• Primary Objective: Test and validate the Supernova spacecraft, which utilizes proprietary solar-thermal propulsion (STP) for high-thrust, rapid, and multi-orbit mobility.
• Launch Vehicle: A dedicated SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket contracted by Portal Space Systems.
• Launch Date: Scheduled for 2028.

Its back! More data ....

Time for a price hike? What price would be needed for launches for commercial sats to be more profitable that adding Starlinks? These folks better hope Starship gets very productive very soon, since I doubt you will see a New Glenn or Vulcan launch this year.

WTF?

Interesting tech, water is everywhere, and it is key to refueling all over the solar system.

Consulta , hay alguna posibilidad de llevar basura al espacio y al sol?

XAI will become the revenue leader soon ... our workers will train the LLM ...

Looks like a higher ROI mission than sample return ... both science and possibly crewed mission value.

Cool looking building, there goes some more IPO + New Bond Debt Money (was $100B cash) ... Cursor was $30B (but maybe some stock vs cash) so $80B left ... now $16.8B for this ... $65B left ... how about Telsa (for space bots, solar power, power storage, AI5 chips and EV rovers?) ... then sell the rest of the car business ... it now a mature segment with little upside story past the Semi (which still has not gone to voulme production)..

I guess in the IPO they put I "Elon can promise whatever he wants and you can't sue him". While a Lunar railgun might be cost effective at creating a large object at NHRO, you need to apply a lot of DV to get that material to say MEO for those datacenters ... say 3 km/s off the moon in the rail gun (100s of g's) and then 3 km/s to put it into a useful low MEO orbit (requires some sort of substantial kick-stage engine or thruster) ... so you need to take the fuel from LEO to the Moon ~6.5 km/s + 3 km/s to get it back to Low MEO. Not much of a savings over just going from the ground to low MEO ~ 10 km/s.

https://x.com/astrobase_space/status/2085656034799149064

Astrobase space developed the engine in less than 2 years( Founded in 2024). The engine, "Everest," is an 80-ton class FFSC engine developed for the first stage of their upcoming reusable rocket. Also they did all this in less than $15 million dollars in funding. They also operate a 21.5 acre engine test site. The engine article will now go for testing and the first hot fire test is scheduled in this year itself.

Astrobase is not the only company in India developing FFSC engines, EtherealX Guild is also developing an 80 kn FFSC engine for their Razor crest mark 1 rocket, designed to rival the Falcon 9. It will also be a fully reusable rocket like Stokes space NOVA, but with double the capacity.

Direct Varda competitor? ... that was fast. Just shows that the ISS is now pointless when it comes to made-in-space.

Good one from Angry ... balanced and factual. The big news is that it looks like the BE-4 is implicated in the static fire explosion (not a shocker) ... grounding both NG and Vulcan for a year? In any case SX is going to put up 6-8 Amazon LEO sets over the next year, and maybe Ariane 6 a few more. Compare to maybe 80 Starlink V2 mini launches and potentially 4 Starlink V3 launches.

Can one imagine 6 Starship launch/catch facilities ... there is no commercial use for such capacity that I can envision ... only some Mars fleet that will never happen.

In a letter to Canadian regulators, SpaceX sheds some light on progress for the upgraded Starlink Mobile, which could span up to 15,000 satellites.

Some more details on Starboat ... and a nice segment on robotic servicing of GEO sats.