The US Federal Aviation Administration has approved a commercial launch license for SpaceX's Starship rocket's third test flight. The test is scheduled for this morning at 7 am CDT, with a launch window of 110 minutes. SpaceX will target the Indian Ocean for Starship's slashdown. Details about the changes planned for flight 3 are available in the article.

SpaceX's Starship rocket flew halfway around the world yesterday, accomplishing a key demonstration of its ability to carry heavy payloads into low-Earth orbit. The successful launch builds on two previous flights last year. Thursday's flight tested Starship's payload bay door and performed a precursor test of an in-orbit refueling system. Photos from the launch are available in the article.

SpaceX's cameras recorded unprecedented views of atmospheric heating acting on Starship for a couple of minutes during Starship's descent on its third test. These views were possible thanks to Starlink terminals on the ship sending signals to satellites in low-Earth orbit, which were then sent back to Earth. The low-Earth orbit satellites were in space thanks to SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket, which conducted its first land-based landing days before Christmas in 2015. This article looks at the achievements that made Starship possible and takes a peek at the future of the project. The video of Starship reentering the atmosphere is available in the article.

The fourth SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy launch may be in the next month or so. Its goal will be to get Starship's upper stage to get through the high heating regime of reentry and make a controlled splat into the ocean. SpaceX aims to bring the Super Heavy booster back intact, having it land on a virtual tower in the Gulf of Mexico. It could attempt to land a Starship booster on the real tower as soon as the vehicle's fifth flight. The company is working to accelerate production of Starship vehicles to support higher flight rates and increase payload capacity.

Elon Musk gave a 45-minute speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas last weekend about making life multiplanetary, the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and SpaceX's plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization. SpaceX has now completed 327 successful launches, with 80% of those involving used boosters. This performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. While SpaceX's goals seem audacious, the company has proven that rocket reusability is a very viable thing, so its other goals appear a lot more achievable.

Elon Musk gave a 45-minute speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas last weekend about making life multiplanetary, the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and SpaceX's plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization. SpaceX has now completed 327 successful launches, with 80% of those involving used boosters. This performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. While SpaceX's goals seem audacious, the company has proven that rocket reusability is a very viable thing, so its other goals appear a lot more achievable.

Elon Musk gave a 45-minute speech at SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas last weekend about making life multiplanetary, the booster for Starship, the upper stage, and SpaceX's plans to ultimately deliver millions of tons of cargo to Mars for a self-sustaining civilization. SpaceX has now completed 327 successful launches, with 80% of those involving used boosters. This performance has given Musk confidence that reusability can be achieved with the Super Heavy booster that powers Starship. While SpaceX's goals seem audacious, the company has proven that rocket reusability is a very viable thing, so its other goals appear a lot more achievable.

Max Space wants to launch expandable stadium-sized habitats into Earth's orbit by the end of the decade. It has designed habitats that minimize the mass and volume of the payload required to be launched into space, providing people with room to live both in space and on other planets or moons. The company plans to launch the scalable habitats on SpaceX's rockets in 2027 and 2030. It will launch its first off-Earth test in two years.

A new 'Human Spaceflight' tab on SpaceX's website offers flights to Earth's orbit, the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon, and Mars, with missions beginning as early as this year. There is no pricing information for the offerings and interested customers will have to inquire through email. The Earth orbit mission, which will last three to six days, offers a view of the planet from 300 kilometers high for two to four passengers. Ten-day commercial missions to the ISS will be available as early as 2025. The missions to lunar orbit and Mars do not have listed timelines.

The US provided Boeing and SpaceX with funding to build a crewed space vehicle in 2014. Boeing received far more funding than SpaceX and it had far more experience, but the company still allocated fewer resources to the project than it needed to thrive. The company kept carrying technical debt forward so that additional work was lumped onto the final milestones. Other issues, such as the way the company was structured, cost fixation, siloed development, and a lack of proper testing, all worked together to kneecap the project.

The Federal Aviation Administration is kicking off a new environmental review of SpaceX's plan to launch Starships from Florida. The US Space Force is overseeing a similar Environmental Impact Statement review for SpaceX's proposal to take over a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. While the reviews can take a while and may delay SpaceX's plans, they show that SpaceX is finally cementing its plans to launch Starship from Florida.

While SpaceX's Starlink system for cell phones is still in its testing phase, the technology is already good enough to power a video call. SpaceX recently posted a video that showed a video call being completed through Starlink Direct to Cell satellites from unmodified mobile phones. The company has increased the number of cellular Starlink satellites from six to 38. Starlink tech can deliver download speeds as high as 17Mbps to unmodified Android phones.

The focus for the next Starship mission will be to control the reentry of the rocket's Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage - both vehicles broke apart during their descent on the last flight. The company aims to make the Super Heavy booster make a controlled pinpoint splash down in the Gulf of Mexico as the Starship upper stage attempts to survive its reentry back into Earth's atmosphere. The test will be a repeat of the previous test without the propellant transfer, without the Pez door open, and without the other items that SpaceX was working to demonstrate. NASA's main interest in the test will be seeing that SpaceX replicates the good engine performance it demonstrated on the last two flights. SpaceX is not planning to attempt a Raptor engine restart during the test.

SpaceX is targeting June 5 for its next Starship test flight. The highly anticipated flight seeks to demonstrate the Super Heavy stage's ability to make a soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico. It also aims for the Starship upper stage to make a controlled reentry through the Earth's atmosphere before falling into the Indian Ocean. The Super Heavy first stage failed to make a soft landing in previous attempts due to a blockage in a filter in the Raptor engines. The Starship upper stage lost the ability to control its altitude during its coast phase in space due to clogged valves used by its reaction control thrusters.

SpaceX's Starship's next test flight could be on June 5. The main objective of the test will be to evaluate the second stage's reusable heat shield as the vehicle tries to safely reenter the atmosphere for the first time. Composed of around 18,000 ceramic hexagonal tiles, the heat shield is vulnerable to even the loss of a single tile in most places. SpaceX still needs to receive a commercial launch license from the US FAA before the launch can move ahead.

SpaceX has revealed plans to launch its Starlink system for phones this fall in a filing about the FCC's new rules on supplying satellite connectivity to US carriers. The company says that the FCC's current framework for supplying satellite connectivity to phones is too restrictive and has urged the agency to loosen the aggregate limit on radio frequencies for cellular satellites, specifically the “one-size-fits-all aggregate out-of-band power flux-density.” It backs replacing the restriction with more granular band-specific limits. SpaceX's rivals have lobbied the Commission to maintain the restriction to protect against potential radio interference.

SpaceX's Starship launched successfully and made a controlled splashdown for the first time on Thursday. The test fell short of total perfection, but it was still a large success. Two of the 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed and there was damage to the ship's thermal protection tiles and one of its control flaps. SpaceX has already test-fired the ship for the next test flight, and the booster could be hot-fired soon. The next test flight, which could happen within a couple of months, may involve an onshore landing.

SpaceX's Starfactory started construction back in February. The upgrade gives Starbase an extra 100,000 square feet of factory floor to help SpaceX reach its ambitious goal of producing one Starship a day. SpaceX intends to start building Starship Version 2 at the new Starfactory. Starship Version 2 is said to hold more propellant, have improved reliability and a lower dry weight, and feature aerodynamic changes. There are currently over 1,800 full-time employees at Starbase.

SpaceX aims to fly its full stack Starship rocket for the fifth time in late July. The rocket was able to make a successful soft splashdown during its fourth test, giving the company the confidence to try a tower catch for the fifth test. Another area SpaceX will be testing is the second stage ship's heat shield, which is made of thousands of tiles. Many of the tiles fell off in the previous test even when the ship was on the ground.

SpaceX allows its employees to cash out some of their shares by selling to company-authorized outside investors around every 6 months. This article discusses an internal document from SpaceX about such a tender offer from 2022. Investors paid $70 per share to employees in the offer, an enormous discount compared to the $270 per share during the primary sale that year. The main reason for the price discrepancy comes from employees owning common stock - investors who buy into primary rounds typically buy preferred stock, which entitles them to dividends and liquidation preferences.

NASA has awarded SpaceX an $843 million contract to build a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station after its retirement in 2030. The vehicle will effectively destroy the ISS by pushing the station into reentry from orbit. It is unknown whether the vehicle's design will be based on one of SpaceX's existing spacecraft. NASA intends to replace the ISS with private space stations.

SpaceX will sell insider shares at $112 each in a tender offer that values the company at close to $210 billion. The company was valued at $180 billion in December. The new valuation is a record for an American private company. It puts SpaceX on par with some of the world's largest publicly traded companies by market capitalization. Terms on the tender offer haven't been finalized - the size of the offer could change depending on interest from both insider sellers and buyers.

Several agencies are now preparing impact statements for SpaceX's Starship launch plans. SpaceX plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA's Kennedy Space Center and up to 76 times per year from the Space Launch Complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Elon Musk aims to eventually launch Starship multiple times per day, with each launch delivering hundreds of tons of cargo to low Earth orbit or beyond. Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance have expressed concerns that SpaceX's high flight rate will have effects on other launch providers with infrastructure at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral.

Polaris Dawn, a mission designed to purchase the limits of SpaceX's technology and help pave the way for a longer-term human presence in space, is now set to launch no earlier than July 12. It will be SpaceX's second all-civilian mission and the first in its Polaris program. The mission plans include the first commercial spacewalk, research on human health in space, and tests to equip the spacecraft with Starlink Wi-Fi. It will reach an orbit of over 800 miles above Earth, the furthest out a human has gone from the planet since the Apollo era.

Europe is preparing to test launch a new single-use rocket, the Ariane 6 rocket, from French Guiana today. Development of the rocket was aimed at reducing the EU's reliance on SpaceX. Europe's satellites and military intelligence have come to depend on SpaceX. Officials fear that Europe and its armies may need to rely on the US company even during warfare.

SpaceX employees are working on the design and details of a Martian city. Teams are working on habitats and spacesuits to combat the planet's hostile environment. The initiatives are still in their infancy. Elon Musk told SpaceX employees in April that he expects one million people to be living on Mars in about 20 years. Musk's vision for Mars underlies most of the six companies that he leads or owns - each could potentially contribute to an extraterrestrial colony.

A SpaceX rocket has failed for the first time in nearly a decade. The upper stage engine of the Falcon 9 rocket malfunctioned several minutes into flight. It left 20 Starlink satellites in an orbit less than half of what was intended. The company is attempting to boost some of the satellites to a higher orbit using onboard ion thrusters, but it is unlikely to be successful. The satellites will likely return to the atmosphere and burn up. The Federal Aviation Administration says the problem must be fixed before SpaceX can fly its Falcon rockets again.

SpaceX will begin returning its Dragon crew and cargo capsules to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean sometime next year and end recoveries of the spacecraft off the coast of Florida. This will eliminate the tiny risk that a piece of debris from the ship's trunk section might fall on someone and cause damage, injury, or death. Debris from several Dragon missions have been discovered on properties over the past couple of years. SpaceX is unaware of any structure damage or injuries caused by this debris.

SpaceX plans to perform the first-ever human space flight over the Earth's poles before the end of this year. The Fram2 mission crew will comprise a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur, a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker. They will fly aboard Crew Dragon Endurance, which will be fitted with a cupola for both photography and filming. This will be SpaceX's third free-flying mission aboard Crew Dragon.

While SpaceX is the undisputed leader in launch, with a record 96 launches last year, it has a growing number of competitors that say they can bring much-needed supply and competitive pressure to the market. This article looks at the current medium-, heavy, and super-heavy lift rocket landscape. While some are yet to be operational, if any of these projects succeed, it will change everything in the industry.