Jonathan McDowell
@planet4589
Astronomer commenting on space launches. Orbital Police. Personal account. All plots CC-BY. @planet4589 on Ma, bsky, etc.
How great was Tom Lehrer? In 2020, he moved his entire catalog into the public domain because he felt he'd made more than enough money off of it. Enjoy every Tom Lehrer album: tomlehrersongs.com
Tom Lehrer, king of songs and sarcasm, has died. Time to put on 'We'll All Go Together When We Go' again...
Farewell TOM LEHRER 💔 Brilliant musical satirist & Harvard-trained mathematician whose wickedly clever songs like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” & “The Vatican Rag” delighted & scandalized audiences. Known for pairing dark, sardonic lyrics with irresistibly cheerful melodies.
LAUNCH at 1003 UTC Jul 27 of Weixing hulianwang digui 05 zu weixing, five sats in the Xingwang (Guowang) internet satellite constellation, by CZ-6A from Taiyuan
LAUNCH at 0431 UTC Jul 27 of Starlink 17-2 from Vandenberg
MicroCarb cataloged in a 642 x 665 km x 98.0 deg orbit; CO3D satellites 1 to 4 cataloged in a 500 x 502 km x 97.5 deg orbit.
LAUNCH at 0901:40 UTC Jul 26 of Starlink Group 10-26 from Canaveral
LAUNCH of Vega-C flight VV27 with CO3D and MicroCarb for the French space agency CNES at 0203 UTC Jul 26
LAUNCH at 0554 UTC Jul 25 of a Soyuz-2-1b/Fregat from Vostochniy with the Ionosfera-M 3 and 4 science sats and a cluster of small Russian satellites, as well as Iran's Nahid-2.
It has taken some time, but the payload from Rocket Lab's "Symphony In The Stars" mission has been cataloged as "Lyra-4", confirming that it did indeed carry a Lyra Block 1 satellite for EchoStar. celestrak.org/satcat/table-s… @trypto_tran
7 objects cataloged from the TRACERS launch in a 588 x 594 km x 97.7 deg, 0956 LTDN sun-synch orbit. Consistent with the expected payloads assuming the 5 Skykraft-4 sats are still attached to each other
The O3b MP-9/10 satellites and the Falcon 9 upper stage, launched yesterday, cataloged in expected 2654 x 7018 km x 9.7 deg insertion orbit. The payloads will raise their orbits to circularize at apogee.
LAUNCH at 1813 UTC Jul 23 of Falcon 9 from Vandenberg with TRACERS T1/T2, Bard, REAL, LIDE, EPIC Athena, and Skykraft 4/4A/4B/4C/4D.
LAUNCH at 2112 UTC Jul 22 of Falcon 9 from Canaveral with the O3b mPOWER F9 and F10 communications satellites
LAUNCH on Jul 21 of a Qased vehicle from Shahroud, Iran on a suborbital trajectory. Qased previously made 3 successful orbital flights; this flight is claimed as a tech development test for future orbital missions.