, sum of A x d². Distance from the centreline is squared.
22/x Now the pick-up. She pumps ballast out and rises, and the steel cradle welded to her deck starts taking the cargo's weight off the cargo's own buoyancy. Call the share she has taken P. It runs from nothing to 90,000 tonnes.
23/x The cargo's weight never lands exactly on her centreline. Call the sideways error the offset. Offset times P is a heeling moment: a sideways push that grows all through the transfer. How far she leans is that push divided by her weight times GM. GM is poor, so she leans a lot.
24/x Afloat with the cargo aboard, it reverses. The waterplane is back, so GM is enormous. A stiff ship snaps upright fast: roll period goes as one over the square root of GM, so the roll is short and hard.
25/x So during the whole procedure the danger lies in the collapse of TPC when the deck is submerged. At that point every error in the ballasting sequence is multiplied by more than an order of magnitude.
26/x Second, the margin against a large heel narrows sharply. She is not close to capsizing in the ordinary sense, but the reserve that made her feel like a raft is gone, and any residual heeling moment now produces an angle it would never have produced ten minutes earlier.
27/x On a flat deck with zero trim, 275 metres of deck goes under at the same instant and the waterplane vanishes in one step. Trim her by a few degrees and the deck submerges progressively from one end, spreading the transition over minutes
28/x and leaving live waterplane at one end while the other is already gone. The dominant failure mode in this phase is loss of control of the submergence itself: a list that develops while the waterplane has no authority to resist it
29/x and a hull that keeps going down past the intended draft because the operator no longer has fine control. This is not hypothetical. Mighty Servant 3 was lost this way at Luanda in December 2006, developing a list during submergence and continuing beyond her design limits.
Tick: "Mir kreist der Hut!" Trick: "Mein Gehirn käst!" Track: "Meins ist völlig verdunstet!" (zuerst in Micky Maus Sonderheft 8 vom Dezember 1953, Story "Rat einmal!")
Glücklicherweise hat Schiff 40 eine Leermasse von maximal 130 Tonnen - was die Austarierung von M zu B ein wenig vereinfachen sollte.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️@mercoglianos 🚀STARSHIP 40 UPDATE🚀
▶️FORTE is holding position in the lee of Christmas Island. The water is to deep to anchor as the island is a mountain sticking our of the ocean. ▶️They may need to move FORTE closer to shore to anchor before they can begin the ballsting of the ship. ▶️The yellow structure on deck appears to be the cradle for the STARSHIP. The two large vertical posts will be used to rest one side of the Starship against it. ▶️ Once Forte is in position, and the weather is within parameters - low wind, current and waves - they will ballast the ship. They will move STARSHIP over FORTE. They will use lines from the quarters of FORTE and small boats to maneuver the ship into position. ▶️Once in position they will gradually deballast the ship. Once complete, they will need to secure STARSHIP in place. This may take another day or two.
We will know when this begins as FORTE's stern begins to slip under the water as she takes on ballast. 2:41 AM · Aug 24, 2026
Diver Dan@DiverDa74038889·9h The Forte has GPS controlled Station Keeping thrusters. Anchoring is not nessesary.
Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️@mercoglianos·9h They still usually like to have the backup of anchoring. They can do it via station keeping with the dynamic positioning system.
Zitat Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️@mercoglianos 🚀STARSHIP UPDATE🚀
▶️FORTE departed Christmas Island and is making good speed = 14 knots ▶️On a course of 257 degrees which has her on a course for the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) ▶️Her destination is Brownsville,TX ▶️ On this track and speed, her earliest ETA would be approximately Oct 8 - but she may have to slow for weather and potentially stop for fuel. ▶️Overall, this is an impressive performance by @SpaceX, @beleefboskalis and Solestad in conducting the salvage and loading. 7:01 PM · Aug 28, 2026
Zitat Marcus House@MarcusHouse·7h SpaceX's Ship 40 on board FORTE with is now heading home a tad earlier than we had thought. 😍 It's currently screaming away from Christmas Island at 14.7 knots. ETA... October 8th. It's a long ride home! 👋
Zitat von Ulrich Elkmann im Beitrag #178Zitat von Ulrich Elkmann im Beitrag "Vorne macht es 'zisch!' und hinten knallt's"Aktuelle Rückmeldung:Zitat Isar Aerospace@isaraerospace Mission ‘Onward and Upward’ will be moved to new launch window. We are standing down from today's launch attempt to address an issue with a pressurization valve...
Kaum wartet man einen Monat geht´s auch schon zum nächsten zweiten Startversuch. Wie ich jetzt gerade erst sehe, ist für Dienstag ein neuer Anlauf für ‘Onward and Upward’ geplant.
Möge die Macht mit ihnen sein...
Gruß Morn <>< ______________________________________ Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell
Zitat Jonathan McDowell@planet4589 Roman Space Telescope friends, can we have an *accurate* mass of RST for the record? At one point the plan was 8137 kg dry 9253 kg wet, but recent press says about 10500 kg wet? Really 2400 kg of hydrazine or what's the missing piece? 12:00 PM · Aug 29, 2026
Zitat Jonathan McDowell@planet4589 I wrote to Lisa Bartusek, Roman team member and the author of the 2022 paper that Wikipedia cites for the 10500 kg design planning value. She tells me the actual launch mass is 9174 kg including 1116 kg of hydrazine. Result! 12:00 AM · Aug 30, 2026
Zitat Jonathan McDowell@planet4589 Roman has a special light weight 2.4m mirror donated to NASA by the National Reconaissance Office from its cancelled FIA spy sat program 1:08 PM · Aug 30, 2026
SuuuuiiiiD@lockhidmartinez·36m We can thank Boeing for the massive cost overruns because of which NRO cancelled the project.
13:26 MESZ. Liftoff. t +2:30 Absprengen der beiden F9-Booster. 4:35 Absprengen der Schanzverkleidungen. 5:56 endlich Einblendung von Telemetriedaten für die 2. Stufe. 13:34. t + 8:06 Landung der beiden F9 auf LZ 40.
Zitat Jonathan McDowell@planet4589 Roman: successful trans-Lagrange insertion and successful separation from the upper stage at 1157 UTC 1:59 PM · Aug 30, 2026
Zitat Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
During launch and early orbit, Roman uses the Near Space Network’s ground stations and relay satellites to exchange tracking, telemetry, and command data with ground controllers. About 70 minutes after launch, the Deep Space Network takes over communications and guides Roman toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles from Earth. Roman connects to that network through the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia first. Approximately six hours later it will transfer to the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex in Spain and then to the Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex in California, ensuring continuous contact with Roman throughout its journey.
The Roman team also confirmed successful deployment of the observatory’s solar panels and lower instrument sun shade an hour and 23 minutes after launch. Within the upcoming days, Roman’s high-gain antenna and visor-like deployable aperture cover will deploy, ground controllers will initiate the first of two-mid-course corrections, and the Coronagraph Instrument will power on. This instrument will demonstrate the technology that future missions like NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept could use to image Earth-like planets in the search for life in the universe. Roman’s Coronagraph will take a giant step in that direction by snapping pictures of Jupiter-like planets.
A few weeks into Roman’s voyage, its primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument, will activate. This 300-megapixel infrared camera has 18 4K detectors, each about the size of a saltine cracker. These detectors collect photons of light that will be decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas. Thanks to the observatory’s rigid design and stable optical performance, it will rapidly scan the sky without needing substantial time between separate observations. The Roman telescope is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Throughout the rest of Roman’s three-month commissioning period, scientists will run the instruments through a series of calibrations and tests. NASA anticipates releasing Roman’s first images by early 2027.
Roman will send back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission, so far. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and citizen scientists will help sift through it and flag significant findings, which astronomers can then study.
Zitat Jonathan McDowell@planet4589 Per JPL Horizons, injection orbit for Roman will be 190 km x 1.2 million km x 33.7 deg, with C3 about -0.65 km2/s2 (this q was asked in the @NASA presser but not answered) 8:58 PM · Aug 29, 2026
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