I’m Anthony Colangelo.

The language is vague, but it sounds like they’re talking about the entire window that runs until July 6. Must be a really pesky issue if they don’t think they can get it solved within a week.

Yowza. They’ll need to get an additional $800 million approved by Congress, and the launch is now set for about a year from the estimated retirement date of Ariane 5.

“The partnership combines the lower resolution but daily global coverage of Planet’s cubesat constellation with Airbus’ fleet of high-resolution satellites that have more limited coverage.”

About two months ago, we heard that Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin would be receiving sole-source contracts for the next-generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program. I believe this is the first official contract award we’ve seen posted.

The HYDROS-C propulsion unit is tiny—just 1U in size. NASA also has a nice video up showing PTD-1 in action.

I don’t remember RL10 being part of the previously-awarded EELV propulsion contracts. Wonder if that’s related to the recent announcements that both Vulcan and OmegA will use the RL10 as their upper stage.

AFSPC-52 is well within the performance of an expended Falcon 9, so this is exactly one of those scenarios predicted for Falcon Heavy’s use: flying a recoverable Falcon Heavy instead of an expended Falcon 9.

Just in time for opposition, when we take out our telescopes and try to get a glimpse of some surface detail. Hoping it clears up for us —and Opportunity—by mid-July.

That means the relay satellite is doing well at Earth-Moon L2. I’m really excited to watch this mission get up there.

Incredible video (with accelerometer data turned into sound) that really gives you a sense for just how far Opportunity has traveled.

The thermal limits were a main concern of mine going into the press conference NASA held yesterday about Opportunity and the currently-active Martian dust storm. Things seem okay!

Beautiful shots. Earth from lunar orbit is always something special.

Good news for Rocket Lab, and better news for Spaceflight, who seemingly had no problem filling these flights.

This month, Jason Davis of the Planetary Society joined Jake and I on Off-Nominal. We talked about when and why—but not how—humanity will go to the Moon and Mars. Okay, maybe a little about how.

Juno is on its 13th orbit right now, so an additional 41 months allows Juno to make 37 orbits—the exact amount originally planned.