CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX is “about a month away” from testing a rocket engine that will be essential for Starship and its Super Heavy booster to reach their full potential. Known as Raptor Vacuum, the engine – as its name suggests – is a variant of the base Raptor engine optimized for maximum […]
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SpaceX’s newly-announced Moon Starship is a fairly radical departure from the Mars-focused, fully-reusable vehicle the company has been pursuing for years. Unintuitively, that may be the perfect half-step towards truly reusable Mars rockets. On April 30th, NASA announced that SpaceX had won $135 million to design and build a highly-customized variant of its reusable Starship […]
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SpaceX has won part of a new $1 billion NASA contract to create a custom version of Starship designed explicitly to send space agency astronauts and huge amounts of cargo to the Moon. Incredibly, SpaceX won its Lunar Starship development contract alongside two others awarded by NASA – one to a Blue Origin-led coalition and […]
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster had all four of its landing legs successfully retracted after a flawless fourth launch and landing, highlighting the impressive margins and durability of the rocket’s upgraded Block 5 design. On April 22nd, Falcon 9 booster B1051 lifted off on its fourth orbital-class mission – also its second 60-satellite Starlink launch […]
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SpaceX’s latest Starship appears to be just a few days away from becoming the first full-scale prototype to attempt a static fire test with a functional Raptor engine, potentially setting the rocket up for a hop test in the near future. On April 26th, SpaceX teams successfully filled the fourth full-scale Starship prototype with ~1000 […]
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Hot on the heels of the revelation that SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch is on schedule and will carry a small satellite copassenger, a US Space Force official has effectively confirmed that it will feature the first dual rocket landing of its kind. Scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) “late 2020”, likely November or […]
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CEO Elon Musk has revealed more details about SpaceX’s plans to build and launch upgraded “VisorSat” Starlink satellites, part of the company’s work to ensure that the internet constellation can coexist with astronomy. Back on April 22nd, Musk gave us the best glimpse yet of what he previously described as a sort of deployable sunshade […]
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Elon Musk says a SpaceX Starship prototype has passed a critical “cryo proof” test for the first time, opening the door for the rocket to move on to even bigger tests. Late on April 26th, SpaceX’s South Texas team (and possibly a console team in California) readied the fourth full-scale Starship prototype (SN4) for its […]
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SpaceX has successfully recovered its first Falcon 9 rocket by sea-going drone ship in more than 12 weeks and the company’s next launch and (attempted) landing is already just a week or two away. Four days after completing a flawless 60-satellite Starlink launch on April 22nd, Falcon 9 booster B1051 sailed into Port Canaveral aboard […]
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Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s newest Starship prototype just passed its first test, clearing the way for the rocket to perform a form of testing that has destroyed all previously full-scale prototypes. Known as a cryogenic proof test and reportedly scheduled to kick off as early as tonight (April 26th), SpaceX will fill some or […]
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