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Good transfer orbit insertion by the second stage (175 x 1321 km x 66 degrees). Alas, the first stage on the other hand is currently in a Schrödinger's cat quantum state.... :uhh:

Well, uh, this is the worst fog I have seen in VAFB for launches of the last few years! :shifty: (and remember there is almost always some kind of fog there from past launch experiences :P)

It's probably not a co-incidence that our latest sea barge heading rocket launch is carrying something that will measure the heights of the ocean surface from space! Jason-3 is the 4th member in a long series of ocean altitude measuring satellites co-developed by NASA and the French CNES since...

Two favors of live coverage will be offered by SpaceX starting from this flight: If you are of the party kind, use this one: If you want the technical countdowns, use this: Also NASA TV is already covering it from an hour ago. :tiphat:

It's amazing that after 3 pages here there's not a single sentence on the passenger on board! Hmm....I'll take that part then. :hmm: But first, a weather report: Weather forecast for Lompoc, California on January 17, 2016 (11 a.m.) Morning fog, then mostly cloudy this afternoon. High 17C...

.....or fund 1 more SLS flight for NASA, or 1 more Mars rover mission, or you can send it to The Elon and buy 20 Falcon 9 flights...... :rofl:

In other news, there's another spacewalk later today for replacing a power supply unit on the truss (SSU) that failed last month. As Tim Peake is one of the two "Tims" who will go out today, this will make the first ever spacewalk by a British! :thumbup:

These things apparently came from this launch: http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=36467 More precisely, they are parts of the 2nd stage of the Zenit rocket. ;)

Alas, I recently took up a full time job and the rest of the time was (somewhat) spent elsewhere. Heck I have two December Russian sat launches and 9 (yes, nine) Chinese launches dating from Q4 2015 that are still pending me to write on here..... :facepalm: Rest assured that I can speed up my...

So apparently the Chinese military force's Second Artillery Corps (basically their ballistic and cruise missile force) has just been re-organized into a higher level force in parity with their tri-forces. The literal translation of their new name in Chinese means "Rocket Army". My first...

Well....I missed it again, but there's not much to see either. Anyway it's flying well right now with spacecraft separation about 4 hours away!

Well Mars missions getting to the point of missing launch windows isn't new at all (MSL missed the 2009 one by a lot and Spirit/Opportunity were only a month away from slipping past 2003), but you'd think that a Martian seismometer might be an easier instrument to made than those gadgets on...

While something that has been touted as "as phenomenal as the flight of Charles Lindbergh" (ahem) has just happened at the Cape, things are.....as usual during Western Christmas at the other mega-spaceport of the world (with their Christmas still 2 weeks away). Making its 2nd flight in less...

From Elon: Elon Musk @elonmusk Falcon 9 standing on LZ-1 at Cape Canaveral

Well that's a right-down-the-pipe landing and a good flight for satellites. Now please I expect more of the same for the next consecutive >50 flights. ;) And the hard part that follows - how to refly 1st stages reliably and cheaply and keep the system reliable in the long term. ;)

So (ahem) while everyone focuses on the lower part of the F9, lemme fill in the details of the rest that absolutely no one will care, not (quite) even by the boss of the company that the satellites on board come from! The passengers today are 11 satellites of the new 2nd generation Orbcomm...

The EVA will occur later today from 13:10 UTC onwards and will last around 3.5 hours. Here's what the astronauts will do to get free of the stuck brakes and secure the cart: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/12/nasa-eva-free-stuck-ceta-cart-iss/

Oops, I completed the launch report too late to put it out before launch. :embarrassed: Nevermind, the Progress is safely in orbit with all the solar arrays and antennae confirmed deployed and spacecraft not rolling around. ;) Now please Scott and Tim, get the stuck astronaut cart on the truss...