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Jonathan's Space Report
Personal blog · planet4589.orgsciencehistory
Jonathan's Space Report is a personal blog at planet4589.org about science and history. Since 2012, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 45 times, most often “Starlink Statistics”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Jonathan McDowell's new homepage
Most-linked posts?
- Starlink Statistics6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-09-24
- James Webb Space Telescope – Launch Timeline4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-12-22
- Bigger-than-Tiangong objects that fireballed through an uncontrolled reentry2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-31
- /space/gcat/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-29
- Jonathan's Space Report – Latest Issue2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-12-16
- /space/stats/star/starstats.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-09
- Jonathan's Space Report2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-21
What Hacker News says?
Apparently it takes about 100 days for the instruments to cool down far enough. https://planet4589.org/space/misc/webb/time.html
Comment linking /space/misc/webb/time.html
on “James Webb is fully deployed”Submitted There's Now 10k Active Satellites in Orbit as a story · 31 points
HN discussionAnalysis of what, exactly? The physics of the orbits they are in are pretty well understood. You can track the orbital altitudes (and failures/disposals) here: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html
Comment linking /space/stats/star/starstats.html
on “Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm”Submitted Jonathan's Space Report as a story · 20 points
HN discussion> At what point do they start breaking up into unrelated orbits? It's not as easy to see as in this visualization, but Jonathan McDowell ( https://twitter.com/planet4589 ) posts graphs on his website of each launch of starlink satellites as they raise orbits. https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html Scroll down to the individual launches and there's images you can click on of the orbit raising progress…
Comment linking /space/stats/star/spl51.jpg
on “Low Earth Orbit Visualization”Submitted Transparency in Cislunar and Interplanetary Spaceflight Activities as a story · 9 points
HN discussionOnly around one quarter of them are in their operational positions, with just over one half of them having been launched (the other one quarter is either raising their orbits or drifting into position). So it's not quite enough to run a service on yet, for that portion. Stats here: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/star/starstats.html
Comment linking /space/stats/star/starstats.html
on “Starlink for RVs”Submitted Starlink Statistics as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere are most of the big ones, with timing: https://planet4589.org/space/misc/webb/time.html
Comment linking /space/misc/webb/time.html
on “James Webb Space Telescope launch [video]”Submitted Launch statistics by country 2023. 212 out of 223 made orbit [pdf] as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBeen exploring the amazing GCAT space dataset - it’s been a good way to drive some dashboard feature experimentation using fun data. Still need to work on my dashboard design skills, though. GCAT: https://planet4589.org/space/gcat/ Dashboard example: https://trilogydata.dev/trilogy-studio-core/#screen=dashboar...
Comment linking /space/gcat/
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)”Submitted James Webb Space Telescope – Launch Timeline as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJonathan's Space Report ( http://www.planet4589.org/jsr.html ) is an exhaustive accounting of human activity in space (manned or unmanned), with a focus on recent launches. Released every few weeks. Back issues run to 1989 and continue to the present day. Emily Lakdawalla writes some very good explanations of space science for the Planetary Society - very accessible, but with more detail and intelligence (IMHO) than…
Comment linking /jsr.html
on “Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read?”Submitted Jonathan's Space Report – Latest Issue as a story · 2 points
HN discussionStarlink isn't at the top of my list for "likely Kessler Syndrome starters" because its a rather low orbit. They're at 550km up. From https://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/debris/orblife.htm puts it at likely a 10 year lifespan with some variation. The published lifespan of a satellite is 5 years. Its the stuff in the 700km to 900km range that's a problem. http://stuffin.space https://www.satview.org/spacejunk.php -…
Comment linking /astro/starsim/index.html
on “Starlink satellites hindering detection of near-Earth asteroids, study finds”Submitted Jonathan's Space Report as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFor anyone interested in current data like this, Jonathan McDowell maintains GCAT which is a General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (and does so fastidiously). https://www.planet4589.org/space/gcat/index.html Be warned if you planning to ingest this dataset, the dates are fun =)
Comment linking /space/gcat/index.html
on “Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)”Submitted Jonathan's Space Report – Latest Issue as a story · 2 points
HN discussionNot feasible. That would entail putting shrapnel into orbit (unlike extant anti-sat weapons which are short-range suborbital), which would mean a full orbital launch for every satellite target orbit. There's hundreds[0] of Starlink orbital groups already, so that'd require hundreds of independent orbital launches in a short timescale—far beyond China's launch capabilities today. [0] https://planet4589.org/space/con/…
Comment linking /space/con/star/planes.html
on “Analysis of the GFW's Unconditional Port 443 Block on August 20, 2025”Submitted Bigger-than-Tiangong objects that fireballed through an uncontrolled reentry as a story · 2 points
HN discussionJonathan McDowell keeps track of all the Starlink Sat orbits, including failures: https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html
Comment linking /space/con/star/stats.html
on “Economics of Orbital vs. Terrestrial Data Centers”Submitted Juno's Orbital Insertion Velocity and Records for Spacecraft Speed as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTheir 66 satellites are going to support a much lower aggregate constellation throughput and spot beam count vs StarLink. They’re fundamentally constrained by lift costs and low constellation satellite count. Iridium has 48 spot beams per satellite each covering 250 miles. Each StarLink cell covers ~15 miles with a similar spot beam count, with 5,442 satellites currently operational (as of this comment). https://pla…
Comment linking /space/con/star/stats.html
on “SpaceX just achieved speed of 17Mb/s from satellite to stock Android phone”Submitted Enormous (`Mega') Satellite Constellations as a story · 1 points
HN discussion“Many” seems to mean only a dozen-odd. Which seems like an awfully small number to image the entire earth at meaningful levels of resolution or frequency. Which also seems to be the article’s lesson. FWIW, it looks like Starlink alone is up to 5,942 satellites in orbit [0] these days [0] https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html
Comment linking /space/con/star/stats.html
on “Why are there so many methane satellites?”Submitted Space Activities in 2022 [pdf] as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOne further note. Here's a list of the largest uncontrolled re-entries. https://planet4589.org/space/articles/big_reentries.txt Look at the dates on them, other than the Chinese stages.
Comment linking /space/articles/big_reentries.txt
on “CZ5B (Chinese rocket) Reentry Prediction”Submitted James Webb Space Telescope – Launch Timeline as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://planet4589.org/space/stats/megacon/starbad.html
Comment linking /space/stats/megacon/starbad.html
on “Starlink Packet Routing”Submitted List of Space Travelers as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
