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The Star
a day ago
- Business
- The Star
SpaceX will record revenue of about $15.5 billion in 2025, Elon Musk says
FILE PHOTO: SpaceX's next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its Super Heavy booster is launched on its ninth test at the company's launch pad in Starbase, Texas, U.S., May 27, 2025. REUTERS/Joe Skipper/File Photo (Reuters) -Elon Musk's SpaceX will record revenue of about $15.5 billion this year, the billionaire said on Tuesday, underscoring the rocket maker's growing dominance in the commercial space sector. The company's commercial revenue from space will exceed NASA's budget of roughly $1.1 billion next year, Musk said in a post on X. SpaceX's success is driven largely by its satellite internet service, Starlink, which Musk has said will go public, but has not provided a timeline. In early November 2023, Musk reported that Starlink had achieved breakeven cashflow. Under the Starlink banner, SpaceX has deployed thousands of satellites to deliver broadband internet globally. (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SpaceX's Starship spins out of control after flying past points of previous failures
By Joe Skipper and Joey Roulette STARBASE, Texas (Reuters) -SpaceX's Starship rocket roared into space from Texas on Tuesday but spun out of control about halfway through its flight without achieving some of its most important testing goals, bringing fresh engineering hurdles to CEO Elon Musk's increasingly turbulent Mars rocket program. The 400-foot tall (122 meter) Starship rocket system, the core of Musk's goal of sending humans to Mars, lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase, Texas, launch site, flying beyond the point of two previous explosive attempts earlier this year that sent debris streaking over Caribbean islands and forced dozens of airliners to divert course. For the latest launch, the ninth full test mission of Starship since the first attempt in April 2023, the upper-stage cruise vessel was lofted to space atop a previously flown booster - a first such demonstration of the booster's reusability. But SpaceX lost contact with the 232-foot lower-stage booster during its descent before it plunged into the sea, rather than making the controlled splashdown the company had planned. Starship, meanwhile, continued into suborbital space but began to spin uncontrollably roughly 30 minutes into the mission. The errant spiraling came after SpaceX canceled a plan to deploy eight mock Starlink satellites into space - the rocket's "Pez" candy dispenser-like mechanism failed to work as designed. "Not looking great with a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today," SpaceX broadcaster Dan Huot said on a company livestream. Musk was scheduled to deliver an update on his space exploration ambitions in a speech from Starbase following the test flight, billed as a livestream presentation about "The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary." Hours later, he had yet to give the speech and there was no sign that he intended to do so. In a post on X, Musk touted Starship's scheduled shutdown of an engine in space, a step previous test flights achieved last year. He said a leak on Starship's primary fuel tank led to its loss of control. "Lot of good data to review," he said. "Launch cadence for next 3 flights will be faster, at approximately 1 every 3 to 4 weeks." SpaceX has said the Starship models that have flown this year bear significant design upgrades from previous prototypes, as thousands of company employees work to build a multi-purpose rocket capable of putting massive batches of satellites in space, carrying humans back to the moon and ultimately ferrying astronauts to Mars. RISK-TOLERANT The recent setbacks indicate SpaceX is struggling to overcome a complicated chapter of Starship's multibillion-dollar development. But the company's engineering culture, widely considered more risk-tolerant than many of the aerospace industry's more established players, is built on a flight-testing strategy that pushes spacecraft to the point of failure, then fine-tunes improvements through frequent repetition. Starship's planned trajectory for Tuesday included a nearly full orbit around Earth for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean to test new designs of its heat shield tiles and revised flaps for steering its blazing re-entry and descent through Earth's atmosphere. But its early demise, appearing as a fireball streaking eastward through the night sky over southern Africa, puts another pause in Musk's speedy development goals for a rocket bound to play a central role in the U.S. space program. NASA plans to use the rocket to land humans on the moon in 2027, though that moon program faces turmoil amid Musk's Mars-focused influence over U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. MISHAP PROBE Federal regulators had granted SpaceX a license for Starship's latest flight attempt four days ago, capping a mishap investigation that had grounded Starship for nearly two months. The last two test flights - in January and March - were cut short moments after liftoff as the vehicles blew to pieces on ascent, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and disrupting scores of commercial airline flights in the region. The Federal Aviation Administration expanded debris hazard zones around the ascent path for Tuesday's launch. The previous back-to-back failures occurred in early test-flight phases that SpaceX had easily achieved before, in a striking setback to a program that Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded the rocket company in 2002, had sought to accelerate this year. Musk, the world's wealthiest individual and a key supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, was especially eager for a success after vowing in recent days to refocus his attention on his various business ventures, including SpaceX, following a tumultuous foray into national politics and his attempts at cutting government bureaucracy. Closer to home, Musk also sees Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in the company's commercial launch business, which already lofts most of the world's satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit.
Daily Maverick
28-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Maverick
SpaceX Starship launched on ninth test flight after last two blew up
Ninth test launch follows grounding of nearly two months Musk to outline new goals for 'multiplanetary' ambitions Starship flying with re-used booster rocket for first time By Joe Skipper and Joey Roulette The two-stage spacecraft, consisting of the Starship vessel mounted atop a towering SpaceX Super Heavy rocket booster, blasted off at about 7:36 p.m. EDT (2336 GMT) from the company's Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast of Texas near Brownsville. A live SpaceX webcast of the liftoff showed the rocketship rising from the launch tower into the early evening sky as the Super Heavy's cluster of powerful Raptor engines thundered to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor. SpaceX launched the Starship system with a previously flown Super Heavy booster for the first time, aiming to achieve a key demonstration of its reusability. As expected, the 232-foot (71-m) first-stage rocket separated from the upper-stage Starship vehicle several minutes after launch and headed back toward Earth. But SpaceX controllers lost contact with the booster during its descent before it presumably plunged into the sea instead of making the controlled splashdown the company planned. The upper-stage Starship vehicle continued to climb to space, reaching its planned suborbital trajectory about nine minutes into the flight. In one test-flight mishap, Starship's payload doors failed to open in order to release a group of simulated satellites. Plans called for Starship to complete its experimental flight of less than 90 minutes with a controlled descent and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. But about a half-hour after launch, SpaceX said its flight team had lost attitude control over Starship, leaving the vehicle in a spin as it continued to head for atmospheric re-entry. 'We will not be aligned as we wanted it to be aligned for re-entry,' a SpaceX commentator said during the livestream. 'Our chances of making it all the way down are pretty slim.' Federal regulators granted SpaceX a license for Starship's latest flight attempt just four days ago, capping a mishap investigation that had grounded Starship for nearly two months. Its last two test flights – in January and March – were cut short moments after liftoff as the vehicle blew to pieces on its ascent, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and disrupting scores of commercial airline flights in the region. The Federal Aviation Administration expanded debris hazard zones around the ascent path for Tuesday's launch. The previous back-to-back failures occurred in early test-flight phases that SpaceX had easily achieved before, dealing a striking setback to a program that Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur who founded the rocket company in 2002, had sought to accelerate this year. Musk, the world's wealthiest individual and a key supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, was especially eager for a success after vowing in recent days to refocus his attention on his various business ventures, including SpaceX, following a tumultuous foray into national politics and his attempts at cutting government bureaucracy. Musk is counting on Starship to fulfill his goal of producing a large, multipurpose next-generation spacecraft capable of sending people and cargo to the moon later this decade and ultimately flying to Mars. Closer to home, Musk also sees the 400-foot-tall (122 m) Starship as eventually replacing the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the workhorse in the company's commercial launch business, which already lofts most of the world's satellites and other payloads to low-Earth orbit. MUSK PLANS UPDATE Musk was scheduled to deliver an update on his space exploration ambitions in a speech from Starbase following the test flight, to be livestreamed under the banner slogan 'The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary.' He was expected to offer new timelines and development plans for sending cargo and potentially astronauts aboard Starship on voyages to Mars, a tantalizing but still-distant destination for human spaceflight that poses major technical hurdles for SpaceX and NASA. The speech could also offer clues about the trajectory of NASA's human spaceflight strategy. While Musk has been known to make overly ambitious projections about SpaceX's development timelines, he has since amassed significantly more sway over the Trump administration's space agenda. Picked by NASA in 2021 as the vehicle to return humans to the moon's surface this decade for the first time in more than 50 years, Starship is expected to play an even bigger role in the U.S. space program. Trump attended a Starship test launch in November and has publicly promoted Musk's Mars vision. Musk and SpaceX remain influential over U.S. space policy despite his recent shift away from government and signals to cut political spending.
The Star
29-04-2025
- Business
- The Star
Amazon launches first Kuiper internet satellites, taking on Starlink
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off carrying Amazon's Project Kuiper internet network satellites from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 28, 2025. REUTERS/Joe Skipper WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The first 27 satellites for Amazon's Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet-from-space network that will rival SpaceX's Starlink. The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10 billion effort unveiled in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governments - customers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business. Sitting atop an Atlas V rocket from the Boeing and Lockheed Martin joint-venture United Launch Alliance, the batch of 27 satellites was lofted into space at 7 p.m. EDT pm from the rocket company's launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Bad weather scrubbed an initial launch attempt on April 9. Kuiper is arguably Amazon's biggest bet under way, pitting it against Starlink as well as global telecommunications providers like AT&T and T-Mobile. The company has positioned the service as a boon to rural areas where connectivity is sparse or nonexistent. The mission to deploy the first operational satellites has been delayed more than a year - Amazon once hoped it could launch the inaugural batch in early 2024. The company faces a deadline set by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to deploy half its constellation, 1,618 satellites, by mid-2026, but its slower start means Amazon is likely to seek an extension, analysts say. Hours or possibly days after the launch, Amazon is expected to publicly confirm initial contact with all of the satellites from its mission operations center in Redmond, Washington. If all goes as planned, the company said it expects to "begin delivering service to customers later this year." ULA could launch up to five more Kuiper missions this year, ULA CEO Tory Bruno told Reuters in an interview this month. Amazon said in a 2020 FCC filing that it could begin service in some northern and southern regions at 578 satellites, with coverage expanding toward Earth's equator as the company launches more satellites. The Web services and e-commerce giant's Project Kuiper is an ambitious foray into space, with a late start in a market dominated by SpaceX. But Amazon executives see the company's deep consumer product experience and established cloud computing business that Kuiper will connect with as an edge over Starlink. Amazon launched two prototype satellites in 2023 in tests it said were successful, before de-orbiting them in 2024. It had been relatively quiet about the program's development until announcing its first Kuiper launch plans earlier this month. 'ROOM FOR LOTS OF WINNERS' Elon Musk's SpaceX, with a unique edge as both a satellite operator and launch company with its reusable Falcon 9, has put more than 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit since 2019, marking its 250th dedicated Starlink launch on Monday. Its deployment pace has hastened to at least one Starlink mission per week, each rocket with roughly two-dozen satellites on board to expand the network's bandwidth and replace outdated satellites. That quick pace has helped Musk's company amass more than 5 million internet users across 125 countries, upend the global satellite communications market and woo military and intelligence agencies that have sought to use Starlink and its manufacturing line for sensitive national security programs. Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos has voiced confidence that Kuiper can compete with Starlink, telling Reuters in a January interview "there's insatiable demand" for internet. "There's room for lots of winners there. I predict Starlink will continue to be successful, and I predict Kuiper will be successful as well," he said. "It will be a primarily commercial system, but there will be defense uses for these LEO constellations, no doubt," he added, referring to low-Earth orbit. Amazon in 2023 revealed its Kuiper consumer terminals, an LP vinyl record-sized antenna that communicates with Kuiper satellites overhead, as well as a smaller terminal whose size it compares to its e-book Kindle device. The company expects to make tens of millions of the devices for under $400 each. Amazon in 2022 booked 83 rocket launches from ULA, France's Arianespace and Blue Origin, Bezos' space company, snagging the industry's biggest-ever launch deal as it prepared to begin Kuiper deployment. (Reporting by Joey Roulette in WashingtonAdditional reporting by Greg Bensinger in San FranciscoEditing by Diane Craft and Matthew Lewis)
