Hey,
Wow, it’s June, when did that happen.
Anyway, C’mere to me…
Abort Zone Shannon 🚀
The Irish Coast Guard on Standby
I’m sure no one missed the Space X launch on Saturday evening, apologies for reminding everyone a million times.
The mission was a success, both for Space X in achieving their first crewed flight, and for NASA (the client) who could once again send astronauts up to the ISS using an American rocket flown from US soil, the first time since the shuttle was retired in 2011 and the first time ever from a commercially built spacecraft.
However, what you might not know is that the Irish Coast Guard was in fact on standby as Falcon 9 climbed into orbit.
One of the cool and stand out features of the Space X crew module, Dragon, is the new escape system.
In the event of a serious systems failure, the Dragon module will separate itself and blast away from the rocket using its own propulsion. Once away, it will then deploy it’s parachutes and descend as if it had just re-entered on a nominal return to Earth.
Despite the fact that Space X has been able to remarkably land and reuse it’s first stage boosters, it had to sacrifice one a few months ago, blowing up the booster in order to test the escape feature.
Image: Space X
This abort system adds another level of safety to the rockets, but in the unlikely event that they actually had to use it, it would splashdown in the Atlantic ocean, far off course, and crucially hundreds of kilometres away from help.
This is where the Irish Coast Guard comes in.
Due to the trajectory of this mission, there were 3 abort zones. For anyone who watched the first few minutes of the launch, you would have heard over the comms that Dragon entered each of these zones as it climbed.
Abort Zone Shannon is the final zone before orbit and is exactly as it implies, had the module had to abort, it would have splashed down somewhere off the South West coast of Ireland.
Image: Clare Herald
Also known as the DAEZ, Downrange Abort Exclusion Zone.
With both the Shannon and Waterford helicopters on standby, it is pretty cool that the Irish played a tiny tiny role in the mission.
Smile 😊
Saved 📷
Think 🌊
It's easier to think of medieval times in color than it is for the 40s…
That’s all 🤙🏽
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Until next week,
Guy