SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has presented the first significant update on the company’s Starship program since September 2019, offering a couple of new details about the status of the first orbital launch attempt of the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Unfortunately, above all else, the promised update was primarily a rehash of the…
For the second time ever, SpaceX has fully stacked a two-stage Starship rocket, once again creating the largest launch vehicle prototype ever assembled. This time around, though, SpaceX used building-sized arms installed on Starbase’s ~145-meter-tall (~480 ft) ‘launch tower’ to lift to grapple Starship, lift massive upper stage more than 80 meters (260 ft) off…
SpaceX says that dozens of the 49 Starlink satellites aboard its most recent Starlink launch may have been doomed by a “geomagnetic storm” that arrived the day after. In an update published on SpaceX.com, the company revealed that “up to 40 of the [49 Starlink V1.5] satellites [launched on February 3rd] will reenter or already have…
Startup ‘Launcher Space’ has chosen SpaceX to launch at least three more ‘Orbiter’ space tugs, meaning that the company will have a payload on every dedicated SpaceX rideshare launch planned from Q4 2022 to the end of 2023. Following SpaceX’s third successful dedicated rideshare launch in January 2022, the company has another two missions –…
For the third time, SpaceX has installed Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4) on Starbase’s lone orbital launch mount, kicking off preparations for CEO Elon Musk’s upcoming presentation. In a decision that is difficult to logically explain, however, SpaceX chose to install Super Heavy on the ‘orbital launch mount’ with a crane instead of a complex…
While running behind schedule in classic fashion, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he’ll present the first big Starship program update in two and a half years on Thursday, February 10th. Additionally, as an apparent centerpiece for the event and update, Musk says that SpaceX will perform the second-ever “full stack” fit test with a Starship upper stage…
SpaceX has rapidly recovered the first converted Falcon Heavy ‘side core’ after its first Falcon 9 launch and landing, kicking off preparations for its fourth launch less than two days after its third. After four consecutive days of delays, one of which was caused by an inexplicably wayward cruise ship, former Falcon Heavy side core B1052…
Shortly before SpaceX was scheduled to launch an Italian Earth observation satellite, a member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) revealed that the company aims to conduct as many as 52 launches this year. Supporting several estimates published by Teslarati over the last month, SpaceX officially targeting up to one launch per week in…
SpaceX has successfully tested a Falcon 9 rocket tasked with launching Italy’s CSG-2 Earth observation satellite as early as 6:11 pm EST (23:11 UTC), Thursday, January 27th. For any European Space Agency (ESA) member state, launching a spacecraft on a non-European rocket is a rarity. Because the Ariane and Vega rockets that ESA has helped…
CEO Elon Musk has published the first official visualization of what SpaceX’s plans to catch Super Heavy boosters might look like in real life. However, the simulation he shared raises just as many questions as it answers. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1484012192915677184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Since at least late 2020, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been floating the idea of catching Starships and Super…