starlink – Page 3

Starlink enters National Radio Quiet Zone—but reportedly cut off access for some

national radio quiet zone, Policy, starlink / Tim Belzer / November 1, 2024

Starlink offered to 99.5% of zone, but locals say Roam product was disabled.

Starlink satellite dish. Credit: Starlink

Starlink’s home Internet service has come to the National Radio Quiet Zone after a multi-year engineering project that had the goal of minimizing interference with radio telescopes. Starlink operator SpaceX began “a one-year assessment period to offer residential satellite Internet service to 99.5% of residents within the NRQZ starting October 25,” the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory announced last week.

“The vast majority of people within the areas of Virginia and West Virginia collectively known as the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) can now receive high speed satellite Internet service,” the announcement said. “The newly available service is the result of a nearly three-year collaborative engineering effort between the US National Science Foundation (NSF), SpaceX, and the NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), which operates the NSF Green Bank Observatory (NSF GBO) in West Virginia within the NRQZ.”

There’s a controversy over the 0.5 percent of residents who aren’t included and are said to be newly blocked from using the Starlink Roam service. Starlink markets Roam as a service for people to use while traveling, not as a fixed home Internet service.

The Pendleton County Office of Emergency Management last week issued a press release saying that “customers with the RV/Roam packages had been using Starlink for approximately two years throughout 100% of the NRQZ. Now, the 0.5% have lost coverage after having it for two years. This means that a large section of southeastern Pendleton County and an even larger section of northern Pocahontas will NOT be able to utilize Starlink.”

PCMag wrote that “Starlink is now live in 42 of the 46 cell areas around the Green Bank Observatory’s telescopes.” Pendleton County Emergency Services Coordinator Rick Gillespie told Ars today that Roam coverage was cut off in the remaining four cell areas.

“After the agreement, we all lost effective use within the four cells,” Gillespie told Ars in an email. Gillespie’s press release said that, “in many cases, Starlink was the only Internet provider option residents and emergency responders had. This is unacceptable.”

“The dark ages of communications systems”

Gillespie was quoted as saying in a WBOY article that the restrictions are “keeping a portion of Pendleton and Pocahontas counties in the dark ages of communications systems.”

We contacted SpaceX and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory about any limits imposed on Roam today and will update this article if we get any response.

Residents of the 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone have limited Internet access due to restrictions on radio transmissions first put in place in 1958. In addition to scientific research at Green Bank in Pocahontas County, the National Radio Quiet Zone includes a National Security Agency facility at Sugar Grove Station in Pendleton County.

SpaceX and the NRAO collaborated on testing over the past few years and presumably concluded that the service could only be provided without interference in 99.5 percent of the zone. Chris De Pree, the NRAO deputy spectrum manager, said in the organization’s announcement that “working closely with SpaceX over the past three years has enabled NRAO and SpaceX to better understand each other’s systems and how to actively coexist in this part of the spectrum.”

In that time, “scientists and engineers performed multiple tests and analyses to determine the best way to maximize satellite internet service without hindering the missions within the NRQZ,” the announcement said. During the one-year assessment period for Starlink’s home Internet service, “scientists and engineers will monitor for interference issues and work to resolve them without interrupting Internet service.”

Starlink steers beams away from telescopes

Starlink said in August that it worked with the NRAO “to enable Starlink satellites to avoid transmissions into the line-of-sight of radio telescopes, leveraging our advanced phased array antenna technology to dynamically steer beams away from telescopes.”

Starlink published a summary noting that “direct transmissions from satellites towards the eye of radio telescopes may pose a significant risk of interference to astronomical research.” The technique for steering beams away from telescopes is “made possible by a real-time data sharing framework between radio astronomy observatories and Starlink that provides the Starlink network with a telescope’s planned observation schedule, including the telescope’s pointing direction (aka ‘boresight’) and its observed frequency band. With this information, the Starlink network can ensure that satellites passing near the boresight of a telescope dynamically redirect their beams away from the telescope.”

The redirection happens “in milliseconds” and “protects the telescope’s observations while ensuring Starlink service remains uninterrupted for customers near the telescope.” Starlink is also using the technology with NRAO’s Very Large Array in New Mexico.

Counties want quiet-zone rules scrapped

The quiet-zone rules should be scrapped, a number of local officials say. The Pendleton County press release said that 10 West Virginia counties and one Virginia county “have formally expressed their need for change regarding the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) through Resolutions and Letters of Support.” These counties have a combined 262,296 residents, the press release said.

“We do not seek the closure of these federal entities but rather their commitment to identifying and funding viable solutions that would enable our communication systems to operate effectively, similar to those in the majority of America,” Gillespie said in the press release.

Gillespie told Ars that local communities are hampered by “archaic 1950’s regulations. We are being left behind when it comes to the modern advancements in public safety and personal communications.” He said that “absent some relief in a timely fashion, we will explore taking our plight to the FCC seeking waivers.”

The Pendleton County Commission resolution approved in September called for dissolution of the quiet zone or “total waivers of any NRQZ restrictions imposed on Public Safety Radio Frequency Bands currently in use, as well as all the commercial cellular/wireless Bands, and commercial satellite Internet providers, such as Starlink.”

The county resolution said the quiet zone is effectively “an ever-growing unfunded federal mandate on our county emergency services/911 operation wherein it causes us to spend large amounts of funding building a larger number of tower sites than would be needed absent the NRQZ restrictions.” The restrictions have greatly diminished access to the AT&T FirstNet public safety network and other networks used by first responders and residents, the resolution said.

The Pocahontas County Commission issued a resolution in September calling for total waivers of restrictions imposed on public safety spectrum, or federal funding to offset costs associated with developing public safety communications systems under “the unique burden of NRQZ regulations.”

Limited fiber and cellular access

Starlink service wouldn’t be as necessary for home Internet access if the area had universal access to fiber broadband. Recent government grants could help, as one funded project is designed to subsidize Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone’s installation of fiber lines in Pocahontas and Pendleton counties.

Ideally, residents would have access to both fiber home Internet and strong cellular networks. But the NRAO still warns that cellular signals could threaten its scientific research.

“Optical fiber as a broadband solution is far better than service from space or via wireless or cellular links, which are less reliable and have the potential to undo much of the coordination work that has happened in the National Radio Quiet Zone over many decades,” Sheldon Wasik, Zone Regulatory Services Coordinator for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, said in March 2024.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Starlink enters National Radio Quiet Zone—but reportedly cut off access for some Read More »

Free Starlink Internet is coming to all of United’s airplanes

Biz & IT, inflight broadband, spacex, spacex starlink, starlink, United Airlines / Mike M. / September 13, 2024

free as in beer —

The upgrade starts in 2025, but with more than 1,000 planes, will take several years.

Jonathan M. Gitlin – Sep 13, 2024 2: 01 pm UTC

A child plays with a handheld games console while sitting in an airplane seat — Enlarge / Soon you’ll be able to stream games and video for free on United flights.

United

United Airlines announced this morning that it is giving its in-flight Internet access an upgrade. It has signed a deal with Starlink to deliver SpaceX’s satellite-based service to all its aircraft, a process that will start in 2025. And the good news for passengers is that the in-flight Wi-Fi will be free of charge.

The flying experience as it relates to consumer technology has come a very long way in the two-and-a-bit decades that Ars has been publishing. At the turn of the century, even having a power socket in your seat was a long shot. Laptop batteries didn’t last that long, either—usually less than the runtime of whatever DVD I hoped to distract myself with, if memory serves.

Bring a spare battery and that might double, but it helped to have a book or magazine to read.

By 2011, the picture had changed. Wi-Fi was no longer some esoteric thing known only to nerds who built their own computers, and smartphones and tablets were on their way to ubiquity. After an aborted attempt in 2004, 2008 made in-flight Internet access a reality in North America, although the air-to-ground cellular-based system was slow, unreliable, and expensive.

Air-to-ground Internet access was maybe slightly cheaper by 2018, but it was still frustrating and slow, particularly if you were, oh, I dunno, a journalist trying to upload images to a CMS on your way back from an event. But by then, there was a better alternative—satellites. Airliners started sporting new antenna-concealing blisters, and soon, we were all streaming and posting and working our way across the skies.

Enter SpaceX

That bandwidth was courtesy of Viasat, according to all the receipts in my expense reports, but in 2022, SpaceX announced that it was adding aviation to Starlink’s portfolio. Initially, Starlink only targeted smaller regional and private jet aircraft, but now its equipment is also certified for commercial passenger planes from Airbus and Boeing and is already in use with carriers including Qatar Airways and Air New Zealand.

United says it will start testing Starlink equipment early in 2025, with the first use on passenger flights later that year. The service will be available gate-to-gate (as opposed to only working above 10,000 feet, a restriction some other systems operate under), and it certainly sounds like a superior experience to current in-flight Internet, as it will explicitly allow streaming of both video and games, and multiple connected devices at once. Better yet, United says the service will be free for passengers.

Depending on the route you fly, you may need to have some patience, though. United says it will take several years to install Starlink systems on its more than 1,000 aircraft.

Free Starlink Internet is coming to all of United’s airplanes Read More »

After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship

culture, Navy, Security, starlink, WiFi / Rejus Almole / September 5, 2024

I need that sweet, sweet wi-fi —

To be fair, it’s hard to live without Wi-Fi.

Nate Anderson – Sep 5, 2024 5: 54 pm UTC

A photo of the USS Manchester. — Enlarge / The USS *Manchester*. Just the spot for a Starlink dish.

Department of Defense

It’s no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions.

For instance, a former US Ambassador to Kenya in 2015 got in trouble after working out of an embassy compound bathroom—the only place where he could use his personal computer (!) to access an unsecured network (!!) that let him log in to Gmail (!!!), where he did much of his official business—rules and security policies be damned.

Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn’t like the Navy’s restriction of onboard Internet access. In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the “O-5 level weatherdeck” of a US warship.

They called the resulting Wi-Fi network “STINKY”—and when officers on the ship heard rumors and began asking questions, the leader of the scheme brazenly lied about it. Then, when exposed, she went so far as to make up fake Starlink usage reports suggesting that the system had only been accessed while in port, where cybersecurity and espionage concerns were lower.

Rather unsurprisingly, the story ends badly, with a full-on Navy investigation and court-martial. Still, for half a year, life aboard the Manchester must have been one hell of a ride.

Enlarge / A photo included in the official Navy investigation report, showing the location of the hidden Starlink terminal on the USS Manchester.

DOD (through Navy Times)

One stinky solution

The Navy Times has all the new and gory details, and you should read their account, because they went to the trouble of using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to uncover the background of this strange story. But the basics are simple enough: People are used to Internet access. They want it, even (perhaps especially!) when at sea on sensitive naval missions to Asia, where concern over Chinese surveillance and hacking runs hot.

So, in early 2023, while in the US preparing for a deployment, Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero—the enlisted shipboard leader—led a scheme to buy a Starlink for $2,800 and to install it inconspicuously on the ship’s deck. The system was only for use by chiefs—not by officers or by most enlisted personnel—and a Navy investigation later revealed that at least 15 chiefs were in on the plan.

The Navy Times describes how Starlink was installed:

The Starlink dish was installed on the Manchester’s O-5 level weatherdeck during a “blanket” aloft period, which requires a sailor to hang high above or over the side of the ship.

During a “blanket” aloft, duties are not documented in the deck logs or the officer of the deck logs, according to the investigation.

It’s unclear who harnessed up and actually installed the system for Marrero due to redactions in the publicly released copy of the probe, but records show Marrero powered up the system the night before the ship got underway to the West Pacific waters of U.S. 7th Fleet.

This was all extremely risky, and the chiefs don’t appear to have taken amazing security precautions once everything was installed. For one thing, they called the network “STINKY.” For another, they were soon adding more gear around the ship, which was bound to raise further questions. The chiefs found that the Wi-Fi signal coming off the Starlink satellite transceiver couldn’t cover the entire ship, so during a stop in Pearl Harbor, they bought “signal repeaters and cable” to extend coverage.

Sailors on the ship then began finding the STINKY network and asking questions about it. Some of these questions came to Marrero directly, but she denied knowing anything about the network… and then privately changed its Wi-Fi name to “another moniker that looked like a wireless printer—even though no such general-use wireless printers were present on the ship, the investigation found.”

Marrero even went so far as to remove questions about the network from the commanding officer’s “suggestion box” aboard ship to avoid detection.

Finding the stench

Ship officers heard the scuttlebutt about STINKY, of course, and they began asking questions and doing inspections, but they never found the concealed device. On August 18, though, a civilian worker from the Naval Information Warfare Center was installing an authorized SpaceX “Starshield” device and came across the unauthorized SpaceX device hidden on the weatherdeck.

Marrero’s attempt to create fake data showing that the system had only been used in port then failed spectacularly due to the “poorly doctored” statements she submitted. At that point, the game was up, and Navy investigators looked into the whole situation.

All of the chiefs who used, paid for, or even knew about the system without disclosing it were given “administrative nonjudicial punishment at commodore’s mast,” said Navy Times.

Marrero herself was relieved of her post last year, and she pled guilty during a court-martial this spring.

So there you go, kids: two object lessons in poor decision-making. Whether working from an embassy bathroom or the deck of a littoral combat ship, if you’re a government employee, think twice before giving in to the sweet temptation of unsecured, unauthorized wireless Internet access.

Update, Sept. 5, 3: 30pm: A reader has claimed that the default Starlink SSID is actually… “STINKY.” This seemed almost impossible to believe, but Elon Musk in fact tweeted about it in 2022, Redditors have reported it in the wild, and back in 2022 (thanks, Wayback Machine), the official Starlink FAQ said that the device’s “network name will appear as ‘STARLINK’ or ‘STINKY’ in device WiFi settings.” (A check of the current Starlink FAQ, however, shows that the default network name now is merely “STARLINK.”)

In other words, not only was this asinine conspiracy a terrible OPSEC idea, but the ringleaders didn’t even change the default Wi-Fi name until they started getting questions about it. Yikes.

2022 Twitter thread announcing that “STINKY” would be the default SSID for Starlink.

After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship Read More »

China begins launching a megaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink

broadband, china, launch, Science, Space, starlink, telecom, thousand sails / Paul Patrick / August 7, 2024

Sailing in LEO —

Like Starlink, China’s Qianfan satellites have an easy-to-pack flat-panel design.

Stephen Clark – Aug 7, 2024 12: 27 am UTC

A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China's Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network. — Enlarge / A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.

Chinese officials have long signaled their interest in deploying a satellite network, or maybe several, to beam broadband Internet signals across China and other nations within its sphere of influence.

Two serious efforts are underway in China to develop a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink network, which the Chinese government has banned in its territory. The first batch of 18 satellites for one of those Chinese networks launched into low-Earth orbit Tuesday.

A Long March 6A rocket delivered the 18 spacecraft into a polar orbit following liftoff at 2: 42 am EDT (06: 42 UTC) from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China’s Shanxi province. The Long March 6A is one of China’s newest rockets—and the country’s first to employ strap-on solid rocket boosters—with the ability to deploy a payload of up to 4.5 metric tons (9,900 pounds) into a 700-kilometer (435-mile) Sun-synchronous orbit.

The rocket placed its payload of 18 Qianfan satellites into the proper orbit, and the launch mission was a complete success, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest state-owned contractor for the Chinese space program.

Qianfan translates to “Thousand Sails,” and the 18 satellites launched Tuesday are the first of potentially thousands of spacecraft planned by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a company backed by Shanghai’s municipal government. The network developed by SSST is also called the “Spacesail Constellation.”

Shanghai officials only began releasing details of this constellation last year. A filing with the International Telecommunication Union suggests the developers of Shanghai-based megaconstellation initially plan to deploy 1,296 satellites at an altitude of about 1,160 kilometers (721 miles).

Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said the constellation “will provide global users with low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband Internet services.”

Opening the floodgates?

SSST’s network was previously known as G60 Starlink, referencing a major cross-country highway in China and the project’s intent to imitate SpaceX’s broadband service.

Thousand Sails may eventually consist of more than 14,000 satellites, but like other Internet megaconstellations, the size of the fleet will likely grow at a rate commensurate with demand. It will take many years for SSST to deploy a 14,000-satellite constellation, if it ever does. SpaceX has rolled out several generations of Starlink satellites to offer new services and more capacity to meet customer uptake.

Chinese officials have released few details about the Qianfan satellites. But the project’s backers have said the spacecraft has a “standardized and modular” flat-panel design. “It meets the needs of stacking multiple satellites with one rocket,” said Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, a joint venture set up by SSST and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to oversee manufacturing of Qianfan satellites.

This sounds a lot like the design of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which are flat-packed for launch on Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX pioneered this way of launching and deploying large numbers of satellites. The approach used for Starlink, and apparently for Qianfan, streamlines the integration of multiple satellites with their launcher on the ground. It also simplifies their separation from the rocket once in orbit.

The new Qianfan satellite factory in Shanghai can produce up to 300 spacecraft per year, project officials said in December. Officials previously said the first 108 satellites for the Thousand Sails constellation would launch this year.

SSST announced in February it had raised more than $900 million from Chinese state-backed investment funds, Shanghai’s municipal government, and sources of venture capital. SSST’s origin is linked to a Chinese joint venture with a Germany-based company called KLEO Connect, which intended to develop a smaller constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites for data relay services.

China launched four technology demonstration satellites, purportedly related to the KLEO Connect venture, to test telecom hardware and electric propulsion systems in orbit. The joint venture fell apart with a flurry of lawsuits, and the German government last year blocked a complete takeover of KLEO Connect by its Chinese investors.

Now, SSST is going it alone with the Thousand Sails network. It has rapidly scaled up satellite manufacturing capacity in Shanghai. But outside of Starlink, companies with ideas for megaconstellations have run into serious headwinds.

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020 before eventually launching its entire first-generation network of 633 Internet satellites. Amazon has pushed back the full-scale deployment of its Project Kuiper megaconstellation, and the launch of the first operational Kuiper Internet satellites may be delayed again to 2025. The future of the European Union’s IRIS² satellite Internet network is in doubt after disagreements among European governments on funding the project.

The Thousand Sails constellation is less well-known than another planned Chinese satellite Internet network known as Guowang, or “national network,” which is supported by China’s central government. Guowang is owned by a state-backed company called SatNet, and its architecture will consist of 13,000 satellites. However, China has not yet launched any spacecraft for the Guowang project.

It’s unclear if the Thousand Sails network and the Guowang constellation will be direct competitors. They could be geared to different segments of the broadband market. In either case, China’s restrictive Internet policies with terrestrial networks will likely spill over into the satellite segment.

Chinese officials recognize the military utility of satellite Internet services like Starlink, which has supported Ukrainian military forces fighting Russian troops since 2022. A homegrown Starlink-like service would, no doubt, prove useful for China’s military.

Alongside potential domestic civilian users, China could use its satellite Internet networks as a diplomatic tool to build on existing partnerships between the Chinese government and developing countries. This could “lead to a leapfrogging moment, where African countries opt for the Chinese Internet constellation over Western providers due to the fact that much of their infrastructure is already Chinese-built,” the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think tank, wrote in a report last year.

While there are open questions about how China will use its satellite megaconstellations, their deployment will require a significant increase in the country’s launch capacity, driving the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters, to lower costs and increase their flight rate.

China begins launching a megaconstellation, and it sounds a lot like Starlink Read More »

SpaceX’s unmatched streak of perfection with the Falcon 9 rocket is over

Commercial space, elon musk, falcon 9, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starlink, Vandenberg space force base / Rejus Almole / July 13, 2024

Enlarge / Numerous pieces of ice fell off the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket during its climb into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

SpaceX

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered an upper stage engine failure and deployed a batch of Starlink Internet satellites into a perilously low orbit after launch from California Thursday night, the first blemish on the workhorse launcher’s record in more than 300 missions since 2016.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, posted on X that the rocket’s upper stage engine failed when it attempted to reignite nearly an hour after the Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7: 35 pm PDT (02: 35 UTC).

Frosty evidence

After departing Vandenberg to begin SpaceX’s Starlink 9-3 mission, the rocket’s reusable first stage booster propelled the Starlink satellites into the upper atmosphere, then returned to Earth for an on-target landing on a recovery ship parked in the Pacific Ocean. A single Merlin Vacuum engine on the rocket’s second stage fired for about six minutes to reach a preliminary orbit.

A few minutes after liftoff of SpaceX’s Starlink 9-3 mission, veteran observers of SpaceX launches noticed an unusual build-up of ice around the top of the Merlin Vacuum engine, which consumes a propellant mixture of super-chilled kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen. The liquid oxygen is stored at a temperature of several hundred degrees below zero.

Numerous chunks of ice fell away from the rocket as the upper stage engine powered into orbit, but the Merlin Vacuum, or M-Vac, engine appeared to complete its first burn as planned. A leak in the oxidizer system or a problem with insulation could lead to ice accumulation, although the exact cause, and its possible link to the engine malfunction later in flight, will be the focus of SpaceX’s investigation into the failure.

A second burn with the upper stage engine was supposed to raise the perigee, or low point, of the rocket’s orbit well above the atmosphere before releasing 20 Starlink satellites to continue climbing to their operational altitude with their own propulsion.

“Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD for reasons currently unknown,” Musk wrote in an update two hours after the launch. RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly) is a term of art in rocketry that usually signifies a catastrophic or explosive failure.

“Team is reviewing data tonight to understand root cause,” Musk continued. “Starlink satellites were deployed, but the perigee may be too low for them to raise orbit. Will know more in a few hours.”

Telemetry from the Falcon 9 rocket indicated it released the Starlink satellites into an orbit with a perigee just 86 miles (138 kilometers) above Earth, roughly 100 miles (150 kilometers) lower than expected, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and trusted tracker of spaceflight activity. Detailed orbital data from the US Space Force was not immediately available.

Ripple effects

While ground controllers scramble to salvage the 20 Starlink satellites, SpaceX engineers began probing what went wrong with the second stage’s M-Vac engine. For SpaceX and its customers, the investigation into the rocket malfunction is likely the more pressing matter.

SpaceX could absorb the loss of 20 Starlink satellites relatively easily. The company’s satellite assembly line can produce 20 Starlink spacecraft in a few days. But the Falcon 9 rocket’s dependability and high flight rate have made it a workhorse for NASA, the US military, and the wider space industry. An investigation will probably delay several upcoming SpaceX flights.

The first in-flight failure for SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family since June 2015, a streak of 344 consecutive successful launches until tonight.

A lot of unusual ice was observed on the Falcon 9’s upper stage during its first burn tonight, some of it falling into the engine plume. https://t.co/1vc3P9EZjj pic.twitter.com/fHO73MYLms

— Stephen Clark (@StephenClark1) July 12, 2024

Depending on the cause of the problem and what SpaceX must do to fix it, it’s possible the company can recover from the upper stage failure and resume launching Starlink satellites soon. Most of SpaceX’s launches aren’t for external customers, but deploy satellites for the company’s own Starlink network. This gives SpaceX a unique flexibility to quickly return to flight with the Falcon 9 without needing to satisfy customer concerns.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses all commercial space launches in the United States, will require SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation before resuming Falcon 9 flights.

“The FAA will be involved in every step of the investigation process and must approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” an FAA spokesperson said. “A return to flight is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety.”

Two crew missions are supposed to launch on SpaceX’s human-rated Falcon 9 rocket in the next six weeks, but those launch dates are now in doubt.

The all-private Polaris Dawn mission, commanded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket on July 31 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Isaacman and three commercial astronaut crewmates will spend five days in orbit on a mission that will include the first commercial spacewalk outside their Crew Dragon capsule, using new pressure suits designed and built by SpaceX.

NASA’s next crew mission with SpaceX is slated to launch from Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket around August 19. This team of four astronauts will replace a crew of four who have been on the International Space Station since March.

Some customers, especially NASA’s commercial crew program, will likely want to see the results of an in-depth inquiry and require SpaceX to string together a series of successful Falcon 9 flights with Starlink satellites before clearing their own missions for launch. SpaceX has already launched 70 flights with its Falcon family of rockets since January 1, an average cadence of one launch every 2.7 days, more than the combined number of orbital launches by all other nations this year.

With this rapid-fire launch cadence, SpaceX could quickly demonstrate the fitness of any fixes engineers recommend to resolve the problem that caused Thursday night’s failure. But investigations into rocket failures often take weeks or months. It was too soon, early on Friday, to know the true impact of the upper stage malfunction on SpaceX’s launch schedule.

SpaceX’s unmatched streak of perfection with the Falcon 9 rocket is over Read More »

Starlink user terminal now costs just $300 in 28 states, $500 in rest of US

Policy, starlink, Tech / Mike M. / June 13, 2024

Starlink price cut —

The $600 standard price was replaced with regional pricing of $500 or $300.

Jon Brodkin – Jun 12, 2024 8: 20 pm UTC

A rectangular satellite dish sitting on the ground outdoors. — Enlarge / The standard Starlink satellite dish.

Starlink

You can now buy a Starlink satellite dish for $299 (plus shipping and tax) in 28 US states due to a discount for areas where SpaceX’s broadband network has excess capacity.

Starlink had raised its upfront hardware cost from $499 to $599 in March 2022 but cut the standard price back down to $499 this week. In the 28 states where the network has what SpaceX deems excess capacity, a $200 discount is being applied to bring the price down to $299. It’s unclear how long the deal will last, though we can assume the number of states eligible for $299 pricing will fall if a lot of people sign up.

“In the United States, new orders in certain regions are eligible for a one-time savings in areas where Starlink has abundant network availability,” a support page posted yesterday said. “$200 will be removed from your Starlink kit price when ordering on Starlink.com and if activated after purchasing from a retailer, a $200 credit will be applied. The savings are only available for Residential Standard service in these designated regional savings areas.”

The 28 states in the “regional savings areas” are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming.

There’s one more significant price difference that applies based on location. Since early 2023, Starlink has charged $120 a month for service in areas with limited capacity and $90 a month in areas with excess capacity. So if you’re in an excess-capacity area, you can buy a $299 dish and get $90 monthly service.

Whether you pay $499 or $299 upfront, you’ll get a Wi-Fi router and the new version of Starlink’s standard residential user terminal. There is a drawback compared to the older version of the Starlink dish, which is now called “Starlink Actuated” and doesn’t seem to be available for residential orders on Starlink.com anymore.

The current standard satellite dish doesn’t have the old version’s ability to re-position itself. The new version must be positioned manually, but the Starlink app can help you find the best position.

“The ‘actuated’ part of Standard Actuated refers to the electric motors inside the antenna housing,” says an in-depth comparison of the models written by Starlink user Noah Clarke. “The motors, which are connected to the mast, can rotate and tilt the Standard Actuated dish, enabling it to self-align to the Starlink satellites. In contrast, the Standard dish has done away with the built-in mast and motors. The Standard dish must be manually rotated during the initial installation, with the help of the Starlink app.”

Starlink offers mounting hardware as optional accessories during the checkout process. There’s a pivot mount for $74, a wall mount for $67, a pipe adapter for $38, and a 45-meter cable for $115. The optional cable is three times longer than the one that comes with the standard terminal.

Starlink user terminal now costs just $300 in 28 states, $500 in rest of US Read More »

Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet.

ars live, Science, Space, starlink / Rejus Almole / May 29, 2024

Let’s talk —

How has Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years?

Eric Berger – May 29, 2024 5: 13 pm UTC

A stack of 60 Starlink satellites being launched into space, with Earth in the background. — Enlarge / A stack of 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019.

SpaceX began launching operational Starlink satellites five years ago this month. Since then, the company has been rapidly developing its constellation of broadband satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has now launched about 6,000 satellites with its Falcon 9 rocket and has delivered on its promise to provide fast Internet around the world. Today, the company is the largest satellite operator in the world by a factor of 10.

But is this massive enterprise to deliver Internet from space profitable?

According to a new report by Quilty Space, the answer is yes. Quilty built a model to assess Starlink’s profitability. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago. In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base of about 3 million, SpaceX has also managed to control costs. Based upon its model, therefore, Quilty estimates that Starlink’s free cash flow from the business will be about $600 million this year.

So, what does it mean for this industry that Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years? What’s next for the network? Are there credible competitors to Starlink in OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, or other planned megaconstellations? Can low-Earth orbit accommodate all of these satellites?

Please join me for a discussion of Starlink and these questions with Caleb Henry, the director of research for Quilty. Henry is a true expert in the area of satellite-based Internet, and we’ll get into the weeds of this topic. We’ll also be taking your questions.

This will be the first Ars Live event we’ve done in a few years. During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day. So please join us at 2 pm ET (18: 00 UTC) on June 11 on our YouTube livestream.

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Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet. Read More »

Analyst on Starlink’s rapid rise: “Nothing short of mind-blowing”

quilty, Science, Space, starlink / Rejus Almole / May 10, 2024

$tarlink —

Starlink’s estimated free cash flow this year is about $600 million.

Eric Berger – May 10, 2024 1: 45 pm UTC

60 of SpaceX's broadband satellites stacked before launch. — Enlarge / 60 Starlink satellites stacked for launch at SpaceX facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2019.

According to the research firm Quilty Space, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet business is now profitable.

During a webinar on Thursday, analysts from the firm outlined the reasons why they think SpaceX has been able to achieve a positive cash flow in its space Internet business just five years after the first batch of 60 satellites were launched.

The co-founder of the firm, Chris Quilty, said the rapidity of Starlink’s rise surprised a lot of people, including himself. “A lot of industry veterans kind of scoffed at the idea,” he said. “We’d seen this before.”

Some history

Both SpaceX and another company, OneWeb, announced plans to build satellite megaconstellations in 2015 to deliver broadband Internet from low-Earth orbit. There was a lot of skepticism in the space community at the time because such plans had come and gone before, including a $9 billion constellation proposed by Teledesic with about 800 satellites that only ever managed to put a single demonstration satellite into space.

The thinking was that it would be too difficult to launch that many spacecraft and too technically challenging to get them all to communicate. Quilty recalled his own comments on the proposals back in 2015.

Enlarge / Analysis of Starlink financials in the last three years.

Quilty Space

“I correctly forecast that there would be no near term impact on the industry, but boy, was I wrong on the long-term impact,” he said. “I think I called for possibly a partial impact on certain segments of the industry. Incorrect. But remember the context back in 2015, the largest constellation in existence was Iridium with 66 satellites, and back in 2015, it wasn’t even entirely clear that they were going to make it successfully without a second dip into bankruptcy.”

It is clear that SpaceX has been successful on the launch and technical challenges. The company has deployed nearly 6,000 satellites, with more than 5,200 still operational and delivering Internet to 2.7 million customers in 75 different countries. But is the service profitable? That’s the question Quilty and his research team sought to address.

Build a model

Because Starlink is part of SpaceX’s portfolio, the company’s true financial situation is private. So Quilty built a model to assess the company’s profitability. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago.

“What Starlink achieved in the past three years is nothing short of mind-blowing,” Quilty said. “If you want to put that in context, SES and Intelsat announced in the last two weeks—these are the two largest geo-satellite operators—that they’re going to combine. They’ll have combined revenues of about 4.1 billion.”

In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base, SpaceX has managed to control costs. It has built its satellites, which are connected to Internet hubs on Earth and beam connectivity to user terminals, for far less money than historical rivals. The version 1.0 satellites are estimated to have cost just $200,000.

Enlarge / Building satellites for less.

Quilty Space

How has SpaceX done this? Caleb Henry, director of research for Quilty, pointed to three major factors.

“One is, they really, really aggressively vertically integrate, and that allows them to keep costs down by not having to absorb the profit margins from outside suppliers,” he said. “They really designed for manufacture and for cheap manufacture. And you can kind of see that in some of the component selections and designs that they’ve used. And then they’ve also built really high volume, so a production cadence and rate that the industry has not seen before.”

Getting to a profit

Quilty estimates that Starlink will have an EBITDA of $3.8 billion this year. This value indicates how well a company is managing its day-to-day operations and stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Additionally, Quilty estimates that capital expenditures for Starlink will be $3.1 billion this year. This leaves an estimated free cash flow from the business of about $600 million. In other words, Starlink is making money for SpaceX. It is self-sustaining.

According to Quilty’s analysis, the Starlink business has also addressed some concerns about its long-term financial viability. For example, it no longer subsidizes the cost of user terminals in the United States, and the replenishment costs for satellites in orbit are manageable.

These figures, it should be noted, do not include SpaceX’s Starshield business, which is building custom satellites for the US military for observation purposes and will likely leverage its Starlink technology.

There is also room for significant growth for Starlink as the larger Starship rocket comes online and begins to launch version 3.0 Starlink satellites. These are significantly chunkier, likely about 1.5 metric tons each, and will have the capability for significantly more broadband and enable direct-to-cell communications, removing the need for user terminals.

Analyst on Starlink’s rapid rise: “Nothing short of mind-blowing” Read More »

Two giants in the satellite telecom industry join forces to counter Starlink

Amazon, Commercial space, Intelsat, kuiper, Science, ses, Space, spacex, starlink / Mike M. / May 1, 2024

M&A —

SES is buying Intelsat, the world’s first commercial satellite operator, for $3.1 billion.

Stephen Clark – May 1, 2024 1: 30 am UTC

Enlarge / The Intelsat 901 satellite is seen by a Northrop Grumman servicing vehicle in 2020.

Facing competition from Starlink and other emerging satellite broadband networks, the two companies that own most of the traditional commercial communications spacecraft in geostationary orbit announced plans to join forces Tuesday.

SES, based in Luxembourg, will buy Intelsat for $3.1 billion. The acquisition will create a combined company boasting a fleet of some 100 multi-ton satellites in geostationary orbit, a ring of spacecraft located more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. This will be more than twice the size of the fleet of the next-largest commercial geostationary satellite operator.

The problem is that demand is waning for communication services through large geostationary (GEO) satellites. There are some large entrenched customers, like video media companies and the military, that will continue to buy telecom capacity on geostationary satellites. But there’s a growing demand among consumers, and some segments of the corporate and government markets, for the types of services offered by constellations of smaller satellites flying closer to Earth.

The biggest of these constellations, by far, is SpaceX’s Starlink network, with more than 5,800 active satellites in its low-Earth orbit fleet a few hundred miles above Earth. Each of the Starlink satellites is smaller than a conventional geostationary platform, but linked together with laser communication terminals, thousands of these spacecraft pack enough punch to eclipse the capacity of internet networks anchored by geostationary satellites. Starlink now has more than 2.6 million subscribers, according to SpaceX.

Satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) offer some advantages over geostationary satellites. Because they are closer to users on the ground, low-Earth orbit satellites provide signals with lower latency. The satellites for these constellations can be mass-produced at relatively low cost, compared to a single geostationary satellite, which often costs $250 million or more to build and launch.

“In a fast-moving and competitive satellite communication industry, this transaction expands our multi-orbit space network, spectrum portfolio, ground infrastructure around the world, go-to-market capabilities, managed service solutions, and financial profile,” said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES, in a statement announcing the acquisition of Intelsat.

A trend of consolidation

Some of the largest legacy operators in geostationary orbit have made moves over the last decade to respond to the new competition.

The only operational low-Earth orbit internet constellation besides Starlink was launched by OneWeb, which primarily sells capacity to existing internet providers, who then distribute services to individual consumers. This is in contrast to SpaceX’s approach with Starlink providing services direct to homes and businesses.

Eutelsat, the third-largest operator of geostationary satellites, merged with OneWeb last year, creating a company with a blended offering of GEO and LEO services. Viasat, a pioneer in satellite internet services using dedicated spacecraft in geostationary orbit, last year purchased Inmarsat, which specialized in providing connectivity to airplanes and ships.

SES’s acquisition of Intelsat stands apart due to the size of their satellite fleets. Founded in 1985, SES currently operates 43 geostationary satellites, plus 26 broadband spacecraft in medium-Earth orbit (MEO) a few thousand miles above Earth. These MEO satellites operate in a kind of middle ground between LEO and GEO satellites, offering lower-latency than geostationary networks, while still flying high enough to not require hundreds or thousands of spacecraft to blanket the globe.

Intelsat has 57 geostationary satellites, primarily for television and video relay services. Al-Saleh said the combined company will offer coverage over 99 percent of the world, and provide services through a range of communication bands. For now, LEO broadband satellites in the Starlink and OneWeb networks beam signals to user terminals in Ku-band.

Al-Saleh said the combined networks of SES and Intelsat will span Ka-band, Ku-band, X-band, C-band, UHF, and secure bands tailored for military use. “That gives us a unique position in the market place to be able to deliver to our clients,” he said.

SES and Intelsat have 13 new satellites on order, including six GEO spacecraft and seven broadband MEO satellites. Intelsat also brings to the table access to OneWeb’s LEO constellation. Earlier this year, Intelsat announced it reserved $250 million of capacity on OneWeb’s network over the next six years, with an option to purchase double that amount.

Enlarge / This illustration shows the relative locations of satellites in geostationary orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit.

“We will create a stronger expanded network capabilities that are multi-orbit,” Al-Saleh said in an earnings call Tuesday. “We are not just a GEO player. We are an all-orbit player.”

Internet signals coming from a GEO satellite, like a Viasat spacecraft, typically have a latency of about 600 milliseconds. Al-Saleh said SES’s O3b network in medium-Earth orbit provides signals with a latency of about 120 milliseconds. According to SpaceX, Starlink latency ranges between 25 and 60 milliseconds.

A satellite pioneer

Intelsat has a storied history. Founded in 1964 as an intergovernmental organization, Intelsat operated the first commercial communications satellite in geostationary orbit. It became a private company in 2001, then went public in 2013 before filing for bankruptcy in 2020. Intelsat emerged from bankruptcy proceedings as a private company in 2022.

“Over the past two years, the Intelsat team has executed a remarkable strategic reset,” said David Wajsgras, CEO of Intelsat, in a statement. “We have reversed a 10-year negative trend to return to growth, established a new and game-changing technology roadmap, and focused on productivity and execution to deliver competitive capabilities.”

SES and Intelsat expect the acquisition to close in the second half of 2025, pending regulatory approvals. The boards of both companies unanimously approved the transaction.

Both companies maintain hundreds of millions of dollars of business with the US government each year, and the military’s appetite for commercial satellite communications is going up. “I think many of the satellite players are seeing the benefit of that, not just us,” Al-Saleh said. “You can look at our competitors. You can look at Starlink. You can look at others. We’re all seeing an uptick in demand.”

Al-Saleh said he doesn’t foresee any roadblocks from the Pentagon or any government regulators before closing the transaction next year.

SES and Intelsat revealed last year there were in talks to combine. According to Al-Saleh, SES looked at multiple opportunities for mergers or acquisitions to make use of a multibillion-dollar windfall from the Federal Communications Commission tied to the auction of C-band satellite spectrum for cellular networks.

“It was clear to us that this particular transaction, if we’re able to successfully close it with the right type of value, is the most compelling proposition we had on the table,” he said.

Two giants in the satellite telecom industry join forces to counter Starlink Read More »

SpaceX’s most-flown reusable rocket will go for its 20th launch tonight

b1062, cape canaveral, Commercial space, falcon 9, launch, reusable rocket, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / Kris Guyer / April 12, 2024

Enlarge / File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket rolling out of its hangar at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

For the first time, SpaceX will launch one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters for a 20th time Friday night on a flight to deliver 23 more Starlink Internet satellites to orbit.

This milestone mission is scheduled to lift off at 9: 22 pm EDT Friday (01: 22 UTC Saturday) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Forecasters from the US Space Force predict “excellent” weather for the primetime launch.

Falcon 9 will blaze a familiar trail into space, following the same profile as dozens of past Starlink missions.

The rocket’s first-stage booster will shut off its nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, reaching a top speed of more than 5,000 mph (8,000 km per hour). The first stage will detach from the Falcon 9’s upper stage, which will continue firing into orbit. The 15-story-tall Falcon 9 booster, meanwhile, will follow an arcing trajectory before braking for a vertical landing on a drone ship floating in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas.

The 23 flat-packed Starlink spacecraft will deploy from the upper stage a little more than an hour after liftoff, bringing the total number of Starlinks in low-Earth orbit to more than 5,800 spacecraft.

A hunger for launch

Pretty much every day, SpaceX is either launching a rocket or rolling one out of the hangar to the launch pad. At this pace, SpaceX is redefining what is routine in the space industry, but the rapid-fire launch rate also means the company is continually breaking records, mostly its own.

Friday night’s launch will break another one of those records. This first-stage booster, designated by the tail number B1062, has flown 19 times since its first flight in November 2020. The booster will now be the first in SpaceX’s inventory to go for a 20th flight, breaking a tie with three other rockets as the company’s fleet leader.

When SpaceX debuted the latest version of its Falcon 9 rocket, the Falcon 9 Block 5, officials said the reusable first stage could fly 10 times with minimal refurbishment and perhaps additional flights with a more extensive overhaul. Now, SpaceX is certifying Falcon 9 boosters for 40 flights.

This particular rocket has not undergone any extended maintenance or long-term grounding. It has flown an average of once every two months since debuting three-and-a-half years ago. So the 20-flight milestone SpaceX will achieve Friday night means this rocket has doubled its original design life and, at the same time, has reached the halfway point of its extended service life.

In its career, this booster has launched eight people and 530 spacecraft, mostly Starlinks. The rocket’s first two flights launched GPS navigation satellites for the US military, then it launched two commercial human spaceflight missions with Dragon crew capsules. These were the all-private Inspiration4 mission and Axiom Mission 1, the first fully commercial crew flight to the International Space Station.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off Sunday, April 7, on the Bandwagon 1 rideshare mission.

Remarkably, this will be the sixth Falcon 9 launch in less than eight days, more flights than SpaceX’s main US rival, United Launch Alliance, has launched in 17 months.

It will be the 38th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 111th flight of a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket—the 114th launch by SpaceX overall—in the last 365 days. More than a third of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy missions, a number that will stand at 332 after Friday night’s flight, have launched in the past year.

This month, for the first time, SpaceX demonstrated it could launch two Falcon 9 rockets in less than five days from the company’s launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. SpaceX has also cut the turnaround time between Falcon 9 rockets at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The company’s most-used launch pad, SLC-40, can handle two Falcon 9 flights in less than four days.

It’s not just launch pad turnaround. SpaceX uses its drone ships—two based in Florida and one in California—for most Falcon 9 landings. In order to meet the appetite for Falcon 9 launches, SpaceX is getting rockets back to port and re-deploying drone ships back to sea at a faster rate.

SpaceX’s most-flown reusable rocket will go for its 20th launch tonight Read More »

SpaceX takes a proactive step toward responsible behavior in orbit

orbital debris, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / Rejus Almole / February 16, 2024

Clearing one’s orbit —

“We commend this commitment as a first step.”

Eric Berger – Feb 15, 2024 9: 18 pm UTC

A group of Starlink satellites assembled and ready for a launch. — Enlarge / SpaceX’s V2 Mini Starlink satellites awaiting launch.

SpaceX

SpaceX announced this week that it will voluntarily bring down about 100 of its first-generation Starlink satellites, which provide broadband Internet from low-Earth orbit, as part of its commitment to “space sustainability.”

The satellites are presently operational and serving Internet customers. However, in a statement, the company said, “The Starlink team identified a common issue in this small population of satellites that could increase the probability of failure in the future.”

This only represents a small fraction of the Starlink megaconstellation, which SpaceX has been launching on Falcon 9 rockets over the last half-decade. To date, SpaceX has put nearly 6,000 satellites into orbit a few hundred kilometers above the planet. This rapid growth in the company’s constellation has raised widespread concerns about the cluttering of low-Earth orbit and the potential for a profusion of debris.

Previously, SpaceX has initiated controlled de-orbits of 406 satellites. The vast majority of these have already entered Earth’s atmosphere and burnt up. However, 17 have become non-maneuverable. These are in decaying orbits and will eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Until such time, they are being tracked to prevent collisions with other satellites.

In its announcement this week, SpaceX is saying it will bring down about 100 additional Starlink satellites.

Why is SpaceX doing this?

The company said it is being proactive in deciding to bring down satellites that are currently operational.

“While this proactive approach comes at the cost of losing satellites that are serving users effectively, we believe it is the right thing to do to keep space safe and sustainable—SpaceX encourages all satellite owners and operators to safely de-orbit satellites before they become non-maneuverable,” the statement said.

If nothing else, this is a clever public relations move to get out ahead of satellite de-orbits that the space-tracking community would have spotted eventually. SpaceX is controlling the narrative, and it seems to have worked. The release of this information has, based upon several people I have spoken with, engendered goodwill in the community of scientists and activists who worry about orbital debris, clutter, and the sustainability of activity in low-Earth orbit.

However, there appears to be more to this announcement than simple public relations. SpaceX operates nearly two-thirds of all the active satellites in low-Earth orbit, and it is taking responsibility for reducing the likelihood of uncontrolled satellites whizzing around the planet hundreds of kilometers above the surface.

In this sense, SpaceX has taken an important step toward the establishment of a norm: proactive de-orbiting of one’s satellites.

What are the implications of it?

One of the fiercest protectors of low-Earth orbit is Moriba Jah, a co-founder and chief scientist at Privateer, a company that helps monitor congestion in orbit and seeks to enable sustainable growth of the new space economy. Jah told Ars he welcomed this step by SpaceX.

“Ensuring the safety and accessibility of space for all stakeholders is essential and we commend this commitment as a first step,” he said. “Proactive measures to deorbit satellites and share position information represent significant steps toward mitigating the risks associated with space debris.”

However, he added, this is just an interim step toward what should be a long-term goal—the recycling of satellites in space.

“While it may seem economically prudent to deorbit satellites and let them burn up in the atmosphere, the long-term implications of such practices on space sustainability, and the atmosphere itself, cannot be overlooked,” he said. “The long-term path to a circular space economy is in the adoption of reusable and recyclable satellites.”

This approach would reduce the potential for orbital debris and foster a culture of responsible space operations.

There has been some government leadership in this direction. The United States, primarily but not exclusively through NASA, has been pushing for in-space repairing and reviving of satellites to extend their useful lifetimes, including refurbishment activities. Additionally, the European Space Agency has embraced a “Zero Debris Charter” to drive the development of technologies required for no more debris to be left in orbit by 2030.

In releasing this statement, and proactively deorbiting its own spacecraft, the world’s largest operator of satellites has indicated that it wants to play ball.

SpaceX takes a proactive step toward responsible behavior in orbit Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s record year; Firefly’s Alpha rocket falls short

china, Commercial space, falcon heavy, firefly, india, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / Mike M. / January 5, 2024

Ending big —

Living downrange from one of China’s launch sites sure doesn’t seem safe.

Stephen Clark – Jan 5, 2024 12: 00 pm UTC

Firefly Aerospace's fourth Alpha rocket lifted off December 22 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. — Enlarge / Firefly Aerospace’s fourth Alpha rocket lifted off December 22 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Welcome to Edition 6.25 of the Rocket Report! We hope all our readers had a peaceful holiday break. While many of us were enjoying time off work, launch companies like SpaceX kept up the pace until the final days of 2023. Last year saw a record level of global launch activity, with 223 orbital launch attempts and 212 rockets successfully reaching orbit. Nearly half of these missions were by SpaceX.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Firefly’s fourth launch puts payload in wrong orbit. The fourth flight of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket on December 22 placed a small Lockheed Martin technology demonstration satellite into a lower-than-planned orbit after lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. US military tracking data indicated the Alpha rocket released its payload into an elliptical orbit ranging between 215 and 523 kilometers in altitude, not the mission’s intended circular target orbit. Firefly later confirmed the Alpha rocket’s second stage, which was supposed to reignite about 50 minutes after liftoff, did not deliver Lockheed Martin’s satellite into the proper orbit. This satellite, nicknamed Tantrum, was designed to test Lockheed Martin’s new wideband Electronically Steerable Antenna technology to demonstrate faster on-orbit sensor calibration to deliver rapid capabilities to US military forces.

Throwing a tantrum? … This was the third time in four flights that Firefly’s commercial Alpha rocket, designed to loft payloads up to a metric ton in mass, has not reached its orbital target. The first test flight in 2021 suffered an engine failure on the first stage before losing control shortly after liftoff. The second Alpha launch in 2022 deployed its satellites into a lower-than-planned orbit, leaving them unable to complete their missions. In September, Firefly launched a small US military satellite on a responsive launch demonstration. Firefly and the US Space Force declared that mission fully successful. Atmospheric drag will likely pull Lockheed Martin’s payload back into Earth’s atmosphere for a destructive reentry in a matter of weeks. The good news is ground teams are in contact with the satellite, so there could be a chance to complete at least some of the mission’s objectives. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Australian startup nears first launch. The first locally made rocket to be launched into space from Australian soil is scheduled for liftoff from a commercial facility in Queensland early next year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. A company named Gilmour Space says it hopes to launch its first orbital-class Eris rocket in March, pending final approval from Australian regulatory authorities. This would be the first Australian-built orbital rocket, although a US-made rocket launched Australia’s first satellite from a military base in South Australia in 1967. The UK’s Black Arrow rocket also launched a satellite from the same remote Australian military base in 1971.

Getting to know Eris … The three-stage Eris rocket stands 25 meters (82 feet) tall with the ability to deliver up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit, according to Gilmour Space. The company says the Eris rocket will be powered by Gilmour’s “new and proprietary hybrid rocket engine.” These kinds of propulsion systems use a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. We’ll be watching to see if Gilmour shares more tangible news about the progress toward the first Eris launch in March. In late 2022, the company targeted April 2023 for the first Eris flight, so this program has a history of delays. (submitted by Marzipan and Onychomys)

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A commander’s lament on the loss of a historic SpaceX booster. The Falcon 9 rocket that launched NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on SpaceX’s first crew mission in 2020 launched and landed for the 19th and final time just before Christmas, then tipped over on its recovery ship during the trip back to Cape Canaveral, Florida, Ars reports. This particular booster, known by the tail number B1058, was special among SpaceX’s fleet of reusable rockets. It was the fleet leader, having tallied 19 missions over the course of more than three-and-a-half years. More importantly, it was the rocket that thundered into space on May 30, 2020, on a flight that made history.

A museum piece? … The lower third of the booster was still on the deck of SpaceX’s recovery ship as it sailed into Port Canaveral on December 26. This portion of the rocket contains the nine Merlin engines and landing legs, some of which appeared mangled after the booster tipped over in high winds and waves. Hurley, who commanded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on the booster’s historic first flight in 2020, said he hopes to see the remaining parts of the rocket in a museum. “Hopefully they can do something because this is a little bit of an inauspicious way to end its flying career, with half of it down at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,” said Hurley.

SpaceX opens 2024 campaign with a new kind of Starlink satellite. SpaceX has launched the first six Starlink satellites that will provide cellular transmissions for customers of T-Mobile and other carriers, Ars reports. A Falcon 9 rocket launched from California on January 2 carried 21 Starlink satellites overall, including the first six Starlinks with Direct to Cell capabilities. SpaceX says these satellites, and thousands of others to follow, will “enable mobile network operators around the world to provide seamless global access to texting, calling, and browsing wherever you may be on land, lakes, or coastal waters without changing hardware or firmware.” T-Mobile said that field testing of Starlink satellites with the T-Mobile network will begin soon. “The enhanced Starlink satellites have an advanced modem that acts as a cellphone tower in space, eliminating dead zones with network integration similar to a standard roaming partner,” SpaceX said.

Two of 144 … SpaceX followed this launch with another Falcon 9 flight from Florida on January 3 carrying a Swedish telecommunications satellite. These were the company’s first two missions of 2024, a year when SpaceX officials aim to launch up to 144 rockets, an average of 12 per month, exceeding the 98 rockets it launched in 2023. A big focus of SpaceX’s 2024 launch manifest will be delivering these Starlink Direct to Cell satellites into orbit. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Chinese booster lands near homes. China added a new pair of satellites to its Beidou positioning and navigation system on December 25, but spent stages from the launch landed within inhabited areas, Space News reports. Meanwhile, a pair of the side boosters from the Long March 3B rocket used for the launch appeared to fall to the ground near inhabited areas in Guangxi region, downrange of the Xichang spaceport in Sichuan province, according to apparent bystander footage on Chinese social media. One video shows a booster falling within a forested area and exploding, while another shows a falling booster and later, wreckage next to a home.

Life downrange … Chinese government authorities reportedly issue warnings and evacuation notices for citizens living in regions where spent rocket boosters are likely to fall after launch, but these videos clearly show people are still close by as the rockets fall from the sky. We’ve seen this kind of imagery before, including views of a rocket that crashed into a rural building in 2019. What’s more, the rockets return to Earth with leftover toxic propellants—hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide—that could be deadly to breathe or touch. Clouds of brownish-orange gas are visible around the rocket wreckage, an indication of the presence of nitrogen tetroxide. China built its three Cold War-era spaceports in interior regions to protect them from possible military attacks, while its newest launch site is at a coastal location on Hainan Island, allowing rockets launched there to drop boosters into the sea. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Launch date set for next H3 test flight. The second flight of Japan’s new flagship H3 rocket is scheduled for February 14 (US time; February 15 in Japan), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced on December 28. This will come nearly one year after the first H3 test flight failed to reach orbit last March when the rocket’s second stage failed to ignite a few minutes after liftoff. This failure destroyed a pricey Japanese Earth observation satellite and dealt a setback to Japan’s rocket program. The H3 is designed to be cheaper and more capable than the H-IIA and H-IIB rockets it will replace. Eventually, the H3 will launch Japan’s scientific research probes, spy satellites, and commercial payloads.

Fixes since the first flight … Engineers narrowed the likely cause for the first H3 launch failure to an electrical issue, although Japanese officials have not provided an update on the investigation for several months. In August, Japan’s space agency said investigators had narrowed the cause of the H3’s second-stage malfunction to three possible failure scenarios. Nevertheless, officials are apparently satisfied the H3 is ready to fly again. But this time, there won’t be an expensive satellite aboard. A dummy payload will fly inside the H3 rocket’s nose cone, along with two relatively low-cost small satellites hitching a piggyback ride to orbit. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

India’s PSLV launches first space mission of 2024. The first orbital launch of the new year, as measured in the globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, was the flight of an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) on January 1 (December 31 in the United States). This launch deployed an X-ray astronomy satellite named XPoSat, which will measure X-ray emissions from black holes, neutron stars, active galactic nuclei, and pulsars. This is India’s first X-ray astronomy satellite, and its launch is another sign of India’s ascendence among the world’s space powers. India has some of the world’s most reliable launch vehicles, is developing a human-rated capsule to carry astronauts into orbit, and landed its first robotic mission on the Moon last year.

Going lower … After releasing the XPoSat payload, the PSLV’s fourth stage lowered its orbit to begin an extended mission hosting 10 scientific and technology demonstration experiments. These payloads will test new radiation shielding technologies, green propulsion, and fuel cells in orbit, according to the Indian Space Research Organization. On missions with excess payload capacity, India has started offering researchers and commercial companies the opportunity to fly experiments on the PSLV fourth stage, which has its own solar power source to essentially turn itself from a rocket into a satellite platform. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

Mixed crews will continue flying to the International Space Station. NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, will extend an agreement on flying each other’s crew members to the International Space Station through 2025, Interfax reports. This means SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Boeing’s Starliner capsule, once operational, will continue transporting Russian cosmonauts to and from the space station, as several recent SpaceX crew missions have done. In exchange, Russia will continue flying US astronauts on Soyuz missions.

There’s a good reason for this… Despite poor relations on Earth, the US and Russian governments continue to be partners on the ISS. While NASA no longer has to pay for seats on Soyuz spacecraft, the US space agency still wants to fly its astronauts on Soyuz to protect against the potential for a failure or lengthy delay with a SpaceX or Boeing crew mission. Such an event could lead to a situation where the space station has no US astronauts aboard. Likewise, Roscosmos benefits from this arrangement to ensure there’s always a Russian on the space station, even in the event of a problem with Soyuz. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX sets new records to close out 2023. SpaceX launched two rockets, three hours apart, to wrap up a record-setting 2023 launch campaign, Ars reports. On December 28, SpaceX launched a Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida with the US military’s super-secret X-37B spaceplane. Less than three hours later, a Falcon 9 rocket took off a few miles to the south with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites. These were SpaceX’s final launches of 2023. SpaceX ended the year with 98 flights, including 91 Falcon 9s, five Falcon Heavy rockets, and two test launches of the giant new Super Heavy-Starship rocket. These flights were spread across four launch pads in Florida, California, and Texas. It was also the shortest turnaround between two SpaceX flights in the company’s history, and set a modern-era record at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the shortest span between two orbital-class launches there since 1966.

Where’s the X-37B?… The military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane that launched on the Falcon Heavy rocket apparently headed into an unusually high orbit, much higher than the spaceplane program’s previous six flights. But the military kept the exact orbit a secret, and amateur skywatchers will be closely watching for signs of the spaceplane passing overhead in hopes of estimating its apogee, perigee, and inclination. What the spaceplane is doing is also largely a mystery. The X-37B resembles a miniature version of NASA’s retired space shuttle orbiter, with wings, deployable landing gear, and black thermal protection tiles to shield its belly from the scorching heat of reentry.

Elon Musk says SpaceX needs to built a lot of Starships. Even with reusability, SpaceX will need to build Starships as often as Boeing builds 737 jetliners in order to realize Elon Musk’s ambition for a Mars settlement, Ars reports. “To achieve Mars colonization in roughly three decades, we need ship production to be 100/year, but ideally rising to 300/year,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X. SpaceX still aims to make the Starship and its Super Heavy booster rapidly reusable. The crux is that the ship, the part that would travel into orbit, and eventually to the Moon or Mars, won’t be reused as often as the booster. These ships will come in a number of different configurations, including crew and cargo transports, refueling ships, fuel depots, and satellite deployers.

Laws of physics… The first stage of the giant launch vehicle, named Super Heavy, is designed to return to SpaceX’s launch sites about six minutes after liftoff, similar to the way SpaceX recovers its Falcon boosters today. Theoretically, Musk wrote, the booster could be ready for another flight in an hour. With the Starship itself, the laws of physics and the realities of geography come into play. As an object flies in low-Earth orbit, the Earth rotates underneath it. This means that a satellite, or Starship, will find itself offset some 22.5 degrees in longitude from its launch site after a single 90-minute orbit around the planet. It could take several hours, or up to a day, for a Starship in low-Earth orbit to line up with one of the recovery sites. “The ship needs to complete at least one orbit, but often several to have the ground track line back up with the launch site, so reuse may only be daily,” Musk wrote. “This means that ship production needs to be roughly an order of magnitude higher than booster production.”

Next three launches

January 5: Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 11: 20 UTC

January 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-35 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21: 00 UTC

January 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 7-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 05: 00 UTC

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