Astronomer commenting on space launches. Orbital Police. All plots CC-BY. https://xitter-newx.xyz-mikolabs.workers.dev/t.co/MjaOE0FEqR
Somerville, MA, USA
Joined January 2009
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Rant of the day: I hate the newfangled term PNT (for 'position, navigation and timing'). Both timing and position have been integral parts of navigation since the RGO was founded in 1675, so it's just tautological. Just say 'Nav'.
LAUNCH at 0048 UTC Nov 7 of a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg with the US Space Force SBST R-4 group of satellites (mission USSF-432)
The Gushenxing-2 (Ceres-2) carried the Yunyao-1-28 sat with a GNSS-RO meteo payload, the Juntian-1-06A radar sat, the Zhongbe Daxue 1 optical imaging sat for North Univ of China, and Guanlan Shiyan. The owner and mission for Guanlan Shiyan is unknown so far.
LAUNCH at 2337 UTC Nov 6 of the Gushenxing-2 rocket from Jiuquan on its second launch, reaching orbit successfully for the first time.
Unpacking continues to consume me, so posts will continue to be sparse, but GCAT is still being updated every few days.
Launches: Nov 2 at 1641 UTC, Electron from Mahia with QPS-SAR-20 radar sat. Nov 3 at 0015 UTC, Lijian-2 from Jiuquan with Qianfan group 21 internet sats Nov 5 at 1558 UTC, CZ-2C from Xichang with three Yaogan 51 sigint sats
ISS spacewalk. They meant to say EST, not EDT, I believe.
.@Astro_Kutryk and @Astro_Anil set their spacesuits to battery power at 8:36 a.m. EDT today signifying the beginning of their spacewalk to finish upgrading the station's power generation system. More... go.nasa.gov/48wjhBQ
ALT From left, Astronauts Joshua Kutryk of CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and Anil Menon of NASA conduct spacewalk training at Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, Texas.
Latest Space Force prediction for SWIFT reentry is 1142 to 1342 GMT today, i.e. in the next few hours
Jonathan's Space Report No. 861 published at planet4589.org/jsr.html
Update on Rassvet-3 orbit raising. Two failed R3s will reentered in the next day or two. Most of the rest are stable at 500 km
While I might well have been on the side of the EHBs, this is a truly fabulous reply that university leadership would never come up with (or be allowed to come up with) today.
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!
A more detailed analysis of the latest with Kosmos-2612 from COMSPOC, who have access to tracking data I don't....
COSMOS 2612 (SSC.68762) walks up to ICEYE-X36 (SSC.59103)
In July we posted on the Cosmos 2609–2614 group. Back then we flagged COSMOS 2612 as the satellite best placed to reach ICEYE-X36. Three months later, it did.
Analysis via COMSPOC SSA.
On 1 October COSMOS 2612 raised its orbit ~47 km. The higher orbit gave it a fast catch-up drift, and it passed ICEYE-X36 at ~55 km on 5 October and again on 12 October. Within about two hours of the second pass it made two retrograde burns (~27 m/s total) and dropped back to ICEYE-X36’s altitude, ~515 km behind it. Between 13 and 16 October seven small burns (~5 m/s total) closed that gap.
By 16 October COSMOS 2612 was in ICEYE-X36’s plane (within 0.003°) and at its altitude. Since the two share a plane, there are no plane crossings to wait for. From 16–18 October they spent ~24 hours within 2 km of each other and ~12 hours within 1 km. First pass was ~220 m (max uncertainty ~490 m) near 14:03 UTC on 16 October. It then held 2–4 km behind before drawing level on 17 October and settling into a centred safety ellipse around ICEYE-X36, which it held for the rest of the day. Closest pass in our solution was ~60 m (max uncertainty ~950 m) near 14:18 UTC. By late on 17 October it had drifted ~2 km ahead, then trimmed back for a third pass at ~260 m (max uncertainty ~160 m) near 01:58 UTC on 18 October. Relative speed at the closest points was 0.15–0.9 m/s, walking pace or slower. Slow walk-past, not a fly-by . ICEYE-X36 did not maneuver.
COSMOS 2612 burned away at 12:30 UTC on 18 October, braked on 19 October, and is now holding ~480 km from ICEYE-X36 in the same orbit.
We’ve seen this sequence before. COSMOS 2581, 2582 and 2583 (SSC.62902/62903/62904) have been running it against each other since February 2025: raise, phase, drop to co-altitude, close at under half a meter per second, hold, depart, loiter. Since August 2025 we’ve logged more than 170 sub-km conjunction events within that trio, several down to single-digit meters. Until now, every target had been one of their own. This is the first non-cooperative one.
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