Jonathan McDowell
@planet4589
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Astronomer commenting on space launches. Orbital Police. Personal account. All plots CC-BY. @planet4589 on Ma, bsky, etc.
Somerville, MA, USA
Joined January 2009
LAUNCH at 0131 UTC Nov 6 of Starlink 6-81 from Canaveral
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LAUNCH at 1951 UTC Nov 5 of a Rocket Lab Electron from Mahia with the QPS SAR 14 radar sat for Japan's iQPS
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At 0935 UTC Nov 5 the US Air Force carried out test launch GT254 of a Minuteman 3 ICBM from Vandenberg Space Force Base (likely silo LF09 or LF10) to Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific.
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Rook is back! Congrats and good luck Jared. I expect I won't always agree with your decisions, but I do trust your integrity and your focus and committment to America's future in space.
Thank you, Mr. President @POTUS, for this opportunity. It will be an honor to serve my country under your leadership. I am also very grateful to @SecDuffy, who skillfully oversees @NASA alongside his many other responsibilities. The support from the space-loving community has
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Launch at 2102 UTC Nov 4 of an Ariane 6 from Kourou with the EU's Sentinel-1D radar satellite
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Yaogan 46 cataloged in a 2548 x 7562 km x 20.0 deg orbit, suggesting it is related to Yaogan 45 and is not a geostationary mission as some had suggested
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Yep finally got TLE data for the Shenzhou 21 upper stage in a 194 x 327 km orbit on Nov 3.
@planet4589 Le voilà ! 25307.25866615 ...
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CMS-03/GSAT-7R and the LVM3 stage 2 rocket cataloged in a 179 x 26647 km x 21.3 deg transfer orbit.
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I'm still trying to identify the reentry seen over Aruba at 0112 UTC Oct 31 - I suspect it was 65564 / 2025-202B CZ-7A Y14 stage 3, which did reenter that day and whose orbit seems to roughly match. Can someone with better reentry prediction tools check me?
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LAUNCH at 0347 Nov 3 of a CZ-7A from Wenchang with the Yaogan 46 remote sensing satellite. Orbit not yet known.
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We now have two elsets of SZ-21 docked to the CSS, but still nothing from pre-docking and nothing for the upper stage, as far as I can see.
More than 24 hours after launch, still no @S4S_SDA orbit data for either Shenzhou-21 (which has now docked to the Chinese space station) or its CZ-2F upper stage, preventing analysts from studying the rendezvous profile.
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LAUNCH at 1156 UTC Nov 2 of India's LVM-3 from Sriharikota carrying the CMS-03 military comms sat for ISRO and the Indian Navy to a subsync geotransfer orbit.
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LAUNCH at 0510 UTC Nov 2 of a Falcon 9 from Canaveral pad 40 with the Bandwagon-4 rideshare mission, including as primary payload the fourth Korean Project 425 military radar sat
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The Chinese station made another orbit reboost on Oct 29, a couple of days before the Shenzhou-21 launch
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More than 24 hours after launch, still no @S4S_SDA orbit data for either Shenzhou-21 (which has now docked to the Chinese space station) or its CZ-2F upper stage, preventing analysts from studying the rendezvous profile.
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Casey is not impressed with NASA's Orion program. (And neither am I.)
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Among the 18 satellites aboard the @SpaceX Bandwagon-4 mission to be launched on Sunday, there are three sats called SEMI-1, 2, 3, manifested by @Exolaunch; can anyone tell me which company owns these sats, or anything else about them?
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Launch of @SpaceX Starlink Group 11-23 at 2041 UTC Oct 31 from Vandenberg Space Force Base
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Shenzhou-21 docked with the TIanhe forward docking port at 1922 UTC Oct 31
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Botched test apparently forced the replacement of the Soyuz vehicle for the upcoming ISS mission, according to my sources. FULL STORY:
russianspaceweb.com
Soyuz MS-28 mission
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