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Going inside NASA’s Clean Room for a rare look at a SpaceX payload

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NASA invited media to a very special opportunity to go inside their Clean Room at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is where satellites are meticulously prepared in the weeks leading up to their scheduled launch date. Of course, I was there, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!

The Press Accreditation Office is an unassuming building that’s located off the beaten path and a few miles outside KSC gates. It’s a convenient location for a large gathering of people that need to avoid traffic congestion. The building itself looks like an abandoned gas station without pumps, mostly vacant inside, except for a couple of tables and bathrooms. There’s really nothing inside – not even a coffee maker (I’m shocked by this). It serves its purpose perfectly though – get media personnel checked in and loaded onto a bus, quickly.

NASA’s Press Accreditation Office (Photo/Google Maps Street View)

I was anxious to go inside NASA’s Clean Room and catch a glimpse of SpaceX’s upcoming payload.

The payload and our Solar System’s latest remote camera is called ‘TESS’ – The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Technically speaking, it is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission designed to perform an all-sky survey to detect transiting planets around the closest brightest stars by monitoring their brightness with high precision. Simply put, it’s a satellite containing four insanely great cameras that will photograph the sky and detect planets around nearby stars!

After passing through the usual K-9 unit sniff test, I boarded a NASA bus and was taken through parts of the Kennedy Space Center that you don’t ever see while on the standard tour. We were traveling through heavily wooded back-of-the-property roads and for good reason. We were going to NASA’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility.

We were first escorted into the conference room, which is separated from the building containing the Clean Room. A bunch of swag-bags for press were being handed out, one for each of us, as we walked inside. The room was furnished with a large board-table with a huge flat-screen TV attached to the wall at the head of the table. Hanging on the walls were stunning high-resolution black and white prints of planets and moons, the same ones you’ve seen on the internet, evenly separated and precisely level. TESS mission experts were sitting at the table waiting for us to take our seats. As I sat down, I noticed some hardware on the table that we would soon be able to get our hands on.

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MIT’s George Ricker – TESS’ Principal Investigator promptly started his lecture about the details of the satellite and the mission. This would be my first MIT-level lecture and I was absolutely captivated because it was organized and explained logically. George is an excellent teacher, very articulate in his descriptions of everything and had the help of great animations on the screen.

You know that scene in Interstellar where the main characters stumble into ‘NASA’ and they’re given a lecture on the ‘anomaly’ that was discovered in our solar system? That’s the scene here, except this was reality – we are discovering distant planets around other Sun’s.

The scene from Interstellar that resembled the TESS lecture.
(Screencap credit : Nolan, C., Nolan, J., Thomas, E., Obst, L. R., McConaughey, M., Hathaway, A., Chastain, J., … Warner Home Video (Firm),. (2015). Interstellar.

There are a ton of impressive features of TESS that I can hardly pick a favorite to tell you about. It has four custom-made high-resolution cameras. The CCD’s (camera sensors) are the largest and most perfect sensors that have ever been developed for a spacecraft. The experts, luckily, had one extra sensor to pass around for us to get a hands-off, drool-worthy close-up look. If you know about full frame 35mm sensors – get a load of this one!

TESS camera custom-made CCD wafer full-size. (Photo/TomCross)

Next up was one of the extra lens-elements that are inside each of the four cameras. I keep a lens cloth in my pocket so once I received it I gave it a soft wipe-down and captured a few iPhone pictures of the different reflections in the lens coating. I’m still hoping for an answer about what this lens is coated with but I may never find out, though. But isn’t it intriguing?

Perhaps my favorite part of the lecture was learning about how they’re getting this satellite into orbit. This is where orbital dynamics becomes a bit like mixed martial arts with Newton’s laws of motion.

TESS is launching aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 with a very slim window of opportunity – about 1 minute per day because it has to be perfectly in sync with the orbit of our Moon. As George Ricker explained, “This is a type of orbit that is normally unstable. If you aren’t careful about the way you launch into this orbit, you’re almost guaranteed to hit the Moon within four years. So, there’s a delicate balance staying in this orbit and there’s been a lot of effort that has gone into figuring it out. If you actually manage to do this, it’s stable for decades!”

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TESS’ orbit outline. (Photo from TESS PDF file)

After transporting into space from Cape Canaveral, via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the satellite is going to orbit Earth three times, and during each of its closest approaches, the satellite’s hydrazine propulsion system is going to propel it faster, essentially pumping the orbit farther out until it reaches the distance of the Moon. They timed this approach perfectly so that TESS does a ‘lunar flyby’ that will swoop beneath the Moon and use its gravity to speed-up the spacecraft and change its inclination from an East to West orbit to a new North to South orbit the will travel above and below Earth and Moon.

The reason this orbit is so elegantly chosen is that there are 300-hours of unbroken observations for photography, almost non-existent Earth-Moon light pollution. The lens hoods, also, don’t have to deal with much light or toxic radiation levels that will often destroy electronics, thus being able to remain in this orbit for several decades without any help. Absolutely awesome.

So, let’s go see TESS in the clean room.

Bunny-suit selfie!

I was transported to a very tall building and put into a small group to get dressed into bunny-suits before entering the high-bay, Clean Room. They take ‘clean’ seriously. Before stepping into the dressing room, I was escorted to a shoe scrubbing machine that had large scrubby-wheels and a vacuum to capture the particles. Then, to another device that automatically put booties on my shoes.

As I walked into the clean room, there was a sticky doormat that grabbed any particles off my booties that I picked up on the way in. I was quickly fitted with a bunny suit “You look like a large, here you go,” said a facility employee while handing me a sealed bag with a clean suit inside. We were shown how to put the suit on. Then, we went over to the glove dispensary to be sized. I noticed that their gloves were incorrectly labeled S, M, and L, according to NASA lore. I asked the employees, “Do you know about the issue this caused with the condom sizes astronauts chose?” They did not. So I was able to teach the workers a fun-fact about astronauts.

See, astronauts have egos, all of them contain the ‘Right Stuff’ but not all of them wear the same sized condoms for their spacesuit urine bags. All astronauts chose ‘Large’, not wanting to hurt their egos. Sometimes their urine condoms leaked into their spacesuit so NASA came up with a brilliant plan: Change the names of the condoms from Small, Medium, and Large to Large, Huge, and Gigantic so that all astronauts chose their appropriate sizes. It worked! But, in this case, the gloves were not labeled this way. Of course, I asked for Large. The room burst into laughter.

An employee handed me an alcohol-soaked microfiber cloth and told me to wipe down my gear perfectly before going to the next cleaning-station. This was followed by a visit to an ‘Air Shower’. It’s literally what it sounds like. There’s a small rectangular-shaped room with nozzles on the ceiling and walls that eject high-powered air all over our body. Vents in the floor sucked particles through a filter. After this final cleanse, we were checked with a blacklight … ok, just kidding. After the air shower we were granted access to the room that TESS was located: NASA’s high-bay!

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The air shower entrance-exit to the clean room. (Photo/TomCross)

The room was absolutely drenched in disorienting orange sodium lighting – a nightmare to deal with for photography and white balance but TESS was in its own protected E.T. style clean area beneath bright fluorescent lights.

In the limited time available, we were able to interview satellite experts and take as many photos as we could while technicians worked on the satellite. I love hardware images, so I set up my tripod and used my Miops Mobile remote to photograph detailed close-ups of the intricate components.

 

Wide angle image of the high-bay, TESS inside its own clean-room. (Photo/TomCross)

I was politely warned to not take any photographs of the hardware surrounding the satellite and keep my lens pointed only at the satellite in order to not accidentally capture something I’m not supposed to. I was very respectful and got some incredible images of things you typically will never see unless you worked on it yourself.

The spacecraft itself is quite small, there’ll be plenty of room remaining in the Falcon 9 fairing.

It’s not often I get to see a payload inside a NASA Clean Room. These are always incredible experiences.

Frequently, a mission’s importance is diminished by the fact that we’re unable to see what’s going to space and what its purpose is, mainly weather and communications satellites. They often have state-of-the-art technology on board, which is likely the reason why they want to keep it under wraps. I’m really looking forward to photographing this launch in April now that I have actually seen the payload in person.

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After my time was up photographing TESS, I changed out of the bunny-suit and was brought back to the Accreditation Office. I wasted no time getting on my way to see Falcon Heavy’s Side Booster that was temporarily on display at Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Center.

A beautiful sunset eclipsed by SpaceX’s equally beautiful flight-proven Falcon Heavy booster. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)

Have a good one,

Tom Cross

 

 

 

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Tesla Cybertruck takes a bump from epic failing Dodge Charger

The Cybertruck seemed unharmed by the charging Charger.

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Credit: Hammer_of_something/Reddit

There comes a time in a driver’s life when one is faced with one’s limitations. For the driver of a Dodge Charger, this time came when he lost control and crashed into a Tesla Cybertruck–an absolute epic fail. 

A video of the rather unfortunate incident was shared on the r/TeslaLounge subreddit.

Charging Charger Fails

As could be seen in the video, which was posted on the subreddit by Model Y owner u/Hammer_of_something, a group of teens in a Dodge Charger decided to do some burnouts at a Tesla Supercharger. Unfortunately, the driver of the Charger failed in his burnout or donut attempt, resulting in the mopar sedan going over a curb and bumping a charging Cybertruck.

Ironically, the Dodge Charger seemed to have been parked at a Supercharger stall before its driver decided to perform the failed stunt. This suggests that the vehicle was likely ICE-ing a charging stall before it had its epic fail moment. Amusingly enough, the subreddit member noted that the Cybertruck did not seem like it took any damage at all despite its bump. The Charger, however, seemed like it ran into some trouble after crashing into the truck.

Alleged Aftermath

As per the the r/TeslaLounge subreddit member, the Cybertruck owner came rushing out to his vehicle after the Dodge Charger crashed into it. The Model Y owner then sent over the full video of the incident, which clearly showed the Charger attempting a burnout, failing, and bumping into the Cybertruck. The Cybertruck owner likely appreciated the video, in part because it showed the driver of the Dodge Charger absolutely freaking out after the incident.

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The Cybertruck is not an impregnable vehicle, but it can take bumps pretty well thanks to its thick stainless steel body. Based on this video, it appears that the Cybertruck can even take bumps from a charging Charger, all while chilling and charging at a Supercharger. As for the teens in the Dodge, they likely had to provide a long explanation to authorities after the incident, since the cops were called to the location.

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Anti-Elon Musk group crushes Tesla Model 3 with Sherman tank–with unexpected results

Ironically enough, the group’s video ended up highlighting something very positive for Tesla.

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Credit: Led By Donkeys/X

Anti-Elon Musk protesters and critics tend to show their disdain for the CEO in various ways, but a recent video from political action group Led By Donkeys definitely takes the cake when it comes to creativity.

Ironially enough, the group’s video also ended up highlighting something very positive for Tesla.

Tank vs. Tesla

In its video, Led By Donkeys featured Ken Turner, a 98-year-old veteran who served in the British army during World War II. The veteran stated that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is “using his immense power to support the far-right in Europe, and his money comes from Tesla cars.” 

He also noted that he had a message for the Tesla CEO: “We’ve crushed fascism before and we’ll crush it again.” To emphasize his point, the veteran proceeded to drive a Sherman tank over a blue Tesla Model 3 sedan, which, of course, had a plate that read “Fascism.” 

The heavy tank crushed the Model 3’s glass roof and windows, much to the delight of Led By Donkeys’ commenters on its official YouTube channel. But at the end of it all, the aftermath of the anti-Elon Musk demonstration ended up showcasing something positive for the electric vehicle maker.

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Tesla Model 3 Tanks the Tank?

As could be seen from the wreckage of the Tesla Model 3 after its Sherman encounter, only the glass roof and windows of the all-electric sedan were crushed. Looking at the wreckage of the Model 3, it seemed like its doors could still be opened, and everything on its lower section looked intact.

Considering that a standard M4 Sherman weighs about 66,800 to 84,000 pounds, the Model 3 actually weathered the tank’s assault really well. Granted, the vehicle’s suspension height before the political action group’s demonstration suggests that the Model 3’s high voltage battery had been removed beforehand. But even if it hadn’t been taken off, it seemed like the vehicle’s battery would have survived the heavy ordeal without much incident.

This was highlighted in comments from users on social media platform X, many of whom noted that a person in the Model 3 could very well have survived the ordeal with the Sherman. And that, ultimately, just speaks to the safety of Tesla’s vehicles. There is a reason why Teslas consistently rank among the safest cars on the road, after all.

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Tesla Model 3 driver is using FSD to travel to Mt. Everest Base Camp

The ambitious, nearly 4,000-kilometer (2,485-mile) Tesla FSD journey is being livestreamed on Chinese social media.

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Credit: Douyin 老高懂电车

Count on Tesla drivers in China to push Full Self Driving (FSD) as far as it could go. As could be seen in videos posted on Chinese social media, a brave Model 3 owner is currently going on an epic journey from Henan Province to the base camp of Mt. Everest on FSD.

Recent posts from the Model 3 driver suggest that the ambitious destination may be within reach.

Epic FSD Journey

As noted by Tesla owner-enthusiast Aaron Li, the journey from Henan Province to the base camp of Mt. Everest spans almost 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles). The journey itself is epic, with stunning vistas and roads that require some drivers to bring oxygen canisters with them. The fact that it is being done using FSD makes it extra impressive. 

Based on the videos that have been recently shared, the Model 3 running FSD seems to be nearing the Everest Base Camp. There seems to be a good chance that the Tesla Model 3 may reach its destination this Friday.

Previous Everest Trips

This is not the first time that a Tesla has driven to Mt. Everest’s base camp.  That would be a Model 3 that was driven in September 2020. That vehicle, which went on a long 5,500 km (3,400-mile) journey, was manually driven to its destination. 

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In April 2021, Tesla China announced that it has completed the buildout of 11 Supercharger stations in the picturesque route from Chengdu to Tingri. This route would allow drivers to reach the base camp of Mt. Everest. Sure enough, in July 2022, Tesla China shared a video of two Teslas—a Model X and Model Y—reaching the Everest base camp without any issues. Numerous other Tesla drivers have since taken on the long, picturesque journey.

Check out this Tesla Model Y’s journey to the Mt. Everest base camp in the video below.

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