Category: space

Taiwan Innovative Space will conduct a test launch of its Hapith I rocket in Australia later this year

Australian regulators have given Taiwan Innovative Space, a five-year-old launch company that goes by Tispace, the green light to conduct a commercial launch at a newly licensed facility in southern Australia later this year. Tispace will conduct a test flight of its two-stage, suborbital rocket Hapith I from the Whalers…

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Relativity is pushing back the demo launch of its Terran 1 rocket to early 2022

3D rocket printing company Relativity Space has pushed back the date of the demonstration launch of its lightweight Terran 1 rocket from winter 2021 to early 2022. The company announced the updated schedule on Twitter, while also confirming that the launch will take place out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.…

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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin goes toe to toe with NASA in federal court over award to SpaceX

Blue Origin, the space company helmed by billionaire Jeff Bezos, is taking NASA to court. The company filed a complaint with a federal claims court on Monday over the agency’s decision to award a lunar lander contract solely to rival company SpaceX. The complaint, which Blue Origin successfully petitioned to…

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$100M donation powers decade-long moonshot to create solar satellites that beam power to Earth

It sounds like a plan concocted by a supervillain, if that villain’s dastardly end was to provide cheap, clean power all over the world: launch a set of three-kilometer-wide solar arrays that beam the sun’s energy to the surface. Even the price tag seems gleaned from pop fiction: one hundred…

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SpaceX stacks the full Starship launch system for the first time, standing nearly 400 feet tall

[embedded content] SpaceX has achieved another major milestone in its Starship fully reusable launch system: It stacked the Starship spacecraft itself on top of a prototype of its Super Heavy booster, which itself is loaded up with a full complement of 29 Raptor rocket engines, and the Starship on top…

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Walter Isaacson is working on a biography of Elon Musk

Walter Isaacson, the biographer who chronicled the lives of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo Da Vinci, is turning his attention to the life and career of Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO announced the project in a tweet Wednesday. If you’re curious about Tesla, SpaceX & my general goings on,…

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