On Wednesday, employees at SpaceX reportedly posted an open letter in an internal chat channel grilling CEO Elon Musk’s recent behavior as a “distraction” and an “embarrassment” to the company.
On Wednesday, employees at SpaceX reportedly posted an open letter in an internal chat channel grilling CEO Elon Musk’s recent behavior as a “distraction” and an “embarrassment” to the company.
Elon Musk, CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, is being accused of sexual misconduct in a new report. Without directly commenting on the case, Musk is hinting that it is part of a campaign of “political attacks” carried out by Democrats.
Today Netflix released the trailer of “Return To Space,” announcing a documentary on how NASA and SpaceX returned human spaceflight to the US after a nine-year hiatus.
In his latest prediction, SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that he expects humans to land on Mars in 2029.
On March 9, we learned that in addition to the Starlink terminals SpaceX has been sending to help keep Ukraine online, another Elon Musk company, Tesla, has been fabricating cables and shipping out Tesla Powerwall units to help keep the terminals powered. Now, a video sent to our sister-site Electrek shows how the units can be set up to provide a more mobile power solution.
Upon request, SpaceX quickly took action to help Ukraine stay online during Russia’s invasion. In late February, SpaceX sent the first batch of Starlink user terminals to help keep the country online through infrastructure outages. The terminals have already helped keep the country connected and emergency services online, but Elon Musk’s company is not done helping in ways that governments around the world cannot.
SpaceX’s Starlink internet service takes a different approach than most other internet services, one that allows it to operate in remote areas, disconnected from the grid, all around the world. That’s why it has so quickly become a part of aid efforts, be it in Fiji after a volcano eruption, Washington state after wildfires, or Ukraine, in the midst of a Russian invasion.
Over the past few days, Ukraine has been under attack by Russian forces, who are now battling to control the nation’s capital. As a result, top government officials have been begging for help from other countries as they fight for their freedom, the most recent is a need for Starlink internet service.
Update: The terminals have arrived in Ukraine.
If you haven’t been to SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, it is truly a mesmerizing place. Very few places have rockets this size on display, and it looks like SpaceX will share this love with the community.
The time has finally come, Elon Musk is about to take to the stage to update the world on SpaceX’s Starship progress. While many of the big events were widely reported when they happened, we expect to get more information about how development has gone, internal progress, and the future of the development.
Tonight Elon Musk will update us on the current progress of SpaceX’s Starship development. The last time this happened was in 2019, just after the first Starhopper flight.
This year’s TIME “Person of the Year” title goes to the man who led the space industry to a new era of affordability and reusability, built an electric vehicle empire, and tweets about pooping in his spare time. Of course, we are talking about Elon Musk.
SpaceX is steadily building out its Starlink internet satellite constellation in orbit around the planet, and ground service is already available to customers across several countries. Using Starlink to provide internet access that’s actually reliable on flights has also been a goal of SpaceX for the last year. A new report from Bloomberg today cites a SpaceX VP in saying that the company wants Starlink service on flights to happen “as soon as possible”.
In an internal email seen by Space Explored, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX intends to build “several million [Starlink user terminal] units per year.” In order to have the internet bandwidth to support this goal, SpaceX will need to deploy its V2 Starlink satellites in orbit. It turns out, however, that this goal is entirely reliant on its next-gen Starship rocket that is currently in development in South Texas.
In an email sent to SpaceX employees, obtained by Space Explored, Elon Musk addressed the ‘crisis’ of Starship Raptor engine production and said the company could face a ‘genuine risk of bankruptcy’ if the company is unable to achieve a Starship flight rate of once every two weeks next year.
Elon Musk is already the world’s richest man with an estimated net worth of $253.8 billion, and investment analysts say trillionaire status is likely.
This week the FAA hosted two public comment hearings for SpaceX’s Starship facility in Boca Chica, Texas. Both sessions lasted for about five hours, with over 100 commenters speaking with more not making the time cut. The hearings had two overall points made by commenters, “SpaceX is hurting our environment and way of life” and “move out of the way FAA and let Elon do Elon things.”
The powerhouse commercial launch provider we know today has come a long way since it opened its doors in 2002. On this day back in 2008, on its fourth attempt, SpaceX launched Ratsat into space on its Falcon 1 rocket.
It’s hard to believe that SpaceX has only just started launching people to space, but that’s practically the case with just four crewed missions under their belt since last year. DM-2, Crew-1, and Crew-2 missions for NASA saw the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft send humans to the International Space Station. The journey inside Dragon wasn’t also the destination as it was for Inspiration4.
What changes when the experience in Dragon is tested by ordinary people for whom the SpaceX spacecraft is also the endpoint in space? SpaceX founder Elon Musk has weighed in with some early suggestions that range from cooking methods to waste management.
Beyond sharing a photo of his new dog Floki, talking about UFOs, and stressing the importance of reusable rockets on Twitter this week, Elon has also shared new features, including Starlink, that will be coming to the Crew Dragon capsule.
The Inspiration4 crew successfully splashed down in the Atlantic following their nearly three days orbiting the Earth. In a great conclusion to the mission, Elon Musk shared that he would be donating $50 million dollars to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital—pushing the fundraising campaign past its $200 million goal.
SpaceX plans to start catching their Starship Super Heavy booster have raised eyebrows. Those Starship catch attempts should start with Booster 5, the second Super Heavy booster to launch, Elon confirmed in a tweet this week. Along with this, news about Starlink satellite’s laser interconnects and development at Starbase.
A recent Jigsaw report raised concerns over the growing number of government-engineered internet outages across the world. With over 850 government-engineered internet outages in the past decade, citizens of affected nations are desperate for a solution. SpaceX Starlink and similar satellite internet services could potentially help overcome these outages in ways that legacy connectivity cannot.
A surprise to those focused on Astra’s orbital launch attempt today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and the crew of Inspiration4 took to the skies for a flyover of Starbase this afternoon.
Six internal emails were leaked this week that share statements from United Launch Alliance Vice President Robbie Sabathier to a lobbyist about NASA’s “incompetent” leaders and favoritism towards SpaceX.
The emails leaked from the ULA employee also contain wild speculation that contracts awarded to SpaceX by NASA were tied to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s inferred support for former President Trump.
This week, SpaceX has continued their work at Starbase, 34 more OneWeb satellites were launched into orbit, and SLS has gained its Orion mass simulator.
This week, Tesla has been a mainstay of the news. Their AI day served as a recruitment tool as they unveiled their Dojo super-computer and a Tesla robot.
While Blue Origin continues to attack SpaceX’s award of the Human Lander System contract for Artemis, SpaceX remains hard at work towards the first orbital launch from their “non-existent” spaceport. More so, Elon has criticized Bezos for holding back the Artemis program in the very ways that Bezos has previously spoken against.
NASA has been working on a new generation of Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU), the big white space suits you see on spacewalks, for their Artemis Program. Elon Musk offered his help with xEMU development to make sure it would hit its 2024 deadline.
Today Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, released his final part of his Starbase tour/interview with Elon Musk. This part of the tour shows what Starbase’s orbital launch pad area looks like the day before teams stacked the orbital mount table.
Earlier this week Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, released the first part of his interview/tour with Elon Musk at SpaceX’s Starship facility. Saturday, Dodd released his second part featuring a stockpile of Raptor engines for Starship and Super Heavy.
This week SpaceX has made massive progress towards launching their Super Heavy rocket. Last week the booster was a mere tube in the build site, but now it has had the engines installed and been stacked with Starship 20; now laden with tiles.
Over the weekend Tim Dodd, creator of Everyday Astronaut, walked around SpaceX’s Starbase facilities. The 3 part Starbase tour, given by Elon Musk himself with Everyday Astronaut, gave never before seen views of the facility.
This week, SpaceX has added the final section to the orbital Starship launch tower, integrated the orbital launch table, and completed a great deal of work on their first Superheavy booster slated for flight, booster 4.
While the news this week primarily focused on Blue Origin’s flight to space on Tuesday, SpaceX has continued to work towards the first flight of Starship Super Heavy. This week, Super Heavy had its first static fire, while Starship may see some slight design changes moving forward.
This week on Twitter, Elon addressed some major planned improvements to the constellation of Starlink internet satellites, and the advantages Starlink has over traditional internet connections.
The Wall Street Journal has been able to confirm that Elon Musk has bought a ticket on Virgin Galactic. Although Musk himself hasn’t said anything.
Today we witnessed history as the first fully crewed flight of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane VSS Unity. This was one of the final test flights before Galactic begin flying paying customers next year.
While the focus in space this week has been on Virgin Galactic, Elon still shared many notable pieces of information about SpaceX on Twitter.
The last few weeks have seen some fierce competition and mudslinging between private spaceflight companies. From Elon Musk’s criticisms of ULA and Blue Origin, to Blue Origin’s criticism of Virgin Galactic, there has been very little peace on Space Twitter recently. That’s why Elon Musk’s recent reply to Richard Branson was so nice to see.
So this happened today. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded to a Vulcan rocket teaser video from ULA CEO Tory Bruno with a slightly provocative “when do the engines arrive” response. Without mentioning Blue Origin, the taunt is mostly targeted at Jeff Bezos’ rocket company.
In 2009, Elon Musk wrote an article titled, “Risky Business” discussing his goals for the future and the challenges overcome thus far since SpaceX’s founding.
Dogecoin has gone from a joke crypto coin to the hottest cryptocurrency since bitcoin, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is largely responsible for its meteoric rise over the last few months. Now the space exploration company is planning the first dogecoin-funded mission to the Moon …
This week’s Saturday Night Live was hosted by none other than SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. This lead to many references to all of Musk’s companies, one of the highlights of the night though was a skit showing off SpaceX’s future base on Mars.
Tomorrow night, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will be the guest host of NBC’s Saturday night live. The show airs live at 11:30 PM EDT.
Tonight on NBC Nightly News, Tom Costello will be sitting down for a joint interview with SpaceX founder Elon Musk and billionaire Jared Isaacman. During the interview, Costello will also be given an exclusive tour of SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
It turns out Iron Man 2 isn’t just a classic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The 2010 American superhero film is also a piece of SpaceX history, and not just because of the Elon Musk cameo with Tony Stark.
SpaceX just completed its highly anticipated, high-altitude flight test with a prototype version of its Starship rocket. Starship serial number 8 successfully launched, readjusted its position for slowing speed, and again adjusted position for landing. The actual landing itself was a total explosion heard from miles away, but that was expected.
SpaceX describes the test flight while teasing the next to come:
On Wednesday, December 9, Starship serial number 8 (SN8) lifted off from our Cameron County launch pad and successfully ascended, transitioned propellant, and performed its landing flip maneuver with precise flap control to reach its landing point. Low pressure in the fuel header tank during the landing burn led to high touchdown velocity resulting in a hard (and exciting!) landing. Re-watch SN8’s flight here.
Thank you to all the locals supporting our efforts in Cameron County and beyond. Congratulations to the entire Starship and SpaceX teams on today’s test! Serial number 9 (SN9) is up next – Mars, here we come!
SpaceX is on the cusp of conducting a milestone test of its next-generation Starship rocket currently in development in South Texas. Starship Serial Number 8 (SN8), an early prototype version of the reusable rocket and spacecraft design, is now expected to launch as early as December 8. SpaceX will livestream the hop attempt.