SpaceX conducted the first high-altitude Starship test flight on Wednesday, December 9th, with the SN8 prototype of a spacecraft under construction to transport astronauts back to the Moon and colonize Mars. Starship SN8 took off from the Launch Pad at the SpaceX South Texas Launch Facility in Boca Chica Beach. Starship SN8 conducted a “belly…
Update: SpaceX has published a video taken near the launch pad of Starship nailing an exotic ‘flip’ maneuver shortly before a hard landing destroyed the rocket. Both the company, test directors, and CEO Elon Musk have all made it abundantly clear that despite the explosive end, Starship SN8’s maiden flight was a spectacular success, proving that…
SpaceX has successfully launched a flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket for the historic launch debut of the Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft. The weather is just 40 percent favorable for tomorrow’s 11:39am EST (16:39 UTC), December 5th launch attempt, but conditions are expected to clear up about 11:15am EST, jumping to 80 percent favorable during a backup…
In more ways than one, The Boring Company is truly becoming an Elon Musk-founded firm. The tunneling business is also attracting quite a lot of criticism from ardent skeptics, apart from growing quite quickly for a start-up of its size, many of whom seem to be under the impression that the ventures of the Boring…
This year, SpaceX gave human spaceflight capabilities back to NASA. After almost a decade of relying on Russia to launch astronauts to the International Space Station, the United States resurfaced as a space force (ISS). In May, SpaceX conducted a crewed demonstration flight, then its first crewed operating mission, Crew-1. On November 15th, a team…
In May 2020, SpaceX carried out its first Crewed Demonstration Flight. The aerospace industry has demonstrated that its Crew Dragon spacecraft is capable of carrying astronauts safely to the International Space Station (ISS) with the Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX is now able to make its second crew flight, known as Crew-1, the first operational mission…
SpaceX is about to launch the first human-rated commercial spacecraft with four astronauts this Saturday, November 14th at 7:49pm EST. This won’t be the first human SpaceX mission. This summer, NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley rocketed into Earth’s orbit and docked at the International Space Station aboard the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. They…
The SpaceX Crew Dragon, called “Resilience” by the crew selected for the mission, is ready for the launch of the Crew-1 mission scheduled for November 14th to transport four astronauts of the Expedition 64 to the ISS. https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF/status/1311004705108172802?s=20 This “Crew Dragon” is part of the SpaceX Dragon capsule family and is named “Dragon Rider” but…
A lot more people will soon have access to the satellite-based broadband internet service Starlink from SpaceX. The CEO of the company, Elon Musk, tweeted on Monday that “several thousand more Starlink beta participation invitations” are coming this week. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1323348268823314432?s=20 However, this is just for U.S. customers. But in response to a couple of other…
A rollout is now underway for SpaceX’s “Better than Nothing Beta” for Starlink. And it seems that Starlink’s Terms of Service and Installation Instructions contain some unforgettable (and somewhat sensible) Easter Eggs in the true Elon Musk theme. Needless to mention, it has charmed the space community. Among the most prominent of these Easter Eggs…