Enlarge SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said his company’s Starlink division is trying to cut the price of its user terminal from $500 to as low as $250. Starlink has been charging $99 a month for Internet service during its beta phase, plus $500 up front for the user terminal/satellite dish, and it’s losing money on the […]
Enlarge / Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, chairs the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky) NASA Administrator Bill Nelson will appear at a committee meeting of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee on Wednesday, and the meeting could be full of intrigue when the subject of NASA’s Artemis Program to […]
Enlarge / Starlink satellite dish and equipment in the Idaho panhandle’s Coeur d’Alene National Forest. (credit: Wandering-coder) A Starlink beta user in Arizona said he lost Internet service for over seven hours yesterday when the satellite dish overheated, demonstrating one of the drawbacks of SpaceX’s broadband service. When the user’s Internet service was disrupted, the Starlink […]
Enlarge / A rendering of the Terran R rocket in flight. (credit: Relativity Space) Relativity Space announced Tuesday morning that it has raised an additional $650 million in private capital and that this money will fuel an ambitious agenda of 3D printing large, reusable rockets. The new funding will accelerate development of the “Terran-R” launch […]
Enlarge / Photo of the Starlink payload on top of a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida this week. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX will attempt to launch another batch of 60 Starlink satellites today—if anyone is counting, this is the 28th overall launch of operational Starlink satellites—at 2:59 pm ET (18:59 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Force […]
Enlarge / Committee Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., listens to former US Sen. Bill Nelson, President Biden’s nominee to be the next administrator of NASA, on April 21, 2021. (credit: NASA) On Wednesday, a US senator added an amendment to unrelated science legislation that would impose significant restrictions on NASA and its plans to return […]
Enlarge / Starship SN15 descending back to Texas under two of its three upgraded raptor engines. Successful landing! (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) By now many readers are familiar with SpaceX’s Starship tests. The rocket makes its way skyward and performs maneuvers that seem like impossibilities to a generation raised on rockets that simply shot things to orbit. […]
Enlarge / Engine cutoff, with SN11 entering its bellyflop maneuver, on March 30, 2021. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann) SpaceX has received permission from the US Federal Aviation Administration to launch its latest Starship prototype, SN15, and it may attempt to do so as early as Friday afternoon from South Texas. The primary concern today is weather, […]
Enlarge / A SpaceX Starlink user terminal/satellite dish. (credit: SpaceX) SpaceX today was granted permission to use a lower orbit for Starlink satellites, as regulators agreed with SpaceX that the change will improve broadband speed and latency while making it easier to minimize orbital debris. In granting SpaceX’s request, the Federal Communications Commission dismissed opposition […]
Enlarge / Screenshot of a presentation from China’s main state-owned rocket manufacturer, CALT. (credit: Weibo/CALT) This weekend, China celebrated its sixth “National Space Day” in Nanjing, a capital city in one of the country’s eastern provinces. As part of the festivities, Chinese space officials highlighted the Chang’e-5 mission’s recent return of lunar samples, some of which […]