Een nabespreking van Artemis II, waar het hitteschild toch prima werkte. Het eerste hergebruik van New Glenn en zorg bij NASA: zijn de ruimtepakken voor een maanlanding op tijd klaar? Dat en meer met Philippe Schoonejans, Erik Laan en Herbert Blankesteijn.
www.bnr.nl/podcast/s...
Piracy and (attempted) murder on the High Seas
Trump knows he’s lost this war. That’s what an indefinite ceasefire means. He just doesn’t want to say it out loud. newsletter.ivodaalder.com/p/trump-know...
Extremely normal and fine for a company to put this in a public statement
That looks lovely! Suits you well!
Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026. They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.
Yeah, it's been acting up all day.
Screenshot of Navigational Warning NAVAREA IV 363/26, defining three exclusion zones A, B and C
The three exclusion zones A, B and C from Navigational Warning NAVAREA IV 363/26 plotted on a map of the NW Atlantic, with an indication of thye flight trajectory
Navigational Warnings have appeared for what looks like another @RocketLab #HASTE launch from Wallops, 22-29 April
So, show how it looks on you :-)
"accidentally bought" :-D
14/x
Like I said at the start: it is all very confusing...
13/x
The source from 1/x was very muddled, and the reference to "only once before" concerning the airborne launch to me seemed to refer to the US 1985 ASAT test, hencve why my interpretation went to ASAT
But yeah, that last source is more consistent with ABM, I agree. The earlier source was very muddled and the reference to "onlyy once before" concerning the airborne launch to me suggested connection to the 1985 US ASAT test.
This source sounds more like it is talking about an ABM system rather than ASAT
newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/secret-...
12/x
As @planet4589.bsky.social remarked, the source in 11/x sounds more like it concerns an anti-ballistic missile system
especially the latter
Longer thread on it:
bsky.app/profile/marc...
11/x
The orginal source of the news seems to be this, by the way:
newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/secret-...
10/x
And this includes both military and civilian satellite systems on which our modern societies and economies have become highly dependent.
Like Nukes, ASAT weapons are weapons you would not like to see used, and proliferation of them is concerning.
9/x
And this implication of developing an ASAT capacity is a reason for concern. ASAT weapons are indicriminate. They produce a lot of (sometimes long-lasting) space debris that next is a threat to all satellites in Low Earth Orbit: not just the enemy ones but also your own, and your allies'.
8/x
Testing missiles, air-launched or not, on suborbital trajectories reaching up to 200 km and statements that it aims at a "capacity to engage enemy assets operating in space" sounds like they are aiming to develop an ASAT weapon like the ASM-135 (they'll need to get higher than 200 km though).
7/x
So this clearly does not tally with the claim of "only once before in the mid 1970's". Ignoring sounding rockets, the only event that can be considered "only once before" was the 1985 ASAT test, but that was the mid 1980's, not 1970's
6/x
And of course there was the famous US Anti-Satellite (ASAT) test using an ASM-135 missile fired from an F15-A on 13 Sept 1985, destroying the Solwind satellite.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135...
5/x
Airborne suborbital launches have been done before too. There was the US ALSOR (Air Launched Sounding Rocket) during the '50's-'60s reaching altitudes up to 117 km, launched from Starfighters. There was Farside and Rockoon in the '50's, launched from balloons.
4/x
Airborne actual space launches (satellites) have been conducted multiple times, e.g. Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne, and Northrop's Pegasus.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northro...
3/x
One of the launches reportedly was from an aircraft and it is claimed that this was only the "second worldwide", refering to an earlier US launch "in the mid-'70's".
That is incorrect, and confusing, as I will discuss further on.
2/x
The news item talks about "space launches" and "orbital", but in reality it seems to concern SUBORBITAL launches, not orbital, as also implicated by the quoted apogee altitudes. Are these "space launches"? In general, they are not considered to be, even though they reach space in their apogee.
1/x
This news item is doing the rounds, and it is very confusing. It seems to conflate things that should not be conflated - suborbital launches, space lanches, suborbital and orbital. More concerningly, it seems to hint at ASAT.
A 🧵
defence-blog.com/ukraine-conf...
3/x
The implication is strongly: direct ascend ASAT. Which is concerning, as it produces large amounts of space debris, which is a threat to all (including European and American) satellites in LEO, not just the Russian ones.
