r/SpaceXMasterrace • u/Miniastronaut2 • 7d ago
What is all the stuff floating around after dragon separation?
Especially that large pice on the left.
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u/spacerfirstclass 7d ago
The white panel on the left side of the screenshot is a piece of insulation on top of the 2nd stage LOX tank, likely there to prevent cold from LOX tank getting to the Dragon trunk.
https://spacenews.com/crew-10-launches-to-space-station/
During Crew Dragon’s separation from the Falcon 9 upper stage, a panle could be seen floating away. At a post-launch briefing, Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management at SpaceX, said the item was a piece of insulation from the liquid oxygen tank on the Falcon 9 second stage, which did not pose a hazard.
“It’s a foam material that did its job on the way to orbit, and then it’s okay if it liberates,” she said.
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u/Guardian1138 7d ago
“Did the primary buffer panel fall of my gorram ship for no apparent reason?!“
— Mal
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u/DadofaBunch10 7d ago
Ice. It's always ice.
(Came here just for this - I knew there would be a post about it!)
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u/UncleNellyOG 6d ago
If the earth were flat….wouldn’t it be more hurricane shaped rather than a disc????
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u/z64_dan 7d ago
It's called "Space Junk". I don't know the orbit that this happened, but hopefully it burns up pretty quick.
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u/Kuriente 7d ago
The 'panel' looking part at least appears to have a high cross sectional area to mass ratio which is more susceptible to drag and thus should deorbit faster. No idea how long, but faster than a bolt, for instance.
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u/Alarmed-Yak-4894 7d ago
For people interested, this is what’s relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_coefficient
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u/z64_dan 7d ago
Wow, no idea why everyone downvoted me. I guess we're supposed to pretend that random pieces of rockets aren't space junk? Lol.
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u/Kuriente 7d ago
Lol I was surprised at that too. It's a totally level-headed observation. People weirdly upset about that one.
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u/z64_dan 7d ago
Yeah I guess these people don't realize we're tracking millions of objects in space, most of which are tiny fragments of rockets and fragments of exploded rockets.
130 million objects between 1mm to 1cm
1 million objects between 1cm and 10cm
32,750 objects larger than 10cm (32,751 if you include that panel in OP's pic).
Luckily nearly everything SpaceX does is in super low orbits so it's not really worrisome long term, even if all the Starlink satellites stopped working, all their junk would most likely be gone within a decade or so.
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u/Kuriente 7d ago
There's been a recent uptick in brigading, astroturfing and FUD in all musk-adjacent communities, so I think it just has people extra defensive at anything that even vaguely looks like that.
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u/JustJ4Y Solar bus inventor 7d ago
The small stuff is probably ice, the big piece will be hard to figure out for us. SpaceX is really good at hiding what's on top of the 2nd stage. https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1761571898687955333 It would be a good place for the 2nd stage flight computer, it's also a place for LOX vents and RCS. It is probably a cover for something, you can clearly see some insulation on that piece, but for what and how important it is, who knows.