A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster made its 9th flight on March 14th (at 06.01 Florida time, 10.01 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center. This 9th use of the same booster is another record-breaking achievement for the SpaceX and Starlink teams. Another 60 Starlink satellites were placed into orbit on this, the 22nd batch of […]
SpaceX successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on March 11th, and brought back the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage to a landing on the ‘Just Read the Instructions’ floating barge. Astronomer and close observer of Starlink activity Jonathan McDowell says 1265 of the broadband satellites have been launched in total and 1200 are […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is seeking permission to launch its Starlink broadband-by-satellite service to moving vehicles. Musk, in a Tweet, stressed that Starlink was not targeting Tesla or other cars, but aircraft, ships, large trucks and RVs; “Our terminal is much too big [for cars]” he said. Sami Kassab, satellite analyst at investment bank Exane/BNPP, said […]
A fully-fledged rocket explosion occurred a few seconds after apparently landing flawlessly at Elon Musk’s Texas facility on March 3rd. At his Florida launch site, meanwhile, all went like clockwork with 60 new Starlink satellites launched with 100 per cent mission success. The launch on March 4th was something of a worry given that it […]
SpaceX says its February 15th failure to correctly return its Falcon 9 booster to its landing barge was down to a hole at the top of one of the Merlin engines. Benji Reed, SpaceX’s director of human spaceflight, speaking March 1st at a NASA news conference, said the hole permitted hot gas into the engine […]
An aborted take-off, barely 1 minute before launch late on February 28th for 60 Starlink broadband satellites is being rescheduled for 8.15pm (Florida time) today (March 1st). This is not the first delay for this particular batch of Starlinks. The Falcon 9 rocket was originally slated to fly earlier in February but certain issues with […]
Researchers at Quilty Analytics have carried out a running total of SpaceX’s fund-raising exercises and estimate that the Elon Musk-backed business has raised around $6 billion (€4.9bn) since the announcement of its – then proposed – Starlink broadband-by-satellite service in 2015. Quilty says its calculations show some $6.54 billion, not including debt financing and the […]
Elon Musk says download transmission rates on his mega-constellation of Starlink satellites will double to around 300 Mb/s later this year. Musk, in a Tweet, added that signal latency will also improve to around 20 milliseconds. He also said that Starlink coverage will reach subscribers around “most” of the planet by the end of this […]
The French communications regulator, ARCEP (l’Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques), has approved SpaceX’s Starlink broadband-by-satellite system for use and access to the nation. But the residents of a small village near Mont Saint-Michel abbey on the English Channel are saying a very firm “no”. The village, Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron, population 350, is fearful of the impact […]
Elon Musk’s broadband-by-satellite Starlink business is readying to open for business in Europe. The markets invited include France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Italy and others. It plans to launch its service in these European markets in mid to late 2021 on a “first come, first served basis”. Its service will deliver broadband internet connexions at 50-150Mbps […]