Tag Archives: SpaceX

The New York Times reports: SpaceX’s latest test flight of its Starship vehicle got off to a sobering start as the company was unable to recover the enormous booster stage of the rocket, the most powerful ever built. Instead of snapping back into its original place on the tower it lifted off from at a South Texas site, as it …

The New York Times reports: President-elect Donald J. Trump plans to attend a SpaceX launch in Texas on Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the planning, in yet another demonstration of the billionaire Elon Musk’s increasing closeness to the incoming president. SpaceX will be conducting its sixth test of its Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful rocket ever …

Courthouse News reports: In a pair of cases that may foreshadow the targeted deregulation of federal agencies under President-elect Donald Trump, a panel of judges at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Monday about the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board. The separate but similar cases were filed by Amazon after the NLRB accused the company of …

The New York Times reports: Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies. His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial. His companies have …

Ars Technica reports: The US Space Force’s Space Systems Command announced Friday it has ordered nine launches from SpaceX in the first batch of dozens of missions the military will buy in a new phase of competition for lucrative national security launch contracts. The nine launches are divided into two fixed-price “task orders” that Space System Command opened up for …

The Hill reports: SpaceX filed a lawsuit against a California commission Tuesday, accusing members of political bias after they rejected the aerospace company’s request to allow more rocket launches from an air base in the state. The suit was filed in federal court against the California Coastal Commission, a state agency tasked with planning and regulating the land and water …

ABC News reports: SpaceX pulled off the boldest test flight yet of its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday, catching the returning booster back at the launch pad with mechanical arms. A jubilant Elon Musk called it “science fiction without the fiction part.” At the flight director’s command, the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad where it had blasted …

The Los Angeles Times reports: SpaceX’s plans to launch more rockets from the California coast were rejected by a state commission this week, with some officials citing Elon Musk’s political posts on X and raising concerns about the billionaire’s labor record at his companies. The plan to increase the number of rocket blasts into space up to 50 a year …

The Texas Tribune reports: Elon Musk gave $1 million last month to a powerful tort reform group that is one of the main political forces backing Republicans in battleground legislative races this fall, marking the tech mogul’s deepest foray yet into Texas politics. Musk’s donation to Texans for Lawsuit Reform is especially notable because of the group’s poor standing among …

NBC News reports: The maker of the party game Cards Against Humanity has sued Elon Musk’s SpaceX accusing it of trespassing on and damaging company-owned property in Texas. The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Texas court, asks for $15 million to cover damages including what the company calls the destruction of natural vegetation. The dispute involves a plot of vacant land …

CBS News reports: After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday, SpaceX shifted gears and pressed ahead with plans for back-to-back launches of Starlink internet satellites early Wednesday, one from Florida and the other from California. But the second flight was called off after the first stage used in the Florida launch toppled into the Atlantic Ocean …

The Washington Post reports: NASA announced Saturday that it will use SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring home two astronauts stuck in space for months, because the agency does not have confidence in Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule. The highly anticipated decision, one of the most consequential by the space agency in years, is a devastating blow to Boeing, which had argued …

The business site Benzinga reports: Elon Musk said on Friday that he discussed the idea of a ‘government deficiency commission’ with Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump in case the former President reclaims the White House. The CEO also expressed his willingness to be part of it. “I have discussed with Trump the idea of a government deficiency commission,” Musk told …

CBS News reports: SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink internet satellites from California Thursday, but the engine powering the rocket’s second stage suffered a catastrophic failure, if not an explosion, during an attempt to carry out a final “burn” to raise the low point of the orbit, company founder Elon Musk posted early Friday on X. Musk referred to the …

The New York Times reports: For more than two decades, Elon Musk has focused SpaceX, his rocket company, on his lifelong goal of reaching Mars. Over the last year, he has also ramped up work on what will happen if he gets there. Mr. Musk told SpaceX employees in April that he now expects one million people to be living …

Axios reports: NASA picked SpaceX to develop and deliver a spacecraft that’ll bring the International Space Station out of orbit after the operational life of the ISS ends in 2030, the space agency announced Wednesday. The spacecraft, which NASA is calling the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, needs to guide the ISS safely back through Earth’s atmosphere before its planned crash into …

NBC News reports: Eight former SpaceX employees are suing the rocket company and its CEO Elon Musk, alleging that Musk personally ordered their firing after they accused SpaceX of tolerating sexual harassment in the workplace. The eight employees were all fired in 2022 after they circulated an “open letter” within SpaceX alleging that Musk’s “behavior in the public sphere is …

The New York Times reports: Starship, the gargantuan rocket under development by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, launched on Thursday morning to make a fourth attempt to get to space and back. The previous three flights of the vehicle all ended in explosions, but each got farther than the last. Such progress is regarded as success in SpaceX’s break-it-then-fix-it approach to engineering …

Roll Call reports: The Defense Department is working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to find and disable Starlink satellite internet terminals that have fallen into Russian hands, but the problem is not going away, a top Pentagon official said Tuesday. SpaceX’s Starlink terminals enabled Ukrainian forces to communicate with each other and with their families after Russia’s 2022 invasion had shut …

Reuters reports: SpaceX is building launch facilities, office buildings and even a shopping center in rural Texas, as billionaire Elon Musk’s space venture rapidly expands its rocket and satellite business across the Lone Star state. But a Reuters review of Texas property records shows that SpaceX and its contractors can be far slower to pay builders and suppliers than they …