Photo credit: Nicholas D’Alessandro via PetaPixel
Photographer Nicholas D’Alessandro happened to be in the right place and time this past Saturday to capture a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket passing in front of a full moon. He used a Canon R5 DSLR with a Sigma 150-600 lens and a 2x teleconverter to achieve a 1200mm optical zoom after 3-days of waiting, since the initial launch was scrubbed due to weather.
SpaceX Starlink internet is available for RVs and now, the researchers in Antarctica at McMurdo Station. To date, Elon Musk’s company has launched 3,200 Starlink satellites thus far to low Earth orbit and carried out 61 Starlink launches ahead of the Starlink V2 launch next year that will bring satellite connectivity to smartphones.
Photo credit: Maximilian Schneider via Car Scoops
Automotive designer Maximilian Schneider is quite familiar with supercars after working at Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen, so it’s no surprise that he has a few ideas for a potential Tesla hypercar. Called the Tesla X SpaceX Model R, this concept builds upon the upcoming second-generation Tesla Roadster and adds a glass cockpit, along with downforce boosters.
T-Mobile has partnered with SpaceX to offer coverage in areas with little to no cell service using Elon Musk’s new Starlink V2 satellites. This means that even in the middle of nowhere such as in Death Valley or in any other national park, you’ll still be able to send and receive text messages.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured some fascinating images over the past three decades, but the Giant Magellan Telescope is ready to take over its reigns in the near future, right alongside the JWST. The telescope has just received a $205 million investment from its international consortium to accelerate construction, marking one of the largest funding rounds since its founding.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX secretly installed Starlink internet on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas cruise ship last month and since then, passengers have been able to use it freely with their Voom package. Why? The Federal Communications Commission recently approved SpaceX to provide Starlink satellite internet to vehicles in motion, which includes cruise ships.
NASA has officially awarded a NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to SpaceX. Elon Musk’s company will provide launch service for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission, which is actually the top-priority large space mission recommended by the 2010 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey.
SpaceX gives us a first look at a Super Heavy booster rocket equipped with 33 Raptor engines ahead of its first orbital flight. In case you missed out on Elon Musk’s announcement, the Starship is basically a two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle, which consists of the Super Heavy booster stage and the Starship second stage, with the latter having four main variants: cargo, crew, propellant tanker, and lunar lander.
Elon Musk announced a SpaceX Starlink internet plan designed specifically for RVs yesterday, and it’s available now, but with a few differences from its fixed counterpart. Let’s just get all of the downsides out of the way, with the first being that when users travel with the satellite away from their home address, the data is automatically deprioritized, thus resulting in slower internet speeds.
The rumors are true, Google Street View can be used to tour the International Space Station (ISS), thanks to ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. He used DSLR cameras to capture nearly all the modules, the US Laboratory and Cupola included, to give us a preview of how where they collect data on the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, and land surface.