March 13, 2026 Quick space links
As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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.
- SpaceX to lower the orbits of 1,600 Starlink satellites to improve customer signal quality
The reduction is about 70 kilometers, and the company plans to lower as many 4,400 satellites before it is done.
- The head of Amazon’s Leo constellation suddenly left the company in February
No replacement has as yet been named, but a further management shake-up is expected.
- ISRO completes static fire test of the engine for its LVM rocket at higher thrusts
The Indian space agency has been upgrading and testing this engine for the past several months. The LVM is the rocket it wishes to use for its manned, space station, and planetary missions.
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
As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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.
- SpaceX to lower the orbits of 1,600 Starlink satellites to improve customer signal quality
The reduction is about 70 kilometers, and the company plans to lower as many 4,400 satellites before it is done.
- The head of Amazon’s Leo constellation suddenly left the company in February
No replacement has as yet been named, but a further management shake-up is expected.
- ISRO completes static fire test of the engine for its LVM rocket at higher thrusts
The Indian space agency has been upgrading and testing this engine for the past several months. The LVM is the rocket it wishes to use for its manned, space station, and planetary missions.
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
SpaceX launched another Starlink mission from Vandy 14 hours ago. Thought I’d have seen a post here about that by now.
Dick Eagleson: Got distracted with other stuff, including my own life. :)
Posting now.
On Tuesday my father’s Vanguard 1 turns 68. He tinkered with it on our dining room table.
Robert Zimmerman,
Real life – annoying sometimes, but you can’t live without it.
Richard Easton,
I’d like to see one of the space billionaires gin up a pro bono mission to go fetch that puppy back and put it on display at the Air & Space Museum. I’d rate the odds as pretty good that that happens before it turns 75.
Isaacman actually used the words “reviewing contractor roles for conversion to civil service positions.” Yikes!
https://x.com/nasaadmin/status/2032841322667618339?s=46
Good news!
Embarrassed by ineffectual rocket designers , civil engineers managed Japan’s most successful launch to date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtiec4Y1fYQ
Truax was right about pressure-fed.
Now to the rocket guys to build sewers, and the sewer guys to build rockets–and everything sorts itself out.
Gary,
The word “contractor,” in this context, refers to people working for NASA as independent contractors rather than as part of the civil service workforce. If NASA has, indeed, outsourced most of its technical expertise in this fashion over the years, then there is a very serious question as to just what the remaining “on-payroll” NASA workforce does. Project management? On the evidence, that is no longer a core NASA competency either. I’m not sure Isaacman is going to be especially successful at bringing these individual contractors back onto the regular payroll, but I suppose he has to at least make the attempt. I suspect he will get takers mostly from the lower-ability quintiles with the best of these people looking to join a NewSpace company instead of NASA if single-client contractor status is no longer an option.
It should be emphasized that this is not some scheme to raid the payrolls of contractor corporations. In the case of OldSpace contractors like Boeing, any success in such a notional endeavor would only further enfeeble NASA. In the case of NewSpace contractors such as SpaceX, there would likely be few, if any, takers.
This new program is just an effort to get people who have been the functional equivalent of employees into an actual employee status. How much this will serve to improve NASA’s overall functioning is problematical at best. I harbor no great expectations. The same people operating under different paperwork seem unlikely to produce a sudden uptick in NASA capability.
“I’d like to see one of the space billionaires gin up a pro bono mission to go fetch that puppy back and put it on display at the Air & Space Museum.”
That would be absolutely awesome.
Dick,
I was “triggered” by the notion of creating more civil service employees. That makes alarms go off in my head.
“New Physics” bandied about again
https://phys.org/news/2026-03-ultra-high-energy-neutrino-linked.html
Sonny White
https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/l8y7-r3rm
I’m wearing the red coat next to Vanguard 1 in the first six seconds of this video.
Richard Easton: Please provide the url for this video. I’d love to see it.
Gary,
I share your misgivings. Especially if joining a public employee union is a condition of employment at NASA for some or all of the affected personnel. Public employee unions – one of JFK’s legacies that has lived a much longer and more consequential life than did his Moon program – have been a key mechanism in the leftist capture and transmogrification of most of the public institutions that are now tumors, rather than useful organs, of the US body politic. They need to be disbanded and made illegal once again.