United has announced that the FAA has approved its first Starlink-equipped aircraft type and that the first commercial flight is planned for May, less than eight months after the deal was first announced. The FAA issued a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for the Embraer 175 and the airline expects the first commercial flight to be […]

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is not happy with last week’s problem with Elon Musk’s Starship rocket which exploded over the Turks & Caicos Islands. The FAA has grounded future flights pending a detailed explanation and examination of the flight’s data. There are numerous reports and images of pieces of the rocket, especially its heat-resistant […]

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating a problem suffered by a SpaceX booster which upon landing on the ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’ floating recovery vessel on August 28th collapsed and exploded. The FAA has mounted a “mishap” because of the “permanent loss of vehicle”. The Falcon 9 rocket had successfully placed a cargo of […]

There were 3.3 million people viewing SpaceX’s live web-feed of its March 14th Starship launch, plus many, many millions watching via the world’s news channels as the rocket blasted off on its record-breaking flight. However, the FAA almost immediately issued an investigation order into what it said was a “mishap”. Elon Musk is perhaps not […]

The FAA has detailed and listed the 17 technical corrections that need to be carried out of the giant SpaceX Starship rocket before the third test flight can take place. The FAA says that its investigation into the rocket’s November 17th 2023 explosion has concluded. All updates are underway. SpaceX issued its own comments and […]

It is always fun going back a few years and Pierre Lionnet, director of research at ASD Eurospace, has done exactly that and gone back to Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) forecasts for the space industry as they saw things in 2015. Lionnet is too polite to say the forecasts were rubbish, but points out that […]

SpaceX now has a mega-constellation of some 5,400 Starlink satellites in orbit. Some of these are its Version 2 craft with sophisticated laser links and extremely rapid inter-satellite links. The 9,000+ installed laser links amount to a massive throughput for the fleet which Starlink says is 42 PetaBytes (PB) per day or 1260 PB/month. There […]

The FAA last week issued a report to the US Congress expressing concern over how the growing number of satellite constellations will dispose of their failed craft and what the FAA says are the risks to human life and property. The report says: “The dramatic rise of non-geostationary satellites, particularly those in low Earth orbit […]

The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has given SpaceX a list of 63 tasks that must be carried out before the new Starship rocket can be launched. Elon Musk has Tweeted that the rocket is ready for launch. On the upside, the FAA has closed its investigation as to what went wrong on the Starship’s first […]

Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX has built the first Starlink 2.0 satellite, which will be much larger and more powerful than the original versions. However, Musk’s Starship mega-rocket is the only way SpaceX will be able to get volume production of Starlink 2.0 into their orbits. The new satellite design is 22 feet (7 […]