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"I have been photographing Iridium flares since 1997 from various parts of the world. In fact, I was the one who first discovered the source of the flares after working with engineers at Motorola that year. I have gone so far as making a bar bet with people, advertising Iridium flares at international aerospace conferences, and emailing predictions to other overseas before there were web pages that allowed easy access to flare times." — Paul Maley, NASA Johnson Space Center Astronomical Society
Sadly, that era will soon draw to a close. On January 14th, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 delivered the first 10 of a new generation of Iridium NEXT satellites to low-Earth orbit, starting the process to replace the older units in a maneuver called slot-swapping. While the new birds will provide faster data rates and enhanced global communications, their antenna design is completely different and not expected to produce significant flares.
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