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Tag: SpaceX

  • US proposes $175K fine on SpaceX

    US proposes $175K fine on SpaceX

    Musk or SpaceX did not immediately respond to the FAA notice. The SpaceX mission was one of 61 launches that the space transportation company conducted last year…reports Asian Lite News

    The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed a $175,000 civil penalty against Elon Musk-run SpaceX for failure to submit launch collision analysis trajectory data directly to the agency.

    The case pertains to the August 19, 2022, launch of the Starlink Group 4-27 mission.

    The FAA said in a statement that launch collision analysis trajectory data is used to assess the probability of the launch vehicle colliding with one of the thousands of tracked objects orbiting the Earth.

    “SpaceX was required to submit the data to the agency at least seven days prior to an attempted launch,” said the administration. SpaceX has been given 30 days to respond to the FAA after receiving the agency’s enforcement letter.

    Musk or SpaceX did not immediately respond to the FAA notice. The SpaceX mission was one of 61 launches that the space transportation company conducted last year.

    The SpaceX Group 4-27 mission successfully launched 53 Starlink satellites atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Meanwhile, SpaceX may attempt to complete the long-awaited orbital test flight of Starship as early as next month.

    Musk tweeted earlier this month the private space firm is targeting a March launch attempt. “If the remaining tests go well, we will attempt a Starship launch next month,” he posted.

    In January, SpaceX completed its first-ever, full flight-like dress rehearsal for its deep space rocket Starship which is likely capable of taking astronauts to Mars.

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  • SpaceX gets nod to deploy up to 7,500 satellites

    SpaceX gets nod to deploy up to 7,500 satellites

    SpaceX has sought approval to operate a network of 29,988 satellites to beam Internet to areas with little or no Internet access…reports Asian Lite News

    The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Thursday it approved SpaceX’s bid to deploy up to 7,500 satellites, but put on hold some other decisions.

    SpaceX’s Starlink, a fast-growing network of more than 3,500 satellites in low-Earth orbit, has tens of thousands of users in the United States so far, with consumers paying at least $599 for a user terminal and $110 a month for service. The FCC in 2018 approved SpaceX plans to deploy up to 4,425 first-generation satellites.

    SpaceX has sought approval to operate a network of 29,988 satellites, to be known as its “second-generation” or Gen2 Starlink constellation to beam Internet to areas with little or no Internet access.

    “Our action will allow SpaceX to begin deployment of Gen2 Starlink, which will bring next generation satellite broadband to Americans nationwide,” the FCC said in its approval order, adding it “will enable worldwide satellite broadband service, helping to close the digital divide on a global scale.”

    The FCC said its decision “will protect other satellite and terrestrial operators from harmful interference and maintain a safe space environment” and protect “spectrum and orbital resources for future use.”

    In August, a US appeals court upheld the 2021 decision of the FCC to approve a SpaceX plan to deploy some Starlink satellites at a lower Earth orbit than planned as part of its push to offer space-based broadband Internet.

    In September, SpaceX challenged the FCC decision to deny it $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in August Starlink’s technology “has real promise” but that it could not meet the program’s requirements, citing data that showed a steady decline in speeds over the past year and casting the service’s price as too steep for consumers.

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  • Former SpaceX employees allege sexual harassment at work

    Former SpaceX employees allege sexual harassment at work

    She added that SpaceX’s lack of action was possibly driven by management’s desire to avoid work disruptions and the company reluctance to hold some men accountable for bad behaviour…reports Asian Lite News.

    Five former employees at tech billionaire Elon Musk’s space firm SpaceX have come forward to speak out about the sexual harassment they faced in the company and how managers and the human resources department their handled complaints poorly, as per media reports.

    This comes on the heels of six more women filing separate lawsuits against Musk’s electric car company Tesla, in the US, for rampant sexually harassment at the workplace. Two other women had filed sexual harassment lawsuit in the US – two within a month’s time.

    One former employee Ashley Kosak, who left SpaceX in November, wrote of her experiences at the rocket company in an essay that was published in Lioness – a platform for whistleblowers to report on workplace misconduct, the report said. She worked as a build reliability engineer in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

    In the essay account, Kosak detailed multiple instances of being groped and feeling uncomfortable after fending off sexual advances by her male co-workers. She also wrote how despite several complaints to the HR, the matter was ignored. The other four former employees said they faced similar experiences at the company.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVaRRHBxECQ

    They shared their own troubling experiences at SpaceX or witnessing other women and non-binary people being harassed with The Verge. Shockingly, in three cases, SpaceX HR was made aware of the allegations and had inconsistent responses that the employees felt were inadequate, the report said.

    “SpaceX, as an organisation, values the mission over employee wellness to the extent that I never saw meaningful action taken against individuals who committed acts of sexual harassment,” one former employee was quoted as saying.

    She added that SpaceX’s lack of action was possibly driven by management’s desire to avoid work disruptions and the company reluctance to hold some men accountable for bad behaviour

    With the essay, Kosak aims to put out the message that will also help others in the space industry realise that any harassment they might be experiencing should not be tolerated.

    “I think until someone finally says, ‘This is unacceptable,’ you find a way mentally to accept that it’s okay,” Kosak was quoted as saying to The Verge.

    “I hope that this essay helps bring to light that a lot of behaviours that are happening out there are not okay.”

    In view of the essay, SpaceX has sent a company-wide email to SpaceX employees, reminding them of the company’s “no A-hole” policy and that harassment will not be tolerated, the report said.

    “Timely reporting of harassment is key to our maintaining SpaceX as a great place to work; we can’t fix what we don’t know,” Gwynne Shotwell, president and COO of SpaceX wrote in the email.

    She also encouraged people to report any harassment they might experience, the report said.

    Meanwhile Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX as well as Tesla has been chosen as the Time’s ‘person of the year’.

    But the magazine’s decision has been criticised because of Musk’s attitude towards taxes, opposition to unions, and playing down the dangers of Covid-19, The Guardian reported.

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  • Indian-American to command NASA-SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission

    Indian-American to command NASA-SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission

    Indian-American Chari will serve as the commander of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Crew-3 mission. He also will serve as an Expedition 66 flight engineer aboard the station….reports Asian Lite News

     An Indian-American astronaut is part of NASA-SpaceX’s third mission to the International Space Station.

    “NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 mission will carry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket to the space station,” the US space agency said in a statement.

    The four astronauts will lift off to space on October 30 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the statement added.

    Crew-3 is the SpaceX’s fifth crewed flight to space and fourth to the International Space Station.

    Indian-American Chari will serve as the commander of the Crew Dragon spacecraft and the Crew-3 mission. He also will serve as an Expedition 66 flight engineer aboard the station.

    Born in Milwaukee, he became a NASA astronaut in 2017 and this will be his first spaceflight. He is also a colonel in the US Air Force and has extensive experience as a test pilot with more than 2,500 hours of flight time.

    The Crew-3 mission follows Inspiration4, an all-civilian crewed mission that lifted off on September 15 for an orbital journey aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

    With Crew-3, “the four crew going up are going to be doing even more science,” Space.com reported Kathy Leuders, associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA as saying.

    Pic credits @Astro_Raja

    Leuders added that the crew will be continuing to test “our exploration risks and pushing the bounds of technology and continuing to establish our key international partner relationships.”

    This expedition “will have experiments that crossover from science and utilisation that we do as well as technology development”, added Joel Montalbano, the manager of NASA’s ISS programme.

    He specified that there will be experiments on board that include human research as well as rodent research and other experimentation similar to what’s been done previously on the station.

    But, while the astronauts launching will spend the vast majority of their six-month station stay working hard, they will have a bit of room for some festive fun. The crew will be arriving just in time for Halloween and will also be living in the lab during the winter holidays,the report said.

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  • SpaceX Inspiration4 returns with all-civilian crew after 3 days in space

    SpaceX Inspiration4 returns with all-civilian crew after 3 days in space

    “Splashdown!” SpaceX posted from its official handle on Twitter, with a clip of the landing. “Welcome back to planet Earth, Inspiration4!”…reports Asian Lite News

    SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission is now officially a success. The four amateur astronauts who went on a private space trip this week landed safely back to Earth on Saturday night after orbiting the planet for three days. The SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft ‘Resilience’ splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida in the United States at approximately 7:07pm EDT (around 4:37am IST), writing a new chapter in the history of human spaceflight and perhaps bringing the civilisation closer to the much-speculated future of space tourism.

    “Splashdown!” SpaceX posted from its official handle on Twitter, with a clip of the landing. “Welcome back to planet Earth, Inspiration4!”

    “On behalf of SpaceX, welcome back to planet Earth,” a SpaceX mission controller was quoted as saying after the splashdown. “Your mission has shown the world that space is for all of us.”

    Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire who sponsored the trip and was also its mission commander, said in reply, “Thanks so much, SpaceX. It was one heck of a ride for us… just getting started.”

    SpaceX, the much-touted American aerospace company founded by businessman Elon Musk, launched the four amateur astronauts – the world’s first all-civilian crew – on the private Earth-circling in a historic spaceflight on Wednesday night from Nasa’s legendary Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida, where the Apollo 11 mission once took off for the Moon.

    The four amateur astronauts travelled to an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometres) above the surface of the Earth, which is much further and deeper into space than the International Space Station (ISS). The event generated great interest across the world since it is expected that this chapter will now lead to a future of spaceflight for average people, rather than just government-sponsored astronauts.

    However, it is to be noted that the aforementioned crew was still far from ‘average’, in the true sense of the word.

    The trip was sponsored by Jared Isaacman, billionaire and philanthropist with pilot training. He is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of payment processor Shift4 Payments Inc, and was also the mission commander of the spaceflight, having chosen the rest of the crew himself through a competition.

    Isaacman was joined in the SpaceX mission by Hayley Arceneaux, a 29-year-old paediatric cancer survivor, now working as a physician assistant. Arceneaux also became the first person to fly to space with a prosthetic device—she lives with a rod implanted in her left leg as part of her treatment for bone cancer.

    Chris Sembroski, a US air force veteran who now works as an aerospace data engineer for Lockheed Martin in Seattle, was also part of the crew. The other member was Sian Proctor, a 51-year-old geoscientist in Phoenix, who was almost selected to become an astronaut for Nasa in 2009.

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  • Debris of Falcon 9 lands on private farm in US

    Debris of Falcon 9 lands on private farm in US

    An expert said that re-entries of this kind into atmosphere happen every couple of weeks but it is “just unusual that it happens over a densely populated area”, reports Asian Lite News

    In a bizarre incident, a farm owner in the US was left in shock when a pressure vessel from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fell on his property in Washington State, leaving a “4-inch dent in the soil.”

    In a normal course, most second stage parts either hang out in orbit for years or re-enter Earth over the ocean.

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    The debris was identified as Composite-Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV) from the breakup of a Falcon 9 second stage over Oregon and Washington State on March 26, reports The Verge, quoting local officials.

    The stage re-entered the atmosphere in an unusual spot in the sky after sending a payload of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to orbit.

    The farm owner in Grant County, Washington State, found the pressure vessel and reported it to the Grant County Sheriff’s Office.

    “Neither the property owner nor our sergeant is rocket scientist, of course, but judging from what had happened a few days prior, it looked to them like it was possibly debris from the Falcon 9 reentry,” Grant County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Kyle Foreman was quoted as saying in the report.

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    A sergeant then called Elon Musk-run SpaceX, which confirmed the remnant of the rocket belonged to the company and dispatched its workers to retrieve the debris.

    “Of course, we didn’t have a protocol for this, so we just erred on the side of returning someone’s property to them,” Foreman said.

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk

    A COPV is a part of the Falcon 9’s second stage, the smaller section of the rocket that detaches from the main stage at the edge of space and boosts satellites farther from Earth.

    The COPV stores helium at pressures of nearly 6,000psi, which is used to pressurise the second stage’s large tanks of propellant.

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    According to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, re-entries of this kind happen every couple of weeks but it is “just unusual that it happens over a densely populated area”.