Space Geckos Saved and Space Surveillance Satellites Launched

These are two follow-ups, one closing out one of last week’s posts and one continuing a post I wrote in February. First, the geckos. I wrote last week about the Russian geckos that were sent into space on a satellite. There was supposed to be some kind of “gecko orgy” that Russian scientists were interested […]

Croney and the Bandit (Or Why Space Needs Full Privatization)

This most definitely is opinion. There must be some doubt about the effectiveness of Alabama Senator Richard Shelby’s legislative poison pill against new space launch providers like SpaceX and Orbital. Another attack has been launched, this time against SpaceX’s credibility of how it builds and operates its rockets. The attack comes from three Representatives (we’ll […]

Forget NOAA; NASA’s GRACE Protects You from Floods

Or is that spelled Noah? Anyway, NASA has a pair of 12-year old satellites from their Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE), and it’s NASA’s GRACE that might save you from flooding. The two satellites are orbiting the Earth in a polar Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and are 220 kilometers (140 miles) apart from each other. They […]

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 […]

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 […]