Tag: commercial-space
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Fire destroys Starship on its seventh test flight, raining debris from space
SpaceX launched an upgraded version of its massive Starship rocket from South Texas on Thursday, but the flight ended less than nine minutes later after engineers lost contact with the spacecraft. For a few moments, SpaceX officials discussing the launch on the company’s live webcast were unsure of the outcome of the test flight. However,…
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Two lunar landers are on the way to the Moon after SpaceX’s double moonshot
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Wednesday and deployed two commercial lunar landers on separate trajectories to reach the Moon in the next few months. The mission began with a middle-of-the-night launch from Kennedy at 1:11 am EST (06:11 UTC) Wednesday. It took about an hour…
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As NASA increasingly relies on commercial space, there are some troubling signs
When it comes to space policy, a hallmark of the first Trump administration was its embrace of private companies. NASA sought to build fewer expensive things and buy more lower-cost services. In doing so, it aimed to foster a healthy ecosystem of private space companies. Under the leadership of Jim Bridenstine, NASA, during these years,…
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SpaceX will try some new tricks on Starship’s sixth test flight
The sixth flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket, set for takeoff on Tuesday from South Texas, will test the vehicle’s limits in new ways. Most importantly, SpaceX will attempt to briefly reignite one of Starship’s six Raptor engines in space. SpaceX tried this on Starship’s third launch in March but aborted the engine restart after…
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Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing
Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company resurrected from bankruptcy, is riding high these days. In a few months, Firefly will attempt to become the second company to safely place a commercial lander on the Moon. Firefly’s Alpha rocket has reached orbit four times, and engineers are developing a larger medium-class rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman,…
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Firefly Aerospace rakes in more cash as competitors struggle for footing
Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company resurrected from bankruptcy, is riding high these days. In a few months, Firefly will attempt to become the second company to safely place a commercial lander on the Moon. Firefly’s Alpha rocket has reached orbit four times, and engineers are developing a larger medium-class rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman,…
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NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites
The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world. “You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019. The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to…
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NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites
The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world. “You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019. The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to…
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Finally, a sign of life for Europe’s sovereign satellite Internet constellation
The European Commission announced Thursday it plans to sign a contract with the continent’s leading space companies before the end of the year to begin development of a 290-satellite broadband Internet network estimated to cost more than 10 billion euros (about $10.9 billion). The press release announcing the contract award to IRIS²—known as Infrastructure for…
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Rocket Report: Sneak peek at the business end of New Glenn; France to fly FROG
Welcome to Edition 7.17 of the Rocket Report! Next week marks 10 years since one of the more spectacular launch failures of this century. On October 28, 2014, an Antares rocket, then operated by Orbital Sciences, suffered an engine failure six seconds after liftoff from Virginia and crashed back onto the pad in a fiery…