Monthly Archives: July 2024

And he got away with it, too. Death Note

There's a wildlife death toll associated with SpaceX's success and the Elon Musk-owned company seems to have played the government to make that success happen.

In a new investigation, theNew York Times found 19 instances of environmental damage since 2019 at SpaceX's Boca Chica, Texas launch facility, with the rockets tested there unleashing powerful explosions that litter the surrounding wildlife refuge with debris and decimate the habitats of the animals nesting there.

Initially, SpaceX's plans for the Lower Rio Grande Valley were based on the launch of its less-powerful Falcon 9 rockets, theNYT found, and the Federal Aviation Administration's ensuing environmental impact study only took those spacecraft into account.

Once the company's plans for the much-larger Starship were made public, the FAA said it was going to do another study but then reversed course, deciding without having done an investigation that the uber-powerful rockets would be unlike to do damage to the "continued existence" of wildlife there.

As the most recent Starship launch test shows, that assessment seems to be incorrect. That latest launch, the newspaper notes, resulted in charred grasslands, strewn sheet metal and insulation, and the destruction of all nine of the recorded bird nests nearby. Apparently that sort of devastation occurs during many of the rocket's launches.

According to George Nield, a former top FAA space official who now runs his own private commercial space enterprise, SpaceX is merely "leveraging" federally-protected land. However, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has sometimes considered the company's launches overly destructive to nearby habitats and has used its powers to slow the company's progress.

"What can we do to maximize SpaceXs bold, grand vision?" Nield recalled to theNYT. "Fish and Wildlife has a mission. But it was different from ours and it did not include a lot of rockets."

All the same, the FAA did famously order SpaceX not to undertake a Starship launch in December 2020 though when Musk flagrantly violated that order, the agency allowed SpaceX to conduct its own investigation into what happened and did not, as the paper notes, make the results of that self-probe public.

Though Fish and Wildlife has, too, ended up signing off on SpaceX's exploits, it has seemingly ended up acting as the enforcer even as the FAA has repeatedly granted the company pardons, theNYT's investigation demonstrates.

With the two agencies seemingly at odds, SpaceX has, clearly, gotten the upper hand and with Musk bragging that he wants to build 1,000 Starships within the next decade, the local environment in Boca Chica is slated to be the biggest loser.

More on SpaceX: SpaceX Pays for Rocket Parts That Fell to Farm of Canadian, Who Vows to Use Money to Pay for Hockey Rink

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Investigation Finds Elon Musk's SpaceX Used Trickery to Open Rocket Facility - Futurism

NASAs Artemis astronauts are currently slated to land on the moon in 2026 aboard SpaceXs massive Starship. According to researchers, however, relying on a 15-story-tall spacecraft with 16.7 million pounds of thrust may not be the best ideaespecially if humans hope to study and use potential water reserves underneath the lunar surface.

Although its reusable stage has yet to successfully return intact, SpaceXs Starship appears on track to eventually pull off the necessary feat. But each of the four test launches have come with hefty impacts near the Texas launchpad. Upon liftoff, Starships 33 Raptor engines have already blasted massive craters into the ground, shattered windows, destroyed vehicles, and generated huge plumes of dust and debris.

In a paper published in The Planetary Science Journal, researchers at the Space Science Institute, NASA, Johns Hopkins University, and DeepSpace Technologies argue the power needed to land Starships 164-feet-tall upper stage (its 226-feet-tall lower stage detaches after leaving Earths orbit) could contaminate portions of the lunar surface before its passengers even step foot onto the moon. More specifically, it could foul up any icy cold traps located across the moons permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs, near the lunar south pole.

[Related: SpaceXs fourth Starship launches.]

Previous data collected during NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiters Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) indicates water frost could compose somewhere between 1-to-2 percent of PSR surface soil. As Space.com noted on June 9, further analysis suggests as much as 60 tons of water may reside deeper within these areassizable reserves that astronauts could harvest for drinkable water, oxygen, and hydrogen rocket fuel.

But experts will need to study any lunar surface frost before anyone can confirm the existence of these underground PSR ice reservoirs. Past NASA observations from neutron spectrometers suggest at least some ice is down there, although it could also come from other sources such as water migration by way of solar wind, or even mini-meteoroids.

Studying the surface frosts formation would be key to understanding water dynamics on the moon. Using exospheric modeling and other analysis, however, researchers estimate Starships rocket-powered landing plumes from its upper stage may make a mess by generating over 10 tons of water and icy particles that mixes with the existing frost. Whats more, it may only take four Starship lunar landings to generate as much, or more, existing surface frost in PSRsbasically rendering any future analysis impossible at those sites.

This anthropogenic contribution could possibly overlay and mix with the naturally occurring icy regolith at the uppermost surface, the team writes in its study. A possible consequence is that the origin of the intrinsic surficial icy regolith, which is still undetermined, could be lost as it mixes with the extrinsic anthropogenic contribution.

To put matters into perspective, researchers examined the potential disruptions caused by the Apollo missions much smaller lunar landers after analyzing their own plumes. In their findings, such craft would only add less-than-one percent of water to existing frost. Thats approximately 30 times less human-generated contamination than a potential Starship landing.

As NASA and SpaceX inch closer to return humans to the moon, researchers suggest employing existing and upcoming equipment to further investigate the possible situation. Aside from examining the before-and-after of a Starship landing (possibly even a test landing on the lunar surface), NASA could also direct its upcoming Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to record a Starship moon landing in real time. Such considerations could be vital to ensuring humanity doesnt trash the moon (or beyond) like its currently doing here on Earth.

Popular Science has reached out to NASA and the papers authors for comment.

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SpaceXs Starship may mess up the lunar surface - Popular Science

We won't have to wait much longer to see the most powerful rocket ever built take to the skies again, if all goes according to plan.

That rocket, SpaceX's 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship, has flown four test flights to date. And number five should be just around the corner, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.

"Flight 5 in 4 weeks," Musk said Friday (July 5) via X, the social media platform he owns.

Starship consists of two elements: a first-stage booster known as Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall upper-stage spacecraft called Starship, or simply Ship. Both are designed to be reusable.

Starship's four test flights occurred in April and November of 2023 and March 14 and June 6 of this year. All have launched from Starbase, SpaceX's site in South Texas, near the city of Brownsville.

The vehicle has performed better on each successive flight. The most recent launch, for example, went entirely according to plan; Super Heavy and Ship separated on time and came back to Earth as planned, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian Ocean, respectively.

That success helps explain the relatively rapid turnaround for Flight 5. Because Starship performed as expected on June 6, SpaceX has fewer issues to analyze ahead of the next launch. And the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration didn't require a mishap investigation, so technical readiness, rather than regulatory approval, is the main timeline driver for Flight 5.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Flight 5 will feature an exciting new twist, if all goes according to plan: SpaceX has said it aims to bring the giant booster back for a pinpoint landing on Starbase's launch mount, an effort that will be aided by the "chopstick" arms of the facility's launch tower.

This bold strategy will increase Starship's flight cadence, allowing the booster to be inspected, refurbished and relaunched more rapidly, Musk has said.

Read more from the original source:

SpaceX's Starship to fly again 'in 4 weeks,' Elon Musk says - Space.com

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, has a long history of being weird about reproduction. Perhaps its related to his long history of allegedly harassing and exposing himself to women, which a new report from Bloomberg says has been codified in the culture of SpaceX a culture that now has the company facing lawsuits from eight ex-workers.

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Bloomberg spoke with the fired employees, who claim theres a massive gap between how SpaceX says workers should act and how they actually do and how the company encourages immature behavior from those it employs. From Bloomberg:

At SpaceX, sexual harassment became a joke a long time ago. Some years back, employees at the company holiday party were treated to a 10-minute parody video, one of those eye-rolling exercises where your bosses awkwardly try to land a few punch lines. Believe it or not, this particular video has its moments. Astronauts whose lives are riding on a SpaceX rocket might not be thrilled with the gags about the companys engineers being young or stupidat one point, little kids arrive to lecture the staff, who are depicted trying to solve every engineering problem by hitting things with hammersbut some bits land on the right side of dad joke.

The videos sourest note plays a few minutes in, when a narrator chides a staffer whos just grabbed her colleague Brian Bjeldes butt. We have a very strict sexual-harassment policy, the voiceover intones, and youve got to get it right. Cut to the same woman practicing her harassment technique on Bjelde, whos now SpaceXs vice president for human resources. While he faces an office wall, hands over his head, she spanks him several more times, and another woman helps her refine her form, like a golfer. The eventual punch line is a freeze-frame of her hand on Bjeldes bum accompanied by a chime and a green check mark, indicating that her harassment now meets with company approval.

Ive worked at some HR-risk companies in my time, but a video like that containing people in positions of power at the company, no less is a new level of encouraging bad behavior. SpaceXs reaction, however, is the nuclear option: Trying to gut the entire enforcing body, the National Labor Relations Board. SpaceX is suing to have the entire organization ruled unconstitutional, in a complicated constitutional case:

13. To prevent SpaceX from undergoing protracted administrative proceedings before an unconstitutionally structured agencyafter which SpaceX is unlikely to have a chance to secure meaningful retrospective reliefthe Court should stay or enjoin the current agency proceedings, declare that the NLRBs structure violates the separation of powers under Article II of the Constitution, and permanently enjoin the NLRB and its General Counsel from pursuing unfair labor practice charges against SpaceX before agency officials that are unconstitutionally insulated from presidential oversight.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp v. National Labor Relations Board is a wildly in-depth case, citing articles of the Constitution in seemingly every sentence, but its one thats geared towards the current Supreme Court. The case focuses plenty of its attention on the Presidents inability to easily fire NLRB workers as a constitutional issue, which is targeted right at the Courts declaration that the Presidents management of the Executive Branch requires him to have unrestricted power to remove the most important of his subordinatessuch as the Attorney Generalin their most important duties from the recent Trump v. United States opinion. SpaceXs retaliatory strike against its workers may be nuclear, but its also very possible the Court will like how its written.

SpaceXs culture appears fratty, debaucherous, and altogether unprofessional not to mention aggressive towards people outside of positions of power. Yet, the lengths the company will go to in order to protect that culture reach the highest court in the land. And, if were all unlucky, Musks defenses of sexual harassment will end worker protections for all of us.

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SpaceX's Sexual Harassment Case Could End Worker Protections For All Of Us - Jalopnik

SpaceX sent Trkiye's first domestically produced communications satellite to orbit today (July 8).

A Falcon 9 rocket launched the Turksat 6A spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth shortly thereafter as planned. It touched down about 8.5 minutes after liftoff on SpaceX's Just Read the Instructions droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the 15th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling Turksat 6A toward geosynchronous transfer orbit, deploying the spacecraft there 35.5 minutes after liftoff as planned.

Turksat 6A will then make its own way to its final orbit, where it will undergo a roughly month-long series of checkouts before entering service, Abdulkadir Uralolu, Trkiye's transport and infrastructure minister, told the Hrriyet Daily News.

Turksat 6A is Trkiye's first fully homegrown communications satellite, the English-language Turkish newspaper reported.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

"Turksat 6A will widen the country's satellite coverage and meet the television broadcasting needs," the Hrriyet Daily News wrote, citing Uralolu.

"India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, which were not served by currently operating satellites, will be covered with Turksat 6A, reaching 5 billion people," the minister added.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:15 p.m. ET on July 8, with news of successful launch, rocket landing and satellite deployment.

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SpaceX launches Trkiye's 1st homegrown communications satellite to orbit (video) - Space.com

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Monday evening after several weather-related delays.The Turksat 6A mission is set to send a Turkish communication satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 7:30 p.m. Monday. The launch was originally scheduled for 5:20 p.m., but inclement weather in the launch area caused the company to delay liftoff several times.The company was able to stave off a complete scrub and launched the rocket at 7:30 p.m. from the Space Coast.The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting the mission has previously flown 14 other missions. The booster supported the Eutelsat 36D, CRS-26, OneWeb Launch 16, Ovzon 3 missions among others.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Monday evening after several weather-related delays.

The Turksat 6A mission is set to send a Turkish communication satellite to geosynchronous transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at 7:30 p.m. Monday. The launch was originally scheduled for 5:20 p.m., but inclement weather in the launch area caused the company to delay liftoff several times.

The company was able to stave off a complete scrub and launched the rocket at 7:30 p.m. from the Space Coast.

The Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting the mission has previously flown 14 other missions. The booster supported the Eutelsat 36D, CRS-26, OneWeb Launch 16, Ovzon 3 missions among others.

Read more:

SpaceX dodges weather, launches Falcon 9 rocket Monday evening - WESH 2 Orlando

When Elon Musk first eyed South Texas for a new base of space operations, he promised that SpaceX would have a small, eco-friendly footprint and that the surrounding area would be left untouched.

A decade later, the reality is far different. An investigation by The New York Times shows how SpaceXs ferocious growth in the area has dramatically changed the fragile landscape and has threatened the habitat that the U.S. government is charged with protecting there.

More repercussions are likely coming, in South Texas and in other places where SpaceX is expanding. Mr. Musk has said he hopes to one day launch his Starships the largest rocket ever manufactured a thousand times a year.

Executives from SpaceX declined repeated requests to comment. But Gary Henry, who until this year served as a SpaceX adviser on Pentagon launch programs, said the company was aware of concerns about SpaceXs environmental impact and was committed to addressing them.

Here are four takeaways from our investigation:

Rocket launch sites in the U.S., such as Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Kennedy Space Center in Florida, typically are enormous, secure facilities with tens of thousands of acres within their confines.

Mr. Musk didnt intend to buy up anything like that amount of land when he was looking at the area near Brownsville, Texas. Instead, he wanted to buy a tiny piece of property in the middle of public lands what the team involved referred to as a doughnut hole. He figured the surrounding state parks and federal wildlife preserves would serve as natural buffers.

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SpaceXs Assault on a Fragile Habitat: Four Takeaways From Our Investigation - The New York Times

The next flight test of SpaceX's Starship could include a new milestone, according to a teaser included on a video of highlights from the rocket's fourth flight test.

SpaceX posted the video on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday (July 4), which contains a montage of milestones from Starship's fourth flight test that took place on June 6. The video shows clips from ignition, lift off, booster separation and the reentries of both the Starship upper stage and its Super Heavy booster.

At the end of the video, an animation depicts a 400-foot-tall (122-meter-tall) Super Heavy coming back in for a landing at Starship's launch tower, known as "Mechazilla," beside the words "Next up" and "Flight 5," suggesting the company plans to attempt to catch the booster on its upcoming flight test. SpaceX plans to catch Super Heavy on its launch tower so the rocket can be refurbished and relaunched more efficiently and on shorter timeframes, the company has said.

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has suggested as much on social media as well. "Aiming to try this in late July!" Musk wrote on X last month, following Starship's fourth flight test.

The company previously posted a 60-second animation of the "chopstick" arms on the huge Mechazilla launch tower catching a Super Heavy booster as it comes in for a landing at Starbase, SpaceX's site in South Texas.

Prior to that, on June 27, the companyposted a short video on X of Mechzilla's chopstick arms grasping a stationary Super Heavy as it sat upright on its launch mount. "Starbase team testing the tower chopsticks for the upcoming catch of a Super Heavy booster," SpaceX wrote in the video's description.

Starship has launched four times to date: In April and November 2023, and on March 14 and June 6, 2024. Each test was more successful than the previous one, ticking off additional milestones every time.

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

On its first flight, Starship's two stages failed to separate and the vehicle was detonated in fewer than five minutes. On its most recent mission, both Starship and Super Heavy reentered Earth's atmosphere intact, both making ocean splashdowns.

The massive vehicle is designed with off-world destinations in mind. SpaceX wants Starship to reach Mars, and potentially help settle humans there, while NASA is planning to use the rocket to land crews on the moon during the Artemis program.

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SpaceX teases catching Super Heavy booster with 'chopsticks' on upcoming Starship test flight (video) - Space.com

Enlarge / SpaceX launches Falcon 9 rockets from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The company plans to develop Starship launch infrastructure at Pad 39A and Pad 37. United Launch Alliance flies Vulcan and Atlas V rockets from Pad 41, and Blue Origin will base its New Glenn rocket at Pad 36.

NASA (labels by Ars Technica)

United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin are worried about SpaceX's plans to launch its enormous Starship rocket from Florida.

In documents submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration last month, ULA and Blue Origin raised concerns about the impact of Starship launch operations on their own activities on Florida's Space Coast. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, urged the federal government to consider capping the number of Starship launches and landings, test-firings, and other operations, and limiting SpaceX's activities to particular times.

Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, called Blue Origin's filing with the FAA "an obviously disingenuous response. Not cool of them to try (for the third time) to impede SpaceXs progress by lawfare." We'll get to that in a moment.

The FAA and SpaceX are preparing an environmental impact statement for launches and landings of the Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC), while the US Space Force is working with SpaceX on a similar environmental review for Starship flights from Space Launch Complex 37 at nearby Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).

These reviews likely won't be complete until late 2025, at the earliest, and only then will SpaceX be cleared to launch Starship from Florida. SpaceX also must construct launch infrastructure at both sites, which could take a couple of years. This is already underway at Launch Complex 39A.

During the environmental review process, the FAA should weigh how regular flights of the reusable Starshipas many as 120 launches per year, according to TechCrunchwill affect other launch providers operating at Cape Canaveral, ULA and Blue Origin said. SpaceX's final proposed launch cadence from each site will be part of draft environmental assessments released for public comment as soon as the end of this year.

SpaceX plans to launch Starlink satellites, customer payloads, and missions to support NASA's Artemis lunar landings from the launch pads in Florida. Getting a launch pad up and running in Florida is one of several schedule hurdles facing SpaceX's program to develop a human-rated lunar lander version of Starship, alongside demonstrating orbital refueling.

Starship-Super Heavy launches and landings "are expected to have a greater environmental impact than any other launch system currently operating at KSC or CCSFS," Blue Origin wrote. In its current configuration, Starship is the most powerful rocket in history, and SpaceX is developing a larger version standing 492 feet (150 meters) tall with nearly 15 million pounds (6,700 metric tons) of propellant. This larger variant is the one that will fly from Cape Canaveral.

"Its a very, very large rocket, and getting bigger," wrote Tory Bruno, ULA's CEO, in a post on X. "That quantity of propellant requires an evacuation zone whenever fueled that includes other peoples facilities. A (weekly) launch has injurious sound levels all the way into town. The Cape isnt meant for a monopoly."

At SpaceX's privately owned Starbase launch site in South Texas, the evacuation zone is set at 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) when Starship and Super Heavy are filled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants. During an actual launch, the checkpoint is farther back at more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the pad.

"The total launch capacity of the Cape will go down if other providers are forced to evacuate their facilities whenever a vehicle is fueled," Bruno wrote.

We don't yet know the radius of the keep-out zones for Starship operations in Florida, but Blue Origin wrote that the impact of Starship activities in Florida "may be even greater than at Starbase," presumably due to the larger rocket SpaceX plans to launch from Cape Canaveral. If this is the case, neighboring launch pads would need to be evacuated during Starship operations.

Purely based on the geography of Cape Canaveral, ULA seems to have the bigger worry. Its launch pad for the Vulcan and Atlas V rocket is located less than 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). SpaceX's proposal for up to 44 launches from LC-39A "will result in significant airspace and ground closures, result in acoustic impacts felt at nearby operations, and potentially produce debris, particulates, and property damage," ULA said.

ULA said these hazards could prevent it from fulfilling its contracts to launch critical national security satellites for the US military.

"As the largest rocket in existence, an accident would inflict serious or even catastrophic damage, while normal launch operations would have a cumulative impact on structures, launch vehicle hardware, and other critical launch support equipment," ULA said.

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Heres why SpaceXs competitors are crying foul over Starship launch plans - Ars Technica

On Monday, July 8 at 7:30 p.m. ET, SpaceX launched the Turksat 6A mission to geosynchronous transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. SpaceX succeeded in launching Turkeys first home grown communications satellite despite a delay due to weather. The Sunday weather report report from the 45th Weather Squadron forecast only a 30 percent chance of favorable weather at liftoff for both the primary and backup dates and thunderstorms that could bring with them winds of 40 miles per hour or greater.

Convective activity should taper off after sunset, but steering winds are expected to be weak, possibly extending any weather violations that occur. Conditions are expected to be similar for the backup day, the weather report stated. The Cumulus Cloud, both Anvil Cloud, and Surface Electric Fields are the most likely rules to violate on both the primary and backup days.

Prior to the missions launch, Turkeys Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uralolu called the Trksat 6A geostationary satellite the symbol of our independence.

This was the ninth flight of the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched CRS-26, OneWeb Launch 16, Intelsat IS-40e, O3b mPOWER, Ovzon 3, Eutelsat 36D, and eight Starlink missions.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan expressed his gratitude to SpaceX founder Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter) saying that his country is pleased to strengthen our cooperation with Mr. Elon Musk and SpaceX in various fields.

SpaceX Trksat 6A comsat planned for Monday

Convective activity should taper off after sunset, but steering winds are expected to be weak, possibly extending any weather violations that occur. Conditions are expected to be similar for the backup day, the weather report stated. The Cumulus Cloud, both Anvil Cloud, and Surface Electric Fields are the most likely rules to violate on both the primary and backup days.

If on schedule Falcon 9 will launch Trksat 6A communications satellite for the Turkish operator Trksat first from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, from 5:20-9:43 p.m. EDT.

Trksat 6A is the first geostationary communications satellite to be built in Turkey, with development led by TBTAK Space Technologies Research Institute and Turkish Aerospace Industries. It will operate at the 42 East orbital position providing services to customers in Turkey, as well as in Europe, Northern coast of Africa, Middle East, India and Indonesia. Delayed from 2nd Quarter 2023 and March 2024, and launch moved up from July 9.

The forecast calls for a temperature of 88F, light rain, 100% cloud cover, a wind speed of 13mph and 0.29in of rain.

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SpaceX sends Turkeys first home grown communications satellite despite threatening weather - SatNews