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Hello, Starship: SpaceX’s big rocket gets new name

BFR illustration
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s newly renamed Starship in flight. (SpaceX Illustration)

First it was the Mars Colonial Transporter, or MCT … then it was the Interplanetary Transport System, or ITS … then it was the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR. Now it’s Starship.

Tonight SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced the latest name for the spaceship that he says SpaceX aims to use to deliver a million people to Mars, send a Japanese billionaire and an assortment of artists around the moon and back, carry passengers on supersonic trips around the globe, and basically do everything big that needs to be done in space.

The name change comes just days after Musk tweeted that the design for the spaceship is being radically revised once again. “New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive,” he wrote.

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NASA picks landing site for Mars 2020 rover

Jezero Crater
This color-coded image of the Jezero Crater delta combines information from two instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars and the Context Camera. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / JHU-APL)

One week before the next Mars mission is due to land, NASA has chosen the landing site for its next next Mars mission. Jezero Crater will be where NASA’s yet-to-be-named rover will land on Feb. 18, 2021, the space agency announced today.

“It’s a Thursday,” said Allen Chen, who’s leading the entry, descent and landing team for what’s currently known as NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. That touchdown is due to come seven months after the mission’s launch in mid-July 2020.

Jezero Crater is thought to be the site of an ancient river delta on the western edge of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator. Scientists say the 28-mile-wide crater’s rocks and soil may contain organic molecules and other traces of microbial life from the water and sediments that flowed into the crater billions of years ago.

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Virgin Orbit jet aces first flight with rocket attached

Cosmic Girl with Launcher One
Virgin Orbit’s 70-foot-long LauncherOne rocket is hooked beneath the left wing of the modified 747 jet known as Cosmic Girl during the first captive-carry flight. (Virgin Orbit Photo)

Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 jet, nicknamed Cosmic Girl, has made its first test flight with a LauncherOne rocket tucked under its wing.

The 80-minute captive-carry flight from California’s Victorville Airport and back came on Nov. 18 after months of step-by-step preparations, and represents a major step forward in Virgin Orbit’s plan to start sending satellites to orbit next year.

In a news release, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said the outing was “a picture-perfect flight.”

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GM’s self-driving car venture plans Seattle office

Cruise Chevy Bolt
GM-owned Cruise Automation is developing autonomous driving capabilities using the Chevy Bolt as a testbed. (General Motors / Cruise Automation Photo)

Cruise Automation, General Motors’ autonomous-vehicle subsidiary, says it’s getting ready to open up an office in the Seattle area that could employ as many as 200 engineers within a year.

Don’t expect Cruise to start putting its self-driving Chevy Bolts on the streets of Seattle, as the San Francisco-based venture has done in its hometown as well as in Arizona and the Detroit area. There aren’t any plans to test autonomous vehicles in the Seattle area. But Cruise has big plans to take advantage of Seattle’s status as a magnet for software engineers, data analysts and experts in computer vision and machine learning.

“To continue growing a team that is diverse and rich in talent, we feel that it’s important to explore talent pools outside of the Bay Area, and Seattle’s vibrant tech community and proximity to our headquarters in San Francisco make it a logical choice,” Kyle Vogt, Cruise’s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement emailed to GeekWire.

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Cygnus cargo ship heads to space station

Cygnus launch
Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket rises from its launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (NASA Photo / Joel Kowsky)

Two uncrewed cargo craft are now en route to the International Space Station, thanks to the launch of a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spaceship atop an Antares rocket.

Liftoff came right on time at 4:01 a.m. ET (1:01 a.m. PT) today at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA said the Antares’ ascent should have been visible from a stretch of America’s East Coast ranging from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, given acceptable weather conditions and viewing elevation.

A round of applause could be heard at Wallops’ launch control center when spacecraft separation was announced.

The rocket’s red glare came less than 15 hours after Russia’s robotic Progress spaceship began its trip to the space station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The close timing was the result of a couple of weather-caused delays for the Cygnus launch. The Progress is due to rendezvous with the station on Nov. 18, followed by the Cygnus’ arrival on Nov. 19.

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Elon Musk celebrates tunnel’s big breakthrough

Tunnel worker
A worker knocks dirt off the Boring Company’s tunneling machine after its emergence into a vertical shaft. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

The Boring Company’s “cutting-edge technology” got a shout-out from billionaire founder Elon Musk tonight after the venture’s tunneling machine, nicknamed Godot, broke through into a vertical exit shaft in Hawthorne, Calif.

“Congratulations … on completing the LA/Hawthorne tunnel!” Musk wrote in a tweet.

The breakthrough apparently finishes up the heavy-duty boring job for a test tunnel that connects a parking lot next to SpaceX’s headquarters to another piece of property purchased by the Boring Company.

Musk mandated the project to demonstrate a low-cost, small-bore approach to urban tunnelling. The first mile-long section of the Hawthorne Test Tunnel — including a spur line to the exit shaft, known as O’Leary Station — is scheduled to open for invitation-only tours starting on Dec. 10.

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Arecibo makes plans for new message to aliens

Arecibo Message
A global contest will give the 1974 Arecibo Message a reboot. (Arecibo Observatory Illustration)

The Arecibo Observatory today kicked off a student-focused competition to design a new message to beam to extraterrestrials, 44 years to the day since the first deliberate message was sent out from Arecibo’s 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope.

“Our society and our technology have changed a lot since 1974,” Francisco Cordova, the observatory’s director, said in a news release. “So if we were assembling our message today, what would it say? What would it look like? What one would need to learn to be able to design the right updated message from the earthlings? Those are the questions we are posing to young people around the world through the New Arecibo Message – the global challenge.”

It’s not just about the message, however: Competitors will have to solve brain-teasing puzzles posted on Arecibo’s website in order to qualify, get instructions, register and submit their designs. Along the way, they’ll learn about space science, the scientific method and Arecibo’s story.

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Russian cargo launch clears way for crew’s trip

Progress launch
Russia’s Soyuz rocket lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, sending a Progress cargo ship to the International Space Station. (Roscosmos / NASA via YouTube)

Russia successfully launched an uncrewed Progress cargo spaceship today to the International Space Station, using a Soyuz rocket similar to the one that malfunctioned last month.

No issues arose during the craft’s ascent to orbit from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, boosting mission managers’ confidence that the malfunction had been addressed and that a crewed Soyuz launch planned for next month could proceed.

“A perfect 8-minute, 45-second flight on a brisk day over in Baikonur,” NASA launch commentator Gary Jordan said after the 10:14 a.m. PT launch.

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Spaceflight Industries goes through restructuring

Spaceflight team
Spaceflight’s team gathers in front of SpaceX’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California during preparations for a dedicated-rideshare launch. (SpaceflightInc via Twitter)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries laid out the status of a debt restructuring plan this week in advance of its most ambitious satellite launch operation to date.

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 13 describe an offering of $29.9 million in debt instruments and options for other securities, with five investors participating to date. The filing said $22 million of the offering has been sold, with $7.9 million remaining.

Spaceflight Industries spokeswoman Jodi Sorensen told GeekWire in an email that the filing was triggered when the company finished up a restructuring deal.

“Part of that funding ($15M) went through restructuring, making it more available to us, while the current investors did invest another $7M,” she explained. “So some is from restructuring, some is net new investment.”

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Rocket Lab reports $140M in fresh funding

Rocket Lab factory
Electron rockets are made at Rocket Lab’s production facility in New Zealand. (Rocket Lab Photo)

Fresh on the heels of a successful satellite launch, Rocket Lab today announced that it has received $140 million in new investment.

Rocket Lab said the Series E financing round was led by Future Fund and closed last month, well in advance of last weekend’s “It’s Business Time” mission. The Electron rocket launch from the California-based startup’s pad on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula put six satellites in orbit and tested an experimental drag sail for small satellites.

The new round brings Rocket Lab’s total funding to $288 million and puts the company’s valuation well past a billion dollars, extending its status as a startup “unicorn.”

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