Author: Robert Zimmerman

SpaceX launches 21 more Starlink satellites

9:09 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

94 SpaceX
42 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 110 to 64, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 94 to 80.

The United States has now tied its record for launches in a single year, 110, set only last year. It has done so however in less than three-quarters of a year, suggesting that the new record will be significantly higher. This new record mostly reflects the pace that SpaceX and Rocket Lab are setting, with most of the heavy lifting by SpaceX.

If things go as expected, expect 2025 to smash this record as well, because all signs suggest that both ULA and Blue Origin will begin launching regularly in order to meet their various contracts, joining SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and several other rocket startups.

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FAA administrator claims SpaceX wasn’t following regulations; SpaceX says that’s false

4:08 pm

FAA administrator Mike Whitaker today said this to SpaceX:
FAA administrator Mike Whitaker today to SpaceX:
“Nice company you have there. Shame if something
happened to it.”

In a hearing today before the House transportation committee, the FAA administrator Mike Whitaker claimed repeatedly that the red tape his agency has imposed on SpaceX, as well as the fines it recently imposed on the company, were due to safety concerns as well as SpaceX not following the regulations and even launching without a license.

Mike Whitaker, the administrator of the FAA, told lawmakers on the House Transportation Committee that his decision to delay SpaceX’s launch for a few months is grounded in safety, and defended the $633,000 fine his agency has proposed against SpaceX as the “only tool” the FAA has to ensure that Musk’s company follows the rules.

… [Kevin Kiley (R-California)] argued those reviews don’t have anything to do with safety, prompting Whitaker to shoot back: “I think the sonic boom analysis [related to returning Superheavy back to Boca Chica] is a safety related incident. I think the two month delay is necessary to comply with the launch requirements, and I think that’s an important part of safety culture.”

When Kiley asked what can be done to move the launch up, Whitaker said, “complying with regulations would be the best path.”

SpaceX immediately responded with a detailed letter, published on X, stating in summary as follows:

FAA Administrator Whitaker made several incorrect statements today regarding SpaceX. In fact, every statement he made was incorrect.

The letter then detailed very carefully the falseness of each of Whitaker’s claims. You can read images of the letter here and here. The company noted:

It is deeply concerning that the administrator does not appear to have accurate information immediately available to him with respect to SpaceX licensing matters.

Based on SpaceX’s detailed response, it appears its lawyers are extremely confident it has a very good legal position, and will win in court. Moreover, the politics strongly argue in favor of fighting now. Though such a fight might delay further Superheavy/Starship test launches in the near term, in the long run a victory has a good chance of cleaning up the red tape for good, so that future work will proceed without this harassment.

Whitaker’s testimony also suggests strongly that he — a political appointee by the Biden administration –is likely the source of many of the recent delays and increased red tape that SpaceX has been forced to endure. He clearly thinks he knows better than SpaceX on these technical areas, even though his education and work history has never had anything to do with building rockets.

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September 24, 2024 Quick space links

3:37 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

As this is an open thread, I must add that the lack of any political or cultural posts recently is entirely because I am presently sick of reporting about this stuff. When you have a big long term player in the Democratic Party, Leon Pannetta, make the utterly stupid comment that Israel’s very targeted attacks on Hezbollah is “a form of terrorism” — essentially endorsing this murderous Islamic terrorist organization — and yet approximately half of Americans apparently still consider the Democratic Party to be a viable option, it seems somewhat pointless to attempt to change these people’s minds. Too many leftists no longer have the ability to think. They are wedded to their party, and will support it no matter how infantile or childless or dangerous or violent it gets.

Enough. Back to Jay’s links about space:

  • Stoke Space touts its growing inventory of built hardware

    • The image shows four engines, two partly assembled, and what looks like a tank dome. The company is clearly making some progress, but as Jay notes, it is not yet “hardware rich. That distinction is given when you have multiple assembled test articles.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Layered mesas in Martian chaos

12:27 pm

Layered mesas in Martian chaos
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a 2,500 to 3,000-foot-high mesa with what the scientists call “bedrock layers”, most obvious as the lower terraces on the mesa’s western slopes.

What makes this mesa especially interesting is its overall shape. It appears as if something has taken a bite out of it, resulting in that bowl-like hollow on the mesa’s southern half.

Was this caused by an impact? Or has some other long term Martian processes caused it?

This mesa is just one of many mesas in a region of chaos terrain dubbed Hydraotes Chaos. Such chaos terrain is thought to form when erosion processes, possibly glacial in nature, that carve out canyons along faultlines, leaving behind mesas with randomly oriented canyons cutting in many directions.
» Read more

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Observations of solar flares do not match the standard model used to explain their origin

9:47 am

The uncertainty of science: When scientists carefully compared new and much more precise observations of the Sun’s solar flares with the standard model they have used for decades to explain their origin, they found unexpected differences, suggesting the model is wrong or imcomplete.

In sum, none of the processes simulated in accordance with the model proved capable of explaining the observational data. The conclusion drawn by the researchers was obvious to some extent: the standard model of solar flares needs to be reformulated, as required by the scientific method.

The scientists found that the two sources of each flare brightened at slightly different times. The model said these sources should brighten almost simulatanously, and no version of the model could explain the contradiction.

All this means is that the researchers simply don’t have enough data or understanding of the Sun to formulate a model that can fully explain the process. This study simply demonstrates this, but also provides a guide for soliving the problem.

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Bioengineered heart samples on ISS confirm that weightlessness weakens and ages the heart

9:33 am

Using 48 bioengineered heart samples that spent 30 days on ISS in 2020, scientists have confirmed other research that showed weightlessness not only weakens the heart, it ages it as well.

In addition to losing strength, the heart muscle tissues in space developed irregular beating (arrhythmias)—disruptions that can cause a human heart to fail. Normally, the time between one beat of cardiac tissue and the next is about a second. This measure, in the tissues aboard the space station, grew to be nearly five times longer than those on Earth, although the time between beats returned nearly to normal when the tissues returned to Earth.

The scientists also found, in the tissues that went to space, that sarcomeres—the protein bundles in muscle cells that help them contract—became shorter and more disordered, a hallmark of human heart disease. In addition, energy-producing mitochondria in the space-bound cells grew larger, rounder and lost the characteristic folds that help the cells use and produce energy.

Finally …[t]he tissues at the space station showed increased gene production involved in inflammation and oxidative damage, also hallmarks of heart disease.

None of this is ground-breaking, as it confirms numerous other past studies. What it does do however is confirm that long-term weightlessness is not good for a person’s heart. Many studies have shown that these issues mostly go away once astronauts return to Earth, but for any journey to Mars, involving two years in weightlessness, this data suggests the health risks will be far higher.

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Blue Origin completes first static fire test of New Glenn upper stage

9:23 am

Blue Origin yesterday successfully conducted a 15 second static fire test of the upper stage of its orbital New Glenn rocket.

The hotfire lasted 15 seconds and marked the first time we operated the vehicle as an integrated system. The purpose of the hotfire test was to validate interactions between the subsystems on the second stage, its two BE-3U engines, and the ground control systems.

Additionally, we demonstrated its three key systems, including: the tank pressurization control system, which uses helium to pressurize the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks during flight; the thrust vector control system, which gimbals the engines and steers the rocket during flight; and validated the start-up and shut-down sequences for the BE-3U systems, which can be restarted up to three times during a mission.

In addition to testing our flight hardware, this hotfire test was also an opportunity for the launch operations team to practice launch day procedures on console and verify timing for a number of critical operations.

An actual launch date has not been announced. Previously New Glenn was to carry two Mars orbiters for NASA and launch by October 21, 2024 at the latest. Because of doubts the company could meet that data, NASA pulled the satellites from the rocket.

Prior to launch the company still has to do a full static fire test of the rocket’s first stage. Though company officials have said this would happen “very soon,” no date has been announced for the test.

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China launches eight satellites from offshore barge

9:16 am

China's spaceports

China today successfully launched eight satellites, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket lifting off from an offshore barge off the northeast coast of China.

The reports from China’s state-run press provided no information on the satellites themselves. The rocket has four stages that are all solid-fueled. This was its fourth launch from the off-shore barge. It was also thirteenth total offshore launch for China, involving four different rockets.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
42 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 109 to 64, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 80.

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September 23, 2024 Quick space links

4:23 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • ULA is prepping Vulcan for its second launch

    • Target launch date is October 4, 2024. The launch will put a dummy payload into orbit, but it will, if successful, also certify Vulcan for operationals paying launches for the U.S. military.

 

 

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More deterioration to Curiosity’s worst wheel

12:13 pm

Comparison of changing damage from Feb to Sept 2024
For original images go here, here, and here.

The science team for the Curiosity Mars rover on September 22, 2024 did another survey of its damaged wheels using the close-up camera on the end of the rover’s arm, and though most of the pictures appear to show the situation remains stable, the one wheel that has consistently shown the worst damage now shows some additional deterioration since February 2024.

To the right are comparison pictures, with the February 2024 picture on top and two new September 22, 2024 images showing the same damaged area, though from a different angle, on the bottom. (The technical captions for the bottom images can be found here and here.) I have labeled the treads, dubbed growsers, to make it easier to understand how the pictures all line up.

Previous images have looked down at the large damaged area from growsers 1 to 4, and since it was first spotted in 2022 showed it to be growing, but very slowly. The new pictures show that same damaged area from the side, which reveals that the zig-zag divider between growser #3 and growser #4 has now collapsed, so that this whole damaged area is now a major depression, as indicated by the two arrows.

Overall, the rover’s wheels appear to surviving the rough terrain of the foothills of Mount Sharp, though it is clear that care must continue to be taken to extend their life for as long as possible. That the rover has six wheels gives it a lot of redundancy, so that even if this one wheel eventually fails the rover will likely be able to continue to rove, but with some limitations. This wheel is the left middle wheel, which is helpful, as it is less necessary than the four corner wheels. [Update: According to a rover update today, this wheel is the right middle wheel, which contradicts an earlier report which described this as the left middle wheel. I note this contradiction for accuracy.]

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Isar begins static fire tests of its Spectrum rocket

9:44 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Isar Aerospace, one of three German rocket startups vying to the be first to complete an orbital launch, has now revealed that it has begun static fire tests of its Spectrum rocket at its launch facility at the Andoya spaceport in Norway.

In response to questioning from European Spaceflight, Isar confirmed that all components of the Spectrum rocket that will be utilized for its inaugural flight had arrived in Andøya and that testing of the first and second stages had begun.

“All components of our launch vehicle Spectrum have arrived in Andøya and the final preparations for the first test flight of Spectrum are in full swing,” an Isar Aerospace spokesperson said. “We are currently performing hot fire tests of the first and second stages. These tests will determine whether the systems meet all the necessary requirements for the first test flight.”

The company has a 20-year lease at Andoya, and though it has not announced a launch date, these ground tests suggest that launch could occur quite soon. If so, Isar will have beaten Rocket Factory Augsburg and Hyimpulse to space. Rocket Factory had apparently been in the lead until a fire during a full static fire test of its RFA-1 rocket’s first stage in August destroyed the rocket.

This race is also between the spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea. Rocket Factory is launching from Saxavord in the Shetland Islands, a spaceport that has been under development the longest, since before 2020, and has been plagued with the red tape problems that appear systemic in the United Kingdom. Andoya however is a latecomer in this race. Though it has been used for suborbital tests for decades, it only started its effort to become a commercial spaceport for orbital flights in November 2023, less than eleven months ago.

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New Russian missile explodes during test

9:29 am

According to orbital imagery, it appears that a new Russian missile that has been under development for more than a dozen years but has not yet completed a full test flight, exploded sometime between September 20th and September 21st during a test launch.

Satellite images from Planet Labs of the Sarmat’s Yubileinaya launch silo in Plesetsk posted on Sept. 21, 2024, showed a major crater left by an apparent rocket explosion, along with multiple fires just east of the site. The fires were also confirmed by NASA’s satellite-based Fire Information for Resource Management System, FIRMS, within 24 hours of Sept. 21, 2024. At least four fire engines speeding to the facility were also discernable on satellite images, confirming that these pictures had been taken immediately after the incident on September 21.

The rocket’s development — which claims will be far more capable than its present missiles — appears to have been plagued with problems and delays. It is also a strange missile, in that it is liquid-fueled, something that western militaries abandoned for missiles more than a half century ago. Solid-fueled missiles are simpler and can be stored ready-to-launch for long periods. Fueling and launching a liquid-fueled rocket quickly is not really practical during a wartime emergency.

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SpaceX conducting salvage operations to recover a Superheavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico

9:19 am

SpaceX has apparently conducted salvage operations in the Gulf of Mexico to recover the Superheavy booster that had successfully completed a soft vertical splashdown during the fourth Starship/Superheavy test flight on June 6, 2024.

Confirmation of the recovery project came from a group of young, independent filmmakers who caught wind of the operation and chartered a boat for the 15-mile trip to the Ridgewind to see for themselves what was going on.

…After a two-and-a-half-hour cruise they were about a half mile from the Ridgewind when a drone buzzed toward them. It hovered for a moment before a voice announced through a loudspeaker: “There is a one mile exclusion zone in this area, please depart one mile away from vessel.”

The filmmakers retreated as requested, but then remained there for awhile, observing operations from a distance. They later contacted SpaceX.

The Interstellar Gateway crew reached out to SpaceX, which Leal said quickly confirmed it had contracted with Hornbeck to recover the giant booster. It asked the filmmakers to refrain from announcing the find until after the Ridgewind completed its work and began steaming to port. That happened Sunday.

The filmmakers are one of the number of independent live stream groups that record launches, and made it clear it announcing the salvage work that they respected SpaceX’s request because they knew it was entirely reasonable — to avoid safety problems that could be caused by others boating over — and that they had no desire to hinder SpaceX’s effort.

The article, from a mainstream Democratic Party propaganda source, however tried to slam SpaceX for its “secretive nature,” something that is so untrue only a Democrat shill could write it with a straight face. It also spent a lot of time criticizing the company for creating that one-mile safety exclusion zone around its salvage operations, questioning SpaceX’s “authority” to do so.

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Chinese pseudo-company almost succeeds in vertically landing test rocket

9:00 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Deep Blue Aerospace this weekend almost succeeded in vertically landing a grasshopper-type test rocket, its engines cutting off just before landing so that when the rocket hit the ground the impact was too much for its landing legs.

I have embedded video of the flight and crash landing below. The footage has a AI feel to it, for several reasons. First the camera is a fisheye lens, creating distortion. Second, this test grasshopper-type rocket is quite small, much smaller than the company wants you to realize, thus allowing the drone to fly around during its flight it in a somewhat spectacular manner.

The company stated that the test completed 10 of 11 engineering goals. It will have to rebuild a new test lander however to achieve that last and most important goal, landing without damage to allow immediate reflight. Regardless, this test means that China is finally getting close to achieving rocket reusablity, something it promised in 2018 it would achieve by 2020.

Note also that though this pseudo-company will likely not release its data to the other Chinese pseudo-companies, if China’s government wants to expropriate it for its own government rockets it will do so, and in fact likely has.
» Read more

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China and Rocket Lab complete launches

3:11 pm

Yesterday there were two more launches. First China’s Long March 2D rocket in the very early morning hours lifted off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China, placing six satellites in orbit.

The satellites are part of a constellation for doing high resolution Earth observations. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.

Next Rocket Lab successfully launched five satellites for the French satellite company Kinéis. This was the second of five planned launches by Rocket Lab to put the entire 25 satellite internet-of-things constellation into orbit. It was also the second attempt to launch, with the first experiencing a launch abort at T-0 seconds due to a ground-system issue.

The launch pace is beginning to heat up. There were four launches yesterday, two from China, one from SpaceX and one from Rocket Lab. The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
41 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 109 to 63, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 79.

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Boeing replaces the head of its defense/space/security division

4:24 pm

Ted Colbert
Ted Colbert

Boeing today announced that the head of its defense/space/security division, Ted Colbert, has been removed, effective immediately.

New Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg in his first significant move since taking over in August, said Ted Colbert would be leaving and Steve Parker, the unit’s chief operating officer, would assume Colbert’s responsibilities until a replacement is named at a later date.

One project that Colbert was in charge of was Starliner, a program that has cost the company at least $1.6 billion in overruns because of numerous faulty engineering problems.

Colbert might not be to blame for the endless problems at Starliner, but the fish stinks from the head. He also might be very qualified, but sadly, as his picture shows, he is a minority, and since Boeing went all in on DEI racist hiring quotas a few years ago, which makes the skin color and gender of an applicant a major qualification in hiring, one can’t help wondering if he was a DEI (Didn’t Earn It) hire. At Boeing that policy created a goal to increase black staffing by 20%. Its full report [pdf] makes it very clear it no longer made talent, experience, or skill the primary qualification for getting hired, but skin color and sex took precedence.

As I said, one cannot help wondering if Colbert was hired not because of his great management and engineering knowledge, but because he happened to born with a dark skin color. If so, that might help explain the failures in this paricular division.

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China’s solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches four satellites

4:05 pm

China this afternoon launched four satellites using its solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket, lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

It is unclear what the satellites purpose are, though there are hints they are part of a constellation providing communications for the internet of things. No word was also released where the rocket’s lower stages crashed in China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
40 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 62, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 77.

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September 20, 2024 Quick space links

4:00 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

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Land of cracks

1:26 pm

Land of cracks

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on June 28, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled a “terrain sample,” it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When the camera team needs to do this, they try to pick something interesting, but don’t always have that option.

In this case, the landscape available included the channel shown to the right. About a half mile wide and only about fifty feet deep, the floor of this canyon appears to have a lot of trapped dust, forming ripple dunes, along with a lot of knobby protrusions, likely small mesas. The canyon walls appear layered, with the erosion processes producing different features on opposite sides. On the southeast the layers appear to produce distinct terraces, while on the northwest the cliff is very steep at the top and then forms a long gently descending slope that appears formed of alluvial fill (from that cliff) and formed from erosion and landslides.
» Read more

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A review of Firefly’s new launch facilities in both the U.S. and Sweden

10:19 am

Link here. The company already has leases for launchpads at both Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, though only the Vandenberg pad is presently operational. It now building new pads in Viriginia at Wallops Island and in Sweden at the commercial Esrange spaceport.

Regarding the purpose of offering a launch site in Europe, Firefly stated to NSF, “The launch cadence will largely be driven by customer demand. With the inaugural Alpha launch from Esrange as early as 2026, the new complex can support commercial customers in the broader European market and enable tactically responsive space missions to further advance national security for NATO countries.”

The company has already completed five launches from Vandenberg, with a sixth upcoming.

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Brazil approves space bill that appears to crush that country’s future in space

10:13 am

The Brazillian legislature has now approved a new space regulatory bill that appears to create a whole range of new agencies and regulatory bodies, all designed to heavily supervise all space activities while giving a great deal of arbitrary power to the government.

The quote below says it all. Note that the term “space operators” refers to any private aerospace operation.

The [government] may economically exploit, directly or indirectly, without bidding, the space infrastructure, including ground equipment and logistical resources, installations and computer systems necessary to carry out space activities.

The regulatory authorities, AEB and the Air Force Command, will have free access to the facilities and equipment of space operators. They may, at any time, cancel or change the licenses granted in the event of non-compliance with obligations or when there is a threat to national security or violation of international commitments. Even if its activities are suspended or canceled, the operator remains responsible for the artifacts that are in operation. [emphasis mine]

There is a lot more, all of it adding more heavy regulation while imposing great responsibilities both legal and financial on the private companies, all to the benefit of the government.

Who is going to invest billions, even millions, under such an arbitrary regime? No one, especially because the Brazillian government has already proven its willingness to unilaterially block or take over private companies with its actions in connection with Starlink and X.

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SpaceX finds a way to extend the launch window for Europa Clipper

10:03 am

The launch window for SpaceX’s launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper to Jupiter has now been extended a full week because the company has revised the launch process and made hardware changes.

The new launch window runs from October 10th to November 6th.

Usually the two side boosters come back to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station so they can be reused and sometimes the core booster is recovered at sea, but not this time. All their fuel will be used to get Europa Clipper on its way to Jupiter. Piloto said SpaceX “made some hardware modifications that enable the launch vehicle to utilize all the fuel in the boosters,” but couldn’t go into detail about what they are because the information is proprietary.

[The NASA official] added that SpaceX has gained experience in flying this configuration — it’s the 11th Falcon Heavy launch — and the company has “come up with a strategy to optimize throttling of the launch vehicle to get more performance out of it.”

NASA and SpaceX have also decided to use NASA’s orbiting communications constellation during the launch instead of ground stations, which increases their flexibility and margins.

I wonder if the FAA has approved these changes. Or even if anyone there even understands them.

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SpaceX and Elon Musk blast the FAA’s red tape again

9:54 am

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

Fight! Fight! Fight! Yesterday both SpaceX and Elon Musk renewed their attack on the FAA’s apparent arbitrary harassment of the company, both by slowing down development of Starship/Superheavy as well as imposing fines and delays on the company for petty issues relating to Falcon 9 launches.

First, Elon Musk sent out a tweet on X, highlighting a successful static fire launchpad engine test of the Starship prototype the company plans to fly on the sixth Starship/Superheavy orbital flight. As he noted with apparent disgust, “Flight 5 is built and ready to fly. Flight 6 will be ready to fly before Flight 5 even gets approved by FAA!”

Second, and with more force, the company released a public letter that it has sent to the leading Republican and Democratic representatives of the House and Senate committees that have direct authority over space activities, outlining its issues with the FAA’s behavior. The letter details at length the irrational and inexplicable slowdown in FAA approvals that caused two launches last summer to occur in a confused manner, with SpaceX clearly given the impression by the FAA that it could go ahead which the FAA now denies. In one case the FAA claims SpaceX removed without its permission a poll of mission control during its countdown procedure. SpaceX in its letter noted bluntly that the regulations do not require that poll, and that the company already requires two other polls during the count.

In another case involving SpaceX’s plan to change to a new mission control center, the company submitted its request in June, and after two months the FAA finally approved the control center’s use for one launch, but had still not approved it for a second. The first launch went off, so SpaceX thus rightly assumed it could use the control center for the second. Yet the FAA is now trying to fine SpaceX for that second launch.

The third case of FAA misconduct appears to be the most egregious. » Read more

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SpaceX launches 21 more Starlink satellites

8:58 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
39 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 76.

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