Starlink satellites

July 13, 2024 11:48 AM

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 grounded after failure dooms batch of Starlink satellites

SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday after one broke apart in space and doomed its payload of Starlink satellites, the first failure in more than seven years of a rocket relied upon by the global space industry. Roughly an hour after Falcon 9 lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday night, the rocket's second stage failed to reignite and deployed its 20 Starlink satellites on a shallow orbita...

Musk’s Starlink satellites disrupted by major solar storm

Starlink, the satellite arm of Elon Musk's SpaceX, warned on Saturday of a "degraded service" as the Earth is battered by the biggest geomagnetic storm due to solar activity in two decades. Starlink owns around 60% of the roughly 7,500 satellites orbiting Earth and is a dominant player in satellite internet. Musk said earlier in a post on X that Starlink satellites were under a lot of pressure due to the geomagnetic storm, but were holding up so far. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric ...