Tag: SpaceX

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Elon Musk savages Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin after it challenges SpaceX’s NASA lunar lander contract

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took one more poke at rival tycoon Jeff Bezos’ space startup, Blue Origin, on Monday in the midst of a fight more than a $2.9 billion agreement to assemble a lunar lander for NASA.

The New York Times revealed Monday Blue Origin had filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office to challenge NASA’s decision to award the exclusive agreement to SpaceX.

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith disclosed to The Times NASA had failed in its evaluation of the proposals submitted by his organization, SpaceX, and a third bidder, Dynetics.

On Twitter, Musk reacted to the report about Blue Origin’s challenge by poking a not at all subtle fun at the male anatomy, saying: “Can’t get it up (to orbit) lol.”

The joke insinuated the way that Blue Origin has not yet accomplished an effective orbital spaceflight with its rockets.

Blue Origin didn’t react to a solicitation for input on this story.

Blue Origin recently launched its suborbital New Shepherd rocket system with a crash-test dummy dubbed “Mannequin Skywalker,” however has lagged overall in its space race contrasted with Musk’s SpaceX.

The feud between Musk and Bezos started over 15 years prior when a discussion about reusable rockets allegedly went south. From that point forward, the two executives have fought habitually over their adversary plans for colonizing space and infrequently their different organizations, Tesla and Amazon.

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Elon Musk says SpaceX, Tesla searching for approaches to help Texas community in the midst of brutal winter storm

Elon Musk said SpaceX and Tesla are “providing direct assistance where feasible” in Texas after the deadly impact of winter weather overpowered the electrical grid and left millions in the dark and without heat.

On Twitter, Musk composed that SpaceX has been assisting in south Texas while Tesla has been assisting in central Texas, including saving cold-stunned turtles and aiding power a water treatment plant.

Be that as it may, Musk encouraged his Twitter followers to tell the organizations by what other method they can help during this unprecedented time.

“Please let us know if we may be helpful in other ways,” he wrote.

The comments came soon after the business magnate criticized the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas(ERCOT) for a statewide power outage that left millions looking for warmth in the midst of sharply chilly temperatures.

Musk tweeted that Texas’ power grid manager isn’t acquiring the “R” in the abbreviation.

Adding to the state’s misery, the weather jeopardized drinking water systems. Authorities ordered 7 million individuals — a fourth of the number of inhabitants in the country’s second-biggest state — to boil tap water prior to drinking it, following record low temperatures that harmed infrastructure and pipes.

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SpaceX loses Falcon 9 rocket on landing in first of 2 Starlink missions

After effectively sending another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites into orbit Monday night from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, SpaceX seems to have missed the arrival of its Falcon 9 first stage supporter for the first time in a year.

On the live stream of the mission, a flash is seen just to the side of the droneship right now the supporter ought to land, albeit no rocket at any point enters the frame.

SpaceX has not yet affirmed the destiny of the Falcon 9, however it appears to be likely it crashed in the ocean. Simultaneously, it seems to have saved three seagulls that were hanging out on the landing pad and may never see how close they came to being barbecued.

The Falcon 9 itself had a nice life, finishing six launches effectively, yet just five arrivals in its career.

The evident hard water landing comes precisely a year after something very similar occurred toward the finish of a prior Starlink mission on Feb. 17, 2020. Each landing attempt in between has been successful (for Falcon 9, that is. Definitely not including Starship testing in Texas).

Following up, SpaceX has just somewhat more than 24 hours before its next Starlink flight. The 20th batch of satellites is set to launch from the adjacent Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday at 9:55 p.m. PT (12:55 a.m. Wednesday ET).

The organization had planned to launch two batches of Starlinks from Florida within hours of one another previous this month, yet one of these missions was delayed. (That launch is currently planned for Tuesday night.)

These launches and the droneship landings that follow them are becoming pretty routine for SpaceX, however Musk might want to see the speed of launches increment. The permit from the FCC for Starlink to work requires that at least 2,212 of its satellites be operational by March of one year from now.

Up until now, more than 1,000 of the small satellites have been shipped off space, yet it’s not satisfactory the number of those are as of now operational. In any case, doubtlessly if SpaceX can pull off at least two Starlink launches each month, it ought to have the option to hit its objective.

Just two Starlink missions have been flown so far in 2021, yet the organization can rapidly get up to speed on the off chance that it nails the two missions this week.

Obviously, these launches have been known to slip.

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SpaceX’s Starlink internet service currently has 10,000 clients

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite internet service presently has in excess of 10,000 clients, the organization said. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday, Elon Musk’s Starlink said its network is additionally previously giving 100/20Mbps internet speeds or above.

“Starlink’s performance is not theoretical or experimental,” says the filing, reported earlier Thursday by CNBC. “Over 10,000 users in the United States and abroad are using the service today.”

SpaceX expects to improve internet speeds with satellite service Starlink. It’s sending a great many small satellites into orbit, which form constellations of flying routers that beam connectivity back to Earth.

Prior Thursday, SpaceX sent another 60 flying routers into space to send a more extensive Starlink service, with more scheduled to launch Friday.

The FCC in December awarded SpaceX nearly $885.5 million as a feature of a program to help carry high-speed internet to rural areas in the US. Phase one of the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction assigned SpaceX with 642,925 locations to serve across 35 states.

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SpaceX propels record number of spacecraft in a cosmic rideshare program

A veteran rocket from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX aerospace organization launched 143 spacecraft into space on Sunday, another record for the most spaceships sent on a solitary mission, as per the organization.

The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 10 a.m. EST from the Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It flew south along the eastern coast of Florida on its approach to space, the organization said.

The reusable rocket carried 133 commercial and government spacecraft and 10 Starlink satellites to space – part of the organization’s SmallSat Rideshare Program, which gives admittance to space to little satellite operators looking for a reliable, moderate ride to orbit, as per the organization.

SpaceX deferred the launch one day in view of unfavorable weather. On Jan. 22 Musk, additionally CEO of Tesla Inc., composed on Twitter: “DLaunching many small satellites for a wide range of customers tomorrow. Excited about offering low-cost access to orbit for small companies!”

SpaceX has recently launched to orbit more than 800 satellites of the several thousand needed to offer broadband internet globally, a $10 billion investment it appraisals could create $30 billion every year to help fund Musk’s interplanetary rocket program, called Starship.

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SpaceX prepares for second launch this week with ridesharing mission

After effectively launching its own payload from Florida recently, SpaceX is setting up another Falcon 9 rocket to takeoff with satellites from a few clients, including DARPA, NASA and its very own greater amount Starlink satellites.

The SpaceX rideshare mission incorporates government and private client payloads as well as a dozen more modest nanosatellites. The rocket will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Launch Complex 40. The launch window opens at Saturday at 9:40 a.m. It was deferred from Friday morning.

The mission, known as Transporter-1, additionally incorporates a to some degree a minute addition of 10 Starlink satellites, subsequent to accepting Federal Communications Commission approval recently to incorporate those.

As indicated by the 45th Space Wing forecast, the current worry for the launch window will be thick cloud cover. Space Force forecasters are giving the launch window a 60% chance of favorable weather. A front will carry showers to the Space Coast Saturday morning.

After launch, the Falcon 9 will head south toward polar orbit, an uncommon direction sending the rocket down Florida’s coast. Because of the strange way SpaceX’s droneship, Of Course I Still Love You, won’t be north of the launch site standing by to get the rocket supporter however due south in the Atlantic Ocean.

Prior in the week, another Falcon 9 launched 60 Starlink internet-beaming satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The effective delivery to low-Earth orbit was the 17th batch part of SpaceX’s group of stars intended to give global internet to even far off territories of the world. There were almost 1,000 Starlink satellites effectively in orbit.

SpaceX plans to keep on developing that constellation this year with launches all other weeks.

In the interim in Texas, SpaceX teams are running after another test flight of the organization’s interplanetary spaceship going through improvement at the Boca Chica site. The latest trip of Starship wowed online watchers everywhere on the world when the spaceship prototype launched, played out an aeronautical flip and descended for an explosive landing.

This current weekend’s launch will mark the third for SpaceX this year.

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SpaceX is going to run its last trial of Starship SN9 before the first launch

SpaceX is equipping to test the 10th model of its enormous, sparkly rocket, Starship SN9 Wednesday (Jan. 20), illuminating its motors for what ought to be the last time before its debut flight. The test is expected before 5 p.m. Central Time.

The rocket won’t go anyplace during this “static fire” test. (Or then again, in any event, it shouldn’t.) But on the off chance that all works out as expected, this test should make room for a launch soon, however SpaceX has not set a date. NASA Spaceflight is live streaming the test from the Boca Chica, Texas, site where SpaceX assembles and tests its Starships.

This will be the second static fire trial of SN9, after a triplet of Jan. 13 tests finished uncertainly, with the engines not firing for the full proposed span, as NASA Spaceflight revealed. The organization has since traded out the engines utilized in the past tests.

Starship is SpaceX’s moonshot — literally. The organization has proposed the 160-foot-tall (49 meters) and 30-foot-wide (9 m) vehicle could one day land enormous groups of individuals on the moon or Mars. It has additionally sold tickets to board a future Starship for an orbit around the moon. To do all that will require a far-bigger “Super Heavy” promoter rocket to hang Starship into space, and that rocket has not yet been fabricated.

For the present, SpaceX is centered around building up the Starship vehicle itself. The last model, SN8, showed great capacities during a December 2020 test flight. That test saw SN8 space to the cruising altitude of a jetliner and make a controlled way to deal with its landing site prior to detonating on contact, as LiveScience announced at that point. SpaceX hasn’t said what its goals are for this next launch, however a successful arriving of the mammoth vehicle could be on the menu.

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The last SpaceX launch of the year will help a spy satellite Saturday

SpaceX this year sent astronauts to orbit for its first time and saw the unstable presentation of its most recent Starship prototype. In any case, it actually has one more launch intended to wrap up 2020.

A Falcon 9 rocket is set to send a new spy satellite to space for the US National Reconnaissance Office on Saturday morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch was at first set to happen Thursday morning, yet some irregular pressure readings triggered an auto-abort, pushing the launch initially back to Friday and now to Saturday.

This classified national security mission is assigned NROL-108 and will be the 6th launch in 2020 from the National Reconnaissance Office. Like most other NRO launches, this one has a fairly cryptic poster and slogan, as a cartoon gorilla beating its chest and the phrase “peace through strength.”

“Gorillas are peaceful animals but can be fierce when necessary,” the NRO cryptically tweeted. “Like the gorilla, our #NROL108 mission is constantly vigilant and ready to defend its own.”

A new NRO mission, launched on board a United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket on Nov. 13, highlighted a baffling Lord of the Rings subject, including some elvish content.

“I think we just have some Lord of the Rings fans,” an NRO spokesperson later told me via email.

Weather forecasts look positive for Saturday’s mission to blast off during its three-hour launch window between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. PT (9 a.m. to early afternoon ET). The primary stage booster of the Falcon 9 will endeavor to make an arrival aground at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

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SpaceX launches 100th Falcon 9 mission with a fleet-leading rocket from Florida

The most experienced Falcon 9 rocket in SpaceX’s fleet vaulted off its Cape Canaveral pad Tuesday, delivering 60 Starlink internet satellites to low-Earth orbit and flipping around for its seventh effective arriving to date.

“For the seventh time, this Falcon has landed,” Kate Tice, a reliability engineer at SpaceX, said after the 162-foot first stage conducted an autonomous landing on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship 250 miles northeast of Florida.

The achievement makes this booster, assigned B1049, the most experienced in SpaceX’s fleet. In the event that post-launch investigations look great, it’ll be cleared for an eighth flight, pushing the organization ever nearer to CEO Elon Musk’s expressed objective of flying rockets 10 times with minimal refurbishment.

Different parts of Falcon 9 rockets, for example, nose cones, are sometimes recuperated and re-flown, however the second stages that support the payloads near their final orbits are most certainly not. SpaceX’s reusability efforts principally center around the first stage, which by a long shot is the most costly gratitude to its size and nine Merlin main engines.

Tuesday’s mission launched another achievement for the California-based organization: 100 Falcon 9 launches since its presentation in 2010. However, with 23 total Falcon 9 missions this year, that implies SpaceX has flown almost a fourth of its whole 10-year portfolio in 2020 alone.

Of the 27 total Space Coast launches this year, 14 have been for the Starlink internet constellation, which is presently delivering a $99-a-month service to clients in northern latitudes like Canada, Washington, and Michigan. Some planned clients found farther south who signed up for public beta access could start getting invitations to join right on time one year from now.

The only hardware expected to access the network is a 19-inch dish and wireless router, which clients buy at $499 before monthly charges kick in. While not as fast as some ground-based internet providers, Starlink’s 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps speeds offer a lot of bandwidth for the average American family unit focused on streaming video, working from home, and gaming.

For others like remote crisis or military personnel, Starlink has just made advances and is ready to fill in those fields, as well.

Until this point in time, SpaceX has launched just under 960 of the flat-packed satellites to an orbit of around 350 miles. Despite the fact that a few batches have degraded orbits and at last wrecked in the atmosphere, somewhere in the range of 800 and 850 remain.

The Space Coast’s next mission, then, will come as one more Falcon 9. Groups at Kennedy Space Center will launch an uncrewed Cargo Dragon capsule packed with a huge number of pounds of supplies and science experiments to the International Space Station at 11:39 a.m. Dec. 5.

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SpaceX focusing one week from now for Starship’s first high-height test flight

SpaceX looks prepared to continue to the following vital phase of its Starship spacecraft improvement program: A 15km (50,000 feet) test flight. This would far surpass the maximum stature that any earlier Starship prototype has accomplished up until now, since the current record-setting jump test maximized at around 500 feet. Elon Musk says that SpaceX will hope to make its first high-height attempt at some point one week from now.

This speculative date (these are consistently liable to change) follows an effective static test fire of the current SN8 generation prototype – basically terminating the test shuttle’s Raptor engines while it stays stationary on the pad. That is a pivotal advance that makes ready for any actual flight, since it demonstrates that the rocket can basically hold together and withstand the pressures of active engines before it leaves the ground.

SpaceX’s SN8 prototype is different from prior versions in various ways, most clearly in light of the fact that it has a real nosecone, alongside nose fins. The prototypes that did the short test hops, including SN6, had what’s known as a mass simulator up top, which weighs as much as a real Starship nose segment however looks totally different.

Musk added that the chances of a SN8 high-altitude flight going to plan aren’t incredible, assessing that there’s “maybe a 1/3 chance” given the number of things need to work accurately. He at that point noticed that that is the explanation SpaceX has SN9 and SN10 prepared to follow fast, which is a theme of Starship’s improvement program to date: building progressive generations of prototypes quickly in equal to test and repeat rapidly.

We’ll probably improve thought of when the launch will happen because of alerts filed with local regulators, so watch this space one week from now as we anticipate this significant jump forward in SpaceX’s Starship program.