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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.

 

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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites; China launches test internet satellite

SpaceX yesterday successfully placed 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Thank you from several readers for letting me know that I missed it. This was the company’s first of two launches yesterday, the second of which was the Fram2 manned mission. I was so focused on that I missed the first.

The first stage completed its seventeenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

China in turn today launched a satellite to test new technology for providing the internet from orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest. Little information was released about the satellite, and no information was released about where the rocket’s lower stages — using very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

37 SpaceX
17 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 37 to 30.

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4 comments

  • Trent Castanaveras

    One of the Fram astronauts, Eric Philips, took video of the F9 Starlink launch during the commute to their own launch happening a few hours later:

    https://x.com/Icetrek/status/1906803890269376653?s=19

  • Larry

    Bob –

    On March 31, you listed SpaceX as having made 36 launches, vs the rest of the world 28. Then today, you say SpaceX and China both made launches, with the total of SpaceX vice rest of world now being 37 to 30. Did someone else launch today, or yesterday? Or is that a typo?

    We only ask because we care. ;-)

  • Larry: Ten points to you for paying attention. When I was posting the two launches this morning, I noticed the numbers from the previous launch the day before were not right. I made sure today’s were correct, but didn’t bother to fix the previous post.

    I think what happened is that I miscounted the total non-SpaceX launches after Rocket Lab launched last week.

  • Larry

    Thanks for clarifying!

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