SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy Block 5 center core (i.e. booster) has completed a bittersweet return to shore aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You after apparently breaking in half during a wave-induced tumble. Local maritime and spaceflight fans Julia Bergeron and Stephen Marr were first to document the condition of the SpaceX rocket […]
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SpaceX has successfully ignited a Block 5 variant of its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time ever, also marking the second-ever integrated static fire of the heavy-lift launch vehicle. According to SpaceX, the company will aim for an extraordinary four-day turnaround from static fire to launch, targeting liftoff as early as 6:36 pm EDT […]
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SpaceX is set to take another stab at the first integrated static fire test of Falcon Heavy Block 5 rocket, a milestone that will open the doors for its commercial launch debut just a handful of days later. The window for the second Falcon Heavy’s static fire test will open at 10am EDT on Friday, […]
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The first Block 5 variant of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has rolled out to Launch Pad 39A for an inaugural launch that could occur as early as April 7th. Minor delays, however, are extremely likely for the second Falcon Heavy launch attempt ever, with the most likely dates resting closer to April 8-11. With an […]
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company’s first full-scale Starship prototype has completed an inaugural hop test in South Texas, igniting its lone Raptor engine and straining against a trio of tethers attached to its legs. While relatively minor in the scope of SpaceX’s next-generation rocket program, Starhopper’s successful tethered hop now paves the […]
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the company’s next-generation Crew Dragon spacecraft is a “major improvement” over its Cargo Dragon (Dragon 1) predecessors after successfully demonstrating a number of reusability-focused upgrades during the vehicle’s launch and splashdown debut. Even as SpaceX’s longer-term development groups aim to make the company’s Dragon spacecraft all but redundant with […]
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This is a free preview of DeepSpace, Teslarati’s new member-only weekly newsletter. Each week, I’ll be taking a deep-dive into the most exciting developments in commercial space, from satellites and rockets to everything in between. Sign up for Teslarati’s newsletters here to receive a preview of our membership program. Rocket Lab continues to buck the […]
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Despite contrary comments made one week prior, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has affirmed – this time in no uncertain terms – that a two-week study investigating commercial options for launching the Orion spacecraft to the Moon concluded that Falcon Heavy would be the only practical option if NASA chooses to proceed. Due to fundamental performance […]
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has proposed an unusual approach to conducting a robotic survey of the Solar System’s major outer planets, asteroids, and comets, requiring a stripped-down Starship with a minimalist payload of Starlink satellites modified for interplanetary cruises and high-resolution cameras. To enable this arrangement, it sounds like an expendable variant of Starship would […]
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SpaceX’s team of South Texas engineers and technicians have dived into a program of critical pre-hop tests of the first assembled Starship prototype, a partial-fidelity vehicle – known as (Star)Hopper – meant to soon perform low-altitude, low-velocity hop tests powered by Raptor. Despite a lack of official information is known and SpaceX’s general silence – […]
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