Helmed by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, SpaceX has made a name for itself as a leading rocket launch provider. We bring you complete coverage of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket launches and landings, as well as SpaceX’s more ambitious exploration goals. That includes flying people around the Moon in the company’s Dragon capsule and starting a human colony on Mars.
On the stream, we watched the return of the Super Heavy booster rocket after separation, which seemed to have partial success on some of its planned maneuvers as it came back to Earth. The commentators noted it “feel a little short,” of the plan, but didn’t go into detail.
The vehicle took off successfully and is now heading toward the “Hot-staging (Starship Raptor ignition and stage separation).”
As we wait to see if the Starship will launch, SpaceX posted this clip showing what the splashdown could be like.
If everything works out as planned, the Starship will attempt an in-space relight of its Raptor engines and eventually splash down in the Indian Ocean, as shown in this animation.
After the first two Starship tests went up in flames, SpaceX says it’s now attempting “a number of ambitious objectives” for today’s targeted 9:25AM ET launch, including:
The successful ascent burn of both stages, opening and closing Starship’s payload door, a propellant transfer demonstration during the upper stage’s coast phase, the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine while in space, and a controlled reentry of Starship. It will also fly a new trajectory, with Starship targeted to splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
If SpaceX attempts another Starship launch this morning, it now says the launch could happen about an hour and a half into the planned 110-minute launch window that started at 8AM ET.
An update from SpaceX said it is “go for propellant load,” and the launch is targeting 9:25AM ET. An official livestream has not started yet, but the folks at Spaceflight Now are broadcasting live with cameras set up near the Boca Chica, TX, launch site.
Update March 14th, 8:26AM ET: Updated launch timing (again) from SpaceX.
The Washington Post reports that Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia sent a letter to SpaceX on Wednesday night, expressing concern that the company “may not have appropriate guardrails and policies in place” to prevent Russia from illegally acquiring Starlink terminals.
Ukraine claims that Russia has deployed the terminals in occupied areas of eastern Ukraine. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says, “To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.”
[The Washington Post]
The third flight test for the Starship rocket might take place on March 14th at 7:30AM ET, SpaceX has announced on X. (This is assuming the FAA signs off, and that it’s not delayed for some other reason.)
Starship’s last two tests failed memorably; during the most recent November launch the booster and Starship exploded after their separation.
In some countries including the Netherlands (where I live), the price has dropped to €50/mth (from €65/mth) for residential customers while my roam plan that lets me take my dishy anywhere in Europe has dropped to €59/mth (from €100/mth), down from €124/mth when I started service back in 2022. One-time hardware costs have now been lowered from €450 to €225, as well, down from the €720 I paid for gen 1.
But it’s not on one of his rockets. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is carrying MethaneSat, a satellite made to measure the potent greenhouse gas methane. The Bezos Earth Fund gave the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) $100 million to build and launch the satellite. Google is also partnering with EDF to create a global map of methane pollution coming from oil and gas infrastructure.
[T]he Starlink team identified a common issue in this small population of satellites that could increase the probability of failure in the future. The satellites will follow a safe, circular, and controlled lowering operation that should take approximately six months for most of the vehicles.
It’s a small fraction of the 5,828 Starlink sats in orbit, and SpaceX says it’s deorbited 406 sats previously. Unusual to decommission so many at once, though.
The California Civil Rights Department is investigating complaints by seven workers that SpaceX execs “discriminated against women, joked about sexual harassment and fired workers for raising concerns,” reports Bloomberg and Reuters.
The same agency is also suing Tesla over charges of operating a “racially segregated workplace.”
In the SpaceX complaints, employees cite a pattern of discrimination, as well as inappropriate tweets by Musk that they said they couldn’t easily avoid because he uses the platform for important company announcements.
Not very, according to The Wall Street Journal’s examination, published last night.
It’s not just that some members have earned, for example, “hundreds of millions of dollars” — far more than typical board member compensation, the Journal says.
It’s that reportedly, some members are heavily invested in Musk’s and each other’s companies, and regularly do drugs with him “because they think refraining could upset the billionaire, who has made them a lot of money.”
That’s right, Trader Joe’s also thinks the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional, just like Musk’s SpaceX. I’m sure this has nothing whatsoever to do with the case the NLRB is bringing against the grocer, and is just a fun coincidence.
The failure of recent missions highlights the challenges of relying on private entities to spearhead the US’s lunar ambitions.
The satellite internet company has announced a new program that lets internet service providers deliver symmetrical download and upload speeds of up to 10Gbps to remote areas.
One remote town in Alaska is already using the gateway to provide connectivity across the community — the only catch is that it costs ISPs $1.25 million upfront on top of a $75,000 / Gbps per month fee.
It makes sense that a new deal will see the company outfitting new and existing hardware with Starlink. That should allow people who live in the middle of nowhere to better take advantage of the high-tech tools John Deere has been packing inside recently. Because right now the rural internet situation is hellish.
As for cost, John Deere hasn’t settled on a price for the new connectivity option, but it does plan to generate 10-percent of its annual revenue from software service fees by 2030.
Six of the 21 new Starlink satellites launched last night support the company’s new Direct to Cell service announced in 2022. SpaceX will now test the service with ordinary 4G LTE-compatible phones on T-Mobile in the US before the text messaging service goes live in multiple countries this year. Voice and data (and IoT devices) will be added in 2025 as more D2C satellites come online.
HughesNet announced its rural internet service now has up to 100Mbps downloads and 5Mbps uploads. Plans range from $74.99 to $109.99 and throttle once you hit 100GB or 200GB, depending on the plan. As PCMag noted, the best HughesNet offered before was an unthinkable 50Mbps down on a $149.99 plan.
That makes it more competitive with Starlink, which starts at $120 per month for a “Standard” plan with up to 100Mbps down and 5-10Mbps up — and have no specific limit before throttling.
The FCC issued SpaceX a “Special Temporary Authorization” so the company can test “direct-to-cellular communications payloads” to unmodified cell phones, as reported by PCMag.
SpaceX and T-Mobile are planning to launch texting through the “Starlink Direct to Cell” service in 2024, with more functionality coming in 2025.
It’s down to just three of the six gyroscopes NASA upgraded it with in 2009 — and one of those is flaking out. According to Ars Technica, the agency’s engineers figured out a way to keep the Hubble going on a single gyro.
In this one-gyro mode, Hubble’s control system would receive inputs from the single gyroscope in combination with magnetometers, Sun sensors, and star trackers.
Unfortunately, it’s also got issues with one of its guidance sensors, and its orbit is decaying, putting it a little over a decade from falling out of the sky. NASA and SpaceX have studied whether they can push it farther out again.
From the SpaceX livestream, the team there said about 15 minutes into the 8AM ET launch that Starship’s signal had disappeared, and it appears the craft’s flight termination system ended its journey soon after the planned engine shutdown.
The ship made it much farther along than the previous attempt earlier this year.
SpaceX’s rocket launched just after 8AM CT. The rocket is currently heading towards space. The booster exploded seconds after the stage separation, but Starship itself continued.
The FAA still hasn’t cleared SpaceX to attempt another Starship orbital launch from its Boca Chica, TX, site after the first one caused significant damage to the pad and surrounding environment. SpaceX’s website and this teaser trailer indicate it’s ready to try again as soon as November 17th.
Those are also popping up on the same day as a report from Reuters documenting 600 injuries to SpaceX workers since 2014.
The records included reports of more than 100 workers suffering cuts or lacerations, 29 with broken bones or dislocations, 17 whose hands or fingers were “crushed,” and nine with head injuries, including one skull fracture, four concussions and one traumatic brain injury.
Musk himself at times appeared cavalier about safety on visits to SpaceX sites: Four employees said he sometimes played with a novelty flamethrower and discouraged workers from wearing safety yellow because he dislikes bright colors.
This time last year Musk said that Starlink was losing about $20 million a month. Now he says it’s breakeven, which is good news for a service that keeps people connected in remote locations, in times of disaster and war, or while tooling around in a van or boat. Unimpeded growth could be bad for astronomers trying to see past those roughly 5,000 satellites currently operating in low-Earth orbit, with plans for up to 37,000 more.
