Category Archives: Spacex

The sun sets in south Texas at Starbase, where SpaceX will attempt their first orbital flight of their Starship spacecraft Monday morning. Image: SpaxeX

SpaceX is preparing the historic launch of their Starship and Super Heavy Rocket from southern Texas; if all goes well, the massive rocket will head on its first orbital journey before coming down near Hawaii just 90 minutes later. A document released by the FAA now details exactly what will happen near Hawaii at the end of this orbital flight test, and the results could be quite explosive.

Space X has designed Starship to be a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond. Several tests have occured up to this point and more tests are planned in the months ahead before people travel on Starship. With an orbital flight test such as the one planned for Monday, April 17, SpaceX says, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship.

In addition to the testing of Starships upper stage, the team has conducted numerous tests of the Super Heavy rocket, which include the increasingly complex static fires that led to a full-duration 31 Raptor engine test. That 31-engine test was the largest number of simultaneous rocket engine ignitions ever in history. For this orbital test, SpaceX will attempt to nearly circle the world with Starship and not much else; for this first flight test, the team will not attempt a vertical landing of Starship or a catch of the Super Heavy booster. Such attempts will be made at future test launches.

As part of a slew of documentation released by the FAA when SpaceXs license to launch Starship was issued, included in the documentation was a re-evaluation of the 2022 Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship / Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas. That document, authored by Stacey Molinich Zee on April 14, 2023. This Programmatic Environmental Assessment or PEA for short details numerous specifics of the launch plans, including possible environmental impacts at the launch site around Texas and the planned splashdown site around Hawaii.

According to the updated PEA, from a height of about 75 miles, Starship would begin its passive descent back to Earth over the Pacific Ocean. During this descent, residual rocket fuel amounting to roughly 10 metric tons of Liquid Oxygen (LOX) and 4 metric tons of methane would remain with the spacecraft to the surface. The PEA says the residual fuel represents approximately 1.1 percent of the total fill levels for the Starship main tanks.

Starship would impact the Pacific Ocean intact, horizontally, and at terminal velocity, and the impact would disperse settled remaining propellants and drive structural failure of the vehicle. The structural failure would immediately lead to failure of the transfer tube, which would allow the remaining LOX and methane to mix, resulting in an explosive event, the PEA describes.

With a planned 8am Central Time Launch in Texas (3am Hawaii Time / 9am Eastern Time), such an explosive event would occur 90 minutes after launch time as the Starship returned to Earth near Hawaii. This means Starship would explode upon impact in the off-shore waters of Hawaii at 4:30am local time (10:30 am Eastern Time / 9:30 am Central Time) assuming an on-time launch free of technical issues.

While recovery of Starship isnt expected due to the explosive event planned, SpaceX resources will attempt to retrieve any large debris pieces from the ocean.

Following the Starship breakup, SpaceX would have a vessel in the area of highest likelihood of debris that would identify large debris for salvage. SpaceX would use the vessel to survey the debris field for approximately of 24 to 48 hours using visual survey in the day and onboard vessel radar at night) depending on the outcome of the breakup, the PEA says. The initial survey area would be determined based on last known data location point received from the telemetry on the vehicle upon splashdown. Weather and ocean current data would be used to further characterize the debris field as the operation is conducted.

During the debris recovery mission, SpaceX will coordinate with the United States Coast Guard on their endeavors.

If debris is generated, SpaceX expects the majority of the Starship debris would sink because it is made of steel and will have sufficient mass to sink to the seafloor, the PEA adds. Debris is expected to sink within the expected landing location which is 240 nautical miles east of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument; SpaceX says any debris is not expected to drift into the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. However, they caution that some lighter items not made of steel, such as composite overwrapped pressure vessels, may float for a short period before sinking after becoming water logged.

SpaceX also adds that though not expected and unlikely, if there is floating debris found by the vessel during the debris field survey, they would sink or recover any floating debris before it could drift into the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument by physically removing the item or puncturing the item to cause it to sink.

The PEA also evaluated potential impacts to marine life around Hawaii from such an explosive return to Earth of Starship. A consulting biologist explored marine mammals and sea turtles that could be in the splashdown zone; these creatures include assorted whale species, the Hawaiian Monk Seal, assorted turtle species, the Giant Manta Ray, and the Oceanic Whitetip Shark. Based on their assessment of marine life being harassed or injured as a result of this impact, they project less than 1 marine life would be impacted in this zone.

SpaceX plans to start a live webcast on their website roughly 45 minutes before their planned liftoff. SpaceX cautions, though, as is the case with all developmental testing, this schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our social media channels for updates.

Questions remain with how successful this rocket test will be. When SpaceX was testing their first Falcon 1 rocket, their first three launches proceeded to fail. SpaceX Founder Elon Musk has said he believes theres a 50-50 chance of this orbital test flight of Starship to succeed.

SpaceX wrote, As we venture into new territory, we continue to appreciate all of the support and encouragement we have received from those who share our vision of a future where humanity is out exploring among the stars!

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Historic SpaceX Starship Launch to Be Followed by Stunning Explosion Near Hawaii at 4:30am - Weatherboy

Visitors look on as SpaceX's Starship, the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, stands ready for a scheduled launch from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Eric Gay/AP hide caption

Visitors look on as SpaceX's Starship, the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, stands ready for a scheduled launch from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Wednesday, April 19, 2023.

SpaceX will try to launch its Starship again on Thursday after it was delayed earlier this week due to a frozen valve.

The launch window will begin at 9:28 a.m. ET in Texas and last for 62 minutes, the company said.

"All systems currently green for launch," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said.

Musk has billed the world's largest rocket as a way to transport humans to the Moon and Mars.

"With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship," SpaceX said in a statement.

Numerous SpaceX rockets have blown up during testing in the past.

The live stream of the launch will be available about 45 minutes before the anticipated takeoff.

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SpaceX will try to launch its Starship rocket again on Thursday - NPR

SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket is getting ready to fly again.

Elon Musk's company conducted a "static fire" (opens in new tab) with the Falcon Heavy on Thursday (April 13), briefly igniting the vehicle's 27 first-stage Merlin engines on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Static fires are common preflight tests, designed to ensure that a rocket's various systems are primed for launch. And that liftoff is just around the corner for the Falcon Heavy: It's scheduled to fly from KSC on Tuesday (April 18) at 7:29 p.m. EDT (2329 GMT).

You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, when the time comes.

Related: SpaceX's 1st Falcon Heavy rocket launched Elon Musk's Tesla into space 5 years ago

The upcoming launch will send two satellites toward geostationary orbit. The primary payload is the 14,000-pound (6,400 kilograms) ViaSat-3 Americas, a broadband satellite that will be operated by California-based company Viasat.

The secondary satellite flying on Tuesday is Arcturus, a communications craft belonging to San Francisco-based Astranis Space Technologies.

"Although it only weighs 300 kg [660 pounds], the mighty communications satellite has the ability to provide data throughput up to 7.5 Gbps for ... Alaska and the surrounding region," EverydayAstronaut.com wrote (opens in new tab) of Arcturus in a description of the Falcon Heavy mission.

The Tuesday launch will be the sixth overall for Falcon Heavy, which debuted in February 2018 with a test flight that sent Musk's red Tesla Roadster into orbit around the sun with a spacesuit-clad mannequin at the wheel.

The Falcon Heavy's most recent flight, a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force called USSF-67, occurred in January of this year.

The Falcon Heavy consists of three strapped-together first stages of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, with the central booster topped by an upper stage and the payload(s). These three first-stage boosters are designed to be reusable, but none of them will be recovered on Tuesday, according to EverydayAstronaut.com. (There apparently won't be enough fuel left over for the boosters to steer themselves back to Earth for safe touchdowns.)

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There (opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter@michaeldwall (opens in new tab).Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcom (opens in new tab)orFacebook (opens in new tab).

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SpaceX fires up powerful Falcon Heavy rocket ahead of April 18 ... - Space.com

A robotic SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule is returning to Earth today (April 15) after a month parked at the International Space Station.

The Dragon CRS-27 supply ship undocked from the International Space Station at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT) as both spacecraft orbited high over the Indian Ocean, beginning an hours-long trip back to its home planet. It splashed down off the Florida coast at about 4:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT), SpaceX wrote in a Twitter update (opens in new tab).

"After re-entering Earths atmosphere, the spacecraft will make a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida on Saturday, April 15," NASA wrote in blog post (opens in new tab). NASA will not livestream the Dragon capsule's splashdown.

Related: Facts about SpaceX's Dragon capsule

The Dragon launched into orbit from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on March 14, kicking off SpaceX's 27th robotic cargo run to the orbiting lab for NASA.

The Dragon carried up about 6,300 pounds (2,860 kilograms) of supplies on its mission, which is known as CRS-27. (CRS stands for "commercial resupply services.") The cargo included a variety of hardware, 60 different scientific experiments and some gustatory treats for the station astronauts.

"The crews requested some fresh fruit and refrigerated cheeses," Phil Dempsey, NASA's International Space Station Program transportation integration manager, said during a CRS-27 prelaunch press conference on March 13. "So on board are apples, blueberries, grapefruit, oranges [and] cherry tomatoes, as well as a few different cheeses."

The CRS-27 Dragon will carry about 4,300 pounds (1,950 kg) of "experiment hardware and research samples" down to Earth with it today, according to the NASA blog post.

This is a unique capability of the SpaceX capsule. The other two robotic cargo craft that currently service the space station Russia's Progress vehicle and Northop Grumman's Cygnus are designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere when their time in orbit is up.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:45 pm ET to reflect the successful undocking of the Dragon CRS-27 spacecraft.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There (opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter@michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).

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SpaceX Dragon cargo ship departs space station and returns to Earth - Space.com

SpaceX launched dozens of small satellites to orbit early Saturday morning (April 15) and landed the returning rocket back on Earth.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 51 satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base at 2:48 a.m. EDT Saturday (0648 GMT; 11:48 p.m. on April 14 California time), kicking off the Transporter-7 rideshare mission.

The Falcon 9's first stage come back to Earth as planned, acing a vertical touchdown at Vandenberg about 7 minutes and 45 seconds after launch. It was the 10th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description (opens in new tab).

Related:8 ways that SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 51 satellites to orbit. The payloads were deployed on schedule over a roughly 95-minute span, beginning about an hour after liftoff, SpaceX confirmed via Twitter (opens in new tab).

The payloads that launched Saturday are a diverse lot, consisting of "cubesats, microsats, hosted payloads and orbital transfer vehicles carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time," SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

The spacecraft will be operated by a variety of customers. The main payload, for example, is the Imece Earth-observation satellite, which was provided by the Turkish government.

Another three belong to Canadian company GHGSat, which detects greenhouse gas emissions from space. And another satellite, called Brokkr-1, will be operated by AstroForge, a California-based startup that aims to mine asteroids.

"During this mission, we will demonstrate our refinery capabilities with the goal of validating our technology and performing extractions in zero gravity," AstroForge wrote in a January blog post (opens in new tab). "The spacecraft will launch pre-loaded with an asteroid-like material that the refinery payload will vaporize and sort into its elemental components."

As its name suggests, Transporter-7 is the seventh small-satellite rideshare mission that SpaceX has launched to date. The most recent one, Transporter-6, launched atop a Falcon 9 on Jan. 3.

Transporter-6 sent 114 satellites to orbit quite a haul, but not a record. The mark belongs to SpaceX's Transporter-1, which launched a whopping 143 spacecraft back in January 2021.

Saturday's launch was the 24th of 2023 so far for SpaceX. Falcon 9s have flown all but one of these; the lone outlier was USSF-67, a classified mission for the U.S. Space Force launched by SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket on Jan. 15.

We should see a lot more spaceflight action from the company in the coming weeks and months. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said last summer that the company could launch up to 100 orbital missions in 2023.

And SpaceX is currently gearing up for the first-ever orbital test flight of Starship, its next-generation spaceflight system. That landmark mission is scheduled to fly on Monday (April 17).

Transporter-7 had been scheduled to launch early Wednesday morning (April 12), but SpaceX announced on Tuesday (April 11) that it was pushing the try back by two days to allow more time for pre-launch checks and to give the weather a chance to improve. The company tried to launch early Friday morning (April 14) but scrubbed the attempt due to bad weather with about 30 seconds left on the countdown clock.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:35 a.m. EDT on April 12 with the correct launch date of April 14 (not April 13). It was updated again at 2:50 a.m. EDT on April 14 with news of the scrubbed launch attempt and new target date of April 15. It was updated again with news of successful launch and rocket landing at 3:10 a.m. EDT on April 15, then again at 11:10 a.m. EDT on April 15 with news of payload deployment.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There (opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter@michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), or on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).

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SpaceX launches 51 small satellites, lands rocket back on Earth - Space.com

His decision to slap a "government-funded media" label on NPR's Twitter account makes no sense.The Taxman Cometh

It looks like Elon Musk needs to put his or the taxpayer's money where his mouth is when it comes to "government-funded" enterprises.

The Twitter owner's controversial decision to slap a "government-funded media" label on NPR's account led to the independent public broadcaster's exitfrom the social network.

Many saw the move as hypocritical, Gizmodo reports, since several of Musk's ventures, including SpaceX and Tesla rely far more on government funding.

While NPRdoes receive public grants, they only account for one percent of its revenue, the nonprofit news service claims. Those grants were only one percent of the organization's $309 million revenue last year, though that percentage doesn't include the government grants some of NPR's local affiliates use to pay their licensing fees.

Compared to the amount of money Musk's ventures have received from the government over the years, that's chump change.

SpaceX alonegot a whopping $2.8 billion in government contracts last year, according toThe Information, and has gotten a total of $15.3 billion from the government since 2003.

While Gizmodo notes that Musk insists contract awards are not the same as the sort of subsidies that NPR gets,the news site is arguing that were it not for NASA taking a chance on SpaceX, the company would not exist today.

Along with the money SpaceX has been awarded by the US government, the company requested an $885 million subsidy about 295 times more than what NPR got last year for its Starlink satellite broadband service to serve rural communities, but was denied by the Federal Communications Commission. The company has since appealed that decision.

Speaking of subsidies: Tesla has also gotten its own giant share of taxpayer money via grants meant to boost electric vehicle manufacturing, as well as a $465 million preferential loan from the US Department of Energy back in 2010 that Musk, to his credit, did pay off by 2013.

Like countless other companies, Tesla also accepted some untold amount of cash through the Treasury Department's corporate aid during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2020 and as Insider reported at the time, Musk received them right after tweeting against subsidies.

In short: Tesla and SpaceX are far more "government-funded" thanNPR, but you won't see Musk labeling their Twitter accounts as such.

More on Elon: Twitter Rips Into Elon Musk's New Crypto "Ponzi Scheme"

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It Turns Out SpaceX and Tesla Get Way More Government Money ... - Futurism