Aftermath of the liftoff of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission taking four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. In three months, NASA will come upon the 10th anniversary of the final space shuttle flight, a period that was surely melancholy for the space agency. When the big, white, winged vehicles touched down for the […]
Enlarge / In the future, what might lunar exploration look like if NASA can send multiple Starships there each year? This SpaceX rendering offers a vision of one such future. (credit: SpaceX) When NASA astronauts return to the Moon in a few years, they will do so inside a lander that dwarfs that of the […]
Enlarge / NASA and Boeing work to remove the SLS rocket core stage from its test stand in Mississippi. (credit: NASA) Welcome to Edition 3.42 of the Rocket Report! This week we’ve got an update on Virgin Orbit, which has signed a multilaunch deal for its LauncherOne vehicle. Additionally, NASA has provided a couple of […]
Enlarge / A stack of 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019. (credit: SpaceX / Flickr) SpaceX has accused satellite-broadband rival OneWeb of spreading a false story claiming that the companies’ satellites nearly crashed into each other. In reality, “[t]he probability of collision never exceeded the threshold for a [collision-avoidance] maneuver, and the satellites would not […]
Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish in the Idaho panhandle’s Coeur d’Alene National Forest. (credit: Wandering-coder) SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expects the Starlink satellite broadband service to be “fully mobile” later in 2021, allowing customers to use the satellite dishes away from home. “Yeah, should be fully mobile later this year, so you can move […]
How do you launch and land a rocket in the same day? Here’s how. [credit: SpaceX ] I was born a mere four months after the final Apollo astronauts brushed gray dust from their spacesuits and lifted off from the Moon. As my interest in space grew over the years, and writing about this industry […]
Enlarge / SpaceX Starlink logo. (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images ) The Starlink broadband network will probably stick with one price instead of offering different tiers of service, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said yesterday. “I don’t think we’re going to do tiered pricing to consumers. We’re going to try to keep it […]
Early on Monday, a Crew Dragon was docked at the “forward” port of the Harmony module. [credit: NASA TV ] Early on Monday morning, four astronauts donned their flight suits and clambered into their Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Resilience. But they were not coming home. Rather, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, as well […]
SN11 nears apogee on March 30, 2021 over SpaceX’s South Texas launch site. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ] Despite a thickly fogged launch site in South Texas, SpaceX let its SN11 Starship prototype fly on Tuesday morning at 8 am local time. An onboard camera showed the vehicle making a nominal ascent to about 10 km, […]
SpaceX’s Starship SN11 on Pad B in South Texas awaiting launch. In the distance, the first Super Heavy booster prototype (BN1) continues stacking operations. [credit: Trevor Mahlmann ] SpaceX appears set to fly the latest prototype of its Starship vehicle—dubbed SN11—as early as Friday afternoon. Local residents have been informed of the test as part […]