Tag: SpaceX

SpaceX reschedules the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight to March 3, 2025

9:40 am

SpaceX has rescheduled the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight from today to March 3, 2025, with the launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The company gave no reason for the delay, but it also indicated that the FAA has still not closed out the investigation of the Starship failure on the last test in January, nor issued the launch license.

That SpaceX is pushing for this quick launch date suggests it either expects the FAA to issue the permit momentarily, or it is purposely highlighting continuing delay tactics and is applying pressure on the agency. Unlike the Biden administration, which was very hostile to Musk and SpaceX and worked to harass it with lawfare, Trump will not take kindly to such tactics. By making such tactics patently obvious Musk and SpaceX will force Trump to step in.

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SpaceX and China complete launches

9:02 am

Since my last launch report yesterday there have been two more launches (with another planned for later today).

First, last night SpaceX launched another 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket — using a new first stage — lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This new stage shows that SpaceX appears building about one to two new first stages per year in order to maintain its fleet.

Next, China placed two classified remote sensing satellites into orbit, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s first stage, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.

Another launch is expected later this afternoon, by Russia, launching a new Progress freighter to ISS.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

25 SpaceX
9 China
2 Rocket Lab

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SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander

5:33 pm

The Moon's South Pole with landers indicated
The Moon’s South Pole with landers indicated.
Click for interactive map.

SpaceX today successfully launched the second lunar lander built by the startup Intuitive Machines, dubbed Athena, for a landing near the lunar south pole in about eight days, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The “X” on the map to the right indicates the landing location, on a mountain called Mons Mouton, about 100 miles from the south pole. This will be the closest landing to the pole by any lander. It is also the site that was originally selected for NASA’s now cancelled VIPER rover mission.

The launch also included NASA Lunar Trailblazer lunar orbiter, designed to map the Moon’s surface for evidence of water, and Astroforge’s first interplanetary probe, dubbed Odin, which will attempt the first close fly-by of an asteroid by a privately built and own space probe. The asteroid, 2022 OB5, is thought to be made up largely of nickel-iron, which makes it a prime mining target.

The first stage completed its ninth mission, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

24 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later tonight)
8 China
2 Rocket Lab

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Intuitive Machine’s Athena lunar lander to launch later today

12:41 pm

The second attempt by the startup Intuitive Machines to soft land a spacecraft on the Moon is scheduled to launch today at 7:16 pm (Eastern) time on a Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I have embedded the Space Affairs live stream feed below, because it starts only 45 minutes before launch. If you want to watch an extra hour of pre-launch blather and propaganda from NASA, the official live steam can be found here. Be warned however. All the live feeds are being produced by NASA, which tends to make believe it made everything happen, when in truth both the rocket and lander are privately owned and built. NASA is contributing most of the science instruments, but without SpaceX and Intuitive Machines, none of those instruments would go anywhere.

A very good description of the mission and the science instruments on board, including a hopper, and a drill, can be found here.

Secondary payloads on the rocket include a low cost NASA lunar orbiter and the first interplanetary probe of a private company.

The first, Lunar Trailblazer, has two instruments for mapping the existence of water on the lunar surface. The second, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft, will attempt a close fly-by of the asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up mostly of nickel-iron and thus potentially very valuable resource for mining.

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SpaceX now targeting February 28, 2025 for 8th Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight

1:13 pm

Superheavy captured for the second time
Superheavy captured for the second time,
on January 16, 2025

SpaceX today announced it will attempt the eighth Starship/Superheavy test orbital flight this coming Friday, February 28, 2025, with a launch window beginning at 5 pm (Central). From the company’s website update:

The upcoming flight will target objectives not reached on the previous test, including Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch. The flight also includes the launch, return, and catch of the Super Heavy booster.

The company also published today a detailed report on its investigation into the loss of Starship soon after stage separation in the 7th test flight.
» Read more

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Eutelsat-Oneweb uses its satellite constellations to test technology for phone-to-satellite capabilities

9:17 am

The communications company Eutelsat-Oneweb announced today that it has successfully tested the technology that would allow smartphones to use its satellite constellations as orbiting cell towers in order to eliminate dead zones in their ground-based systems.

Based on the press release, it is unclear whether the tests actually included a cell phone.

The trial used Eutelsat OneWeb satellites, with the MediaTek NR NTN test chipset, and NR NTN test gNB provided by ITRI, implementing the 3GPP Release 17 specifications. Sharp, Rhode & Schwarz provided the antenna array and test equipment and the LEO satellites, built by Airbus, carry transponders, with Ku-band service link, Ka-band feeder link, and adopt the “Earth-moving beams” concept. During the trial, the 5G user terminal successfully connected to the 5G core via the satellite link and exchanged traffic. [emphasis mine]

That user terminal might have been a smart phone, or it could have been an engineering test terminal.

Either way, Eutelsat-Oneweb appears to be aggressively trying to enter the competition for cell-to-satellite business, competing with the systems already operational from Starlink and AST SpaceMobile.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

7:36 pm

Two more launches today. First China launched a communications satellite into orbit, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s core stage and four side boosters crashed inside China. Nor has China released much information about the satellite itself.

Next SpaceX placed another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

23 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab

At this moment SpaceX’s 23 launches in 2025 is not far short of being twice as much as the 14 launches completed by rest of the entire world combined. It certainly is outpacing everyone else quite handily.

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Musk: ISS should be de-orbited quickly! And he may be right.

12:23 pm

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, showing ISS and outlining the airlieak annotated to show Zvezda and Poisk locations.

Food fight! Yesterday Elon Musk did a Donald Trump, issuing a bunch of tweets that are likely causing some heads to explode inside NASA, Congress, and Europe.

First — and far less significant — Musk got into a war of insults with European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen over his comments in recent days accusing the Biden administration of delaying the return of the two Starliner astronauts “for political reasons.” Mogensen accused Musk lying about this, and Musk responded by calling Mogenson “fully retarded” and an “idiot,” adding that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.”

Since Musk was there and Mogensen was not, it seems Musk won that battle. NASA meanwhile issued a mild statement saying everything it has done has been to maximize safety, a statement that matches the facts quite accurately.

Then Musk — on a far more important topic — stirred the pot more by tweeting his belief that ISS should be retired now.

It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the Space_Station. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars.

In a second tweet he recommended the de-orbit should occur “two years from now.”

Left unstated by Musk was what might be his most important reason for retiring ISS so quickly: the fragile condition of the Russian-built Zvezda module. » Read more

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Justice Department drops absurd Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX

9:15 am

As expected, the Justice Department now under Donald Trump’s presidency yesterday filed papers to end the insane Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX that demanded it hire refugees and even illegal aliens, even though State Department rules forbid it to do so.

In an unopposed motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again.

Of all the lawfare initiated against Musk and SpaceX by the Biden administration, this lawsuit was by far the stupidest and most ridiculous. SpaceX doesn’t discriminate against non-American citizens. If they meet State Department rules and also have the qualifications, it hires them. And has done so. For one federal agency, Justice, to demand that SpaceX violate the rules of another agency, State, proves the lawsuit’s real purpose was harassment only.

That harassment has ended with the arrival of Trump.

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Musk: Biden delayed the return of Starliner’s astronauts “for political reasons”

10:06 am

During a television interview with President Trump, Elon Musk suggested that the reason the two Starliner astronauts have been forced to remain on ISS for months was because of a political decision by the Biden administration last year.

The billionaire SpaceX CEO said his company was “accelerating the return of the astronauts” as per Trump’s instructions. Musk then appeared to take a shot at the Biden administration, saying the move was “postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree,” before the president chimed in saying “they got left in space.”

When Hannity pointed out the astronauts have been on the ISS for almost 300 days instead of the planned 8 days, Trump simply said “Biden,” before Musk claimed they were “left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”

While the decision to return Starliner unmanned certainly had a political component (a desire to avoid a disaster in the final year of Biden’s term), Musk’s claim is greatly exaggerated. Worse, Musk is papering over his own company’s contribution to the delays. Had SpaceX and NASA chosen in December to use an already existing Dragon capsule instead of a brand new capsule to launch the next crew to ISS, the astronauts would be home already. Instead, they decided to get that new capsule ready, requiring an almost two month delay in their return.

When it became obvious last month that even this extra time was insufficient to get the new capsule ready, only then did SpaceX and NASA choose to switch capsules. That switch allowed them to move up the return date by about a week.

In reporting Musk’s words here, our ignorant press has generally left these details out, allowing both Musk and Trump to make it appear as they are saviors for these poor astronauts. This is simply not true. SpaceX is certainly making it possible to bring them home (something Boeing was unable to do), but it also contributed to the delay in doing so.

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SaveRGV drops lawsuit against SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations

9:29 am

SaveRGV, one of several fringe activist groups that has been using lawfare to try to shut down SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations in Boca Chica, suddenly announced yesterday that it has dropped a lawsuit against the company that claimed the potable water released in the launchpad deluge system during launches polluted the wetlands there.

Save RGV board member Jim Chapman said they dropped the lawsuit because the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality [TCEQ], the state’s environmental agency, granted SpaceX a permit that “moots” their lawsuit. “We think we’re right,” Chapman said in a phone interview. “We just didn’t feel like [the lawsuit] was going to move in a positive direction for us.”

According to the article at the first link above, SaveRGV and its partner fringe groups have filed a different lawsuit against TCEQ, challenging its decision to issue SpaceX that permit.

When TCEQ issued the permit last week, I wondered if the lawfare of these groups would begin to fade away because their funding is now drying up because of the Trump’s DOGE team effort to shut down the laundering of money illegally to such groups by many agencies in the executive branch. SaveRGV’s decision yesterday, only days after TCEQ’s decision, makes me think my theory might have some merit. It could be it no longer has funds to pay its lawyers for multiple lawsuits, and has decided to focus on one for the time being. Only time will tell.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites; landing first stage on drone ship in the Bahamas

4:35 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed 23 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 14th and 22nd flight respectively. The first stage completed its 16th flight, landing on a drone ship off the coast of the Bahamas, near Exumas. That landing was the first ever to land in territory of another country. SpaceX negotiated rights to do so from the Bahamas to give it more orbital options launching from Florida.

The 2025 launch race:

21 SpaceX
7 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab

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SpaceX engineers given task to review FAA air traffic operations

9:14 am

On February 16, 2025 the new head of the Department of Transportation revealed that he had invited SpaceX to review its air traffic control operations in Virginia and make recommendations.

Tomorrow, members of @elonmusk’s SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.

Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the @FAANews regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.

Many propaganda news reports immediately did exactly what Duffy predicted, quickly finding people to attack both Musk and Duffy for this action and giving them a bull horn for those attacks:

That prompted criticism from some aviation professionals. “SpaceX put people in danger yesterday and their for-profit corporation should reimburse every other for-profit corporation that had to divert, change course or delay because of their operations in the national airspace system,” wrote Steve Jangelis, aviation safety chair for the Air Line Pilots Association, in a social media post after the incident.

Like many in the propaganda press, this article made a big deal about the debris that fell in the Caribbean during the January Starship/Superheavy test flight when Starship broke up soon after stage separation. It however buried this fact to the very end of the article:

In the case if January’s launch, Diez said SpaceX coordinated “debris response areas” with ATO [the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization] beforehand, as it had done on past flights, but this was the first time the areas were activated. “It was only a matter of minutes from when it was activated to when airspace began to be cleared,” she said, sufficient given the time it would take for debris to fall into the airspace. The airspace was cleared in about 15 minutes, she added.

Those debris response areas are developed in coordination with the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, said Katie Cranor, acting deputy director of AST’s office of operational safety, on the same panel. After the mishap, she said “only certain sections of the debris response areas were activated to allow traffic to still move freely.”

To put it more bluntly, SpaceX did the proper due diligence before launch — anticipating the possibility of such a failure — and worked well with the FAA to prepare for it. These facts have been conveniently left out of all the reports on that January launch, and we should at least give kudos to this article for finally mentioning it, albeit reluctantly.

Nonetheless, the insane hostile reaction to this invitation for help by the Transportation Department illustrates once again the stupidity of the left. In every case they attack blindly and without any thought at all, hoping such attacks will win them support and hurt their opponents. Instead, it simply makes them look petty and stupid, and is likely convincing their moderate supporters to rethink that support.

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Texas commission rejects anti-SpaceX calls to deny company its Starship deluge water permit

2:27 pm

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week strongly and finally dismissed the repeated demands by various fringe activist groups to shut down SpaceX’s launch operations at Boca Chica and the use of the deluge system designed to protect the launchpad and the Superheavy booster.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Thursday denied requests from a dozen area residents and several groups to reconsider the commercial space company’s permit to dump as much as 358,000 gallons of water into wetlands during tests and launches of its Starship rocket from its Starbase east of Brownsville.

Commission Chair Brooke Paup introduced the item as “quite a big deal,” then quickly moved to deny additional hearings on the subject and issue the permit. She said concerns raised by individuals and groups including Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas failed to identify “new factual information or an error that would alter the executive director’s decision.

“The hearing requesters did not show that their ability to practice their religion or engage in recreational activities will be affected in a manner different than the general public,” Paup said.

The commission admitted in its ruling that there had been numerous technical errors by both the commission and SpaceX when it initially approved the permit, but none of those errors were significant.

It appears this particular effort by a very tiny minority of leftist anti-Musk activists has finally been shut down. We can only hope that these groups will now fade away, not because they want to give up but because their funding could be gone. I suspect their money came from somewhere within the fraudulent grant programs at EPA and other federal agencies that DOGE has now identified and shut down.

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Starlink Falcon 9 launch sets new reuse record for first stage

2:05 pm

Last night SpaceX successfully launched 21 new Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 26th flight, a new record for the Falcon 9 boosters. That number also exceeded the number of flights the space shuttle Endeavour completed in nineteen years from 1992 to 2011. This SpaceX booster however needed less than three and a half years to do it. Next shuttle record to beat is Columbia’s, which flew 28 times.

The 2025 launch race:

20 SpaceX
7 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab

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Watching a Falcon 9 liftoff from an airplane passenger seat

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I think this launch was in December 2022, from Cape Canaveral. Makes a great start for the weekend.

Hat tip Greg the Geologist.

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Judge okays vote on whether SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility can incorporate as city

9:03 am

After reviewing the local petition submitted by SpaceX requesting permission, a local judge as signed an order allowing the citizens of Boca Chica to vote on whether they can incorporate as city in Texas.

The incorporation petition, [Cameron County Judge Eddie] Treviño explained, was duly signed by at least ten percent of the qualified voters of Starbase. Additionally, the petition satisfied the statutorily required elements and set forth satisfactory proof that Starbase contains the requisite number of inhabitants as required by law and the area to be incorporated is not part of another incorporated city or town.

Since the submitted petition met all statutory requirements, Treviño said he is required under Section 8.009 of the Texas Local Government Code to order that an incorporation election be held on a specific date and at a designate place in the community.

The election is set to occur during the general election on Saturday, May 3rd, 2025.

SpaceX itself had organized the petition and submitted it to the county in mid-December, noting that it already “…currently performs several civil functions around Starbase due to its remote location, including management of the roads, utilities, and the provision of schooling and medical care for the residents. Incorporation would move the management of some of these functions to a more appropriate public body.”

Expect the petition to be approved, making Starbase at Boca Chica one of the most spectacular company towns ever to exist.

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NASA announces March 12, 2025 as new launch date for next crew to ISS

9:47 am

NASA yesterday announced that it is now targeting March 12, 2025 as new launch date for sending the next crew to ISS, thus moving that date up about one week.

The earlier launch opportunity is available following a decision by mission management to adjust the agency’s original plan to fly a new Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-10 mission that requires additional processing time. The flight now will use a previously flown Dragon, called Endurance, and joint teams are working to complete assessments of the spacecraft’s previously flown hardware to ensure it meets the agency’s Commercial Crew Program safety and certification requirements. Teams will work to complete Dragon’s refurbishment and ready the spacecraft for flight, which includes trunk stack, propellant load, and transportation to SpaceX’s hangar at 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to be mated with the mission’s Falcon 9 rocket. This will be the fourth mission to the station for this Dragon, which previously supported the agency’s Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 flights.

Both NASA and SpaceX are touting this as a great decision because it will allow the present ISS crew (which includes the two astronauts initially launched on Starliner last year) to get home quicker.

The truth is that this decision really hides the fact that both the agency and company made a wrong decision to use a new capsule for this mission. SpaceX needed more time than expected to prepare it, and those delays pushed back both the launch of a new crew and the return of the old. So, while everyone is spinning this as SpaceX and NASA brilliantly improvising to get those Starliner astronauts home sooner, the real story is that their return had been significantly delayed by almost two months by SpaceX’s inability to get the capsule ready as promised.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

12:02 pm

Both China and SpaceX successfully completed launches today.

First, China completed the first launch of its Long March 8A rocket, an upgraded and more powerful version of its Long March 8 rocket. The rocket lifted off from China’s coastal Wencheng spaceport, and put the second batch (number unrevealed) of one of China’s new mega internet constellations.

Along with the basic Long March-8 model and the booster-free tandem configuration, it forms the Long March 8 series of rockets, providing a payload capacity range of 3 tons, 5 tons, and 7 tons to SSO. This significantly enhances China’s satellite networking capabilities for low and medium Earth orbits.

These rockets and the coastal spaceport will also allow China to steadily reduce its reliance on its older family of rockets that use toxic hypergolic fuels and launch from within China.

Next SpaceX launched another 21 Starliink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 18th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2025 launch race:

19 SpaceX
7 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab

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SpaceX launches another batch of Starlink satellites

8:28 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 22 or 23 Starlink satellites (the reports vary), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its 23rd flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific. At present one other SpaceX booster has flown more, 25 times.

The 2025 launch race:

18 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab

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Falklands public wants the freedom to choose between OneWeb and Starlink

8:53 am

Even as the Falklands government is demanding its money back from OneWeb for not activating its service on time, it appears the public on those islands has buying and using Starlink terminals, even though it is presently illegal to use it there.

The high level of Starlink usage sparked a successful petition backed by 70% of the island’s population. This petition demanded both a reduction of the £5,400 FIG VSAT licence fee and formal approval for Starlink’s operation in the Falkland Islands.

In response, a Starlink Select Committee – comprising all of the island’s MLAs – convened from July to October 2024. The committee formally endorsed the petition’s demands, and the proposal was subsequently forwarded to the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) for implementation. However, the effective date for this approval has now been delayed until April.

Because Sure International holds an exclusive monopoly telecommunications licence, Starlink’s use in the islands is currently illegal. Nonetheless, this restriction has not prevented the widespread installation of hundreds of Starlink terminals, which remain unlicensed.

Sure International apparently provides internet service though traditional land lines. The cost difference compared to Starlink is considerable, with Starlink being far cheaper and providing much faster speeds. Meanwhile, OneWeb has failed to deliver and is losing this business. By April expect Starlink to be approved.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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SpaceX to use older Dragon capsule for next manned launch because of issues with new capsule

9:12 am

Ars Technica today reported that because of continuing battery issues with the new Dragon manned capsule, SpaceX now plans to use the older Endurance Dragon capsule for the next manned launch to ISS and prevent further delays in bringing home the two Starliner astronauts.

NASA now believes the vehicle will not be ready for its debut launch until late April. Therefore, according to sources at the agency, NASA has decided to swap vehicles for Crew-10. The space agency has asked SpaceX to bring forward the C210 vehicle, which returned to Earth last March after completing the Crew-7 mission.

Known as Endurance, the spacecraft was next due to fly the private Axiom-4 mission to the space station later this spring. Sources said SpaceX is now working toward a no-earlier-than March 12 launch date for Crew-10 on Endurance. If this flight occurs on time—and the date is not certain, as it depends on other missions on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 manifest—the Crew-9 astronauts, including Wilmore and Williams, could fly home on March 19. They would have spent 286 days in space. Although not a record for a NASA human spaceflight, this would be far longer than their original mission, which was expected to last eight to 30 days.

The new capsule will then be used for Axiom’s fourth commercial flight to ISS, AX-4, presently scheduled for later in the spring.

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SpaceX withdraws from process to bring Starlink to South Africa

1:39 pm

In what appears to be directly related to the new South African law that will force the redistribution of private land holdings based on race, SpaceX this week withdrew from a meeting to discuss South Africa’s plan to license Starlink operations.

According to an Icasa spokeswoman, SpaceX notified Icasa on Wednesday evening that it would no longer participate in the oral presentations. The company had already made a written submission, which has not been withdrawn. It’s not clear why SpaceX decided to withdraw from the hearings – the company couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

The withdrawal by SpaceX follows a post by Musk on his social media platform X that asked President Cyril Ramaphosa why the country has what he called “openly racist ownership laws”.

It is not surprising Musk had the company cancel its plans. Musk has more and more been learning about the corrupt and racist policies of the left, and since South Africa has been ruled for several decades by communists who have now decided to impose DEI quotas on land ownership that require a percentage of white-owned land to be confiscated to give to blacks, he has probably decided there are better places than South Africa to provide Starlink services.

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SpaceX launches two high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites

8:34 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched Maxar’s last two of six high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites of its Worldview constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX placed the entire Worldview constellation in orbit over three launches. The first stage on today’s launch completed its fourth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral, while the rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 21st and 23rd flights respectively.

This was also SpaceX’s second launch today.

The 2025 launch race:

16 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan

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Is SpaceX routinely stiffing its outside construction contractors in Boca Chica?

9:31 am

According to an article today in the San Antonio Express-News SpaceX has been routinely not paying its bills to construction contractors hired by it to build things in Boca Chica, and almost three dozen have had to file liens against the company to get their money.

A San Antonio Express-New review of Texas property records found at least 29 contractors — and six in San Antonio — have filed 77 liens against SpaceX since March 2022. Their total value is up from $2.5 million in May. Since then, SpaceX has settled at least six liens but gained another 44.

Though it’s unclear whether the money is owed by SpaceX, its general contractors or subcontractors, landowners are ultimately responsible for unpaid construction bills on their properties under Texas law. The liens are a legal mechanism for contractors and suppliers to secure their claims.

The article admits repeatedly that its information is incomplete, and that many of these liens might already be settled. It also admits that the failure to pay might not be by SpaceX, but as landowner with the most money, it is the biggest target capable of forcing payment by others.

It is also likely, with the amount of work and expansion that is going on at Boca Chica, such liens are somewhat expected, especially because they seem to be a relatively small amount compared to the billions that SpaceX is spending in the area.

Thus, though the article appears to suggest SpaceX is a deadbeat company, it also appears the article might also be part of the propaganda press’s effort to slander Elon Musk wherever it can.

Regardless, if SpaceX is behind in paying its bills, it needs to fix this issue now.

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Satellite startup Astranis awards SpaceX another launch contract

9:17 am

The satellite startup Astranis, which already has five small satellites placed in orbit by SpaceX, has announced a new SpaceX launch contract for launching its next five satellites later this year.

By making its geosynchronous satellites small, like cubesats, the company is challenging the recent trend away from these high orbits. In the past five years very few new big geosynchronous communications satellites have been built or launched, because they can’t compete with the cheaper low-orbit smallsats.

Astranis is bucking that trend, partly because of its small satellites, and partly because SpaceX’s launch costs are so much less than anyone else’s.

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