LIFT-OFF
THIS IS HUGE!! SpaceX Starlink EXPANDING is Really GAMECHANGING!
SpaceX was seconds away from launching its 20th mission of this year Tuesday when the countdown
was halted due to an aircraft entering the launch range, delaying the mission by at least a day.
Elon Musk took to Twitter to voice his frustration about the delay, reiterating prior criticisms he has
made about regulations around the business of launching rockets.
“An aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone’, which is unreasonably gigantic,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
“There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory
reform. The current regulatory system is broken,” he added.
Musk has ratcheted up his criticism of launch regulations this year, with SpaceX firing off Falcon 9
rockets at a blistering pace – with launches going up an average of every nine days – and also flying
multiple development tests of its Starship prototype rockets. After a Starship test was delayed in
January, Musk similarly criticized the Federal Aviation Administration for how it handles launch
regulations.
“Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA space division has a fundamentally broken regulatory
structure,” Musk wrote then. “Their rules are meant for a handful of expendable launches per year from
a few government facilities. Under those rules, humanity will never get to Mars.”
The FAA has internally pushed back on SpaceX’s next-generation rocket-launching after the company
violated its launch license with the authorized test flight of Starship prototype SN8 in December. Since
then, the FAA says SpaceX has “modified their procedures effectively” and earlier this month testified
before Congress about efforts to streamline launch regulations and rules.
Although he’s publicly criticized regulators, Musk has also stated that “99.9% of the time, I agree with
regulators!”
“On rare occasions, we disagree. This is almost always due to new technologies that past regulations
didn’t anticipate,” Musk said in April.
A safe return
SpaceX's latest rocket landing on a drone ship was so smooth that if you blink while watching the video,
you could miss the touchdown.
SpaceX posted the five-second clip on Twitter on June 21. In the video, a Falcon 9 rocket's first stage
successfully kisses the deck of the drone ship on June 17, off the coast of eastern Florida. Minutes
before, the rocket successfully boosted the GPS III SV05 navigation satellite to orbit, for the company's
19th launch of the year from the Space Coast.
If the video zipped by a little fast for you, SpaceX also released some high-definition still shots on Twitter
showing the rocket's first stage — orange flame glaring below — hovering and landing aboard the drone
ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
SpaceX also posted more views of the mission taken from orbit, showing the Falcon 9's second stage
Merlin engine, backdropped by Earth, and from the launch area at the recently renamed Cape Canaveral
Space Force Station, showing the Falcon 9 soaring high in the seconds after liftoff.
The GPS III SV05 satellite mission is the second SpaceX mission so far in June, following the launch of
a broadband satellite for Sirius XM on June 6. It also was the fourth GPS satellite delivery by SpaceX for
the U.S. military, after three previous GPS III missions also launched on Falcon 9 rockets. (Another GPS III
satellite launched in August 2019 on United Launch Alliance's final flight of the Delta IV Medium rocket.)
This generation of upgraded GPS satellites includes more robust anti-jamming capabilities and more
accurate signals to eventually replace the capabilities of the navigational satellites that are aging in orbit
after launching two decades ago, according to manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
Starlink extremely fast growth rate
Elon Musk on Tuesday said SpaceX’s satellite internet network Starlink “recently” passed near 70,000
active users and expects fast-paced growth in the year ahead.
“We are on our way to having a few hundred thousand users, possibly over 500,000 users within 12
months,” Musk said, speaking virtually at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain.
Starlink is the company’s capital-intensive project to build an interconnected internet network with
thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to deliver high-speed
internet to consumers anywhere on the planet. SpaceX first rolled out the service with a beta program
for select consumers for $99 a month, and in the past year has sought regulatory approval to test the
network inflight and expand the service to large moving vehicles, like ships and trucks.
It’s now the world’s largest satellite constellation, with more than 1,500 Starlink satellites launched to
orbit to date.
#spacex #starlink #falcon9