Not only did the 120-ton Starship rocket take off on its fourth test flight, but both stages also returned, with the booster landing in the Gulf of Mexico and the upper stage experiencing a chaotic reentry. This test brings the super heavy lift vehicle closer to achieving reusability. Astronomers could soon receive warnings when SpaceX … Read more
Enlarge / No simulation. Plasma flows over the surface of SpaceX’s spacecraft during its return high above the Indian Ocean. SpaceX demonstrated Thursday that its towering Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket could one day soon be recovered and reused in the way Elon Musk envisions for the future of space exploration. For the first … Read more
SpaceX’s launch of its giant Starship rocket on Thursday accomplished a series of ambitious goals that Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, had set out before the test flight, its fourth. While the flight wasn’t a perfect success, it offered a sign that Musk’s vision to build the most powerful rocket ever and make it reusable … Read more
Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will not shoot to the moon with SpaceX’s Starship after all. Maezawa, who booked a private trip around the moon in 2018 on SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket, has now scrapped the project – which he called dearMoon – after the rocket wasn’t ready to fly him and eight hand-picked artists in 2023. … Read more
SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile are working to bring satellite connectivity to smartphones, but scientists say the technology threatens to disrupt radio astronomy. “The proposed direct-to-cell satellites would effectively eliminate the existence of radio silence zones, significantly reducing the effectiveness of existing radio telescopes,” said Catherine Lovekin, associate professor of physics at Mount Allison University in … Read more
Enlarge / SpaceX’s fourth full-scale Starship rocket will undergo a refueling test on Monday. After three test flights, SpaceX has demonstrated that the world’s most powerful rocket can reach space. Now engineers must prove that the company’s next-generation Starship vehicle can make it home again. This will be the central objective for the fourth Starship … Read more
Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship tower (left) at Launch Complex 39A dwarfs the launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket (right). There are a number of ways to read the Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement that it is kicking off a new environmental review of SpaceX’s plan to launch the world’s most powerful rocket from Florida. The … Read more