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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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Rocket stage to hit Moon is from Chinese rocket, not Falcon 9 upper stage

Astronomers have now concluded that the rocket stage that will impact the Moon on March 4th is not an abandoned the Falcon 9 upper stage that launched the DISCOVR satellite in 2015, but an upper stage from a Chinese rocket.

It was an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jon Giorgini, who realized this object was not in fact the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. He wrote to Gray on Saturday morning explaining that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory did not go particularly close to the Moon, and that it would therefore be a little strange if the second stage strayed close enough to strike it. This prompted Gray to dig back into his data, and identify other potential candidates.

He soon found one—the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket. This lunar mission sent a small spacecraft to the Moon as a precursor test for an eventual lunar sample return mission. The launch time and lunar trajectory are almost an exact match for the orbit of the object that will hit the Moon in March.

Regardless, it will be very useful to pindown the exact impact time and place so that astronomers can observe it.

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. 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

4 comments

  • Col Beausabre

    Man, will this infuriate the Musk haters, who’ve been after him for allowing such a thing to happen. Of course. the Chinese Ministry of Public Enlightenment will be working overtime – I can see steam pouring out of ears – to convince the world this is a lie concocted in the Fascist US to cover for a running dog capitalist swine,

  • Jeff Wright

    I’m kind of disappointed…it would have been SpaceX’s first contact with Luna.

  • James Street

    NBC sports boss admits Beijing winter Olympics ratings have flopped after 50% drop in viewers from summer games as viewers reject Communist China as host
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10507409/NBC-exec-admits-difficult-Olympics-Beijings-week-slides-record-lows-2018.html

  • Col Beausabre

    James Street – Three cheers and a Tiger!! It’s a national disgrace we’re there at all for Munich-36 2.0 – guess we didn’t learn our lesson. As for the athletes, plenty of them are willing to criticize the US for our failings – which are miniscule compared to Xi’s paradise – , what are they doing in China?

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