Author: Scott Manley

The First Nuclear Missile Launched From Submarines – And How It Lead To Polaris

How the US Navy went from a copy of the German V-1 missile to the Polaris missile! In the 1940’s the US quickly started copying the German V-1 missile and after the war developed a submarine able to launch it, but advancing technology delivered the more capable Regulus missile. Submarines were built with special hangars […]

Deep Space Updates November 26th

The last 2 weeks saw the biggest spaceflight of the year, when Starship was lobbed above the Karman line for a few minutes, becoming the most massive object ever launched into space by humans. Arianespace ran a full duration test of the Ariane 6 core. Qualcomm and Iridium gave up on trying to add satellite […]

NASA’s Most Important Satellites: Satellites Talk To All The Other Satellites

In the 1970’s NASA began development of the Tracking & Data Relay Satellite System – a fundamental part of NASA’s space infrastructure which allows satellites near the Earth to communicate back to mission control even when there’s no ground stations visible over the horizon. Follow me on Twitter for more updates: Tweets by DJSnM I […]

Starship & Superheavy Become The Biggest Rocket In Space…. Before Exploding

SpaceX finally got to fly their second integrated flight test of the fully reusable Starship & Superheavy system, the launch was spectacular, excitement had been guaranteed and excitement was delivered. The reusable part however remains elusive for now, but I look forward to seeing the next launch be even more successful. Follow me on Twitter […]

Why NASA Relies On A 1950’s Aircraft Design To Track 21st Century Spacecraft

Parked at an uncontrolled rural airfield in Northern California a 70 year old British Jet Bomber which was once used to carry experiments for NASA. The British Canberra design was licensed by the USA to make the B-57 which in turn evolved into the WB-57F – NASA’s high flying camera platform. There’s a pair of […]