Category Archives: Spacex

EDITORS NOTE:Updated with launch delay to Saturday, April 16.

SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Californias Central Coast just before sunrise Saturday, boosting a classified cargo into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office on what is widely believed to be a naval reconnaissance mission.

The Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, a military base on the Pacific coastline northwest of Los Angeles, at 6:27 a.m. PDT (9:27 a.m. EDT; 1327 GMT) Saturday. SpaceX announced late Thursday the launch was being delayed to no earlier than Saturday, allowing time to complete pre-launch checkouts and data reviews.

The National Reconnaissance Office has not disclosed details about the the mission, codenamed NROL-85. With rare exceptions, the NRO typically keeps specifics about its launches secret. The agency owns the U.S. governments fleet of intelligence-gathering spy satellites, supplying optical and radar surveillance imagery, eavesdropping capabilities, and data relay support.

While were unable to discuss the specifics of this launch, we can confirm that we will have more than a half-dozen launches scheduled and a dozen payloads planned for orbit in 2022, said Nathan Potter, an NRO spokesperson. We can also confirm NRO is the only organization launching as part of the NROL-85 mission, and there are no rideshares.

The NRO also develops and launches satellites to locate and track the movements of ships. Theres a broad consensus among independent analysts that the NROL-85 mission will add two new spacecraft to the U.S. governments naval reconnaissance satellite fleet.

Ted Molczan, an expert tracker of military satellites, told Spaceflight Now hes 100 percent sure the payloads on the NROL-85 mission launching Friday are the next pair of Intruder-class ship-locating spacecraft.

The circumstances of the NROL-85 mission its target altitude, inclination, and launch time all point to the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the next pair of Intruder naval reconnaissance satellites, experts said. The Intruder spacecraft are are sometimes calledNaval Ocean Surveillance System, or NOSS, satellites.

The U.S. military, which oversees launch procurement for NRO missions, awarded SpaceX a contract for the NROL-85 launch in 2019. In military procurement documents, officials disclosed the NROL-85 mission would aim to place its payloads into an orbit between 636 miles and 758 miles (1,024 by 1,221 kilometers) in altitude, with an inclination of 63.5 degrees to the equator.

Those orbital parameters match with the known altitude and inclination of previous Intruder satellites. Airspace and maritime warning notices associated with the Falcon 9 launch Saturday confirm the rocket will follow a trajectory southeast from Vandenberg, lining up with the expect 63.5-degree inclination target orbit.

The NROL-85 mission is almost certainly hauling the next pair Intruder, or NOSS, satellites into orbit, according to Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archaeologist and an expert in satellite movements.

The Intruder satellites collect data used by the U.S. Navy and government intelligence agencies.

They geolocate shipping on the high seas, by detecting their radio/radar emissions, Langbroek wrote on his website. They always operate in close pairs.

Whats more, the time of Saturdays launch closely matches the time the orbital plane of an older pair of Intruder satellites passes over Vandenberg, suggesting the two new spacecraft could be replacements, according to Langbroek.

Recent launches that lofted NRO naval surveillance satellites used United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The most recent pair of Intruder satellites launched on an Atlas 5 from Vandenberg in 2017, and the two satellites tracking near Vandenberg around the the of Fridays launch were deployed by an Atlas 5 in 2012.

For Saturdays mission, SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 booster that flew on its first mission Feb. 2 on a previous dedicated launch for the NRO.

SpaceX landed the reusable booster back at Vandenberg shortly after the Feb. 2 launch. Technicians refurbished the rocket designated B1071 in SpaceXs inventory for its second flight on the NROL-85 mission around 10 weeks later.

After separating from the Falcon 9s upper stage, the rocket booster will return again to Landing Zone 4, just a quarter mile west of the Falcon 9 launch pad, for a propulsive touchdown about eight minutes after liftoff.

The upper stage will ignite its single engine nearly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight as the rocket heads downrange southeast from Vandenberg over the Pacific Ocean. The second stage will guide the NROL-85 payloads into a preliminary orbit, then another upper stage engine burn is expected to inject the satellites into their targeted separation orbit.

The detailed timeline of the Falcon 9 mission hasnt been released by SpaceX, honoring a request from the NRO to keep that information secret. SpaceXs live launch webcast will focus on the first stage boosters return to Earth, and the upper stages maneuvers will occur in a government-ordered news blackout standard operating procedure for the NRO.

The NROL-85 mission will mark SpaceXs 14th Falcon 9 launch of 2022, and the third this year from Vandenberg Space Force Base. It will be the 148th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket since SpaceX debuted the workhorse launcher in June 2010.

SpaceX will follow the NRO mission with two more Falcon 9 launches from Florida next week. Another batch of Starlink internet satellites is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base on April 21, followed by a liftoff April 23 from NASAs Kennedy Space Center with the next crew heading to the International Space Station.

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US intelligence-gathering payloads awaiting launch on SpaceX rocket Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Bowman:Open the pod bay doors, HAL.HAL 9000:I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. -- 2001: A Space Odyssey

Like astronaut Dave Bowman on Discovery One, space logistics company Spaceflight Inc. found itself on the wrong side of the airlock last month -- and without an option to get back in. Spaceflight's problem wasn't a homicidal computer, though. Instead, Spaceflight found itself pitted against space industry behemoth SpaceX, and its stranglehold on the market for small satellite launches.

Image source: Getty Images.

I hate to say "I told you so," but I really did predict this would happen -- three years ago, in fact.

For those not familiar with the company, Spaceflight Inc. began as a subsidiary of Spaceflight Industries, and soon began to build itself a business reselling "extra" payload capacity aboard other companies' rockets. When a customer hired SpaceX, for example, to launch a satellite that wasn't quite big enough to fill up a Falcon 9 rocket fairing, Spaceflight Inc. would step in, buy the extra capacity, and then resell it to customers with smaller satellites, shoehorning their satellites into the remaining space before liftoff.

Spaceflight called the concept "rideshare," and it was a booming business for a while. SpaceX focused on what it did best (space launch); Spaceflight played to its own competitive advantage -- logistics -- and both companies profited thereby.

Business boomed -- that is to say, until SpaceX decided this business was so good that it would start organizing some rideshares of its own in 2019. It only took Spaceflight Industries six months to read the writing on the wall, and decide that its partnership with SpaceX had a fatal flaw -- that one day, SpaceX might decide to keep all of the profits from rideshare for itself, and jettison its partner.

And so, in 2020, Spaceflight Industries sold Spaceflight Inc. to a consortium of Japan's Mitsui & Co. and Yamasa Co, and exited the business.

Fast forward to 2022. On Friday, April 1, SpaceX launched its fourth-ever Falcon 9 rocket mission dedicated entirely to putting large numbers of various companies' small satellites into orbit -- "Transporter-4." In one single launch, SpaceX sent up "40 spacecraft, including CubeSats, microsats, picosats, non-deploying hosted payloads, and an orbital transfer vehicle carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time." Among these three dozen-odd satellites were four Kleos Space Patrol Mission Earth imaging satellites, whose passage had been arranged by Spaceflight.

But as it turns out, this was to be Spaceflight's final mission in cooperation with SpaceX. On March 21, 10 days before Transporter-4 lifted off, SpaceNews.com reported that "SpaceX is severing ties with launch services company Spaceflight Inc. after years of working closely together."

Commenting on the announcement -- which SpaceX sent it by text! -- Spaceflight VP Jodi Sorensen exclaimed that "we were surprised to learn of it" and "were not given any insight into the reasoning behind the decision." But it's not hard to figure out what happened here.

Over three years, multiple "Starlink" launches incorporating rideshare satellites, and four dedicated "Transporter" missions, SpaceX got the hang of how rideshares work -- and no longer needed Spaceflight's help to resell its extra payload room. What's more, as SpaceNews points out, Spaceflight generally charges less to integrate a customer's satellite than the $1 million base price (recently raised to $1.1 million) that SpaceX charges when signing up a rideshare customer directly -- and then takes a cut of that lower price.

By cutting Spaceflight out of the loop, therefore, SpaceX found a way to do the same rideshare work, charge more for it -- and then keep the whole price for itself. And granted, charging $1.1 million for a tiny satellite launch may not sound like much. But at a nominal $67 million price tag for launching a Falcon 9's main cargo, each extra $1.1 million SpaceX can charge for a rideshare adds 1.6% to the company's revenues, almost all of which falls to SpaceX's bottom line.

But what does this mean for Spaceflight? The loss of SpaceX as a customer will definitely hurt, but Spaceflight still has lots of other customers-not-named-SpaceX to work with to get its customers' satellites into orbit -- Rocket Lab, Arianespace, and theIndian Space Research Organization ("India's NASA") just to name a few.

Ultimately, I expect that this split between SpaceX and Spaceflight will end up helping the former, without necessarily putting the latter out of business just yet.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis even one of our own helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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SpaceX Pushes Spaceflight Inc. Out the Airlock - The Motley Fool

Where does AI exactly come to play in SpaceXs day-to-day operations and on rockets?

Space travel has entered another period. However, government organizations, for example, NASA and Roscosmos were liable for fostering the underlying innovation expected to fly people into space, privately owned businesses, for example, SpaceX is currently initiating the improvement of the next generation of reusable space shuttles (as well as assembling an assortment of other space-bound equipment such as satellites). However, even as the business space race has barely started, SpaceX has arisen in front of the opposition, landing a US$2.9 billion contract with NASA to build a moon lander. This follows a US$7 billion agreement with NASA to ship supplies to and from the International Space Station settled in 2020. At the heart of SpaceXs success lies data. From planning a vehicle that will endure the cruel states of room to working out payload size, information is filling the following influx of space travel.

Similar to modern airplanes, SpaceX utilizes an Artificial Intelligence fueled autopilot program to explore them securely from send-off to the ISS docking port. According to Community AI, Artificial Intelligence works by ascertaining parabolic flight, fuel utilization and reserves, liquid engine sloshing, weather, and a number of other factors that can impact the flight. Artificial Intelligence uses this information to establish the safest as well as the fastest flight path. Once the ship has reached its destination, the autopilot uses convex optimization algorithms and computer vision to determine the best landing spot for the Dragon capsule.

However subtleties on this specific task are meager, SpaceXs emergency abort system also utilizes AI to - in case of a catastrophic event - disengage the shuttle from the rocket and securely guide space explorers back to earth.

Like the Dragon, SpaceXs shuttle, its satellites also use AI to guide through space debris and travel to and from the earth. Notwithstanding its success, SpaceXs automated system for avoiding satellite crashes has ignited discussion. In the past 2-3 years, SpaceXs Starlink satellites have had a number of close calls, almost crashing into other satellites. In addition, its competitors say they have no way of knowing which way the system will move a Starlink satellite in the event of a close approach, making collision avoidance on their end nearly impossible.

What makes them different than their government rivals like NASA? SpaceX combines modern, cutting edge technology such as AI into their rockets capabilities and expands upon what hasnt changed in the space industry for half a century. SpaceX, which operates out of Hawthorne, California sets its own self-imposed deadlines and has an aggressive work schedule, while also being able to launch its rockets time in and time out since they are a private organization and dont have government-imposed guidelines or restrictions (besides flying a safe rocket).

Since the inauguration of SpaceX, the company has accomplished a reusable and self-landing booster section of its rockets. This allows them to keep costs at a minimum since they are able to use their manufacturing less often. Typical space travel organizations discard their rocket after the flight, costing billions of dollars every time this happens.

SpaceX is also credited with the worlds most powerful rocket fuel and engines. The Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship use liquid oxygen, refined kerosene, and other novel chemical compounds or reactions in order to create 5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.

Additionally, they have near perfected the desirable sci-fi movie capsule for payloads for humans or cargo. The Dragon has made 20 ISS flights and resupply missions combined and is capable of holding 7 passengers. The Dragon capsule combines state-of-the-art modern architecture techniques in order to create a sleek interior design that feels like a luxury vehicle. They have also revamped the controls from the many buttons, switches, and control pads in standard industrial rockets to touch screens with controls simple to use, just like playing a mobile game on an iPad.

The most revolutionary, or perhaps prescient, data-related undertaking SpaceX is currently involved with is its collection of space data. Space data a.k.a. big data from space is a term used to describe the camera and sensor information gathered by space-borne monitoring equipment (satellites) and the process of extrapolating patterns using analytical software. As the commercialization of space becomes a reality, space data and analytics will become increasingly valuable.

NASA is getting ready to send astronauts to explore more of the Moon as part of the Artemis program, and the agency has selected SpaceX to continue the development of the first commercial human lander that will safely carry the next two American astronauts to the lunar surface. At least one of those astronauts will make history as the first woman on the Moon. Another goal of the Artemis program includes landing the first person of color on the lunar surface.

The agencys powerful Space Launch System rocket will launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft for their multi-day journey to lunar orbit. There, two crew members will transfer to the SpaceX human landing system (HLS) for the final leg of their journey to the surface of the Moon. After approximately a week of exploring the surface, they will board the lander for their short trip back to orbit where they will return to Orion and their colleagues before heading back to Earth.

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Fact Check: SpaceX and its AI Capabilities Outperforming NASA? - Analytics Insight

Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter.

The billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX, who also runs Tesla, announced his bid to buy the social media company Thursday (April 14) on the Twitter platform itself and shared a link to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing he submitted as part of the process.

"I made an offer," Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, where he has over 80 million followers.

Musk laid out his plan for what could be the ultimate Twitter takeover in a letter to Bret Taylor, the chair of Twitter's board and Salesforce co-CEO. In the letter, Musk offered to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash. The SpaceX CEO already owns a 9.2% stake in Twitter, which was announced earlier this month. If the sale goes through, Musk would pay $43 billion in cash to buy Twitter, according to Reuters.

"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," Musk wrote in the letter. "However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company."

Related: 8 ways SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

Musk wrote that his offer to buy Twitter represented a 54% premium over what he paid for his initial stake, and a 385% premium over Twitter's stock price from just before his first investment was announced.

"My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder," Musk wrote in the letter. "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it."

Musk is a prolific Twitter user who regularly uses the platform to share updates on SpaceX and Tesla operations, his personal thoughts on current events along with jokes, images and memes. At times, Musk's Twitter use has led to trouble, like in 2018 when the SEC sued the billionaire for fraud over a tweet in August of that year in which he wrote that he had secured funding to take Tesla, a public company, private at $420 per share.

Musk and Tesla each paid a reported $20 million fine to settle the dispute with the SEC.

According to Forbes, Musk is currently the richest person in the world and has a current net worth of about $302 billion, about a third more than his space rival Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, who has a net worth of about $194 billion.

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandInstagram.

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Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for a reported $43 billion in cash - Space.com

With his offer to buy Twitter for $43 billion (39.8 billion), Elon Musk may end up controlling the social media platform that contributed to his rise to fame.

Musk is the richest person in the world with a fortune of $262 billion (240 billion), but it wasnt plain sailing for the South-African entrepreneur. There were multiple bumps along the road.

Despite being at the helm of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, he was ousted multiple times from his own enterprises, had numerous rocket crashes and it was a slow start before his electric vehicles (EVs) really took off.

Heres a look back at the various failures and successes underpinning his controversial image.

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.

His first business venture was at the age of 12 when he sold the code for the PC space-fighting game Blastar for $500 (460) to the magazine PC and Office Technology. "[It was] a trivial game... but better than Flappy Bird," Musk said.

After graduating high school in South Africa, he moved to Canada, where he studied at Queens University in Kingston in Ontario for two years.

But he finished his studies in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree in physics and economics.

To pay for rent while he was a student in Pennsylvania, Musk and a classmate rented a 10-bedroom frat house and transformed it into a nightclub.

Musk then studied for his PhD at Stanford University but dropped out of the programme just two days after it began and decided to work in the dot-com bubble.

Musk then founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal in 1995. It was Musks first enterprise and it provided online city guide software to newspapers. With no money, Musk actually lived in the office.

As the business took off, the company Compaq bought Zip2 in a deal worth over $300 million (278 million).

In 1999, Musk then launched X.com, an online banking company. A year later, X.com merged with the Peter Thiel-founded financial start-up Confinity, and PayPal was formed.

Musk was then named PayPals CEO, but that didnt last long. After many disagreements over branding and micro-managing, Musk was fired from PayPal in 2000 while he was on holiday in Australia. Musk told Fortune years later: Thats the problem with vacations.

But he still had a stake in PayPal, and when eBay bought the company in 2002, Musk took home $165 million (150 million).

With $100 million of the PayPal money, he founded the company Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, in 2002. His goal was to make spaceflight 10 times cheaper.

Proving the critics wrong, SpaceX began developing the Dragon space capsule in late 2004. It was called Dragon in a jab at those who said he couldnt do it, in a reference to the song Puff the Magic Dragon.

In 2010, the spacecraft made its maiden voyage and became the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to be recovered successfully from orbit.

But Musk was also making moves on Earth. In 2004, Musk began investing in the electric car company Tesla. He took an active role in the company and helped develop the first all-electric car, the Roadster. In 2006, Musk was appointed as Teslas chairman.

During this time, Musk came up with the idea for the energy company SolarCity, which he put his cousins in charge of in 2006. Tesla would later buy the company in a deal worth $2.6 billion (2.3 billion).

In 2007, Musk staged a coup at Teslas boardroom and ousted Martin Eberhard as CEO and then from the board.

A year later during the financial crisis, Tesla got a $40 million (36 million) lifeline to save it from bankruptcy, raised by investors and also from Musk's personal fortune.

Musk was then named Teslas CEO.

Neither SpaceX, Tesla, nor SolarCity were doing well and were losing money. Musk was living off personal loans to survive.

But by December 2008, SpaceX won a $1.5 billion (1.3 billion) contract with NASA to deliver supplies into space.

Meanwhile, Tesla secured more outside investors and in 2010, Tesla held an initial public offering and raised $226 million (209 million).

During this time, SpaceX set many records and supplied the International Space Station multiple times. The company also built the Falcon 9, SpaceXs most powerful rocket.

Musk also pursued other ideas. In 2013 he published a white paper on a Hyperloop high-speed train that could in theory transport passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes.

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit research company aiming to ensure artificial intelligence benefits humanity. He later stepped down from the board to avoid conflicts with Tesla, which is building its own AI for self-driving cars.

In 2016, Musk started The Boring Company, which aims to build a network of tunnels both underground and around cities for high-speed travel.

In 2017, Musk founded Neuralink, which develops devices to be implanted inside human brains.

In 2008, Musk divorced his then-wife Justine. Their first son died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at 10 weeks old. The couple later had twin and triplet boys.

In 2020, Musk and the singer Grimes had a son, called X A-12, or X for short. In 2021, he had a daughter with Grimes via surrogate called Exa Dark Siderl Musk, who goes by Y.

Musk is all for procreation and said in 2021 that rapidly declining birth rates are one of the biggest risks to civilisation... I cant emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.

Musk has made controversial comments. In 2018, he offered to build a submarine to rescue 12 boys and their football coach who were stuck in a cave in Thailand. A British diver said Musks actions were a PR stunt. In response, Musk called the diver a Pedo guy on Twitter.

He also made a series of false claims on Twitter over coronavirus. He first called COVID-19 dumb and falsely claims that children are "essentially immune" to the virus. He also falsely claims on Twitter that the malaria drug chloroquine could be a possible COVID treatment.

Musk also got into trouble with authorities in 2018 after he said on Twitter he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 (386) per share, adding: "Funding secured".

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Musk, accusing him of making false and misleading statements. Musk settled with the SEC and he and Tesla each paid a $20 million (18 million) fine. Tesla was also ordered to appoint a committee to oversee Musks communications.

In 2020, SpaceX partnered with NASA to launch astronauts into space and the company had its first operational human spaceflight, sending four astronauts to the ISS. The same year, Tesla joined the S&P 500.

Meanwhile, Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were feuding over NASA contracts being granted to SpaceX and not Blue Origin for satellite projects.

In 2021, Musk ruffled a few feathers in the Bitcoin community.

Tesla said it would accept Bitcoin as payment and fill the companys coffers with $1.5 billion (1.2 billion) in the cryptocurrency. But Musk later made a U-turn over the environmental concerns of Bitcoin mining and met with miners to try and convince them to turn to greener ways.

In April 2022, Musk bought a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter, making him the biggest shareholder. But he will not join the board. Meanwhile, former Twitter shareholders in the United States have decided to sue him for allegedly delaying his stake in the social media company so he could buy more of the stock at lower prices.

On April 14, 2022, Musk offered to buy all of the remaining shares in Twitter in a bid valuing the company at $43 billion (nearly 40 billion).

In a letter to Twitter's chairman, Musk said the company needed to be transformed into a private company to become "the platform for free speech around the globe".

"Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," he said.

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Elon Musks life story: the highs and lows of the Tesla and SpaceX boss - Euronews

The fastest-growing Azuki NFT collection is going to become a witness to the historical moment between the intersection of the digital and the real world. Azukis NFT Bobu the Bean Farmer is going to join the outer space mission Crew-4 to the International Space Station with top-notch space agencies SpaceX and NASA on April 23.

The stunt pits Bobu as the first NFT to be sent to space via hardware wallet, but perhaps more importantly confirms Azukis interest in making headlines and pushing boundaries in the NFT space.

Credits: NewsBytes

The Azuki team has also announced that they have partnered with STELLAR, a student research organization from Grand Canyon University. The student group will be researching energy output and electrical characteristics of a Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) run in a microgravity environment.

A donation ranging between 2-8 ETH to help with STELLARs efforts will be determined by Bobu NFT holders in a vote slated to start on April 14, at 4:00 pm.

Bobu has been an active participant and core character in the Azuki community. Its also the first decentralized governance experiment in character IP management (12,000 holders), and Azuki has launched a collection of 50,000 Bobu The Bean Farmer NFTs. 2,000 of the tokens Bobu will bring to the space inside a ledger. The trip will last 31 days, and during the time, Bobu will be exploring his interest in intergalactic sake-brewing & more.

Stellars research will measure the energy output and electrical characteristics of a Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) run in a microgravity environment. NFTs will make history with this voyage and will also contribute to important humanitarian research, Bobus official website wrote.

Cerdits: Indy 100

Bobu will launch into the space in a SpaceX Crew-4 rocket on April 23, with the exact time announced on its Discord channel. The event will be live-streamed on YouTube.

Bobu tokensare smaller fractions of the original Azuki #40 non-fungible token. Last month, together with the community, Azuki led a huge web3 experiment in the decentralized governance of IP. In other words, Azuki #40 NFT was deposited in a decentralized Vault and fractionalized, or divided, into 50,000 smaller fractions.

The Vault created ERC-1155 tokens that allow all Bobu NFT holders to participate in collective governance over Bobus character and join the Azuki community.

While Azukis NFT collection was released only a couple of months ago, the NFT brand soon established its collection as a blue-chip NFT project. The prominent NFT collection consists of 10,000 uniquenon-fungible tokensthat give access to the exclusive Azuki community and additional benefits.

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Azuki's Bobu to join NASA and SpaceX - Techstory

SpaceX's huge Starship rocket for eventual trips to the moon and Mars could go orbital for the first time just two months from now, if all goes according to plan.

SpaceX is developing Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and beyond. The vehicle consists of two elements: a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship.

Starship and Super Heavy are both designed to be completely and rapidly reusable, and both will be powered by SpaceX's new Raptor engine 33 for Super Heavy and six for Starship. It's a challenge to build so many engines, but SpaceX is on track to have enough for the first Starship orbital test flight soon, company founder and CEO Elon Musk said.

Related: SpaceX's Starship will reach orbit this year on road to Mars

"Well have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test," Musk tweeted on Monday (March 21).

That target is also dependent on the timely resolution of an environmental review that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is conducting of Starship launch operations at Starbase, SpaceX's facility in South Texas. That view is scheduled to wrap up by March 28, FAA officials have said.

SpaceX has performed a number of Starship test launches already, but those have involved prototype upper-stage vehicles with a maximum of three Raptor engines that flew just 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) high or so. The upcoming orbital test flight will mark the first-ever launch of a Super Heavy as well as the first liftoff of a six-engine Starship.

The Super Heavy booster will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after liftoff. The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, will power its way to orbit, circle our planet once, and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, near the Hawaiian island of Kauai, if all goes according to plan.

The target timeline for the debut orbital Starship flight has shifted to the right multiple times over the past year or so hardly an unexpected occurrence in the development of a new launch vehicle, especially one that has not yet run the full regulatory gauntlet.

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

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Elon Musk says SpaceX's huge Starship rocket will 'hopefully' launch on 1st orbital flight in May - Space.com

Correction at 8:55 pm Eastern Time on March 21: Spaceflight was notified of SpaceXs decision by text.

SAN FRANCISCO SpaceX is severing ties with launch services company Spaceflight Inc. after years of working closely together, a move that surprised Spaceflight executives.

In an email sent to companies that send satellites to orbit on its popular small satellite rideshare missions, the SpaceX Rideshare Team said SpaceX will no longer be flying or working with Spaceflight Industries after the currently manifested missions. We look forward to reliably launching all customers currently on our manifest and growing our relationships with new operators as well.

Spaceflight was notified of SpaceXs decision by text minutes before the email was sent to rideshare customers.

We were surprised to learn of it on Friday, and were not given any insight into the reasoning behind the decision, Jodi Sorensen, Spaceflight marketing vice president, said by email. We continue to reach out to SpaceX in an attempt to discuss their position but havent heard back yet.

In December, SpaceX removed a Spaceflight Sherpa tug from the SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-3 rideshare mission because the propulsion system, provided by Benchmark Space Systems, developed a leak.

Then, SpaceX declined to fly another Sherpa tug on the SpaceX rideshare mission scheduled to launch in April because of concerns about unrelated environmental factors affecting the spacecraft installed on Sherpa.

Sherpa itself was subjected to all expected launch environments with industry standard factors, Sorensen said by email. Spaceflight and SpaceX continued to discuss analysis and test products up until Spaceflight was informed that SpaceX would not fly the vehicle, which was the day of final integration to the SpaceX vehicle.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

SpaceX, a leading satellite rideshare provider, sent 105 satellites to orbit on the Jan. 13 Transporter-3 flight. SpaceX accommodated 88 satellites on the June Transporter-2 mission and 143 on the first Transporter rideshare launched in January 2021.

Launch integration is big business. Established and new launch providers rely on companies including Spaceflight, Exolaunch and D-Orbit to integrate cubesats and microsatellites as secondary payloads or on dedicated rideshare missions.

We bring down the launch costs per satellite, supply essential mission hardware, take care of the end-to-end mission management, provide environmental testing and perform the satellite-to-launch vehicle integration, an Exolaunch executive said by email.

Companies that have relied on Spaceflight to integrate satellites for SpaceX rideshare missions are considering their options for launching satellites beyond the current manifest. Firms that opt to book rideshare flights directly with SpaceX pay more than $1 million per payload, making it more expensive than relying on a rideshare provider.

SpaceX is renowned for its reliability and overall performance as the leading global launch provider, an Exolaunch official said. We are proud that SpaceX delegates significant portions of the technical work to the launch integrators, who must ensure that they match and meet SpaceXs technical requirements and high standards. If these requirements and high standards are not met, then the safety of the whole mission can be placed in jeopardy, which is an unacceptable risk.

Spaceflight is a dominant player in the launch integration business. In 2021, Spaceflight supported the launch of 81 spacecraft from nine countries on 11 launches. In addition to integrating satellites for SpaceX, Spaceflight works with launch providers Rocket Lab and Astra Space.

The propulsion leak on Spaceflights Sherpa-LTC vehicle was discovered about three weeks before the Jan. 13 SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-3 launch.Root-cause analysis of the leak traced the problem to an oxidizer circuit in the propulsion system. The circuit actuated per design. Unfortunately, a design flaw allowed some trapped liquid to be vented during the process, Sorensen said.

Out of utmost concern, Spaceflight decided not to fly the Sherpa vehicle, Sorensen said. All affected customers were re-manifested within weeks, and have already flown on alternative launches or are scheduled to fly in the next two months. Spaceflight has since worked with the vendor to address the root cause, and has subsequently received approval from SpaceX to fly the system on an upcoming Starlink mission.

Regarding the upcoming launch, Spaceflight began working with SpaceX to address concerns about the analysis and test results of Sherpa and its customer payloads as soon as it became aware of them.

Despite Spaceflights best efforts, SpaceX chose not to fly the Sherpa vehicle until the analysis and test approaches could be better understood, Sorensen said. We continue to work with SpaceX to understand their decision and address any concerns for future missions.

Meanwhile, Spaceflight has found rides for all the affected satellites. Several will continue to fly on this mission, while the others have been rebooked on alternative launches, Sorensen said.

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SpaceX severs ties with longtime partner Spaceflight Inc. - SpaceNews

It wont just be SpaceX going to the moon if NASA officials get their wish. That could be a boon to the space dreams of Jeff Bezos.

As part of Artemis, NASAs program to send astronauts back to the moon, the agency in 2019 looked to hire two companies to provide the landers to take its astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon. But with insufficient financing from Congress, the agency decided in April last year to give just one contract, to SpaceX.

Other companies would have the opportunity to compete for future missions, NASA officials said.

On Wednesday, Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said the space agency would soon announce a competition to develop a second lunar lander.

I promised competition, Mr. Nelson said, so here it is.

The second company would share NASAs moon missions about one a year over the course of a decade or so with SpaceX. These are not isolated missions, Mr. Nelson said. Each is going to build on the past progress.

Similar to SpaceXs contract last year, the second company would receive financing for two landings one without astronauts to demonstrate the abilities of the spacecraft, then a second mission with astronauts.

Jim Free, NASAs associate administrator for exploration systems development, said the aim would be for a crewed mission to occur in 2026 or 2027.

The lunar landers follow NASAs recent approach of seeking fixed-price contracts, setting certain requirements but encouraging innovation by allowing private companies to come up with their own designs to meet the agencys needs and compete on price. That approach led to SpaceXs capsule that ferries astronauts to and from the International Space Station. In the past, NASA generally led the development of rockets and spacecraft, and companies were paid to carry out the plans, usually at much higher costs.

Still, the plan for a second lunar lander hinges on Congress providing money to pay for it. Mr. Nelson said he would not discuss how much the program may cost until the presidents budget proposal for fiscal year 2023 is released early next week.

After SpaceX was named the only winner last year, the two companies that lost Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon; and Dynetics, a defense contractor filed protests with the federal Government Accountability Office. Blue Origins proposal was twice the price of SpaceXs and Dynetics proposal was even higher.

The G.A.O. ruled against both companies.

Blue Origin then sued NASA in federal court. It again lost.

Blue Origin and Dynetics now have a second chance, as do other companies that would like to submit proposals. Lisa Watson-Morgan, the manager for NASAs human landing system program, said the agency planned to decide on a second lander by early next year.

In a statement, Dynetics said the company was pleased to learn of NASAs plans, and was looking forward to reviewing the upcoming call for proposals.

Blue Origin also cheered the announcement. Blue Origin is thrilled that NASA is creating competition by procuring a second human lunar landing system, the company said in its statement. Blue Origin is ready to compete and remains deeply committed to the success of Artemis.

The requirements for the second lander will be more ambitious more cargo, longer stays on the surface reflecting the desire for more ambitious missions on the moon.

In addition, NASA would negotiate with SpaceX under its existing contract to build a lander meeting the new requirements, Ms. Watson-Morgan said.

NASAs journey to sending astronauts back to the moon has been long and winding, and the current 2025 target for adding new American footprints on the moon appears unrealistically optimistic.

Still, NASA has been making progress.

A giant rocket, the Space Launch System, is now finally at the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, although it will just sit there for now. Next month, NASA will conduct a dress rehearsal of a countdown fueling the rocket but not igniting the engines. The rocket will then return to the Vehicle Assembly Building essentially a huge tall garage for rockets for final preparations of a crewless test launch called Artemis 1 that could occur as early as this summer. It would send a capsule, Orion, around the moon and back to Earth.

The second Artemis mission will be the first with astronauts riding inside the Orion crew capsule at the top of the S.L.S. rocket. That flight, which is penciled in for May 2024, would enter orbit around the moon before returning to Earth.

The first moon landing would occur no earlier than 2025, during Artemis 3. Four astronauts would again take an Orion capsule to lunar orbit where they would dock with the SpaceX Starship spacecraft, which will be there waiting for them. Two of the astronauts the first woman and the first person of color, NASA says would move to Starship and then land near the moons south pole and stay on the surface for about a week.

SpaceX has launched a series of Starship prototypes from its site in South Texas to an altitude of about six miles to show how it would belly flop after re-entering the atmosphere to slow down and then land vertically. In May, after four failed attempts, one of the prototypes landed successfully. SpaceX is aiming to launch the first orbital flight of a Starship in the coming months.

The goal of returning astronauts to the moon was revived during the Trump administration. NASA officials then, and now under the Biden administration, have insisted that the objective this time is not itself the end but the beginning of larger human explorations of the moon, and eventually farther out into the solar system.

With Wednesdays announcement, NASA is trying to turn that hope into a continuing program.

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NASA Plans to Give SpaceX Some Company on the Moon - The New York Times

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin made headlines around the world when he stated that the U.S. would have to use broomsticks to fly into space since Russia would no longer makeits rocket enginesavailable to the U.S. companies. And althoughNASA Administrator Bill Nelson played down the comments at the time, there is no doubt that traveling to space may soon become more complicated.

That's why NASA is planning ahead. According to a statement by the space agency released on Friday,12 additional missions have been ordered under its Commercial Resupply Services-2 (CRS-2) contracts to ensure continuous science and cargo delivery for the agency and its international partners to the International Space Station.

The new missions would go to Northrop Grumman and SpaceX (six each) and will provide resupply services to the station through 2026. This is not the first time the space agency turns to American companies to meet its space needs.

Back inIn 2016, NASA awarded three American companies CRS-2 contracts to resupply the International Space Station.

Few would have imagined back in 2010 when President Barack Obamapledgedthat NASA would workwith a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable,that less than six years laterwed be able to saycommercial carriers have transported 35,000 pounds of space cargo (and counting!) to the International Space Station -- or that wed beso firmly ontrack toreturn launches of American astronauts to the ISS from American soil on American commercial carriers. But that is exactly what is happening, said at the time NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

A few years later, Bolden's words seem prophetic as NASA continues to rely on American companies to guarantee its space missions. With these latest missions underway, the agency has awarded a total of 32 missions for cargo resupply with 14 missions going to Northrop Grumman, three missions going to Sierra Nevada Corporation (now Sierra Space), and 15 missions going to SpaceX.

It is estimated that the maximum potential value of all these contracts is $14 billion, an amount well worth playing to guarantee the continued success of American space missions.

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SpaceX and Northrop Grumman join forces to service the ISS through 2026 - Interesting Engineering