F-22Raptor
Elite Member
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- #676
All things SpaceX - Updates and Discussion
- Thread starter F-22Raptor
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Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
SolarWarden
Trusted Member
Riiiiight "telescope" with likely another package from NRO.
Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
Starbase Louisiana Just Changed The Game | SpaceX Announcement Explained
AZ_HighCountry
INT'L MOD
Probably.
Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
that went by quick...
orbitalradar.com
SpaceX Marks 700th Falcon Launch with Telecom Trio | Orbital Radar
SpaceX achieves 700 Falcon launches, ESA preps Vega C, and Mercury's tectonic secrets.
orbitalradar.com
SpaceX Marks 700th Falcon Launch with Telecom Trio
Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
SpaceX declares Starship ready for orbit, sets launch date next week
Reaching orbit would mark a significant milestone.
arstechnica.com
SpaceX declares Starship ready for orbit, sets launch date next week
Pending regulatory approval, SpaceX said today it intends to launch its 14th Starship mission as early as September 22. This flight is notable, as it will be the first time that SpaceX attempts to launch the experimental vehicle into orbit.
The company set a target liftoff time of 7:15 am local in Texas (12:15 UTC), with a 75-minute launch window. Sunrise in Brownsville, Texas, is 7:17 am CT, so the launch could make for some striking imagery.
The super heavy lift rocket will be carrying 26 of the larger V3 Starlink satellites into an orbit 275 km above the Earth. In an update on its website, SpaceX said the Starship upper stage will seek to complete six orbits around the Earth before completing its mission after about 10 hours.
Reaching orbit would mark a significant milestone in the company’s Starship development campaign, which conducted its first test flight on April 20, 2023, and has since made progress in fits and starts. With the upcoming mission, SpaceX continues to make modifications to the Starship vehicle as it seeks to improve the third iteration of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage. After recent successes, the company appears to be closer to developing a fully reusable, super heavy lift rocket.
First-stage modifications
During the most recent Starship test flight on July 24, the vehicle’s first stage performed nominally during ascent. However, after a successful boostback burn, the vehicle experienced problems during the return through Earth’s atmosphere.“In the terminal phase of the burn, the three center [V3] engines showed signs of ice clogging, which triggered an early end to the maneuver,” SpaceX said in its update on Tuesday. “The booster went on to attempt a landing burn, with 8 of the 13 planned engines reigniting before the booster made a hard splashdown in the Gulf. The Super Heavy on this upcoming flight has hardware modifications to improve filtering to the engines and software changes to enhance relight reliability.”
Accordingly, this first stage will not attempt to return to the launch site. Rather, it will attempt to make a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico. If successful, this could set up a first-stage catch on the subsequent flight of Starship.
Second stage will again be ocean-bound
During the upcoming test flight, the upper stage will attempt to reach orbit for the first time and deploy operational payloads. These Starlink satellites, significantly more capable than V2 mini Starlink satellites launched on a Falcon 9 mission, will then use onboard propulsion to raise their orbits.Despite a largely successful ocean landing of the Starship upper stage during the July test flight, this mission will not attempt a return of the upper stage to the launch site in Texas. Instead, SpaceX plans to gather more data about heat shield performance. The company said it had made several upgrades since the mission two months ago, based on data gleaned from the vehicle both in flight and once recovered in the Indian Ocean, largely intact.
“[The upgrades] include additional retention mechanisms added to tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent, addressing recently discovered areas that offer flow paths behind tiles for plasma, and flying multiple areas with a curved tile design that has shown the ability to reduce heating in the gaps between tiles,” the company said.
Additionally, two tiles recovered from Ship 40 are planned to be reflown on Ship 41, marking the first tile reuse for Starship.
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Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
SpaceX plans mobile service in 2028, wavers on wireless network
SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen said Starlink mobile satellite services are planned for the first half of 2028 and it is open to options for a terrestrial network.
www.lightreading.com
SpaceX expects to launch "5G-quality" mobile satellite services to smartphones in the first half of 2028, but it is undecided about how, and if, to build a terrestrial wireless network.
Speaking at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia + Technology Conference last week, SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen dismissed the idea that mobile is a "distraction" for the company, given that it is focused on investing in satellite broadband and AI infrastructure, the latter on the ground and in space.
SpaceX plans to deploy a new constellation of direct-to-device (D2D) low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites throughout next year, via Starship, and start mobile satellite services in the first half of 2028. The timing for service availability is later than the previous target of end-2027 that was stated on the company's earnings call in early August.
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Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
Well SpaceX's Starlink is doing so well they are turning away customers and keeping up the Starlink satellite launches.
Avio CEO Reports Influx of Customers Turned Away by SpaceX - European Spaceflight
Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo says the company is seeing an increase in customers turned away by SpaceX and looking for alternative launch options.
europeanspaceflight.com
Avio CEO Reports Influx of Customers Turned Away by SpaceX
Italian launch services provider Avio has seen an influx of customers who were unable to secure launch opportunities with SpaceX, according to CEO Giulio Ranzo.“I can tell you SpaceX has already gone captive because we have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, oh my God, can you fly us?” Ranzo said during the company’s 10 September earnings call.
Reports in June and July suggested the company was no longer accepting some future Falcon 9 rideshare reservations and had begun turning away customers seeking dedicated launches beyond 2028. SpaceX itself also acknowledged the possibility in a June securities filing, warning that it “may prioritize our own launch payloads over additional U.S. government contracts or third-party customers.” That shift now appears to be taking effect, with Space Intel Report’s Peter de Selding reporting this week that SpaceX had told multiple prospective customers that it was no longer accepting new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches.
Starlord
Trusted Member
I secure some more, i am not selling for now but waiting for a day when and if it hit 200 or more, I did put some money in Charter communication and that took a dive, i regret not buying 10 or so Nvidia when i had the chance, i only bought 1 @ 101$ per share, now it sits at 210 or so. I am hopping SpaceX shoots up good, at least enough so i can pay off 1-2 of my debts.Well SpaceX's Starlink is doing so well they are turning away customers and keeping up the Starlink satellite launches.
Avio CEO Reports Influx of Customers Turned Away by SpaceX - European Spaceflight
Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo says the company is seeing an increase in customers turned away by SpaceX and looking for alternative launch options.Avio CEO Reports Influx of Customers Turned Away by SpaceX
Italian launch services provider Avio has seen an influx of customers who were unable to secure launch opportunities with SpaceX, according to CEO Giulio Ranzo.
“I can tell you SpaceX has already gone captive because we have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, oh my God, can you fly us?” Ranzo said during the company’s 10 September earnings call.
Reports in June and July suggested the company was no longer accepting some future Falcon 9 rideshare reservations and had begun turning away customers seeking dedicated launches beyond 2028. SpaceX itself also acknowledged the possibility in a June securities filing, warning that it “may prioritize our own launch payloads over additional U.S. government contracts or third-party customers.” That shift now appears to be taking effect, with Space Intel Report’s Peter de Selding reporting this week that SpaceX had told multiple prospective customers that it was no longer accepting new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches.
Hamartia Antidote
Elite Member
NASA awards SpaceX $946 million for 3 more astronaut missions to the ISS
The award brings SpaceX's total commercial crew haul to $5.92 billion.
SpaceX will continue launching astronauts for NASA for at least another four years.
The agency just awarded Elon Musk's company $946 million to fly three more crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS), a "period of performance" that runs through 2030.
"As part of the agency's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, this change brings the total missions for SpaceX to 17 and helps NASA to maintain access to the space station with two unique commercial crew industry partners," NASA officials said in a statement on Friday (Sept. 18).
The other commercial partner is Boeing, which, like SpaceX, got a CCtCap contract from NASA in 2014. The agency looked to these two companies to fill the crew-carrying shoes of the space shuttle, which had retired in 2011.
SpaceX has tackled the challenge with its Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, which first launched astronauts to the ISS on the Demo-2 mission in May 2020. NASA certified that system for operational missions in November of that year, and SpaceX has completed 11 such astronaut flights to date.
It's still conducting the 12th, known as Crew-12, and is gearing up for the launch of Crew-13, which is expected to occur in early October. The new contract modification will take SpaceX through Crew-17 and bring the total value of its CCtCap contract to $5.92 billion.
Boeing has had a tougher time. Its Starliner capsule flew its first crewed test mission to the ISS in June 2024, and things didn't go according to plan; Starliner suffered thruster issues and other problems on the way to the orbiting lab, and the mission's two crewmembers — NASA's Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — ended up coming back to Earth in a Crew Dragon in March 2025.
NASA still has not certified Starliner for operational astronaut missions, and it's unclear when the capsule will fly again. However, Starliner is still part of the agency's commercial crew plans, as Friday's update indicates.
NASA and its international partners currently plan to retire the ISS in late 2030 or early 2031 (though the U.S. Congress has pushed to extend operations through 2032).
The agency anticipates needing the services of crewed orbital spacecraft even after the ISS is dead and gone, however. It's encouraging the development of commercial space stations in low Earth orbit, which will be destinations for NASA astronauts and, perhaps, a range of other folks.
But Crew Dragon likely won't be around when these future stations get up and running. SpaceX plans to retire the capsule in 2030 or thereabouts, according to Ars Technica, giving its duties (and those of pretty much all of the company's other spaceflight systems) to its fully reusable Starship megarocket.
