Jonathan McDowell

Update on Rassvet-3 orbit raising. Two failed R3s will reenter in the next day or two. Most of the rest are stable at 500 km

Reported by Eric Berger back in June and now apparently confirmed by Anatoliy Zak and others, the leaky ISS Zvezda PRK and aft hatch area are declared permanently 'out of order'. Progress ships will dock at a side port to deliver cargo, and then redock at the Zvezda port for orbit reboosts.

LAUNCH at 0725 UTC Oct 27 of Starlink group 15-16 from Vandenberg

LAUNCH at 0203 UTC Oct 25 of Xingwang Digui (SatNet LEO) Group 28 by CZ-8A from Hainan

My annual warning that the coming week is the one where the US is still on daylight savings time but the UK is not: UK will be on GMT (EDT+4, EST+5) not BST (EDT+5, EST+6) starting 0100 GMT tonight. Be careful when scheduling transatlantic zoom meetings!

Kosmos-2612 has retreated to a distance of 500 km from ICEYE X36 and is maintaining that distance.

Back from France, catching up on analysis. It looks like the object found in Borneo on Oct 19 is indeed likely to be from the upper stage of ZQ-2E Y4, launched on Oct 14 and reentered on Oct 18. The ground track (using the final Space-Track TLE) passed near the debris site at 1036 UTC Oct 18.

Honored to receive this evening the Loftus Space Sustainability Award from the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety

A bit surprised that MMX doesn't have a nickname (like Hayabusa or Kaguya or Hitomi); XRISM doesn't either so have JAXA stopped doing this? A shame if so

JAXA broadcast over; hopefully confirmation of solar array deployment will follow in their press conf tomorrow

SECO-2, spacecraft separation: MMX and the H3 second stage are on an Earth escape hyperbola with C3=9.97 km2/s2

MMX H3 Earth escape burn underway

LAUNCH at 1941 UTC Oct 19 of MMX from Tanegashima! Go MMX!

This week I am at the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS) conference; GCAT will be updated at the weekend when I am back in London.

After 2 days in close proximity (less than 5 km, possibly much less), Kosmos-2612 moved away from ICEYE X36 on Oct 18 and is now more than 100 km away, according to US Space Force tracking data

I booked a flight at WHAT time tomorrow morning?? Aaargh.... Present me hates past me.

This afternoon's orbital data suggests - subject to confirmation - that Russia's Kosmos-2612 has carried out a rendezvous with the US ICEYE X36 radar sat, within a few km. To my knowledge this is the first LEO rendezvous of two active sats where the owner of one of the sats did not give approval.

I talked to Space Daily about one of my favourite lines: spacedaily.com/karman-line-...

Possible space debris in Minnesota, close to the path of the Zhuque-2E upper stage reentry on Sep 15.

LAUNCH at 0001 UTC Oct 16 of a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg with the USSF-481 mission, thought to carry seventeen `moving-target-indicator' spy sats for the US Space Force

OK I think I now have my RAS talk on megaconstellations down to the required 20-min-including-questions. See some of you tomorrow morning at Burlington House!

Two satellites called Sirius A and Sirius B are manifested on this weekend's Bandwagon-5 launch.. Can anyone tell me anything about these sats? Owner? mission? size?

LAUNCH at 1140 UTC Oct 14 of a Zhuque-2E with eight Guoxing 'Xingshidai' orbital compute sats and two LandTower 'Guangchan' lasercom test sats

LAUNCH at 0028 UTC Oct 13 of Starlink Group 15-25 from Vandenberg LAUNCH at 1033 UTC Oct 13 of cargo mission Dragon CRS-35 on Falcon 9 from Canaveral

D'oh. Crew-12, not Crew-13. It's been a long day.

I've been busy, but: LAUNCH at 0323 Oct 7 of South Korea's Nuri 2 with five Neonsat imagers and 9 cubesats LANDING at 1534 UTC Oct 8 of Dragon Crew-13 off the coast of Los Angeles.

Starting to kit out my office area. If only I knew where in the 1,170 boxes the box with the monitor cables is..

The 1,170 boxes and ~200 bookcases are now moved in. Several months of unpacking still to do. Also more months of construction (plumbing , etc) and more bills to come. But this is huge.

The library space on Monday, ready to receive the movers:

A major milestone to report for the gofundme www.gofundme.com/f/fund-jonat... - the library is now full of books! Some pics in the next few posts

Margaret Hamilton has died. Absolute legend, it was my honour to meet her and have a conversation with her just a few years ago, super nice and still sharp. Ave atque vale Margaret. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

1/x #France conducted a test #launch of an unarmed #SLBM (its Nuclear capable M51.3) from its submarine Le Vigilant from in front of the Bretagne coast today, targetting an area 665 km east of Bermuda at a range of ~4735 km. @planet4589.bsky.social @m514ever.bsky.social @nukestrat.bsky.social

Update on Rassvet orbit raising: looks like Rassvet-3 No. 22 has belatedly begun orbit raising, but 23 and 17 continue to decay and 11 and 14 are stuck at 350 km

Yesterday, DLR successfully launched the suborbital MAPHEUS-17 mission from Esrange, carrying several small experiments and technology demonstrators.

Our Smile mission is ready for science. Its ultraviolet camera has already captured this substorm rippling through the northern lights around Earth’s North Pole. @science.esa.int 🧪🔭

LAUNCH at 1832 UTC Oct 1 of the Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg

Jonathan's Space Report No. 860 published at planet4589.org/jsr.html

LAUNCH at 1510 UTC Oct 1 of the Crew-13 Dragon on a Falcon 9 from Canaveral

Orbits for the Starlink Group 31-1 sats are now available on @celestrak.bsky.social showing them in a 262 x 275 km x 30.5 deg orbit.

It turns out that the Space Force TIP message recording LINK's reentry on Sep 24 was incorrect. The Katalyst team inform me that the SWIFT reboost mission satellite sent its last data during reentry at 0638:12 UTC Sep 25. I have no explanation for the incorrect USSF data.

Starship deployed 26 Starlink V3 sats and then performed a deorbit burn at 2h12m; reentry underway