The radio contest I mentioned yesterday. As the day went by yesterday I pretty much only heard a handful of guys in the peninsula of Florida, from a guy in Miami area to one on the farthest northeast corner north of Jacksonville. I didn't even hear the panhandle like out by Tallahassee or farther, like Pensacola or Panama City. A review toward the end of the day showed there were a couple of short openings to around San Antonio, Texas and then around Arlington, Virginia. Both openings were short and I didn't try to call those stations.
This morning started out looking quite a bit busier. I had the station on around 8AM and listened to the meteor scatter activity also on 6m. It was busier than most of Saturday, with signals copied from around the SE US. After not hearing any new places to work, I went back to FT8. While the overall picture of the activity was similar to yesterday, there were no new places to work there, either.
A rough rule of thumb for choosing meteor scatter over other modes is that meteor showers are best, and those tend to be densest in the midnight to sunrise hours. This is primarily due to the geometry of how Earth moves through the space dust trails the comets leave, which create the meteors. The speed at which the meteors impinge on the atmosphere and leave their ionized trails drops off after sunrise, and the few times I've dedicated a morning to making contacts thanks to some meteor shower it was unusual to get a contact after 9AM.
Today brought more signals heard from relatively populous areas in New England, and along the eastern seaboard. As the day went by that thinned out but didn't get replaced by areas to the west, as often happens. As a trade-off (I guess) we did have a few countries in South America show up as it was approaching evening: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were all heard, and all three are common and easy to contact from here.
By the time the Cargo Resupply launch to the ISS from Cape Canaveral rolled around, we were ready for some "sit back and enjoy" time.
From Space.com's Video From Space.
Wait, what? Cygnus as in ATK/Northrup Grumman? Who swore years ago that they'd never launch using SpaceX?
ReplyDeleteOh, how the tides have turned.
Once again, SpaceX doing the impossible. That being launching competitors' stuff, from Amazon to Northrup Grumman.
How soon before SpaceX launches Dream Chaser, that is if Dream Chaser ever launches?
"Wait, what? Cygnus as in ATK/Northrup Grumman? Who swore years ago that they'd never launch using SpaceX?"
DeleteI've been calling these "strange bedfellows" missions since Grumman signed them up.
It's really drop dead simple for Grumman, though: who ya gonna go to, the guys who launch every other day or the ones who say they'll launch every other week at some point in the future?
There was talk this year about Dream Chaser switching over to Falcon Heavy, though. I wouldn't be surprised to see it. It's the same basic question as Grumman faced, though. They can't launch a FH every other day that we know of (AFAIK there has never been that much need) but I sure wouldn't bet against them doing it.
Northrop Grumman makes solid and liquid rockets. Northrop Grumman builds the SLS boosters. The liquids may be too small for the Cygnus ISS resupply missions but the solids have more than enough capacity to lift anything to ISS. If the SLS version is too big, Northrop Grumman can use less propellant. They know how to do this, the larger (Northrop Grumman) solids are built in segments (the famous O rings).
ReplyDeleteIf Northrop Grumman chooses SpaceX as its rocket supplier, what is the point of Northrop Grumman being in the rocket business? Why would a customer choose Northrop Grumman when Northrop Grumman will not choose Northrop Grumman?
At the time that they said the reason for the changes was that they were unable to procure the engines they had been using in their liquid-fueled Antares rocket (Russian engines). They contracted Firefly to design the next generation, and said they were hoping to get the first Antares (330, apparently) flying by the end of 2024. Hah!
DeleteNow the question starts out "if Northrop Grumman chooses Firefly as its rocket supplier..." Maybe the answer is all the engineers who could have designed the next rocket left for the company where bigger things are happening faster.
Oops. Meant to include this link to the background story.
Delete