What is this ring-shaped part falling from Starship SN9 after launch?

Asked Feb 06 '21 at 09:22

Active Feb 06 '21 at 13:57

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The picture shown is a screenshot during the recent launch of SpaceX's SN9 from a live stream, and I noticed that a black ring fell off the exhaust/engine. It only shows up for around a frame or two and I couldn't find any related information on it. My question is what that was?

edited Feb 06 '21 at 13:57

uhoh

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asked Feb 06 '21 at 09:22

Philip.P

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Interesting. This could be related to the engine failure. Or, it could be completely unrelated :-D Roadside rocket science is fun. – Jörg W Mittag Feb 06 '21 at 12:02
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It's clearly not bird shaped. The 2nd stage F9 Merlin engines have rings at the end of their much longer and vibration-prone vacuum nozzles that keeps them from vibrating too much, but I don't think that this could be anything like that. – uhoh Feb 06 '21 at 13:55
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Maybe it's an o-ring falling off something closer to the camera and not actually in the plume? Something in the plume would have been moving extremely fast. Can you give a video link and time? – Organic Marble Feb 06 '21 at 14:31
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Hello everyone, thank you for the responses. I actually found this in a youtube video by Scott Manley. You can see this frame at around 5:01 on the lower right. – Philip.P Feb 06 '21 at 15:08
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Thanks for the info. I got the original, less-annoying-than-Manley video from SpaceX's website and extracted a bunch of frames around the one you show. Unfortunately this didn't show any other positions of the object. My guess, but only a guess, is still that it's not in the plume. – Organic Marble Feb 06 '21 at 16:34
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if it was really moving that fast, its amusing to not get draggy smudgy image of whatever it is – zephyr0110 Feb 06 '21 at 17:31
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It looks like a drop of liquid. – amI Feb 08 '21 at 18:28

What is this ring-shaped part falling from Starship SN9 after launch?

0 Answers0