SpaceX has launched its most public and aggressive offensive against regulators to date, with a blog post published Tuesday urging more expeditious launch licensing — lest the country lose its place as the leader in the global space race. Orbital launch is a tightly regulated industry governed chiefly by the Federal Aviation Administration, though to […]
‘Stop harassing Starlink,’ SpaceX President tells Brazilian judge
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell made a public plea to one of Brazil’s top judicial figures on Thursday, asking him to “please stop harassing Starlink” amid the ongoing battle in the country against Elon Musk’s social media business X. Musk has been engaged in a months-long dispute with the Brazilian courts, who have been waging a […]
The new generation of heavy lift rockets rising to challenge SpaceX
As the global appetite for orbital launches continues to grow, the competition among new and old space companies to build bigger and better launch vehicles is firing up. It can be hard to keep up with this fast-paced yet incredibly complex and highly regulated industry — but everything you need to stay up to date […]
Crewed commercial SpaceX mission will traverse the poles like the explorers of old
A new commercial space mission will take off as early as this winter to observe the polar regions from low orbit — the first crewed mission to ever do so. It’s charmingly and anachronistically named Fram2, after the famous icebreaker used by Norwegian national hero Fridtjof Nansen to explore the arctic in the late 19th […]
SpaceX cleared to resume Falcon 9 launches while FAA investigation remains open
Regulators have given SpaceX the all-clear to return to launch with the Falcon 9 rocket two weeks after the vehicle experienced an anomaly on orbit. It’s a quick turnaround for the space company, which had to conduct an investigation overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, identify the probable cause of the anomaly, and the […]