Brotoro

Did they announce a name for the spacecraft? I thought they were going to announce on launch day...but were they planning to announce AFTER launch?

You will not go to space today.

Bob and Doug's Excellent Mission.

Is NASA's contract with SpaceX not a matter of public record? I presume if NASA is paying full price for the booster with the understanding that it gets thrown away if there is bad recovery weather, it should say something about that. But if SpaceX gave NASA the option to take a cheaper booster price in exchange for the option to delay for booster recovery reasons, it should say that.

Well, that was very disappointing. The big group of 40 that went high overhead at about 8:30... we only saw three of them as they each flared briefly. The sky was brighter than yesterday, but I could see the Big Dipper stars, so I should have been able to spot the Starlink satellites if they were as bright as yesterday's bunch. But just a few flares. And the bunch of 19 that were such a bright parade yesterday... When they went past tonight at about 9:04, I was able to see several of them with binoculars, but they were way too dim to see naked eye (at least with the streetlight interfering). It must depend a lot on the orientation of the satellites relative to the Sun. I wonder if the big group is oriented differently from the 19? And the 19 were much more backlit today, I guess.

And tonight should be better. The larger group (41 satellites) is coming higher overhead...although they will be earlier (8:29 PM), so the sky will be lighter. And then the group of 19 will come by at 9:04, but they will be down at 30 degrees or so in the south. It's interesting that they separated into two groupings like that. Also, predictions are for clearer sky.

We watched a group of Starlink satellites from the recent launch go over. I saw 19 objects about as bright as the Big Dipper stars that they were parading through, about 60 degrees max altitude, starting at about 8:47 PM. I couldn't see any dimmer ones in the gaps with binoculars. Nice parade.

Huzzah. I still enjoy a good landing.

Finally! A lot of last second translation goin' on there. But it's great to get to see it at last.

Good job, SpaceX!

Looks like a nice pass of the latest batch of Starlink sats will happen at around 6:00AM tomorrow morning, and the weather is clear. I guess I get up and have a look-see.

Once again, we didn’t see the actual separation of the stack of Starlink sats.

They won't rename the Greek letter designations of the stars in Orion if Betelgeuse explodes. The rule that the stars of a constellation are lettered in order of brightness is not true for all constellations anyway. See Ursa Major, where the Greek letters were assigned in the order the stars appear in the Big Dipper.

Have we EVER seen video of the moment of the Starlink stack separating? It always seems to me that they cutaway to the orbit animation at that point.

This was much more satisfying than the Orion abort test that just dropped the capsule into the drink.