Category: SpaceX

A SpaceX rocket, carrying astronauts, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 23, 2021.

By Al Root

SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk said his space company can be ready to go to the moon in the next three years.

Musk said in a Saturday Twitter post responding to a question about the timeline that SpaceX’s lunar lander would be ready for its moon mission “probably sooner” than 2024. 

SpaceX won NASA’s lunar lander contract in April, beating Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin and Leidos (ticker: LDOS) unit Dynetics for the job. 

The NASA program, dubbed Artemis, is slated to take astronauts, including women, to the moon in 2024. SpaceX will make a reusable lander it calls Starship that will eventually carry people to Mars if Musk’s ultimate ambitions are realized. 

Continue reading… “Elon Musk’s SpaceX Shoots for the Moon—by 2024 or Sooner”

Space is going to be a billboard. If you like to run your own ad, the collaboration accepts cryptocurrencies only. 

By  Ameya Paleja

Just as paid human spaceflights are about to begin, advertising is making a mark in space too. A Canadian startup called Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) has tied up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, taking advertising to space on a small satellite aboard the Falcon 9 rocket, Business Insider reported. However, the collaboration won’t feature a classic advertising billboard that we are used to see around, the ads will run on a pixelated display screen on a satellite called a CubeSat. 

Calgary-based GEC is an intellectual property, manufacturing, and logistics company, all rolled into one. Through its subsidiaries, Geometric Space, GeometricLabs, Geometric Medical, and Geometric Gaming, the company is inventing and manufacturing products and services for its customers in the private as well as the public sectors. As the company claims, during the pandemic, it supplied “ethically sourced” nitrile gloves to institutions in Canada and the U.S. while also developing a solid-state Sodium-Ion battery product. 

Continue reading… “SpaceX and a Canadian Startup Will Turn Space Into a Billboard”

Elon Musk, SpaceX Chief Engineer, and the SpaceX team are recognized by Vice President Mike Pence inside the Vehicle Assembly Building following the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on NASA’s SpaceX Demo-2 mission with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, Saturday, May 30, 2020, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

By Aubrey Clarke 

Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO, recently stated that the company’s Starship could be converted into a “huge telescope” with 10 times the resolution of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The recent revelation indicates that the billionaire still has lots of ambitious ideas for the company’s spaceship.

SpaceX’s Starship might bring the first astronauts to the Moon’s surface since the Apollo missions, clean up our planet’s increasingly polluted orbit, and possibly assist in the establishment of a metropolis on Mars.

Musk has now stated that he wishes to bring astronomical observations into the twenty-first century.

Continue reading… “Elon Musk Wants to Turn SpaceX Starship to a Giant Space Telescope; Is It Possible?”

Elon Musk says SpaceX can fly around space and “chomp up debris” with its upcoming Starship craft.

Starship is central to many of SpaceX’s aims, and continues to be under development. It hopes to eventually use it to carry people to space, the Moon and further, and it has conducted a number of often spectacular tests.

But it comes at the same time as SpaceX and other companies face criticism over their contribution to “space debris”, which can block out the view of the sky and poses a threat as it fills up the sky. Numerous experts have warned that the growing number of satellites and other materials above the Earth could possibly cause a disastrous collision.

Its Starlink space internet satellites, for instance, have faced both criticism and risk from the increasing number of satellites they share the sky with. They have been attacked by astronomers who argue that they are crowding out the view of the sky, and have been forced to change orbit to avoid the risk of collisions.

But Mr Musk has said on Twitter that the company could also help fix that problem, using its Starship to pick up that litter from the sky.

Continue reading… “ELON MUSK SAYS UPCOMING SPACEX STARSHIP CAN ‘FLY AROUND SPACE AND CHOMP UP DEBRIS’”

The Starship SN10, on ascent.

By  Brad Bergan

Appearances can be deceiving.

In a bizarre turn of events, SpaceX just rolled its newest Starship, SN16, from its Boca Chica, Texas factory directly to the nearby “rocket garden,” where the private aerospace firm retires its Mars-vehicle prototypes. But appearances can deceive: Soon after industry experts made their peace with SN16, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that no, this was not the case, at all.

Continue reading… “Elon Musk Says SpaceX’s Starship SN16 Might Jump to Hypersonic Flight”

By Trevor Mogg

As SpaceX continues to deploy numerous satellites in low-Earth orbit as part of its Starlink internet project, the company revealed this week that it’s talking to “several airlines” about the possibility of providing in-flight Wi-Fi.

Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX’s VP of Starlink and commercial sales, revealed the news during an event at the Connected Aviation Intelligence Summit on Wednesday, The Verge reported.

“We’re in talks with several of the airlines,” Hofeller told a panel at the event, adding, “We have our own aviation product in development … We’ve already done some demonstrations to date and looking to get that product finalized to be put on aircraft in the very near future.”

Continue reading… “SpaceX Starlink internet could be coming to an airline near you”

By Chris Davies 

SpaceX has revealed a new image of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, showing an incredible glass dome window on top for incredible views of space. The new image shows the familiar bullet-shaped craft but now with a pop-up nose cone, which hinges back to reveal what might end up being the best seat in orbit.

It’s based on the existing Crew Dragon design, but does away with the docking adapter that would ordinarily be intended to mate with the International Space Station. That’s there so that astronaut missions can take place, shuttling people up and down from the ISS, as well as cargo and other items.

Continue reading… “SpaceX reveals new Crew Dragon with an incredible window dome”

An orbital view of SpaceX’s South Texas launch site, with SN10 on the pad, in early March. Maxar Technologies

By Eric Berger 

THE COMPANY WILL HAVE TWO ORBITAL, AND TWO SUBORBITAL LAUNCH PADS.

As part of a federal review process for its plans in South Texas, details of SpaceX’s proposed spaceport have been made public. They were posted late last week in a public notice from the US Army Corps of engineers, which is soliciting public comments on the changes.

Most notably, the new documents include a detailed architectural drawing of the multi-acre site at the southern tip of Texas, along the Gulf of Mexico. The major hardware that exists or will be built includes:

• Two orbital launch pads, one of which is already under constriction
• Two suborbital launch pads, one of which already exists
• Two landing pads, one of which already exists
• Two structural test stands for Starship and the Super Heavy booster
• A large “tank farm” to provide ground support equipment for orbital flights
• A permanent position for the totemic “Starhopper” vehicle at the site’s entrance

Continue reading… “SpaceX reveals the grand extent of its starport plans in South Texas”

Bankrolled by a Japanese millionaire, the DearMoon mission plans to transport eight people around the moon and back in 2023

By Jackson Ryan

The SpaceX Starship prototype, flying high above the launch facility in Boca Chica, TexasSpaceX

In 2023, will civilians fly around the moon for the first time? According to Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa, the answer is yes. He is bankrolling the DearMoon mission, which is intended to take a group of eight people to the moon on SpaceX’s still-in-development Starship and loop around Earth’s natural satellite on a six-day mission. 

The project, announced by Maezawa and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in 2018, originally planned to invite artists from around the world to experience. The criteria for “artists” was never clearly defined, but on Tuesday, in a new promotional video for the mission, Maezawa announced that DearMoon would be opened up to practically everyone across the globe. 
“I began to think that maybe every single person who is doing something creative could be called an artist,” he says in the video, which you can view below.

Maezawa outlines “two key criteria” for the civilian passengers. These seem fairly flexible, too. 

• “Whatever activity you are into, by going to space, I hope that you can push its envelope, to help other people and greater society in some way.”
• “You have to be willing and able to support other crew members who share similar aspirations.”

Continue reading… “SpaceX moon mission to take eight people ‘further than any human has ever gone’ from Earth”

If Texas approves, the Starbase city will be located near SpaceX’s Boca Chica site.

By  Fabienne Lang

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is thinking about creating a city called Starbase, which will be located around his space company’s rocket launch and production facility in Texas. 

Musk already approached state county officials about his interest to incorporate the Boca Chica Village into the City of Starbase, as read SpaceX’s official inquiry.

In typical Musk style, the billionaire also shared his idea on Twitter, where he simply said “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.” Followed by “From thence to Mars, and hence the Stars.”

Continue reading… “Elon Musk Wants To Build a City Called ‘Starbase’ in Texas”