Future astronaut, @Unistellar ambassador, exoplanet explorer, KBO co-discoverer, wannabe rocket scientist, occasional palaeontologist – boldly fighting entropy
In orbit around a G2V star
Joined December 2010
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Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Close-up drone shot of the pervious LJ-2 Y2's launch. via v.douyin.com/9XTBabcWLaE/
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Auroras pulsing intensely through this orbital timelapse. Natural light shows! If you look closely, wisps of the higher altitude red auroras briefly appear within the sea of green before fading away, like sprites from a thunderstorm. Watching them never gets old!
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
.@Astro_Kutryk and @Astro_Anil completed their spacewalk at 3:35 p.m. EST today after installing the eighth and final roll-out solar array. This completes the upgrade of the International Space Station's power generation system. More... go.nasa.gov/4sG21Dq
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
The European Space Agency’s Hera mission for planetary defence has acquired its first close-up of the Didymos binary asteroid system! 🛰️🪨🪨
esa.int/articles/about-us/di…
ALT Main Didymos asteroid in space with largely shaded Dimorphos asteroid around it
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
LIVE: Watch as @astro_anil and Joshua Kutryk of @csa_asc install the final roll-out solar array on the @space_station during a spacewalk that will last about seven hours. The solar arrays will boost power to the orbital lab. teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/2qVjWBPJd…
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory plummeted back into Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday over Western Indonesia, ending nearly 22 years in orbit for the gamma-ray burst hunter after a failed attempt to rescue it. spaceflightnow.com/2026/11/0…
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Space Force reports SWIFT reentered at 1239 UTC Nov 4 over 99 deg E, 3 deg N over Northern Sumatra
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Get ready: Trans-Mars Injection incoming.
Our two spacecraft - Blue & Gold - will slingshot Earth and shoot for Mars in four days.
The @escapade_mars mission for @NASA & @ucbssl is preparing for TMI – a critical maneuver in this epic interplanetary mission.
Blue’s engine burn scheduled: Saturday 7th November
Gold’s engine burn scheduled: Monday 9th November
Learn more about ESCAPADE here: rocketlabcorp.com/missions/e…
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Update: obj. 28485 SWIFT decay prediction: November 04, 2026 UTC 09:57 ± 6h
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Update: obj. 28485 SWIFT decay prediction: November 04, 2026 UTC 05:31 ± 12h
The October 31 G2 geomagnetic storm increased atmospheric drag, significantly advancing the re-entry date.
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
6 years ago, @Satellogic helped us explore what Earth observation satellites could see when pointed at other spacecraft.
Today, we're announcing a three-year agreement to expand non-Earth imaging and deliver insights to commercial and government customers.
Together, we're pushing what's possible in orbit.
Read more: heospace.com/resources/stori…
BlueWalker 3 imaged by a Satellogic satellite from 17 km at 3 cm/pixel.
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
LIVE: NASA's Anil Menon and @csa_asc's Joshua Kutryk are setting up a new solar array outside the @Space_Station. Today's spacewalk is scheduled to start around 8am ET (1200 UTC) and run for about six and a half hours. teapaw.org/i/broadcasts/1rxmqpBDD…
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
🛰️🪨After 2 years in deep space, ESA's Hera mission for planetary defence is closing in on its target - Dimorphos, the 1st object in the Solar System to have had its orbit changed by human action, when NASA's DART impacted it in 2022
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Behold: The US Defense Intelligence Agency has released a report on challenges to security in space, including an NEI image of China’s spaceplane from Maxar, taken in 2024.
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Otter Pup 2 is now operating as close as 25 meters away from @GilmourSpace's ElaraSat, fully autonomously. This vid contains imagery captured when we were separated by just 33.6 meters.
We’ve demonstrated our ability to safely and precisely operate at very close range, executing intricate maneuvers, gathering detailed imagery, and testing the capabilities we’ll need for docking.
With this progress, Otter Pup 2 has officially completed Characterize, the penultimate phase of its mission. That leaves just one phase left: attempting docking, and a chance to make history.
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
Update on Rassvet-3 orbit raising. Two failed R3s will reentered in the next day or two. Most of the rest are stable at 500 km
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
According to the sources, Roscosmos agreed to seal completely the Transfer chamber of the #Zvezda module due to the continuing air leak. From now on, #PrK will not be used for cargo operations, despite the docking port of Zvezda will be used by Progress ships to reboost the #ISS.
Mario Billiani 🚀 retweeted
The family tree behind this rocket body reaches all the way back to Sputnik.
SL-4 R/B (68753) is the spent rocket body from a Soyuz-2.1b launch from Plesetsk in April 2026.
Soyuz belongs to the R-7 rocket family, the same lineage that carried Sputnik 1 into orbit in 1957. Nearly 70 years later, that lineage continues to evolve, putting new hardware into space.
Through our Non-Earth Imaging, we can see the rocket body tumbling in orbit, with the main body and engine nozzles visible.
Images taken from an average distance of 321.31km with an average resolution of 25 cm/px.