Update on SpaceX COTS 2 Launch
Today’s launch was aborted when the flight computer detected slightly high pressure in the engine 5 combustion chamber. We have discovered root cause and repairs are underway.
During rigorous inspections of the engine, SpaceX engineers discovered a faulty check valve on the Merlin engine. We are now in the process of replacing the failed valve. Those repairs should be complete tonight. We will continue to review data on Sunday. If things look good, we will be ready to attempt to launch on Tuesday, May 22nd at 3:44 AM Eastern.
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| Find a centerline location of the annular solar eclipse |
The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 this morning was aborted at literally the last second — the sensors detected too high a pressure in a combustion chamber in one of the engines. Apparently this didn’t put the rocket in any danger, but it was outside the limits for an allowable launch so the computer shut things down.
[UPDATE: SpaceX is reporting a faulty valve caused the issue, and it's being replaced. They should be ready for the Tuesday launch window.]
Here’s video of the last few seconds of the countdown.
Ouch. My thoughts on this are pretty clear: it’s a bummer, but then again that’s all it is. Not a disaster, not a failure, just a setback. These are complicated, complex machines, and delays are inevitable.
The good news is there’s a backup launch date of Tuesday, May 22, at 07:44 UTC (03:44 Eastern US time), and another the next day, May 23, at 07:22 UTC. Hopefully, this glitch can be fixed and the rocket launched on one of those dates.
Related Posts:
- Space X set to launch on Saturday May 19
- Elon Musk of SpaceX on CBS’s 60 Minutes
- SpaceX ...
UPDATE: Solved by Rob at 12:44 CDT
Greetings, and happy Saturday. It’s approaching Summer here in North Central Texas. The wind is blowing and we’re hitting 90F regularly. We’ll break 100F next month.
Alright, kittens, Mamma says this is the last chance riddle before a bonus riddle. Tom and I will run the bonus riddle at noon CDT May 25th. The people eligible for the riddle so far are: Ron, Patrick, David, Hugo, Roger, Editus, Jeff, Bruce, and Alex. I’ll add the name of today’s puzzle winner to the list. You should know the rules by now for a bonus riddle, but if not you can email me or Tom and we will explain them to you. We’ll post at the first of the week to let you know what you’ll be winning this time. It’s really cool.
By the way; if you’ve already solved a riddle this cycle, and your name is on the list, please DON’T solve in the comments. You can still solve the riddle in my email, but give someone else a chance.
Now, on to the riddle. I haven’t done this in a while, so you might have forgotten my “riddle style”. You’ll survive.
Today we’re in the real world.
This is a thing, and an event.
It changed the course of history.

Image by Dave Beckham. Let's consider this under copyright until I find out for sure. It was published in the private sector without copyright... but I want to find out for sure.
The entire world watched.
The remains of this thing can be found in the Smithsonian.
This was the beginning.

I think that’s sufficient. You can answer with the thing or the event; I’ll name either correct. You know where to find me.
The 100th and 101st Lockheed Martin commercial geostationary communication satellites have been successfully placed in orbit after a dual launch aboard an Ariane 5-ECA launch vehicle. Both satellites are based on Lockheed Martin's A2100 geosynchronous satellite series.
JCSAT-13, manufactured for SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation of Japan and VINASAT-2, manufactured for Vietnam Posts and Telecom
Baby galaxies from the young Universe more than 12 billion years ago evolved faster than previously thought, shows new research from the Niels Bohr Institute. This means that already in the early history of the Universe, there was potential for planet formation and life. The research results have been published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128, is a peculiar massive elliptical galaxy with a supermassive black hole at its heart. It lies about 12 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur) and has the distinction of being the most prominent radio galaxy in the sky.
Astronomers think that the bright nucleus, strong radio emission and jet features of Centaurus
A new Legacy Image from the Gemini Observatory reveals the remarkable complexity of the planetary nebula Sharpless 2-71 (Sh 2-71). Embroiled in a bit of controversy over its "birth parents" the nebula likely resulted from interactions between a pair of two old and dying stars. Legacy images like this one share the stunning beauty of the universe as revealed by the twin 8-meter Gemini telescopes
Observing Earth from far above, ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers is acting as a world ambassador for the WWF, which issued its flagship publication the Living Planet Report. The Living Planet Report measures changes in biodiversity by tracking 9000 populations of more than 2600 of the world's species. Andre wrote the foreword to the report and is doing his part to show how fragile our world really is
By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light-years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they were able to observe this highly luminescent active galactic n
Early this morning, an Ariane 5 launcher lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on its mission to place two telecommunications satellites, JCSAT-13 and Vinasat-2, into their planned transfer orbits.
Liftoff of flight VA206, the 62nd Ariane 5 mission, came at 22:13 GMT (00:13 CEST; 19:13 French Guiana). The target injection orbit had a perigee altitude of 249.9 km, an apogee al
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin team successfully intercepted a ballistic missile target for the first time, using the second generation of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system, known as Aegis BMD 4.0.1.
This second-generation system, which was certified in March, introduces the Aegis BMD signal processor to improve target identification capabili
SpaceX on Saturday scrubbed the highly anticipated launch of its Dragon capsule toward the Space Station due to a rocket engine problem. The last-second abort came when one of the Falcon 9's engines exceeded a technical limit that forced a shutdown of the launch attempt, which may be rescheduled as early as May 22. "Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days," SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweated.
NASA says it will modify an existing and proven Delta IV rocket second stage to launch an Orion spacecraft on an unmanned test flight in 2017.
A manned flight to lunar orbit is planned for four years after that, the agency said.
The Boeing upper stage is "the only means available to support the immediate in-space propulsion needs" for the excursions, NASA said in a statement.
North Korea on Friday denied it had jammed the GPS systems of hundreds of civilian aircraft and ships in South Korea, accusing the South of using problems with navigation equipment to smear the North.
Pyongyang's telecommunications ministry spokesman said the South's allegations that the North jammed GPS signals from April 28 to May 13 were "sheer fabrication" aimed at slandering the communi
An international research team led by Gerd Weigelt from the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie in Bonn reports on high-resolution studies of an active galactic nucleus in the near-infrared. The observations were carried out with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
The use of near-infrared interferometry allowed the team to resolve
Kansas State University physicists and an international team of collaborators have made a breakthrough that improves understanding of matter-light interactions.
Their research allows double ionization events to be observed at the time scale of attoseconds, which are one-billionth of a billionth of a second. The physicists have also shown that these ionization events occur earlier than thou
XCOR Aerospace has announced the grand prize winner of a trip aboard the Lynx Mark I suborbital launch vehicle. XCOR Chief Operating Officer Andrew Nelson made the announcement at the Spacecraft Technology Expo (STE) in Los Angeles, CA.
"About two months ago, we were at an event called the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference, where together with the Southwest Research Institu
The U.S. Navy awarded Raytheon a $313.8 million contract for low-rate initial production of Standard Missile-6 all-up rounds.
SM-6 leverages the legacy Standard Missile airframe and propulsion elements, while incorporating the advanced signal processing and guidance control capabilities of Raytheon's Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.
Work will be performed in Tucson, Ariz.; C
I wrote earlier about the annular eclipse happening this coming Sunday. It’s a solar eclipse, with the Moon blocking the Sun, but because the Moon is at apogee — the point in its orbit farthest from Earth — the Moon appears smaller in the sky, so it doesn’t completely block the Sun. We’re left with a ring of solar surface surrounding the Moon, the so-called Ring of Fire.
I got a couple of people asking me why this eclipse is happening at lunar apogee when we just had a "Supermoon", when the Moon was full at perigee (when it’s closest to Earth in its orbit). This is a good question! It’s not a coincidence. In fact, it must happen this way! Here’s why.
First, here’s a drawing of the Moon’s orbit, courtesy NASA:
The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse, so sometimes it’s closer to us, and sometimes farther. The ellipticity is exaggerated in the drawing; it’s actually about a 10% difference in distance between apogee and perigee. The Moon orbits the Earth once every 27.3 days, so ...
Right up to t-minus 0.5 seconds it looked like there was going to be a launch. Unfortunately the Falcon 9 computer shutdown the rocket just as it was set to launch due to a high pressure reading on engine number 5, one of nine engines on the Falcon 9 first stage.SpaceRef also has a video, although with no launch it is overkill.
The next launch attempt, assuming everything is ok with the rocket, will be at 07:44:34 GMT (3:44:34 a.m. EDT) Tuesday, May 22nd. If they can launch on the 22nd SpaceX has said they can try approximately every three days though they could also try on the 23rd.
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| Credit: NAST TV via SpaceRef |
T minus 1 minute and it looks good.
Hearing that familiar voice say “This is Falcon launch control” is a little weird.
Uh Oh, launch abort. There was a cut off by the computers right at firing.
There will be a minimum of a 72-hour turn around so next launch attempt will be no sooner than Tuesday at 3:44 am. We should learn what happened in a little while.
Here’s the update from SpaceX:
All nine engines did light. and the cut-off occurred at T minus 0.5 seconds and the problem was with chamber pressure in Engine 5 trending high. A similar situation occurred during the very first launch of the Falcon 9.
So were does that leave things? It appears they will roll back and change out Engine 5 and the launch time will be as I said earlier on Tuesday at 3:44 am as they have to delay about 20 minutes per day due to the ISS pass timing.


Just passed final launch review with @NASA. All systems go for liftoff on Sat morn. Webcast live at spacex.com.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2012
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| NASA researchers Alan Ehrgott, Mike Koop, and Derek Sears wait to board the zeppelin Eureka for a meteorite hunt on May 3, 2012. (NASA photo) |
My rig setup was a Lunt LS60T-Ha telescope and the new TIS DMK 51AU02.AS in prime focus. I can capture a full disc with the 500mm Lunt in a single AVI file.
Steffen Benter
Evening sky looking North as seen from Adelaide at 8:00 pm local time on Saturday May 19 showing Mars, Regulus, Saturn and Spica and comet Garradd. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the telescopic appearance of Saturn at this time. Click to embiggen.
Morning sky on Saturday May 19 looking east as seen from Adelaide at 6:00 am local time in South Australia. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)
Evening sky on Wedensday May 23 looking north-west as seen from Adelaide at 6:00 pm local time in South Australia showing Venus near the Star Elnath. The inset shows the appearance of Venus seen telescopically at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)On May 12th, 2012 members of our astronomical association gathered to share their experiences about astrophotography topics. Before others arrived, I managed to capture some images using the observatory's 200/2470 D&G refractor and the excellent DMK 41AU02.AS camera, with a Herschel wedge and Baader Continuum filter. The sky was a bit hazy but the image was very steady, I was suprised to see the small details.
Péter Molnár, Budapest, Hungary from Polaris Observatory
On May 10th, 2012 students at Hopewell Middle School in a suburb of Atlanta, GA witnessed and imaged the largest sunspot anyone has seen in years in Active Region 11476. We were able to capture this highly detailed image of the Umbra, Penumbra, granulation and surrounding "pores" or newly forming spots as they broiled with magnetic activity. The spot is now aimed squarely at Earth as spaceweather forecasters around the world try to determine what may happen next. We used an Explore Scientific 127mm APO refractor and a Lunt Solar Wedge with a DMK 41AU02.AS camera to image the region.
Stephen W. Ramsden, www.solarastronomy.org