Space

The US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has successfully tested SpaceX’s disc-shaped Starfall reentry capsule in an effort to determine the viability of point-to-point rocket cargo deliveries. Starfall carried AFRL-developed cargo pods that were recovered after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, containing essential survival kits that might be needed on real emergency missions.

The deal was announced in April and is expected to close in 2027. It gives Amazon Globalstar’s constellation of 25 satellites and its spectrum — a welcome boost given its stalled launch timeline — and means Leo will now power the satellite services for Apple’s supported iPhones and Apple Watches.

Trump asked Musk on Wednesday to fully roll back the interruptions that neither has publicly taken responsibility for, The Wall Street Journal reports.

During today’s Q3 SpaceX earnings call, Musk also said the company should “probably” do a “longer presentation on the game plan” for the business.

After Ukraine said a Starshield slowdown had interrupted its military operations, Elon Musk claimed any limits “are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Then the president told reporters, “It wasn’t me... and I don’t think it was Elon.”

The Martian Moons eXploration mission is scheduled to launch at 2:41PM ET and, if successful, should return to Earth in 2031 carrying samples from Phobos. It’ll study both Phobos and Deimos on its journey to shed some light on how they came to exist, and hopefully provide new insights into both Mars and Earth.

$330 million is going towards expanding manufacturing plans next year that aim to produce up to 150 rocket upper stages. Blue Origin is also requesting to increase launches from 12 to 50 per year, and plans to “support multiple flights per week by the end of the decade.” That involves building additional New Glenn launch pads at Cape Canaveral, alongside restoring the one that blew up in May.

A Ukranian official tells Axios that Starshield — SpaceX’s government-focused internet service that runs on Starlink satellites — has been “restored to full capacity.” Sudden restrictions on Ukraine’s Starshield services disrupted the military’s drone operations, officials said on Wednesday.

Here’s a tidbit in SpaceXSI’s announcement post for Grok Voice 3.0 today:

The company’s unsecured debt due in 2032 is now trading below 80 cents on the dollar, Bloomberg reports. “Yikes” is right, Elon — if CoreWeave crumbles, other debt-laden neoclouds might be in trouble, too.

Despite not deploying any new space-internet satellites since early July because of issues at launch partners, Amazon says it’s on track “to launch initial service in 2026” with its existing 396 Leo satellites, having already missed its revised “mid-2026” target. “We’re still doing work to raise them into final position, and then you know there’s a lot of work on the ground to do,” says Amazon VP Chris Weber.

As reported by Reuters, Trump bought up to $1.6 million in Nvidia stock and sold up to $1 million in August. Trump also disclosed an investment of as much as $5 million in SpaceX debt, according to CNBC.

The airline said it will install Starlink across its entire mainland fleet of 1,300-plus aircraft, up from a previous commitment of 500 planes. Installations will begin in early 2027 and use Starlink’s Performance Aero Terminal, which can deliver speeds of up to 1 gigabits per second. Meanwhile, SpaceX founder Elon Musk is predicting Delta Air Lines’ CEO will lose his job over his decision to go with Amazon’s Leo satellite internet.

NASA shared these images from the Curiosity rover as the Sun rose over the Martian cliffs, bathing them in soft, diffuse light. The color is more subdued than the bright rust red we’re used to. There’s an eerie beauty to the hazy landscape.

A satellite equipped with Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday. The mission is part of Google’s Project Suncatcher, an experimental initiative that could eventually put AI data centers in space.

It finally reached the milestone on Starship’s 14th test flight on Monday, after years of testing. This mission also carried the first 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit.

The Starship 14 mission includes two firsts for its next generation rocket: send the Starship spacecraft into Earth orbit, and insert a few dozen of SpaceX’s larger and more capable V3 satellites into the Starlink constellation for the first time. The 26 satellites will each add 1Tbps of capacity to the constellation, boosting total network capacity by about 3 percent on just this one flight.

Following backlash, YouTube posted on X that when the trailer was “submitted as an ad, it was temporarily restricted by our system. Following review the ad has been cleared to run.” Meta spokesperson Alex Dziedzan said, “This was an error,” and will now run the ads.

If you want to know where the power in tech currently lies, you only need to look at this photo of the head table at Donald Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. I see Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, AMD’s Lisa Su, Apple’s Tim Cook, and SpaceXaiTesla’s Elon Musk seated by the leaders of the world’s two superpowers. The CEOs and / or founders of Alphabet (Google), OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Qualcomm, Micron, Dell, and… Zoom, were also in attendance.