The SatTrackCam (B)log is 20 years old!

 

On 6 August 2005, this blog saw its very first post. This means that the SatTrackCam blog is now

20 Years Old! 

 

Since that first post, we are now 20 years and over one-thousand blogposts further. 

To quote the Talking Heads: "And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

Originally it started out as a mere observers activities log, documenting my baby steps into satellite tracking. Most of the early blogposts were very simple, descriptive and brief (and sometimes naive), and contain a lot of complaining about the Dutch weather.

Over the years, as I built up more knowledge, insight and expertise, I started to post more elaborate posts, including increasingly elaborate analysis of observations, events, data, and satellite life histories. It also included occasional Off-Topic posts on asteroids and comets and astrophotography (it still does every now and then). Some 13 years ago, a growing interest in the North Korean Space and Missile program and a chance observation by a German amateur astronomer on La Palma of what eventually turned out to be a Trident-II SLBM launch (see original post here - still containing misinterpretations - and a later revisit post and analysis here), lead to a broadening of the scope of the blog to also include Missile tests.

I can truely say that writing this blog changed my life. With hindsight, this post from July 2014 on a very tragic event (the shootdown of flight MH17, and whether US SBIRS satellites could have seen and geolocated the firing of the missile) was a turning point. It was picked up by Dutch politician Pieter Omtzigt, which one-and-a-half year later, in January 2016, led to me being invited to provide an expert opinion during a Dutch Parliamentary Committee Hearing on the subject. Little did I know at that time, that this was to profoundly alter the course of my professional life, and the beginning of a switch from an essentially amateur hobbyist interest to professional involvement in (military) Space Situational Awareness. It led to warm and ongoing contacts with the Defense Space Security Center (DSSC) of the Royal Netherlands Airforce, and to the initiation of a series of projects around building an optical satellite tracking capacity for the DSSC. In the period 2017-2022 I got a series of small positions at the Astronomy department of Leiden University in the context of these projects. 

Eventually, three years ago in June 2022, it culminated in what is by now a permanent position at the Aerospace Engineering faculty of Delft University of Technology, where I am currently employed as a part-time (0.5 fte) Lecturer in Space Situational Awareness as part of the section Astrodynamics and Space Missions. 

The second half of the 20 years since I started this Blog truely has been a rollercoaster in this sense, and I am still wildly amazed (and somewhat in disbelief) where it has brought me (apart from landing the academic position,  I found myself at a small invitation-only UNIDIR expert meeting at the United Nations in Geneva just three months ago for example). I never envisioned that to happen, when I decided to make my first blogpost on a rainy August day 20 years ago. It blows my mind.

The blog is no longer the only venue through which I share my thoughts, analysis and observations (but still an important one). There always was the Seesat-L mailing list; and over the past 15 years I grew a large twitter account (sorry, refuse to say 'X") that I still maintain because I do not want to leave the 21.6K followers I still have there (including a lot of journalists). I also have an account with 3.4K followers on BlueSky, and recently have become much more active on LinkedIn as well. I occasionally publish topical analysis in The Space Review, and I am frequently featured in the media (including Dutch, and occasionally foreign, tv and radio, as well as Dutch and international written press and online news media). And then there are of course publications in professional scientific journals as well.

But it all started with this blog (and contributions to the SeeSat-L mailing list), very modestly, now 20 years ago. 

I want to thank all of you who have read my blogposts, who shared insights, and have supported and encouraged me over the past 20 years. A blog is nothing without an audience.

I specifically want to thank Ted Molczan, Jonathan McDowell, Bart Hendrickx, Scott Tilley, Bob Christy, Mike McCants, Cees Bassa, Nico Janssen, Bram Dorreman, Leo Barhorst, Greg Roberts, Paul Camilleri, Jeffrey Lewis, Alice Gorman, Trevor Paglen, Bill Gray, Ankit Panda, the late Pierre Neirinck, and twitter contributor @Dutchspace, plus several members of the Seesat-L list and Twitter's Missile and Space communities, for much appreciated feedback, discussions, suggestions, corrections, and food for thought over all these years.

Now, let's continue towards 25 years!