SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully launched 22 or 23 Starlink satellites (the reports vary), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its 23rd flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. At present one other SpaceX booster has flown more, 25 times.
The 2025 launch race:
18 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
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
SpaceX today successfully launched 22 or 23 Starlink satellites (the reports vary), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its 23rd flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. At present one other SpaceX booster has flown more, 25 times.
The 2025 launch race:
18 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
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
Was this launch to an equatorial or polar orbit? I ask because it is my understanding that launches from Vandenberg are only to the south; yet my brother in Arizona sent me a video of the Falcon 9 overhead. Would this not take the rocket over inhabited land?
Best Regards
Nathan Visser: No, launches from Vandenberg to the southeast over the ocean (which is where this launch headed) are visible in Arizona. Once the rocket is high enough it can be seen from that distance.
I witnessed the cutoff of the F9 second stage over the southern Baja California city of La Paz, Mexico. This would confirm that the trajectory was South-southeast, roughly along the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula, as usual with Starlink launches from Vandenberg.
Ah, I see. Thank you.