SpaceX’s Starship rocket has survived a record-breaking engine test – potentially the most powerful static fire in the history of rocketry. According to CEO Elon Musk, Super Heavy Booster 7 (B7) ultimately ignited 31 of its 33 Raptor engines. One engine was manually disabled “just before” the static fire, while the other faulty engine automatically […]
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SpaceX is preparing for a surge of geostationary communications satellite launches after several slow years. In the late 2010s, orders of large geostationary commsats plummeted. Formerly a mainstay of the commercial launch industry, western geostationary satellite launches became much rarer in 2019 and the early 2020s. That downturn was especially noticeable for SpaceX, where geostationary […]
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company could eventually develop an expendable version of its next-generation Starship rocket. Starship is extraordinarily ambitious. Even before considering the unproven concepts of orbital propellant refilling and full, rapid reusability that are central to the full system, Starship is a beast. The rocket measures 120 meters (~390 ft) […]
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SpaceX has set the stage for a record-breaking Starship booster static fire after the rocket completed a complex fueling test and launch rehearsal earlier this week. On January 25th, a tower the size of a skyscraper activated a pair of giant mechanical arms to disassemble the largest rocket ever built. The arms carefully grabbed Starship […]
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SpaceX appears to be preparing to ship a huge collection of hardware – including parts of a possible launch deluge system – from Florida to Texas. Captured live by NASASpaceflight’s 24/7 Space Coast Live webcam, hardware began accumulating at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Turning Basin on January 12th. Within a few days, four midsize […]
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SpaceX has revealed a new and mysterious reason to delay its own rocket launch: something called “constellation optimization.” Known as Starlink 2-4, the mission is now scheduled to launch a batch of 51 Starlink V1.5 satellites to a semi-polar Earth orbit no earlier than (NET) 8:15 am PST (16:15 UTC) on Sunday, January 15th. That […]
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After many years of delays, all the parts of the United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket are about to converge on Florida for their first launch. Unveiled in 2015, ULA has been working on Vulcan Centaur since at least 2014. Following Russia’s first illegal invasion of Ukraine, countries around the world attempted to punish […]
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SpaceX has successfully completed its second launch for OneWeb, carrying another 40 of the London-based company’s small communications satellites into orbit. Similar to SpaceX’s own Starlink constellation, OneWeb’s primary goal is to serve internet to customers almost anywhere on Earth, particularly in places where traditional high-bandwidth connectivity is currently unavailable or unlikely to ever be […]
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SpaceX’s first Starship orbital launch mount (OLM) appears to have passed a busy week of stress-testing, clearing the way for the company to transport a finished Super Heavy booster to the pad. Using the same launch mount, that Starship booster is expected to attempt to complete some of the riskiest and most challenging tests SpaceX […]
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SpaceX is reportedly planning to launch its first Starlink mission of 2023 from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base. Next Spaceflight reports that SpaceX is preparing to launch Starlink 2-4 no earlier than (NET) 6:54 pm PST on January 8th, almost eight weeks after unspecified issues with a Falcon 9 rocket indefinitely delayed the mission. While […]
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