Pictures of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy

One of the problems with the SpaceX booth at the 30th Space Symposium last week is they only displayed their Falcon 9 rocket (and the landing legs were the wrong color–black–instead of the white a real Falcon 9 booster is painted with). Of course, it’s the only rocket that SpaceX uses so far. The other problem, by the […]

Why Space Matters: HEO Satellite Operations, Part 5–Spysats, IR, and MMS

The Molniya orbit, a type of highly elliptical orbit (HEO), was the focus of the last HEO post. And it was noted that the Molniya is an orbit perfectly suited to communication. But what other missions and satellites use the HEO? Believe it or not, the US has organizations that use the HEO for a […]

Dextre: When Humans Just Won’t Do

It might come as a surprise to some people that Canada has a space agency–the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Some Americans might view our northern neighbor’s agency as a NASA-Lite, but that would be very untrue. It might be even more surprising for people to know the CSA is very active and has provided some critical […]

Googs in Space?

Google’s maybe getting into space? This is an interesting TechCrunch article about the possible acquisition of satellite imagery company SkyBox by advertising aggregator Google. Theoretically, SkyBox is Google’s only target, but TechCrunch does float Planet Labs and RapidEye as possible targets, too. Except, SkyBox is the ONLY satellite company offering real-time streaming of High Definition video. Which might […]

30th Space Symposium Pictures

The 30th Space Symposium is done. It was fun and there were a lot of interesting displays. Every company present was chest-thumping–some more than others. Some booths were quite big. Others were of typical size. I realize the ticket prices are a little steep and some of you don’t have the option of volunteering. So […]