That’s no moon…

…at least according to this article it isn’t, but it is a “quasi-satellite.” They do say in about 5,000 years or so it might become one of Earth’s moons for a while. The interesting thing about this particular satellite (it’s natural) is the orbital configuration, which scientists label co-orbital. Such a weird one coinciding with […]

New Chinese Launch–another three satellites in one.

The Chinese launched another three satellites from Jiuquan (map below), China, according to this article. One supposedly has a electro-optical payload, another has synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and the third has possibly a ELINT/SIGINT payload. All are suspected, according to the NASA Spaceflight.org page, to be used for maritime vehicle tracking. I don’t know, but suspect these are probably going […]

The poor man’s LEO satellite

This is a good reminder that while satellite technology and operations are cool, sometimes the cheap ways will work just fine, too. Balloons are great if you want to look at areas that are easy to fly over. Just too bad these people feel compelled to do it over North Dakota. I don’t have anything […]

Of elephants for satellites

You might remember in another aside I posted, I noted the Chinese may not be just targeting the United States with their space activities, but their Indian neighbors, too. Well, according to this article, the Indians just had one of their communications satellites, GSAT-7, launched on an Ariane-5 out of Kourou, French Guiana. It’s just […]

Thanks and good-bye to one of the first space operators

Darn it–the internet and search engines got me on this one. Caught this as soon as I posted it. Of course he died last year, so thanks to anyone shaking their head and bothering to cluck under their breath. Sorry about that! Please just ignore this one. Now I know why I didn’t see this […]