For the third time ever, both of SpaceX’s East Coast drone ships have departed Port Canaveral to support two Falcon 9 launches and landings scheduled just a few days apart. Originally scheduled to launch on June 1st and June 3rd, SpaceX’s SiriusXM SXM-8 and CRS-22 Cargo Dragon missions recently swapped positions after unknown issues delayed…
SpaceX has almost completed a ‘test tank’ meant to ensure that Starship’s Super Heavy booster is capable of withstanding the immense thrust of more than two-dozen Raptor engines. Believed to be known as test tank BN2.1, the prototype’s latest appearance comes on the heels of news from CEO Elon Musk that SpaceX has upgraded Super…
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that Starship’s Super Heavy booster will have at least one more engine than expected after hardware spotted at its Boca Chica, Texas factory indicated as much. Simultaneously, Musk revealed that SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California factory and headquarters is now producing Raptors at a rate that will likely make it the…
A recent modification to SpaceX’s Dragon XL lunar cargo resupply contract with NASA suggests that the spacecraft could be used as an extra crew cabin and bathroom at a lunar space station known as Gateway. The contract modification was made around April 1st of this year and provided SpaceX around $121,000 to complete the latest…
SpaceX has released concrete information about Starship and Super Heavy’s first orbital flight test via FCC regulatory filings. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, denied a stunning NASASpaceflight.com story earlier this year that the organization was working on launching Starship into orbit by July 2021 – a feat that would be nothing short of miraculous.…
Four years after Elon Musk revealed “aspirational” plans to launch Starships to Mars in 2022, the SpaceX CEO now believes that 2024 is a more accurate target. For SpaceX, that two-year ‘delay’ is more impressive than anything given that the company practically restarted Starship development from scratch a year after Musk set the 2022 target.…
After doubling in price over the past week, Dogecoin has surpassed SpaceX in terms of total market value. According to recent SEC filings, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency was trading above $0.60 on Thursday, placing its market cap at $78 billion – $4 billion more than the estimated valuation of Elon Musk’s privately owned rocket business. The…
Update: CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX “might try to refly SN15 soon” after it became the first Starship to ace a high-altitude launch and survive the landing. In other words, SpaceX might be about to kick off what’s bound to be a long and fruitful future of Starship reusability. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1390569345361883136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Less than six months after…
Update: For the first time ever, SpaceX has successfully landed a Starship prototype in one piece and kept the giant steel rocket intact throughout the post-flight safing process. The fun, however, is just beginning. First and foremost, excluding simpler Starship prototypes SN5 and SN6, Starship SN15 is the first prototype to actually complete that safing process.…
Next Spaceflight reports that SpaceX’s next Starlink launch – scheduled as few as five days after the last mission – will see Falcon 9 mark a hugely significant milestone for truly reusable rocketry. According to Next Spaceflight’s sources, SpaceX has chosen Falcon 9 booster B1051 to launch Starlink-27 – the constellation’s 26th operational mission – as…