SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
64 SpaceX
30 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 64 to 55.
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Off-topic comment on BO pad explosion: I note that the immense fireball exhibits what is to me a startling symmetry! If you look at the replay, the expansion of the fireball and thus the overall shape of it shows an almost artificial lateral symmetry.
Is this others’ impression? If so, does this have any implications for the source, location, or other characteristics of the explosion?
I’m just noting the appearance – it may be of no consequence or even naturally inevitable, but its appearance struck me as perhaps significant.
The explosion seems to have quickly propagated up through the rocket’s structure, which is radially symmetrical, so that could account for a lot of apparent symmetry. Camera placement might also be a factor. The NSF footage that has been widely copied was shot looking pretty much up the ramp from the integration hangar to the pad with a tower to each side and the flame trench out of sight but its centerline in line with the camera view. So anything coming out of the flame trench would have looked bilaterally symmetric too.
You should probably try to find as much video as you can taken from different viewpoints around the pad. Not all of it may look as symmetrical.
Ray Van Dune: This comment really belongs in the post related to the New Glenn explosion.
This isn’t a big deal, but it seems off topic here.
It certainly is off topic, as I acknowledged, but given the age of the original thread at this point, I felt nobody would see this much newer comment if I put it there.
I’m no physicist, but I suspect a symmetric fireball and mushroom cloud is a more or less constant feature of all detonations, big or small. The shockwave, particularly for BIG blasts, is always spherical, with the pressure difference across the shock proportional to the blast yield. Once that shock has propagated out (which was beautifully captured by the NSF video), atmospheric pressure will symmetrically rush back in, shaping the fireball and the cloud.
Bob, wouldn’t it be easier on you to ost on day s they don’t launch 29 sats?
Ray Van Dune,
The comment Reply function doesn’t show any Cloudflare verification widget and won’t let me post an actual reply so I’ll just post a first-level comment here – if I can – using the reply text I couldn’t post previously.
The explosion seems to have quickly propagated up through the rocket’s structure, which is radially symmetrical, so that could account for a lot of apparent symmetry. Camera placement might also be a factor. The NSF footage that has been widely copied was shot looking pretty much up the ramp from the integration hangar to the pad with a tower to each side and the flame trench out of sight but its centerline in line with the camera view as are the rocket itself and the transporter-erector. So anything coming out of the flame trench would have looked bilaterally symmetric too.
You should probably try to find as much video as you can taken from different viewpoints around the pad. Not all of it may look as symmetrical.
Dick: Your first comment came through with no problem. How long did you wait before before reposting? I need to know how this system is working, or not, so we can tweak it.
Dick Eagleson,
I have a similar problem posting replies rather than original comments. My workaround is to verify that I am human before clicking the reply button, then writing my comment as an already proven human. It lets me then post the comment despite the lack of Cloudflare box. This is how I did this reply to you.
Edward and Dick: Shane my web guy says he has patched this issue. Please let me know if things work better now.
Robert,
It still is doing the same thing, When I hit the reply button, the Cloudflare box vanishes. This reply was posted using the workaround I described above,
Edward: I have forwarded you comment to Shane, including your email. He might want some additional info from you.