Launching and Putting SXM-11 Into Service

This June I had the pleasure of going to Florida to watch the launch of SXM-11. The viewing party was lovely, we got tours of the SpaceX facilities (which sadly didn’t allow pictures). We got to see Dragon capsules, Starlink stacks ready to go into fairings, Falcon9 refurbishment, and so much cool stuff. That night SXM-11 launched at the top of its 4 hour launch window, picture perfect.

Almost immediately after we were working on deploying the satellite, and after a long summer of in-orbit-testing, the satellite is finally on station and ready to begin it’s life!

Of course the day that SXM-11 arrived at it’s final orbital slot ushered in a week of clouds for me. It’s truly an astronomy tradition. Last night the clouds finally broke and I was able to see SXM-11 up there in the sky.

I took the images with my 10” dobsonian telescope with a ZWOASI290MC camera with a 2x focal reducer to expand the field of view. Each frame of this animation is a 3 second exposure, so the full video is sped up slightly to show the motion of the background stars. I did attempt a real time capture to show how the background stars move.

For some reason the software didn’t handle scaling the image nicely and there are some moire effects going on making patterns in the image.

It’s been a pleasure being involved in SXM-11 from clean room, to launch, to ongoing operations. I’m looking forward to keeping this one going well past the 15 year life span!