Tag Archives: SpaceX

The Texas Tribune reports: Elon Musk’s wish to create his own city just came true. On Saturday, voters living around SpaceX’s rocket testing and launch facility in South Texas approved a measure to incorporate the area as a new city. Soon after polls closed at 7 p.m., Cameron County election officials confirmed that overwhelming support among early voters clinched the …

The Guardian reports: Voters in a small patch of south Texas are casting their ballots on Saturday in an election that could give Elon Musk a town to call his own. The vote would officially create a new city called Starbase in the area where Musk’s SpaceX holds its Texas rocket launches. The outcome, which will be decided almost entirely …

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk and SpaceX are big winners in Donald J. Trump’s 2026 spending plan. President Trump is delivering on Mr. Musk’s wish list at both NASA and the Pentagon to reorient federal spending on space in a way likely to drive billions of dollars in new business to Mr. Musk’s space technology company, if Congress …

Reuters reports: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said. Musk’s rocket and satellite company is partnering with software maker Palantir and drone builder Anduril on a bid to build key parts of Golden Dome, the sources …

The Wall Street Journal reports: Musk has had at least 14 children with four women, including the pop musician Grimes and Shivon Zilis, an executive at his brain computer company Neuralink. Multiple sources close to the tech entrepreneur said they believe the true number of Musk’s children is much higher than publicly known. Musk’s baby-making project is relevant to his …

Ars Technica reports: The US Space Force announced Friday it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin for $13.7 billion in contracts to deliver the Pentagon’s most critical military to orbit into the early 2030s. These missions will launch the government’s heaviest national security satellites, like the National Reconnaissance Office’s large bus-sized spy platforms, and deploy them into bespoke …

The New York Times reports: Within the Trump administration’s Defense Department, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocketry is being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe. In the Commerce Department, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government’s $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut …

Space.com reports: SpaceX is poised to land its Crew Dragon Freedom from the International Space Station with the two crewmates who launched on it and two astronauts who arrived at the space station last June on Boeing’s Starliner, which landed uncrewed without them. SpaceX’s Crew-9 is scheduled to splash down on Tuesday (March 18) at about 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 …

NPR reports: Four astronauts are scheduled to make a trip to the International Space Station later this evening. NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers will launch to the station aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Also on board is Takuya Onishi, an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. This is the second attempt to …

The Associate Press reports: A launch pad problem prompted SpaceX to delay a flight to the International Space Station to replace NASA’s two stuck astronauts. Concerns over a critical hydraulic system arose less than four hours before the Falcon rocket’s planned evening liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. As the countdown clocks ticked down, engineers evaluated the hydraulics used to …

CNN Science reports: A SpaceX Starship spacecraft, the upper portion of the most powerful launch system ever built, exploded during its eighth test flight Thursday, disrupting air traffic and marking the second consecutive failure for the vehicle this year. The uncrewed Starship mission lifted off at 5:30 p.m. CT (6:30 p.m. ET) from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, with …

The New York Times reports: The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday that it would dismiss a case against Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in which the rocket company had been accused of discriminating against people based on their citizenship status. In an unopposed motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Justice Department said it intended …

Forbes reports: Musk appeared alongside Trump in a Fox News interview hosted by Sean Hannity on Tuesday and asked about the planned “rescue” of the two astronauts, who the Fox News anchor claimed were “abandoned” by the previous administration. The billionaire SpaceX CEO said his company was “accelerating the return of the astronauts” as per Trump’s instructions. Musk then appeared …

Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy wrote yesterday: America deserves safe, state-of-the-art air travel, and President Trump has ordered that I deliver a new, world-class air traffic control system that will be the envy of the world. To do that, I need advice from the brightest minds in America. I’m asking for help from any high-tech American developer or company that is …

Mother Jones reports: In late January, Trump announced details for the Dome. A land-based missile-interceptor system—like the one Israel has—would not be possible to build for a country the size of the United States. Instead, military commentators coalesced around another plan: build a cloud of “satellite missile interceptors” similar to former President Ronald Reagan’s ill-fated 1980s “Star Wars” proposal. In …

The Verge reports: Falling debris from the SpaceX Starship explosion yesterday created what looked like a meteor shower, or a colorful fireworks show based on videos shared by people in the area, but it also delayed flights. Eight and a half minutes after launch yesterday, the upper stage of the SpaceX Starship “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” following the separation …

CNN reports: SpaceX just took to the social media platform X to rehash what happened today: Starship experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” That’s a favored SpaceX euphemism for an explosion or unplanned destruction of a launch vehicle. It’s not clear how, when or why the Starship spacecraft exploded. The vehicle is equipped with a “flight termination system,” which is designed …

Retired Lt. General Russel L. Honoré writes: According to news reports, Mr. Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, face federal reviews from the Air Force, the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General and the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security for failing to provide details of Mr. Musk’s meetings with foreign leaders and other potential violations of national-security …

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk and his rocket company, SpaceX, have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders, according to people with knowledge of the company and internal documents. Concerns about the reporting practices — and particularly about Mr. Musk, …

The Texas Tribune reports: SpaceX’s goal is to colonize Mars. But first, it wants to create an official city in Texas. Employees living on the site of SpaceX’s operations in South Texas are requesting a special election to determine whether the site can be incorporated into a city. Current residents of Starbase, the company’s South Texas headquarters and launch site, …