Free Republic

Check out this video posted by SpaceX’s Elon Musk showing part of a rocket being caught by ship at sea with a giant net.

Early Saturday evening, SpaceX hopes to embark on its 28th Starlink mission, sending another cluster of 60 broadband internet network satellites into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. That launch is at 6:54 p.m. ET and will lift off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Then, on Monday, United Launch Alliance hopes to send up an Atlas V rocket with the S-B-I-R-S GEO-5 missile detection and early warning satellite for the U.S. Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The rocket is poised to lift off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. That launch...

This never gets old to me, especially the landings, but today at 3:01pm Eastern the next batch of SpaceX/Starlink satellites are scheduled to be launched. Anything can happen but the weather looks good for a launch today... This will be the 26th launch of 60 satellites, which means about 1550 Starlink satellites are up there in LEO offering internet service to a rapidly growing beta test base...including users in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.....

SpaceX's Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft, called Resilience, is scheduled to undock from the space station at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT) after delays due to bad weather at its splashdown site on Earth. The spacecraft will return NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi home after six months in space. You can watch SpaceX's Crew-1 Dragon undocking here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of NASA TV. NASA's livestream will begin at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) and will continue until splashdown, which is scheduled for Sunday at 2:57 a.m. EDT (0657...

SpaceX launched its third crew to the International Space Station an hour before sunrise on Friday in Florida, recycling a rocket and spacecraft for the first time. The Crew-2 mission, the first involving a European, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5.49am Eastern Time (7.49pm AEST). “Endeavour launches once again — four astronauts from three countries on Crew-2, now making their way to the one and only International Space Station,” announcer Gary Jordan said to loud cheers and applause. The Crew Dragon entered orbit a few minutes later and is racing to catch up with the...

The four astronauts are scheduled to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on SpaceX's next crewed mission Thursday (April 22) at 6:11 a.m. EST (1011 GMT). They practiced that launch day today (April 18) with one last predawn dress rehearsal. The spaceflyers — NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, France's Thomas Pesquet and Japan's Akihiko Hoshide — arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Friday (April 16) and have already begun their final preparations before liftoff, which included a quick chat with reporters broadcast from the astronaut crew quarters. The Crew-2 mission will see a...

It looks like the Falcon 9 booster on its 6th launch failed to come down on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You'. According to the video just seen, the booster performed its re-entry burn successfully. But, after the shutdown, when there should have been no flame visible, there was still flame coming from the booster. The video cut off, as did the telemetry from the booster. The video switched to the video from the drone ship. There was a slight orange glow from off screen, but then nothing.

Axiom Space revealed the three private citizens who paid $55 million each to go to the International Space Station They are American real estate investor Larry Connor, Canadian investor Mark Pathy and Israeli businessman Eytan Stibbe The mission will be led by a veteran NASA astronaut and is set to launch in January next year The first customers of commercial space travel have been revealed, and each paid a jaw-dropping amount for their trip to the International Space Station (ISS) early next year. Axiom Space, the Houston, Texas-based aerospace company that arranged the trip, said the first fully private astronaut...

I have always wondered about that. Now I know.

SpaceX sent another batch of Starlink satellites into space Tuesday night, on the heels of the company’s Sentinel-6 ocean-mapping satellite launch from California and Crew-1 astronaut mission from Florida. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on time at 9:13 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s launch complex 40, its fiery tail visible across parts of Central Florida on a cool, clear evening. Then, about eight minutes after launch, SpaceX also recovered the rocket’s booster, marking its seventh flight to date and making it the company’s most re-flown booster. It’s the latest Starlink launch since the program began last...

NASA's SpaceX astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi arrived at KSC historic launchpad 39-A, and boarded the launch vehicle. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission will be the first crew rotational flight of a U.S. commercial spacecraft with astronauts to the International Space Station. The launch may be viewed via link above, or streaming via SpaceX Launches, and via Roku NASA channel.

Elon Musk's company has launched two people into space to date: NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken, who rode to the International Space Station May 30 aboard a Crew Dragon capsule mounted on a Falcon 9 rocket. That test flight, termed DEMO-2, marked the first-ever commercial crewed launch, and the first launch from American soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. But it was a test flight, with just two astronauts aboard, lasting just 64 days with most of that time in zero-gravity spent on the International Space Station (ISS). On Nov. 14, if all...

From communists on Mars to 'The Expanse' in real life, the questions about the future of Musk's Mars are huge. Here's what you need to know. Martian 1776 has arrived, according to SpaceX. In a set of recently released documents, the company announced it has no intention of following laws from any government on Earth once it reaches Mars.“For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the document reads, which was included...

Could rural Montana be the next Silicon Valley? Check internet speed off your list of reasons why not.Even though Elon Musk’s SpaceX says its expanded “Better Than Nothing” test is still a beta version of Starlink’s eventual capabilities, at least one early Starlink internet service customer says he is getting better than expected speed. Starlink says it should give you between “50 and 150 MB/s with 20-40 milliseconds of latency.” Starlink customer “FourthEchelon19” is getting 161 megabits/second download and 23 megabits/second upload speed.In rural Montana.That’s good enough to stream 4K YouTube videos with zero buffering. And it’s making people with hard-wired “high-speed”...

This is the first practical field deployment that I've heard about. Washington Emergency Management who is responding to the wildfires out west has deployed 7 Starlink Terminals remotely to provide internet and communication capabilities to help their response to the fires. The reviews so far a fantastic.....

As someone who has posted multiple times about Starlink, I'm not sure how I feel about this, especially if it alters the purpose of Starlink. OTOH, if Starlink makes for a better more secure GPS system for our military then I would be more inclined to go for it.... Evidently The US Army has been in discussion with Starlink about using their constellation of satellites for GPS purposes that would make it much harder to jam..

About 26 minutes away, I think.

Inmarsat is a satellite communication system that is likely to become obsolete once Elon Musk’s Starlink system is up and running. The differences go well beyond age and branding. Let’s learn more about the differences between the Starlink and Inmarsat antennas.

Elon Musk raised a rather important question on Twitter, saying he’d been tested four times for the Wuhan coronavirus. What mystified him was that two times it came back positive and two times it came back negative. Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020 This of course raises a lot of questions. Why? And how is that possible? What’s going on when you get results like that? Is...