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A full-scale prototype of the huge Starship rocket SpaceX says will fly people to the moon and Mars left the ground for the first time Tuesday in South Texas, flying to an altitude of roughly 500 feet before settling on a nearby landing pad.

“Mars is looking real … Progress is accelerating,” says Elon Musk.

📷: @SpacePadreIsle

The footage of the tiny tiny landing legs deploying is particularly fantastic. Credit: SpaceX

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The Department of the U.S. Air Force awarded SpaceX a National Security Space Launch Phase 2 Launch Service contract valued at $316 million. The military launches will be conducted by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, between 2022 and 2027. One of the requirements for the Phase 2 contract is that SpaceX must have the capability to do a vertical payload integration at their launch site. SpaceX President, Gwynne Shotwell, told reporters–

“The only modifications we need are an extended fairing on the Falcon Heavy, and we are going to have to build a vertical integration capability. But we are basically flying the rockets that they need.”

Starship lifts off and a terraformed Mars map is published. How will Mars astronauts reach the surface? It’s Musk Reads: SpaceX Edition #193.

A version of this article appeared in the “Musk Reads” newsletter. Sign up for free here.

The footage of the tiny tiny landing legs deploying is particularly fantastic. Credit: SpaceX

A full video showing how the SpaceX teams took care of Starship SN5 following her hop on to the landing pad. This is the first time — for Starship — that there’s been a post-flight processing flow.

Video and Pictures from Mary (@BocaChicaGal). Edited by Jack Beyer (@TheJackBeyer).

Continue reading “SpaceX Boca Chica — The first ever Starship Post Flight Processing Flow” »

Musk has scored bragging rights in the battle of billionaires in space after his SpaceX rockets beat competition from Bezos’s Blue Origin to launch National Security payloads for the U.S. Air Force.

For a few months in 2018, as NASA’s Dawn spacecraft used up its last drops of fuel, it gave scientists an incredibly detailed look at one of the strangest places in the solar system: Occator Crater.