After completing what it said was a “thorough assessment,” the FAA on Wednesday ordered SpaceX to investigate anomalies that its Super Heavy booster experienced during the 12th test flight of its behemoth Starship rocket. The aviation regulator on Tuesday was ambiguous about whether an investigation would be required into Starship Flight 12, which launched Friday evening fromContinue reading "FAA grounds SpaceX Starship after V3 debut"
Ahead of what observers anticipate will be the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, SpaceX debuted its largest rocket yet on a mostly successful mission. Though Starship and the Super Heavy booster — which combined stand more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall, nearly the length of a Boeing 777 — suffered multiple engineContinue reading "What Starship Flight 12 means for SpaceX’s IPO"
Welcome to Edition 8.43 of the Rocket Report! A disclaimer: No one yet fully appreciates the ramifications of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explosion Thursday night on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. What we know as of this writing is that much of Blue's sole orbital-class launch pad has been destroyed, and the New Glenn rocket will be grounded for an extended period of time. It is too soon for any hot takes, at least until the Sun rises at the Cape on Friday morning. One thing I am sure of is that we will be writing about this event for weeks, months, and years to come.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Charting China's contribution to space junk. There's a problem with the drastic uptick in Chinese space launches over the last decade. China appears to be ignoring long-established norms about disposing of the upper stages of rockets, Ars reports. These are the parts of the vehicle that separate from the first stage of a rocket and push a satellite or spacecraft into orbit. In the early decades of spaceflight, launch operators routinely left upper stages in orbit after they released their payloads. But most launch companies today reserve enough propellant in their rockets to remove them from orbit to avoid the risk of spent upper stages becoming a source of space debris. But China is not following this trend. There has been striking growth in China’s rocket body mass. In the past five years, the mass of Chinese rocket bodies in long-lived orbits has risen from less than 100 metric tons to 252, according to a new analysis by Space Domain Awareness expert Jim Shell.
SpaceX has won a lucrative contract to provide the US military with a means of distributing space-based sensing and targeting data, forming the "backbone" of a rearchitected network after separate Pentagon initiatives stalled, officials announced Tuesday.
Space Systems Command, the Space Force's primary procurement and acquisition center, announced the $2.29 billion firm-fixed-price agreement, confirming long-simmering reports that the Pentagon was likely to tap SpaceX for a new communications network in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX's selection for the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone contract "accelerates the delivery of a resilient, high-speed communications network in space," Space Systems Command said in a statement.
The network will be based on technology originally developed for SpaceX's Starlink global Internet constellation. SpaceX already builds and launches specially designed satellites, called Starshield, for military applications. The SDN Backbone network in low-Earth orbit (LEO) will presumably use the Starshield platform.
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results.
The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX's Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket, the largest ever built, cleared the launch tower and turned onto an eastward heading over the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour later to conclude the first flight of the latest version of SpaceX's stainless-steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 fared better on its debut than the first flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025. Both past versions of Starship broke apart during launch on their inaugural flights.
SpaceX got within 40 seconds of launching the first flight of a taller, more powerful version of its Starship rocket Thursday, but a pesky problem with the launch tower kept the vehicle bound to Earth for at least one more day.
Clouds and rain showers cleared the area around SpaceX's launch site in South Texas, leaving mostly sunny skies over the Starship launch pad Thursday afternoon. SpaceX pushed back the launch time by one hour, but the countdown appeared to proceed smoothly once propellants began loading into the rocket.
That was true, at least, until the countdown clock paused 40 seconds before liftoff. The launch team repeatedly attempted to resume the countdown, only for the computer controlling the launch sequence to stop the clock again. There were five holds in all before SpaceX called off the launch attempt.
After nearly a quarter of a century operating as a private company, with its financial accounts a closely guarded secret, SpaceX on Wednesday afternoon released a detailed accounting of its business in a nearly 400-page S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
SpaceX, founded in 2002 and still led by Elon Musk, submitted the filing in anticipation of an initial public offering of its stock as soon as June 12.
The document revealed no major surprises about the company's space operations, but there was a trove of details about its sprawling operations, which now encompass launch, spaceflight, space-based Internet, and, thanks to its recent acquisition of Musk's xAI, social media and AI.
SpaceX has won a lucrative contract to provide the US military with a means of distributing space-based sensing and targeting data, forming the "backbone" of a rearchitected network after separate Pentagon initiatives stalled, officials announced Tuesday.
Space Systems Command, the Space Force's primary procurement and acquisition center, announced the $2.29 billion firm-fixed-price agreement, confirming long-simmering reports that the Pentagon was likely to tap SpaceX for a new communications network in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX's selection for the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone contract "accelerates the delivery of a resilient, high-speed communications network in space," Space Systems Command said in a statement.
The network will be based on technology originally developed for SpaceX's Starlink global Internet constellation. SpaceX already builds and launches specially designed satellites, called Starshield, for military applications. The SDN Backbone network in low-Earth orbit (LEO) will presumably use the Starshield platform.
SpaceX launched the first test flight of its upgraded Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster Friday, with mostly positive results.
The powerful rocket, propelled by 33 methane-fueled main engines, climbed away from SpaceX's Starbase launch facility in South Texas at 5:30 pm CDT (6:30 pm EDT; 22:30 UTC) Friday. Within a few seconds, the 408-foot-tall (124-meter) rocket, the largest ever built, cleared the launch tower and turned onto an eastward heading over the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean a little more than an hour later to conclude the first flight of the latest version of SpaceX's stainless-steel mega-rocket. Starship V3 fared better on its debut than the first flights of Starship V1 and V2 in 2023 and 2025. Both past versions of Starship broke apart during launch on their inaugural flights.
SpaceX got within 40 seconds of launching the first flight of a taller, more powerful version of its Starship rocket Thursday, but a pesky problem with the launch tower kept the vehicle bound to Earth for at least one more day.
Clouds and rain showers cleared the area around SpaceX's launch site in South Texas, leaving mostly sunny skies over the Starship launch pad Thursday afternoon. SpaceX pushed back the launch time by one hour, but the countdown appeared to proceed smoothly once propellants began loading into the rocket.
That was true, at least, until the countdown clock paused 40 seconds before liftoff. The launch team repeatedly attempted to resume the countdown, only for the computer controlling the launch sequence to stop the clock again. There were five holds in all before SpaceX called off the launch attempt.
Login
