A Landmark Anniversary for Space?

Oct. 3, 1942–72 years ago–an A-4 test rocket was launched from Peenemuende Army Research Center. The fourth A-4 to be tested, it was the first to successfully fly. It was also the first rocket to reach the edges of outer space (it flew about 85-90 kilometers above the Earth). If you’ve never heard of the A-4, […]

Some Changes Coming

Hi! If you’re reading this, thank you! That means you deliberately chose to read my posts, and that takes some time. So I’m writing this to tell you there will be changes to the number of posts on this site every week. Why? Well, that’s the good news–at least for me. After one year and […]

Losing Proposition: Cutting USAF Space Operations

The United States Air Force (USAF) looks to be on the verge of admitting it can’t spend the money on its own people to operate its own satellites. They are considering some piecemeal options for moving contractors into what were military positions. This SpaceNews post describes four studies the USAF will be contracting out to figure out if […]

China Sends Up Another ‘Practice’ Satellite

On Sept 28, China, unsurprisingly, launched another satellite in their weird passive/aggressive way. At least it seems passive/aggressive with China advertising it’s a practice satellite but then keeps its mission secret. On the other hand, the US does the same thing with its military and intelligence satellites as well. The newest Chinese satellite is called the […]

Deadly Bubbles of Plasma

Business Insider posted an interesting article last Friday about plasma bubbles and how they affect communications between satellites and devices on Earth. The post suggests that ionospheric plasma bubbles seem to occur primarily around the Earth’s equator. The article also gives a short description of what a plasma bubble is–the rising of a low-density plasma through […]