I’m Anthony Colangelo.

It certainly reads to me like they really want to see some details about what New Glenn could offer, and they want to know if Blue Origin would put a bid in for the launch.

Dawn is now in its final orbit at Ceres, and it has a shockingly-low periapsis of 35 kilometers. For some perspective, SpaceShipTwo’s most recent flight achieved a peak altitude of 34.9 kilometers.

I’ve heard that they did lose a day due to weather last week, and have been working around some since, but this is at least somewhat encouraging. I’ve also heard a lot of skepticism about the vehicle that is supposed to be attached to this engine, but I guess we’ll see soon.

It’s good to see this sort of hardware coming through the production lines. I’m excited to see ULA launch one of these brawny Centaurs. The last—and only—flight of a Dual Engine Common Centaur was 16 years ago—over four and a half years before ULA was formed.

My long-term gut feeling: we’ll one day look at life in the solar system the way we do water and geologic activity today. We used to think just about everywhere but Earth was barren and static, and we’re constantly surprised whenever we go somewhere.

Contrary to what was reported in SpaceNews a few days ago, there will be more than one captive carry test, there won’t be a captive carry test next week, and there will be a drop test before the first launch attempt. The test campaign will take most of the summer, so I wouldn’t expect to see engines light until the end of August or even September.

Workers will be attaching the pylon that holds LauncherOne to the aircraft’s left wing in the next few days, he said. “If everything goes well there, we’ll conduct our first captive carry test,” he said. The flight will take place from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

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!