Yes – this is a satellite leaving a rocket.
It’s drifting away from a SpaceX Falcon 9, hundreds of kilometres above the Earth – and anyone can watch it happen on a laptop or a phone. I’ve worked in space for many years, but moments like this still impress.
When the first SSTL satellite went into orbit in 1981, all we got was a phone call to say:
“Yes – it’s gone up.”
That was it.
No video.
No telemetry dashboards.
No live view of anything at all.
Just a voice on the other end of a line.
Forty-odd years later, we can all watch as our satellites gently float free from their rockets, live, in real time.
We talk a lot about how fast technology moves.
Sometimes it’s nice to actually see it.
Andrew Greenhalgh 