Telemetry
Altitude: 630 km
Iridium wikipedia
Satellites are in low Earth orbit at a height of approximately 485 mi (781 km) and inclination of 86.4°.
That awkward moment when your satellite is 151 km below where it should be
Definitely very odd.
1) Strange sights over LA. Rocket went on a horizontal path, produced a strange shaped cloud, and was very bright. Musk joked about this on twitter, which Q confirmed was a distraction.
2) SpaceX decide not to land the rocket, instead letting it fall to earth. They have easily landed rockets following three previous Iridium missions, which have had nearly identical profiles to this one.
3) Pictures were tweeted of the Falcon rocket filled with just a tesla, not the iridium satellites. Q has posted the word missile with an i missing over the past few days. Today he confirmed the [i] stood for the iridium satellite. Is he implying the missle was launched without the iridium satellite?
4) The picture Space X tweeted of the deployed satellite included the altitude, 630 km, which according to wikipedia is 151 km below it's operational altitude.
5) Probably unrelated but Japan also launched satellites today, but it was interesting that they launched it 72 seconds before the falcon 9. The last time two rockets took off any near this close was in 1970 and they were 304 seconds apart.
Q has also linked this launch with north korea (which was in the news today), possibly as the guidance system for their ICBMs (supporting the view that the iridium satellites were removed from the missile).
Yeah but they aren't at the right altitude. They should be at 781 km for operational iridium satellites, 666 km for backup satellites, and SpaceX tweeted a picture of them at 630 km. It takes a lot of fuel and time to change altitude. All of this is on the iridium wikipedia.
Correct. I believe the Department of Defense has them too. The original iridium project was the largest bankruptcy in US history. Billions of dollars on an overly expensive sat phone network. But it provided better coverage than other sat phones so the DoD decided to fund it.