Latest news with #EricBerger
Gulf Insider
06-05-2025
- Business
- Gulf Insider
Chinese Space Program Copying Elon Musk's Starlink
Eric Berger, the senior space editor at Ars Technica, quoted a post on X from a China space observer detailing how Beijing appears to be copying Elon Musk's Starlink space internet company, operated by SpaceX. 'The Chinese space program copying SpaceX? Well, I never …,' Berger wrote. Berger quoted Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting and an expert on China's space industry, who identified SpaceSail—a Chinese space company backed by the Shanghai municipal government—as having unveiled its 'commercial' version of Starlink satellites at China Space Day 2025. The only problem China has is its launch cadence. For the year, SpaceX has 50 launches. This includes 48 Falcon 9 launches and 2 Starship launches. They have also launched 17 non-Starlink missions and 45 reused boosters. The latest count of Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit has surpassed 7,000, delivering high-speed internet to five million customers across 125 countries, territories, and other global markets. SpaceX's third quarter 2024 launch report showed the US leading the global space race, launching 84% of all mass to orbit globally. This is 15 times all Chinese launches combined in the quarter, according to data from BryceTech. Goldman turned bullish on Starlink earlier this year.
WIRED
12-04-2025
- Science
- WIRED
Proposed NASA Budget Cuts ‘Would Decimate American Leadership in Space'
Eric Berger, Ars Technica Apr 12, 2025 4:00 AM The approximate 20 percent budget cut could force the closure of the Goddard Space Flight Center and would see projects such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope scrapped. This week, as part of the process to develop a budget for fiscal-year 2026, the Trump White House shared the draft version of its budget request for NASA with the space agency. This initial version of the administration's budget request calls for an approximately 20 percent overall cut to the agency's budget across the board, effectively $5 billion from an overall top line of about $25 billion. However, the majority of the cuts are concentrated within the agency's Science Mission Directorate, which oversees all planetary science, Earth science, astrophysics research, and more. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. According to the "passback" documents given to NASA officials on Thursday, the space agency's science programs would receive nearly a 50 percent cut in funding. After the agency received $7.5 billion for science in fiscal-year 2025, the Trump administration has proposed a science top-line budget of just $3.9 billion for the coming fiscal year. Detailing the Cuts Among the proposals were a two-thirds cut to astrophysics, (down to $487 million), a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics (down to $455 million), a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science (down to $1.033 billion), and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science (down to $1.929 billion). Although the budget would continue support for ongoing missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, it would kill the much-anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory seen as on par with those two world-class instruments that is already fully assembled and on budget for a launch in two years. "Passback supports continued operation of the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes and assumes no funding is provided for other telescopes," the document states. Other significant cuts include ending funding for Mars Sample Return as well as the DAVINCI mission to Venus. The budget cuts also appear intended to force the closure of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland where the agency has 10,000 civil servants and contractors. The Passback Process The cuts are in line with what Ars Technica exclusively reported last month, that the Trump administration was considering a massive 50-percent cut to NASA's science programs. Publicly, some officials downplayed these concerns. As recently as this week, NASA's acting administrator, Janet Petro, characterized this reporting as "rumors from really not credible sources." However, science policy experts have been more alarmed, characterizing such cuts as an "extinction level" event for what is seen as the crown jewel of the space agency. Nearly all of NASA's most significant achievements over the past 25 years have been delivered by the science programs, including feats such as the Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars, New Horizons swooping by Pluto, and Cassini's discovery of water plumes on Enceladus. This passback document represents just the opening salvo of the process to establish a federal budget for fiscal-year 2026, which begins on October 1 of this year. The budget is produced by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which is overseen by Russell Vought, who has long made his anti-science budgeting priorities clear through his Center for Renewing America. The Trump administration nominee to lead NASA, private astronaut Jared Isaacman, said during a confirmation hearing this week that he strongly supported NASA's science programs. It is unlikely that Isaacman was involved in drafting this document, as he has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate. Nominees, typically, are excluded from policy prior to confirmation. After receiving passback documents, NASA usually has 72 hours to review the materials and then submit appeals and justification for changes. Any modifications are then incorporated into a final document that becomes the "President's Budget Request" for the next fiscal year. It is not clear when the Trump administration plans to release this budget request, a public document. It could happen within the next four to six weeks. Congress Will Likely Fight Back Following this, the White House will work with Congress to actually set the budget. The US House and Senate each have separate appropriations committees that consider (or not) the White House priorities in establishing a final budget that the president must then sign into law. Fierce opposition to some of these NASA cuts is likely in Congress. "This massive cut to NASA Science will not stand," Representative George Whitesides, a California Democrat, told Ars. "For weeks we have been raising the alarm about a rumored 50 percent cut to NASA's world-leading science efforts. Now we know it is true. I will work alongside my colleagues on the Science Committee to make clear how this would decimate American leadership in space and inflict great damage to NASA centers across the country." One concern, however, is that should the budgeting process be delayed—as is often the case with the federal budget—the White House could force agencies to make operational plans based on the president's budget request once the new fiscal year begins on October 1. Again this will depend on negotiations with Congress, but, using a process called impoundment, some Trump officials believe it may be possible to turn the budget request into an actual budget for all intents and purposes. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Elon Musk's Starship blew up again — and our prospects of mining the moon hang in the balance
SpaceX's Starship hasn't totally stuck the landing yet, and the space industry is watching closely. That's because Starship is key to opening the moon for business. Companies need the rocket's heft and reusability to launch moon mining and tourism. SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket screamed past the Texas skies only to spin out of control just as it reached space on Thursday. The vehicle lost contact with ground controllers, fell from space, and exploded, triggering ground stops at airports in southern Florida. It was the second flight in a row where Starship exploded on ascent, which could be a significant setback. As with every Starship test flight, the entire space industry was watching with bated breath. The lunar gold rush is coming, space experts say, and it needs a fully functional Starship. Leroy Chiao, a retired NASA astronaut who consulted for SpaceX on its Safety Advisory Panel for 12 years, called Starship "the most exciting thing" since the Apollo era and the construction of the International Space Station. "I don't think the regular person really understands what a technological leap Starship is," Eric Berger, the author of two books about SpaceX, previously told BI. It's a larger, fully reusable version of the rocket that flew humans to the moon, he added, "and it's just really audacious." Though the moon isn't Elon Musk's favorite Starship destination — he's got his eyes on Mars — it may be the rocket's greatest business appeal. That's because it's designed to fly super-heavy payloads all the way to the moon, land on the moon's surface, then launch itself back toward Earth. On top of that, both stages of the rocket are meant to be reusable, which could slash the cost of spaceflight "by an order of magnitude," Brendan Rosseau, a teaching fellow at Harvard Business School who wrote a book about the space industry and now works for SpaceX competitor Blue Origin, previously told BI. That reduced-price super-heavy lift is what many companies need to launch their biggest plans for the moon: tourism and mining operations. Just look at the two Texas-based companies that landed spacecraft on the moon this week. The Blue Ghost mission by Firefly Aerospace landed on the moon on Sunday, loaded with experiments to test the lunar surface and soil. Intuitive Machines landed on the moon for the second time on Thursday. Its Athena lander is carrying a cellular network and a drilling experiment. Both missions aimed to test technologies that will be critical for mining on the moon — although Athena landed sideways, couldn't get enough sunlight on its solar panels, and ended its mission early. To eventually mine ice and minerals on the moon, companies will need to fly in heavy equipment like harvesters, Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, told BI in December. "You have to take larger masses up to the moon to have a sustainable human presence on the moon. Habitats, human landers — there's a lot of elements that have to go into sustaining humans on the moon," Altemus said. Starship will be able to carry up to 100 metric tons (110 tons) to the moon, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a NASA press conference in 2019. That's about 16 James Webb Space Telescopes, or about one quarter of the space station. To put that in perspective, the Saturn V rockets that launched the Apollo missions could only carry 50 tons to the moon. "In order to have a sustained economy around the moon, I think we need a heavy lift launch vehicle," Altemus said. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket could be up to the super-heavy lunar lift task, too, but it's further behind in its development than Starship and only designed to reuse its booster. NASA has its own super-heavy lift vehicle, called the Space Launch System, which has flown an uncrewed test flight around the moon. However, SLS is so behind schedule and over budget that one of its strongest supporters recently called for an "off-ramp" and Boeing is anticipating the program may be canceled, Ars Technica has reported. The agency has already contracted Starship to land its next astronauts on the moon, putting boots on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. SpaceX still needs to prove that Starship can fulfill its promise. So far, the launch system has flown to space a few times. Its Super Heavy booster has returned to Earth in one piece, caught by a pair of "chopsticks" on the launch tower. The Starship spaceship itself has returned from suborbital heights to land on the ground in one piece, but has only returned from space to splash down in the ocean. Returning from a spaceflight to land on the ground will be a key step in the vehicle's development. That's how SpaceX will someday recycle Starships and fly them again and again. NASA plans for Starship to put its first astronauts on the moon in 2027. Musk said on X in September that Starship could fly its first crewed flights to Mars in four years. Both NASA and SpaceX have historically set overly optimistic timelines for those milestones, and both have repeatedly moved their dates back. "We don't know where Starship is going. Maybe it will never be fully reusable. Maybe they'll never nail rapid reuse of the upper stage," Berger said. Even so, no launch system has ever been so powerful and been able to reuse its booster. "I think it's going to be revolutionary almost no matter what," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
SpaceX's Latest Starship Exploding on Launch Is a Grim Setback for the Company
NASA's Space Shuttle successfully reached orbit during its first attempt in April 1981. The Saturn V rocket that launched the first humans to the Moon also didn't explode during liftoff in July 1969. Even NASA's ultra-expensive and expendable Space Launch System didn't erupt into a giant fireball during its maiden voyage in late 2022. But SpaceX has taken a strikingly different approach for its reusable, two-stage rockets. Instead of lining up an orbital-ready vehicle on the launch pad, the company has picked an iterative design methodology — with varying degrees of success, and a string of explosions that are starting to look less like learning from failure and more like a sustained failure. The pros and cons of the approach have never been more apparent when it comes to its heavy lift vehicle, dubbed Starship, the "world's most powerful launch vehicle" ever developed. SpaceX has run into serious issues trying to get a prototype upper stage launched into orbit, then reenter the atmosphere and make a soft landing upon its return. During its latest attempt on Thursday evening, the company's prototype, dubbed Starship 34, roared into the sky from SpaceX's testing facilities in South Texas. But an "energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several engines" minutes into the launch, according to the company's statement published late on Thursday. "This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship." It was a moment of deja vu, as Starship 34's predecessor suffered a notably similar fate during the company's seventh test flight in January. At the time, the prototype self-destructed following an oxygen leak, flashes, and "sustained fires" in its aft section. In short, SpaceX has had two of its Starships break up into countless pieces in a row, resulting in a stunning display of bright streaks lighting up the night sky each time. The back-to-back mishaps highlight the degree of difficulty SpaceX is wrestling with. "The loss of Starship on ascent during the second flight in a row is clearly a serious setback for SpaceX," tweeted Ars Technica's Eric Berger, who has published two books on the company's history. "Loss of engines and attitude control on SpaceX's Starship Flight 8, failing at about the same time as Flight 7," wrote his colleague, space reporter Stephen Clark. "Some real growing pains for the world's largest rocket." Meanwhile, Musk remained quiet, eventually venting his frustration by slinging insults at his critics on his social media platform. Where the latest setback leaves SpaceX's ambitions to deliver NASA astronauts to the lunar surface in a matter of just two years as part of the agency's Artemis program, let alone send humans to Mars, remains to be seen. Through the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already demonstrated that its iterative design methodology can work. But Starship is a project of unprecedented scale, with a gargantuan learning curve. How many more "rapid unscheduled disassemblies," a term used by SpaceX officials to denote an explosion, can the company still afford? SpaceX claimed that its eighth flight was a step in the right direction. "With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today's flight will help us improve Starship's reliability," the company wrote in its statement. "We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests." The space firm has already moved mountains to lift a 400-foot tower of stainless steel off the ground. But getting it to reliably enter orbit, survive the extreme heat during reentry, and land in one piece appears to be a far more difficult exercise. A major glimmer of hope, however, is Starship's booster, Super Heavy, which was successfully caught by the company's "Mechazilla" tower for the third time this week — a major engineering feat that could buy the company some time as it irons out the many kinks of its upper stage. More on Starship: SpaceX Having Trouble Getting Starship Launched Again After Explosion
WIRED
20-02-2025
- Science
- WIRED
The Odds of a City-Killing Asteroid Hitting Earth Keep Rising
Eric Berger, Ars Technica Feb 20, 2025 10:00 AM The likelihood of 2024 YR4 colliding with the our planet in 2032 have ticked up to over 3 percent. Is it time to start worrying? ILLUSTRATION: NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL An asteroid discovered late last year is continuing to stir public interest as its odds of striking planet Earth less than eight years from now continue to increase. Two weeks ago, when Ars first wrote about the asteroid, designated 2024 YR4, NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimated a 1.9 percent chance of an impact with Earth in 2032. NASA's most recent estimate has the likelihood of a strike increasing to 3.2 percent. Now that's not particularly high, but it's also not zero. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. Naturally the prospect of a large ball of rock tens of meters across striking the planet is a little worrisome. This is large enough to cause localized devastation near its impact site, likely on the order of the Tunguska event of 1908, which leveled some 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers) of forest in remote Siberia. To understand why the odds from NASA are changing and whether we should be concerned about 2024 YR4, Ars connected with Robin George Andrews, author of the recently published book How to Kill an Asteroid . Good timing with the publication date, eh? Ars: Why are the impact odds increasing? Robin George Andrews: The asteroid's orbit is not known to a great deal of precision right now, as we only have a limited number of telescopic observations of it. However, even as the rock zips farther away from Earth, certain telescopes are still managing to spy it and extend our knowledge of the asteroid's orbital arc around the sun. The odds have fluctuated in both directions over the last few weeks, but overall, they have risen; that's because the amount of uncertainty astronomers have as to its true orbit has shrunk, but Earth has yet to completely fall out of that zone of uncertainty. As a proportion of the remaining uncertainty, Earth is taking up more space, so for now, its odds are rising. Think of it like a beam of light coming out of the front of that asteroid. That beam of light shrinks as we get to know its orbit better, but if Earth is yet to fall out of that beam, it takes up proportionally more space. So, for a while, the asteroid's impact odds rise. It's very likely that, with sufficient observations, Earth will fall out of that shrinking beam of light eventually, and the impact odds will suddenly fall to zero. The alternative, of course, is that they'll rise close to 100 percent. What are we learning about the asteroid's destructive potential? The damage it could cause would be localized to a roughly city-sized area, so if it hits the middle of the ocean or a vast desert, nothing would happen. But it could trash a city, or completely destroy much of one, with a direct hit. The key factor here (if you had to pick one) is the asteroid's mass. Each time the asteroid gets twice as long (presuming it's roughly spherical), it brings with it 8 times more kinetic energy. So if the asteroid is on the smaller end of the estimated size range—40 meters—then it will be as if a small nuclear bomb exploded in the sky. At that size, unless it's very iron-rich, it wouldn't survive its atmospheric plunge, so it would explode in mid-air. There would be modest-to-severe structural damage right below the blast, and minor to moderate structural damage over tens of miles. A 90-meter asteroid would, whether it makes it to the ground or not, be more than 10 times more energetic; a large nuclear weapon blast, then. A large city would be severely damaged, and the area below the blast would be annihilated. Do we have any idea where the asteroid might strike on Earth? The 'risk corridor' is currently spread over parts of the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, parts of Africa, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia. Additional observations will ultimately narrow this down, if an impact remains possible. What key observations are we still waiting for that might clarify the threat? Most telescopes will lose sight of this 'small' asteroid in the coming weeks. But the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to track it until May. For the first time, it's been authorized for planetary defense purposes, largely because its infrared eye allows it to track the asteroid further out than optical light telescopes. JWST will not only improve our understanding of its orbit, but also constrain its size. First observations should appear by the end of March. JWST may rule out an impact in 2032. But there's a chance we may be stuck with a few-percentage impact probability until 2028, when the asteroid makes its next Earth flyby. Bit awkward, if so. NASA's DART mission successfully shifted an asteroid's orbit in 2022. Could this technology be used? Not necessarily. DART—a type of spacecraft called a kinetic impactor—was a great success. But it still only changed Dimorphos' orbit by a small amount. Ideally, you want many years of advance notice to deflect an asteroid with something like DART to ensure the asteroid has moved out of Earth's way. I've often been told that at least 10 years prior to impact is best if you want to be sure to deflect a city-killing-size asteroid. That's not to say deflection is impossible; it just becomes trickier to pull off. You can't just hit it with a colossal spacecraft, because you may fragment it into several still-dangerously sized pieces. Hit it too softly, and it will still hit Earth, but somewhere that wasn't originally going to be hit. You have to be super careful here. Some rather clever scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (which has a superb planetary defense contingent) worked out that, for a 90-meter asteroid, you need 10 years to confidently deflect it with a kinetic impactor to prevent an Earth impact. So, to deflect 2024 YR4, if it's 90 meters long and we have just a few years of time, we'd probably need a bigger impactor spacecraft (but don't break it!)—or we'd need several kinetic impactors to deflect it (but each has to work perfectly). Eight years until impact is a little tight. It's not impossible that the choice would be made to use a nuclear weapon to deflect it; this could be very awkward geopolitically, but a nuke would impart a bigger deflection than an equivalent DART-like spacecraft. Or, maybe, they'd opt to try and vaporize the asteroid with something like a 1-megaton nuke, which LLNL says would work with an asteroid this size. So it's kind of late in the game to be planning an impact mission? This isn't an ideal situation. And humanity has never tried to stop an asteroid impact for real. I imagine that if 2024 YR4 does become an agreed-upon emergency, the DART team (JHUAP plus NASA, mostly) would join forces with SpaceX (and other space agencies, particularly ESA but probably others) to quickly build the right-mass kinetic impactor (or impactors) and get ready for a deflection attempt close to 2028, when the asteroid makes its next Earth flyby. But yeah, eight years is not too much time. A deflection could work! But it won't be as simple as just hitting the asteroid really hard in 2028. How important is NASA to planetary defense? Planetary defense is an international security concern. But right now, NASA (and America, by extension) is the vanguard. Its planetary defenders are the watchers on the wall, the people most responsible for not just finding these potentially hazardous asteroids before they find us, but also those most capable of developing and deploying tech to prevent any impacts. America is the only nation with (for now!) a well-funded near-Earth object-hunting program, and is the only nation to have tested out a planetary defense technique. It's a movie cliché that America is the only nation capable of saving the world from cosmic threats. But, for the time being—even with amazing planetary defense mission contributions from ESA and JAXA—that cliché remains absolutely true. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
