SpaceX launches 26 Starlink satellites
SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 26 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, and doing so only 39 days after its first flight.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
59 SpaceX
26 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 43.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 26 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, and doing so only 39 days after its first flight.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
59 SpaceX
26 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 43.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The PRC looks to be trying to get a bit of its own back with four launches scheduled in as many days vs. two for SpaceX and one for Rocket Lab during the same interval. But SpaceX has at least four more Falcon launches scheduled in May with schedule room for a fifth. There is also the Starship IFT-9 mission currently slated to go next Thursday. SpaceX could finish the month with 66 Falcons for the year to-date plus a Starship if all goes well. That would position SpaceX to achieve a year-to-date Falcon total of 80 or more by the end of June, an annualized rate in the low-to-medium 160s – a notable improvement over the annualized rate of 150 posted at the end of April. Perhaps a year-end total of 180 Falcons will not prove to be beyond reach after all.