Jonathan McDowell

@planet4589.bsky.social

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Yay, my UK election postal vote ballot just arrived! When is the election again?

8 of 9 expected objects from the Firefly launch cataloged by SpaceTrack in a 490 x 525 km x 97.3 deg sun-synchronous orbit with 19:45 local time orbit plane

LAUNCH of Firefly Alpha FLTA005 from Vandenberg at 0404 UTC Jul 4

LAUNCH at 0855 UTC Jul 3 of Starlink Group 8-9

Daichi-4 cataloged in a 609 x 612 km x 97.9 deg orbit, confirming its successful launch. The H3 second stage made a deorbit burn and reentered over the Indian Ocean near 94E 44S at about 0513 UTC Jul 1.

LAUNCH at 0306 UTC Jul 1 of JAXA's H3 No. 3 from Tanegashima with the ALOS 4 (Daichi 4) satellite

LAUNCH of the Zhongxing-3A ( 中星3A卫星 ) military comms satellite from Wenchang on a Chang Zheng 7A to a 212 x 35793 km x 15.5 deg geotransfer orbit at 1157 UTC Jun 29

LAUNCH at 0314 UTC Jun 29 of Falcon 9 from Vandenberg with the NROL-186 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, thought to be a second batch of about 20 Starshield satellites

GOES U weather satellite and the Falcon Heavy upper stage tracked in a 16000 x 35240 km x 4.4 deg transfer orbit.

LAUNCH of NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-U weather satellite on Falcon Heavy at 2126 UTC Jun 25

.. at 1246 UTC water started coming out of an attach fitting and the spacewalk was aborted, with hatch close at 1255 UTC and beginning of repressurization at 1318 UTC. The airlock was depressurized for 42 minutes

US spacewalk EVA-90 was cut short today; the Quest airlock was depressurized with astronauts Dyson and Barratt in spacesuits EMU 3003 and EMU 3009. The airlock went below 50 mbar at 1236 UTC and the hatch was opened at 1244 UTC. However ...

LAUNCH at 0347 UTC Jun 24 of Starlink Group 9-2 from Vandenberg Space Force Base

LAUNCH at 1715 UTC Jun 23 of Starlink Group 10-2 by Falcon 9 from Canaveral

Jonathan's Space Report No. 834 published at planet4589.org/jsr.html

Jonathan's Space Report - Latest Issueplanet4589.org Jonathan's Space Report | Current Issue

Two objects from the SVOM launch cataloged in a 626 x 632 km x 29.0 deg orbit

LAUNCH at 0700 UTC Jun 22 of a Chang Zheng 2C from Xichang with the 中法天文卫星 (Zhongfa Tianwen Weixing, Sino-French Astronomical Satellite), a collaboration with France's CNES who call it SVOM (Space-based Variable Objects Monitor). The satellite will study gamma ray bursts

The Astra 1P comms satellite and the Falcon 9 second stage have been cataloged in a 334 x 53560 km x 27.9 deg elliptical super-sync transfer orbit.

LAUNCH at 2135 UTC Jun 20 of Falcon 9 from Canaveral with the SES Astra 1P communications satellite to geotransfer orbit. No orbit data yet.

LAUNCH at 1813 UTC Jun 20 of Rocket Lab Electron from Mahia pad 1B with five IoT comms satellites for the Toulouse-based company Kinéis to 650 x 660 km sunsync orbit with 0636 local time orbital plane.

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Jonathan McDowell

UK Election campaigning hits "silly season" with #Labour stating "the roads have more potholes than the moon has craters" 🧐 I set the record straight on BBC 'More or Less': way, way more craters than potholes. Still great if Labour is going to fix them tho! 🧪🔭 📻 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

LAUNCH at 0340 UTC Jun 19 of Starlink Group 9-1 from Vandenberg Space Force Base. 13 direct-to-cell and 7 regular Starlinks aboard.

Virgin Galactic: Galactic 07 was launched from the Eve mothership at 1526:30 UTC, flew briefly to an apogee around 85 km, and landed around 1541 UTC back at Spaceport America (New Mexico)

Takeoff of Virgin Galactic VMS Eve carrying Spaceship 2 from Spaceport America at about 1428 UTC per FlightRadar24. Aboard Spaceship 2 Unity for flight Galactic 07 are Nicola Pecile, Jameel Janjua, Tuva Atasever, and three unidentified individuals

LAUNCH at 1258 UTC Jun 8 of Starlink Group 8-8 from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

LAUNCH at 0156 UTC Jun 8 of Starlink Group 10-1 from Canaveral to 53 deg orbit

New documentary about commercial space will premiere next week, eventually will be on HBO. Your humble servant provided some consulting on it... dcdoxfest.com/films/wild-w...

Wild Wild Space - DC/DOXdcdoxfest.com Less than one hundred miles above our heads is where some of the most valuable real estate in the universe lives: Low Earth Orbit. This is an extraterrestrial land grab, a galactic Wild West where the...

Here is a fit to the Starship webcast height-velocity data with a -15 x 213 km orbit. Not perfect but pretty good; I believe perigee is somewhere between -20 and -10 km based on my attempts to fit.

Ship 29 completed its burn and entered marginal-orbit trajectory around -10 x 213 km x 26.8 deg, with impact in the eastern Indian Ocean, NW of Australia. Despite major thermal erosion to the flaps, Ship 29 survived reentry and reignited its engines just above the ocean for controlled splashdown.

Starship booster successful splashdown, Ship in marginal-orbit trajectory with expected apogee of 214 km and reentry targeted over Indian Ocean