Space

Tesla paid X $280,000 for advertising and other services, according to the company’s proxy statement. X paid Tesla $1.02 million for unspecified work. SpaceX paid Tesla $2.9 million for “certain commercial, licensing and support agreements.” Tesla paid SpaceX $800,000 for use of its corporate jet. And Tesla paid the Boring Company $1.2 million.

No one paid Neuralink anything.

The spacecraft is being readied to carry astronauts Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station, with liftoff from Cape Canaveral scheduled for no earlier than 10:34PM ET.

The crew is expected to spend about a week at the orbiting laboratory before their capsule makes an airbag and parachute-assisted landing in the southwestern United States.

After making its final flight in January, NASA’s Mars helicopter has transmitted its last message to Earth and will now serve as a stationary testbed for collecting up to 20 years’ worth of data. Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s project manager, gave it this moving farewell:

“Whenever humanity revisits Valinor Hills — either with a rover, a new aircraft, or future astronauts — Ingenuity will be waiting with her last gift of data, a final testament to the reason we dare mighty things. Thank you, Ingenuity, for inspiring a small group of people to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds at the frontiers of space.”

The European Space Agency plans to find out with a project called Solaris. Scientists and engineers have been trying to figure out how to make space-based solar power work since the 1960s. And the rise of the commercial space industry is finally bringing launch costs down enough to really put the technology to the test.

The accounting is “more of an art than a science,” anonymous sources tell Bloomberg. But on an operational and ongoing basis? No, not profitable, according to those sources.

Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported Starlink fell short of expectations in 2022. Hm!

While airlines are paying aviation excise taxes that go towards the necessary air traffic controls during takeoff, commercial space companies like SpaceX — which require similar airspace safety measures around launches — are exempt.

Now, the Biden Administration is proposing these companies start paying their share of the government resources being used. Former F.A.A.-licensed aircraft dispatcher William J. McGee told the New York Times:

“This is a question of fundamental fairness. It would be the equivalent of having a toll system on a highway and waving through certain users and not others”

According to Reuters, the White House has asked NASA to develop a plan for establishing a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) standard by the end of 2026.

Lunar time works differently, so the aim is to provide a time-keeping benchmark to keep communications between Earth, satellites, bases, and astronauts synchronized. As NASA’s space communications chief Kevin Coggins puts it:

“Think of the atomic clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory (in Washington). They’re the heartbeat of the nation, synchronizing everything. You’re going to want a heartbeat on the moon.”

The 3,200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera will help researchers address cosmology’s biggest questions, including the nature of dark matter and our solar system, by photographing the southern sky for 10 years.

It took the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory over 20 years to build, and now the largest digital camera ever created for astronomy will be shipped to the Andes.

That’s what Alejandro Otero’s about to find out now that NASA has collected an object that tore through his roof and two floors of his home. The incident happened at about the same time that depleted batteries ejected from the International Space Station were supposed to burn up in the atmosphere.

Ars Technica has the full writeup on the fascinating and developing saga.

Scientists for the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration say the magnetic structure of the Milky Way’s central Sagittarius A* black hole is “strikingly similar” to the bigger singularity in the middle of the galaxy M87, writes Phys.org.

They discovered this by comparing polarized images of the two. One researcher told Phys.org that this discovery could mean “this structure is common to all black holes.”

Weather services are reporting that people in northern Britain and as far south as the midwest in the US may see the aurora borealis on Monday night, as geomagnetic storms on the sun’s surface send particle streams toward Earth.

The best viewing time is between 10PM and 2AM (locally) according to the NOAA, in dark, north-facing locations away from city lights.

The mission will launch “hopefully the first of May,” according to Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore, who was joined by fellow astronaut Suni Williams during a NASA press conference yesterday.

NASA postponed the first crewed Starliner flight test last summer over safety concerns. When the mission launches, Wilmore and Williams will dock with the International Space Station for up to two weeks before returning to Earth.

BurstCube is aboard SpaceX’s Dragon resupply spacecraft, which launched on the Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral on Thursday. After it arrives and is unpacked, the shoebox-sized CubeSat will be released into orbit, where it will locate and study gamma-ray bursts linked to the gravitational waves that were first detected in 2016.

You can see NASA’s simulation of the BurstCube below.

SpaceX already filed one lawsuit claiming the agency’s actions o (on a complaint about workers who say they were fired illegally for criticizing Elon Musk) are unconstitutional and now there’s this complaint issued Wednesday night.

SpaceX is accused of using severance agreements with ”unlawful confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses, and an unlawful limit on participation in other claims against SpaceX,” among other issues. The parties can either settle (seems unlikely), or there will be a hearing on October 29th.

Two diplomats (presumably Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, and Freekey Zekey were not all available) tell Politico that with the Ariane 6 delayed and Russia’s Soyuz unavailable, the European Space Agency (ESA) is using SpaceX to launch satellites for its Galileo global navigation system and have set up a special security deal to make it happen.

Separately, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said it will start selling the lasers Starlink satellites use for in-space communication to other companies.

Leaked documents viewed by TechCrunch say SpaceX can prevent former or current employees from selling shares during a tender offer if they engaged in “an act of dishonesty against the company” or violated policies.

Since SpaceX is a private company, this could prevent employees from selling their shares until SpaceX goes public — which may not even happen. SpaceX also reserves the right to buy back vested shares six months after an employee leaves the company, TechCrunch reports.

The Starship was reported “lost” before it could splash down after reentry as planned. but for a better look at the takeoff, the folks at NASASpaceflight put together a few different camera angles from this morning’s events.

Before the SpaceX broadcast ended, SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said, “the team has made the call that the ship has been lost, so no splashdown today.”

There’s no word on the status of Starship as the live video feed from the vehicle has ended for the moment, but you can see part of the reentry process in this clip posted by SpaceX.

As Starship reenters Earth’s atmosphere, the external cameras are capturing the heat and plasma field generated.

We’ve skipped over one planned element of this test flight, as the Starship 28 prototype continues on its way toward a planned splashdown.

SpaceX finished another test for this Starship flight and ended internal views from the flight. As the live broadcast continues, it has gone in and out as the vehicle continues to barrel roll in space on its way to a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

The next milestone for this flight test is a planned in-space relight of the Raptor engines, which is scheduled for 40:46 into the flight, or a about 18 minutes from now.

On the stream, we watched the return of the Super Heavy booster rocket after separation, which seemed to have partial success on some of its planned maneuvers as it came back to Earth. The commentators noted it “feel a little short,” of the plan, but didn’t go into detail.

The vehicle took off successfully and is now heading toward the “Hot-staging (Starship Raptor ignition and stage separation).”

As we wait to see if the Starship will launch, SpaceX posted this clip showing what the splashdown could be like.

The countdown just crossed T-10 minutes and counting.

If everything works out as planned, the Starship will attempt an in-space relight of its Raptor engines and eventually splash down in the Indian Ocean, as shown in this animation.