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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone that so generously donated. You don’t have to give anything to read my work, and yet so many of you donate or subscribe. I can’t express what that support means to me.

 

For those who still wish to support my work, please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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Rocket Lab and SpaceX complete launches

9:49 am

In the past two days both Rocket Lab and SpaceX successfully completed launches.

I am reporting the Rocket Lab launch two days late because it was unannounced and remains officially unconfirmed by the company two days after lift-off. According to two different launch tracking websites (here and here), the company’s Electron rocket lifted off successfully from one of its two New Zealand launchpads on June 19, 2026, placing a Rocket Lab payload into orbit dubbed Puma, a Space Force satellite designed to rendezvous with a target spacecraft dubbed Jackel that was built by the company True Anomaly and launched on an earlier SpaceX launch.

The mission secrecy was also for a second purpose, as outlined by Rocket Lab:

The $32 million contract includes a Rocket Lab spacecraft, configured for the unique requirements of the VICTUS HAZE mission, that will launch on Electron within just 24 hours’ notice. The mission is designed to improve Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) processes and timelines to demonstrate the SSC’s ability to respond to on-orbit threats on very short timelines.

SpaceX then followed up today with a launch of 24 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage (B1063) completed its 33rd flight (70 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. With this flight this booster moved into a tie with the space shuttle Atlantis for fourth place in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1078

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

74 SpaceX
40 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 74 to 69.

Genesis cover

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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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

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