Jonathan's Space Report

June 23, 2021 7:50 AM

Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Since 1989, he has self-published Jonathan's Space Report, a monthly free web-based newsletter that recaps launches of satellites, reentries and launches of manned spacecraft, and other recent spaceflight activity.

His back catalogue of issues since 1989 are also available in plain text.

posted by fizzix (4 comments total)

Super interesting and knowledgeable guy. I saw his space-race keynote a couple of years ago, around the Apollo 11 anniversary, and he turned out to be a really engaging speaker. He's also peripherally involved in the story about the recent failed Iranian space launch that surfaced yesterday.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:29 AM on June 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is completely and utterly fabulous.

I love its global span (I always wonder what's going on with India's space program, and the ESA - and I'm seeing Israel and Canada mentioned in here! and lots of China news).

And the occasional Orbituary:

Orbituary
---------

At 0616 UTC Jul 3 the CZ-3B Y56 third stage (SSN 43921) from the Jan
2019 launch of ZX-2D reentered and broke up over southern Florida
causing widespread meteor reports.

I am excited to subscribe to his newsletter, and delighted to see it's run on mailman.

Thank you so much for posting this, fizzix!
posted by kristi at 9:48 AM on June 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

You might also enjoy Ars Technica's Rocket Report. It is also available as a weekly email newsletter, but I prefer to read it on the site, because the comments are (usually) as informative as the content.
posted by feersum endjinn at 11:37 AM on June 23, 2021 [1 favorite]

While this thread is still around, I just wanted to add that NasaSpaceFlight have a couple of recent, pretty long interviews with McDowell here and here. Lots of good stuff about space debris, astronomers-vs-satellite-constellations, Chandra X-Ray observatory, arguments about the Karman line, and more!
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:07 AM on July 4, 2021