SpaceX has canceled Tuesday’s launch of a South Korean military satellite to “take a closer look” at the rocket’s staging.
The launch, which will send the satellite into orbit on its ANASIS-II mission, was delayed due to concerns over the rocket’s second stage. SpaceX tweeted that it will “swap hardware” for the rocket if needed.
A new launch date has not been set.
On Saturday, SpaceX announced it had completed a test of its Falcon 9 rocket ahead of the launch. The rocket had been loaded onto the launchpad and even fired its engines for a few seconds. “Static tests” like that allow engineers to measure pressure and temperature, as well as check that everything is working as it should.
The rocket booster that will be used in the ANASIS-II flight will be the same as the ones that lifted NASA astronauts into orbit during the historic Crew Dragon launch last month.
The ANASIS-II will be South Korea’s first military communications satellite. However, little else is known about the satellite due to its military background.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.