Category Archives: Spacex

Planet has signed another contract with SpaceX, locking it in as the 'go-to launch provider' for the Earth-imaging company through 2025.

San Francisco-based Planet operates the world's largest fleet of Earth-observation satellites, most of which are tiny but capable cubesats known as Doves (or, more recently, SuperDoves). SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets have launched 83 Planet satellites on seven missions to date, and the new deal ensures that number will grow.

"I'm excited to continue our partnership with SpaceX," Planet co-founder and CEO Will Marshall said in a statement today (Aug. 5). "We've had seven launches to date. But more than that, together we've pioneered rapid planning, manufacturing and launch of satellites that only Planet and SpaceX could together have achieved."

Related: Planet satellites' views of Earth (photos)

Today's statement doesn't specify the number of planned launches or the value of the contract. It describes the deal as a "multi-year, multi-launch agreement with SpaceX, solidifying them as our go-to-launch provider through the end of 2025."

Planet spacecraft will piggyback as "rideshare" payloads on Falcon 9 rockets, as they have done in the past. The first planned launch under the new agreement is scheduled for this December, when 44 SuperDoves will lift off on SpaceX's Transporter-3 mission.

Planet satellites have launched atop a number of rockets to date, including India's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and Rocket Lab's Electron (which gives small satellites dedicated rides to space). Planet will maintain such diversity in the future despite the new SpaceX deal, company representatives said.

"Moving forward, we will continue to operate with a variety of launch providers to ensure that launch needs can still be met in the event of unavailabilities of specific providers," Planet representatives wrote in the same statement. "By engaging with a diversified manifest, Planet can find launches to the right orbit in the right time frame for each evolving satellite project."

For example, Planet recently signed a deal with Bay Area startup Astra for a "multilaunch mission" in 2022. Astra has not yet launched any satellites to orbit but will attempt to do so on a mission for the U.S. Space Force later this month.

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 Facebook.

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SpaceX, Planet ink deal to launch Earth-imaging satellites through 2025 - Space.com

Elon Musks SpaceX will put a huge advertising satellite in the sky where companies can display logos and other promoted content.

The space company is working with a Canadian startup Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC) to launch the satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket, which will release the advertising platform before the rocket reaches the moon.

Samuel Reid, CEO and co-founder of GEC, told Business Insider that the satellite would be released in 2022. People and companies would buy tokens to locate and design a pixel on the screen.

Five tokens affecting the pixels are purchasable: Beta and Rho for the adverts placement on the screen, Gamma and Kappa for the colour and brightness, and XI for its duration. These tokens will be purchasable via cryptocurrencies.

"Im trying to achieve something that can democratize access to space and allow for decentralized participation," Mr Reid said. "Hopefully, people dont waste money on something inappropriate, insulting or offensive.

"There might be companies which want to depict their logo ... or it might end up being a bit more personal and artistic. Maybe Coca-Cola and Pepsi will fight over their logo and reclaim over each other, he said.

It is currently unclear how large the ads will be, how many ads will be shown at any one time, the environmental impact of bright advertising on local flora and fauna, and the energy use of the satellite. Neither SpaceX nor GEC responded to The Independents request for comment before time of publication.

GEC is also the group behind the satellite Doge-1, which Mr Musk said would be the first crypto in space and the first meme in space.

The satellite will "obtain lunar-spatial intelligence from sensors and cameras", according to CNN. "This is not a joke," Reid said, but refused to comment further.

Dogecoin has proven to be a fast, reliable, and cryptographically secure digital currency that operates when traditional banks cannot and is sophisticated enough to finance a commercial Moon mission in full," a press release sent in May 2021 read.

"It has been chosen as the unit of account for all lunar business between SpaceX and Geometric Energy Corporation and sets precedent for future missions to the Moon and Mars."

Since then, however, Elon Musks tweets generally seen as market-movers in the crypto space have failed to affect dogecoins performance.

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SpaceX to launch billboard satellite that plays ads and hopes people dont do something inappropriate - The Independent

This week was a pretty eventful one in science news, full of record-breaking rockets, a major anniversary for a remarkably vain robot on Mars (we kid, we kid. We love you Curiosity!), and Google claiming that it used its quantum computer to flagrantly violate one of the basic principles of physics.

Boeing unfortunately suffered another frustrating setback with its Starliner capsule, further delaying its second attempt at reaching the International Space Station. Speaking of which, ISS astronauts bid farewell to the Russian-made Pirs module as it safely burned up in the Earth's atmosphere and were kind enough to record this human "shooting star" for us critters down below.

Read on to learn more about all the exiting news you might have missed this week in the world of science.

NASA's highly photogenic Curiosity rover celebrated its ninth year on the red planet this week, sending out a trademark selfie in celebration.

The intrepid rover touched down in Gale Crater on the Martian surface in the late evening hours of August 5, 2012 (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is in California, so the landing occurred on August 6, 2012 EDT). Since then, it has travelled more than a dozen miles across the Martian surface, even ascending nearly half a kilometer up the slope of Mount Sharp in the crater's center, making science with every turn of its many wheels. Here's to another year of science and many more to come!

As SpaceX prepares to return astronauts to the Moon in 2024, it is assembling some of the most advanced spacefaring vessels ever, including the largest rocket ever assembled. This week, SpaceX tested the stacking and mating of its Starship spacecraft with the Super Heavy rocket booster that will help carry it into its first orbital flight later this year. The two combined for a total height of 395 feet, beating out the previous record-holder, the Apollo program's Saturn V rocket, which stands at 363 feet.

SpaceX rival Boeing, meanwhile, suffered another frustrating setback this week in its efforts to get it's Starliner capsule off the ground and docked with the International Space Station (ISS). After last week's launch had to be postponed when an accidental misfire of a docked Russian capsule rotated the ISS and altered its trajectory it's fine now...we hope? Boeing and United Launch Alliance detected an unexpected "valve position indication" during a pre-launch check, and the launch was scrubbed until engineers can track down the problem. This puts Boeing even further behind SpaceX, something that's gotta sting for the venerable spaceflight pioneer.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station recorded the fiery end of the Russian-made Pirs module as it (safely) burned up in Earth's atmosphere.

The timelapse video shows the module turning into a "shooting star" of sorts, a fitting send off after its service in pursuit of science and discovery.

Finally, this week saw the science world trying to wrap their brains around a paper published by Google researchers late last week that claims to show its quantum computer, Sycamore, created a scalable "time crystal" using qubits that complete violate the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of time translation symmetry. What this development means is still unclear, since something like this isn't supposed to ever happen, so we'll have to wait for peer review to do its thing and confirm results from Google's scientists. If they do, maybe Sycamore can show us how to divide by zero, while it's at it.

Excerpt from:

Curiosity, SpaceX, and Time Crystals: this week in science news - TechRadar

Netflix is giving viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the historic launch of SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission in a brand new documentary series.

"Countdown: Inspiration Mission to Space" will be released in five parts. The first four episodes will premiere on September 6 and 13, with the rest of the series available September 14, 1 5, and 16 surrounding the launch day from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Unlike Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's spaceflights, which only touched the edge of space and returned to Earth minutes later, Inspiration will orbit the Earth for three days to raise funds and awareness for St. Jude Children's Hospital.

There will be four passengers on board the flight, including billionaire Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, who will Lead and Command the craft, according to a press release. Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old physician assistant at St. Jude and pediatric cancer survivor, will serve as the mission's Chief Medical Officer.

Dr. Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old professor of geosciences and two-time NASA astronaut candidate who long dreamed of going to space, will serve as pilot, and Chris Sembroski, a 41-year-old, former member of the U.S. Air Force who served in Iraq and now works as a Lockheed Martin engineer, will serve as mission specialist.

"The crew was selected to represent the four pillars of the mission: Leadership, Hope, Prosperity, and Generosity," Netflix said in a press release.

The documentary series will be directed and executive produced by Jason Hehir, the director of the Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls documentary "The Last Dance" on Netflix.

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SpaceX's first all-civilian launch next month will be chronicled in a Netflix documentary - Business Insider

Heres how you fly a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft: Climb aboard; strap yourself in; close the hatch; fly to space. The Dragon takes care of everything, so relax and enjoy the rideunless, of course, something goes wrong, and in space, something can always go wrong.

So heres how you prepare for that possibility: Spend months of 60-hour weeks in classrooms and simulators; master hundreds of pages of technical specs and procedures; learn the workings of dozens of systems and subsystems aboard the spacecraft; train for emergencies ranging from communications blackouts to navigation failures to on-board fires; and, not for nothing, spend a little time in a centrifuge and an altitude chamber, practicing for the g-forces youre going to have to endure and the possibility of depressurization.

Theres north of 60 procedures that range from normal contingency to emergency, says Jared Isaacman, the CEO of Shift4 Payments, an online payment service, who will be commanding the Inspiration4 mission in September, spending three days in orbit with three other civilian astronauts. In a multi-day mission there is a lot of time for a lot of things to go wrong. (TIME Studios is producing a documentary series on the Inspiration4 mission.)

Practicing for those eventualities aboard a Dragon requires a whole new kind of training, because by any measure, the new ship is not your daddys spacecraft. NASAs old Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules were very much designed with an airplane cockpit in mind. Their sheet metal instrument panels were studded with hundreds of switches, dials, lights and analog gauges. Their simple on-board computers were controlled by a mechanical keyboard. The commander flew those ships the same way youd fly a planewith a control stick determining velocity, attitude, altitude and direction.

The Dragons designers swept all of that away, replacing everythingincluding the control stickwith three large touch screens facing four side-by-side seats. Each screen is capable of calling up as many as 10 sets of displays, allowing the crew to focus on a particular set of systemsguidance, environmental, electrical, and more.

You have an overall systems page on the screen, and then you can drill down into individual pages as well, says Doug Hurley, the commander of the first crewed SpaceX mission, which launched in May of 2020. Theres a total of 25 to 30 individual pages, and SpaceX may have added some more since my flight. With any aircraft or spacecraft, you always iterate because it makes sense and its easy and will help the crew.

The seats in the Crew Dragon spacecraft are reconfigurable, allowing it to carry up to seven peoplethough four is typical for a NASA mission. Three large touchscreens replace the traditional instrument panel.

Courtesy SpaceX

Ideally, the spacecraft helps the astronauts so much that they have virtually nothing to do, with the ship operating entirely autonomously. And if the automation doesnt take care of a problem, then the ground is your next layer of defense, says Hurley, referencing SpaceX ground controllers who can problem-solve and issue commands to the spacecraft from the comfort of mission control. Only if the Dragon fails to look after itself and the ground staffers cant solve the problem would the astronauts take over.

Thats the case too when it comes to the most critical aspect of commanding the spacecraft: flying it. The Dragon features a full-time autopilot program, requiring no astronaut intervention. On Hurleys flight, he took over in the final stages of the spacecrafts approach to the International Space Station, steering the ship in all axes, flying above, below and to the left and right of the station. But the purpose of that exercise was just to prove that the manual systems worked.

In space youve got to trust and verify, Hurley says. But theres no plans to do any more manual flying, unless theres a need for it from a systems failure kind of scenario.

Those failures do occur, and learning to fly the Dragon by hand can take some doing. Stripping out the control stick and replacing it with buttons on a touch screen may make for a more elegant spacecraft, but it also eliminates the most important physical connection a pilot has to their vehicle. Pilots using a stick never have to look at it because they operate by feel, but thats impossible with a touch screen that offers nothing by way of tactile response. When youre flying off soft keys on a touch screen its a totally different feel, and a lot of muscle memory is lost, says Isaacman, who is a licensed jet pilot and knows a thing or two about stick-and-rudder skills. There is that delay when you look at the screen and input a command before its executed, versus something instantaneous when you move the stick.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft before being mated to its Falcon 9 rocket (left); the Falcon's second stage is disposable, and the first stage returns to Earth, landing on a barge, to be refitted and reused.

Courtesy SpaceX/NASA

Then too, there are the kinds of emergencies that not only require on-site human intervention, but require it to be executed immediatelyand perfectly. Fires can and do break out aboard spacecraft; crew members on Russias Mir space station had to battle a blaze in 1997 when a fuel canister ignited. The biggest risk aboard Dragon is a fire caused by a battery overheating, and there are a lot of batteries aboard the shipnot only the spacecrafts own, but those that power the tablets, cameras and smartphones the crew members will carry.

There is also the risk of a spacecraft depressurization, requiring the crew to look for the breach, try to seal it off and scramble into their suits at the same time. A launch emergency may happen tooif, say, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket that carries the ship to space fails to separate from the Dragon and the commander has to manually execute the separation maneuver. The Dragons guidance system is also subject to failure, potentially causing the ships solar panels to slip out of alignment with the sun and requiring human intervention to set things right.

Finally, there are the overall risks raised by the simple number of days the Inspiration4 crew will spend in orbit. Crews heading for the space station fly there directly and are usually aboard within a day or so of launching. The Inspiration4 crew will be in orbit for three days, flying independently, without the security the giant station providesthe longest a U.S. space a U.S. crew has been aloft in a vehicle other than the station since the last shuttle stood down in 2011. Every day spent on their own is another day during which something can go wrong.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket a few days before the launch of Crew-1 Mission in Nov. 2020.

Courtesy SpaceX

Ideally, nothing goes wrong on any given missionand on the three crewed flights SpaceXs Crew Dragon has flown so far, the ideal has been the real. But space remains, ever and always, a dangerous place to go. Its for the Dragon designers to remove the riskand even the workfrom the equation. Its for the crew to be prepared if that equation does not add up.

I dont know that theres ever been a human spaceflight mission that did not have some anomaly, says Isaacman. People are telling us were making good progress. I think weve definitely arrived at the point where were ready and this is going to be a well-executed mission.

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Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.

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Inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon: Here's How the Inspiration4 Crew Will Fly to Space - TIME

Historic Moments in Texas

August 6th, we got a live view of something very historical happening. Livestreams of what's going down at theSpaceXStarbase facility in South Texas aired as people around the globe watched in anticipation.

The city of Boca Chica plays host to a SpaceX facility that is breaking records and making history happen. Engineers and workers completed the stacking of their massive SpaceX Starship.

The Starship stands alone at 165 feet, and the Super Heavy rocket adds another 230 feet making the massive vehicle just about 400 feet tall, make it the BIGGEST rocket ever assembled.

The bottom part of the rocket is the Super Heavy rocket. This piece is what is going to get the rocket soaring into space. It contains 29 raptor engines. That is a whole lot of power, which is necessary for a rocket that plans to reach the moon and Mars in its very first orbital test flight.

The Starship is the second part of the rocket. It sits on top of the Super Heavy rocket and is what will eventually carry cargo and passengers.

All of this went down Friday, August 6th, and Texas got to get in on this historic assembly. The record-breaking rocketship was assembled in the great state of Texas.

While the ship was assembled on August 6th, there is speculation that Elon Musk was aiming for the previous day, August 5th. On his personal Twitter page, Musk tweeted, "Winds are too high today. Looks like wind speed will be low enough to stack early tomorrow morning."

While the Starship and Super Heavy rocket assembly are complete, this massive rocket will not be launched just yet. SpaceX still has a couple of measurements they need to go through to get this rocket fully finished and ready.

According to MSN, the Super Heavy rocket "must pass several pressurization and engine tests before lifting off." Aside from that, "SpaceX is also waiting on anenvironmental review of Starship's launch operationsbeing performed by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration."

Women have left marks on everything from entertainment and music to space exploration, athletics, and technology. Each passing year and new milestone makes it clear both how recent this history-making is in relation to the rest of the country, as well as how far we still need to go. The resulting timeline shows that women are constantly making history worthy of best-selling biographies and classroom textbooks; someone just needs to write about them.

Scroll through to find out when women in the U.S. and around the world won rights, the names of women who shattered the glass ceiling, and which country's women banded together to end a civil war.

LOOK: 100 years of American military history

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SpaceX is Breaking Records with This Newly Assembled Rocket Ship in Texas - ktemnews.com

A Starlink ground terminal. Credit: SpaceX

After going through the month of July with no launches, SpaceX is scheduled to resume missions in August with Falcon 9 rocket flights from California and Florida to begin deploying Starlink internet satellites into new orbits.

SpaceX is gearing up for at least two Starlink launches next month, beginning with a Falcon 9 mission departing from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, no earlier than Aug. 10, multiple sources said. Another Falcon 9 launch is scheduled to carry a batch of Starlink satellites into orbit in mid-August.

They will be the first SpaceX launches since June 30, an unusually long gap in the companys jam-packed launch schedule. SpaceX launched 20 Falcon 9 missions in the first half of the year, mostly for the companys own Starlink program.

The most recent Falcon 9 mission to carry a full load of Starlink satellites occurred May 26.

Since then, SpaceX has activated hundreds of internet spacecraft delivered to orbit on previous Falcon 9 missions, raising the number of operational Starlink craft from roughly 950 satellites to more than 1,300, according to an analysis by Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a widely-respected tracker of spaceflight activity.

More than 200 additional Starlink satellites are drifting into their operational positions in orbit 341 miles (550 kilometers) above Earth at an inclination of 53 degrees to the equator.

SpaceX has regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission to eventually launch and operate up to 12,000 internet relay satellites. The early phases of SpaceXs Starlink network involves the launch of 4,408 satellites into five orbital shells, or layers, in low Earth orbit.

SpaceX has launched 1,740 Starlink satellites to date, including prototypes already retired, more than all other commercial satellite fleets combined. Most of the satellites have launched into a 53-degree inclination orbit, the first of five orbital shells the company plans to complete full deployment of the Starlink network.

With that shell on the verge of having more than 1,500 active satellites, SpaceX is transitioning to a new phase of the Starlink program.

The completion of the first Starlink shell will enable the network to provide high-speed, low-latency internet services to lower latitudes, such as the southern United States. The partial deployment of satellites into the first orbital shell initially provided service over northern regions of the United States, Canada, and Europe, as well as higher-latitude regions in the southern hemisphere.

SpaceX, founded and led by billionaire Elon Musk, is currently providing interim internet services through the Starlink satellites to consumers who have signed up for a beta testing program in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, France, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

SpaceXs other Starlink layers will include 1,584 satellites at 335 miles (540 kilometers) and an inclination of 53.2 degrees, 720 satellites at 354 miles (570 kilometers) and an inclination of 70 degrees, and 520 satellites spread into two shells at 348 miles (560 kilometers) and an inclination of 97.6 degrees.

The Starlink mission set for liftoff from Vandenberg next month, designated Starlink 2-1, will begin populating a new orbital shell.

A SpaceX application with the FCC associated with launch vehicle telemetry links for the Starlink launch from Vandenberg suggests the companys booster landing platform, or drone ship, will be positioned in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California. The drone ship position indicates the launch will target an orbit with an inclination of 70 degrees.

A similar FCC application for a Starlink launch next month from Cape Canaveral shows a SpaceX drone ship will be parked in the Atlantic Ocean in line with a rocket trajectory heading for an inclination of 53.2 degrees.

SpaceX recently moved one of its drone ships, named Of Course I Still Love You, from Florida to California to prep for the upcoming Starlink missions from Vandenberg. Weeks later, a new drone ship named A Shortfall of Gravitas arrived at Port Canaveral to be stationed there alongside the drone ship Just Read the Instructions.

More Starlink missions will follow the launches in mid-August. SpaceX is expected to launch an average of one Starlink mission per month from Vandenberg over the next year, and there will be a regular cadence of Starlink flights from Cape Canaveral, too.

SpaceX has not disclosed what, if any, design changes it plans to introduce on the next series of Starlink satellites, which the company builds on an assembly line at a development facility in Redmond, Washington. A fully loaded Falcon 9 rocket could carry 60 of the quarter-ton first generation of Starlink satellites into orbit on each mission, but its not clear whether that number could change on future flights.

In January, Musk said SpaceX would introduce laser intersatellite links to all Starlink spacecraft beginning in 2022. Starlink satellites heading into polar orbit this year would have the upgrade, he tweeted.

SpaceX launched 10 Starlink satellites into a 97.6-degree polar orbit on a rideshare mission in January. Another three Starlink payloads launched into a similar orbit last month on a subsequent rideshare flight.

Those satellites featured laser intersatellite links, which allow spacecraft to pass data and internet traffic between each other without routing it through a ground station. The upgrade will allow SpaceX to provide internet connectivity near the poles and in other regions without ground stations.

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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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SpaceX is about to begin launching the next series of Starlink satellites Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Eight has become the magic number when it comes to the maximum meeting size for collaboration and creativity, but behind the smoke and mirrors, you've been duped. If you want creative collaboration, the theory of eight isn't meeting. It's a crowd.

In reality, the magic eight ball will most likely leave your meeting with one message: try again later. Inconclusive or unproductive meetings are a symptom of too many participants, or worse, too many passive attendees and not enough active participants.

The theory of smaller teams for creativity and large teams for productivity isn't new. Steve Jobs was an advocate for compact meeting groups. He had his own take on essential employees. But his version related to whether you had to come to a meeting, not come into work. And yet, still many companies struggle to exercise this simple practice. And it's not surprising why. It's human nature to gravitate toward operating in excess. Psychologically, anything less than a surplus can feel like a lack.

But when it comes to innovation, a surplus of participants is more likely to lead to a lack of creativity and ideation.

A one-hour meeting with eight people breaks down to just seven and a half minutes per person. And if that meeting is just 30-minutes, then each participant only has about three and a half minutes each. But those are best-case scenarios, and as if the meeting begins the second the clock hits the scheduled start time, which isn't particularly common. So logistically, the more people you have in a meeting, the more you dilute each participant's time--and ability to ideate.

For a startup, innovation and collaboration are crucial. A packed meeting doesn't only lead to less creativity, brainstorming, and ideation, but less decision-making and even less motivation. By failing to set your team up for success in an environment where they can collaborate and ideate, you also demotivate. Creatives have ideas and want to be heard, but if every meeting turns into a missed opportunity to share an idea--or the birth of a new one--your team may become uninspired and uninterested. Great ideas only become inspiring when people feel as though they are able to be heard, and with that, potentially pursued.

There's a tendency to believe that everyone on a team is there for a reason and thus needs a seat at the meeting table, but putting a warm body in an empty seat isn't an equation for collaboration. While Steve Jobs' seemingly take on essential participants in a meeting seems harsh, there's a major difference between holding an essential role within a particular meeting and holding an essential role within a particular team.

Look at SpaceX's Dragon Crew-1, for example. While the space shuttle has a capacity of eight, the shuttle operates at half-capacity with just four astronauts. And not because SpaceX is lacking the resources to fill those empty seats, but because they weren't essential to the mission. And though only four astronauts were essential onboard, the mission, on the whole, involved dozens of essential SpaceX team members.

Though the right meeting size will depend on your team, your agenda, and your business, make the most out of your creative meetings by limiting the number of participants to ensure every person in the meeting is indeed a participant and not a spectator. Chances are, eight is too much. And when you're in the early days, living off of a set sum of money, every hour wasted is money burned. Take a note from SpaceX and consider what's vital for a successful mission, or in this case meeting and give your staff the springboard to launch their creativity and your startup's success.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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Steve Jobs and SpaceX Reveal the Right Meeting Size and It's Not What You Think - Inc.

July 28, 2021

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has told SpaceX and a few other would-be beneficiaries of its rural broadband largesse that the cash it is prepared to award cannot be used to serve parking lots and well-served urban areas.

Michael Janson, the FCCs Rural Broadband Task Force director, has written directly to SpaceX as well as to others who were successful with their applications for a portion of the FCCs $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) that the cash cannot be used to serve places like airports which already have satellite-delivered broadband.

SpaceX was one of 197 businesses who were awarded FCC grants. SpaceX received $886 million from the FCC under the RDOF scheme.

There have been complaints (from the likes of the Competitive Carriers Association) that at least some of the cash was being allegedly misspent with widespread flaws and waste. One report stated that some $111 million of SpaceXs grant was going to random patches of land which included central highway median strips and even New York City parking lots.

The FCC has been busy comparing and contrasting the selected areas by some of the recipients and comparing the sites with official census returns. SpaceX was specifically approved last year for its plan to provide service to 642,925 locations in 35 states.

However, it is alleged that SpaceXs list of proposed installations include Newark International Airport and Miami Airport.

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FCC issues rural broadband ruling to SpaceX | - Advanced Television

BLACKPINKs Jennie and Grimes have shared pictures of their recent outing to the SpaceX facility, sparking collaboration rumours.

On July 26, the two singers posted a series of photos from their rocket day hangout. Grimes is the latest in the string of musicians the BLACKPINK member met up with during her recent trip to California, following pop star Dua Lipa.

Rocket day with my fairy princess, Jennie wrote on Instagram, alongside pictures of them posing in front of a SpaceX rocket. The pictures appear to be taken at Californias SpaceX facility, which is owned by Grimes boyfriend, Elon Musk.

Later on the same dat, the Canadian singer took to Twitter to share more photos of the pair. Jennie and Grimes go to space, she wrote, uploading a few close-up shots of Jennie and herself.

Fans have since started to speculate that a collaboration between Jennie and Grimes could be on the cards. The American singer is no stranger to the K-pop scene, having previously collaborated with LOONA sub-unit yyxy on Love4eva in 2018.

Aside from Jennie, BLACKPINKs Ros has also been in LA in order to work on new music, The Korean-Australian singer was recently allegedly spotted with singer Olivia Rodrigo, sparking rumours of a potential collaboration. Director Petra Collins and stylist Devon Carlson were also seen with the two pop stars.

Earlier this month, BLACKPINKs Ros revealed that singer-songwriter John Mayer gifted her a pink electric guitar after she covered one of his songs. Life is complete, she wrote, tagging him in an Instagram story.

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BLACKPINKs Jennie and Grimes share their trip to SpaceX, sparking collaboration rumours - NME