About & sources
The Orbital Brief is an automated brief on personal finance. A scheduled job reads the feeds listed below, merges any stories that several outlets are covering into a single entry, and writes a short summary in our own words. We never reproduce the publisher's article text — every entry links straight to the original reporting, and headlines remain the property of the publisher.
Editorial rules
- Short original summaries only (target 45 words), plus a one-line "why it matters".
- Automatic check that no twelve-word span is shared with the source text.
- New stories can be held for review before they appear.
- Corrections, removals and takedown requests: see the contact below — we act on them promptly.
Advertising
Sponsored placements are labelled "Sponsored" and are never styled to look like editorial. They are limited to one unit per five feed items, one per story and one sidebar unit, and no pop-ups or interstitials are used. Ads link to CrowdfundShowcase listings and are marked as such.
How this site works
Stories are written from reporting published by spaceflight newsrooms, agencies and research outlets, and are checked against fixed rules before they appear.
- A launch is not a success until the operator or agency confirms it. Where a report is written before the outcome, we say the outcome is not yet confirmed.
- Every date, orbit, payload and mission number comes from the sources. We do not estimate or round a figure.
- An observation, a simulation and a proposal are described as what they are. A model result is never reported as a discovery.
- A private operator's claim about its own vehicle is attributed to the operator.
- Sky events carry their region and timing, because visibility is local.
- We do not publish live coverage. A launch blog summarised after the fact is wrong, so live material is filtered out and the confirmed report is what appears.
Feeds we read
| Source | Section | Last successful read |
|---|---|---|
| Astronomy Magazine | Skywatching | 2026-10-11 04:43:07 |
| Astronomy Now | Astronomy | 2026-10-11 04:43:09 |
| EarthSky | Skywatching | 2026-10-11 04:43:10 |
| NASA JPL | Missions | 2026-10-11 04:43:06 |
| NASASpaceflight | Launches | 2026-10-11 04:43:04 |
| Phys.org Space | Research | 2026-10-11 04:43:10 |
| Physics World Space | Research | 2026-10-11 04:43:13 |
| Spaceflight Now | Launches | 2026-10-11 04:43:04 |
| Universe Today | Astronomy | 2026-10-11 04:43:06 |
Feeds whose terms restrict commercial reuse are not read and are not listed here.
Contact
We do not publish an email address (it is a magnet for spam). Use the contact form for corrections, removals, takedown requests or anything else — it reaches us directly and we reply to the address you give.