Lifeboat Foundation

NASA’s goal of building a space plane might at last come true. Should one company succeed in its mission, spaceplanes might actually become a reality. Unlike multi-stage rockets, Radian’s model has the potential to be a less expensive means of space travel.

A company is bringing back to life a NASA concept from decades ago to construct a reusable space plane that could affordably transport humans and small payloads into space. NASA investigated building a space plane prototype known as the X-33 in the 1990s, but the project was shelved in 2001 due to technical problems. With Radian One, a space plane that can carry up to five astronauts at a time and is fully reusable up to 100 times, Seattle-based Radian Aerospace is currently attempting to complete what NASA started.

The company’s chief technology officer, Livingston Holder, oversaw NASA’s X-33 program and is in charge of the new endeavor. Holder told CNN that since 2001, enough has changed to make building a space plane a more feasible objective. They’ve got composite materials that are lighter, tougher, and can take a larger thermal range than they had back then. And propulsion is better than anything they had, in terms of how efficiently it burns propellant and how much the systems weigh. The business informed CNN that it intends to test a scale model this year and that it has raised nearly $28 million to build Radian One in 2022.

SpaceX satellite internet service Starlink said it will comply with court orders to block social network X in Brazil.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday that T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS subscribers in the U.S. will get direct to mobile phone internet with the help of Starlink satellites first and other telecom service providers later.

What Happened: “Starlink direct to mobile phone Internet is exclusively with Tmobile in the US for the first year, then other carriers thereafter,” Musk wrote on X. “We are starting off working with one carrier in each country, but ultimately hope to serve all carriers.”

Musk’s comment comes on the heels of SpaceX launching 26 Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities to low-Earth orbit on Saturday.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX resumed launches of its Falcon 9 rocket early Aug. 31 after the Federal Aviation Administration ended a brief grounding of the vehicle.

One Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 3:43 a.m. Eastern, placing 21 Starlink satellites into orbit. It was followed at 4:48 a.m. Eastern by another Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Space Launch Complex 4E, also delivering 21 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. The 65 minutes between launches is the shortest interval yet between Falcon 9 launches.

The launches were the first by SpaceX since the Aug. 28 launch of a Falcon 9 where the booster was lost during landing on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. While the rocket successfully placed its payload of Starlink satellites into orbit, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a halt in Falcon 9 launches later that day to investigate any public safety implications of the failed landing.

WASHINGTON — General Dynamics Mission Systems, a unit of defense contractor General Dynamics, has been awarded a $491 million contract extension by the Space Development Agency for satellite ground systems, the Pentagon announced Aug. 30.

The modification nearly doubles the company’s existing contract with the Space Development Agency (SDA) to approximately $900 million through 2029. General Dynamics in 2022 was selected to build the ground operations and integration segment for the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a mesh network of satellites in low Earth orbit designed to support global military operations.

SDA. which is under the U.S. Space Force, is building the PWSA with a dedicated tracking layer that allows for real-time detection and monitoring of ballistic missile threats. The PWSA also is intended to provide a low-latency communication backbone for continuous data transmission, enhancing the ability to coordinate joint operations across different military branches.

HELSINKI — Chinese researchers are calling for improved space situational awareness, following an assessment of U.S. capabilities and trends.

An article titled “A Review of Space Situational Awareness Satellites: Silentbarker,” published in the journal ACMSR, provides an in-depth review of the development, status and future trends of space situational awareness (SSA) satellites.

It focuses in particular on four significant programs developed by the United States. These are the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX), the Space-Based Surveillance System (SBSS), the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) and Silentbarker.

TAMPA, Fla. — Verizon is launching satellite-enabled emergency text and location services this fall for compatible Android smartphones in the United States at no extra cost for customers.

The telecoms giant announced a partnership Aug. 28 to deliver the service with Skylo, which has developed ground infrastructure enabling L-band geostationary satellites to reach devices using the latest standards-based chipsets.

Google’s family of Pixel Pro devices and the Samsung Galaxy S25 are set to be among the first to get access to Skylo’s partner satellites, enabling emergency narrowband connectivity when cell towers are out of reach.

The summer holidays are ending, which for many concludes with a long drive home and reliance on GPS devices to get safely home. But every now and then, GPS devices can suggest strange directions or get briefly confused about your location. But until now, no one knew for sure when the satellites were in a good enough position for the GPS system to give reliable direction.

Scientists are trying to build a new sort of satellite, and have recently tested their idea with the Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment, or “StarFOX.” You may be getting flashbacks to the retro Star Fox video game series — and you’d be right to imagine this experiment as a science fiction fantasy brought into reality. There are no space-faring animals here, though.

Basically, StarFOX is a quartet of small satellites that work in tandem — a satellite “swarm,” as it’s sometimes called. This concept isn’t entirely new, but there’s something that sets StarFOX apart from standard satellite swarms. Typically, these conglomerates need external help in terms of orientation — but StarFOX’s four satellites can gauge their own positions with onboard cameras, an ability that could allow them to operate autonomously well beyond Earth orbit.