The company holds a contract to put NASA astronauts down near the lunar south pole on the Artemis 3 mission, which is expected to launch in 2028, if all goes according to plan. SpaceX will use a modified upper stage of its Starship megarocket — the biggest and most powerful launcher ever built — for this very high-profile job.

Or will it? Last week, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy said the agency will reopen the Artemis 3 landing contract to competition, citing concerns with the pace of Starship's development. The rocket has flown 11 uncrewed test flights to date, the last two of them completely successful, but has yet to reach Earth orbit or demonstrate key moon-critical milestones such as in-space propellant transfer. (Each Starship vehicle will need to be refueled multiple times in Earth orbit before it can reach the moon.)

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Oct. 20 during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box." (China plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2030 and has been making steady progress toward this goal.)

This announcement did not sit well with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. He attacked Duffy via social media repeatedly over the following few days, calling the acting NASA chief "Sean Dummy" and claiming that he "is trying to kill NASA."

Now, more than a week later, SpaceX has formulated a more substantive response. On Thursday (Oct. 30), the company posted an update called "To the Moon and Beyond," which summarizes the progress that SpaceX has made with Starship to date and lays out the vehicle's potential to make NASA's lunar ambitions a reality.

"Starship provides unmatched capability to explore the moon, thanks to its large size and ability to refill propellant in space," the blog post reads. "One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, which is roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, and is complete with a cabin that can be scaled for large numbers of explorers and dual airlocks for surface exploration."

SpaceX stressed in the update that it's working in parallel along two Starship paths, developing the "core" megarocket (which will help humanity colonize Mars, among other tasks) as well as the Artemis-specific moon-lander upper stage. SpaceX is self-funding the core path, and its contract for the Artemis lander is of the fixed-price variety, "ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs," the company wrote.

According to Thursday's update, SpaceX has already completed 49 such milestones for the Artemis lander, including testing of micrometeoroid and space debris shielding and demonstrations of "lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control" systems. And the company plans to make even more progress soon, sending a Starship upper stage to Earth orbit and completing an in-space fueling test with the vehicle in 2026, if all goes to plan.

SpaceX affirmed in the blog post that it shares NASA's goal to return astronauts to the moon "as expeditiously as possible" and wants to be "a core enabler" of the Artemis program's overriding ambition — to establish a permanent and sustained human presence on the moon, rather than mount a flags-and-footprints retread of Apollo. And the company said it's willing to be flexible to help make all of this happen.

"Since the contract was awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis 3 have changed and have shared ideas on how to simplify the mission to align with national priorities," reads the update, which also features a new render of the interior of a crewed Starship moon lander. "In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the moon while simultaneously improving crew safety."

The current Artemis 3 plan calls for its four astronauts to lift off atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, then ride an Orion capsule to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the Starship upper stage. The astronauts will move into Starship, which will take them to and from the lunar surface.

SpaceX's new blog post doesn't provide any details about the possible "simplified" Artemis 3 architecture. But Musk may have given us a clue on Oct. 20, in one of his many Duffy reaction posts. "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry," the billionaire wrote. "Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words."

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 4:41 p.m. EDT (2041 GMT; 1:41 p.m. local California time).

Starlink, SpaceX's internet-beaming network in low Earth orbit (LEO), is by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled. The company has lofted more than 10,000 Starlink spacecraft to date, and nearly 8,800 of them are active today.

Most of SpaceX's launches these days go toward building out Starlink even further: The company has flown 138 Falcon 9 missions so far in 2025, and 99 have been Starlink efforts.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after launch, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was the 29th flight for this particular booster, which is designated 1063. That's close to the Falcon 9 reuse record, which currently stands at 31 flights.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9's upper stage will continue hauling the 29 Starlink satellites to LEO, where they'll be deployed about an hour after liftoff.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 12:35 a.m. EDT (1635 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, pulling off a pinpoint touchdown in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Just Read the Instructions."

It was the 15th flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1082, and some of its previous missions were pretty high-profile. For example, this same first stage also launched the Crew-8 astronaut mission to the International Space Station for NASA and Polaris Dawn, a crewed flight to Earth orbit that featured the first-ever private spacewalk.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 29 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit today. They'll be deployed there about 64 minutes after launch, if all goes according to plan.

Today's liftoff was the 138th orbital launch of the year for SpaceX, extending the company's cadence record. The previous mark was 134, set in 2024.

Ninety-nine of this year's missions have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of more than 8,700 active satellites.

Astrobotic's Griffin-1 lunar lander, carrying NASA and commercial payloads that include rovers from Astrobotic and Astrolab, will wait just a little longer before its planned excursion to the moon. The mission had previously targeted a launch at the end of 2025, but will apparently miss that deadline, according to an Astrobotic update posted on Oct. 24.

The mission will mark Astrobotic’s second attempt at a lunar landing after its Peregrine Mission One in January 2024 failed to reach the moon after experiencing a propellant leak shortly after launch. Griffin is undergoing payload integration and software testing at the Pennsylvania company's facility, where propulsion testing and avionics validations are currently underway.

Like Peregrine, Griffin is being developed under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which funds private missions to the moon to deliver payloads in support of the Artemis program — NASA push to return astronauts to the lunar surface.

NASA originally planned to fly its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) aboard Griffin, but that mission was canceled in 2024, leading Astrobotic to repurpose its payload spot for a commercial rover: Astrolab's FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform) rover. (VIPER was recently un-canceled, and added to the manifest of a Blue Origin lunar mission targeted for 2027.)

In addition to FLIP, Griffin will carry Astrobotic's own CubeRover, and several smaller payloads including the Nippon Travel Agency plaque sending messages collected from children in Japan to the moon, the Galactic Library to Preserve Humanity from Nanofiche and the MoonBox capsule that will deliver "items from around the world" to the lunar surface, according to Astrobotic's update.

The company said it has nearly completed assembly of Griffin's core structure, with critical components like thrusters, pressure tanks, solar panels and payload ramps already successfully fitted to the vehicle. The lander awaits the installation of four propellant tanks, which Astrobotic will ready the vehicle for environmental acceptance testing to simulate various stages of the mission, like launch, spaceflight and exploring the surface of the moon. Simultaneously, Astrobotic said it is also performing engine qualification testing ahead of final integration.

NASA's CLPS program aims to stimulate the commercial lunar economy while giving the agency access to low-cost delivery services to the moon. Setbacks and early failures in the program, like Peregrine's mishap or Intuitive Machines' landers both toppling over and ending their mission early, have drawn scrutiny, and Astrobotic's ability to recover with Griffin will be a critical test for both the company as well as the CLPS program.

With integration milestones converging and major payloads on track for delivery and testing, Astrobotic said it is targeting the next viable launch window, which opens next July. The launch will be the 12th for SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, which utilizes three modified Falcon 9 boosters through liftoff and the first stage of flight. Previous flights have successfully returned Falcon Heavy's side boosters to SpaceX's landing zones on Florida's Space Coast, but none have yet successfully landed the rocket's core stage.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 Starlink craft lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 8:43 p.m. EDT (5:43 p.m. local California time; 0043 GMT on Oct. 28).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 17th flight for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1082.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 28 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO), where they will be deployed about an hour after launch.

Today's launch was the 137th Falcon 9 mission of the year and the third in the last three days. Ninety-eight of those flights have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, by far the largest satellite network ever assembled.

SpaceX has launched more than 10,000 Starlink spacecraft to date, and nearly 8,750 of them remain active in LEO. The megaconstellation will get considerably bigger, however, adding perhaps another 30,000 satellites or so over the coming years.

SpaceX extends its single-year launch record with every liftoff these days. The company's previous mark for orbital launches was 134, set in 2024.

Now, it seems that the parties involved have come to an amicable settlement, the monetary details of which weren't disclosed.

This court-aimed quarrel began last year, when Cards Against Humanity (CAH), the Chicago-based publisher of that popular adult party game, became aware of a piece of their South Texas property being used to store heavy equipment, vehicles and random construction materials owned by SpaceX in an area adjacent to the aerospace company's Starbase manufacturing and launch facility.

The kerfuffle escalated when CAH filed a $15 million lawsuit seeking restitution for the encroachment and subsequent damage to that slice of land, which is situated near the U.S.-Mexico border. The property was purchased in 2017 by a coalition of supporters who aimed to disrupt then-President Donald Trump's plan to build a border wall.

As part of the Cards Against Humanity Saves America project, 150,000 customers donated $15 each to buy that grassland meadow, which eventually became a sprawling parking lot filled with "gravel, tractors and space junk," CAH wrote in a statement on Sept. 20, 2024. Any remaining funds recovered in the lawsuit were promised to be equally distributed back to those who had participated in the land’s initial purchase.

Per AP, according to Texas court records, a settlement was finalized last month, prior to the upcoming Nov. 3 jury trial marked on the calendar. SpaceX owns other land plots in the Brownsville, Texas area in Cameron County, but apparently had no right to use this patch.

"The upside is that SpaceX has removed their construction equipment from our land and we're able to work with a local landscaping company to restore the land to its natural state: devoid of space garbage and pointless border walls," CAH wrote in a recent message to customers. "Were we hoping to be able to pay all our fans? Sure. But we did warn them they would probably only be able to get like $2 or most likely nothing."

CAH has opted for a different approach to compensate its donors, since the (undisclosed) amount gained will mostly go toward refurbishment of the property. They've come up with a funny consolation prize for fans that reflects the bold spirit and attitude of the successful gaming firm.

"Elon Musk's team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and f***ed off," CAH's recent message adds. "But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls. So while we can't give you what you really wanted –– cash money from Elon Musk –– we're going to make it up to you, our best, sexiest customers … with comedy! We're sending you each a brand new mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk."

And something tells us this special pack of Musk cards won’t be very flattering!

Over the past year, Ukraine dispatched thousands of wheeled ground robots to its frontline military units to help deliver supplies, evacuate the wounded and, in some cases, attack the intruding Russians troops and push them out without risking the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. But the limited bandwidth SpaceX's satellites can provide means that individual terminals mounted on the UGVs have to make do with as little as 10 megabits per second, which results in poor quality of the video feed used to control the UGVs.

"If you want to drive fast, you need a frame rate of at least 30 frames per second to be able to control the robot," Vadym Burukin, technologist and CEO of drone start-up Huless, told Space.com. "If you only have ten frames per second and you are moving fast, there is a huge chance that you're going to end up in a minefield or in a tree."

SpaceX's internet-beaming Starlink megaconstellation has been indispensable for Ukraine since the early days of the war. Its terminals keep troops connected on the battlefield but also help guide FPV drones, marine robots and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) beyond the reach of radio links. According to sources with links to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, as many as 200,000 Starlink terminals are active in Ukraine, making the former Soviet republic by far the biggest user of Starlink services in Europe.

But the high number of devices, especially along the frontlines, means the robots can only travel at meager speeds of about 6 miles per hour (10 kilometres), Andriy Dovbenko, Ukrainian entrepreneur and CEO of the Ukrainian Tech Exchange network, told Space.com. Due to that slow speed, the ground robots need up to two hours to cross the 12-mile-wide (20-kilometer) grey zone, where troops and equipment are in constant danger of being destroyed by Russian first-person-view (FPV) drones. "It's quite slow for [unmanned ground vehicles]," Dovbenko said. "You want to have at least 20 kilometres per hour [24 miles]."

Starlink terminals, Burukin added, also tend to get buggy due to the vibrations of the UGV rolling over rugged terrain. Clouds, rain and even tree canopy overhead can further degrade the signal.

In response, Ukrainian tech innovators are looking for alternatives that would enable the robots to drive faster to increase their chances of completing their missions before they get spotted and bombed by Russian kamikaze drones.

To solve the problem, Burukin and his colleagues have developed tethered drones that rise 500 feet high (150 meters), carrying signal repeaters that amplify the weak radio signals to increase their reach.

"For ground-to-ground communication [the radio signal range] is just a couple of kilometers," said Burukin. "With a repeater in the air, this range extends to 40 plus kilometers (25 miles)."

Flying drones can fly even further thanks to the airborne repeaters, up to 48 miles (80 kilometers) from their controllers hidden away from the enemy drones' reach.

This allows Ukrainian soldiers to conduct bold exploratory missions deep into the territory now controlled by Russia while not worrying about losing their Starlink signal.

"Recently, we were able to get all the way to the Donbas arena, a big stadium in the center of Donetsk, flying drones using our repeating equipment," said Burukin.

Donetsk, some 30 miles (50 km) from the current frontline, has been controlled by Russian separatists since 2014.

Still, Starlink remains indispensable for Ukraine, Dovbenko insists.

"There are many uses for Starlink in the war, but it's not been developed specifically as a military technology, so it has its limitations," Dovbenko said. "It would be good to have alternatives. But can we really produce an alternative to Starlink at scale? Probably not."

AI-powered autonomous navigation systems further assist the military robots to overcome signal problems due to deliberate jamming and other disruptions. In the next few years, AI is set to take over most activities along the frontline, the Ukrainian innovators hope. Autonomous war machines will not need any real-time human oversight, thus being immune to radio jamming and Starlink signal loss.

Although killer robots are unlikely to completely replace human soldiers, they will help reduce the number of people needed in the most vulnerable and dangerous locations along the frontline.

One of the company's Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 25) at 10:20 a.m. EDT (1420 GMT; 7:20 a.m. local time), carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO).

It was the 135th orbital launch of the year for SpaceX, breaking a mark the company set in 2024.

All of SpaceX's orbital flights this year have been performed by Falcon 9s, which have now launched as many missions in the past 11 months as NASA's space shuttle flew in its 30-year history.

SpaceX has also launched five suborbital test flights of its Starship megarocket so far this year. In 2024, the company launched 132 Falcon 9 missions, two flights of the more powerful Falcon Heavy, and four Starship suborbital tests.

On today's flight, the Falcon 9 came back to Earth as planned, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the 19th launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which is designated 1081.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 28 Starlink satellites toward LEO, where they will be deployed about an hour after liftoff.

SpaceX has notched a number of important milestones in the past week or so. For example, one recent mission launched the 10,000th Starlink satellite to orbit, and another was the record-breaking 31st flight of the Falcon 9 booster known as 1067.

And the Oct. 23 launch of the Spainsat NG-2 satellite was the 139th overall liftoff of the year for SpaceX, also a new record.

The NVIDIA H100 GPU, which is about 100 times more powerful than any processor that has flown in space to date, will fly aboard the Starcloud-1 satellite, which is expected to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket next month.

The company behind the mission, the Redmond, Washington-based Starcloud, will use the mission to test how data processing could work in space, as the first step in an ambitious plan to build large-scale computing infrastructure in orbit.

Moving data crunching to space would reduce the environmental burden that the world's growing computing needs present for communities on Earth, some technologists believe.

Data centers consume huge amounts of electricity and water, putting strain on local supplies. They also generate noise and contribute to climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In space, power and cooling would be easier to come by, and any potential noise would bother no one.

"In space, you get almost unlimited, low-cost renewable energy," Philip Johnston, cofounder and CEO of Starcloud, said in a statement. "The only cost on the environment will be on the launch; then there will be 10x carbon-dioxide savings over the life of the data center compared with powering the data center terrestrially on Earth."

To move data centers to space, however, will require launch costs to go down a lot. Starcloud expects that the cost calculation will be just right when SpaceX's Starship megarocket becomes fully operational, which could happen in the early 2030s.

"In 10 years, nearly all new data centers will be being built in outer space," Johnston predicted.

In the meantime, the Starcloud-1 satellite will test the basics of orbital data processing by crunching data from Earth-observing satellites to generate swift insights for users on Earth.

High-resolution optical and radar images comprise huge amounts of pixels, requiring satellites to beam to Earth massive data sets. Ground stations are not always available, and bandwidth is limited, so data frequently reaches recipients with delays. Processing data in orbit would remove some of these bottlenecks, as the best images would be identified directly in orbit and sent to Earth during the earliest ground station passage.

The Starcloud-1 satellite will also run the Gemma open language model from Google, another major space first.

"Starcloud needs to be competitive with the type of workload you can run on an Earth-based data center, and the NVIDIA H100 GPU is by far the most performant in terms of training, fine-tuning and inference," Johnston said.

If all goes well, the company will launch more powerful satellites in the coming years, testing more powerful NVIDIA GPUs, including the NVIDIA Blackwell platform, which will offer another up to tenfold improvement in performance, Starcloud said in the statement.

SpaceX launched its record-setting 139th mission of the year today (Oct. 23).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT on Oct. 24), lofting the second and final satellite for the Spainsat Next Generation (NG) constellation.

The two Spainsat NG spacecraft will provide "military-grade secure communications to the Spanish Armed Forces and its partners," according to SatNews.

SpaceX also launched the first Spainsat NG satellite, which lifted off atop a Falcon 9 this past January.

If all goes to plan today, the Falcon 9's upper stage will deploy the Spainsat NG-2 satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit about 36 minutes after liftoff.

The rocket's first stage, meanwhile, did not come back to Earth for a safe touchdown today — a rarity these days for Falcon 9 missions. The booster was in expendable mode "due to the additional performance required to deliver this payload to orbit," SpaceX wrote in a mission description.

This mission was the 22nd for this booster, the company added.

Today's flight was the 139th of 2025 for SpaceX, setting a new mark for the company. SpaceX has now launched 134 Falcon 9 missions this year — also a record — and five suborbital test flights of its Starship megarocket.

In 2024, SpaceX performed 132 Falcon 9 flights, four Starship test launches and two liftoffs of its powerful Falcon Heavy rocket.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:45 p.m. ET on Oct. 23 with news of successful launch.

The SpaceX founder and CEO has hammered Duffy repeatedly on social media over the past few days, calling him "Sean Dummy" (which he later amended to "Sean 'Dangerously Stupid' Dummy") and claiming that Duffy "is trying to kill NASA."

Musk also posted the following poll question on X: "Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America's space program?" That's a nod to Duffy's lumberjack past; he was active in timber sports in his youth and held two world speed-climbing titles by the age of 30.

This barrage didn't come out of left field. It followed on the heels of Duffy's announcement that NASA will reopen competition for the Artemis 3 moon-landing contract, which SpaceX won in April 2021. The company plans to use a modified upper stage of its Starship megarocket for that mission, which will put astronauts down on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The current plan calls for Artemis 3 astronauts to launch atop a NASA Space Launch System rocket, then ride an Orion capsule to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with Starship for the trip down.

Duffy, however, voiced concerns that Starship may not be ready on NASA's desired Artemis 3 timeline, which now features a 2028 launch target.

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Monday (Oct. 20) during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," he added. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

Musk did not seem happy about that. He responded by noting that Blue Origin has never delivered a "useful payload" to Earth orbit — something SpaceX has done hundreds of times — and then made a prediction: "SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole moon mission. Mark my words."

Musk also responded in another, less substantive way, posting a meme on X asking Duffy why he is "gae."

Musk's beef with Duffy appears to extend beyond the Artemis 3 contract issue, however. The SpaceX chief has long backed fellow billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator — a post Isaacman was poised to secure until President Trump abruptly withdrew his nomination on May 31.

Trump himself nominated Isaacman but had a change of heart very late in the game, citing the tech entrepreneur's past donations to Democratic politicians and alleged close relationship with Musk. That decision resulted in Duffy taking the agency over in an acting capacity.

In a twist, Isaacman now appears to be back in the mix as a candidate for the top NASA job. But Duffy is keen to hold onto the position, according to both The Wall Street Journal and Ars Technica.

Both outlets also reported that Duffy may seek to fold NASA into the Department of Transportation, an agency also led by the former lumberjack and reality TV star. (Duffy was on the sixth season of MTV's "The Real World," which aired in 1997.)

Musk thinks this is a bad idea: He replied with the "100" emoji to a post by AstroForge CEO and founder Matt Gialich that reads, "No one wants this to happen. This would mark the beginning of the end for our nation's dominance in space."

And, in a post this morning (Oct. 22), Musk took the fight directly to Duffy yet again: "Having a NASA Administrator who knows literally ZERO about rockets & spacecraft undermines the American space program and endangers our astronauts."

The obvious but unsaid point of comparison is Isaacman, who funded, organized and commanded two private missions to Earth orbit, using SpaceX rockets and capsules. (Musk did distance himself from this comparison in another X post today, however, saying, "At this point, I am not advocating any particular candidate for NASA Administrator. I am just desperate for someone with a 3 digit IQ.")

Will Trump re-up Isaacman's nomination? Will Duffy get to take the "acting" modifier off his NASA job title? And how will Musk respond to any of these eventualities? Stay tuned; there could be much more drama ahead.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:28 p.m. ET on Oct. 22 to include a new X post from Musk, which reads, in part, "I am just desperate for someone with a 3 digit IQ."

SpaceX has broken its own record for number of rocket launches in a year, and is showing no signs of slowing down.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Oct. 22) at 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT; 7:16 a.m. local California time). It was the 133rd Falcon 9 flight of 2025, breaking the mark set by the rocket last year.

The satellites will add to SpaceX's growing megaconstellation in low Earth orbit (LEO), which provides wireless internet services to Starlink customer's across the globe.

Today's launch will be the 138th overall of 2025 for SpaceX, tying the record the company set in 2024.

Last year, SpaceX launched 132 Falcon 9 flights, two missions of the more powerful Falcon Heavy and four suborbital trials of its Starship megarocket. The Falcon Heavy has not flown yet in 2025; SpaceX's other five missions this year have been Starship test flights.

Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was be the 21st launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which is designated B1075. The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, will continue carrying the Starlink satellites to LEO, deploying them there an hour after launch.

Today's launch will be the latest in a series of milestones that SpaceX has notched recently. For example, the company launched two Falcon 9 missions on Sunday (Oct. 19); one sent the 10,000th Starlink satellite to LEO, and the other was the record-breaking 31st flight for that particular Falcon 9's first stage.

China's first reusable rocket just took a big step toward flight.

The Chinese company LandSpace conducted a static-fire test with its stainless steel Zhuque-3 launcher on Monday (Oct. 20), keeping the rocket on track for a debut expected to occur before the end of the year.

The static fire — a common prelaunch trial in which a rocket fires its engines while remaining anchored to the pad — capped the three-day "first phase" of Zhuque-3's maiden flight campaign, according to LandSpace.

That phase also included a fueling test, which, like the static fire, took place in the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone in northwestern China.

"The vehicle will next proceed with planned vertical integration rehearsal, before returning to the technical zone for inspection and maintenance in preparation for its upcoming orbital launch and first-stage recovery," LandSpace said via X on Monday.

Zhuque-3 looks a lot like SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which also features a reusable first stage and an expendable upper stage. Like the Falcon 9, Zhuque-3's booster is powered by nine engines — in this case, Tianque-12As, which LandSpace developed in house.

The Tianque-12A employs liquid methane and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants — a key difference with the Falcon 9, whose Merlin engines burn LOX and rocket-grade kerosene. (SpaceX's next-gen Raptor engine, which powers its Starship megarocket, uses LOX and liquid methane.)

The 217-foot-tall (66 meters) Zhuque-3 can haul about 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) to low Earth orbit (LEO). That's in roughly the same ballpark as the Falcon 9, whose LEO payload capacity is 50,265 pounds (22,800 kg).

Monday's static fire was the latest in a series of significant milestones for the Zhuque-3. For example, LandSpace performed low-altitude launch and landing tests with the vehicle last year, and it conducted a static fire this past June.

Beijing-based LandSpace, which was founded in 2015, also flies the expendable Zhuque-2. In July 2023, that rocket became the first LOX-methane vehicle to reach Earth orbit. That debut kicked off a string of four consecutive successes for Zhuque-2, but the rocket failed on its most recent liftoff this past August.

In April 2021, NASA awarded Elon Musk's company a $2.9 billion contract to provide the first crewed lunar lander for the agency's Artemis program. That vehicle, a modified upper stage of SpaceX's Starship megarocket, is supposed to land astronauts on the moon for the first time on the upcoming Artemis 3 mission.

But NASA isn't satisfied with the pace of Starship's development and is therefore shaking things up, acting agency chief Sean Duffy announced on Monday (Oct. 20).

"I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on Monday morning, during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The president and I want to get to the moon in this president's term, so I'm gonna open up the contract," he added. "I'm gonna let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin."

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, won an Artemis Human Landing System contract of its own in 2023, an award worth $3.4 billion. The company plans to fulfill that deal with its Blue Moon lander, which was originally expected to make its crewed lunar debut on the Artemis 5 mission.

Musk voiced skepticism that Blue Origin could speed up its timeline enough to be ready for a crewed moon mission before SpaceX.

"Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone the moon," the world's richest person said via X on Monday, qualifying that to "useful payload" in a follow-up post. (Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket carried a prototype of the company's Blue Ring spacecraft to Earth orbit on its first — and so far, only — launch this past January.)

Artemis 3's timeline has shifted to the right several times over the past few years, and not just because Starship is still in the testing phase; issues with spacesuits, NASA's Orion capsule and other tech have also played a role. (Orion will carry Artemis astronauts to lunar orbit, where they'll meet up with the lander that will deliver them to the surface.)

The launch date was originally targeted for late 2024 but was pushed back to 2025, September 2026 and then mid-2027.

And NASA is now apparently eyeing an even later timeline: In Monday's "Squawk Box" interview, Duffy suggests that 2028 is the target for Artemis 3.

The Artemis program has one launch under its belt — that of Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to and from lunar orbit in late 2022.

NASA is now gearing up for Artemis 2, which will launch four people on a 10-day journey around the moon next year. That mission remains on track to launch as early as February, Duffy said on Monday.

SpaceX's Starship, meanwhile, has launched on 11 suborbital test flights to date. The most recent two liftoffs, which took place on Aug. 26 and Oct. 13, respectively, were fully successful.

As Duffy noted, China has moon plans of its own: The nation plans to land astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor by 2030 and is making serious progress toward achieving that goal. No humans have touched the lunar surface since NASA's Apollo 17 astronauts did so in December 1972.

SpaceX notched a big milestone on a Falcon 9 rocket launch today (Oct. 19).

A Falcon 9 carrying 28 of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 1:39 p.m. EDT (1639 GMT).

It was the record-breaking 31st mission for this Falcon 9's first stage, a booster designated 1067.

Booster 1067 came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff as planned today, wrapping up its 31st flight with a pinpoint landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas."

Such extensive rocket reuse is a core part of SpaceX's plan to lower the cost of spaceflight and increase its efficiency.

That already-successful strategy could take a big leap forward soon; the company is developing a giant, fully reusable rocket called Starship, which is designed to help humanity settle Mars. (The Falcon 9 and its close cousin the Falcon Heavy are only partially reusable; their upper stages are expendable.)

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, hauled the 28 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit today, deploying them as planned about 64 minutes after launch.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:49 p.m. EDT on Oct. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing. It was updated again at 5 p.m. ET with news of satellite deploy, and to correct an earlier version that claimed that this flight lofted the 10,000th Starlink satellite to space. That milestone actually came on SpaceX's second Starlink launch of the day, which launched from California.

SpaceX notched two big milestones on a single Falcon 9 liftoff today (Oct. 19).

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink internet satellites lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT; 12:24 p.m. local California time).

Those 28 included the 10,000th Starlink spacecraft ever to reach orbit, which a SpaceX employee noted on the company's launch webcast: "From Tintin to 10,000! Go Starlink, go Falcon, go SpaceX!"

It was also the 132nd Falcon 9 liftoff of the year, equaling the mark set by the rocket last year — and there are still nearly 2.5 months to go in 2025.

SpaceX launched its first two Starlink prototypes — known as Tintin A and Tintin B — to low Earth orbit (LEO) in February 2018, then began building the megaconstellation in earnest 15 months later. The company offered Starlink service for the first time with a public beta test in October 2020 and started a commercial rollout the next year.

Starlink now provides service to millions of customers around the world, and SpaceX continues to beef up that product by sending more and more satellites to the final frontier.

The pace has reached extraordinary levels lately: SpaceX launched 89 Starlink missions in 2024 and has already exceeded that number this year. And don't expect it to stop anytime soon: SpaceX already has permission to loft 12,000 Starlink satellites, and the megaconstellation could eventually consist of more than 30,000 spacecraft.

Most of the Starlink satellites that SpaceX has launched remain active — 8,608 are currently operational, according to satellite tracker and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. Most of the others have been deorbited, guided down to burn up in Earth's atmosphere. (Each Starlink satellite has an operational life of about five years.)

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned today about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You." It was the 11th launch and touchdown for this particular booster, which carries the designation 1088.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, deployed the Starlink satellites on schedule an hour after liftoff.

This launch was the second of the day for SpaceX; less than two hours earlier, another Falcon 9 sent 28 more Starlink satellites up from Florida's Space Coast. That earlier liftoff was the 31st for that Falcon 9's first stage, setting a new reuse record.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:35 p.m. ET on Oct. 19 with news of successful launch and rocket landing, then again at 5:05 p.m. ET with news of satellite deploy and to note that this mission carried the 10,000th Starlink satellite to reach orbit.

On Oct. 10, the Department of the Air Force approved SpaceX's proposal to launch up to 100 missions annually from Vandenberg Space Force Base, which sits on the Golden State's rugged, beautiful and cloudy central coast.

SpaceX had been cleared to launch just 50 times per year from the site.

The newly announced record of decision (ROD) came after the Air Force released a final environmental impact statement about SpaceX's proposed ramp-up of activities at Vandenberg.

To date, the only SpaceX rocket that has ever flown from Vandenberg is the company's workhorse Falcon 9 — and all of its liftoffs there have been from Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC-4E).

But the Air Force approval opens Vandenberg to launches of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy as well, from Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6). That pad has not hosted a liftoff since 2022; it will be modified to support both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions, according to an Air Force statement issued on Tuesday (Oct. 14).

The newly granted approval authorizes up to five Falcon Heavy launches per year from SLC-6. But the heavy lifter likely won't actually use 5% of SpaceX's 100-flight quota; the Falcon Heavy hasn't flown in over a year, and SpaceX is working to get an even more powerful rocket online — Starship, a giant, fully reusable vehicle designed to help humanity settle Mars.

The Air Force approval is not the final word on the matter, however. The Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial launches, "will issue an independent ROD based on its conclusions," Air Force officials wrote in Tuesday's statement.

SpaceX currently launches rockets from four sites — Vandenberg, Starbase in South Texas, and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, which are next door to each other on Florida's Space Coast.

Starbase is the center of Starship manufacturing and testing; it has hosted all 11 of the megarocket's test flights to date. Vandenberg generally supports launches to polar orbits, which are popular for Earth-observation missions. Because Earth rotates in a west-to-east direction, satellites that circle it from north to south eventually see almost all of the planet's surface.

Spectacular footage from Starship's recent test launch shows the final seconds of the spacecraft's booster before touching down in the rich, blue waters of the Gulf.

SpaceX launched the 11th test flight of its giant Starship rocket on Oct. 12 and achieved all of its objectives. The vehicle, currently under development, consists of its "Ship" upper stage, and the Super Heavy booster, both of which are reusable. Together, they stand nearly 400 feet tall (122 meters), though SpaceX plans to launch a taller, upgraded version three (V3) iteration of the vehicle moving forward.

Starship V2, which launched Monday (Oct. 13) from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas, has plagued the company over the past year of test flights, but Flight Test 11 and its predecessor have redeemed the rocket in its final flights. To drive that point home, SpaceX has released video from the booster's thrilling last moments before it dived into its new home at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Flight Test 11 achieved all of its mission goals, and SpaceX seemed to have improved issues seen on Flight Test 10, which saw visible structural damage on Ship as the upper stage returned through Earth's atmosphere.

Ship's descent and soft landing in the Indian Ocean created a picture perfect curtain call to wrap up V2's final flight about an hour after its liftoff, but its Super Heavy booster sang its swan song only about 6.5 minutes into the mission. This was the second flight of this particular Super Heavy booster, and only the second booster to be reflown as part of SpaceX's efforts to make Starship completely reusable.

Starship is the rocket SpaceX envisions will establish a permanent human presence on Mars — an effort company CEO Elon Musk estimates will take over a thousand launches, and one reliant on the vehicle's ability to land and launch again and again.

NASA has also tapped Starship as the lunar lander for the agency's upcoming Artemis 3 mission, which aims to put astronauts' boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s. NASA hopes to launch that mission sometime in 2027, putting pressure on SpaceX's timeline to make Starship operationally ready.

In addition of the soft splashdowns of Ship and Super Heavy, Flight 11's success included deployment of Starlink mass simulator satellites, a relighting of Ship's Raptor engines while in space and a new engine burn initiation sequence for Super Heavy during the booster's deceleration and landing burn.

Both Super Heavy and Ship are designed to return to Starbase for quick turnarounds to reflight, though neither stage did so for this mission. SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times using giant mechanical arms attached to the rocket's launch tower, referred to as the "Mechazilla" chopstick arms. The Ship upper stage is also designed to be caught by the launch tower's arms, though Musk has stated SpaceX's first attempt to do so will take place in early 2026.

In the past couple of weeks, the California-based startup has completed the final weld on the primary structure of Haven-1, followed by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article's hatch and a domed window as the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at around 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms), will be the largest spacecraft to lift off atop the rocket. The space station is planned to host up to four short-duration astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four people spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some other combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

The space station is intended to be a stepping stone into a new era of human spaceflight, according to Vast lead astronaut Drew Feustel, who spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

"If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that's an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight," said Feustel, who's a former NASA astronaut. The Falcon 9 for the launch is booked, and liftoff could take place as soon as the second quarter of 2026.

Vast's rise has been meteoric. Founded in 2021, the company has swelled to around 800 employees. Nearly all of its hardware is built in-house, with only solar arrays and thrusters outsourced. "When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum." Feustel recalled. "Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded."

Haven-1 will not just be a private station. It will look to take human spaceflight in a new direction, learning lessons from industry trends and making the human experience more central.

The company has been taking some pages out of the book of SpaceX, which has revolutionized access to the final frontier and was the first space company to start building a commercial vehicle that wasn't designed and developed by NASA.

"What SpaceX did — making it clean and functional at the same time — was something astronauts were skeptical of at first," Feustel said. "But we came to appreciate the calmness of the environment."

Vast has also picked up expertise and experience from Elon Musk's company. "A lot of our people are former SpaceX employees who wanted to do it again, but this time with a space station."

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station (ISS) and with a more human-centered design. The aesthetics, psychology and "Earth tones" of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and calm. Vast also hired a former Campbell's food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep system that allows crew members to adjust the pressure to create a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, rather than the tethered sleeping bag approach on the ISS. Visitors to the Vast exhibit at IAC could try out the new system.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it is also designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a much more ambitious, modular project that Vast hopes could replace the ISS, which will be deorbited in 2030.

Haven-2's modules will add a second docking port, have a larger volume, fixed solar arrays, and likely a second window. Its modular design allows attachment of cargo or future nodes, including a central node designed to launch via SpaceX's Starship megarocket, which is under development. This larger outpost would be a stepping stone toward artificial gravity and long-term habitation.

"Haven-2 will be stretched in length, add another docking port, and become more modular. We can attach cargo supply while the crew is there," Feustel said. These modules will need to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with elongated fairings. "The central node can only launch on Starship. It's an eight-meter-diameter class structure."

Haven-1 is privately funded, and its launch is paid for. Haven-2's design depends on NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program, however. "Once we know the expectations, we can head down with full focus — our architecture is flexible enough to adapt," Feustel said.

Again, Haven-2 is a step toward a grander vision. "We were founded for long-term living in space, so artificial gravity," said Eva Behrend, Vast's vice president of communications. "But we realized we needed stepping stones. So we said, 'Let's just build it and prove we can do it.'"

"We think of ourselves as building destinations in space — places for people to live, work and look back at Earth," said Behrend. For now, it's Haven-1 and Haven-2 in low Earth orbit, but Vast has its sights set on destinations beyond.

A Falcon 9 topped with 28 of the company's Starlink internet satellites launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today (Oct. 16), rising off the pad at 5:57 a.m. EDT (0957 GMT).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, landing in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Just Read The Instructions."

It was the third launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1095. Its other two flights were also Starlink launches, according to a SpaceX mission description.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued carrying the 28 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO), where they're scheduled to be deployed 64 minutes after liftoff.

Today's launch was the 130th Falcon 9 flight of 2025 already. That's just two shy of the rocket's single-year record, which was set in 2024.

More than 70% of this year's Falcon 9 launches have been devoted to building out the Starlink megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 8,600 operational satellites.

SpaceX has five other launches under its belt this year as well — test flights of its Starship megarocket, which the company is developing to take people to the moon and Mars. The most recent Starship mission launched on Monday (Oct. 13) and was a complete success.

Epic new video from this week's Starship launch show's the giant spacecraft's final moments just before it splashed down in the Indian ocean.

Starship lifted off on its eleventh test flight Monday, Oct. 13, from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas. It was the final launch of the current, 397-foot-tall (121-meter-tall) version of the Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage; a taller variant is set to debut on Starship flight 12.

Similar to Starship's tenth flight, Flight Test 11 was a complete success, and even fared better than its predecessor, which took more physical damage during its descent back through Earth's atmosphere. SpaceX posted new footage from Monday's mission that makes that even clearer, showing significantly less distress to the vehicle, compared to Flight 10, and far less discoloration to the spacecraft's heatshield.

Flight Test 11 achieved all of its mission goals, from launch to booster descent and splashdown in the Gulf, and Ship's successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean. It was the second launch for the flight's Super Heavy booster. It's also the second test flight in a row that Starship has accomplished all SpaceX hoped it would, and a positive step forward in the rocket's development.

The spacecraft managed, once again, to deploy a stack of eight simulated Starlink satellites, and successfully initiated a Raptor engine relight while in space. But this week's launch diverted from Flight 10's mission profile with variations in some of the vehicle's engine burn profiles — performed in preparation for the rocket's upgraded version 3.

The upper stage's landing burn, especially, differed from its previous flight, and this time mimicked the approach it will need for a return to its launch site, where the rocket's launch tower is designed to catch and secure Starship during its landing burn midair.

SpaceX cameras secured to drones and buoys captured Starship's descent through the clouds in crystal clear detail. The video tracks the vehicle as it initiated its novel flip-and-burn landing maneuver that transitions Starship from a 'bellyflop' position to an upright orientation, as its engines oriented the vehicle and slowed its momentum.

Impulse Space — a commercial space company founded by Tom Mueller, the first employee the billionaire Elon Musk ever hired at SpaceX — announced on Tuesday (Oct. 14) that it plans to build a robotic moon lander to help open the lunar frontier.

"To echo President John F. Kennedy, going to the moon is hard. But we know that we have some of the brightest minds in aerospace engineering here at Impulse, who push the boundaries of innovation forward every day," Mueller wrote in a blog post on Tuesday that laid out Impulse's lunar vision. "We're confident in our ability to solve technology’s toughest challenges and excited to continue accelerating our future beyond Earth."

Impulse Space, which Mueller founded in 2021, specializes in in-space transportation — getting spacecraft where they need to go after they launch into the final frontier.

The company already operates a dishwasher-sized space tug called Mira, which reached space for the first time on SpaceX's Transporter 9 rideshare mission in November 2023. Impulse is also working on a "kick stage" known as Helios, which is designed to deliver large payloads from low Earth orbit to higher-energy destinations like geostationary orbit and Earth-moon space. Helios is scheduled to make its spaceflight debut in late 2026.

Impulse's moon plans involve that Helios kick stage and a new lunar lander, which the company will build in-house. The duo will launch together on a standard medium- or heavy-lift rocket, according to Mueller's blog post.

"Once Helios and the lander are deployed in low Earth orbit (LEO), Helios serves as a cruise stage, transporting the lander to low lunar orbit within one week," he wrote. "The lunar lander then separates from Helios and descends to the surface of the moon. By taking advantage of Helios' high delta-v capabilities, this mission architecture doesn't require in-space refueling."

Each Helios-lander mission will be able to put 3 tons of payload down on the moon, Mueller said. The first such delivery could occur as soon as 2028, he added.

A number of private lunar landers are already flying or in development. For example, Houston company Intuitive Machines has launched its Nova-C spacecraft to the moon twice already, and Tokyo-based ispace has done the same with its Hakuto-R craft.

Peregrine, a spacecraft built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, has one flight under its belt, as does Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost. (Blue Ghost is the only one with a fully successful mission to its name; Nova-C tipped over shortly after landing on both of its moon flights, Hakuto-R crashed hard into the lunar surface twice, and Peregrine suffered a problem that prevented an attempt at a lunar landing.)

The above are all relatively small robotic landers, but there are bigger, crew-capable moon craft in development as well. For instance, NASA has tapped SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon vehicle to get its Artemis astronauts down safely on the lunar surface.

Impulse Space aims to bridge the gap between these two lander categories, offering a cost-effective way to get midsize payloads down on the moon, according to Mueller.

"We need landers capable of near-term, multi-ton cargo deliveries in order to rapidly build out a sustainable lunar presence," he wrote. "These sorts of deliveries could include things like a lunar terrain vehicle, rovers, communication relay systems, power generators and habitation modules."

Impulse Space has already started working on the moon lander's engine, which will "use a nitrous and ethane bipropellant — the same combination used successfully in space on Mira," Mueller wrote.

And he reminded readers that Impulse took Mira from a mere design on paper to a functioning spacecraft in Earth orbit in less than 15 months.

"We’re confident in our ability to deliver this solution because of our strong track record of rapid success," Mueller wrote of his company's moon plans.

Editor's note: The original version of this story stated that Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander didn't make it out of Earth orbit. That is incorrect; Peregrine reached lunar distances but suffered a problem that prevented a landing attempt, and it was brought back to Earth for destruction in the planet's atmosphere. The story was corrected at 11:15 a.m. ET on Oct. 17.

SpaceX launched 21 satellites for an advanced new U.S. military constellation this evening (Oct. 15).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base today at 7:06 p.m. EDT (2306 GMT; 4:06 p.m. local California time), on a mission for the Space Development Agency (SDA).

The launch helps build out the SDA's Tranche 1 Transport Layer (T1TL), a network of 126 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) that "will provide global communications access and deliver persistent regional encrypted connectivity in support of warfighter missions around the globe," agency officials wrote in a explainer.

Today's mission was SpaceX's second T1TL launch. The first, which occurred on Sept. 10, also sent 21 satellites up from Vandenberg aboard a Falcon 9.

Colorado-based company York Space Systems built those spacecraft. The satellites that launched today, however, were manufactured by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

Northrop Grumman also scored an SDA contract for T1TL satellites. Each of these three companies will provide 42 spacecraft for the nascent constellation.

T1TL will be part of a larger LEO constellation, hundreds of satellites strong, that the SDA calls the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).

The PWSA satellites will be spread across seven "layers" — battle management, custody, deterrence, navigation, (missile) tracking, transport and support. This broad network will be refreshed every two years, keeping the SDA's space assets agile and up to date.

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff today as planned, landing in the Pacific Ocean on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was the seventh launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1093. It also launched SpaceX's first T1TL mission on Sept. 10, as well as five flights carrying the company's Starlink broadband satellites.

The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling the 21 satellites to LEO. It's unclear when and exactly where they will be deployed today; SpaceX's mission description doesn't provide that information, likely at the request of the SDA.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 7:15 p.m. ET on Oct. 15 with news of successful launch and booster landing.

On Monday (Oct. 13), SpaceX launched the 11th test flight of its Starship megarocket, sending the 403-foot-tall (124 meters) vehicle aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas.

The suborbital flight was a complete success. Both of Starship's elements — its Super Heavy booster and Starship (or "Ship" for short) upper stage — came back to Earth for pinpoint splashdowns. Ship also managed to relight one of its engines in space and deploy eight dummy payloads.

Flight 11 was a big moment for the Starship program, and not just because everything went so well. It was also a swan song, the final liftoff of the vehicle's "Version 2" variant.

"Focus now turns to the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy, with multiple vehicles currently in active build and preparing for tests," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 11 wrap-up post.

"This next iteration will be used for the first Starship orbital flights, operational payload missions, propellant transfer and more as we iterate to a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle with service to Earth orbit, the moon, Mars and beyond," the company added.

That next iteration is Starship Version 3, which will be about 5 feet (1.5 m) taller than its predecessor. V3 will look a lot like V2, but there will be big differences "under the hood," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during the Flight 11 launch webcast on Monday.

For example, the V3 Ship's propulsion system has been overhauled to accommodate Raptor 3, a new, brawnier version of the engine that powers both of Starship's stages. (Super Heavy has 33 Raptors and Ship has six.)

"We're also getting energy storage upgrades, tons of avionics changes — a lot of things that will enable longer-duration missions," Huot said.

"One notable thing you'll start seeing on the outside are these new docking adapters, which we'll use when we bring two Starships together for propellant transfer," he added. "That's a core capability of Starship that we're going to demonstrate next year."

Indeed, in-space fuel transfer is a crucial part of any Starship deep-space mission. Ship upper stages bound for the moon or Mars will launch with a minimum amount of propellant onboard (to save mass for payloads) and will therefore need to meet up with multiple "tanker" ships in Earth orbit to fuel up.

The V3 Super Heavy, meanwhile, features a redesigned fuel transfer tube, a giant metallic structure that channels cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen down to the booster's Raptor engines.

"New boosters are also going to have an integrated hot stage, a lot more vent area, and it's designed to be fully reusable," Huot said. (The hot stage marks the junction of Super Heavy and Ship; the "hot" part refers to the fact that Ship begins firing its engines before it has fully separated from the booster.)

The V3 Super Heavy will also have just three grid fins — the waffle-like structures that help the booster steer its way back to Earth for pinpoint touchdowns — instead of V2's four.

"They're 50% larger, though — much higher strength," Huot said. "They're also going to get used for vehicle lift and catch."

The lifting and catching will be done by the Starship launch tower's "chopstick" arms. These arms lift Ship and Super Heavy onto the launch mount, and they'll also catch both vehicles when they come back home after liftoff. (SpaceX has performed three such chopstick catches with Super Heavy to date but has not yet tried it with Ship.)

All 11 Starship test flights have lifted off from Starbase's Orbital Launch Mount 1. That pad will go on hiatus for a spell, however, as it's overhauled to accommodate Starship V3.

"Among many other things, we're installing a new orbital launch mount, a new flame trench system and upgrading the chopsticks for future catches," Jake Berkowitz, a SpaceX lead propulsion engineer, said during Monday's launch webcast. "So until that's complete, we'll be running launches from Pad 2, which will be online very soon."

Starship V3 will be capable of flying to Mars and may well do so next year, if testing continues to go well: SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company would like to launch a small fleet of uncrewed Starships to the Red Planet during the next opportunity, which comes in late 2026. (Earth and Mars align properly for interplanetary missions just once every 26 months.)

Over the long haul, however, SpaceX plans to rely on an even bigger and more powerful Starship — one that stands a whopping 466 feet (142 m) tall and sports 42 Raptors instead of the current 39. This V4 iteration is expected to debut in 2027, Musk has said.

2027 could be a landmark year, for both SpaceX and NASA. It's when the agency aims to launch its Artemis 3 mission, which will land astronauts on the moon for the first time since the Apollo era. The lunar lander for that epic mission will be a Starship upper stage.

That's two in a row for Starship.

SpaceX's Starship , the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, aced a suborbital test flight today (Oct. 13), following up on a similar success in late August.

Today's mission, which lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas, was the 11th overall test flight for the Starship program. It was also the final launch of the current version of the giant vehicle, which will soon be replaced by an even larger variant. And this swan song was a memorable one.

"Let 'em hear it, Starbase!" SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during the company's launch webcast today, as employees at the site cheered the test flight's successful conclusion. "What a day!"

A rocket for the moon and Mars

SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity settle Mars, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk. Indeed, Musk, the world's richest man, has said he established SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help our species set up shop on the Red Planet.

The moon is also in Starship's sights: NASA chose the vehicle to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to put boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo era. If all goes to plan, Starship will land astronauts near the lunar south pole for the first time on the Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.

Musk was on hand Monday evening to watch the Starship Flight 11 launch in person. But not from launch control.

"This is really the first time I'm going to be outside and watching the rocket," Musk said during a brief cameo on SpaceX's launch livestream. "It's going to be much more visceral."

Starship's secret sauce is its envisioned ability to loft incredibly large payloads with mind-boggling frequency. The vehicle is capable of carrying 165 tons (150 metric tons) to the final frontier, and both of its stages — the Super Heavy booster and an upper stage known as Starship, or Ship for short — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to the pad after each flight, catching them with the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. This strategy — which SpaceX has demonstrated three times to date with Super Heavy, though not yet with Ship — will allow superfast inspection and reflight, potentially allowing Starship to launch multiple times per day from a single site, according to Musk.

Today's launch, by coincidence, occurred on the one-year anniversary of SpaceX's first historic catch of a Super Heavy booster, on the Starship Flight 5 test flight.

The current iteration of the vehicle, known as Version 2, stands about 403 feet (123 meters) tall fully stacked. But future variants will be even bigger: Version 3 will be roughly 408 feet (124.4 m) tall, and a "Future Starship" that Musk teased in a May 2025 presentation will tower a whopping 466 feet (142 m) above the ground.

"Future Starship" is likely Version 4, which Musk later said is expected to debut in 2027. V4 will have a total of 42 Raptor engines — three more than the V2 and V3 variants. (The extra three will go on Ship, giving the upper stage nine engines.)

Test flight setbacks — and a bounceback

These are quite ambitious plans, and this summer they seemed even more so. On three straight test launches — Flight 7 in January, Flight 8 in March and Flight 9 in May — SpaceX lost Ship prematurely.

On Flights 7 and 8, the upper stage exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff, sending debris raining down on parts of the Caribbean. On Flight 9, Ship broke apart upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX lost another Ship in June, this time at Starbase: The vehicle that was being prepped for Flight 10 exploded on the test stand, forcing the company to press another Ship into service.

But that replacement upper stage performed well, as did its Super Heavy partner: Flight 10, which launched on Aug. 26, was a complete success. The booster came back to Earth as planned for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, and Ship did the same in the Indian Ocean an hour later.

Ship also managed to relight one of its Raptors in space, demonstrating an ability that will be crucial for future missions to the moon and Mars. The vehicle also deployed some payloads — eight dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which were released on the same suborbital trajectory as that of Ship.

Flight 11 repeated those successes today.

The final flight of Starship V2

Flight 11's main goals were the same as those of Flight 10 — bring Super Heavy down in the Gulf and do the same with Ship off the coast of Western Australia, after an in-space Raptor relight and the deployment of eight more dummy Starlinks.

There were a few twists, however. For example, SpaceX employed a new landing burn strategy with Super Heavy today, trying out an engine configuration that will be used by the next-gen version of the booster.

"Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 11 mission description. "Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns."

Flight 11 also marked the second-ever reflight of a Super Heavy: This same booster also conducted Flight 8, ending its duties that day with a return to Starbase and a chopsticks catch. SpaceX changed out just nine of its 33 Raptors ahead of today's flight, meaning that 24 of them were flight-proven.

The company tweaked Ship a bit as well, to gather data that could aid its future trips back to Earth. For example, SpaceX removed heat-shield tiles to stress-test certain "vulnerable areas" of the upper stage.

And, "to mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean," SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

All of this went to plan on Flight 11, which kicked off with a launch from Starbase at 7:23 p.m. EDT (2323 GMT; 6:23 p.m. local Texas time). It was the final liftoff from the site's first orbital launch pad before it's overhauled to get ready for the Starship V3 variant.

"Among many other things, we're installing a new orbital launch mount, a new flame trench system, and upgrading the chopsticks for future catches," Jake Berkowitz, a SpaceX lead propulsion engineer, said during today's launch webcast. "So until that's complete, we'll be running launches from Pad 2, which will be online very soon."

Super Heavy and Ship separated about 2.5 minutes into flight today, and the booster made its pinpoint splashdown in the Gulf four minutes after that.

"Congrats to the whole SpaceX team," Berkowitz said after the huge booster hit the water. "That was incredible!"

Ship deployed the eight payloads over a six-minute stretch that began about 19 minutes after liftoff, when the vehicle was 119 miles (192 kilometers) above Earth. The vehicle also aced its brief Raptor relight, which occurred just under 38 minutes after launch.

Ship then made its own return to Earth, surviving the intense heat of reentry despite the selective heat shield tile-stripping. The vehicle aced its banking maneuver, then splashed down in the Indian Ocean a little over 66 minutes after liftoff.

And it was a pinpoint landing, occurring within view of a buoy-mounted camera that SpaceX set up beforehand. The dramatic imagery memorializes the successful sendoff for Starship V2, which now cedes the spotlight to its even bigger successors.

"We promised maximum excitement," Berkowitz said toward the end of today's launch webcast. "And Starship delivered!"

The study found that, while in 2019 only 0.2% of satellites in Earth orbit were forced to perform more than 10 collision-avoidance maneuvers per month, that percentage had risen sevenfold by early 2025, to 1.4%. That number might still seem low, but it means that some 340 satellites spend a lot of time dodging debris and other spacecraft.

Moreover, the satellite population is set to keep growing. While in 2019 about 13,700 objects (including space junk) zoomed around the planet in low Earth orbit (LEO), at altitudes below 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers), that number has since risen to 24,185 objects in 2025, an increase of 76%, according to the study. By the end of this decade, some 70,000 satellites may reside in LEO, according to industry growth predictions, representing a more than fivefold increase compared to the 2019 situation.

The study team members said that they selected 10 collision-avoidance maneuvers per month as a threshold at which satellite operation may become too complicated to be beneficial.

"Operators don't want to be spending all their time worrying about collision avoidance," study co-author Maya Harris, a research assistant and science graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Space.com. "They don't want to spend all of their propellant doing maneuvers."

The researchers used data from the catalog of space objects maintained by U.S. Space Command and modeled the likelihood of a collision for each pair of objects, satellites and debris alike, residing in the same orbital region. Every time two objects came within less than 66 feet (200 meters) of each other, the researchers noted the event as requiring a collision-avoidance maneuver.

Different operators choose a different threshold to perform collision-avoidance maneuvers. NASA spacecraft mostly maneuver when the collision risk is greater than 1 in 10,000. SpaceX — the world's biggest satellite operator, with its Starlink broadband megaconstellation — is more cautious, using its autonomous space dodging system to avoid an object posing a risk greater than 1 in 3.3 million.

Frequent maneuvers present a disruption to operations that some satellite handlers are better able to absorb than others, Hugh Lewis, a space debris expert and professor of astronautics at the University of Birmingham in England, told Space.com.

"For an Earth-observation spacecraft, there's probably a much bigger disruption to make a maneuver, because they have to control their altitude and inclination very precisely in order to achieve a particular ground track," said Lewis, who was not part of the new study. "But for spacecraft like Starlink, they have a great deal of flexibility about the orbits that they can be in and still deliver the service."

In addition to the disruption to service, the avoidance maneuvers are not guaranteed to succeed. Space tracking is not perfectly accurate, and miscalculations are possible. On top of that, earlier studies have shown that performing an avoidance maneuver creates a higher risk of a subsequent collision with another spacecraft, as it alters the satellite's trajectory in a way that collision-prediction algorithms may not immediately account for. The more satellites in orbit, the higher the risk of one of these maneuvers failing.

Lewis said that data suggest there is already around a 10% chance of an in-orbit collision happening within a year from now. A full-on satellite collision would create thousands of new debris fragments, which would further increase the need to maneuver for operational spacecraft in nearby orbits and thus boost the probability of subsequent collisions. It is this risk of collisions that concerns researchers and operators alike.

"If we have more collisions that create a lot of debris, that will lead to us reaching [full orbital] capacity much sooner," Harris said.

Lewis said that, according to the latest report filed to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, SpaceX's Starlink satellites performed 145,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers in the six months prior to July 2025. That would be equivalent to around four maneuvers per satellite per month.

"They seem to be able to accommodate that really well," Lewis said. "They don't seem to be saying that it's getting really hard, so they might be able to accommodate it even if we get to the 10 per month."

The new study found that satellites orbiting at certain altitudes face more congestion than others. In orbital regions between the altitudes of 25 miles and 370 miles (400 to 600 km) and 435 miles and 500 miles (700 and 800 km), many satellites are already forced to dodge collisions more than 10 times per month.

"Although most of the orbit is not yet at capacity, some regions already are," said Harris. "The two most affected areas are between 400 and 600 kilometers, where many active satellites are, and then between 700 and 800 kilometers, where there is a lot of space debris."

The new study suggests that satellite operators may be able to better use the available space by launching less into orbits that are already too crowded and operating their constellations in a coordinated manner so that their satellites' orbits are in sync rather than crossing each other.

Lewis, however, questions whether global coordination of satellite operations is feasible. SpaceX is currently the by far largest satellite operator, but the company could soon have some competition for that title: Countries all over the world, including perceived adversaries like China, have plans to develop their own constellation of tens of thousands of satellites.

"I don't think it's likely to happen that you would get SpaceX and the Chinese coordinate how they structure and operate their systems," Lewis said.

The study was published in the October issue of the journal Acta Astronautica.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Oct. 14 to clarify that NASA spacecraft maneuver when the collision risk is greater than 1 in 10,000, not 1 in 100,000, and that Starlink satellites are now using a maneuver threshold of 1 in 3.3 million, not 1 in 1 million.

Update for 8:42p.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched its Starship Flight 11 rocket into space, with its Super Heavy booster making a planned - and controlled - splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The Ship 38 upper stage then successfully splashed down in Indian Ocean one hour and 6 minutes after liftoff after completing a Starlink payload deployment demonstration, engine relight test and "dynamic banking" manuever during landing. Read our Starship Flight 11 launch wrap story top see launch photos and video.

SpaceX plans to launch Flight 11 of its Starship megarocket tonight (Oct. 13), and you can watch the action live.

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, is scheduled to lift off for the 11th time on Monday (Oct. 13), during a 75-minute window that opens at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT).

The launch will take place from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of the company; coverage will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff.

Starship consists of a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship, or Ship for short. Both of these elements are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

SpaceX believes that the vehicle's unprecedented combination of power and reusability will allow humanity to settle Mars, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk.

Starship Flight 11 will look a lot like Flight 10, if all goes according to plan. On that most recent launch, which took place on Aug. 26, Super Heavy steered itself to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, and Ship did that same in the Indian Ocean roughly an hour later.

Ship also managed to relight one of its Raptor engines in space and deploy some payloads — eight dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites.

Those will be the main goals for Flight 11 as well. SpaceX also plans to test a new landing burn engine configuration for Super Heavy and gather data that will help pave the way for Ship to end its missions with a return to Starbase, where it will be caught by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms.

Super Heavy has already done this on three previous Starship test flights. In fact, the booster flying on Monday is a spaceflight veteran, having conducted Starship Flight 8 earlier this year.

"For reentry, tiles have been removed from Starship to intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 11 mission description.

"Several of the missing tiles are in areas where tiles are bonded to the vehicle and do not have a backup ablative layer," the company added. "To mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean."

Update for 8:42p.m. ET: SpaceX successfully launched its Starship Flight 11 rocket into space, with its Super Heavy booster making a planned - and controlled - splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The Ship 38 upper stage then successfully splashed down in Indian Ocean one hour and 6 minutes after liftoff after completing a Starlink payload deployment demonstration, engine relight test and "dynamic banking" manuever during landing. Read our Starship Flight 11 launch wrap story top see launch photos and video.

SpaceX plans to launch the 11th test flight of its Starship megarocket tonight (Oct. 13), and we've got the information you need to tune in live.

The Starship Flight 11 test is scheduled to launch from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas on Monday (Oct. 13), during a 75-minute window that opens at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT; 6:15 p.m. local Texas time). You can watch the liftoff live on Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX. You can visit our Starship Flight 11 live updates page for the latest info.

Flight 11 will be the fifth Starship launch of 2025. SpaceX hopes to build on the success of Flight 10, which launched on Aug. 26 and achieved all of its major objectives. (Flight 7, Flight 8 and Flight 9, which also launched this year, were more checkered; SpaceX lost the Starship upper stage prematurely on each of them.) SpaceX intends to settle Mars using Starship, and NASA has tapped the vehicle as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. But the 400-foot-tall (121-meter-tall) Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — is still in the testing phase, and the company hopes Monday's action will get it closer to the finish line.

What time is SpaceX's Starship Flight 11 launch?

SpaceX is targeting Monday (Oct. 13), for the launch of Starship Flight 11, with liftoff expected at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT). SpaceX has a 75-minute launch window, however, so Starship could fly any time between 7:15 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. EDT (2315 to 0030 GMT).

According to local road closure alerts around Starbase, SpaceX has backup Flight 11 launch dates on Tuesday (Oct. 14) and Wednesday (Oct. 15), if Starship can't get off the ground on Monday.

Related: Read our SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy guide for a detailed look

Can I watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 11 launch?

You can watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 11 test launch in a few ways.

SpaceX will stream the liftoff live via its X account, as well as on its Starship Flight 11 mission page and the X TV app. Coverage will begin about 30 minutes before launch — so, at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT), if SpaceX continues to target the beginning of the launch window on Monday.

Space.com will simulcast the SpaceX Flight 11 stream on our watch live page, as well as on our homepage and our YouTube channel.

If you want a longer livestream, you can check out NASASpaceflight's webcast on YouTube. This stream will begin at about 4:15 p.m. EDT (2015 GMT) and feature live commentary during "go for launch" polling and other key preflight activities.

Finally, if you're in the area, you can watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 11 in person. SpaceX doesn't have an official launch-viewing site for the public or the media, but you can find a spot yourself.

One good option is Cameron County Amphitheater, in Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island, which provides clear views of Starbase's orbital launch mount from across the water. You can also stake out a place along the shore of nearby Port Isabel.

Traffic in the area tends to get very heavy in the leadup to a Starship launch, so plan to get to your preferred viewing site early — multiple hours early, if possible.

How long is SpaceX's Starship Flight 11?

If all goes according to plan, Starship Flight 11 will last just over an hour. The mission will be broadly similar to Flight 10, with ocean landings planned for both Starship stages — the Super Heavy booster and Starship (or "Ship" for short) upper stage. (There will be no "chopsticks" catch of Super Heavy by the Starbase launch tower this time.)

"The upcoming flight will build on the successful demonstrations from Starship’s 10th flight test with flight experiments gathering data for the next-generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship's heat shield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site," SpaceX wrote in a mission overview.

The Flight 11 Super Heavy already has a launch under its belt — it conducted Flight 8 on March 6, capping its work that day with a successful return to Starbase for a chopsticks catch. Twenty-four of its 33 Raptor engines are veterans of that previous mission, according to SpaceX.

The chief objective for Super Heavy this time around is to test a new landing-burn strategy for the next-generation Starship, a bigger vehicle that's expected to debut early next year. (Flight 11 will be the final launch of the current "Version 2" iteration of Starship.)

"Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase," SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

"Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns," the company added. "The booster will then transition to its three center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and dropping into the Gulf of America."

Ship will fly much farther and longer than Super Heavy on Flight 11. As on Flight 10, the upper stage will deploy eight payloads (dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink broadband satellites) into suborbital space. This milestone is scheduled to occur over a seven-minute stretch beginning 18.5 minutes after liftoff.

Ship will also briefly reignite one of its six Raptor engines in space a little under 38 minutes into the flight, demonstrating a key capability for a vehicle designed to travel to the moon and Mars.

In addition, Flight 11 will put Ship's heat shield and other reentry systems to the test, gathering data to pave the way for "chopstick" catches of the upper stage down the road.

"For reentry, tiles have been removed from Starship to intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle," SpaceX wrote in the mission description. "Several of the missing tiles are in areas where tiles are bonded to the vehicle and do not have a backup ablative layer. To mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean."

Ship is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere just under 48 minutes after launch and hit the water off the coast of Western Australia about 18 minutes later.

What if Starship Flight 11 can't launch?

SpaceX has two official backup days for Flight 11 at this point, according to a beach and road closure notice issued by Texas' Cameron County — Tuesday (Oct. 14) and Wednesday (Oct. 15).

The launch windows are likely the same on Tuesday and Wednesday, though we'll have to wait for confirmation from SpaceX on that end.

An amazing new video shows flashes of sunlight sparkling off a batch of SpaceX satellites, with a green aurora glowing just below.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, an accomplished amateur photographer, captured the stunning "train" of SpaceX Starlink broadband satellites during his recent mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The aurora was produced by solar particles slamming into Earth’s atmosphere.

Despite the natural light show, the Starlink group was "very visible. Many were as bright as Jupiter — they would flash from one to 10 seconds," added Pettit in a comment on X, where he posted the undated video on Tuesday (Oct. 7).

That is indeed quite bright. The peak brightness of Jupiter is roughly -2 magnitude in the night sky. For comparison, the brightest stars range between about magnitude 2 and -2, Venus can get as bright as -4, and the sun is at magnitude -26. (Lower numbers indicate brighter objects on astronomers' magnitude scale.)

Pettit’s latest space mission, a 220-day jaunt, concluded on his 70th birthday on April 20, when the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that carried him and his two crewmates touched down in the steppe of Kazakhstan. Since life gets busy on the ISS, however, Pettit has been steadily uploading a backlog of images and videos ever since coming home.

Starlink current consists of nearly 8,600 operational satellites, according to a tracker maintained by space debris expert Jonathan McDowell. While that’s a boon for remote areas looking for the reliable internet service SpaceX strives to provide, astronomers have concerns.

The brightness Pettit observed is one of the worries, as these Starlink trains — usually most apparent shortly after launch aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket — can interfere with astronomical observations. Starlinks also have brought up space debris concerns, both in that more satellites raise the risk of collisions and because their reentry could leave traces of metals in Earth’s atmosphere, potentially causing pollution and affecting climate.

In response to these concerns, SpaceX has changed the reflectivity of some of its satellites, and the company continues to emphasize that the Starlinks can be maneuvered in case of trouble. And many more Starlinks will reach orbit over time: SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 42,000 of the satellites aloft.

On Wednesday (Oct. 8), SpaceX posted photos on X showing the giant booster, known as Super Heavy, making the move to the orbital launch mount at the company's Starbase site in South Texas.

It's part of the leadup to Starship's 11th test flight, which is scheduled for Monday (Oct. 13) at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT). You'll be able to watch the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX.

Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. The current iteration stands about 400 feet (121 meters) tall, and future versions will be bigger still, according to company founder and CEO Elon Musk.

The vehicle consists of two elements — Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship, or Ship for short. Both are powered by SpaceX's Raptor engines — 33 for Super Heavy and six for Ship — and are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

Super Heavy's Raptors take center stage in one of the newly released photos, which focuses on the booster's base as it's placed atop the launch mount.

The plan for Starship Flight 11 is similar to that of Flight 10, which launched on Aug. 26 and was a complete success.

As on that day, Super Heavy will come back to Earth for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. It will be the second reentry for this particular booster, which also launched on Starship Flight 8 this past March. That mission featured a catch of the booster by the Starbase launch tower's "chopstick" arms, which will not happen on Flight 11.

Ship, meanwhile, will deploy eight payloads into space on Flight 11 — dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites — and wrap things up by splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband megaconstellation continues to grow.

Twenty-four more Project Kuiper satellites took flight on Monday (Oct. 13), lifting off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 9:58 p.m. EDT (0158 GMT on Oct. 14). Launch was originally scheduled for Thursday evening (Oct. 9), but SpaceX pushed that back by four days.

It was SpaceX's third Project Kuiper launch and the sixth overall dedicated to building out the nascent network, which will eventually consist of about 3,200 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). With today's launch, 153 of them have now reached the final frontier.

The rest will be lofted on more than 70 additional launches conducted by a variety of rockets — the Falcon 9, Arianespace's Ariane 6, Blue Origin's New Glenn and United Launch Alliance's Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur.

If all goes to plan today, the 24 Kuiper craft will be deployed by the Falcon 9's upper stage at an altitude of 289 miles (465 kilometers), over a 7.5-minute stretch that begins 56.5 minutes after liftoff.

"From there, we perform initial satellite health checks and prepare to raise the satellites to their assigned altitude of 392 miles (630 km), where they will be fully commissioned as part of our operational satellite constellation," Amazon representatives wrote in a mission description.

As on virtually every SpaceX launch, there was action in the downward direction today as well: The Falcon 9's first stage touched down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX droneship "Just Read the Instructions" a little over eight minutes after liftoff.

It was the second launch and landing for this particular booster, according to SpaceX. The vehicle first flew Aug. 11 on another Project Kuiper launch, which happened to be SpaceX's 100th mission of the year.

Project Kuiper isn't the only broadband megaconstellation under construction in LEO. SpaceX's Starlink network already features more than 8,500 operational spacecraft, and it's growing all the time; SpaceX has launched more than 90 Starlink missions so far this year alone.

And China is building two megaconstellations of its own, Guowang ("National Network") and Qianfan ("Thousand Sails"), each of which will host about 13,000 satellites, if all goes to plan.

The Project Kuiper liftoff was the second of the day for SpaceX. On Monday evening, the company launched the 11th test flight of its Starship megarocket, sending the giant vehicle up from its Starbase site in South Texas. The mission was a complete success, according to SpaceX.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:10 p.m. ET on Oct. 9 with the new launch date of Oct. 11, then again at 3:15 p.m. ET on Oct. 11 with the new target date of Oct. 12, and again at 12:50 p.m. ET on Oct. 12 with the new target date of Oct. 13. It was updated again at 10:08 p.m. ET on Oct. 13 with news of successful liftoff and rocket landing.

That's the nickname that Brendan Carr, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has given to October 2025. The branding is part of the agency's push to streamline space regulations, which Carr said is a big priority going forward.

"We are declaring October 2025 'Space Month' at the FCC," Carr said in an emailed statement on Monday (Oct. 6). "Big picture — our goal is to make sure that the U.S. is the friendliest regulatory environment in the world for innovators to start, to grow and to accelerate their space operations."

The FCC has authority over space communications, issuing licenses and allocating specific segments of the radio band to satellite operators. The agency forms a sort of regulatory tag-team with the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses rocket launches and spacecraft reentries. (Both agencies also deal with the issue of space debris)

The "Space Month" agenda calls for "modernizing" the FCC's licensing process, according to the emailed statement.

The agency "will do so by doing away with bespoke licensing processes in favor of a 'licensing assembly line,'" the statement reads. "This will include expediting licensing requests presumed to be in the public interest, as well as simplifying applications, establishing clear timelines and increasing flexibility for licensed operations."

The FCC also aims to encourage "more intensive use" of a portion of the radio spectrum known as the upper microwave flexible use bands, according to the statement.

The FCC will vote on these proposed actions later this month, according to the statement.

"At the FCC, we have been doing our part through a Build America Agenda that aims to boost our country's space economy," Carr said. "Now, the FCC is going to add rocket fuel to those efforts."

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched for the 29th time on Tuesday (Oct. 7), one shy of the company's reuse record.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 of the company's Starlink satellites lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Tuesday at 11:54 p.m. EDT (0354 GMT; 8:54 p.m. local California time).

The rocket's first stage returned to Earth as planned, touching down about 8.5 minutes after liftoff in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was the 29th launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1071. The record holder, Booster 1067, launched for the 30th time in late August.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9's upper stage continued carrying the 28 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO) today. They were deployed on schedule about 60 minutes after launch.

Tuesday's launch was the 127th Falcon 9 flight of the year so far. More than 70% of these missions have been dedicated to building out the Starlink network, by far the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.

There are currently more than 8,500 operational Starlink satellites circling Earth, and more are going up all the time.

SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites to orbit early this morning (Oct. 7).

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida today at 2:46 a.m. EDT (0646 GMT).

The rocket's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas."

It was the eighth launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designated B1090.

The Falcon 9's upper stage continued hauling the Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit (LEO), where they're scheduled to be deployed about 64 minutes after liftoff.

Today's launch was the 126th flight of the year for the workhorse Falcon 9, and the 130th liftoff overall for SpaceX.

The other four were suborbital test flights of the Starship megarocket, which the company is developing to help humanity settle Mars. Starship's fifth test launch of the year is coming up soon — it's scheduled for Oct. 13.

SpaceX has now launched its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket 125 times this year.

A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on California's central coast today (Oct. 3), rising into the sky at 10:06 a.m. EDT (1406 GMT; 7:06 a.m. local California time).

The rocket is carrying 28 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which its upper stage deployed into low Earth orbit (LEO) about an hour after launch, according to a SpaceX social media post.

The Falcon 9's first stage, meanwhile, came back to Earth a little over eight minutes after liftoff today, touching down in the Pacific Ocean on the SpaceX droneship "Of Course I Still Love You."

It was the second launch and landing for this particular booster, which is designed B1097. Its other flight was also a Starlink mission, SpaceX wrote in a mission description.

More than 70% of the Falcon 9 launches in 2025 have been dedicated to building out Starlink, the largest satellite constellation ever assembled.

More than 8,500 active Starlink spacecraft circle Earth at the moment. There are just currently just 12,500 or so operational satellites of any kind in orbit, according to the European Space Agency — meaning that two out of every three functional spacecraft right now is a Starlink satellite. And that proportion is only going to climb as more and more Starlinks go up.

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Avio signed a two-year contract worth 40 million euros (about $47 million U.S. at current exchange rates) on Monday (Sept. 29) at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) here in Sydney, Australia, with the goal of preparing for in-flight demonstration of a reusable upper stage.

The work will cover the preliminary design and the technologies for the ground and flight segments required for an upper stage demonstrator.

It's too soon to know what the test vehicle will look like, but ESA put out a possible signpost on Monday. The agency posted on X a rendering that looks a lot like SpaceX's Starship megarocket upper stage.

The two-stage Starship is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, which would be a potentially revolutionary spaceflight advance. Rocket upper stages, which deliver payloads to their desired orbits, typically remain in orbit or burn up on reentry to Earth's atmosphere. (First stages have historically been expendable as well, but SpaceX has changed that with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles.)

"I am glad to sign this contract since its importance is two-fold: on one side it addresses technological criticalities in the short-term; on the other side, it paves the way for the preparation of Europe's long-term future in space," ESA's Director of Space Transportation Toni Tolker-Nielsen said in a statement.

ESA says the move capitalizes on progress made in advanced liquid propulsion, reentry, recoverability and reusability technologies. The upper stage could be used on future Vega rockets, also developed by Italian multinational Avio, or other European rockets.

The agency recently created the European Launcher Challenge to promote the development of new rockets and boost Europe's access to space. ESA is also working on a reusable space plane known as Space Rider, while ArianeGroup announced plans for the "Susie" reusable upper stage at the IAC in Paris in 2022.

ESA is not the only space actor looking to develop an upper stage or follow in the footsteps of SpaceX. The design of China's own Long March 9 super heavy-lift rocket has been drastically altered in recent years, moving from an initially expendable launcher to a system similar to Starship and to also be eventually fully reusable.

SpaceX announced on Monday (Sept. 29) that it's targeting Oct. 13 for Starship Flight 11, which will be the final launch of the vehicle's current "Version 2" iteration.

Liftoff will occur from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas. The window on Oct. 13 will open at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT; 6:15 p.m. local Texas time), SpaceX wrote in an update on Monday. The company will webcast the action, beginning 30 minutes before liftoff.

SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity settle Mars, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk. The vehicle consists of two stainless-steel elements, both of which are designed to be fully reusable — a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper stage known as Starship, or Ship for short.

Starship Version 2 is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, towering nearly 400 feet (121 meters) above the ground when stacked. The next variant — Version 3, which will debut on Flight 12 — is larger still, at 408 feet (124.4 m) tall.

But the rocket will get even bigger over time, if all goes to plan: Version 4, which is expected to debut in 2027, is expected to be around 466 feet (142 m) tall.

Starship Flight 11 will be very similar to Flight 10, which lifted off on Aug. 26 and was a complete success.

On that most recent flight, Super Heavy steered itself to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico as planned. Ship did the same in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia — but not before deploying eight dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink internet satellites.

Flight 11 will target those same two splashdown zones, and Ship will aim to deploy another eight mock Starlinks, SpaceX wrote in Monday's update. And, as on Flight 10, SpaceX will remove some heat-shield tiles from Ship "to intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle."

Super Heavy, meanwhile, will demonstrate "a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy." That plan calls for the booster to use five of its 33 Raptor engines to fine-tune its descent instead of the usual three, "adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns." The five-engine fine-tuning burn will be the baseline for Version 3 of Super Heavy, SpaceX wrote in the update.

And Flight 11 will be the second launch for this particular booster. It also completed Flight 8 this past March, coming back to Starbase for a catch by the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower — the planned recovery strategy for both Super Heavy and Ship on operational launches. Twenty-four of the Flight 11 Super Heavy's 33 Raptors are flight-proven, according to SpaceX.

This will be the second reuse of a Super Heavy. SpaceX also employed a flight-proven booster on Flight 9, which launched on May 27.

Parts of the Western United States were treated to a cosmic spectacle Sunday evening, as a giant streak illuminated the skies from Los Angeles to Phoenix.

Minutes after SpaceX's Sept. 28 Starlink launch lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Station (VSFS), in California, the Falcon 9 rocket supporting the mission reached the upper atmosphere to create a phenomenon often referred to as a "jellyfish" effect.

Falcon 9 launched at 11:04 p.m. EDT (7:04 p.m. local PDT; 0204 GMT, Sept. 29). The rocket carried 28 new Starlink satellites to join SpaceX's growing wireless internet megaconstellation of over 8,000 networked spacecraft. The dusk liftoff provided ideal conditions for the setting sun to illuminate Falcon 9's expanding engine exhaust against the darkening sky, as onlookers for hundreds of miles gazed in amazement.

The density of Earth's upper atmosphere causes the exhaust plume of a rocket's engines to expand as it ascends. The launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base is notorious for its overcast and extremely foggy conditions, but Sunday's clear skies created the ideal conditions for Falcon 9's jellyfish to emerge.

Among the many treated to the skyward spectacle, Space.com's Managing Editor Brett Tingley managed to snap a photo of the phenomenon as the rocket flew over Afton Canyon, in the Mojave Desert.

"I was camping in Afton Canyon in the Mojave National Preserve when I noticed a colorful streak of light in the sky. I've seen plenty of Falcon 9 'jellyfish' online but never in person." Tingley said. "It was lit up gorgeously from below by the setting sun and made for a surprising start to a night of dark sky stargazing."

Posts to X also highlighted the spectacle as it crossed the sky, like these photos and video from West Coast spaceflight photographer, @spacecoastwest:

Sightings were also reported to the American Meteor Society (AMC), which tracks and triangulates anomalies in the sky (usually meteorites) using witness submission data.

Last night's launch prompted seven different fireball reports to the website, with a video from spectators in Phoenix, Arizona, wondering if the long streak moving across the sky might be a comet.

Sunday's launch was the 28th mission for this particular Falcon 9 first stage, which landed downrange on SpaceX's droneship "Of Course I Still Love You," in the Pacific Ocean about 8.5 minutes after liftoff. The rocket's second stage continued to orbit, successfully deploying the satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO).

Sights like last night's aren't super rare, but can sometimes be hard to predict. Launches near dawn and dusk most often create the conditions for the jellyfish phenomenon, so if you live within a few hundred miles of a launchpad, keep your eyes to the skies.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up the dusk sky over southern California on Sunday (Sept. 28) as it carried a new stack of 28 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.

The evening launch at 10:04 p.m. EDT (0204 GMT on Sept. 29 or 7:04 p.m. PDT local time) from Vandenberg Space Force Base successfully reached space in just under minutes. The Falcon's upper stage booster was on track to deploy the broadband internet relays (Starlink Group 11-20) about an hour after leaving the ground.

The Falcon's first stage (Booster 1063), meanwhile, descended to a propulsive landing on its four deployed landing legs on "Of Course I Still Love You," a droneship positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 28th flight for this particular stage.

The launch added 28 Starlink satellites to SpaceX's megaconstellation, which now totals more than 8,500 active units.

The flight was SpaceX's 124th Falcon 9 mission this year out of a total 542 launches since 2010.

SpaceX launched two dozen more of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit this morning.

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 24 Starlink craft lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on California's central coast today at 12:26 a.m. EDT (0426 GMT; 9:26 p.m. on Sept. 25 local California time).

About 8.5 minutes later, the Falcon 9's first stage touched down on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

It was the 16th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1082. Twelve of those missions have been Starlink launches.

Meanawhile, the Falcon 9's upper stage continued carrying the Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit, where they're scheduled to be deployed 62.5 minutes after launch.

This morning's liftoff was the 123rd Falcon 9 launch of the year, and the 15th to take place already this September.

The vast majority of the 2025 Falcon 9 launches — more than 70% of them — have been dedicated to building out the Starlink megaconstellation. There are now nearly 8,500 active spacecraft in the network, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

NASA's space shuttle orbiters were instrumental in building the ISS, and in keeping it operational for its first decade; these reusable spacecraft ferried astronauts to and from the orbiting outpost until the fleet was fully retired in 2011. Five years later, the agency opened the door to more space plane meetups, signing a cargo deal with Sierra Space, the Colorado-based company behind the robotic Dream Chaser vehicle.

That 2016 contract awarded Sierra Space a minimum of seven ISS resupply flights with Dream Chaser and its companion cargo module, called Shooting Star. Nine years later, however, Dream Chaser has still not reached space — and its cargo deal has just been changed.

"After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract, as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Thursday (Sept. 25).

"Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration," they added. "NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions; however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract."

The timeline is getting a bit tight for possible Dream Chaser ISS missions, given the orbiting lab is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030. However, NASA is encouraging the development of commercial stations in low Earth orbit to fill the void left by the ISS' impending departure, and it's possible that Dream Chaser could visit one or more of those in the coming years.

In a different statement released on Thursday, Sierra Space (which spun off from the aerospace firm Sierra Nevada Corp. in 2021) invoked that and other potential use cases for Dream Chaser. Company officials stressed the space plane could still fly a variety of missions down the road, even if the vehicle never makes it to the ISS.

"Dream Chaser represents the future of versatile space transportation and mission flexibility," Fatih Ozmen, executive chair at Sierra Space, said in the statement.

"This transition provides unique capabilities to meet the needs of diverse mission profiles, including emerging and existential threats and national security priorities that align with our acceleration into the Defense Tech market," Ozmen added. "Together with NASA, we are seeking to preserve the exceptional potential of Dream Chaser as a national asset, ensuring its readiness for the next era of space innovation."

Two private American companies currently fly robotic resupply missions to the ISS for NASA — SpaceX, with its Dragon capsules, and Northrop Grumman, which uses a spacecraft called Cygnus. The agency also tapped SpaceX to deorbit the ISS in a controlled fashion in 2030, using a modified version of Dragon.

SpaceX launched yet another batch of its Starlink internet satellites to orbit from Florida this morning (Sept. 25).

A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 28 Starlink craft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 4:39 a.m. EDT (0839 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth about 8.5 minutes later as planned, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" in the Atlantic Ocean.

According to a SpaceX mission description, it was the 22nd flight for this booster, which is designated B1080.

The Falcon 9's upper stage continued hauling the 28 Starlink satellites toward low Earth orbit, where they deployed 64 minutes after launch.

SpaceX has now launched 122 Falcon 9 missions in 2025, more than 70% of them devoted to building out the huge and ever-growing Starlink megaconstellation.

Starlink — by far the largest satellite network ever assembled — currently consists of more than 8,400 active spacecraft, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

These three spacecraft embarked on a shared ride to orbit early Wednesday morning (Sept. 24).

What is it?

While each spacecraft has a unique role, all three missions are united by a common theme: studying the solar wind, a continuous outflow of charged particles from the sun, and the effects of space weather throughout our solar system.

NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will study Earth's exosphere, also known as the geocorona, to hopefully give new insights into how our planet interacts with solar radiation.

In contrast, NOAA's SWFO-L1 probe will look at solar storms from Lagrange Point 1, a stable orbital location about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, giving critical early warnings about incoming space weather.

Where is it?

This photo was taken at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Why is it amazing?

Unlike the other two spacecraft, NASA's IMAP will be looking farther from home, focusing on the boundary layer of our solar system and mapping and analyzing the interactions between the solar wind and interstellar space.

Space weather can disrupt GPS signals and communications satellites and even endanger astronauts in orbit aboard the International Space Station (ISS) or en route to the moon or Mars. So, understanding how to predict space weather and mitigate against it could have wide-ranging impacts on modern society.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about NASA's IMAP mission and the effects of space weather.

SpaceX just sent three space weather probes to the final frontier.

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida today (Sept. 24) at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), carrying NASA's IMAP mission and and two other spacecraft.

Each probe has its own objectives, but all three will work toward the same larger goal: help scientists better understand space weather and its effects on Earth.

They're also all headed to the same place — the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, in the direction of our star.

IMAP (short for "Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe") is the primary payload on today's flight. The roughly $600 million spacecraft carries 10 different science instruments, which it will use to monitor solar activity as well as study interstellar dust and the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from our sun.

The mission's data will also help scientists map the outer boundary of the heliosphere, the vast bubble around our solar system that's dominated by the sun's solar wind and magnetic field.

IMAP will also provide radiation warnings for astronauts — for example, those with NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon over the next decade or so.

"Radiation exposure is a real threat to our astronauts traveling to the moon and beyond," Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said during a news conference on Sunday (Sept. 21).

"Humanity has only ever existed inside our protective magnetosphere, and as we travel beyond that protective shield, whether it be to the moon or to Mars, the actionable information from missions like IMAP will keep our astronauts safe," she added.

The other two spacecraft that went up today are NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (CGO) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Follow-on (SWFO-L1) spacecraft.

CGO will investigate the exosphere, the wispy outermost reaches of Earth's atmosphere. The small satellite "will image the faint glow of ultraviolet light from this region, called the geocorona, to better understand how space weather impacts our planet," NASA officials said in a mission description. "The Carruthers mission continues the legacy of the Apollo era, expanding on measurements first taken during Apollo 16."

SWFO-L1 will track solar storms, providing an early warning system for space weather, which can pose a threat to satellites, astronauts in orbit and some infrastructure on the ground, such as power grids.

All went according to plan on today's launch. The Falcon 9's upper stage deployed IMAP into an interplanetary transfer orbit about 84 minutes after launch. SWFO-L1 and CGO followed suit about 6.5 minutes and 13 minutes after that, respectively.

And the rocket's first stage came back to Earth on schedule, landing a little less than nine minutes after liftoff on the SpaceX droneship "Just Read the Instructions," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the second flight for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description.

Today's launch was the 120th Falcon 9 flight of 2025 already. Most of these missions — more than 70% of them — have been dedicated to building out SpaceX's Starlink satellite-internet constellation in low Earth orbit.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 24 with news of successful spacecraft deployment.

SpaceX is continuing to gear up for the next flight of its Starship megarocket, which may be just around the corner.

The company conducted a "static fire" test with its latest Starship upper stage recently, firing up its six Raptor engines while the vehicle remained anchored to the launch mount at SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas.

The milestone, which SpaceX announced via X on Monday evening (Sept. 22), is part of the prep work for Starship's 11th test flight. The company has already static-fired the Super Heavy first-stage booster that will fly on that mission.

SpaceX is developing Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, to help humanity settle Mars and embark on other exploration tasks. Both of its elements — Super Heavy and the upper-stage spacecraft, known as Starship or simply "Ship" — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

Starship has flown in its stacked configuration 10 times to date, most recently on Aug. 26. That test launch was a success; both Super Heavy and Ship splashed down in their target zones (the Gulf of Mexico and Indian Ocean, respectively), and Ship deployed eight dummy payloads into space as planned. That had never been done before on a Starship flight.

Flight 10 was a bounce-back mission for Starship; SpaceX had lost Ship prematurely on the previous three test flights, and another one of the upper-stage vehicles exploded on the test stand this past June.

SpaceX has not yet announced a target launch date for Flight 11, which will be the final mission of Starship's current "Version 2" iteration.

The company will soon start flying Starship Version 3, an even bigger vehicle that will be capable of getting cargo and people to Mars. If all goes well with the Version 3 test campaign, the first fleet of uncrewed Starships could launch toward the Red Planet in late 2026, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.

On Monday (Sept. 22), the space agency announced the 10 members of its newest astronaut class — five men and five women who will train for potential missions to commercial space stations in Earth orbit, at the moon and (perhaps) on Mars.

One of the 10 is Anna Menon, who already has extensive experience in the final frontier: She flew to Earth orbit in September 2024 on SpaceX's pioneering Polaris Dawn mission.

Polaris Dawn was the first mission in the Polaris Program, an ambitious project organized and funded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman. (Isaacman was in line to be NASA administrator until late May, when President Donald Trump pulled his nomination.)

Isaacman commanded Polaris Dawn, which sent him, pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet and mission specialists Menon and Sarah Gillis — both SpaceX engineers — to Earth orbit aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule "Resilience" on Sept. 10, 2024.

The five-day mission made history in multiple ways. For example, it reached a maximum altitude of 870 miles (1,400.7 kilometers), getting farther from Earth than any crewed spaceflight since the Apollo era. The Apollo missions were also male-only, so Gillis and Menon flew higher on Polaris Dawn than any woman ever had before.

In addition, Polaris Dawn featured the first-ever private spacewalk. Resilience's hatch opened on Sept. 12, 2024, exposing all four crewmembers to the vacuum of space. Then, Isaacman and Gillis partially exited the capsule, earning unobstructed views of Earth far below.

Interestingly, 39-year-old Menon didn't mention Polaris Dawn during her brief remarks at the astronaut-announcement ceremony on Monday, which was held at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Rather, she focused on her biomedical background — she holds a master's in biomedical engineering from Duke University — and what the future may hold in the field of space medicine.

"My first role out of graduate school was here at NASA's Johnson Space Center," Menon said on Monday. "I worked as a biomedical flight controller, and in that role, our job was to support the medical hardware and software on the International Space Station and help keep the astronauts healthy and safe from Mission Control. I am so thrilled to be back here with the NASA family.

"And, you know, as I reflect on the future of space medicine, I think it's really bright," she added. "We are born into one G, and so when you go into zero G, so many things change. As more and more people venture into space, and we seek to go further than ever before, we have this awesome opportunity to learn a tremendous amount to help support those astronauts and those people that are flying in those adventures and help keep them healthy and safe. So it's an exciting time to be here, and I couldn't be more thrilled and honored."

Menon's classmates in the 2025 NASA astronaut candidate class — the 24th in the agency's history, and its first since 2021 — are Ben Bailey, Lauren Edgar, Adam Fuhrmann, Cameron Jones, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, Imelda Muller, Erin Overcash and Katherine Spies. You can learn more about each of them in our announcement story.

The candidates will now undergo two years of training, which will prepare them for a variety of potential space missions. Some of these astronauts may end up going to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program — and some may even be among the first to set foot on Mars.

Menon isn't the first person to reach orbit before being selected for a NASA astronaut class; a number of others did so during the space shuttle era. For example, Japanese astronaut Mamoru Mohri, Canada's Steven MacLean and Italian Umberto Guidoni had all flown on the shuttle as international payload specialists before being chosen for NASA's Group 16 astronaut class in 1996.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:35 a.m. ET on Sept. 23 to include a paragraph giving examples of other people who reached orbit before being chosen for a NASA astronaut class.

SpaceX launched another batch of spy satellites for the U.S. government today (Sept. 22).

A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from California's foggy Vandenberg Space Force Base today (Sept. 22) at 1:38 p.m. EDT (1738 GMT; 10:38 a.m. local California time), on a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

That flight, called NROL-48, is the 11th dedicated to building out NRO's "proliferated architecture," a new network that relies on large numbers of relatively small, cost-effective reconnaissance and communications satellites rather than just a few big, expensive ones.

"To stay ahead of the competition and ensure it can continue to operate in a heightened threat environment, the NRO is modernizing its architecture in space and on the ground — delivering more capability faster with increased resilience," NRO officials said in a press kit about the proliferated architecture network, which you can find here.

"A greater number of satellites — large and small, government and commercial, in multiple orbits — will deliver an order of magnitude more signals and images than is available today," the officials added. "They will provide greater revisit rates, increased coverage, more timely delivery of information — and ultimately help us deliver more of what our customers need even faster."

Neither SpaceX nor the NRO provided any detail about the payloads going up on NROL-48. However, the proliferated architecture satellites are thought to be modified versions of SpaceX's Starlink internet spacecraft, outfitted with high-tech sensors and other gear.

Everything appeared to go well on today's flight. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down on a Vandenberg landing pad about 7.5 minutes after liftoff. It was the 18th mission for this particular booster, according to SpaceX.

The company ended its launch webcast shortly thereafter at the NRO's request, so we didn't get to see the payloads deploy. And SpaceX's mission description didn't specify exactly where and when that was supposed to happen.

All 11 proliferated architecture missions have launched atop Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg. The first one lifted off in May 2024, and the most recent one before today launched this past April.

SpaceX will launch NASA's ambitious IMAP mission and two other space weather probes early Wednesday morning (Sept. 24), and you can watch the action live.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), carrying IMAP and two rideshare spacecraft deep into the final frontier.

You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage is expected to will begin around 6:40 a.m. EDT (1040 GMT).

The primary payload is IMAP, whose name is short for "Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe."

IMAP "will study how the sun's energy and particles interact with the heliosphere — an enormous protective bubble of space around our solar system — to enhance our understanding of space weather, cosmic radiation, and their impacts on Earth and human and robotic space explorers," NASA officials wrote in a mission description.

Launching with IMAP are NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (CGO) and the Space Weather Follow-on (SWFO-L1) spacecraft, which will be operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

CGO will study Earth's exosphere — the atmosphere's wispiest outer reaches — to help scientists better understand how space weather affects our planet. SWFO-L1 will monitor and track solar storms, "serving as an early warning beacon for potentially disruptive space weather, helping safeguard Earth’s critical infrastructure and technological-dependent industries," NASA officials wrote in the mission description.

The trio will do this work at the Earth-sun Lagrange Point-1 (L1), a gravitationally stable spot that lies 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet. Several other spacecraft operate at L1, including India's Aditya-L1 solar probe and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency.

If all goes according to plan on Wednesday, the Falcon 9's upper stage will deploy IMAP, CGO and SWFO-L1 into interplanetary transfer orbit during a 13-minute stretch that begins about 83 minutes after liftoff. The three spacecraft will then make their way out to L1.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 4:25 p.m. ET on Sept. 22 with the new target launch date of Sept. 24.

SpaceX launched its 119th Falcon 9 mission of the year today (Sept. 21), sending another batch of its Starlink internet satellites aloft from Florida's Space Coast.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 28 Starlink spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station today at 6:53 a.m. EDT (1053 GMT).

The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth as planned about 8.5 minutes later, touching down on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the 11th flight for this particular booster, which is designated B1085. Among its previous missions were the Crew-9 and Fram2 astronaut flights and Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1, which sent a private robotic lander to the moon.

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9's upper stage continued carrying the 28 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, where they were deployed on time about 64 minutes after launch, according to SpaceX.

Today's launch was the 119th Falcon 9 flight of the year. SpaceX has also conducted four other launches in 2025 — suborbital test flights of Starship, the giant rocket the company is developing to help humanity settle Mars.

The most recent Starship launch — the 10th overall for the vehicle — occurred on Aug. 26 and was a complete success, according to SpaceX.

SpaceX just sent two dozen more of its Starlink internet satellites to space.

A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 24 Starlink craft lifted off from foggy Vandenberg Space Force Base on California's central coast today (Sept. 19) at 12:31 p.m. EDT (1631 GMT; 9:31 a.m. local California time).

About 8.5 minutes later, the Falcon 9's first stage returned to Earth as planned, landing on the SpaceX drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Pacific Ocean. It was the 10th launch and landing for this particular booster, which carries the designation B1088.

The Falcon 9's upper stage continued carrying the 24 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit. It will deploy the spacecraft there a little over 62 minutes after liftoff, if all goes to plan.

There are already nearly 8,400 active satellites in the Starlink network, which is by far the largest constellation of spacecraft ever assembled.

Today's launch was the 118th Falcon 9 liftoff of 2025. More than 70% of them of have been Starlink missions.