Category: Behind The Black

Two more launches today

As expected, SpaceX and China completed launches today.

First SpaceX launched another 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacitic.

Next, China placed an unspecified “group” of “remote sensing” satellites into orbit, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

114 SpaceX
51 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 114 to 88.

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China yesterday completed two launches

China yesterday successfully completed two launches using different rockets from two different spaceports in the country’s interior.

First, its Long March 3C rocket launched a classified technology test satellite, the rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China. No real information about the satellite was released, though its name, Shiyan, is part of a series of satellites that tests new designs for communications and remote sensing.

Next, the pseudo-company Galactic Energy placed three satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaeport in northwest China. Once again, little information was released about the satellites’ purpose.

With each launch, China’s state-run press also provided no information about where the lowers stages of both rockets landed inside China. This is especially of concern for the Long March 3C, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuels that can dissolve the skin.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

113 SpaceX
50 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 113 to 87.

These numbers should change again by the end of today, with both SpaceX and China planning an additional launch each.

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The Cracker Barrel kerfuffle proves the now powerful reach of the alternative/conservative press

Cracker Barrel's logos

While much of the entire “controversy” over the decision by Cracker Barrel to change and then restore its old logo seemed to me to be a tempest in a teapot, the fact that the firestorm itself quickly forced Cracker Barrel to back down tells us something far more important: The alternative press (mostly conservative) is no longer confined to the fringes of culture, but now has real reach throughout society.

This cultural change can’t be underlined enough. For most of my long life, conservative news and cultural outlets had little impact on the general culture. They would make their points, often cogently and based on facts, and find themselves generally ignored. Only a decade ago, when conservatives complained about the leftward drift by major corporations or universities into racial quotas, bigotry, blacklists, censorship, and totalitarian Marxism, few noticed and more significantly, the companies or universities shrugged off the criticisms nonchalantly, as if the complaints were nothing more than a tiny gnat flying about in the air.

I speak from experience, because a decade ago I was posting regularly about this drift in both universities and corporations, was getting my posts picked up by many conservative news aggregates, and yet those posts had no impact at all. Nothing changed. If anything, the corporations and universities cited actually accelerated their racial quotas and their emphasis on bigotry, blacklists, censorship, and totalitarian Marxism.

No more. In the past four years the general culture and how it gets its information has fundamentally changed. That culture now listens to the right, and the result is fast and immediate change.

The Cracker Barrel kerfuffle proves this. Cracker Barrel proudly announced its logo change on August 19, 2025. In less than 24 hours numerous conservatives across the entire internet were lambasting the company about it, accusing the company of abandoning its past and going woke. This comment was quite typical:
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September 5, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • Startup PERSEI Space plans to test the use of tethers to remove space junk
    The concept, using the electromagnetic force produced as the tether moves through the Earth’s magnetic field to lower defunct satellites, is actually an old one. There have been a number of attempts to test it previously, especially by the space shuttle, but every time technical problems prevented the test from succeeding.
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Astrobotic signs launch deal with Norway’s Andoya spaceport

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The American lunar lander startup Astrobotic (which is now also a rocket startup) has signed a launch deal with Norway’s Andoya spaceport, where the company intends to launch its proposed reusable Xodiac rocket.

Astrobotic will perform their initial European Xodiac launch campaign operations from Andøya Space starting in 2026. Andøya Space will provide various services, including ground operations, flight preparation, and infrastructure support.

It will be wise to remain skeptical about Astrobotic’s rocket. The company owns the rights and technology of the vertical take-off-and-landing hopper developed and successfully tested by Masten Space System (which Astrobotic took over in 2022), but it also claimed in 2024 it would begin flying an upgraded suborbital version by 2025. No such flights appear on the horizon at this moment.

At the same time, developing a new rocket always involves delays. It will be quite exciting if Astrobotic succeeds in entering the launch market in the next year or so.

As for the Andoya spaceport, it continues to be in the lead among the four spaceports proposed surrounding the Norwegian Sea. Norway has made its licensing arrangement smooth and easy, the spaceport is well located, and it already has another launch contract with the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace, which attempted its first launch there earlier this year (albeit a failure). Moreover, Andoya has signed an agreement with the U.S. allowing American commercial companies to launch there, which is likely why Astrobotic made its deal.

Esrange’s location in the interior places it at a disadvantage, while red tape have badly stymied the two spaceports proposed in the United Kingdom.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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A simple phone device for kids

A British company is selling a very simple phone device for young children that allows them to stay in contact with their parents, including GPS location, without giving them a touchscreen and any access to the web.

The Messenger, from London-based outfit Karri, is meant to help kids aged 5-13 become more independent, while giving their parents peace of mind. It’s designed entirely around voice messaging, so you can chat with your child one-on-one, or connect them with other family members in a group conversation.

This is actually the company’s second-generation Messenger with an improved design over the first from 2023. It features a dot matrix display, a speaker, and most importantly, a “slide to talk” button in the center. Slide it down to listen to a voice message you’ve just received, slide up and hold to record a reply, and short slide up to send it off.

Considering the increasing evidence that smartphones do real damage to kids during their development ages, this kind of option makes sense. So does a simple flip phone, but this device provides a simpler and more limited alternative.

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Amazon gets first airline customer for its Kuiper constellation

Amazon yesterday signed up its first airline customer, JetBlue, the airline agreeing to provide in-flight WiFi to its passengers using the Kuiper constellation.

Amazon’s satellite internet service, Project Kuiper, will partner with JetBlue to provide in-flight Wi-Fi starting in 2027. It’s Project Kuiper’s first deal with an airline as it aims to keep up with the SpaceX-owned Starlink, which has already snagged satellite internet agreements with United Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Air France, and several others.

JetBlue must have gotten a truly great deal to go with Kuiper. It could start providing Starlink to passengers now if it wished, instead of waiting until 2027 with Kuiper. And even that date remains uncertain, considering how few satellites Amazon has so far launched (just over a hundred) when it needs at least 1,600 by next July to meet its FCC license requirements.

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SpaceX launches another 28 Starlink satellites

SpaceX in the wee hours last night successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Centery in Florida.

The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. SpaceX now has one booster with 30 flights and three with 27 flights, putting these stages in the same league with the three most flown space shuttles, Discovery (39), Atlantis (33), and Columbia (28). Expect these boosters to all pass Discovery in the near future, with several more Falcon 9 boosters about to enter this league as well.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

113 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 113 to 85.

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A glittering false-color image from Webb

A glittering false color image from Webb
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today by the science team of the Webb Space Telescope. It shows in infrared false colors a spectacular star-forming region about 5,500 light years away, surrounded by glowing clouds.

Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. Home to a vibrant stellar nursery and one of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 provides rare insight into large and massive stars. Its proximity makes this region one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.

At the heart of this glittering cluster is the brilliant Pismis 24-1. It is at the center of a clump of stars above the jagged orange peaks, and the tallest spire is pointing directly toward it. Pismis 24-1 appears as a gigantic single star, and it was once thought to be the most massive known star. Scientists have since learned that it is composed of at least two stars, though they cannot be resolved in this image. At 74 and 66 solar masses, respectively, the two known stars are still among the most massive and luminous stars ever seen.

…Super-hot, infant stars –some almost 8 times the temperature of the Sun – blast out scorching radiation and punishing winds that are sculpting a cavity into the wall of the star-forming nebula. That nebula extends far beyond NIRCam’s field of view. Only small portions of it are visible at the bottom and top right of the image. Streamers of hot, ionized gas flow off the ridges of the nebula, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks.

The universe is truly beautiful, if we look at it the right way.

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The beginnings of the first political coup in American history

Obama, the boss behind the scandal, just before his election in 2012
Obama pontificating just before his election in 2012.
The change he brought was to toss the Constitution
in the trash heap.

Doug Ross has created a very readable six-part series, with illustrations, outlining in great detail and in dramatic form the corruption of the FBI and the entire intelligence community in the latter years of the Obama administration, beginning first with an extensive cover-up of Hillary Clinton’s illegal use of a private server for sending classified emails, followed by the initial stages of the Russian collusion hoax against Trump that was also used to justify spying on his campaign.

The series admits to be being a dramatization, but is also is based entirely on actual facts that are now documented and known. Nothing of substance or importance here has been made up. And by giving the story a slight patina of drama it becomes much more readable and understandable.

Take a short bit of time and read it all. The actions of numerous dishonest and power-hungry individuals in the FBI, the Justice Department, the Obama White House, and other agencies, will leave you appalled. And heading the list is Barack Obama, taking actions that were unquestionable illegal, immoral, and above all treasonous. He conspired with federal workers to not only cover up crimes, but to attempt to overthrow the elected president of the United States.

The key quote that describes quite succinctly the unconstitutional nature of this scandal comes from part 4, by Rick Ledgett, then deputy director of the National Security Agency.

“This is evidence of systematic violation of Americans’ constitutional rights.”

All six parts can be found at the links below. The series presently ends in May 2016, but Ross fully intends to continue it through the 2016 election and beyond, covering the entire Russian collusion hoax created by the intelligence community, under orders of Barack Obama, that worked to undermine and overthrown Donald Trump’s election as president.

Every American should read it all. It gives a good picture of the initial process that allowed utter evil to take over the entire Democratic Party.

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Sunspot update: In August sunspot activity continued to rise

Time for this month’s sunspot update. To do this each month I begin by taking NOAA’s own monthly update of its graph of sunspot activity and annotating it with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

This annotated graph showing the August activity is below, and for the third month in a row sunspot activity increased (as indicated by the green dot), so that the August number of sunspots now closely matched the April 2025 prediction by NOAA’s panel of solar scientists that the Sun was finally beginning its ramp down from solar maximum.
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Gemini South telescope captures Comet 3I/Atlas’s growing tail

Comet 3I/Atlas
Click for original image.

Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have taken new images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas as it moves through the solar system, this time capturing the slow growth of its tail.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows that tail trailing off to the left. The stars are streaks because it required four exposures in different wavelengths to produce the image. The comet was held steady while the stars shifted after each exposure.

In the images captured during the session, the comet displays a broad coma — a cloud of gas and dust that forms around the comet’s icy nucleus as it gets closer to the Sun — and a tail spanning about 1/120th of a degree in the sky (where one degree is about the width of a pinky finger on an outstretched arm) and pointing away from the Sun. These features are significantly more extended than they appeared in earlier images of the comet, showing that 3I/ATLAS has become more active as it travels through the inner Solar System.

So far, all the evidence continues to show that though 3I/Atlas has an interstellar origin, it is a relatively ordinary comet, simply unique in the manner all objects of a category are unique. As the scientists pour over the comet’s spectroscopy we might find its make-up is somewhat different than comets from our own solar system, but the data so far suggests that the differences are not likely to be that startling.

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Yesterday’s Senate hearing on Artemis: It’s all a game!

Ted Cruz, a typical
Ted Cruz, a typical Congressional porkmeister

The Senate hearing that was held yesterday, entitled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race”, was clearly organized by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to promote a continuation of the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway parts of NASA’s Artemis program. And he was able to do so because senators from both parties felt the same way. They all want to continue this pork, and don’t really care whether those expensive assets can really accomplish what they promise.

Furthermore, the hearing was also structured to allow these politicians to loudly proclaim their desire to beat China back to the Moon, using this pork. They want the U.S. first, but they are almost all want to do this through a government-run program.

As such, the choice of witnesses and the questions put to them were carefully orchestrated to push this narrative. To paraphrase: “We have to beat China to the Moon! And we have make sure a NASA program runs the effort! And above all, we mustn’t let Donald Trump cut any of NASA’s funding, anywhere!”

It was therefore not surprising that the most newsworthy quote from the hearing was the comments by former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine about Starship and how its choice as a manned lunar lander was a bad one, and that it was likely going to the prime reason China will put humans back on the Moon ahead of us.
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Spanish startup signs three customers for first flight of its returnable capsule

The Spanish startup Orbital Paradigm today announced it has signed up three customers for the first flight of a subscale version of its Kestrel returnable capsule.

As it prepares for the inaugural flight of its return capsule, Orbital Paradigm has developed a subscale prototype to validate key technologies that will be used aboard Kestrel. According to the company, the prototype was built in less than a year for under €1 million.

In a 4 September announcement, Orbital Paradigm stated that its KID demonstrator will carry payloads for ALATYR (France), Leibniz University Hannover (Germany), and an undisclosed third customer. While the 4 September announcement did not include details about the Leibniz University Hannover payload or that of the undisclosed customer, ALATYR CEO Emeric Lhomme said his company’s payloads would demonstrate its robotic laboratory technology, which is designed to support microgravity research and production.

The company is also planning a second test flight with another subscale test spacecraft. Once operational in the 2030s, the company hopes to fly Kestrel monthly on three month missions.

The returnable capsule industry is certainly heating up. The American company Varda might have been first to do this in 2023-2024, but since then the field has gotten very crowded. In the U.S. we now have Inversion Space, Sierra Space, and even SpaceX using Starship.

In Europe we have The Exploration Company in France with its Nyx capsule, the German startup Atmos with its Phoenix capsule, the Spanish startup PLD with its Lince capsule, and the Luxembourg startup Space Cargo with its Bentobox capsule.

In addition, both China and Russia have recently flown returnable capsules, though it is not clear either has profit in mind.

This flood of startups strongly suggests there is great interest in the investment community for manufacturing products in space. While it is likely some of these startups will go belly-up, their number tells us that there is money to be made in this area, now that the cost of launch has dropped so significantly. With the expected advent of new rocket companies in the next two years, that cost will lower even further.

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SpaceX gets FAA approval to double its annual launches from Cape Canaveral

After several years of paperwork, the FAA yesterday approved SpaceX’s request to double its launch rate at the Space Force’s Cape Canaveral spaceport.

In addition to the annual launch increase from 50 launches to up to 120, the Federal Aviation Administration’s environmental review also approved a new on-site landing zone that could accommodate up to 34 booster landings per year. These boosters are the reusable first-stage portions of Falcon 9 rockets that SpaceX lands and refurbishes for future flights.

The review, finalized on Wednesday, found what’s known as a “Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact,” meaning the proposed changes “would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment” under federal law, with impacts reduced by specific protective measures. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the absurdity of these environmental reviews. We know without doubt and without any major review that rocket launches do no harm to the environment or wildlife. We have seven decades of data in Florida proving it.

According to the article both the FAA and the Space Force still need to issue further approvals before this request can go forward. Expect the Space Force to agree, without much bother. The FAA needs to amend SpaceX’s launch licenses, and this should also happen relatively quick, especially with Trump as president.

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Cargo Dragon completes test burn to raise ISS’s orbit

The cargo Dragon that docked with ISS in late August successfully completed yesterday an engine burn lasting more than five minutes to see if it could raise ISS’s orbit.

On Wednesday, Sept. 3, SpaceX’s Dragon completed an initial burn to test the spacecraft’s new capability to help maintain the altitude of the International Space Station. Two Draco engines located in the trunk of Dragon, which contains an independent propellant system, were used to adjust the space station’s orbit through a maneuver lasting five minutes, three seconds. The initial test burn increased the station’s altitude by around one mile at perigee, or low point of station’s orbit, leaving the station in an orbit of 260.9 x 256.3 miles. The new boost kit in Dragon will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude through a series of longer burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025.

The Dragon will remain docked with ISS until December. It is expected it will do additional test burns during that time.

NASA wishes to get this capability from its own spacecraft so as to no longer have to rely entirely on the Russians, who have traditionally done these orbital adjustments using its Progress cargo freighters. SpaceX likely also wants to do these tests as an adjunct to its contract to build the de-orbit vehicle that will bring ISS down, after it is retired.

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September 3, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Patterned frozen lava in Mars’ volcano country

Patterned frozen lava
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 31, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The camera team label this “patterned ground.” And it is indeed. Though the topography is almost flat for large distances, the ground itself has these various patterns on it, from meandering small ridges to stippled roughness to very smooth sections.

The location is at 4.6 degrees north latitude, in the dry equatorial regions of Mars. No near surface ice created these features. All we can deduce from this picture is that this landscape is relatively young, as there are no craters seen.

So what caused these features? The location as always provides a clue.
» Read more

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Radar images reveal near Earth asteroid to be a contact binary

Peanut shaped asteroid
Click for original image.

Just after asteroid 1997 QK1 made its first really close pass of the Earth on August 20, 2025, scientists used the Goldstone radio antenna take 28 high resolution images and discovered that the asteriod is peanut shaped, meaning that it is a contact binary of two objects that have fused together.

Those images, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, are shown to the right.

The asteroid is about 660 feet (200 meters) long and completes one rotation every 4.8 hours. It passed closest to our planet on the day before these observations were made at a distance of about 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers), or within eight times the distance between Earth and the Moon. The 2025 flyby is the closest that 1997 QK1 has approached to Earth in more than 350 years. Prior to the recent Goldstone observations, very little was known about the asteroid.

These observations resolve surface features down to a resolution of about 25 feet (7.5 meters) and reveal that the object has two rounded lobes that are connected, with one lobe twice the size of the other. Both lobes appear to have concavities that are tens of meters deep.

Though this asteroid is classified as potentially dangerous, calculations of its orbit show it poses no threat for the “foreseeable future.”

That it is a contact binary reinforces the present theory that about 15% of all larger asteroids belong to this class.

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Juno detects the aurora of the moon Callisto in Jupiter’s atmosphere

Though previous observations had detected auroras on Jupiter produced by three of its four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, and Ganymede — scientists had until now been unable to detect a similar aurora produced by the fourth, Callisto.

The Jupiter orbiter Juno finally accomplished this observation for the first time.

[T]o image Callisto’s footprint, the main auroral oval needs to move aside while the polar region is being imaged. And to bring to bear Juno’s arsenal of instruments studying fields and particles, the spacecraft’s trajectory must carry it across the magnetic field line linking Callisto and Jupiter.

These two events serendipitously occurred during Juno’s 22nd orbit of the giant planet, in September 2019, revealing Callisto’s auroral footprint and providing a sample of the particle population, electromagnetic waves, and magnetic fields associated with the interaction.

The research paper describing this detection has just been published.

These secondary auroras are caused by Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field.

The Juno mission itself is about to end. NASA did not approve a mission extension, and next month the science team will send the spacecraft into Jupiter’s atmosphere, where it will burn up. We will then have to wait five years for Europa Clipper to arrive in Jupiter orbit, followed a year later by Europe’s Juice orbiter.

While the propaganda press is condemning this decision, there is some logic to it. Juno has mostly completed its work. While new knowledge can certainly be gained if it remained operations for three more years, the amount of knowledge will be relatively small. And NASA does face a budget crunch. Better to spend its money on other things that can produce more bang to the buck.

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France startup wins contract to build Starlink competitor

France’s space agency CNES has awarded a €31 million contract to France startup Univity to build a demo satellite to demonstrate internet and phone-to-satellite capabilities, as part a longer term plan to build a constellation that can compete with both SpaceX’s Starlink and AST SpaceMobile constellation, both already launched and in operation.

Founded in 2022 under the name Constellation Technologies & Operations, UNIVITY aims to develop a very low Earth orbit constellation to provide global high-speed, low-latency internet services. A prototype of the company’s regenerative 5G mmWave payload was part of a 23 June SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission, hosted aboard the D-Orbit SpaceBound ION mission. The company expects to launch a pair of prototype satellites in 2027, followed by the deployment of its full constellation between 2028 and 2030.

This deal likely puts the final nail in the coffin of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) own government IRIS satellite constellation, which has been delayed, is expected to be very expensive and take a long time to get launched, and has already faced disinterest from many partners in ESA. That France is now going it alone likely ends any chance that IRIS will be funded.

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Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space confirms successful operation of its first satellite

The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space, which in July tried but failed to launch for the first time its Eris rocket, yesterday announced that its first orbiting satellite, dubbed ElaraSat MMS-1, is operating as expected after a June launch by SpaceX.

Launched aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-14 mission in June, the locally designed and built satellite bus carries a hyperspectral imager from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. Since reaching orbit, ElaraSat MMS-1 has completed platform commissioning, verified satellite bus systems are operating as expected, [and] demonstrated reliable S-band communications and X-band downlink.

If this company can succeed in getting its rocket operational as well as build satellites, it will have capabilities comparable to SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and Firefly, and will be in a very strong position to compete internationally.

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Two more launches in past 24 hours, by Israel and SpaceX

Both Israel and SpaceX completed new launches during the evening hours yesterday. First, Israel placed an Ofek radar surveillance satellite into orbit, its small solid-fueld Shavit-2 rocket lifting off from an undisclosed location within the country, likely its Palmachim Airbase on the Mediterranean coast south of Tel Aviv. The launch occurred about the same time as SpaceX’s Starlink launch from Vandenberg, already reported last night.

This was Israel’s first launch in 2025, and the first since 2023. Since 2008 the country has launched seven military surveillance satellites, one about every two to four years or so.

Several hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, SpaceX completed another launch, placing 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

112 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 112 to 85.

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 24 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage was new, successfully completing its first flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

111 SpaceX
48 China
12 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 111 to 84.

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Website issues today

Though it is possible my readers might not have noticed, but it appears there was some major issue today on the website that slowed things to a crawl and could have even been an attack by hackers somewhere. Because of this my web guy Shane had to disable much of the under-the-hood stuff I use to post so he could fix things. Thus, no new posts or cool images today. Those posts that did go up had been scheduled before the problems appeared.

I am hoping to get back to normal tonight and tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

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Hoobastank – The Reason

An evening pause: This “music” video intentionally illustrates why I prefer live performances over most “official” music videos that show a fake visual story under the music, as if that story and the music have something to do with each other, when they never really do. This video instead shows us what the music video would sound like if you focused instead on this fake story. Quick funny at times.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette, who writes, “Great concept! What happens when you take a Music Video and de-emphasize the music & band performance, and concentrate on the story being told in the background?”

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