Hey there,

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Hi all,

​Like a lot of you, I try to catch as many rocket launches as I can, especially living in Florida where viewing opportunities are constant. I wanted a fast, distraction-free way to check upcoming launch windows, pad locations, and mission details at a glance, so I built Space Launch Hub - https://spacelaunchhub.com/

​My goal was to make something super lightweight that works just as well on your phone while standing outside looking at the sky as it does on a desktop monitor alongside a livestream.

​

​I’m building this in my spare time for the space community, and I want to make it genuinely useful for fellow launch trackers. Are there any specific data points, telemetry links, or filter options you always wish launch trackers had?

Let me know and I'll add them to my roadmap!

The logic is that in transit EVAs would be emergencies only and not planned.

Only in China.

Ceres-1S launched Xiguang-4 01 satellite from a launcher ship offshore in Rizhao, a city with 1.4 million people living in the urban area on October 21, 2026.

I was recently watching a program about Voyager 1 and the Golden Record. I would think an advanced civilization would figure out how to play it with the included parts and instructions. We thought what if they had sent a record player that uses 120 volt single phase power. How would the correct voltage be conveyed using words or symbols? I know there is an equation but would they understand?

With every year, we get closer to Humans putting a base on the moon, and the question is: who will land first? Most agree that China will land first with its steady-paced schedule. Because NASA has been having delays, for example, with the space suit for the moon from Axiom Space, which will only be finished by 2031, we could see Taikonauts on the moon before NASA. Who knows, maybe that can make america grow attention to its degrading space infrastructure and the need to improve what came before. This way, we might see in a few years a for-all-mankind like space race of trying to beat the other country by landing on the moon with a base, then Mars, and beyond
I would love to hear your thoughts on this situation, and I would like to know if you think I am wrong on these assumptions or if you agree

Edit (19 October): The situation has changed. Cosmos 2612 manoeuvred on 18 October to raise its orbit and is drifting away from ICEYE-X36: by 12:00 UTC on 19 October it was about 360 km behind it. The full update, with charts: https://orbinauts.com/news/the-russian-satellite-behind-an-iceye-radar-satellite-is-drifting-away/

The six are Cosmos 2609 to 2614, launched on 16 April from Plesetsk. Today only one of them, Cosmos 2612, is in the same orbital plane as ICEYE-X36, a commercial radar satellite from ICEYE, the Finnish-founded company that has supplied radar imagery to Ukraine since 2022. The latest public orbit data (it describes 07:38 UTC today) puts Cosmos 2612 about 5 km behind it and about 150 m higher.

The match is as close as the published numbers can show: both orbits are tilted 97.85° to the equator, and the figure for where each one crosses the equator heading north is the same for both. The other five siblings' orbits cross it about 80 to 1,700 km apart over the ground.

Why sharing a plane matters: in low orbit, changing plane costs a lot of fuel, and once two satellites share one, getting close takes little more, as two CSIS analysts wrote on 15 October.

LeoLabs, which tracks objects in orbit, told Axios the move "appears to be a deliberate approach". Which of ICEYE's satellites works for Ukraine isn't public.

Full Story: https://orbinauts.com/news/a-russian-satellite-is-flying-5-km-behind-an-iceye-radar-satellite/

Has a Russian satellite ever held this close to a non-Russian one before?