Tag: SpaceX

SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

11:41 pm

The bunny never stops! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

37 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 43 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 37 to 31.

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SpaceX launches 11 commercial payloads

6:00 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 11 commercial payloads into orbit, as the first of what it calls its Bandwagon series, designed to provide launch ssatellites to medium inclination Earth orbits. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, its first stage completing its fourteenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

36 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 41 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 36 to 30.

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Musk provides update to his Boca Chica crew

11:50 am

The candidate landing zone on Mars for Starship
The candidate landing zone on Mars for Starship

Elon Musk yesterday gave a 44-minute update on Starship/Superheavy to his team in Boca Chica, outlining what he now expects in the next two years as well as in the next two decades.

You can watch his presentation here. Musk began by once again describing his fundamental goal behind the company, to make the human race multi-planetary, for its own survival, and that Mars is at this time the best choice for doing so. He then provided some details about the on-going development of Starship/Superheavy:

  • SpaceX will be ready to launch 4th test flight in early May
  • There is an 80-90% chance they will attempt a tower landing of Superheavy, caught by its chopstick arms, by the end of this year
  • Starship will require at least two precision ocean landings before they attempt a tower landing
  • To provide tower redundancy for these test landings, by next year they will have 2 towers at Boca Chica, 2 at Cape Canaveral, with Cape Canaveral operational by next year
  • In 2024 they hope to build 6 Superheavys and Starships for test flights
  • By 2025 they plan to test full refueling of Starship in orbit
  • The third iteration of Starship/Superheavy will be capable of placing 200 tons in orbit
  • That third iteration will cost less to launch than Falcon 1, $2-3 million
  • To make a base on Mars self-sufficient quickly, he anticipates sending large fleets of Starships every two years, everytime the flight window to Mars opens.
  • The preferred landing sites will be in the low mid-latitudes, 30-40 degrees, with elevations two kilometers below the Martian “sea level”, to take advantage of a thick atmosphere.
  • If all goes as planned, Musk expects SpaceX to establish a Mars colony in about two decades

That next-to-last bullet point fits perfectly with the region north of Amazonis Planitia, as shown on the map above, where SpaceX has requested numerous images from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is two kilometers below the “sea level” of Mars. It is at a latitude either on or close to 40 degrees north latitude. It is a region that orbital data says has lots of very near-surface ice. And it is flat, making those first landings relatively safe.

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SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites, with 6 capable of direct-to-cell service

9:34 pm

The beat goes on: SpaceX tonight launched another 22 Starlink satellites, six of which were capable of direct-to-cell service. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg, with its first stage completing its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

35 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 40 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 35 to 30.

1 comment

SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

7:47 am

Like an Energizer bunny: SpaceX last night successfully placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its 14th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

34 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 39 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 34 to 30. SpaceX also has another launch scheduled for tonight.

1 comment

SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites

8:27 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully placed another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

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

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

33 SpaceX
13 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 38 to 24, and SpaceX by itself remains ahead everyone one else combined 33 to 29.

1 comment

SpaceX completes two launches in three and a half hours; third launch scrubbed

10:50 pm

And the beat goes on: Today SpaceX set a new marker for future launch companies, successfully launching twice from two different launchpads in Florida only three and a half hours apart, and then scrubbing a third launch due to weather on the opposite coast of the U.S. only a few hours after that.

First SpaceX launched a Eutelsat geosynchronous communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 5:52 pm (Eastern). Its first stage completed its twelth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

A little more than three and a half hours later, at 9:30 pm (Eastern), SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from its second launchpad at Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its eighteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Finally, the third launch planned for the day, of another 22 Starlink satelites, was scrubbed at Vandenberg in California at about 10:30 pm (Pacific), or 1:30 am (Eastern) due to weather, despite multiple launch attempts during its two hour launch window. The flight will likely be rescheduled for sometime in the next few days.

No private company has ever attempted such a thing before, and only the Soviet Union might have done it during the height of its launch industry from 1970 to 1988, when it routinely launched between 80 and 100 times per year. Whether it ever did three launches in under nine hours however is not likely.

Even though only two of the three launches took off, what SpaceX tried to do today provides a further illustration of the company’s effort to make rocket launches as routine as airplane travel. It now launches at a pace and reliability that is unprecedented since the dawn of the space age, and was for decades considered by experts impossible. So much for experts. It always pays to ignore them when they tell you something is impossible.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

32 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 37 to 23, and SpaceX by itself leads everyone one else combined 32 to 28.

3 comments

SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

10:02 pm

The beat goes on and on and on and… SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Caneveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

30 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 35 to 22, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 30 to 27.

1 comment

South Texas booming due to arrival of SpaceX

11:29 am

Link here. The article details the major tourism and industry dollars that have come into existence in the Brownsville region since SpaceX established its Boca Chica launch facility, including major development now underway to cater to the tourist business of travelers eager to get a close look at a Starship/Superheavy launch.

The article gives a sense of the reality on the ground. While the anti-Musk activist groups sue SpaceX in their attempt to shut down Starship/Superheavy development, claiming it is harming the region, stories like this put the lie to those claims.

Hat tip to Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

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SpaceX launches a cargo Dragon to ISS

2:18 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched a Dragon freighter to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The cargo Dragon was flying for the fourth time. It will dock with ISS on March 23, 2024. The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing back at one of SpaceX’s landing pads at Cape Canaveral.

This was also the first Dragon launch from this particular SpaceX launchpad in four years. The company only recently reconfigured it for Dragon flights, both manned and unmanned, so that it has two options for launching NASA manned missions. NASA had demanded this before it would give SpaceX permission to launch Superheavy/Starship from that rocket’s new launchpad in Florida. The agency thought it was too close to SpaceX’s first manned launchpad, and wanted an option in case a Superheavy launch failure damaged the Dragon launchsite. With this success SpaceX is one step closer to flying operational Superheavy/Starship flights out of Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

28 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 33 to 21, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 28 to 26.

1 comment

SpaceX’s next Superheavy/Starship launch, according to SpaceX

10:06 am

According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, the company hopes to be ready to fly its fourth orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship in about six weeks, and will not attempt to deploy any Starlink satellites, as I speculated earlier this week.

“We’ll figure out what happened on both stages,” she said, not discussing what may have gone wrong with either, “and get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks,” or early May. She added that the company doesn’t expect to deploy Starlink satellites on the next Starship launch, as some had speculated. “Things are still in trade, but I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them.”

The story however provided one very important tidbit of information about the launch license process from the FAA. Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted that after the second test flight in November 2023 “the company completed that report in several weeks.”

That statement confirms my conclusion in late December that SpaceX had been ready to launch in early January, but couldn’t do it because the FAA had to spend another two months rewriting SpaceX’s investigation report.

We should therefore not be surprised if the same thing happens on the next test flight. Shotwell says SpaceX hopes to be ready to launch in early May. That means it will likely submit its report to the FAA around then. Expect the agency to then spend at least one to two months retyping the report, as it has done now after both the first and second flights.

Based on this information, we should now expect the fourth flight to occur sometime in the June-July timeframe, with July more likely.

I am sure that the people at the FAA want to move as quickly as possible. I am also sure their bosses in the White House are demanding they dot every “i” and cross every “t”, with meticulous care, so that things cannot move as fast as desired. That has been the pattern since Joe Biden took office, and I have seen no evidence of that changing now.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

8:31 am

SpaceX yesterday evening successfully launched another 22 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 space race:

27 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 31 to 19, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 27 to 23.

5 comments

What to expect on the next few Starship/Superheavy test launches

11:28 am

Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024
Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024

As noted last week by Eric Berger after the third orbital test launch of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship rocket on March 14, 2024, this rocket is presently only a few short steps to becoming an operational expendable rocket that can put 100 to 150 metric tons into orbit for about the cost of a Falcon Heavy launch.

To completely achieve this status SpaceX will still have to accomplish several additional engineering goals during the next few test flights, beyond what it has been done so far. This is what I predict therefore for the next test flight, number four:

Superheavy

SpaceX will once again attempt to softly bring Superheavy down over the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, hovering the stage vertically over the surface for a few seconds to demonstrate it could do the same once it eventually comes down next to the launch tower so that the chopsticks can grab it. To do this the company will have to figure out what went wrong on last week’s flight, when the stage began to tumble as it dropped below 100 kilometers altitude. It also appeared to be unable to fire its engines as planned.

An even more important achievement on this third flight however will be a third straight successful hot fire stage separation, sending Starship on its way to orbit as planned. If Superheavy can do this for the third time, it will prove without doubt that the rocket stage is now capable of doing its number one job, launching payloads. Reusability can follow later.

Starship
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

6:12 pm

The beat goes on! SpaceX today launched another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th flight, tying the present record for the most reuses of a Falcon 9 booster. It landed safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

26 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 30 to 19, while SpaceX leads the entire world, including American companies, 26 to 23.

5 comments

SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship successfully launches

9:19 am

Superheavy/Starship lifting off today
Superheavy/Starship lifting off today

Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Superheavy/Starship heavy-lift rocket on its third orbital test flight.

The flight achieved almost all of its test goals, and far exceeded what was accomplished on the previous test launch in November.

First, Superheavy appeared to operate perfectly through launch, putting Starship into its correct near-orbit trajectory. The hot-fire stage separation, where Starship begins firing its engines before separation, worked as planned for the second straight time. Superheavy then refired some of its engines so as to target its correct landing zone in the Gulf of Mexico. As it approached the ocean surface, however, it started to tumble, and though some engines appeared to light for the landing burn, something went wrong and the stage was lost.

Next, Starship continued on its coast phase, during which engineers apparently tested opening and closing the payload doors as well as demonstrating a propellant transfer between two tanks. It also appeared that the engineering team was testing a variety of orientation modes for Starship. First it flew oriented stable to the Earth’s horizon. Then it appeared they placed the spacecraft in barbeque mode, where a spacecraft is placed in a steady roll in order to evenly distribute the heat on its surface.

For reasons not yet explained, the team cancelled the refire test in orbit of its Raptor engines. As the orbit chosen was low, the atmosphere still slowed the spacecraft down so that its de-orbit would still occur over the Indian Ocean.

As Starship started to descend it appeared its flaps were working successfully to control its orientation. It also appeared the heat shield tiles were working, as shown in the picture below. As Starship entered the thicker part of the atmosphere however, some tiles could be seen flying away from the ship and the spacecraft began to tumble. At an altitude of about 65 kilometers signal was lost.
» Read more

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SpaceX announces launch time tomorrow for 3rd Superheavy/Starship launch

1:58 pm

UPDATE: The FAA has now amended [pdf] SpaceX’s launch license to approve tomorrow’s Superheavy/Starship launch.

Original post:
————————-
SpaceX has sent out email notices and now revised its Starship/Superheavy webpage to reflect a target launch time for the third Superheavy/Starship launch tomorrow, March 14, 2024, at 7 am (Central).

The third flight test of Starship is targeted to launch Thursday, March 14. The 110-minute test window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates.

I have not yet received a notice from the FAA, announcing the approval of a launch license, but SpaceX’s announcement likely signals that the approval has been given. As I noted yesterday, this approval was likely given as close to the launch as possible to help preclude any legal action by the various leftist activist groups that want to stop Elon Musk, stop SpaceX, and stop any grand human achievement. Their dislike and alienation with success is so deep that such tactics are now necessary to stymie them and allow such achievements to proceed.

A youtube live stream will also be available here. If the flight succeeds in getting Starship into orbit, it will attempt to open and close its payload door, attempt a propellant transfer test, and then attempt the first in-space relight of a Raptor engine in order to bring it down controlled in the Indian Ocean.

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FAA lists possible launch windows for Starship/Superheavy launch

11:59 am

Though it as yet not issued a launch permit, the FAA has now released an advisory to the public, listing the possible launch windows for the next Starship/Superheavy launch, beginning on March 14, 2024 and including windows on each day through March 18th.

The advisory lists a primary date of Thursday, March 14, with the time 12:00Z-14:13Z (7 a.m. to 9:13 a.m. central). The plan also includes backup dates for the following four days, with the window closing at 8:01 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday before increasing to 9:13 a.m. again on Monday.

It is very possible this advisory is premature. It does strongly suggest however that the FAA is about to issue the launch licence. Based on past actions, expect that license to be announced as close to the launch date as reasonably possible, in order to make difficult or impossible any legal action to stop it by the various independent activist groups that have been suing both SpaceX and the FAA. (While the FAA has clearly been ordered by higher-ups in the Biden administration to slow-walk SpaceX’s effort, its people generally want SpaceX to succeed.)

If the first launch attempt will be on March 14th, two days hence, that license licence must be issued soon.

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ISS crew splashes down safely

8:50 am

SpaceX’s Endurance manned capsule yesterday safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, bringing home a crew of four astronauts from ISS after completing a six month mission.

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, returned to Earth splashing down at 5:47 a.m. EDT. Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels retrieved the spacecraft and its crew. After returning to shore, the crew will fly to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

…Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov traveled 84,434,094 miles during their mission, spent 197 days aboard the space station, and completed 3,184 orbits around Earth. The Crew-7 mission was the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov. Mogensen has logged 209 days in space over his two flights, and Furukawa has logged 366 days in space over his two flights.

This was the third flight of Endurance. As always, it is important to note that though the passengers were government employees from the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Russia, the entire splashdown crew and capsule were private employees of SpaceX. This was a private mission, purchased by those governments.

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Two SpaceX launches yesterday evening, on opposite coasts and only five hours apart

8:39 am

SpaceX yesterday completed two different Starlink launches, placing 46 satellites total into orbit from opposite coasts and only five hours apart.

First, at 7:05 pm (Eastern) a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying 23 Starlink satellites, with its the first stage successfully completing its seventeenth flight.

Next, just over five hours later, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg, carrying its own cargo of 23 Starlink satellites, with its first stage also completing its seventeenth flight.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

24 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world in successful launches 27 to 19. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including other American companies, 24 to 22.

4 comments

Two Democrats in Congress go after SpaceX for the alleged Russian theft of Starlink terminals

9:58 am

Two of the more radical Democrats in Congress, Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) and Robert Garcia (D-California), have issued a public letter [pdf] to SpaceX, accusing the company of not having the “appropriate guardrails and policies in place to ensure your technology is neither acquired nor used illegally by Russia.”

The letter then demands SpaceX answer a number of detailed questions, such as the number of thefts SpaceX has detected, what does the company do to prevent such thefts, and how the company is acting to adhere to the present federal sanctions against Russia. It demands answers by March 20, 2024.

SpaceX has made it very clear it is doing what it can to prevent the use of stolen Starlink terminals, not only in the war situation in the Ukraine but elsewhere. It is not in the company’s interest to allow such thefts.

This letter therefore is just another effort by the Democrats to harass Elon Musk, because Musk has also made it clear he personally no longer supports the agenda of today’s Democratic Party. These two politicians likely intend to use whatever answer they get from SpaceX to further attack the company, and even institute sanctions against it.

Welcome to the new America, where politicians can routinely abuse their power to harass any private citizen who disagrees with them.

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