The DoD apparently have concerns over Vulcan's readiness. That’s not surprising, considering that SRM issue on their debut flight. Remember, thats Northrop Grumman’s problem, not Lockheed Martin’s. But with their next GPS Block III flight coming up, they decided to take the opportunity to expand the Space Force’s Rapid Response capabilities. And also cut in SpaceX. So they bought a Falcon 9 rocket to see how fast they could prepare and launch a satellite. Instead of two years, as is typical, they had it ready in six months. GPS Block III-7 Sally Ride launched Monday night at 7:51pm from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. In exchange for the flight move, Vulcan will get a GPS launch originally scheduled for SpaceX.
64 years ago today, Mercury-Redstone 1A was launched from Pad 5, Cape Canaveral. The first time they attempted this launch, back in November, it was scrubbed because of leaks in the helium pressurant in the Mercury spacecraft's reaction control system. Gee, how does that sound familiar right now? The second launch attempt was one of the least spectacular launch failures in spaceflight history, as the Redstone's engines shut down immediately after liftoff, resulting in the rocket going up exactly four inches and setting back down on the launch pad. I wonder if SpaceX studied that as part of their booster recovery research. As for this launch, the suborbital flight reached an apogee of 185 km, and splashed down about 480 km downrange, for a flight time of 15 minutes, 30 seconds. The spacecraft operated exactly as planned, and the program was ready to progress to carrying living astronauts. Though before a human would fly it, it would be test-flown with an ape aboard. The capsule was originally on display at Ames Research Center, but was moved to the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island in 2022.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/...-further-delayed-until-late-march-2024-12-18/ Sunny and Butch are heroes! What's another month anyhow? Jesus! A one week trip has now turned into 9months and then likely another 3 years of recovery.
Launch Window for New Glenn (NG-1) opens December 31rst at 11:30 PM - 2:30 AM ESThttps://t.co/p4NWZtKvFy pic.twitter.com/S5IRgGwGP4— ChadDude301🇨🇦🌌 (@ChadDude301) December 23, 2024 Blue Origin is currently planning to launch the Blue Ring debut payload late next Tuesday, December 30, with a launch window opening at 11:30pm EST. A backup window opens at the same time on New Year's Eve. So it could be the final launch of 2024, or the first launch of 2025. There's just two problems with that. 1) They haven't completed their static fire yet. 2) They don't have their launch license from the FAA yet. The rocket has been rolled out to Pad 36, Cape Canaveral, multiple times this month for testing, to potentially include a static fire. But they haven't gotten all the way there yet. One would think that the first stage synergy with Vulcan would assist with any issues. But then again, Pad 36 is new infrastructure. It's not likely the FAA will issue a launch license without a static fire. So it's not likely New Glenn would launch before the year ends. ******** Falcon 9 has been having some issues with their second launch for Astranis. Booster B1077.17 has been having some issues with its engines, leading to multiple technical scrubs. But they are currently aiming for a launch early Sunday morning at Midnight EST from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. Though this is also coinciding with a planned Starlink launch from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center, which will most likely be delayed at least slightly. ******** India has one more launch planned, with a PSLV-CA rocket launching the SpaDeX experiment. It will be a pair of satellites which will practice autonomous rendezvous and docking in preparation for Gaganyaan and the Bharatiya Antariksha Station. The launch is currently planned for next Monday at 11am EST.
Michael Anderson was born on December 25, 1959, in Plattsburgh, New York. His father was in the U.S. Air Force, and eventually transferred to Fairchild AFB near Spokane. Michael would graduate from Cheney High School in 1977, then went to Washington, where he graduated with a double bachelor's in physics and astronomy in 1981. Out of Washington, Michael would be commissioned in the Air Force. Initially involved in communications maintenance, Michael would take the long way toward becoming a pilot, being selected for pilot training in 1986 at Vance AFB in Oklahoma. He would specialize in the Boeing EC-135, a command and control aircraft based on the Boeing 707 jetliner, and would rise through the ranks of Strategic Air Command. While stationed at Offut AFB in Omaha, he earned his master's in physics from Creighton University in 1990, thereafter becoming a flight instructor. As SAC was winding down with the end of the Cold War, he would pivot to training tanker pilots, since the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker is essentially the same plane anyway. In 1992, he would be stationed at his original home base, Plattsburgh AFB in New York, continuing as a tanker instructor. Michael was selected to NASA in the mission specialist track of Group 15 in 1994. He would play a role in the Flight Support Branch of the Astronaut Office. His first mission was STS-89, a Shuttle-Mir mission aboard Atlantis in January 1998. He would be assigned as payload commander for STS-107, a standalone SPACEHAB mission aboard Columbia in January 2003. It was the first flight of the SPACEHAB Research Double Module, and would also carry the FREESTAR bridge with three Getaway Special canisters carrying six experiments. We already know how this story ends. Michael died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, aged 43. He left a wife and two children. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His final rank in the Air Force was lieutenant colonel. Among the things named for Michael Anderson, which include State Route 904 in Washington, and multiple elementary schools that he attended during his father's Air Force career, is a plaza in front of the science center at Creighton University. The student body wanted to name the science center itself after him, but alumni had bought naming rights right before Anderson died. The current arrangement was a compromise. The school's physics department also has a scholarship in his honor. A bronze statue of him was erected in Spokane in 2005, with a copy placed at the Museum of Flight in Seattle in 2009.
It's official: the debut launch of New Glenn will not take place in 2024. It is now penned in for early Monday morning, January 6, at 1am EST. Of course, this is pending a static fire, which still hasn't happened yet. Some watchers have been wondering whether New Glenn would beat Starship flight test 7. That launch is currently penned in for Friday, January 10, at 5pm EST. In fact, back on December 17, the FAA gave SpaceX open authorization to launch Starship rockets so long as a "mishap" did not take place during a launch. But for more on the Blue Ring Pathfinder mission: Blue Origin will attempt to catch the New Glenn first stage on their own drone platform, named Jacklyn.
STATIC FIRE! Blue Origin New Glenn conducts its first fully integrated Static Fire test at LC-36.https://t.co/tANS0dX6yf pic.twitter.com/pQ97aiA6sK— NSF - NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) December 28, 2024 Blue Origin finally conducted the static fire of its fully-integrated New Glenn rocket last night. They were apparently waiting for the FAA to grant its launch license, which was finally issued yesterday. The seven BE-4 methalox engines ignited and ran at full thrust for 13 seconds. Initial report suggest a good burn, but there are rumors that there were some concerning data points that might need to be worked through. That wouldn't be surprising with clustering seven BE-4 engines together. We saw the difficulties SpaceX had clustering 33 Raptor engines. It's definitely a step in the right direction for a possible January 6 launch. ******** Parker Solar Probe has made history.After seven days of silence, Parker has resumed communication with Earth, confirming it's healthy after soaring just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface — the closest a human-made object has ever been to a star.https://t.co/YgLBDsRlGy pic.twitter.com/UMCNq0BzhA— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) December 27, 2024 Also yesterday, the Parker Solar Probe emerged from radio silence after its first closest fly-by of the Sun on Christmas Eve. Originally planned for 6.9 million km at its final perihelion, the probe's ultimate final orbit placed its perihelion much closer. NASA is now saying 3.8 million miles, or 6.1 million km. These orbits are going to come very fast now, with a new perihelion approach just under every three months. Four are expected for 2025.
One more Starlink launch from Pad 39A, Kennedy Space Center, at 12:39am EST this morning means it's a wrap for 2024. A total of 261 orbital launches were attempted, with 6 complete failures and 2 partial failures. One launch for North Korea, a new rocket which failed. 3 launches for the European Union. 1 Vega, 1 Vega C, and the debut of Ariane 6, which was one of the partial failures. 4 launches for Iran. 2 Qaem, 2 Simorgh, all successful. 5 launches for India. 3 PSLV, 1 GSLV Mk.2, and 1 SSLV. 7 launches for Japan. Two H-IIA, three H3, and two private KAIROS rockets which both failed. 17 launches for Russia. 15 Soyuz-2, and two Angara. 68 launches for the People's Republic of China. 49 Long March rockets, with a partial failure for a Long March 2C. 5 Ceres, 5 Kuaizhou, 4 Kinetica (1 failure), 2 Jielong, 1 Zhuque, 1 Gravity, and 1 Hyperbola (it failed). And 156 launches for the United States, including 15 Electron launches for New Zealand (a 16th launched from MARS in Virginia). The final Delta IV. One Firefly. The first two Vulcan. Two Atlas V. And 136 of those launches were from SpaceX. 134 Falcon 9 (1 failure), and two Starship. Parker Solar Probe is flying at a significant fraction of the speed of light over the surface of the Sun. Lucy made its second fly-by of Earth on December 13, and is on its final cruise to the trojan asteroids of Jupiter. Europa Clipper began its journey chasing JUICE to Jupiter's Galilean moons. 2025 is when things get really interesting. There are two lunar landing probes planned just for January. The New Glenn rocket is planned to debut within the next two weeks. It looks like Vast-1 will become the first commercial space station, with its debut module planned to launch this year. And with launch cadence expected to increase for Starship, the next big test is the orbital fuel transfer test between two Starships, a critical link for the Starship HLS which will eventually land a crew on the Moon with Artemis 3. Though that might be beaten out by Elon's designs for Mars. His intended plan is to send a Starship to Mars in 2026. And potentially land humans on Mars as soon as 2030. Only 12 years late based on the designs of the original Space Exploration Initiative based on the Ride Report.
One of the major features on the largest natural satellite of the Solar System, Ganymede, is Galileo Regio. It is a large rounded dark region in the northern hemisphere. For the longest time, no one ever really thought too much of it. Though exogeologists suspected Ganymede was pummeled by a storm of meteorites during the first billion years of the Solar System's life. While everyone was looking for things to keep themselves busy during the Covid pandemic in 2020, a team of astronomers in Japan took the opportunity to study Ganymede's geology. And they have a theory: They believe Galileo Regio was formed by a gigantic impactor. One that could've been more than 180 km across. Once the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer reaches its final destination entering orbit around Ganymede in 2034, it will have a good opportunity to get good close imagery of the moon. They will be able to test the impactor theory. In addition, if proven, they will see its connection to the moon's hypothesized subsurface ocean. That's another thing that's been getting a lot of attention throughout the solar system, as they have been hypothesized on a lot more moons in the outer solar system. In addition to Europa, Enceladus, and Ganymede, they may also exist on Ceres, Callisto, Titan, Tethys, Mimas, Miranda, Ariel, Triton, and even Pluto and other trans-Neptunian objects. And if there is liquid water, there is always a chance that it could potentially harbor life in some form.
It appears the first launch of 2025 will be the Emirati comsat Thuraya 4-NGS, which is planned to be launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket tomorrow evening at 8:27pm EST. That will be followed by the first Starlink launch of the year Sunday afternoon at 12:10pm EST. Both will be from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. ******** New Glenn's inaugural flight, with the Blue Ring Pathfinder space tug test flight, is still penciled in for early Tuesday morning at 1am EST. If the launch itself at least succeeds, then that will permit its first few payloads to be cleared. The Blue Moon lunar lander is currently penciled in for March, but its targeted landing location is not yet known. EscaPADE is currently planned only for Spring 2025. And its first launch for Project Kuiper is only listed to launch this year. Blue Origin's plans will begin to coalesce once the first launch succeeds. ******** Starship test flight 7, which is planned for next Friday at 5pm EST, will feature Booster 14 and Ship 33. Ship 33 will be the first Block 2 Starship, which will feature redesigned forward flaps and 25% more propellant. While Ship 33 will use Raptor 2 engines, Ship 34 will use Raptor 3, which will improve engine shielding and increase thrust by more than 20%.
53 years ago today, Vasily Mishin was undergoing an audit of TsKBEM with the VVS. The N1 rocket was finally ready for a fresh round of testing after the catastrophic failures of 1969. Mishin was preparing its first test flight. He said he could launch up to five N1's in 1971 over the next two years, culminating in the first Soviet manned lunar landing in March 1973. But VVS was still resisting an Indian Ocean splashdown for the L3 spacecraft. On a different front, they were also resisting an initial 30-day mission. And in general, Mishin was not happy with cosmonauts not training as actual pilots. Though that's a bit more understandable considering what happened with Yuri Gagarin.
In the 13th year of this thread, there are some people that I wonder how I haven't mentioned them so often. I'm sure there are some I haven't mentioned at all that were probably worth mentioning. Oh well... Happy 77th birthday to NASA astronaut Guy Gardner. Born in suburban Lynchburg, Virginia, he graduated high school at age 17 and went to Air Force, receiving a triple bachelor's in astronautics, math, and engineering sciences in 1969. He then got a master's in astronautics from Purdue in 1970. From there, he trained at MacDill AFB in Florida with the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II before doing 177 combat missions in Vietnam in 1972. He would spend the rest of the 1970s in various instructor roles, including graduating from Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB in 1975, and being an instructor there afterward. In 1978, he began a two-year stint in training command at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, prior to be selected to NASA in the pilot track of Group 9 in 1980. During his time in the Astronaut Office, Guy was heavily involved in development for Space Station Freedom. His original mission plan was to be pilot for the first polar-orbit shuttle flight aboard Discovery in July 1986. Naturally, this did not happen. Instead, he would be one of the first rookie astronauts to fly in the Challenger RTF when he piloted Atlantis in STS-27, a DoD satellite deployment mission, in December 1988. (The other rookie on that flight was Bill Shepherd.) Guy would fly Columbia in December 1990 as pilot of STS-35, the remanifested ASTRO-1 mission. After STS-35, he left NASA and returned to the Air Force, serving as commandant of Air Force Test Pilot School until retiring as a Colonel in 1995. After his service commitment ended, he returned to NASA and spent a year in charge of the Shuttle-Mir program. But in 1996, he transferred to the Federal Aviation Administration, where he was put in charge of aviation safety, spending time at Atlantic City International Airport, and then FAA Headquarters at the Pentagon. Leaving the federal government for good in 1998, Guy would enter education, teaching in suburban DC for several years before taking administrative roles at Purdue in 2004, serving as commandant of Riverside Miltary Academy from 2006-2009, and then serving as President of Williamson College of the Trades from 2009-2013. He is married, and has three children.
SpaceX completed two Starlink launches from Cape Canaveral on Monday and Wednesday. They will launch their seventh set of Starshield satellites tonight at 10:52pm EST from Pad 4E, Vandenberg. ******** Starship flight test 7 has been delayed to Monday afternoon at 5pm EST. Another planned test for Ship 33 will be the deployment of Starlink satellites. Ten boilerplates matching the mass and shape of Starlink V3 satellites will be in the new cargo area. The deployment mechanism has been described as being like a Pez dispenser. The boilerplates will re-enter behind Ship 33, which is planned for another soft landing in the Indian Ocean. In the meantime, Booster 14 is planned to be caught back at the Orbital Test Stand at Starbase.
One of the things that Blue Origin is lacking experience in going into the debut flight of New Glenn is experience with landing on the high seas. And things are rough in the Atlantic right now. Blue Origin delayed the Blue Ring Pathfinder launch to early Sunday morning in search of calmer seas. It will be the same launch window opening at 1am EST. ******** That hasn't stopped SpaceX from holding onto their next Starlink flight, still set for 10:27am EST this morning from Pad 40, Cape Canaveral. Booster B1067 will be looking to land for a record 25th time.
Valentin Glushko was born on August 2, 1908, in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire. He got interested in spaceflight due to reading the novels of Jules Verne, and corresponded with Konstantin Tsiolovsky as a teenager. He apprenticed in various machining trades, and also experimented in explosives using a bomb he found discarded by the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. Finding specialized college not to his liking, he dropped out of Leningrad Tech at 20, and instead trained at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. He would spend the next several years working with the engineers that would later build the Soviet rocket program. But not before he stabbed several in the back during the Great Purge in 1938. Not that it saved him, since they were all betrayed by higher powers. After several years in the gulags, Valentin spent the Great Patriotic War working on liquid-fueled rockets. He and Sergei Korolev worked on the Lavochkin La-7R rocket-powered fighter plane to defend Moscow during Operation Barbarossa. After the war, they would piecemeal the scraps left by Operation Paperclip, converting the V-2 into their first ballistic missile, the R-1. Eventually, Valentin was put in charge of OKB-456. which would develop kerolox engines; particularly the RD-107, which would power the legendary R-7 Semyorka ICBM being built by Sergei Korolev. Eventually, Korolev got wind of Glushko's betrayal in the Great Purge, and it would be a poison pill for the Soviet part of the Space Race. One of the biggest gripes between them was Valentin's insistence that liquid hydrogen would not be a sustainable rocket fuel. This was one of the many complications that fraught the development of the N1 moon rocket. After all the failures of OKB-1 and TsKBEM under Korolev's designated successor, Vasily Mishin, Leonid Brezhnev himself consolidated Soviet space efforts into NPO Energia in 1974, and put Glushko in charge. Upon re-evaluation, Glushko finally relented and began to develop the Energia rocket to be the core stage of the Soviet space shuttle using liquid hydrogen as its fuel. But development issues would persist. Energia would not fly until 1987. While the rocket performed flawlessly, its payload failed to reach orbit due to its own issues. The Soviet space shuttle, Buran, would finally fly in November 1988. Glushko died 36 years ago today, aged 80. He was married at least three times, and left four children. He is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
70 years ago today, an alternative was proposed as a backup for the SM-65 Atlas ICBM program. U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Bernard Schreiver, who had just taken over the Western Development Division (a predecessor to what is now the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command), initially thought of a high-end bomber aircraft, initially referred to as the B-68. As it became clear that ballistic missiles were going to be faster for that purpose, they pivoted to developing a complimentary backup missile system, and it became the SM-68, and later HGM-25, Titan ICBM.
Rough seas for recovery drone Jacklyn kept the first New Glenn rocket on the ground this morning. Although a new launch date hasn't been announced, the 45th Weather Squadron has issued a weather forecast for a launch that would take place at 1am EST tomorrow morning. It gives a launch site probability of only 30%, but 48 hours later (early Thursday morning) it's up to 90% with only low-to-moderate recovery risk. ******** The first lunar lander mission of 2025 has turned into a double feature, as iSpace's HAKUTO-R Mission 2 with the RESILIENCE lander and Firefly's Blue Ghost lander will both be launched atop the same Falcon 9 rocket early Wednesday morning at 1:11am EST. While Blue Ghost is headed to Mare Crisium, RESILIENCE is headed to Mare Frigoris, the long lava plain high in the Near Side's northern hemisphere that acts as the brows for the Face of the Moon. ******** I totally didn't notice that an issue has led to a delay in the final orbital capture of BepiColombo. The spacecraft suffered a propulsion system issue during a mid-course correction on April 26, 2024. As a result, it will need to remain in its chase in Mercury's orbit for an additional 11 months. On 8 January, at 06:59 CET, Bepi, Mio and MTM got as close as 295 km to Mercury’s surface. This sixth flyby is the last time the #BepiColombo trio greet the planet together 👉 https://t.co/jheNFY2pQE pic.twitter.com/9cVnRqOrds— BepiColombo (@BepiColombo) January 8, 2025 It did complete its sixth fly-by of Mercury last Wednesday, and is now on its final chase of Mercury. It is now planned to enter its final orbit around Mercury in November 2026.
The double launch of the Blue Ghost and RESILIENCE lunar landers succeeded early this morning at 1:11am EST. Both landers are communicating with Earth, and are planned for long transits to the Moon. Blue Ghost M1 is planned to land at Mare Crisium on March 2, while RESILIENCE is planned to land at Mare Frigoris in late May, essentially three lunar days after Blue Ghost M1.
New Glenn safely reached its intended orbit during today's NG-1 mission, accomplishing our primary objective. The second stage is in its final orbit following two successful burns of the BE-3U engines. The Blue Ring Pathfinder is receiving data and performing well. We lost the… pic.twitter.com/MmDlCb6AVj— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) January 16, 2025 The first New Glenn rocket lifted off this morning at 2:03am EST from Pad 36, Cape Canaveral. The launch was lumbering, taking 90 seconds to go supersonic. I don't know how heavy the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload is supposed to be, but it took over 12 1/2 minutes to achieve orbit. A second firing of the second stage's BE-3U engines achieve its target MEO altitude, and Blue Origin is communicating with the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload. The first stage, however, was lost. The nature of the landing failure is not yet known, but telemetry cut out during the re-entry burn at an altitude of 84,000 feet and a speed of 4,285 mph.
Despite what happened to the new Mark 2 Starship last week, SpaceX is still looking to push the envelope a bit. Their latest Starlink launch from Vandenberg, planned for 10:35am EST this morning, is carrying 27 Starlink V2 satellites. That's the most it's carried from Vandenberg in a while.
56 years ago today, the Soviet Union was celebrating Soyuz 4 and 5 in Moscow, with the first transfer of humans from one spacecraft to another. However, the head of cosmonaut training, Nikolai Kamanin, who was arriving in Moscow from Baikonur Cosmodrome, was in no mood to celebrate. Following Apollo 8 just a month previous, he was certain that the Americans were now destined to win the race to the Moon. The reasons were widespread, from Sergei Korolev and Vasili Mishin's insistence on automated spacecraft to mismanagement by government officials Leonid Smirnov and Dmitri Ustinov. Still, work pressed on to try to get the massive N-1 rocket off the ground.
William Pogue was born on January 23, 1930, in Okemah, Oklahoma. Although he self-identified as Choctaw, there is no genealogical proof to corroborate that. After getting a bachelor's in education from Oklahoma Baptist in 1951, he chose to join the Air Force cadet program, and would fly 43 combat missions in the waning months of the Korean War. After spending a few years with the Thunderbirds aerobatics team, then getting a master's in math from Oklahoma State in 1960, he would spend several years as a professor at Air Force. He applied to be part of the New Nine astronaut group, but was denied due to lack of test pilot experience. So in 1965, he cross-trained with the Royal Air Force, and graduated from the Empire Test Pilots' School, after which he became an instructor at Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards AFB. Bill would finally be picked to NASA with the Original 19 in 1966. He would serve on support crews for several lunar missions, and would be CAPCOM for Apollo 7. It's believe he would've been CM pilot for Apollo 19. But he would eventually serve as CM pilot for Skylab 4 in late 1973. He retired from NASA and the Air Force (as a colonel) in September 1975. From there, he became Vice President of Jim Irwin's High Flight Foundation, and also did various jobs as a consultant and author. Some of his consultant work was for Boeing and Martin Marietta in connection with Space Station Freedom. Bill died at his home in Cocoa Beach on March 3, 2014, aged 84. He left his third wife, and three children from his first marriage. He was cremated, and his ashes were spread in a Celestis launch atop a Falcon Heavy rocket as part of the STP-2 launch on June 25, 2019.
This evening at 8:34pm EST, a Falcon 9 rocket will launch SpainSat NG I. The satellite was designed by HISDESAT, a consortium led by Spanish comsat company Hispasat, to provide secure government and military communications to Spain. It will replace XTAR-EUR. What is most interesting about SpainSat NG is that it is designed with defenses from space warfare, with the ability to neutralize targeted inference and resist EMP from high-altitude nuclear explosions. Booster B1073.21 will be expended in the launch. ******** The first H3 rocket launch of 2025 is scheduled for early Saturday morning, carrying the sixth Quasi-Zenith navigation satellite, Michibiki 6. It will join Michibiki 3 in a geostationary orbit, this one at 90.5°E. It will also piggy-back a space situational awareness payload for the U.S. Space Force. Launch time from Pad Y2, Tanegashima, is a two-hour window opening at 3:30am EST. ******** The second Ariane 6 launch has finally been penned in. It will carry the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite for CNES into a polar SSO. Launch is scheduled for February 26 at 11:24am EST from Pad A-4, Guiana Space Centre.
61 years ago today, the fifth Saturn I rocket, SA-5, was launched from Pad 37B, Cape Kennedy. Following four single-stage suborbital flights, this was the first Saturn I rocket to carry the S-IV cryogenic upper stage. It was powered by six Rocketdyne RL-10 engines, the same engine used in the Centaur upper stage. Its successor, the S-IVB, would be powered by a single Rocketdyne J-2, which provided twice the thrust in a single engine as six RL-10's. Stage separation went perfectly, with small retrorockets on the S-I first stage keeping it from recontacting the S-IV, and ullage motors on the upper stage settling fuel within at the aft of its tanks. Eight camera pods filmed stage separation. They separated once depleted, and were recovered in the North Atlantic 800 miles downrange. The S-IV succeeded in making it to orbit, leaving a nosecone from a Jupiter missile that contained about 38,000 pounds of water as ballast in a 160x460 mile orbit. It was the largest object ever orbited at the time, and didn't re-enter until April 1966. Making orbit was actually considered a bonus for this launch. But it proved that the United States had caught up to the Soviet Union in its ability to place large payloads in orbit.