Welcome to Edition 7.26 of the Rocket Report! Let's pause and reflect on how far the rocket business has come in the last 10 years. On this date in 2015, SpaceX made the first attempt to land a Falcon 9 booster on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, the rocket crash-landed. In less than a year and a half, though, SpaceX successfully landed reusable Falcon 9 boosters onshore and offshore, and now has done it nearly 400 times. That was remarkable enough, but we're in a new era now. Within a few days, we could see SpaceX catch its second Super Heavy booster and Blue Origin land its first New Glenn rocket on an offshore platform. Extraordinary.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Our annual ranking of the top 10 US launch companies. You can easily guess who made the top of the list: the company that launched Falcon rockets 134 times in 2024 and launched the most powerful and largest rocket ever built on four test flights, each accomplishing more than the last. The combined 138 launches is more than NASA flew the Space Shuttle over three decades. SpaceX will aim to launch even more often in 2025. These missions have far-reaching impacts, supporting Internet coverage for consumers worldwide, launching payloads for NASA and the US military, and testing technology that will take humans back to the Moon and, someday, Mars.
Β© Stratolaunch
An upsized version of SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week.
The two-mile transfer moved the bullet-shaped spaceship one step closer to launch Monday from SpaceX's Starbase test site in South Texas. The launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 2200 UTC). This will be the seventh full-scale test flight of SpaceX's Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft and the first of 2025.
In the coming days, SpaceX technicians will lift the ship on top of the Super Heavy booster already emplaced on the launch mount. Teams will then complete the final tests and preparations for the countdown on Monday.
Β© SpaceX
NASA
The Perseverance rover is building up a stash of rocks on Mars that could contain the first-ever signs of alien life, but NASA is scrambling to figure out how it will bring them back to Earth for analysis.
NASA had a plan but it got "out of control," in the words of the agency's administrator, Bill Nelson. After a series of delays, the cost ballooned to $11 billion and the samples wouldn't be landing on Earth until 2040.
So Nelson scrapped that plan in April and called for new proposalsΒ from outside and within NASA.
After months of assessment, on Tuesday, Nelson announced that "the wizards at NASA" had come up with a new plan, which could bring the Mars rocks to Earth as early as 2035 for as cheap as $5.8 billion.
"We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back," Nelson said during a NASA presser on Tuesday.
For that to work, he said the incoming Trump administration will need to get on board.
"This is going to be a function of the new administration in order to fund this," Nelson said. "And it's an appropriation that has to start right now, fiscal year '25."
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
NASA is not looking for active alien life but rather fossilized hints of long-gone microbial life.
The $2.4 billion Perseverance rover has spent the last four years exploring Jezero Crater, which was a lake billions of years ago. If microbes ever lived on Mars, this is the ideal spot to search for evidence of them.
In fact, in July, Perseverance stumbled on a rock in Jezero Crater that contained some of the strongest potential evidence of ancient alien life to date.
One of the rock's outstanding features was tiny white "leopard spots" that could suggest the presence of chemical reactions similar to those associated with microbial life on Earth.
It's still uncertain whether this is truly a sign of alien microbes. There could be non-biological explanations for the spots. To check, NASA needs to get that rock here to Earth for study in laboratories.
Bringing Perseverance's Mars samples to Earth will be complicated.
NASA must launch a mission that collects the samples from the Martian surface and launches them into Mars' orbit, where they must meet up with a European spacecraft designed to grab them and carry them back to Earth.
To make things simpler and reduce costs, NASA focused on how it would drop that mission to the Martian surface.
In order to maximize the chance of the sample return mission moving forward, NASA chose not one but two options to pursue.
The first option would involve using existing technology that's previously landed on Mars. That's a sky crane, similar to the ones that helped lower NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars' surface.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
The second option involves working with existing commercial partners, like SpaceX and Blue Origin. In that scenario, NASA would use new commercial technology, untested on Mars, like a heavy lander, Nelson said.
Both paths would cost around $6 or $7 billion and deliver the samples to Earth before 2040, NASA determined.
Nelson said he expects NASA to choose one of those paths forward in 2026 since the engineering work required to fully understand each option will take about a year.
He added that NASA will need $300 million to do that work in fiscal year 2025. Trump would have to include that expense in his budget proposal, and Congress would have to approve it.
"And if they want to get this thing back on a direct return earlier, they're going to have to put more money into it, even more than $300 million in fiscal year 25. And that would be the case every year going forward," Nelson said.
As part of the transition to the new Trump administration, Nelson will likely be handing the agency over to Trump-nominee Jared Isaacman, a billionaire and two-time SpaceX astronaut.
After Trump nominated him for NASA Administrator, Isaacman wrote in a post on X that "Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars."
His position on the Mars Sample Return mission is unclear. Nelson said he had not spoken with Isaacman about it.
The Italian government is considering the purchase of satellite Internet services from SpaceX's Starlink constellation, and the potential deal has triggered controversy along political, economic, and spaceflight lines in Europe.
The story was initially broken by Bloomberg on Sunday, which reported that Italy is in "advanced talks" with SpaceX to purchase $1.6 billion worth of secure telecommunication services from SpaceX. The publication said an agreement, for which talks began in mid-2023, had been stalled until Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited President-elect Donald Trump in Florida recently.
This report set off a firestorm of responses that highlight the increasing sensitivity of European countries to partnering with SpaceXβthe success of which has put serious pressure on Europe's launch industryβas well as the Trump administration and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Β© Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg via Getty Images
SCOTT MORGAN/REUTERS
Charlie Munger was still sniffing out bargains and scoring big gains at age 99, says a close friend of the late investing icon.
Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner and Berkshire Hathaway's vice chairman for more than four decades, died in late November 2023, about a month shy of his 100th birthday.
In a rare interview marking the first anniversary of Munger's death, Li Lu told the Chinese social network Zhenge Island that one of Munger's last moves was a contrarian bet.
"There was a stock that everyone disliked, and it might not be particularly politically correct," Li said. But that didn't stop Munger from studying the company and buying its shares, continued the Himalaya Capital Management founder, whom Munger once described as the "Chinese Warren Buffett."
"The week before he died, this stock had doubled from the time he started investing to that time," Li said. It's unclear which stock he was referring to. Li didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
Li said the wager showed Munger retained his passion for investing until the end and "could still go against the market consensus and live to see this stock double." He said the stock remained "in the Munger family portfolio" and was "still performing very well."
JP Yim/Getty Images
Li was the only person apart from Buffett who Munger trusted to invest his family's money. He introduced Munger to BYD, the Chinese EV maker that's been one of Berkshire's best investments over the past decade.
Describing Munger's careful approach toward investing, in his interview with Zhenge Island he also seemed to allude to a story Munger had discussed at Daily Journal's annual meeting in 2017, saying Munger "read Barron's magazine every week for 50 years and only made one investment."
"In 50 years I found one investment opportunity in Barron's, out of which I made about $80 million with almost no risk," Munger said in 2017. "I took the $80 million and gave it to Li Lu, who turned it into $400 to $500 million. So I have made $400 to 500 million out of reading Barron's for 50 years and following one idea."
Munger added further details, indicating that the stock was an auto supply company named Tenneco that Apollo Global Management acquired in late 2022. He said that he made 15 times his money on the stock in about two years and that it took him only 90 minutes of research to pull the trigger after reading about it.
Li recalled a lunch with Munger and Elon Musk in which he said the Tesla and SpaceX CEO tried to win Munger's investment. He said the discussion showed their similar thinking on subjects such as batteries and science but also their stark differences in risk appetite. While Musk was willing to do things with only a 5% chance of success, he said, Munger "may need more than 80% chance of success before he will do it."
Musk has previously discussed meeting Munger. Early in 2023 he posted on X that "Munger could've invested in Tesla at ~$200M valuation when I had lunch with him in late 2008." Musk's automaker went on to become one of the world's largest companies and is now worth about $1.3 trillion.
"I was at a lunch with Munger in 2009 where he told the whole table all the ways Tesla would fail," Musk wrote in another post. "Made me quite sad, but I told him I agreed with all those reasons & that we would probably die, but it was worth trying anyway."
Correction: January 7, 2025 β This story was updated to reflect that it wasn't clear from Li Lu's interview where Charlie Munger got the idea for the contrarian bet that Li said Munger made at age 99. The story also misstated when Elon Musk posted one of his comments about Munger. It was in early 2023, not early last year.
Hi, and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Happy New Year! Andβ¦surprise!: This will be the last edition of TechCrunch Space for the foreseeable future. I know, itβs a bummer. But fear not: Weβll still be reporting on space startups, so I hope youβll stay tuned. And there will certainly be a lot to cover. This [β¦]
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Kevin Carter/Getty Images
On December 28, at 5:58 p.m., a loud boom erupted from the dusk sky, stemming from Vandenberg Space Force Base, more than 70 miles away from the sleepy beach town of Carpinteria, California.
The sound, measuring 86 decibels on a home monitor βΒ comparable to a chamber orchestra playing in a small auditorium, according to a scale published by Yale University βΒ was preceded by a low rumbling that rattled windows and started a chorus of neighborhood dogs barking into the evening.
SpaceX rocket launches from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, some taking place between midnight and 5 a.m., have also triggered car alarms, loosened light fixtures, and knocked books and framed photos from the shelves inside homes, residents of Santa Barbara County, California, told Business Insider.
In the quiet city of Lompoc, less than 10 miles from the base, the sonic booms can feel like an earthquake, some residents said.
In 2024, Elon Musk's SpaceX conducted 50 launches from Vandenberg, a spokesperson for the base told BI. In 2025, the company aims to double that number to 100 rockets, according to a statement by The Department of the Air Force.
The base offers an opt-in alert system allowing users to be notified via text of upcoming launches.
Still, some locals are pushing back.
Business Insider spoke with 10 residents of communities near the Vandenberg Space Force Base whose reactions to the launches ranged from fascination to full-blown outrage at the thundering noise and rattling.
"These launches, especially at night, when everyone is asleep, are particularly disruptive," Montecito resident Aimee Klaus told BI. "I'm in an older California bungalow, and things rattle and shake quite substantially."
Each launch sets off a flurry of social media activity in which people express their excitement, anger, and hopelessness about the disruptions and potential environmental impacts.
Locals told BI the base's opt-in alert system is largely ineffective in warning of disruption, because the intensity of the sonic booms changes based on atmospheric conditions, there are sometimes delays not accounted for by the alerts, and some launches take place in the middle of the night β making them disruptive even if you know they're coming.
"I have major panic attacks during the launches," Inga Yater, a resident of Carpinteria, told BI. "And it keeps getting worse; sometimes I feel like I'm having a heart attack."
Yater and other residents also worry the launches might damage the fragile coastal ecosystems nearby.
More than 1,300 people have signed a virtual petition created by Ojai resident Christopher Cantu calling for the suspension of SpaceX launches from Vandenberg pending an environmental impact report.
For his part, Cantu said he's particularly troubled by SpaceX's launches from its Starbase in Texas, where reports indicate the launches have harmed protected habitats, and worries the same damage could occur on the Central Coast he has called home his whole life.
On December 13, the Department of the Air ForceΒ announcedΒ it would prepare an environmental impact statement for SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base to evaluate the potential impact of expanding Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches and landings. The final statement and any potential alternative plans are set to be published by the fall of 2025 at the earliest.
"All launches have the potential to generate sonic booms; however, their audibility to the public is influenced by several factors, including the launch trajectory, the size of the rocket, and atmospheric conditions," a spokesperson for the Vandenberg Space Force Base told BI.
The base has partnered with Kent Gee, a physics professor and acoustics engineer from Brigham Young University, to study the conditions and improve prediction accuracy. However, the spokesperson added that the studies have not yet been completed or their results publicly released.
Representatives for SpaceX and the California Coastal Commission did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
SpaceX launches take place at four facilities across the country: Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and Starbase, the Brownsville, Texas launch site. Residents of each community have expressed similar concerns about the noise and rattling in social media posts and news reports.
In 2024, SpaceX conducted 45 Falcon 9 launches, one Firefly Alpha launch, one Minotaur IV launch, and three Minuteman III test launches from Vandenberg.
In 2025, according to a statement by The Department of the Air Force, the company hopes to expand the types of launches to include its Falcon Heavy rockets, which the company says are larger than the Falcon 9 models and generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff β equal to about 18 747 aircraft.
A spokesperson for the base told BI that up to 50 Falcon 9 launches have already been approved for Vandenberg in 2025. However, they said Falcon Heavy launches will not proceed until the forthcoming environmental impact statement has been reviewed and accepted by the Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment, and Energy.
SpaceX also aims to eventually phase out its Falcon-series rockets and replace them with launches of its Starship vessels, The Los Angeles Times reported in March.
At over 30 stories high, Starships are the tallest vehicles ever to fly and create even louder sonic booms during takeoff than the Falcon-series rockets. BI previously reported the Starship launches, which have flown six test flights from the Starbase launch site so far, are akin to a volcanic eruption on the launchpad.
In November, Gee published comprehensive data about the acoustics of Starship launches in Texas.
Gee told BI the sonic booms from Starship launches are so loud β equal to standing 200 feet from a Boeing 747 during takeoff, by his measurements β that there's an "increased risk" of causing structural damage to the properties near the launch pads.
"And that's not to say it's inevitable," Gee said, "but we're getting into that range where the risk isn't negligible."
A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration told BI that the agency requires SpaceX to maintain insurance in the event of claims of structural damage resulting from the flight of its vehicles. Property owners would contact SpaceX to submit claims and evidence in support of any damage claim, the spokesperson said.
Gee is also studying SpaceX launches from Vandenberg, which he said can likely be felt by a broader radius of people than the launches in Florida or Texas, given the California base's proximity to more populated areas.
A spokesperson for Vandenberg said the base is "not currently planning for Starship launches" from the west coast spaceport.
The results of Gee's study at Vandenberg are not yet available. Gee said the researchers studying the impact "don't really have enough data to understand what's going on," given that the booms from each launch change based on the meteorological conditions and weather patterns.
"It took decades of people's experiences with airports and their noise impacts for engineers to learn how to quiet aircraft," Gee said. "We're just starting here and it will be an evolving situation for many years to come."
SpaceX is significantly upping the ante of its Starship test flight program, with the next rocket launch expected to demonstrate payload deployment for the first time.Β The payload in question will be 10 Starlink βsimulatorsβ that will be similar in size and weight to the next-gen satellites SpaceX plans to use Starship to deploy in [β¦]
Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Although SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for outspokenness and controversial comments on his social media site X, he has been relatively restrained when it comes to US space policy in recent years.
For example, he has rarely criticized NASA or its overall goal to return humans to the Moon through the Artemis Program. Rather, Musk, who has long preferred Mars as a destination for humans, has more or less been a team player when it comes to the space agency's lunar-focused plans.
This is understandable from a financial perspective, as SpaceX has contracts worth billions of dollars to not only build a Human Landing System as part of NASA's Artemis Program but also to supply food, cargo, and other logistics services to a planned Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon.
Β© SpaceX
Scott Olson/Getty/Mark J. Terrill/AP/Drew Angerer/Business Insider Composite
The richest people on the planet saw their fortunes surge in 2024 as the artificial intelligence boom, the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts, Donald Trump's election victory, and a robust economic outlook helped the stock market to roar.
The world's 10 wealthiest people grew more than $500 billion richer last year, boosting their combined net worth to just over $2 trillion β not far off the $2.3 trillion market values of Amazon and Google owner Alphabet.
Widen the lens to the top 20 names on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and the total net worth jumped $700 billion to above $3 trillion by the year's end, rivaling Microsoft's $3.1 trillion market value.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk led the pack with a $203 billion gain for the year, which lifted his personal fortune to $432 billion at the market close on December 31.
His net worth briefly touched $486 billion a couple of weeks earlier after Tesla stock surged to a record high and SpaceX's valuation leaped to $350 billion. At that point, his year-to-date gain of $257 billion exceeded the entire net worth of Jeff Bezos, no.2 on the rich list.
However, Musk wasn't the only one to notch huge wealth gains in 2024. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, and Bezos all grew between $60 billion and $80 billion wealthier as their respective companies surged in value.
Other Big Tech luminaries scored big gains too with Michael Dell, the founder of the eponymous computer maker, adding $45 billion to his fortune. Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin added $42 billion and $38 billion to their respective fortunes.
Tech leaders accounted for most of the wealth gains, but Walmart founder Sam Walton's three surviving heirs β Jim, Alice, and Rob β each grew more than $38 billion richer, thrusting the trio into the $100 billion club for the first time.
Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate owes scores of businesses like Geico and huge stakes in public companies like Coca-Cola, also gained $22 billion and ended the year on $142 billion.
There were a few wealth losers among the uber-wealthy, however. LVMH founder and CEO Bernard Arnault saw his fortune shrink from over $230 billion at its peak in March to $176 billion by the end of December, sending him from first place to fifth.
Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani, Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim, Indian infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani, and L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers all lost money last year by Bloomberg's estimates.
MARTIN BUREAU/AFP via Getty Images
The superrich mostly got wealthier because excited investors wagered the likes of Nvidia, Tesla, and Microsoft would post higher profits by playing key roles in the AI revolution.
The Fed also made its first cuts to rates after hiking them to curb runaway inflation in 2022 and 2023. That has benefited stocks by making them relatively more appealing versus fixed-income assets such as government bonds, and could boost corporate profits by encouraging spending and borrowing.
Trump's win in November pushed stocks higher too, as the former president had run on promises of pro-growth policies such as tax cuts and deregulation. Tesla in particular gained as investors bet Musk's close ties to the future president would benefit the automaker.
Like many highly valued startups, SpaceX sometimes allows its employees to cash out some of their shares by selling to company-authorized outside investors. TechCrunch has gotten a peek at an internal SpaceX document about such a tender offer from May 2022. Musk posted on X last month that SpaceX holds such sales for employees about [β¦]
Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Having tapped his vast personal wealth and marshaled his 210 million followers on X to help propel Donald Trump to election victory in November, Elon Musk has turned his gaze to European politics.
In a post on X late Wednesday, Musk called for the release of Tommy Robinson, a British far-right agitator, saying he was in jail for "telling the truth." Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was jailed last year for breaching a court order not to repeat false claims about a refugee from Syria. Robinson had been successfully sued for defamation over the claims.
Musk then posted that Britain should have an election β the most recent one took place in July β and claimed its government was reluctant to hold an inquiry into child sexual exploitation to protect the prime minister, Keir Starmer. He was the country's chief prosecutor when a series of high-profile court cases about gangs targeting children shook the nation.
The posts are Musk's most aggressive intervention in European politics and follow months of commentary, particularly on events in the UK and Germany.
On Tuesday, Musk urged British voters to back Reform UK, a populist party led by Nigel Farage, a key figure in the UK's 2016 referendum to leave the EU.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO β who has embraced conservative stances on issues such as immigration, diversity, and transgender rights in recent years β met with the conservative firebrand Farage in mid-December at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
Farage later told the BBC that Musk was "fully, fully behind us" and open to donating to Reform UK if he could do so legally. The party has made no secret of its excitement about Musk and his potential financial support, with Farage describing him as a "bloody hero" in a recent interview with the UK's Daily Telegraph.
Musk has been a vocal critic of Starmer. In numerous X posts, he's called the country a "tyrannical police state" and suggested the nation was on the brink of civil war.
The people of Britain have had enough of a tyrannical police state https://t.co/0PtR5qQOKw
β Kekius Maximus (@elonmusk) November 24, 2024
The tech billionaire has also thrown his weight behind the German far-right party the AfD, which has come out strongly against immigration and echoed Trump in calling for mass deportations.
The AfD holds about 10% of the seats in Germany's legislative body, the Bundestag, but it has made significant gains in recent years, including coming second in this year's European Parliament elections.
It is widely expected to win the second-highest share of votes in the Bundestag election in February and, like Reform UK, has welcomed Musk's support. Its candidate to become Germany's chancellor, Alice Weidel, said Musk was "perfectly right" when he said in an X post on December 20 that the party was the only one that could "save Germany."
Musk then championed the AfD in an op-ed published in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Sunday. The paper and Business Insider are both owned by Axel Springer.
Musk wrote that years of misguided policies by the main political parties had led to "economic stagnation, social unrest, and the erosion of national identity," and the AfD represented the "last spark of hope" for the country. He justified his German political commentary by pointing to his "significant investments" in the country.
Musk's Tesla Gigafactory just outside Berlin is the company's main European facility and employs close to 12,000 people. It produces components such as batteries, and the final assembly of the Tesla Model Y is completed at the factory.
The paper printed a response by its editor-in-chief-designate, Jan Philipp Burgard, on the same page as Musk's controversial column. Burgard wrote that "Musk's diagnosis is correct," but his claim that only the AfD can save Germany is "fatally flawed."
Christian Marquardt - Pool/Getty Images
Before the op-ed, Musk's posts on X in support of the AfD prompted a government spokesperson to accuse him of attempting to meddle in the election, Reuters reported.
The spokesperson said that Musk was free to express his opinions, however, he said, "Freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense."
Friedrich Merz, the center-right Christian Democratic Union's candidate for chancellor, described Musk's backing of the AfD as "intrusive and pretentious."
"I cannot recall in the history of Western democracies a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country," he told the Funke media group.
In his New Year's Eve message, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said Musk's support of the AfD was part of a "logical and systematic" campaign to weaken Europe and erode its regulatory system.
Several of Musk's businesses, most notably Tesla, are subject to European regulations and stand to benefit from reduced oversight. Tesla's plans for fully self-driving cars face increased hurdles in Europe, where regulations on autonomous vehicles are more stringent.
Musk has also spoken fondly of Italy's right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. In September, he called her a "precious genius" who was "even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside."
Meloni leads the Brothers of Italy party β which has roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement. She came to power in 2022, campaigning on a platform of lower immigration, tighter border control, and traditional values. At the time, she was described as Italy's most right-wing leader since Benito Mussolini.
This is unacceptable. Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions? https://t.co/MdVUbt1jbF
β Kekius Maximus (@elonmusk) November 13, 2024
Trump's agenda of tax cuts, tariffs, and deregulation would likely benefit Musk's companies. Tesla's stock surged after Trump's election victory. But it's less obvious what Musk and his companies would gain from the rise of those he backs in Europe.
Not only are AfD and Reform unlikely to form governments soon, both also have policies that could hurt Tesla.
The AfD has opposed the extension of Tesla's German factory, while Reform has pledged to reverse a looming ban on the sale of gas and diesel cars in the UK, which would benefit EV makers like Tesla.
The AfD is polling in second place at 19%, more than the 12.6% it won in the last election in 2021. Musk posted to X Monday that it would win "an epic victory." Whether it makes those predicted gains or not, the party will no doubt continue to welcome the support of the world's most outspoken billionaire.
NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Elon Musk's Starlink has signed a deal with Ukraine's largest telecoms operator to provide consumers in the country with "uninterrupted" satellite-powered mobile connectivity.
The deal is set to give Kyivstar customers the ability to send text messages even if the terrestrial network is down, the company said on Monday.
Starlink's "Direct to Cell" service is expected to come online in the fourth quarter of 2025, with voice and data transmission services coming later.
Kyivstar said Ukraine would become one of the first countries to deploy the service, which can be accessed on phones without any additional hardware or software, so long as they have 4G LTE capabilities.
Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, has sent thousands of Starlink kits to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country in February 2022. These have come in the form of portable terminals that receive broadband connections directly from Starlink's constellation of satellites, rather than a mass-consumer network rollout.
Ukraine's military has been using Starlink terminals for internet connectivity in remote locations, making the service an important frontline resource.
Since invading nearly three years ago, Russia has consistently attacked Ukraine's infrastructure, including a drone and missile strike on its energy infrastructure on Christmas Day.
Kaan Terzioglu, the CEO of Veon Group, Kyivstar's parent company, said in an announcement that the Starlink deal would "significantly increase the resilience of our services thanks to satellite technologies" for its more than 23 million mobile subscribers.
SpaceX completed its first constellation of Starlink direct-to-cell satellites during a Falcon 9 rocket launch in early December.
The company has struck deals with telecom companies elsewhere around the world for the direct-to-cell service, including T-Mobile in the US, and partnered with airlines to offer free WiFi on flights.
Global internet traffic from Starlink more than tripled in 2024, according to data from IT service provider Cloudflare
We are at the dawn of a new space age. If you doubt, simply look back at the last year: From SpaceXβs historic catch of the Super Heavy booster to the record-breaking number of lunar landing attempts, this year was full of historic and ambitious missions and demonstrations.Β Weβre taking a look back at the [β¦]
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