A bright Florida afternoon sky helped SpaceX and its Falcon 9 to successfully launch 49 of Starlink satellites on February 3rd. The triple success was the third Falcon 9 launch in barely 10 days. Two were from Florida and the other from Vandenberg Air Base in California. The two Floridian launches successfully returned their booster […]
SpaceX plans to launch its much-delayed batch of Starlink satellites later today (February 3rd). A Falcon 9 rocket will loft 49 Starlink broadband satellites into low Earth orbit. The launch, subject to the usual weather considerations is scheduled for 1:13 pm EST, which is the opening of an instantaneous window at Pad 39A at Kennedy […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch team have had a troubled weekend. First, three scheduled launches of an Italian satellite were scrubbed because of bad weather at Cape Canaveral. The rescheduled launch was planned for January 30th (6.11pm Florida time) but a cruise liner sailed into the formal ’no go’ zone waters downrange from the Cape and […]
A Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX will launch another large batch of Starlink broadband by satellite craft on January 29th. It will be the third SpaceX launch within six days. SpaceX is launching an Italian satellite (January 27th at 11:11 pm EST for launch of COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2 to orbit from SLC-40 in Florida) […]
Pakistan is echoing India in its decision to ban Elon Musk’s Starlink from soliciting pre-orders to its broadband-by-satellite system. Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority (PTA) announced on January 19th that Starlink had neither applied for, nor obtained, any licence from the PTA to provide Internet services to the country. “The directions came in the wake of reports […]
A textbook launch by SpaceX saw an additional 49 Starlink satellites placed into their transfer orbits on January 18th. Despite a technical delay the rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center pad at 21.02 Florida time. The Falcon 9’s booster landed some 9 minutes later on the floating drone-ship ‘A Shortfall of Gravitas’. This […]
There are 1469 SpaceX Starlink satellite working correctly, according to Elon Musk. He tweeted that another 272 are moving toward their operational orbits. However, SpaceX has launched a total of 1993, according to Musk, which suggests that 252 satellites are not working or somehow didn’t make it to orbit. Another 49 craft are scheduled to […]
SpaceX will launch 49 Starlink satellites from Kennedy Space Center today (January 18th). The launch is scheduled for 7.04 Florida time (00.04 UTC), subject to the usual weather considerations. The booster supporting this mission previously launched GPS III-3, Turksat 5A, Transporter-2, and six other Starlink missions. Following stage separation, SpaceX will land Falcon 9’s first […]
Analysts at investment bank BNP/Paribas, in a report on the media sector and satellite activity, suggest that the existing market (notably Europe’s two satellite giants SES and Eutelsat) could be affected by the EU’s decision on plans for a European-financed Low Earth orbiting constellation. The bank says: “In 2022, the EU is likely to make […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is altering its plan to send another 30,000 satellites in its Starlink mega-constellation into space using its existing Falcon 9 rocket fleet. A SpaceX lawyer, William Wiltshire, in a letter to the FCC explains that progress on the constellation is moving forward better than expected and that SpaceX plans to start launching […]