Last week's explosion of a New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was clearly a setback for Blue Origin and NASA, but it was a learning experience for safety officials looking to open up the spaceport to hundreds more launches per year.

The launch base on Florida's Space Coast is gearing up for a flurry of new arrivals. SpaceX is building multiple launch pads for its super-heavy Starship rocket, which will operate within a few miles of launch pads operated by SpaceX rivals Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. Two other companies, Stoke Space and Relativity Space, are also developing launch sites along a narrow stretch of coastline at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

All of them have, or will soon have, rockets burning methane or liquified natural gas, replacing legacy launch vehicles fueled by kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid propellants. There are good technical reasons for making the switch, but until last week, engineers had scant real-world data on the damage that millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen would cause if a fully loaded rocket exploded on the launch pad or soon after liftoff.

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Last week's explosion of a New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was clearly a setback for Blue Origin and NASA, but it was a learning experience for safety officials looking to open up the spaceport to hundreds more launches per year.

The launch base on Florida's Space Coast is gearing up for a flurry of new arrivals. SpaceX is building multiple launch pads for its super-heavy Starship rocket, which will operate within a few miles of launch pads operated by SpaceX rivals Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. Two other companies, Stoke Space and Relativity Space, are also developing launch sites along a narrow stretch of coastline at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

All of them have, or will soon have, rockets burning methane or liquified natural gas, replacing legacy launch vehicles fueled by kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid propellants. There are good technical reasons for making the switch, but until last week, engineers had scant real-world data on the damage that millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen would cause if a fully loaded rocket exploded on the launch pad or soon after liftoff.

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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.

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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.

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