Enlarge / The Falcon Heavy rocket is the most recent heavy-lift booster to debut, and that was more than three years ago. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann / Ars Technica ) A little more than three years ago, Ars published an article assessing the potential for four large rockets to make their debut in 2020. Spoiler alert: […]
The front of the SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. (credit: Megan Geuss) In late September, a former communications executive at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former employees raised concerns about the culture at the company, highlighting issues such as sexism in the workplace. Writing on the Lioness website, Alexandra Abrams and the unnamed employees […]
Enlarge / The Crew-2 mission is seen departing the International Space Station in November 2021. (credit: SpaceX) NASA has announced that it will purchase three additional flights for its astronauts to the International Space Station on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle. The announcement , posted on the space agency’s website late on Friday afternoon, follows a […]
Enlarge (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) The head of the European Space Agency has urged the continent’s leaders to stop facilitating Elon Musk’s ambition to dominate the new space economy, warning that the lack of co-ordinated action meant the US billionaire was “making the rules” himself. Josef Aschbacher, the new director-general of ESA, said that Europe’s readiness […]
Enlarge / The first test firing of a flight version of SpaceX’s Raptor rocket engine. (credit: Elon Musk/Twitter) Last Friday, as most Americans slept off their tryptophan hangovers, headed to the mall for Black Friday shopping, or tried in vain to avoid political discussions with visiting family members, SpaceX founder Elon Musk was instead at […]
Enlarge / SpaceX launches its 25th mission on Saturday, lifting above the particular fog. (credit: SpaceX) By most measures, the Saturday morning launch of a previously flown Falcon 9 rocket seemed fairly pedestrian. After all, SpaceX had already launched 24 rockets this year, so adding one more Starlink satellite mission on top was no big […]
Enlarge / The new version of Dishy McFlatface. (credit: Starlink) Starlink has replaced its user terminal with a new model that’s smaller and cheaper to produce, and the company updated the Wi-Fi router that ships in hardware kits sent to new subscribers. The $499 price that new Starlink users must pay for hardware is unchanged. […]
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 B1067.2 and Crew Dragon spacecraft at LC-39A in advance of the Crew-3 mission: slated for liftoff no earlier than 9:03 pm EST on November 10th, 2021. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ] NASA and SpaceX had originally hoped to fly the next bunch of astronauts to the International Space Station in late October, but […]
Enlarge / The launch of the Crew-3 mission spacecraft, shown here, has been on hold since before Halloween. (credit: NASA) NASA and SpaceX plan to return one Crew Dragon spacecraft from orbit on Monday evening and launch another only about two days later, upon Wednesday night. The particular agency’s crew flight plans have been in […]
Enlarge (credit: Starlink ) Starlink has provided an encouraging update for preorderers who unexpectedly had their estimated delivery dates delayed to 2022 or 2023, but the Starlink website is still displaying delayed shipping dates to people who were previously told to expect service in 2021. As we reported Tuesday , some people who preordered Starlink […]