History was made the moment the SpaceX ‘mechazilla’ mechanical arms grabbed the returning Super Heavy Starship booster. Even Elon Musk hadn’t wholly expected this level of success for his rocket programme. The Starship’s upper stage continued on its orbital flight to a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean and sufficiently on target for the landing […]
Thaicom, the Asian satellite and space tech company, has announced that its subsidiary, Space Tech Innovation Limited (STI), has signed an agreement with SpaceX for the launch of Thaicom-10, Thaicom’s upcoming, next generation, software-defined, high throughput satellite (SD-HTS). Thaicom-10 satellite, built by Airbus Defence and Space SAS (France), will provide over 120 gigabits per second […]
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Texas legislators this week that it will pass 4 million customers for Starlink. That is up from 3 million since the end of May. She was speaking while testifying before a state House Appropriations Committee meeting. Starlink has been rolling out to new markets on a near-weekly basis, and there […]
The Federal Communications Commissioners (FCC) are due to meet and vote on September 26th to potentially free up extra bandwidth for satellite communications. FCC chair Jessice Rosenworcel has written saying that freeing up 1,300 MHz in the 17 GHz band (17.3-17.8 GHz) for high-throughput satellite communications would “facilitate the deployment of high-speed broadband and other […]
On September 5th a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket placed its 7,001st Starlink satellite into orbit. That’s good news, and amongst that number there were 13 of its Direct to Cell (D2C) versions capable of communications direct to smartphones. Those D2C satellites now number 181 in orbit. But a report from Scotiabank itemises the very real […]
Elon Musk, in a Tweet on X, says he will “blast away the dead [cellular] zones,” helped by a launch on August 31st which added 26 Starlink satellites suitable for handling calls direct–to–cellular (DTC). The latest batch takes the number of DTC satellites to 168, with another launch likely later this week. However, waiting in […]
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 […]
AST SpaceMobile has enjoyed a spectacular rise in its share price over the past few days as enthusiasm for its target satellite–to–cellular service despite only having one test satellite in orbit. However, and despite much criticism, SpaceX’s Starlink might well steal AST’s thunder with its own satellite–based connectivity for smartphones. Starlink is basing a portion […]
SpaceX has told the FCC that it now has “more than 1.4 million” Starlink customers in the US, its largest market. In December 2023 it had claimed 1.3 million customers in the US. “Clearly, growth has slowed in the US, even while accelerating in other countries,” commented specialist satellite consultant Tim Farrar of TMF Associates. […]
“Falcon is baaaaaaaack!!!!!!” was the post from SpaceX’s president and COO Gwynne Shotwell following the triple launch weekend of three Falcon 9 rockets, and achieved just two weeks after a partial failure of a Falcon’s upper stage on July 11th. The weekend (July 27th/28th) certainly saw SpaceX regain its stride, and started to make up […]