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OneWeb, SpaceX satellites dodged a potential collision in orbit

Two satellites from the fast-growing constellations of OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink dodged a dangerously close approach with one another in orbit last weekend, representatives from the US Space Force and OneWeb said. It’s the first known collision avoidance event for the two rival companies as they race to expand their new broadband-beaming networks in space.

On March 30th, five days after OneWeb launched its latest batch of 36 satellites from Russia, the company received several “red alerts” from the US Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron warning of a possible collision with a Starlink satellite. Because OneWeb’s constellation operates in higher orbits around Earth, the company’s satellites must pass through SpaceX’s mesh of Starlink satellites, which orbit at an altitude of roughly 550 km.

One Space Force alert indicated a collision probability of 1.3 percent, with the two satellites coming as close as 190 feet — a dangerously close proximity for satellites in orbit. If satellites collide in orbit, it could cause a cascading disaster that could generate hundreds of pieces of debris and send them on crash courses with other satellites nearby.

Currently, there’s no national or global authority that would force satellite operators to take action on predicted collisions. Space Force’s urgent alerts sent OneWeb engineers scrambling to email SpaceX’s Starlink team to coordinate maneuvers that would put the two satellites at safer distances from one another.

While coordinating with OneWeb, SpaceX disabled its automated AI-powered collision avoidance system and manually steered its Starlink satellite out of the way, according to OneWeb’s government affairs chief Chris McLaughlin. It was unclear why exactly SpaceX disabled the system. SpaceX, which rarely responds to reporters, did not return multiple requests for comment for this story, nor did David Goldman, the company’s director of satellite policy.

SpaceX’s automated system for avoiding satellite collisions has sparked controversy, raising concerns from other satellite operators who say they have no way of knowing which way the system will move a Starlink satellite in the event of a close approach. “Coordination is the issue,” McLaughlin says. “It is not sufficient to say ‘I’ve got an automated system,’ because the other guy may not have, and won’t understand what yours is trying to do.”

OneWeb satellites (left) launch in batches of 36. SpaceX’s Starlink satellites (right) launch in batches of 60.

Images: OneWeb / SpaceX

SpaceX has roughly 1,370 Starlink satellites in orbit and is on track to launch thousands more, with ambitions to build a 12,000-satellite network of global broadband coverage. OneWeb has launched 146 satellites so far, of the roughly 650 it plans to send into orbit for a similar global network, operating in higher orbits around Earth. And Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has pledged to join the same race, planning to launch over 3,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit. All companies want to beam broadband internet into Earth’s most rural regions to meet increasing demand from consumers and governments alike.

“This event was a good example of how satellite operators can be responsible given the constraints of global best practices,” says Diana McKissock, the head of the Space Force 18th Space Control Squadron’s data sharing and spaceflight safety wing. “They shared their data with each other, they got in contact with each other, and I think in absence of any global regulation, that’s… the art of the possible.”

Still, the sharp increase of satellites in orbit, mainly driven by SpaceX’s Starlink venture, has moved faster than any authority can regulate the industry for safety. McKissock says SpaceX has made efforts to increase its transparency in orbit; the company currently provides location data of its satellites to other operators. But its automated system for avoiding collisions is a closed book where openness and coordination are needed the most, analysts and operators say.

“What is the point of having it if you have to turn it off when there’s going to be a potential collision?” Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation says, adding that the void of any clear international framework for managing active objects in space makes it largely unclear who would be held responsible if a collision actually occurred.

Satellite maneuvers in space are common, but worry in the industry is mounting as OneWeb, SpaceX, Amazon, and other companies race to toss more satellites into space. And this Starlink close call isn’t the first. In 2019, a European Space Agency satellite had to move out of the way of a Starlink satellite to avoid a potential collision. SpaceX didn’t move its satellite because of a computer bug that prevented proper communication with ESA, it said at the time.

With more OneWeb satellite launches planned on a monthly basis, and with planned constellations from Amazon and Telesat in higher orbits than Starlink, the need to establish clear rules of the road in orbit is becoming more urgent than ever. SpaceX looms especially large, not just because of the size of its constellation but because of where it’s sending them. “OneWeb and others will have to transit through Starlink to reach their destinations, so SpaceX needs to ensure now that other satellite operators can do that safely,” says Caleb Henry, a satellite industry analyst at Quilty Analytics.

McKissock says the 18th Space Control Squadron is fully aware of the industry concerns with SpaceX’s autonomous avoidance approach. “So it’s been interesting,” she says. “But like I said, I’m glad they talked to each other. The scary situation is when one of the operators is not communicative, and then it’s just crossing your fingers.”

YouTuber records himself trespassing at SpaceX’s Starship facilities

A YouTuber recorded himself entering SpaceX’s Starship rocket facilities in south Texas last month, freely sauntering on site. No security stopped him from wandering around the underside of SN11, the 16-story-tall rocket prototype that would launch and explode just a few days later.

The video was posted to a small YouTube channel called Loco VlogS, which is run by “Caesar.” Caesar did not respond to multiple emails and DMs asking for comment.

For space enthusiasts, SpaceX’s sprawling rocket campus in Texas just a few miles north of the Rio Grande is a tantalizing museum of rocketry just laying out in the open, housing millions of dollars worth of tech — some of which SpaceX has pitched to the Air Force and NASA. It doesn’t have the towering walls or advanced security one might expect a company to have for safeguarding sensitive (and potentially dangerous) rocket hardware.

Development of Starship, the centerpiece of Elon Musk’s goal to ferry humans and cargo to the Moon and Mars, is aided in part by a $135 million NASA contract to help mature its design under the agency’s Human Lunar Landing system program.

“NASA takes safety and security very seriously,” said Monica Witt, spokeswoman for the agency. “The Human Landing System contracts include requirements for the contractors to appropriately safeguard information, software, and hardware. SpaceX notified NASA that they investigated this incident.”

Caesar entered the rocket site and seemingly moved around SpaceX hardware and equipment with ease, recording closeups of Starship SN11’s Raptor engines. The video garnered 5 likes and at least 100 dislikes, as well as a barrage of comments from pissed-off SpaceX fans, before he deleted it, according to a different YouTube account that archived the video. In a classic YouTube move, Caesar posted an apology video a few days later on April 1st.

“Yes it was wrong, yes it was illegal,” he said in the apology video. “But in my eyes, in that time of moment, I didn’t really think about that… What went through my mind was, ‘Okay, I’m never gonna get this opportunity again.’ So I went for it. And, well, this happened.”

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates launches and launch infrastructure for the sake of public safety, said it was aware of the video and brought it to SpaceX’s attention. “Maintaining the physical security of a launch facility is an important aspect of ensuring public safety,” a spokesman said. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

The site has had similar security issues before. In 2019, a SpaceX fan was arrested after posting pictures of himself near another Starship prototype to social media.

SpaceX rocket debris lands on man’s farm in Washington

A pressure vessel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stage fell on a man’s farm in Washington State last week, leaving a “4-inch dent in the soil,” the local sheriff’s office said Friday.

The black Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel, or COPV, was a remnant from the alien invasion-looking breakup of a Falcon 9 second stage over Oregon and Washington on March 26, local officials said. The stage reentered the atmosphere in an unusual spot in the sky after sending a payload of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to orbit.

A Grant County, Washington property owner, who told authorities he didn’t want to be identified, found the errant COPV — roughly the size and shape of a hefty punching bag — sitting on his farm one morning last weekend. He reported it to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office, GCSO spokesman Kyle Foreman said in a phone call. A sergeant was dispatched on Monday to check it out.

“Neither the property owner nor our sergeant are rocket scientists, of course, but judging from what had happened a few days prior, it looked to them like it was possibly debris from the Falcon 9 reentry,” Foreman said. So the sergeant called SpaceX, which confirmed to GCSO it appeared to be their’s and dispatched employees to retrieve the COPV on Tuesday. SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The COPV left a neat, COPV-shaped dent in the man’s farm.

Photo: Grant County Sheriff’s Office

“Of course we didn’t have a protocol for this, so we just erred on the side of returning someone’s property to them,” Foreman said.

A COPV is a part of the Falcon 9’s second stage, the smaller section of the rocket that detaches from the main stage at the edge of space and boosts satellites farther from Earth. The COPV stores helium at pressures of nearly 6,000psi, which is used to pressurize the second stage’s large tanks of propellant.

While most second stage parts either hang out in orbit for years or reenter Earth over the ocean, last week’s stage put on a spectacular nighttime show over populated areas in the northwestern US. And somehow from that show, a COPV ended up embedded roughly 4 inches into the property owner’s farmland, some 100 miles inward from the Pacific coast.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a keen tracker of things in space, had been keeping tabs on the second stage and said its reentry wasn’t a surprise — but the timing and location of the reentry was a head-scratcher.

“It is a bit of a puzzle that the stage was not de-orbited under control back on March 4 — looks like something went wrong, but SpaceX has said nothing about it,” McDowell said. “However, reentries of this kind happen every couple of weeks. It’s just unusual that it happens over a densely populated area, just because that’s a small fraction of the Earth.”

The COPV in Washington wasn’t the only piece of debris to land on US soil in recent weeks. An absolute hellstorm of debris rained over SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities on Tuesday when a Starship prototype exploded mid-air during its attempt to land, marking the fourth explosion of a Mars rocket prototype in a row in Elon Musk’s speedy Starship test campaign. The 16-story-tall test rocket successfully launched over six miles in the air, but its return was utterly unsuccessful and resulted in the loss of all test data from the mission.

Former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine joins satellite internet firm Viasat’s board

Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine is joining space-based broadband firm Viasat’s board of directors as his latest post-NASA gig, after joining a space-focused private equity firm in January. Wading into the world of satellite internet, he says he’s concerned about the digital divide and the future of humanity, and he wants to try something new.

“When I left NASA I had a lot of different phone calls and texts on what I should be doing next or what I could be doing next,” Bridenstine tells The Verge. A mentor, he said, suggested he reach out to companies he’s interested in, so he emailed Viasat’s cofounder and executive chairman Mark Dankberg and asked if they need any help.

“There’s a digital divide and we need to close that,” the former Congressman and NASA chief said, adding that he thinks Viasat’s approach of beaming internet from long-distance orbits with massive, high-throughput satellites is the right plan. He said he was also attracted by the company’s goal of cutting internet costs — almost invoking a mantra similar to the one he repeated non-stop at NASA about cutting costs of astronaut rides to space.

“I mean, ultimately, if we want more of the world to be connected, we have to drive down the costs,” he said.

Southern California-based Viasat, a longtime provider of internet from space, plans to launch its technologically complex but long-delayed trio of internet satellites, called ViaSat-3, in roughly six-month intervals beginning in the first quarter of 2022. From super high orbits, those three satellites will shower the world with broadband internet at a throughput capacity of one terabyte per second.

Smaller satellites in lower orbits, and in larger swarms, are all the rage in satellite broadband these days, where the their proximity to Earth reduces the time it takes for internet signals to beam into homes and businesses. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation is growing rapidly, with over 1,300 satellites launched to space since 2019. Jeff Bezos’s Amazon is planning its own constellation called Project Kuiper. Both constellations are multi-billion-dollar undertakings, an investment that has sent other companies into bankruptcy. Viasat also has plans to send 300 internet satellites into low-Earth orbit.

For Viasat, bringing Bridenstine on board will help the company get an edge in “space systems and network technology globally,” Dankberg said in a statement, adding that “Jim is also an ardent proponent of preserving safe access to space via proactive measures to protect the space environment and contain orbital debris.”

Bridenstine wasn’t sure how demanding the new job will be, but he’ll partake in Viasat’s quarterly board of director meetings and possibly its annual shareholder meetings. “But if there are other areas where I can either fill gaps or provide support during the course of the year, I have no doubt that Viasat will probably be giving me a call,” he said.

Less than a week after leaving office on January 20th, when President Biden was sworn in, Bridenstine joined aerospace and defense private equity firm Acorn Growth Companies.

SpaceX is adding a glass dome on Crew Dragon for 360 views of space

The Crew Dragon capsule poised to fly four civilian astronauts to space this year is getting an upgrade: a glass dome will be added at the top to give space tourists a 360-degree view of the cosmos. Plans for the window were announced on Tuesday as SpaceX and the team managing the tourist mission, Inspiration4, revealed the full crew for the upcoming expedition.

The glass dome-shaped window replaces Crew Dragon’s docking adapter at its nose since the spacecraft won’t be docking to the International Space Station. It’s similar to the famed cupola aboard the International Space Station, but Crew Dragon’s appears to be an uninterrupted sheet of glass, with no support structures dividing the window’s view.

Crew Dragon’s protective aerodynamic shell that shields the hatch door area during launch will pop open to expose the glass dome once the craft is safely in orbit. Based on the rendering SpaceX tweeted, the cupola would fit at least one crew member from the chest up, revealing panoramic views of space.

SpaceX designed Crew Dragon under a $2.6 billion contract from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, a public-private initiative to stimulate the development of privately built space capsules that’ll serve as NASA’s primary rides to space. Boeing is developing a competing capsule, Starliner, under the same program. Crew Dragon is already in its operational phase and flew its first two crews of government astronauts to space last year.

NASA, which certified Crew Dragon for astronaut flights last year, said it doesn’t plan to use the cupola version of Crew Dragon for NASA astronaut missions and that the window’s installation doesn’t require NASA safety approval.

“NASA currently does not have plans to fly a modified version of the Crew Dragon,” agency spokesman Josh Finch told The Verge. “As a fully commercial launch, NASA does not need to approve SpaceX’s design for the company’s private missions. NASA will continue to maintain insight into SpaceX’s systems through our normal work, including SpaceX sharing flight data from non-NASA missions.”

The charity-focused Inspiration4 mission, led by billionaire tech entrepreneur and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman, is slated to launch on September 15th, sending Isaacman and three other non-professional astronauts on a free-flying trip in Earth orbit for three days. It will use the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule that’s currently docked to the ISS in support of NASA’s Crew-1 mission, and the glass window will be installed during Resilience’s refurbishment in Florida after it returns.

“We’ve done all the engineering work, we continue to go through all the analysis and testing and qualification to ensure everything’s safe, and that it doesn’t preclude any use of this spacecraft for other missions,” Benji Reed, SpaceX’s director of Crew Dragon mission management, said during a press conference on Tuesday.

The Inspiration4 crew includes Christopher Sembroski, a Lockheed Martin engineer from Everett, Washington; Sian Proctor, a college professor from Tempe, Arizona; and previously announced Hayley Arceneaux, a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital employee and bone cancer survivor.

The new window was announced on the same day that Richard Branson’s space tourism firm, Virgin Galactic, unveiled an upgraded version of its suborbital spaceplane SpaceShipTwo called SpaceShip III.

SpaceX’s latest Starship landing attempt ends in destruction

Another Starship prototype exploded Tuesday morning during an attempt to nail a tricky landing technique at SpaceX’s test launch facilities in Texas. The landing attempt followed a clean liftoff and a demonstration of the rocket’s autonomous in-flight maneuvers, marking SpaceX’s fourth high-altitude flight since December.

The SN11 rocket launched at 9AM ET in foggy weather at SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities, soaring roughly 6.2 miles to test the rocket’s three Raptor engines and a number of in-flight maneuvers that steer it back to land. As SN11 neared peak altitude, the engines gradually shut down to begin its free-fall back toward the ground before executing a “landing burn” — when one Raptor reignites to carry the rocket gently down to a landing pad not far from where it launched. At least, that’s the idea.

“Something significant happened shortly after landing burn start,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted shortly after the explosion. “Should know what it was once we can examine the bits later today.”

A live camera feed aboard SN11, streamed by SpaceX, froze moments before its landing attempt. Another feed, provided by the website NASA Spaceflight, showed large chunks of debris raining on SpaceX’s Boca Chica facilities, though the landing explosion itself was obscured by fog.

“Looks like we had another exciting test,” SpaceX’s John Insprucker said on SpaceX’s live stream, suggesting the vehicle was lost in another eventful landing attempt. “We do appear to have lost all the data from the vehicle, and the team of course is away from the landing pad.”

“At least the crater is in the right place!,” Musk tweeted. One of SN11’s engines “had issues” during ascent and didn’t fire strongly enough during the landing burn, he said.

While the fog ruined views of SN11’s landing attempt, a weather radar from the National Weather Service in Brownsville, Texas detected a plume of gas that indicated an explosion in mid-air.

If anyone on South Padre Island, or in the Boca Chica area, Port Isabel, Laguna Vista, etc received an abrupt and startling wakeup this morning, this was probably it. Our radar was able to see #SN11 unfortunately explode in mid-air. #RGVwx #txwx pic.twitter.com/Ohyyq3bIpf

— NWS Brownsville (@NWSBrownsville) March 30, 2021

Developing…

SpaceX rocket debris creates a fantastic light show in the Pacific Northwest sky

Stargazers in Oregon and Washington were treated to an unexpected show last night: what looked like a meteor shower streaking lazily across the night’s sky that was very likely the remains of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, burning up as it travelled through the atmosphere.

Although SpaceX has not yet claimed responsibility for the spectacle, numerous meteorologists and astronomers ID’ed the lights in the sky as harmless rocket debris. (You can seen plenty of videos of the event in the replies to this Twitter thread.)

“We got a really good show tonight thanks to SpaceX,” James Davenport, an astronomer from the University of Washington, told NBC-affiliate KING5. “This was the top end, what we call the second stage, of a Falcon 9 rocket. It was actually launched about three weeks ago and it did exactly what it was supposed to do: it put satellites in orbit.”

“The only failure it had was it didn’t complete its de-orbit burn, so it didn’t come down when and where we expected it. It’s just been waiting to fall for the last three weeks and we got lucky and it came right over head.”

The Falcon 9 is a partially reusable two-stage rocket. The first stage, housing nine of SpaceX’s Merlin engines, does the initial heavy lifting, getting the rocket off the ground, while the second stage, with just a single Merlin engine, guides it into a parking orbit.

The first stage can be steered back down to Earth, and it’s this section of the rocket you’ve probably seen safely landing (or sometimes not!) on SpaceX’s drone ships. The second stage is usually left to decay in orbit or directed to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere.

This particular launch took place on March 4th, putting another batch of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites into orbit, with the first stage of the rocket safely landing back on Earth.

The Falcon 9 rocket is constructed from two stages. The first can be safely landed back on Earth (as seen above) while the second is usually directed to disintegrate in the atmosphere.

Image: SpaceX / The Verge

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, tweeted a thread about the event, noting that this sort of debris re-entry is not uncommon. “This is the 14th piece of space junk with a mass over one tonne that has reentered since Jan 1st this year,” said McDowell. “In other words, about one a week. Plus lots more smaller bits of course.”

McDowell notes that it can be tricky to predict the timing of these re-entries. The debris breaks up high in the atmosphere, around 40 miles or 60 kilometers above the ground — that’s well above the cruising altitude of commercial flights (around eight miles or 12 kilometers up). But the combination of headwinds in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and the speed of travel (the debris is moving at around 17,000 mph) make it difficult to predict exactly when and where re-entry will take place.

The Falcon 9 second stage from the Mar 4 Starlink launch failed to make a deorbit burn and is now reentering after 22 days in orbit. Its reentry was observed from the Seattle area at about 0400 UTC Mar 26. pic.twitter.com/FQrBrUoBHh

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 26, 2021

4) But remember it’s going 17000 mph, so a 5 hour time uncertainty means an 85,000 mile (53000 km) location uncertainty. That’s more that one entire loop around the Earth. That’s why we couldn’t tell in advance that it would be the Seattle area that would see the reentry.

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 26, 2021

The National Weather Service (NWS) of Seattle also identified the bright lights as debris from a Falcon 9 second stage. The NWS noted that the speed of such debris re-entry is much slower than that of meteor showers, which move at speeds greater than 45,000 mph.

Such re-entries are generally safe, with all rocket components and material burning up in the atmosphere. As Seattle’s NWS tweeted: “There are NO expected impacts on the ground in our region at this time.”

Right now, it seems like the only lasting effect will be a lot of fantastic footage like the video below:

SpaceX moves to beam Starlink internet into cars, boats, and aircraft

SpaceX is seeking regulatory approval to connect its rapidly growing network of internet-beaming Starlink satellites to cars, trucks, shipping boats, and aircraft. The request, filed last Friday with the Federal Communications Commission, marks SpaceX’s biggest step yet toward connecting Starlink to the automotive sector, a potentially lucrative line of business that would expand the company’s current stationary offerings from rural homes.

The March 5th FCC filing asked for “a blanket license authorizing operation” of Starlink terminals on so-called Earth Stations in Motion — an umbrella term for cars, trucks, maritime vessels, and aircraft. “No longer are users willing to forego connectivity while on the move, whether driving a truck across the country, moving a freighter from Europe to a U.S. port, or while on a domestic or international flight,” the filing read.

With over 1,000 satellites in space, SpaceX’s Starlink has at least 10,000 users through an invite-only beta program it started last year. The beta program is currently aimed at rural parts of the US that have little to no internet connectivity. A Starlink kit with an antenna and router costs $499, plus $99 per month for speeds around 70 to 130 Mbps. Last month, SpaceX started accepting refundable $99 Starlink preorders for “a limited number of users per coverage area,” which so far includes parts of the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom.

SpaceX’s request to link Starlink with vehicles didn’t give any details on any new antenna designs, but it said they “are electrically identical to its previously authorized consumer user terminals but have mountings that allow them to be installed on vehicles, vessels and aircraft.” The mobile antennas would fit on the “masts of ships or the tops of semi- trucks” — or, in consumer cases, on “passenger cars or pleasure boats,” another SpaceX filing said. Unlike Starlink’s current terminals, which come with mounts and are installed by the customer, the vehicle antennas will be set up by “qualified installers.”

Throwing a Starlink terminal on a moving vehicle isn’t a surprising move for SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who said early last year “it’s certainly something that could happen in coming years,” when asked in an earnings call if Teslas will ever be able to sport their own Starlink antennas. And in late 2020, SpaceX asked for an experimental FCC permit to operate Starlink terminals on Gulfstream jets.

With the new filing, SpaceX now appears to be more focused on their mobile connectivity efforts, hinting that they plan to target their service at “drivers, ship operators, and air travelers in the United States and abroad.” Offering Starlink internet to those customers will “allow operators and passengers to access services that enable increased productivity,” SpaceX said. The filing also mentioned that it would “enhance the security of mobile platforms” but provided no further insights into those plans.

SpaceX lands Starship prototype for the first time — and then it blows up

SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype landed on Wednesday for the first time after carrying out a high-altitude test flight in Texas — but exploded minutes later on its landing pad. The rocket, an early test version called SN10, demonstrated a few complex dances in mid-air before clinching a soft touch down, aiming to nail a key milestone in Elon Musk’s campaign to build a fully reusable rocket system.

After aborting an initial launch attempt earlier in the day, the prototype lifted off at 6:14pm ET and soared 6 miles above SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities. Unlike the last two tests with SN8 and SN9, which launched successfully but exploded on their landing attempts, SN10 stuck a lopsided landing on a slab of concrete not far from its launchpad, appearing to survive its daring landing maneuver for a few moments before being consumed in a fireball.

NASA Spaceflight

The launch test’s main objective was to demonstrate the computer-controlled movements of the rocket’s four aerodynamic flaps that steer its descent before landing, SpaceX engineer and live stream host John Insprucker said during the company’s broadcast.

At the end of its climb to 6.2 miles, each of the the rocket’s three Raptor engines gradually shut down to prepare for a brief free-fall back to land, reorienting itself horizontally with its “belly” facing the ground.

Then came the “belly flop” maneuver. The rocket’s three engines reignited to swoop itself into a vertical position for landing.

SN10 slowly descended on its landing pad, softly touching down but leaning slightly to the side. Insprucker declared it a success on SpaceX’s live feed: “Third time’s a charm, as the saying goes. We’ve had a successful soft touchdown on the landing pad.”

“As a reminder, the key point of today’s test flight was to gather the data on controlling the vehicle while reentering, and we were successful in doing so,” he said.

The SpaceX live feed ended before SN10’s explosive demise. Another feed, provided by the website NASA Spaceflight, kept the cameras rolling and captured the fireball, which lofted the 16-story-tall rocket back into the air before crashing back down on its side.

Musk tweeted at 7:35PM ET to celebrate that SN10 landed “in one piece,” but jokingly noted two minutes after that the rocket had an “honorable discharge.”

RIP SN10, honorable discharge

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 4, 2021

Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation, fully reusable Mars rocket system designed to ferry crews of astronauts and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to Earth orbit, the moon and eventually Mars. The last three prototypes SpaceX has test-launched are early versions of the top half of the full Starship system, whose bottom half is a reusable super-heavy booster powered by an array of SpaceX’s new Raptor rocket engines.

Update March 3rd, 7:44PM ET: Added tweets from Elon Musk.

With ‘Starbase’ and a new Starlink factory, Musk deepens foray into Texas

Pieces of SpaceX’s ambitious plans to expand its sizable foothold in Texas were on full display this week in three very different corners of the internet. CEO Elon Musk speculated on Twitter about a proposed city in Texas named Starbase, while new job descriptions on the company’s website hinted at an anticipated “state of the art” factory for mass-producing Starlink satellites. And the company made its latest move in a protracted legal fight for a methane-rich piece of land that will supply fuel for Starship.

Here’s a breakdown of the latest details.

Starbase, Texas

Musk, who has said he’s moving to Texas and committed to more projects in the state last year to spite California’s pandemic restrictions, said on Tuesday he’s aiming to create a city called “Starbase” in Texas, teasing a new idea on Twitter as his space company expands its footprint elsewhere in the state.

That footprint, first planted in the Lone Star state over a decade ago, is growing rapidly under Musk’s dogged effort to build a “gateway to Mars.” SpaceX is headquartered in Hawthorne, California, but development for its Mars rocket Starship is primarily based in the more business-friendly state of Texas. Local and state incentives and wealth of prime real estate for building reusable, orbital-class rockets have catered to Musk’s speedy development timeline.

“Creating the city of Starbase, Texas,” he tweeted on Tuesday, adding in a response to a Twitter user that Starbase would encompass “an area much larger than Boca Chica” — the small community in south Texas that’s currently home to SpaceX’s growing test and production facility for Starship.

Creating the city of Starbase, Texas

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2021

SpaceX hasn’t made any official effort to rename Boca Chica, besides approaching county officials with the idea of incorporating a city in recent days, officials in Cameron County said.

“If SpaceX and Elon Musk would like to pursue down this path, they must abide by all state incorporation statutes,” Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño said in a statement. “Cameron County will process any appropriate petitions in conformity with applicable law.”

Starlink factory

Musk’s Starbase tweet came as SpaceX posted a new job opening for remote engineers in Austin, where it said the company is “breaking ground on a new, state of the art manufacturing facility” that will aim to “manufacture millions of consumer facing devices that we ship directly to customers (Starlink dishes, Wi-Fi routers, mounting hardware, etc).”

“Up to 25% travel to SpaceX Headquarters in Los Angeles, until Austin facility is fully established,” one of the job requirements for the position read. The Starlink manufacturing facility would become Musk’s second Austin-based venture. Last year, Musk announced that Tesla would build Gigafactory Texas, a $1 billion, 4-5 million square foot facility currently under construction. Musk has said it will “basically be an ecological paradise” for the public and the company’s expected workforce of 5,000 employees.

Musk’s shift from California seems to be accelerating SpaceX’s growth in Texas that began several years ago. In 2013, Texas created a Spaceport Development Corporation that has since doled out $13.2 million in economic incentives for SpaceX. And the company’s rocket engine development facility in McGregor, Texas, first leased in 2003, is undergoing a $10 million upgrade, with $2 million in subsidies from local governments.

La Pita Wells

Two LLCs created by SpaceX, Dogleg Park and Lone Star Mineral Development, have been buying up dozens of properties in Boca Chica surrounding the company’s Starship plant. A few miles from Boca Chica, Lone Star secured an oil and gas lease from a company called Sanchez Oil and Gas Corporation to revive two inactive wells dubbed La Pita Wells. SpaceX plans to use the wells to extract methane, one of the two propellants used for its new Raptor engine that powers Starship.

But in true SpaceX fashion, the situation has gotten complicated. Lone Star’s bid to operate the wells now faces a legal fight. Dallas Petroleum Group, an oil and gas company operating in South Texas, says it owns the wells. In a lawsuit waged against SpaceX’s LLCs and Sanchez, Dallas Petroleum Group is demanding that the court force Sanchez to put the wells back in DPG’s name. SpaceX’s Lone Star argues that the wells have been inactive for years, making them ripe for a new lease.

In a closing statement filed on Monday, Lone Star attorneys said DPG “is not really planning to operate the La Pita Wells,” and its lawsuit to overturn Lone Star’s lease is “part of its plan to extract money from SpaceX.”

“The hope is that [SpaceX] can produce these properties by reentering these inactive wells and restoring the production for use in connection with their rocket facility operations,” an attorney for Lone Star said during a January hearing. In the Monday filing, Lone Star attorneys noted SpaceX and its LLC “have a unique ability to utilize the natural gas with different economic incentives…”

On SpaceX’s careers page, the company is looking for legal counsel who can help “negotiate complex construction and vendor contracts related to space/airport infrastructure development.”

Japanese billionaire is looking for eight people to join him for a Moon voyage on SpaceX rocket

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa invited the public on Tuesday to apply for a spot on SpaceX’s Starship in his private mission around the Moon, reaching out to a “wider, more diverse audience” two years after announcing he’d only ride with a select group of artists. The trip is slated for 2023, but that date might not hold.

“I want people from all kinds of backgrounds to join,” Maezawa said in a video posted Tuesday afternoon, when the contest’s application went live. “It will be 10 to 12 people in all, but I will be inviting 8 people to come along on the ride.”

Maezawa, the founder of Japan’s largest online fashion retailer, is worth about $2 billion. He was revealed as Starship’s first signed passenger back in 2018 during an event with CEO Elon Musk at SpaceX’s California headquarters. At the event, Maezawa, an avid art collector, announced his Dear Moon Project, which aimed to bring “six to eight artists from around the world” to join him in a roughly six-day lunar flyby mission sometime in 2023.

“These artists will be asked to create something after they return to Earth, and these masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us,” Maezawa said at the time.

In a YouTube video posted on Tuesday, Maezawa said that plan “has since evolved,” adding that “maybe every single person is doing something creative could be called an artist.”

Now, anyone who meets two criteria could get picked for the ride: Those who “can push its envelope to help other people and greater society in some way” and are “willing to support other crew members who share similar aspirations.”

Updates on the project have been scant over the past two years. In January 2020, Maezawa launched a bizarre campaign to search for a “female partner” who would accompany him on his trip around the Moon. A website for the contest received 27,722 applications, and Japanese streaming service AbemaTV was set to document the mission in a reality TV show called “Full Moon Lovers.” Weeks later, the show was canceled, and Maezawa called off his search due to “personal reasons,” he tweeted, apologizing to the AbemaTV crew and all of the applicants.

Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation, fully reusable Mars rocket system designed to ferry humans and up to 100 tons of cargo on future missions into deep space. The company has been rapidly testing early iterations of the rocket in Boca Chica, Texas. Two recent high-altitude flight tests launched and flew successfully, but both ended in fiery explosions on landing attempts. Under a rigorous and sometimes bumpy development timeline, Musk and SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell have said Starship’s first orbital flight could come at the end of 2021.

SpaceX’s other crew vehicle, Crew Dragon, is already in its operational phase and is racking up future flights with private astronauts and tourists. The acorn-shaped capsule flew its first two crews of astronauts to the International Space Station last year under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The private astronaut missions lined up include a flight to the space station planned for early next year carrying real estate investors and philanthropists, and an “all-civilian” charity-focused mission announced last month that’s slated for launch by year’s end.

Developing…

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin delays New Glenn debut to late 2022

Blue Origin is delaying the debut launch of its massive, centerpiece rocket New Glenn to late 2022, the company announced Thursday, citing a key Pentagon contract it lost out on to rival firms SpaceX and United Launch Alliance as the reason for the delay.

New Glenn is a massive, partially reusable heavy-lift rocket designed to launch anything from national security payloads and commercial satellites. Its first flight was previously slated for sometime in 2021.

“The current target for New Glenn’s maiden flight is Q4 2022,” the company said in a statement on Thursday. “The Blue Origin team has been in contact with all of our customers to ensure this baseline meets their launch needs.”

Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder and currently the world’s richest man, has invested billions into the New Glenn program, which has involved the construction of sprawling rocket production facilities in Cape Canaveral, Florida and an extensive renovation to the Space Coast’s Launch Complex 36, which Blue Origin leased in 2015.

The company bid for hefty launch contracts under the Air Force’s next-generation national security launch program, which guaranteed two winning rocket companies multibillion-dollar contracts and a share of all Pentagon launches between 2022 to 2027. The Air Force announced its decision last year — Blue Origin lost out to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin).

That loss “was a big hit for us,” Jarrett Jones, Blue Origin’s senior vice president for New Glenn, told SpaceNews, claiming it cost Blue Origin up to $3 billion. The design of New Glenn was partially tailored to send Pentagon satellites to space, and Blue Origin executives “had to consider the economics” when the Air Force went with other companies instead, Jones said.

“We hope to launch [national security] payloads in the future, and remain committed to serving the U.S. national defense mission,” a Blue Origin statement said.

Blue Origin received $255 million of a $500 million award from the Air Force as part of a precursor program to aid New Glenn development. As planned, the company was cut off from the award’s full amount after losing in the subsequent program.

But Bezos, unshackled from Amazon after announcing his decision to step down as CEO, is now expected to ramp up his involvement in managing Blue Origin, which he founded as a passion project in 2000. He said in 2017 he was liquidating $1 billion a year in Amazon stock to help fund Blue Origin.

Though it has yet to reach orbit and has fallen well behind SpaceX, which Elon Musk founded in 2002, Blue Origin in recent years has stepped up its competitive footing in the space industry. It’s currently leading a team of established defense companies in a bid to provide NASA’s next ride to the moon with its human lunar lander Blue Moon. SpaceX is also vying for that award with its Starship rocket system.

Another crucial business line for the company is its liquid BE-4 rocket engine that powers New Glenn. That engine will also power United Launch Alliance’s rocket, Vulcan — the same one that beat New Glenn to a lucrative Pentagon contract. Vulcan is on target for a late 2021 debut launch. And after some development hiccups last year, Blue Origin is expected to ship the flight-ready BE-4 engines to ULA in mid-2021 to keep Vulcan on schedule.

An aerial view of Blue Origin’s massive rocket factory in Florida, just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Image: Blue Origin

In the meantime, Blue Origin is taking its time with New Glenn (its motto, Gradatim Ferociter, is Latin for “Step by step, ferociously”). A test version of a New Glenn first stage briefly emerged from the company’s Florida facilities earlier this month, giving rocket enthusiasts one of the first major peaks at some New Glenn hardware.

And the company’s new Tank Cleaning and Testing facility, toured in a video it tweeted on Thursday, has become one of the only buildings tall enough to share the Cape Canaveral skyline with NASA’s behemoth Vehicle Assembly Building, which stands tall a few miles away.

Blue Origin said its expanse on Florida’s Space Coast has led to “more than 600 jobs” and represents an investment of $2.5 billion, which includes $1 billion to revamp Launch Complex 36, “which is nearing completion.”

Elon Musk co-authored a COVID-19 antibody study of SpaceX workers

More that 4,300 SpaceX employees volunteered to be part of a COVID-19 antibody study co-authored by CEO Elon Musk in 2020.

The study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Communications, shows evidence that infected people who exhibited milder symptoms developed less of an immunity to COVID-19 than those who got sicker from the disease. The group behind the study found some evidence that suggests there’s a particular threshold of antibodies that could provide immunity, though they wrote that “the precise levels […] associated with protection from re-infection remain unclear.”

Vaccines also produce a much stronger immune response than cases with little to no symptoms, the authors note. They hope that this research, and other studies like it, could help policymakers figure out how to distribute limited vaccine supplies effectively.

SpaceX employees were asked by email in April 2020 to be a part of the study — right around the time that Musk was spreading dangerous misinformation about the virus in internal company emails and on Twitter. In March 2020, Musk told SpaceX employees in an email that he believed they were more likely to die in a car crash than of COVID-19, and that he didn’t see the virus being “within the top 100 health risks in the United States.” He also tweeted that same month that there would “probably close to zero new cases” in the US “by [the] end of April.”

Nearly 500,000 Americans have died since. Musk contracted COVID-19 in November 2020 and said he experienced mild symptoms.

The spaceflight company had its existing medical director — who oversees SpaceX’s budding human flight program — work with an infectious disease expert from Harvard and a doctor from the Ragon Institute to develop the antibody testing program, according to The Wall Street Journal. A group of 30 total co-authors from MIT, Harvard, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Howard Hughes Medical Center, SpaceX, and others collaborated on the study. The effort received funding from, among others, the National Institutes of Health, Musk’s own charitable foundation, the Gates Foundation’s COVID-19 vaccine accelerator, and NASA’s Translational Research Institute for Space Health.

The employees who signed up gave blood samples roughly every month. The paper’s authors note that 92 percent of the volunteers were male, and the median age was 31, which could skew the results. The full paper and dataset are available for free on Nature’s website.

Elon Musk says Starlink internet speeds will double to 300 Mbps this year

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-based internet provider, will double in speed “later this year”, according to a tweet by Elon Musk, posted as a reply to someone who had just received their Starlink beta kit (via CNET). The company currently promises speeds between 50 to 150 Mbps, and Musk specifically calls out a 300 Mbps goal in his tweet.

While 300 Mbps isn’t unheard-of speed, it’s faster than many people currently have access to, especially in the low-to-medium population density areas that Musk talks about targeting in a second tweet.

Speed will double to ~300Mb/s & latency will drop to ~20ms later this year

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2021

Most of Earth by end of year, all by next year, then it’s about densifying coverage.

Important to note that cellular will always have the advantage in dense urban areas.

Satellites are best for low to medium population density areas.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2021

In the reply, Elon also tells the person that their latency should improve to around 20ms as well. In the speed test screenshots, their latency was at 34 and 44ms respectively, while Starlink’s website says to expect between 20 and 40ms during the beta.

The speed increase and latency improvements should come as a nice surprise to anyone who put down a $100 Starlink pre-order. However, it’s well known that Elon’s promises about the future should be taken with a grain of salt, especially if they’re about timelines. Still, this shows that SpaceX is looking to speed up Starlink, and it might be able to keep pace with what’s available from a copper wire running to your house.

SpaceX announces second crew member of its all-civilian space mission

Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, will join the first all-civilian trip to space, SpaceX announced today. She will orbit Earth for up to five days in the Crew Dragon capsule as part of the Inspiration4 mission. Crew members are being selected based on “mission pillars of leadership, hope, generosity and prosperity,” according to the press release for the mission. Arceneaux, SpaceX said, will represent hope.

Diagnosed with bone cancer at 10, she had some of the bones in her left leg replaced with titanium as part of her treatment. She was treated at St. Jude, where she now works with children who are being treated for lymphoma and leukemia. With the upcoming mission, Arceneaux will become the first person with a prosthetic body part to go to space.

The mission is slated for late 2021 and if all goes as scheduled, Arceneaux, at 29 years old, could also be the youngest American to go to space. The title of youngest person in space would still go to Gherman Titov, a cosmonaut who was 25 when he orbited Earth.

The selection process for crew members also involves a fundraising effort for St. Jude, with a sweepstakes where people can donate to St. Jude for chances to be the third member. The fourth crew member will be the winner of a contest sponsored by the billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is funding and commanding the mission.