January 11, 2019: Weekly Spatial Resolutions

Astronaut Accidentally Calls 911 from Space This is funny. As the image above shows, there are worse reasons to dial 911. HawkEye 360 Announces Successful Launch of First Three Satellites Built by SFL Under Contract to DSI Okay, so what does the headline above and the article it links to really mean? It’s one of […]

Weekly Spatial Resolutions

Stories I happened upon during the past week. “…the Government Accountability Office warned that costs for national security space launches are rising…” Aand, here we go again: http://spacenews.com/congressional-auditors-raise-red-flags-on-eelv-costs-national-security-launch-industrial-base/. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an annual report and noted AGAIN concerns about excessive costs surrounding the United States Air Force’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program […]

Deployment Diversity

Sometime in the past few days, new objects showed up in the satellite tracking database published by Space-Track.org. This is nothing new. Space-Track.org is supposed to do this every day. It’s their job: tracking and identifying objects orbiting the Earth, primarily for the United States Department of Defense, and as an ancillary service to the […]

Launching satellites is getting cheaper?

Last year was pretty good for small satellites weighing less than 10 kg (22 lbs). 46 percent of all satellites launched in 2014 weighed less than 10 kg. A LOT of satellites were launched in 2014. Heck, just one Russian Dnepr rocket deployed 37 satellites during one launch last year. Many were deployed from the International […]

SpaceX’s CRS7 mission explodes

The Falcon 9 a little over 2 minutes after launch. Image from NASA TV courtesy of SpaceNew.com This Sunday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to launch and deliver supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). And while SpaceX launched the rocket around 8:20 AM (MST) this morning, the resupply mission, CRS7, didn’t make […]