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Science

SpaceX just launched a Falcon 9 rocket on a record 9th flight and stuck the landing

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a new batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites into orbit early Sunday (March 14) and nailed its landing at sea to top off a record-setting mission. 

The veteran Falcon 9 rocket is the first in SpaceX’s fleet to launch and land a record nine times. The two-stage launcher blasted off from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center here in Florida at 6:01 a.m. EDT (1101 GMT). 

Approximately nine minutes later, the reusable rocket’s first stage returned to Earth to attempt its ninth landing on SpaceX’s drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You” stationed out in the Atlantic Ocean. 

The flight comes just days after the company’s last launch, where a different Falcon 9 rocket took off from neighboring Space Launch Complex 40, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Both missions delivered a full stack of 60 Starlink satellites to orbit, helping SpaceX inch ever-closer to filling its initial constellation of 1,440 satellites.

Related: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite megaconstellation launches in photos 

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 60 Starlink internet satellites into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida as it makes a record 9th trip to space on March 14, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX)
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(Image credit: SpaceX)
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(Image credit: SpaceX)

It was a crystal clear night in Florida as the Falcon’s flames lit up the night sky. Weather forecasters at the 45th Weather Squadron predicted ideal conditions for launch, with the only weather concerns being the potential for cumulus clouds. 

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, as onlookers were treated to an incredible view of the rocket climbing to orbit. 

The pre-dawn sky makes for some trippy atmospheric effects and this launch did not disappoint. Below the horizon, the sun illuminated the rocket’s plume creating a dazzling space jellyfish in the sky. This type of phenomenon only occurs at dawn and dusk. 

These launches are often confused for UFOs because of the weird squiggly clouds produced. (Spoiler alert: It’s definitely not aliens.) 

Related: What’s that in the sky? It’s a SpaceX rocket, but it sure doesn’t look like it

 Record-setting flight

SpaceX’s most-flown Falcon 9 booster stands atop the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You after a successful landing – its 9th so far –  in the Atlantic Ocean on March 14, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The booster, B1051, is one of two in SpaceX’s stable of reusable rockets that has more than seven flights under its belt. The veteran flier first flew in March of 2019, lofting an uncrewed Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a demonstration mission. 

Following that first mission, B1051 traveled cross-country to launch a trio of Earth-observing satellites for Canada from SpaceX’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The booster then flew a total of five times from Florida in 2020, carrying five different Starlink missions and a broadband satellite for Sirius XM.  

Sunday’s mission marks the eighth flight overall for SpaceX in 2021, and the second flight this year for this particular booster. After its last flight took off on Jan. 20, SpaceX engineers were able to turn it around the booster and prep for a historic ninth flight in just 53 days — the second quickest turnaround time for this particular booster. (The record was between flights 7 and 8, which took off just 38 days apart.)

B1051’s counterpart, B1049, has flown eight times, with its most recent flight blasting off on March 4, following several delays due to weather and the need for more prelaunch checkouts. SpaceX designed its Falcon 9 rocket to fly as many as 10 times with little-to-no refurbishments needed in between flights. As these two boosters approach that 10-flight milestone, the company is closely monitoring the wear and tear each receives during flight.

Having a fleet of flight-proven rockets at its disposal, allows SpaceX to keep up with its rapid launch cadence. However company officials have stressed that while booster recovery is a bonus, the main objective is to deliver whatever payload the rocket is carrying to space. 

This SpaceX graphic shows the eight previous flights of the Falcon 9 rocket that made its 9th flight on March 14, 2021. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Each recovery attempt and subsequent post-flight inspection process teaches SpaceX more and more about how much wear and tear occurs after a launch. The company uses that information to improve and streamline its recovery process. 

When its upgraded version of Falcon 9 debuted in 2018, the company said that it expected each Falcon 9 first stage could fly an estimated 10 times with little-to-no refurbishments in between, and as many as 100 times before retirement. 

Now, the company says that the number 10 may be more of a guideline than a hard limit. With B1051 set to make its ninth flight, it’s entirely possible we will see at least one, if not multiple boosters reach that 10-flight milestone. 

On Thursday (March 4), SpaceX’s other fleet leader, B1049, took off on its 8th flight. The booster is back in port, waiting for transport to SpaceX’s facilities for post-flight inspections and will be prepped to fly again. 

SpaceX recently lost one of its boosters in February, after it failed to land on the drone ship. The mishap ended a 24-booster recovery streak the company set in 2020, after losing two other boosters in back-to-back mishaps. 

The loss was attributed to an engine shutdown during flight, which prevented the vehicle from nailing its intended landing spot. SpaceX said that shutdown occurred after hot gas leaked into parts of the engine it wasn’t supposed to. 

Falcon 9 is designed to complete its mission even if one of its engines shut down during flight. However, engineers are hopeful that potential software updates will be able to help the vehicle land if such an anomaly occurs. 

The constellation grows 

With tonight’s launch success, SpaceX has launched more than 1,300 Starlink satellites into orbit, which includes some that are no longer operational. And there are many more launches coming as SpaceX’s initial Starlink constellation will consist of 1,440 satellites. However, the company has sought approval for tens of thousands more.

The company launched its massive constellation, with one major goal: to connect the globe. To that end, SpaceX designed a fleet of flat paneled broadband satellites that will fly over the Earth, providing users across the globe with internet coverage. In particular those in rural and remote areas who otherwise would not have connectivity.

SpaceX previously announced that it gave 40 families in Wise County, Virginia user terminal to access its Starlink internet service. The company has expanded that to two different counties in North Carolina — Swain County in the state’s west and Hide County on the east coast. 

Residents in both of these counties are unable to connect to traditional internet services based on the geography of their respective locations. Neither county has broadband infrastructure or reliable cell service, so attending school during the pandemic has been a challenge. During the launch broadcast, SpaceX revealed that it would be helping students in these areas with broadband service. 

Currently Starlink is still in beta-testing as SpaceX works to fill out its initial constellation. Users in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and now New Zealand can access the service. SpaceX is taking preorders for when it rolls out full commercial services sometime later this year. 

Falling fairings 

GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief, SpaceX’s two net-equipped boats are sidelined for this mission. In their place, SpaceX has deployed two of its Dragon chasers: GO Searcher and GO Navigator.

The pair are typically deployed to fetch Dragon capsules out of the water, but do serve as backup to the fairing catcher twins, and have been the main means of fairing recovery for the past few missions.

Both fairing pieces on this mission previously flew on the Transporter-1 mission in January, and with any luck, they’ll fly again soon. The success of any recovery attempts are typically announced about 45 minutes after liftoff.  

Follow Amy Thompson on Twitter @astrogingersnap. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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US

Austin delivery driver gets stuck in the storm. She stayed with strangers for 5 days

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Homeowners Doug Condon and Nina Richardson checked on Timmons to try to help get her Toyota Rav4 up the driveway, but it was stuck. They invited her to wait for a tow truck inside their home.

“I’m just extremely fortunate that this is where my car crashed,” Timmons told CNN. “It was in their flower bed. It wasn’t in a ditch. It wasn’t on the side of the road … I was stuck someplace safe and warm.”

The bad weather persisted a lot longer than any of them thought. Five days later, Timmons was still living with the couple.

Since Sunday, Texas has weathered a fierce storm that left cities without power, water and warmth for millions of people who aren’t used to this kind of cold.

Amid the tales of people struggling to survive, a few stories of hope showed that Texas hospitality is the real deal.

Timmons, who lives three hours away in Houston, said she makes weekly trips to Austin because the delivery market there pays a little more. The 32-year-old picked up one last delivery on Sunday as the snow picked up, thinking she would have time to make it home.

Waiting for a tow truck that never came

She’d struggled to drive into the hilly neighborhood at midday to deliver the groceries, which were already a day late and included steaks for the couple’s planned Valentine’s Day dinner.

“I was going down very slowly, remembering to tap my brake,” Timmons said from her hosts’ home in Austin. “I tapped more aggressively and it just still kept sliding. My heart just dropped as I just slid right towards their house and I just closed my eyes and just prayed that I did not hit these people’s home, that I did not damage my car. I just knew — definitely knew — if I hit their home, that was my tip.”

She texted the couple to let them know she was there with their groceries and that she was stuck.

Condon came outside and they tried to get her car up the steep driveway. Timmons said she tried to wait in her car and call AAA for a tow, but Condon invited her inside.

With no-contact deliveries,Timmons was used to sanitizing before and after she dropped off the items, in addition to wearing a mask and keeping her distance, she said.

“They invited me inside and of course, at that point, I was just feeling very awkward coming into a stranger’s home. But they were super kind,” she said. “When they invited me in, I sat with my mask in their kitchen for about two hours.”

She kept calling for tow truck updates and went back out to her car to wait. A few hours later, the towing service said they wouldn’t be able to make it to the area safely, due to the storm, she said.

“As soon as we found out that AAA couldn’t come and the conditions were getting worse, it seemed silly to even imagine that she would go to a hotel,” Richardson said. “It didn’t even occur to us.”

Richardson and Condon had just received their first Covid-19 vaccine shot a week before as part of phase 1B. The couple said they were not going to let Timmons sit out there in the cold.

Daytime turned to night and soon dinner was upon them. It was Valentine’s Day and the couple made steak with blue cheese, broccoli and a salad. It was a much better meal than Timmons imagined she’d be getting that night, she said.

“That was definitely not how I expected my Valentine’s Day to go,” Timmons said with a laugh. “We had a great dinner and I sat, I was warm, I was fed and it was just amazing and I thought it was just going to be for one night, but here I am, day five.”

In the meantime, Timmons learned that back at her apartment in Houston, the power had gone out. If she had in fact made it home, it would have simply been to live there without power.

Each day, they would monitor the weather and Timmons and Condon tried to make progress on her car. They shoveled small parts of the driveway and tried to inch it back up, bit by bit.

“We were using a broom and a spade to be able to clear the driveway as best we could,” Condon said. “We thought we had it cleared enough for her to be able to get up. She got up about halfway and got stuck.”

She tried to leave but hosts insisted she stay

Every time Timmons suggested leaving to get a hotel room somewhere, the couple worried about what situation she would find herself in.

“‘Our guest bedroom is better than the Hampton Inn,'” Timmons said the couple told her. “‘If you leave, what are you going to eat? Are you sure you can make it there all the way?'”

As the days went on, the group became chummy and it was just like Timmons was a guest staying in the couple’s spare bedroom.

“We’ve had kind of an exciting week with crazy weather and a surprise guest, which turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience,” Condon said.

The couple’s dogs, Crosby and Haddie, soon began sitting on Timmons’ bed and snuggling up to her.

“She just became kind of part of the family pretty quickly,” Richardson said.

Timmons helped the couple prepare meals. Someone would boil the pasta and someone else would work on the other parts of the meal, Richardson said.

Timmons made a coconut cake to thank the couple. “We were definitely the beneficiaries of her baking,” Condon said.

For Condon and Richardson, they hope that others would have done the same for a stranger needing help.

“We would hope that if our daughters were in a situation similar to Chelsea, that there would be someone that would treat them like we treated Chelsea,” he said. “I don’t think we ever thought twice about it.”

The couple and Timmons said they plan on staying in touch. On Friday, the weather let up and Timmons safely made it home to Houston on a sunny day with clear roads.

“I am so grateful that they were not only able but willing to let a complete stranger into their home in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a storm … with no hesitation,” Timmons said. “They just opened their doors, opened their home and said, ‘Come in and relax.'”

“I’m just so grateful for them and so glad that this is where I ended up out of all the driveways in the world,” she said.

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World

Millions in U.K. face financial ruin while stuck in “death trap” homes

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London — The U.K. government announced an extra 3.5 billion pounds ($4.8 billion) of relief funding Wednesday to help millions of homeowners whose properties have been made unsellable by the discovery that common materials used to weatherproof buildings across Britain are extremely flammable.

Apartment buildings across the country are covered in cladding materials found to be unsafe after the devastating 2017 fire at Grenfell Tower in central London. The blaze claimed 72 lives and showed just how quickly cladding can allow flames to spread around a building.

Unable to sell their homes because no bank will give mortgages on them, owners of apartments with dangerous cladding have also faced mounting costs associated with measures imposed to address the fire hazard, including paying for watchmen to patrol buildings.

The government announced an initial 1.5 billion pounds towards the removal of the unsafe cladding last year. But for some homeowners, the measures have come too late.

Hayley Tillotson, 28, realized her dream of home ownership by saving up the 10,000-pound deposit for her apartment in Leeds. She was recently forced to declare bankruptcy after unsafe cladding and other fire safety issues were found on her building.

“It didn’t for one second occur to me that they could sell me something that’s a death trap and completely unsuitable,” said Tillotson. “Now looking forward, the rest of my future’s ruined. It’s gone. And there are thousands and thousands of people just like me.”

The U.S. connection

The announcement of additional funding came amid an ongoing British government inquiry into the cause of the Grenfell Tower fire, which has revealed how some of the companies that manufactured the materials used in the cladding on Grenfell continued to market their products as safe despite some employees knowing they were flammable.

Among those companies is the American firm Arconic, which manufactured the cladding on Grenfell Tower through a French subsidiary.

Emails shared with the inquiry show that some Arconic employees knew of the danger of fire posed by the type of cladding used on Grenfell Tower, but that the company continued to sell it anyway.

In a statement, the Pittsburgh-based company said it was “continuing to offer their full support to the authorities as the inquiry works through the complex questions presented.  It is not appropriate for us to comment further while the Inquiry is ongoing and before all evidence has been presented in Phase Two.”

“These corporations are still operating as if nothing has happened,” Karim Mussilhy, whose uncle was killed in the Grenfell Tower fire, told CBS News. “People should be safe in their homes. People shouldn’t have to feel like they’re going to sleep and not knowing if they’re going to wake up or not.”

BBC News’ Vinnie O’Dowd contributed to this report.

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World

Twitter is stuck between a rock and a hard place in India

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Early last week, Twitter (TWTR) reportedly suspended hundreds of accounts at the government’s behest, including one handle with over 200,000 followers supporting the ongoing protests by farmers against new agricultural reforms and another belonging to one of the country’s most prominent magazines.
“In our continuing effort to make our services available to people everywhere, if we receive a properly scoped request from an authorized entity, it may be necessary to withhold access to certain content in a particular country from time to time,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement at the time.
The company restored the accounts a few hours later after a public outcry, but is now reportedly under pressure from authorities to block them again. India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology sent a notice to Twitter threatening its employees with up to seven years in jail, according to a report from BuzzFeed News.

Twitter said it has acknowledged receipt of the notice and sought a “formal dialogue” with the Indian government.

“The safety of our employees is a top priority for us at Twitter,” a company spokesperson told CNN Business. “We continue to be engaged with the Government of India from a position of respect,” the spokesperson added.

The Indian government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Who will blink first?

With more than 700 million internet users, India is a huge and important market for global tech companies, albeit an increasingly precarious one as the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to tighten its grip on the internet and social media.

The Modi government has previously clashed with platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp and has proposed regulations that would expand its ability to police content online. It also banned TikTok and dozens of other apps last year after diplomatic tensions with China escalated, and it has resorted to shutting down the internet altogether in several parts of the country to curb protests.
Now Twitter is the latest company to find itself in the government’s crosshairs. The platform has become a key conduit for the public — and increasingly international — debate between proponents and critics of the Indian government’s farm laws. The company had around 19 million users in India as of October last year, according to research firm Statista — more than any country except the United States and Japan.

“The shrinking space for civil society is being mirrored by censorship and anti-democratic regulatory moves to censor users from their rights to free speech,” said Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director at advocacy group Equality Labs. “It is time for the world to understand how much is at risk right now and for American companies like Twitter and Facebook to act before it’s too late.”

Twitter, for now, appears to be standing its ground against the Indian government by keeping the accounts active.

“We review every report we receive from the government as expeditiously as possible, and take appropriate action regarding such reports while making sure we hold firm to our fundamental values and commitment to protecting the public conversation,” the company spokesperson said. “We strongly believe that the open and free exchange of information has a positive global impact, and that the tweets must continue to flow.”

But if the government chooses to make good on its threats or further escalate the situation, Twitter is left with few good options.

“There are two main risks: The first is to Twitter’s employees in India, who may be at risk if the company fails to comply with demands,” said Jillian York, Director of Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“The second risk is that Twitter continues to refuse and gets blocked in India. While this may be the right moral outcome, it’s obviously not the best outcome for the Indian people, many of whom rely on social media to get out key messages about what’s happening on the ground,” she added.

Threading the needle

While Twitter and the Indian government remain at an impasse with each other, both sides must also deal with external scrutiny.

Social media companies have long faced pressure to do more to combat misinformation and hate speech on their platforms. And those issues, hotly debated in the United States, often have further reaching and more sinister consequences in countries where the companies have a smaller business footprint but a far larger impact.
Twitter has been more proactive about policing its platform in recent months, taking down thousands of accounts linked to the conspiracy theory QAnon and banning one of its most prolific and controversial users — former US President Donald Trump. With that ban, Twitter showed a willingness to apply its policies to a world leader who violated them, albeit towards the end of his time in office. Its standoff in India also pits it against a powerful world leader in an important market.

“Jack has shown in the past that he can lead with his values,” said Soundararajan, referring to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

But India, with more than three times the population of the United States and a very different social and political context, presents one of the trickiest challenges to Twitter outside its home country. In another apparent setback, the company also confirmed this week that its public policy head for India, Mahima Kaul, will step down in April after more than five years. (Twitter does not break down user data for India, but third-party research suggests the country is one of its larger markets.)

“The fundamental problem is consistency … are they able to do the same kind of contextual analysis that they did around QAnon posts, hydroxychloroquine posts and Trump’s incitement?” said David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine who previously served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. “India is a really great example of how hard that is.”

India, which bills itself as the world’s largest democracy, must also calibrate its response. Even as it battles with Twitter, the Modi government is fighting a perception battle with some of Twitter’s most prominent voices — the country’s foreign ministry recently released a statement slamming “sensationalist social media hashtags and comments, especially when resorted to by celebrities and others,” after tweets about the farmer protests by singer Rihanna and environmental activist Greta Thunberg went viral.

“I think there’s still a risk for Modi in particular of appearing to be unable to handle sort of fundamental democratic principles like the right to peaceful assembly, the right to protest, the right to criticize and so forth,” Kaye said. “I think it’ll be interesting to see if the Biden administration and other governments, who are friendly with India but are in the democratic camp, really encourage the government to take a different approach here.”

— CNN’s Manveena Suri and Esha Mitra contributed to this report.



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