big news this week is SpaceX finalized the last few steps before flight 8 the breaking news is that this could be launching in just a few days and we even have some incredible hints on the following test flight 9 not only has this been an exciting week in the leadup to that but the upcoming one is looking massive too we've got loads of great updates on the moonlander on their way fantastic developments on another fully reusable beast and lots more to jump into we can see you coming down the ladder now hey hey Marcus house
with you here and it has been yet another action-packed week at the Gateway To Mars as we count down the days to flight test 8 I'll come back to that but I've just got to start at the launch complex with a bunch of intriguing work at the brand new pad B SpaceX have had a clear Focus around the wrap-up and the inspections of the Chopstick actuators after being installed last week here they were removing the straps that held the arms in place all to prepare for the first arm movements driven by those actuators SpaceX moved
very fast and here was the left arm actuating outwards for the very first time quite a smooth movement there and as you can see the crew were nearby inspecting the arm as it moved it must have gone well as the arm was retracted soon after this following some more inspections they repeated this again but how about the right arm sure enough early the next morning this was also being put through movement tests I've got to say watching both arms on pad B come to life so quickly is just another sign of how fast things are
moving at Starbase with two launch Towers SpaceX will soon be able to really increase the potential launch opportunities and reduce the downtime between flights by then of course we should hopefully be getting past the test flight phase so I can't wait for that all right so while the Chopsticks were coming to life what about the rest of the pad over at the extending tank farm upgrades were in full swing too remember they not only need to push propellant through the quick disconnect systems on Tower a they also need to push it the other direction to
Tower B on Tuesday they hoisted a brand new cryogenic propellant pump into place a crucial piece of hardware for keeping all that liquid oxygen and methane flowing smoothly these are inserted into the ground propellant enters through the incoming Pipeline and then is pushed at high pressure towards the pad they weren't done yet though because these new subers had soon joined the farm SpaceX already uses these at pad a of course and it enables them to lower the temperature of the propellant densify it and this essentially means that they can add more volume into the Starship
before it launches some of these have been lifted into place already two more tanks have made their way towards the launch site that recently came into the port of Brownsville the first has already been lifted into place too given their position they are likely related to the Deluge tank farm this week SpaceX has also started to move some of the cladding for the new tower towards the launch site after it was staged over at the sanchz area we could see this in some of RGV aerial photography's recent flyovers there is a Lo of this cladding
2 certainly seems like a lot more to install than what is being used on Tower 1 the flame diverter for the new flame trench is coming along rapidly too they have installed temporary beams that will ensure that all the pipes of each half can be fully aligned next to each other and then welded together right next to that the work on the launch Mount has been ripping along while one side of the mount has already long received all the pipes that will feed the water the other three sides were left open well that is now
being worked on with new plates being being installed lower down as we Peak through the temporary scaffolding it looks like other pip work inside is being installed too wondering if this is for a detonation suppression system I'm also wondering if the expansion of the new tank farm might have some new cenic storage tanks coming in as well recently we've seen seven large tanks removed from the Starship methane tank farm over at launch complex 39a in Florida these were transported and parked next to the turn Basin close by NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building all ahead of being
relocated over the next couple of days all of these were loaded onto the barge at the Basin it isn't certain where these are going but we're watching closely to see if they end up headed for Starbase in Texas especially given how rapidly the padb systems are evolving some other possible destinations if they indeed head towards Starbase could be for the air separation unit or ASU that's a plann expansion close to pad B the idea there is for SpaceX to produce their own nitrogen and oxygen on site and this needs its own storage tanks it works
best of course if you keep it continuously running another possible location for at least one of the tanks could actually be over at the Massi site where we can see these footings close by the methane tank farm now at the start of the week an interesting comment during an xai live stream suggested that flight 8 could occur within a week on or before the 24th of this month this of course resulted in many of you getting in touch with me to see if there's any evidence to suggest that this could be possible keep in mind
that this was all said early in the week which seemed super optimistic at the time later in the week though we did start to see notices coming in starting off with a cadina ois advisory which was soon followed by a notam for the Mexican side of the gulf both of these indicate that a launch can happen as soon as the 26th in just a few days of course we've now had a matching road closure at Starbase appear and another Indian Ocean notam off the coast of Australia starting from the morning of the 27th it looks
like we will have the traditional 90-minute window again however this time it starts at 5:30 in the afternoon local time so a tad later than flights 6 and 7 I suspect they're aiming to have even brighter sunlight conditions at the Splashdown location for the ship while still having reasonable light through the launch one item remaining for the flight of course is the hot staging ring for booster 15 which had been moved inside the mega Bay just a little over a day later though it was moved back to the star Factory in the rain so perhaps
this was just a fit test and just like booster 13 these will just roll out to the launch site separately now interestingly more styling satellite simulators have been spotted inside the star Factory this week so it looks like these will again be used on flight 8 let's hope we get to see them test that payload deploy sequence this time again as far as we can tell these are simply Mass simulators that are built to fit the deploy mechanism My Hope was that there may be cameras attached to a few of them so that we could
watch a point of view shot from one of them exiting the payload Bay but as far as we've seen there is no sign of such a thing yet interestingly when the simulated payloads for flight 7 were spotted in the star Factory that flight had followed only 11 days later another amazing new insight breaking just in the past Day based on this new FCC document is that Starship flight 9 that will follow this one looks to have the opportunity to go orbital and have the Starship caught by the new pad B Tower the booster of course
would return to be caught on P a as normal so both of those Towers being used potentially this would all assume a pretty perfect mission I imagine for flight 8 but this would be incredible do you think we'll finally see this in Flight 9 let me know heading over towards the high Bay the scrapping of ship 32 is continuing along steadily early in the week its middle liquid oxygen section was lifted back inside the high Bay we didn't need to wait long to find out why as less than a day later it was moved back
out again with one big change the majority of its tiles were now removed removed they are obviously removing most of this in the high B now instead of the scrapping that they previously did with the Telly handlers so yeah it's nice to avoid all that nasty dust I assume along with this ship 32s forward Dome section did eventually make an appearance this week likewise this section had the majority of its tiles removed too that continued along steadily with the common Dome section being lifted out followed shortly by the payload Bay section moving in that just
left the after section sitting outside now looking at future flight vehicles coming out of the star Factory was the next section of booster 17's forward tank this three- ring toll section was moved into meabay 1 so that it could be stacked with the existing methane tank once that's completed this makes up nine out of the 13 rings in height for the methane tank so great progress there for the booster on the ship side Tuesday afternoon saw ship 36s Ford Dome section exit the star Factory and move into Mega Bay 2 from here it will be
stacked with the nose cone and the payload Bay stack that we saw moving out last week now this we believe would be the ship for flight test 10 and it is quite intriguing that this new section has barely any Tiles at this stage we saw the same for the payload Bay too of course so I'm wondering if they're trying to expedite ship production and clear out some of the star Factory lines as soon as possible it could also perhaps be that there is a new generation of the tiles coming we know that they have been
testing actively cooled toes some of which do seem to be installed on ship 34 again anyway totally speculative until we see more but interesting to think about we also saw that multiple doubler plates were lifted inside Mega Bay 2 it looks like these may serve as the plates that could be part of the structural hardware for ship catching pins so perhaps these are being retrofitted on ship 35 now close by the parking garage has been getting some attention too with the mural partly removed since it gotten damaged a while back we're all wondering of course
what will replace the original image having sha out there working with us and capturing all this has been incredible and so Greatful for everybody here supporting these videos seriously it means the world to us especially right now algorithm changes are hitting pretty hard and with so much political noise flooding the feeds our content is certainly getting buried much more than usual I see your super supportive comments and replies your likes your messages about being unsubscribed without knowledge or struggling to find our videos at all it's frustrating for us but you are the reason this channel
stays alive and I can't thank you enough for standing here with us okay so Greg Scott has also just taken flight for us again at Florida to check up on the progress at all the facilities over there more on that in just a moment but real quick a big thank you to AO sponsoring today's video I've been doing quite a bit of traveling this past year we took a trip to Singapore just a few months ago and it was fantastic have you ever landed in a new country only to realize that you've got no mobile
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use my code Marcus 3 or scan the QR code there on screen to get $3 off your first eim thank you aelo so yes thanks to Greg Scott's flight right here we have got a bunch of neat information to explore starting off at the SpaceX facilities at Roberts Road the tower construction jigs are still somewhat randomly laid about at the tent we can see pretty much a full complement of parts for the new orbital launch Mount if we go to the north of the active site though we can see a lot of action going on
all this land here has been pretty much completely clear of vegetation and in a gigantic area they've already started to remove the top soil and replace it with more stable soil that compacts more reliably this is all of course in preparation for the new Giga Bay going up there soon enough now what about the launch site at launch complex 39a the activity here has been absolutely buzzing too I've already talked previously about the horizontal storage tanks being removed and Greg got us a nice confirmation that they have indeed all gone in fact the propellant lines
including the concrete footings heading from the methane tank farm have all been removed too and what about that big custom made liquid oxygen tank yes that is gone as well along with the associated footings that would hold the liquid nitrogen tanks and oxygen sub chillers indeed it seems like SpaceX are starting with a clean slate design well with the exception of the Tower with the Chopsticks Still Standing There heading over to Blue Origins Exploration Park facilities multiple tanks for a future new Glenn have been spotted inside the twocat building that is used for ambient pressure
testing we can see a fully assembled second stage here although it hasn't been fitted with insulating foam and other Hardware just yet over here we can also see a liquid oxygen tank for the first stage possibly heading inside shortly for testing you can tell this is for oxygen due to the visible mounting points where the two huge strikes will be mounted in the future thank you Greg do make sure that you are following him over on X to keep up to date on everything there so moving on a unique flight for falcon9 on Tuesday this
starlink group 1012 mission was like no other due to its Landing location this this Falcon 9 took off from space launch complex 40 at Cape canille space force station with the usual pack of 23 satellites in the stack nothing new there of course it was booster 1080 flying for its 16th flight so just an average number of flights for this one what was new though was the placement of the Drone ship down range check this out this is an amazing tracking sequence as the booster fired back up to make its way down to its 16th
landing on the Drone ship just read the instructions this time though it was stationed off the coast of the Bahamas for the first time ever as the mission had launched I tracked the Drone ship position and this is roughly where it was the footage itself must have been coming from a recovery ship nearby because there wouldn't have been any Land close enough for this view interestingly this makes it the first time that a SpaceX booster has technically launched from one country and landed in another this is a significant step because this location allows the Falcon
9 to maximize its performance by launching into this more optimal Southeast trajectory from from the cape now it'll even allow additional satellites to orbit in some cases as SpaceX mentioned here it'll also allow them to launch human space flight missions such as Fram 2 into Polar orbits if you recall that mission aims to be the very first crude space mission ever to be placed into a polar orbit another benefit of Landing off the coast of the Bahamas is that there will be another option for Recovery which is very useful especially in the winter months with
the rougher weather anything that helps SpaceX provide a more rapid launch frequency is beneficial for the many missions in the queue now speaking of styling SpaceX shared a great chunk of footage from a recent deployment we don't get to see these very often and this one in particular included the mixed stack of direct to sell satellites on the top there pretty sure this is in real time so you can see it's spinning reasonably quickly to allow the satellites to Fan out there like a deck of cards very cool we just had the one remaining yesterday
morning for starlink group 124 always nice to see a daylight space launch complex 40 disappearing out of view there as it raced up towards stage separation flight 21 for booster 1076 and a super smooth signal for the touchdown on a shortfall of Gravitas now given all the excitement of the moonland emissions we've almost got weekly goodness to share here intuitive machines is obviously now just counting down the last few days for the im2 mission the launch opportunities start on Wednesday evening so yes keep an eye out for this huge event along with intuitive Mach Athena
Lander remember there is also NASA's lunar Trailblazer and a couple of cube sets hitching a ride on the same Falcon 9 now intuitive machines released this animated rundown of the mission just the other day and after watching it you really get a sense of the major Milestones that they're trying to tick off on this Mission Athena after launch will directly shoot itself towards the moon and will quickly Place itself into a lunar orbit they will attempt the landing around 7 days after it launches after landing Athena is going to be busy it's carrying a bunch
of exciting Rovers in fact there's great stuff on the Rovers in this animation you've got the mobile autonomous prospecting platform Rover from Luna Outpost it has a total mass I believe around 10 kg and will roll around at a top speed of 10 cm/ second it'll have its own multi-day Journey collecting data and mapping the nearby lunar surface next there's even a couple of fun tiny Rovers from Japan and MIT it'll also carry the micro NOA which I've just become much more excited about this is a tiny Luna Hopper which will jump around the lunar
surface collecting data I didn't know much about this lunar Hopper until this week but this is an awesome sub mission that would just be gravy if they can pull this off it's designed to touchdown particularly targeting permanently shadowed regions where sunlight never reaches this is because those areas might contain water ice right on the surface which is crucial for sustaining future human missions with just that alone you can not only create water you can create oxygen and Rocket Fuel now while that is out doing its thing we have NASA's Prime drill that I'm super excited
for essentially it's a demonstration on how feasible Institue resource utilization or isru will be and at the same time the experiment will measure the volatile content of the subsurface samples meanwhile ice space's resilience Lander which took a longer more efficient way to the Moon successfully performed a Luna flyby just recently it is now out in deep space before completing the orbital Maneuvers needed to bring it slowly back towards the moon before an orbit insertion that should happen sometime in May Firefly's Blue Ghost Land has also pulled off another slick maneuver firing its thrusters for 3
minutes and 18 seconds to drop into a lower orbit around the Moon we also got this jaw-dropping footage of the moon's Far Side from 120 km in altitude now they didn't label exactly where this was but looking around on a high resolution map of The Far Side bam there is this right there in the South with each pass over the far side of course there are comm's blackouts but as soon as it passes back into Earth's view the team download all this data as they prepare for the next big move Firefly is on track for
that March 2 landing as far as we know so just a little over a week to go my friends now it is well past time that we've talked about another fully reusable rocket other than Starship indeed Stoke spacers Nova is a design that I've been watching closely for a long time and we've seen them pushing forward at full speed here just days ago they unveiled the new modified version of their reusable upper stage which they've now named androma remember the old setup which we saw fly on the hopper test back in October of 2023 goodness
me where does the time go on the left here is the brand new andrometer 2 engine Stoke have made quite a few changes to it to make it much more efficient and has improved the overall design for better performance the stage now has 24 thrusters instead of the 30 but these have gotten just a little bigger one more big change as you might notice here is that the thrusters are now arranged on the outer circumference of the heat shield and the whole stage is curved with the thrust is now directly integrated onto the surface of
the Dome quite different to what we saw on the hopper now this second stage is going to be hot staged similar to Starship and you may see that the diameter of the second stage is larger than the booster I believe the stages will be attached with these inner pins here and the thrusters look to have enough room to fire directly into the atmosphere rather than directly into the top of the booster that should mean that they don't need any super thick shielding or any sort of hot staging ring like Starship now remember there is just
one engine here and the exhaust is literally shared around the 24 thrusters this engine test that we're watching here lasted for about 30 seconds at first I was confused about why the Flames ended up orange like this after all the hydrogen and oxygen used on the upper stage will mostly burn clear well Andy laps of the CEO mentioned later that they were spraying water in the plumes to cool them down before hitting the concrete this is apparently what's making them appear orange and fluffy looking it's also worth noting that the thrust structure is also hiding
the mark diamonds so he did mention that they would work on getting better imagery next time remember the heat shield is unique too they're going to run the cryogenic liquid hydrogen through the Dome of this heat shield and this is going to keep it cool boiling some of that propellant off which can then Simply Be vented when needed stok bace have raised a little over a quar billion US dollar in funding just last month and they're certainly going to need it with the speed that they're progressing they are at the same time of course getting
launch complex 14 down at the cape all ready for use meanwhile the work on Nova's first stage is also on a roll with the Zenith engine being tested over the past couple of months back in December the engine tested vertically at their new vertical test stand this engine is one of only two full flow staged combustion engines actively being tested the other of course being spacex's Raptor with seven of these highly efficient methane oxygen powered beasts the Nova's first stage should have just over 37 tons of thrust at liftoff now I am closely monitoring the
cuts that are believed to be coming for NASA this week you know me I don't typically like to get into political stuff but when it is to do with the future of space infrastructure well that's part of what affects everything we talk about look as with any government agency there are efficiency issues and we've talked a lot about various NASA projects numerous times that seem absurdly expensive anyway we had expected to see quite dramatic news of NASA Cuts as had been expected for several weeks but it seems for now at least those decisions have been
put on hold I'm wondering if Jared isaacman nominated for the agency lead wants to have the chance to be involved in this process but that is just speculation at this point it was expected that probation positions and other requested Cuts would mean a loss of around 10% of the workforce at Nasa so which just kind of waiting for that news to come finally rocket lab was back again this week for their 60th electron Mission fasten your space belts this was the second electron launch in just under two weeks and it was carrying black Sky's latest
high resolution gen 3 satellite to orbit this is the first to launch in this constellation and it's the introduction to their 35 CM high resolution satellites the aim of this project is to supercharge realtime space intelligence with sharper images faster data retrieval and as almost every piece of technology these days needs to include AI powered Insight whatever that means 55 minutes into the mission the kickstage successfully deployed the satellite there and yet another successful Mission down for Rocket lab so I hope you enjoyed this video if you did don't forget to hit subscribe so we
get to keep making them if you want to continue with more space goodness check out this video here next or maybe these videos thanks for watching all this way through my friends I will see you all in the next video
