Recent content by mfb

New orbit data: 265 x 485 km x 43.0 deg orbit That means the circularization burn started, but stopped after about 50%. Still too low to be useful for the payload, but it now gives ASTS some more time in orbit to test their satellite.

Confirmed loss of the satellite - no orbit data but too low to be saved. It's almost certainly in the same orbit where drag will deorbit it very quickly.

Booster landing success, but wrong orbit for the launch: "NG-3 Update: We have confirmed payload separation. AST SpaceMobile has confirmed the satellite has powered on. The payload was placed into an off-nominal orbit. We are currently assessing and will update when we have more detailed...

New Glenn launch in 2 hours 30 minutes. Livestream This will be the first time a company besides SpaceX reuses a booster of an orbital rocket. The payload is BlueBird 7, a direct-to-cell communication satellite by AST SpaceMobile. Edit:

33-engine static fire of Super Heavy Looks great with the new flame trench. That and the earlier Ship static fire means a launch sometime in May looks likely.

If you are missing live coverage from a spaceflight mission: Apollo in real time is covering the Apollo missions as they happened 56 years ago. It's currently following Apollo 13 on its moon-bound trajectory. Spoiler:

Both stages for the next Starship launch have been moved to the launch site for testing. Looks like a spin prime test of the ship - like a static fire test but without igniting the engine. Things look on track for an early May launch or so. Edit: Spin prime test of the booster followed quickly...

NASA stream for reentry (landing in ~1.5 hours) A steeper angle will lead to a higher peak heat load but the heat shield is designed for that. It's the slow, long-term heating in deeper layers that caused the ablation. The discussion was about a nebula, not a point source.

The area brightness of an object does not depend on distance. It doesn't depend on the magnification either. The Pillars of Creation are too dim for the naked eye - at every distance, and even if you look through a telescope. The popular image is heavily edited, too. Here is an original image...

80,000 km to go. The closest approach is 23.5 hours away. Tomorrow's schedule is basically Moon observations the whole day. Besides using cameras, NASA also highlights the power of human eyes and their connected brains - finding things that look unusual, detecting differences in colors or...

Hello world The Sun is behind Earth, this is a picture of the night side. South is up. The big red area is the Sahara, at the bottom left you have Spain and Portugal, Antarctica is at the top right, South America is on the right side. The thin layer around Earth is our atmosphere. You can see...

Toilet issues are fixed The crew is using Outlook, and it's not working

Timeline, updated for an April 1 launch. NASA's website tracking Orion - seems to be a bit buggy, not all features work for everyone, but at least telemetry should show up. Independent website tracking the mission It's now 3 hours since launch. Orion will separate from the upper stage in...

Apogee raising burn is in progress. This will give them an orbital period of one day, enough time to fully test everything before committing to go to the Moon in 24 hours. There was a lot of discussion about the toilet status but it doesn't seem to be a major issue.

Liftoff!