SpaceX and US cellular provider T-Mobile will launch a direct-to-phone satellite connection using SpaceX’s second-generation Starlink craft. At an event August 25th (dubbed ‘Coverage: Above & Beyond’) T-Mobile’s CEO and President Mike Sievert and SpaceX’s Elon Musk announced what they described as a breakthrough new plan to bring cell phone connectivity everywhere on the planet. […]
Brendan Carr, an FCC Commissioner, has come out with a strongly worded statement saying that the FCC was wrong to reverse its former granting of Elon Musk’s $886 million infrastructure award. The cash reflected SpaceX’s bid for part of the FCC’s massive $20.4 billion rural broadband subsidy scheme. Musk’s bid stated SpaceX would provide broadband […]
Wars and international conflicts are increasingly targeting orbiting satellites, says a report from Aerospace Corp. The report says that as space-based services become ever more integrated with life and society on Earth, the international community will have to consider how commercial actors affect and are affected by crisis and conflict in space. Unfortunately, there are […]
Elon Musk had, by now, hoped to be using the SpaceX Starship rocket to launch its Starlink satellites in significantly larger batches that the current 50 or so per flight. But various regulations have kept the Starship demo flights firmly on the ground. The delay in testing and launching Starships is impacting Musk’s plan to […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning its next Starlink launches on August 19th and August 27th. First up is mission 4.27 on August 19th that 3.24pm Florida time from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Then, late on August 27th – although this might slip by 24 hours to August 28th – another batch […]
The European Space Agency (ESA) is contemplating using a number of SpaceX launch rockets to maintain its scientific and governmental missions because of delays to Ariane’s rockets and the absence of Russian rockets because of the Ukraine boycotts. ESA’s DG Josef Aschbacher, talking to Reuters, said that there were a number of options including Japanese […]
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket placed 46 Starlink satellites into one of five orbital shells in SpaceX’s internet constellation on August 12th. SpaceX began launching dedicated missions into one of the network two polar orbit shells last month. SpaceX has previously launched satellites into the other three shells at inclinations of 53 degrees, 53.2 degrees, […]
Washington State-based Spaceflight Industries’ subsidiary Andrews Space is readying its Shrpa so-called Space Tug, or satellite orbital recovery craft. Its latest version (Sherpa LTC-2) is a chemically powered satellite and was delivered on August 10th to SpaceX’s facility at Cape Canaveral in Florida ahead of a launch in September. The craft had already been delivered […]
The FCC has turned down Elon Musk’s SpaceX request for an $886 million (€860m) grant as part of the US government’s massive $20.4 billion rural broadband subsidy scheme. The FCC had previously awarded the sum back in 2020, but that move has now been rejected. In a statement, the FCC said the FCC said that […]
A report from BryceTech, which analyses and updates global rocket launch activity over Q2, says that SpaceX had the most launches during the three-month period. The 16 launches placed an overall 473 spacecraft into orbit, by far the most of any launch provider. Second place went to CASC, the China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation, […]