The Orbital Index
orbitalindex.com · Group blog · on HN since 2019
Two friends run a weekly space newsletter covering industry news, with occasional deep dives; it has since ended.
What HN saysCommenters call it their favorite space newsletter, praising its dense news and deep dives on recent topics, and recommend it to anyone interested in space.
28HN people shared it
19linked it in comments
220stories submitted
2.0Kstory points
10 months agolast shared
2019people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Show HN: Orbital Index19 people · 50 points · first shared 2019 · 3 comments on HN
- 2The End of the Orbital Index4 people · 8 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 3Our closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri A, may have a planet in its habitable zone3 people · 3 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 4DARPA moving forward with nuclear thermal engine design2 people · 215 points · first shared 2022 · 104 comments on HN
- 5CubeSat interplanetary exploration is heating up2 people · 102 points · first shared 2020 · 25 comments on HN
- 6Visualize Starlink's current coverage with active TLEs2 people · 46 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
- 7Where will we point the largest space telescope ever built?2 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 8The Starship Startups2 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 9The orbital index – issue 2532 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 102022 02 16 Issue 1562 people · first shared 2022
- 11Feed.xml2 people · first shared 2019
- 12So, you want to build a CubeSat?1 people · 215 points · first shared 2019 · 69 comments on HN
- 13Four Mars missions are launching next year1 people · 192 points · first shared 2019 · 70 comments on HN
- 14The first on-orbit fuel depot has been deployed1 people · 174 points · first shared 2021 · 51 comments on HN
- 15SpaceX exploring mission to boost Hubble1 people · 169 points · first shared 2022 · 162 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
josefresco · 2023-06-13
My favorite space newsletter (no affiliation): http://orbitalindex.com/
tectonic · 2022-01-24
Well, it’s fun to see Huginn on HN! I’m the original author, but now it’s maintained by other excellent folks.
I still use Huginn almost daily. It’s kind of my exocortex at this point, and the secret sauce for staying abreast of space industry news for Orbital Index (https://orbitalindex.com).
chinathrow · 2021-11-05
For all space lovers out there, I highly recommend the weekly newsletter "The Orbital Index". You'll get dense news with occasional deep dives on recent topics.
https://orbitalindex.com/
Example:
https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-11-03-Issue-141/
No affiliation, just a fan.
tito · 2021-07-28
Anyone who loves this kind of stuff should check out The Orbital Index, a curated weekly newsletter of all things space:
https://orbitalindex.com
Run by two friends of mine who are avid HNers.
alchemistmax · 2021-07-21
Cheers! Thank you!
https://orbitalindex.com/ is an amazing resource.
https://jatan.space/ is another that I follow.
Payload Research newsletter rocks too: https://mailchi.mp/payloadresearch/bezos-leaves-earth?e=e515a5a900
There's even a Slack bot to be notified of launches (most of which you don't hear about on the news): https://groundcontrolbot.space/
msadowski · 2020-09-12
Not strictly what you are looking for but I can recommend the Orbital Index Newsletter (https://orbitalindex.com/). You might find some interesting projects in their awesome space repo: https://github.com/orbitalindex/awesome-space
ranger207 · 2024-02-23
I like the Orbital Index's weekly newsletter. https://orbitalindex.com/
austinl · 2023-08-22
Reminds me that SpaceX has now landed rocket boosters successfully over 200 times. Landing just a single rocket was huge news a few years ago.
The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2].
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-i…
[2] https://orbitalindex.com
nanomonkey · 2022-10-02
The Orbital Index [https://orbitalindex.com] for space related stuff.
The Prepared [https://theprepared.org/] for engineering discussions.
The Convivial Society [https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com] for discussions about technology and societies intersections, and the good life, with a focus on the works of Ivan Illich.
magnio · 2022-05-21
For space-related news, I like The Orbital Index: https://orbitalindex.com/
jarbus · 2020-11-06
Orbital Index for news about space https://orbitalindex.com/
Bitcoin Optech https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2020/10/07/
Console https://console.substack.com/
_Microft · 2020-06-17
Bug report for https://orbitalindex.com/ :
In desktop Firefox 77.0.1, the page can be scrolled (i.e. the scrollbar is moving) for pages without anything happening. It took me a moment to notice that a content section can be pulled in from the right side. Disabling sanity-saving addons (ad-/tracking blockers) did not make a difference.
c54 · 2022-04-11
weekly space news: https://orbitalindex.com/
squidbeak · 2025-10-08
You are simply incorrect.[1] Starship will change it all if it succeeds. The space sector is abuzz with the possibility of orbital refueling and the opportunities it will open up, eg [2]
[1] https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2023-03-15-Issue-210/
[2] https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50157.0
hendler · 2022-05-25
dang · 2022-02-16
That's because HN's software replaces URLs with canonical URLs when it finds one, and the submitted page includes https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2022-02-16-Issue-156/ as a canonical URL.
In this case, though, the author's own source is more in keeping with the HN guidelines ("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.") so I've replaced the URL above with that one. Thanks!
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jaytaylor · 2021-07-28
And they even provide an RSS feed!
https://orbitalindex.com/feed.xml
syoc · 2021-02-28
> Ingenuity runs Linux (for the first time on Mars) and uses the open-source F' software framework on a 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor. Radiation hardened processors aren’t fast enough for the real-time vision requirements of the experiment—but as an unprotected COTS processor, it will fail periodically due to radiation-induced bit flips, possibly as much as every few minutes. NASA’s solution is to use a radiation-tolerant FPGA ProASIC3 to keep an eye on the CPU (paper) and software that attempts to double-check operations as much as possible. “[I]f any difference is detected they simply reboot. Ingenuity will start to fall out of the sky, but it can go through a full reboot and come back online in a few hundred milliseconds to continue flying.”
Source: https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2021-02-24-Issue-105/#ingenuity
JetSpiegel · 2019-10-27
https://orbitalindex.com/feed.xml
There's even an hidden RSS feed.