Category Archives: Spacex

Rendering of the Starlab commercial space station. Photo: Starlab Space

Starlab, the future commercial space station, will launch on a SpaceX Starship rocket under a new launch agreement announced Wednesday. Starlab Space, a joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus, announced SpaceX will launch the space station to Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) in a single mission.

Wednesdays announcement did not give a specific timeframe, but said that Starlab will launch before the International Space Station (ISS) is decommissioned. NASA plans to fully utilize the space station through 2030, and issued a request for proposals to deorbit the ISS in September 2023.

Starlab is one of the commercial space stations in the works as a commercial successor to the ISS, to host representatives from space agencies, researchers, and companies. Starlab Space said the station will be fully outfitted on the ground, and ready to permanently host four crew members to conduct microgravity research.

The Starship rocket is not operational and has not reached orbit yet. SpaceX conducted two test flights last year, in April and November.

SpaceXs history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab, said Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO, Voyager Space. SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship.

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SpaceXs Starship Rocket to Launch the Starlab Commercial Space Station - Via Satellite

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will be the first Space Force Guardian to launch to the International Space Station.

Hague, who flew twice to space with the U.S. Air Force and NASA before being transferred to Space Force, was named to the SpaceX Crew-9 mission Wednesday (Jan. 31) for an expected International Space Station (ISS) launch in August.

NASA and the Department of Defense have been collaborating since the dawn of the space program. The first U.S. astronauts in 1959 were recruited from the military for the Mercury program, for example. Even today, about two-thirds of NASA astronauts have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, according to Space Force numbers.

Space Force, however, was only established in 2019 as the sixth U.S. military branch. Following his last ISS journey, Hague did a leadership rotation at the Pentagon with Space Force in 2019 as its director of test and evaluation. While still in that role, he transferred in 2021 from Air Force to Space Force.

Related: NASA names astronauts for SpaceX's Crew-9 mission to the ISS

Hague has been to space twice, although the first time was only for a few minutes. His initial ISS launch attempt on Oct. 11, 2018 aborted mid-flight due to a deformed sensor aboard his Russian Soyuz rocket, also carrying Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin.

"This is not the first in-flight emergency that I've been a part of," Hague, who was unharmed from the emergency landing, told reporters a few days after the abort. As evidence, he pointed to his time with the U.S. Air Force as a test pilot and in combat.

Russian engineers addressed the root cause of the rocket failure. Following a new Soyuz launch five months later with NASA astronaut Christina Koch, the trio reached the orbiting lab on March 15, 2019. Hague has accrued 203 days in space already.

Hague's Crew-9 crewmates include cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Roscosmos and two other NASA astronauts: Zena Cardman andStephanie Wilson. Cardman and Gorbunov will be on their first spaceflight. Wilson spent 42 days in space across three orbital missions, most recently aboard space shuttle Discovery mission STS-131 in April 2010.

Crew-9 will be the ninth operational mission for SpaceX under NASA's commercial crew program and will spend about six months in space. The next ISS flight with SpaceX, Crew-8, is expected to launch to the ISS no earlier than Feb. 22, NASA also announced Wednesday.

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Space Force Guardian to reach orbit for 1st time on SpaceX's Crew-9 astronaut launch - Space.com

The U.S. military is considering commandeering SpaceX's reusable Starship rocket for dangerous or sensitive missions.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has reached out to SpaceX to inquire about using Starship on its own, flying the massive rocket as a "government-owned, government-operated" asset on "sensitive and potentially dangerous missions," according to a recent report in Aviation Week.

Currently, the DOD contracts SpaceX as a launch services provider; in this new proposed arrangement the Pentagon would actually take control of the vehicle on its own.

Related: Space is now 'most essential' domain for US military, Pentagon says

Aviation Week cites comments made on Tuesday (Jan. 30) by Gary Henry, a Senior Advisor for National Security Space Solutions at SpaceX, during the 2024 Space Mobility Conference held in Orlando, Florida.

"We have had conversations and it really came down to specific missions, where it's a very specific and sometimes elevated risk or maybe a dangerous use case for the DOD where theyre asking themselves: 'Do we need to own it as a particular asset SpaceX, can you accommodate that?'" Henry said at the conference.

"We've been exploring all kinds of options to kind of deal with those questions," Henry added.

The DOD has been considering using Starship for years. As early as 2020, U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) was discussing using the giant reusable rocket which is not yet operational for transporting cargo or even personnel rapidly around the world.

"Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour. Think about that speed associated with the movement of transportation of cargo and people," former commander of USTRANSCOM Gen. Stephen Lyons said in Oct. 2020. "There is a lot of potential here, and I'm really excited about the team that's working with SpaceX on an opportunity, even perhaps, as early as '21, to be conducting a proof of principle."

Col. Eric Felt, director of space architecture for the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, added that "there might be some use cases where there needs to be a government-owned, government-operated [vehicle], and that transfer can happen on the fly," Aviation Week reports.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has even hinted at using Starship to send 1,000 human passengers on point-to-point flights around the world at hypersonic speeds held in place by amusement-park-like restraints. "Would feel similar to Space Mountain in a lot of ways, but you'd exit on another continent," Musk wrote on X in 2019.

Aside from potential U.S. military applications and its traditional usage as a commercial launch vehicle, Starship is being tapped for NASA's Artemis program. The agency plans to use Starship as a moon lander to ferry human crews to and from the lunar surface, beginning with the Artemis 3 mission no earlier than 2026.

A lot of development and testing has to go right before that can happen, though. SpaceX will first have to conduct a successful demonstration in which Starship will be used as an orbital refueling platform to top off a human lander after it uses most of its fuel after it leaves Earth and heads to the moon.

Starship is SpaceX's next-generation launch vehicle that the company hopes will help humanity build settlements on the moon and Mars. The massive rocket has flown on two test flights to date; one in April 2023 and again in November 2023. A third test flight could come as soon as February 2024, pending regulatory approval from the U.S. government.

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US military eyes SpaceX Starship for 'sensitive and potentially dangerous missions': report - Space.com

Enlarge / An artist's concept of the Starlab space station.

Starlab LLC

The Starlab commercial space station will launch on SpaceX's Starship rocket, officials said this week.

Starlab is a joint venture between the US-based Voyager Space and the European-based multinational aerospace corporation Airbus. The venture is building a large station with a habitable volume equivalent to half the pressurized volume of the International Space Station and will launch the new station no earlier than 2028.

"SpaceX's history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab," Dylan Taylor, chairman and CEO of Voyager Space, said in a statement. "SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship."

Starlab will have a diameter of about 26 feet (8 meters). It is perhaps not a coincidence that Starship's payload bay can accommodate vehicles up to 26 feet across in its capacious fairing. However, in an interview, Marshall Smith, the chief technology officer of Voyager Space, said the company looked at a couple of launch options.

"We looked at multiple launches to get Starlab into orbit, and eventually gravitated toward single launch options," he said. "It saves a lot of the cost of development. It saves a lot of the cost of integration. We can get it all built and checked out on the ground, and tested and launch it with payloads and other systems. One of the many lessons we learned from the International Space Station is that building and integrating in space is very expensive."

With a single launch on a Starship, the Starlab module should be ready for human habitation almost immediately, Smith said.

Starlab LLC

Starlab is one of several privately developed space stations vying to become a commercial replacement for the International Space Station, which NASA is likely to retire in 2030. Among the other contenders are Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Vast Space. SpaceX may also configure a human-rated version of Starship as a temporary space station.

NASA has provided seed funding to some of these companies, including Voyager Space, to begin designing and developing their stations. NASA is expected to hold a second round of competition next year, when it will select one or more companies to proceed with building and testing their stations.

Each company is developing a space station that will serve both government customersNASA wants to continue flying at least a handful of astronauts in low-Earth orbit for research purposesas well as private customers. The challenge for Starlab and other commercial stations is developing a customer base beyond NASA to support the expense of flying and operating stations.

The challenge is a huge one: NASA spent more than $100 billion constructing the International Space Station and has a $3 billion annual budget for operations and transportation of people and supplies to the station. The agency is likely to fund commercial space stations at a level of about $1 billion a year, so these companies must build their facilities relatively quickly at low costand then find a diverse base of customers to offset expenses.

Starlab may have an advantage in this regard with its co-ownership by Airbus. One of the big questions surrounding the end of the International Space Station is what happens to the European astronauts who fly there now. The European Space Agency will likely be reticent about funding missions to private space stations owned and operated by US companies. The involvement by Airbus, therefore, makes Starlab attractive to European nations as a destination.

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Starlabwith half the volume of the ISSwill fit inside Starship's payload bay - Ars Technica

NASAs Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) observatory is inspected and processed on a spacecraft dolly in a high bay at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Dec. 4, 2023 Photo: NASA

SpaceX and NASA are planning to launch a Falcon 9 from SLC-40 NET Tuesday morning at 1:33 AM EST. Weather may be a concern: the 45th Weather Squadron has yet to issue a Probability of Violation forecast, but the National Weather Service and other general forecast products are calling for a good chance of wind and rain at the planned launch time.

The payload for the mission is NASAs PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite. It isan Earth-observing instrument that will conduct observations of global ocean color, biogeochemistry, and ecology, as well as the carbon cycle, aerosols as well as as clouds.

According to NASA, PACEs data will help us better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide. In addition, it will reveal how aerosols might fuel phytoplankton growth in the surface ocean. Novel uses of PACE data will benefit our economy and society. For example, it will help identify the extent and duration of harmful algal blooms. PACE will extend and expand NASAs long-term observations of our living planet. By doing so, it will take Earths pulse in new ways for decades to come.

Until the 45th Weather Squadron releases their official launch forecast, heres the general weather forecast. Note that this forecast does not consider rocket launch weather criteria and should be used only for a very general look ahead:

Monday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 56. Windy, with a north northwest wind 15 to 25 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph.

Tuesday: A 40 percent chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 65. Windy, with a north wind 25 to 30 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph.

Stay tuned, we will replace old forecasts with new ones as they become available.

Trajectory will be south, with the final destination being a Sun-synchronous orbit.

This will be an RTLS (Return To Launch Site) mission. Space Coast residents can expect a sonic boom to spread through the area after 1:42 AM. Remember that sound travels about five miles per second, so the exact time for the sonic booms arrival is dependent on your locations distance to LZ-1.

SpaceX has not yet identified which booster that will be used for this flight. Talk of Titusville will add more information when it becomes available.

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NASA, SpaceX To Launch PACE Earth Science Satellite Early Tuesday - Talk of Titusville

NASA and SpaceX technicians safely encapsulate NASAs PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) spacecraft in SpaceXs Falcon 9 payload fairings on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2024, at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The fairing halves protect the spacecraft from aerodynamic pressure and heating during the ascent phase of launch.

NASA, SpaceX, and PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) mission managers met today, Thursday, Feb. 1, to conduct a Flight Readiness Review at the agencys Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the review, teams provided an update on the mission status and certified the readiness to initiate final launch preparation activities.

Once launched, PACE will use three instruments called the Ocean Color Instrument, Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration, and the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter No.2 to collect data on clouds, aerosols, and phytoplankton growth that can determine ocean color. Measuring the color and amount of light will help scientists better understand the types and locations of microscopic algae, which are vital to the health of Earths oceans and its marine life.PACE will contribute to NASAs more than 20 years of global satellite observations of ocean biology and key measurements related to air quality and climate.

Up next, SpaceX will roll the fully integrated Falcon 9 rocket carrying the encapsulated PACE spacecraft to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Once vertical, the launch team will perform final checkouts ahead of liftoff scheduled for no earlier than 1:33 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 6.

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Teams Hold Flight Readiness Review for NASA's PACE Mission PACE Mission - NASA Blogs

NASA announced the four members for the planned August SpaceX mission to rotate crew on the International Space Station and it includes the first member of the U.S. Space Force flying to orbit.

The crew member, which Space Force calls a guardian, has already been to space, but for NASA as a member of the Air Force.

Piloting the SpaceX Crew-9 flight will be U.S. Space Force Col. Nick Hague, who previously had a scary initial ride the Air Force technically considered having reached space in 2018 that ended with an abort. It happened as he and a Russian crewmate cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin aboard a Soyuz capsule blasted away from a malfunctioning booster after launch from Kazakhstan.

It went from normal to something was wrong pretty quick, he said after the abort. We werent going to make it to orbit that day, so the mission changed to getting back down on the ground as safely as we could.

The altitude of the Soyuz capsule passed the 50-mile mark the U.S. considers for awarding astronaut status, although its shy of the Karman line, which is the internationally recognized line for having made it to space at around 62 miles high.

I got to experience a few seconds of weightlessness and I was able to watch a few things float around in the capsule, he said. I was also able to look out the window primarily to make sure, Hey, are we in a good attitude? Are we stable? Are we ready to come back down? But also to look out the window and realize, you know, looking down at the curvature of the Earth and out into the blackness of space, and realizing I got close but it wasnt going to be this time.

The duo got another shot, though, five months later in 2019, and that time they made it past the Karman line along with NASA astronaut Christina Koch. Hague spent more than 200 days on board the ISS. So Crew-9 will be his third or second flight to space depending on who you ask.

Commanding the Crew-9 flight will be rookie Zena Cardman, a member of the astronaut candidate class of 2017 that was nicknamed The Turtles by the astronaut class that preceded them.

She will be the 10th Turtle to make it space following Crew-8s upcoming flight targeting late February taking up classmate Matthew Dominick. That leaves only one Turtle without an space assignment yet Jonny Kim although he was named among the original Artemis astronaut candidates.

Also flying will be NASA astronaut and mission specialist Stephanie Wilson, who flew three times on Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-121, STS-120, and STS-131 logging 42 days in space, and Roscomos cosmonaut and mission specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov, making his first trip to space.

The quartet will spend about six months on board the station as part of Expeditions 71 and 72 to be relieved by either a SpaceX or possibly Boeing Starliner mission in early 2025.

Hagues return in 2019 led him to a post-flight role at the Pentagon with the Air Force, but working as leadership as director of test and evaluation for the newly formed Space Force. In 2021, Hague transferred from the Air Force to the Space Force, which at just over four years old now has about 14,000 military and civilian Guardians. Since August 2022, Hague has been back with NASA working on the Starliner program.

Roughly two-thirds of NASA astronauts have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Being a part of this mission is a unique honor, but its truly a collective effort, Hague said in a Space Force press release. Guardians worldwide ensure safe and secure operations of critical systems for launch and on station.

The ISS has been continuously populated since November 2020, first by alternating crews from the Space Shuttle Program and Souyz launches from Russia. After the shuttles stopped flying in 2011, it took nearly 9 years before SpaceX restarted human spaceflight to the ISS from the U.S. with the Demo-2 mission in May 2020.

Since then SpaceX has flown 46 humans to orbit on its fleet of Crew Dragon spacecraft including seven operational flights to the ISS for NASA and its ISS partners. Its also sent up three private missions for Axiom Space to the ISS.

A good portion of them are on the station right now, which has a population of 11 for now.

Right now both the Crew Dragon Endurance and Freedom are docked to the ISS as the four members of Crew-7 that arrived last August were joined earlier this month by the four members of the Axiom 3 mission.

Their departure and the arrival of replacement crews mark a busy first half of 2024 for the station.

The Ax-3 crew will climb aboard Crew Dragon Freedom as early as Saturday for their ride home to splash down off the coast of Florida while Crew-7 will await the arrival of Crew-8 thats slated for a late February launch from Kennedy Space Center before they make their return trip as well. A replacement Soyuz crew is slated to arrive in March.

And then in April, the first crewed test flight of Starliner is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas V to send up a pair of NASA astronauts for a short stay in Boeings efforts to join SpaceX as regular flight providers under NASAs Commercial Crew Program.

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Space Force to get its 1st astronaut on SpaceX launch this year - Orlando Sentinel

Starlab Space LLC (Starlab Space), the JV between Voyager Space and Airbus Defence and Space, has selected SpaceX to launch the Starlab commercial space station to LEO.

Starship, SpaceXs fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond, will launch Starlab in a single mission prior to the decommissioning of the International Space Station.

As a continuously crewed, free-flying space station, Starlab will serve a global customer base of space agencies, researchers, and companies, ensuring a continued human presence in LEO and a seamless transition of microgravity research from the International Space Station into the new commercial space station era. Starlab will launch on a single flight, be fully outfitted on the ground, and ready to permanently host four crew members in LEO to conduct microgravity research and advanced scientific discovery.

The Starlab team has advanced through multiple program milestones over the past year, including completion of the Systems Requirements Review, System Definition Review, Human in the Loop testing, and more. Starlab Space recently announced a teaming agreement with Northrop Grumman and plans to collaborate with the European Space Agency. Additional Starlab partners include Hilton Hotels and The Ohio State University.

SpaceXs history of success and reliability led our team to select Starship to orbit Starlab, said Dylan Taylor, Chairman and CEO, Voyager Space. SpaceX is the unmatched leader for high-cadence launches and we are proud Starlab will be launched to orbit in a single flight by Starship.

Starlabs single-launch solution continues to demonstrate not only what is possible, but how the future of commercial space is happening now, said Tom Ochinero, Senior Vice President of Commercial Business at SpaceX. The SpaceX team is excited for Starship to launch Starlab to support humanitys continued presence in low-Earth orbit on our way to making life multiplanetary.

Starlab Space LLC is a transatlantic joint venture between Voyager Space and Airbus that is designing, building, and will operate the Starlab commercial space station. Starlab will serve a global customer base of space agencies, researchers, and companies, ensuring a continued human presence in low-Earth orbit and a seamless transition of microgravity science and research from the International Space Station into the new commercial space station era.

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Starlab Space selects SpaceX's Starship for historic launch of the commercial space station SatNews - SatNews

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SpaceX Crew-9 mission crewmembers (left to right) astronaut Stephanie Wilson,Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, astronaut Nick Hague, and astronaut Zena Cardman.

Credit: NASA

HOUSTONThree NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut have been selected for the SpaceX Crew-9 Dragon mission launch to the International Space Station (ISS), planned for no earlier than August. NASAs Zena Cardman, a geoscientist selected for astronaut training by the agency in 2017, will serve as...

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NASA Names Members Of ISS SpaceX Crew-9 Mission - Aviation Week

"It would have been nice to get a call from Elon Musk. But I guess workers are just disposable to them." Expendable Employees

SpaceX is being sued for negligence by the wife of an employee who was critically injured during a botched rocket engine test that left him in a coma, Reuters reports, as concerns over the workplace safety of the Elon Musk-led company continue to mount.

The employee, Francisco Cabada, was one of over 600 SpaceX injuries that were revealed in a Reuters investigationin November of last year.

Cabada was injured in January 2022, when a piece of a V2 Raptor engine, which powers SpaceX's Starship, broke off during pressure testing. It was sent flying into Cabada's head, fracturing his skull. Over two years later, the father of three is still in a coma.

The lawsuit was filed on his behalf by his wife, Ydy Cabada, in a state court in Los Angeles last week.

"It would have been nice to get a call from Elon Musk," Ydy told Reuters in November. "But I guess workers are just disposable to them."

According to anonymous SpaceX employees who spoke to Reuters, the part that struck Cabada, a fuel-controller assembly cover, had a known flaw that was not addressed before the test was carried out.

Just as damning, the investigation also revealed that senior managers at the Hawthorne California site where Cabada was injured were repeatedly warned about the dangers of rushing the engine's development.

The sheer tally of injuries suggests that there's a systemic problem at work one that's already led to the death an employee of which SpaceX tried to keep under wraps. Many more have suffered broken or dislocated bones, crushed hands, lacerations, and even injuries that resulted in amputations, according to Reuters.

Per the news agency's investigation, both current and former employees have blamed the unsafe environment on Musk's extremely demanding deadlines a trademark of his leadership.

SpaceX, after all, is known to embrace the Silicon Valley ethos of "move fast and break things," which holds that with more failures comes quicker improvements.

Sometimes, though, things can "break" quite catastrophically, and you end up with an exploded Starship or, far more tragically, injured employees.

It's worth noting that this isn't the only Musk-led venture with workplace safety concerns. For years, the EV automaker Tesla has come under fire for gruesome injuries that have occurred at its factories, amidst consistently re-emerging reports that workers are forced to sleep at the assembly line.

What will come of the lawsuit is unclear, but it seems that as long as a quick turnaround is the bottom line at these companies, workers will continue to pay the price.

More on SpaceX: SpaceX Buys Mysterious Aircraft

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Wife Sues SpaceX After Rocket Test Leaves Husband in Coma - Futurism