Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Elon Musk's most ambitious project spun out of control before his eyes once again.
SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket launched from its Texas facility on Tuesday evening to make an ill-fated third attempt at a huge milestone: releasing its first payload into orbit.
That's the key to Starship bringing in the big bucks to fund Musk's visions of building a city on Mars. To garner paying customers, Starship has to show it can deliver.
The first step is releasing a batch of eight mock Starlink satellites into orbit. SpaceX tried to do this twice already βΒ in January and March β only to see Starship explode before it could even try opening its payload doors.
Tuesday's flight didn't fare much better.
The rocket thundered through the skies to reach space in one piece, but when it came time to release its practice satellites, the payload door would not open. It's not yet clear what caused that first mishap.
The hosts on the SpaceX livestream emphasized that the more important test was the vehicle's reentry into Earth's atmosphere, because SpaceX had removed 100 of the spaceship's protective heat-shield tiles to test its limits.
"These launches are all about data. The most important thing is data on how to improve the tile design," Musk had told space reporter Eric Berger before settling in to watch the flight from SpaceX's control room in Starbase, Texas.
A few minutes later, though, that test went out the window too when Starship started spinning as it cruised above Earth.
"We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside Starship," Dan Huot, a SpaceX communications manager, said on the SpaceX livestream.
He added that, with no control over the spaceship's orientation, it was unlikely SpaceX would be able to test the heat shield. Rather, it would fall uncontrolled into the Indian Ocean, probably breaking apart on the way down.
Indeed, SpaceX later confirmed the ship had experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly," which is the company's way of saying "exploded."
This is Starship's third consecutive problem flight. After being on a promising upward trajectory for nearly two years, SpaceX's vanguard rocket program has backslid.
As a super-heavy-lift vehicle, Starship's appeal to the space industry is its massive power. It can haul giant payloads into space, but that's not worth much if it can't release them into orbit.
The Starship-Super Heavy launch system β consisting of the lower-stage Super Heavy booster and upper-stage Starship rocket β promises to be the largest, most powerful, and first-ever fully reusable orbital rocket on Earth.
SpaceX via X
If it succeeds, some experts and Musk have said it could help cut the cost of spaceflight by an order of magnitude.
Musk's interplanetary visions and SpaceX's long-term business plan aren't the only futures on the line. The heft and savings that Starship promises could revolutionize spaceflight and accelerate the space industry at large.
Want to build giant hotels in Earth's orbit? Want to mine the moon or asteroids for rare minerals? Want to set up a radio telescope on the far side of the moon? You'll need to haul a lot of stuff into space. The up-front costs will be high, so you'll need to do it for cheap. Enter Starship.
"In order to have a sustained economy around the moon, I think we need a heavy lift launch vehicle," Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, which has landed two robotic missions on the moon, previously told Business Insider.
Musk said in an interview with Ars Technica on Tuesday that he initially expected Starship and SpaceX's satellite internet service, Starlink, to fail.
"Well, by far the biggest thing is Starship. If the Starship program is successfulβand we see a path to success, it's just a question of when we will have created the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle, which is the holy grail of rocketry, as you know," Musk said.
Starship is still in its testing and development stage, but it has made major strides toward commercial flight.
The rocket has flown to space multiple times. Starship has returned in one piece and landed in the ocean with its engines firing βΒ a crucial demonstration before it can try landing on the ground. Its Super Heavy booster even landed smoothly on its launch tower three times.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Starship's luck changed in January, though, when the rocket was first set to attempt a mock satellite deployment.
As it soared toward space, the upper-stage Starship exploded and rained down huge chunks of debris in the Caribbean, causing the Federal Aviation Administration to divert aircraft in the area and triggering an investigation.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
SpaceX determined that the propulsion system's hardware had suffered more stress than expected during the flight, causing fuel leaks and fire in the ship's "attic area."
The company made upgrades to better vent the attic area, got reapproval from the FAA, and flew again in March β only to watch Starship explode again.
On that flight, the vehicle reached space and quickly spun out of control, eventually tumbling back toward Earth and blowing up.
In that instance, too, the FAA briefly grounded flights across Florida's east coast to avoid raining rocket debris.
According to SpaceX, the ensuing investigation found that a "hardware failure" in one of the ship's Raptor engines had probably allowed its highly reactive propellants to mix and ignite, disabling all the engines. To fix that problem, the company says it improved the engines' plumbing and key joints.
SpaceX said on X that the March flight was "a reminder of the value of putting hardware into a real-world environment as frequently as possible."
It could be weeks or months before SpaceX shares a verdict on what caused Tuesday's mishap. Starship probably won't launch again until then.
AP; Getty Images
When Andy Jassy went on a post-COVID cost-cutting spree, eliminating roughly 27,000 employees, I thought most of Amazon's risky moonshot projects would also get the chop.
So when Jassy didn't cut Project Kuiper, a bold plan to launch a constellation of internet-beaming satellites, I scratched my head. Of all Amazon's moonshots, this may be the most expensive. If the CEO wanted to quickly slash costs, nixing Kuiper would have been the play.
Instead, Kuiper survived the purge β while others, like an AR headset for business meetings, were cut β and Amazon plowed ahead.
That decision underscores two key drivers: massive profit potential and a desire for strategic independence from Elon Musk.
Paul Hennessy/Getty Images
If there's any blueprint for Kuiper's financial upside, it's Starlink. SpaceX's satellite internet venture has rocketed ahead in recent years.
The Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney recently shared estimates of Starlink's financials, citing Chris Quilty, an expert from the satellite and space industry. These are pretty mind-blowing numbers, especially for a service that was ridiculed as impractical and expensive when Musk announced it a decade ago:
"This suggests Kuiper could be a highly attractive business for Amazon at scale," Mahaney wrote in a recent note to investors.
Recent investment rounds valued SpaceX at about $350 billion.
Amazon has thin margins in its core e-commerce business, so Kuiper could be a way to diversify into a more lucrative field. Mahaney noted that Kuiper is going after a $1 trillion total addressable market in terrestrial telecom and broadband services. Given that Amazon typically competes in ultra-low-margin sectors like e-commerce, the prospect of an 80%-margin business is probably too good to ignore.
If that's not enough of an incentive, here's another: There's only so much satellite communication spectrum up in space, especially in the low-earth-orbit areas where Starlink dominates. Because of this, Quilty reckons Kuiper not only is the closest challenger to Starlink β but also will likely be the only significant competitor.
Despite delays, Kuiper's launch of 27 satellites this week is a tangible step toward monetization. Amazon has also announced plans to sell Kuiper terminals for under $400, aiming for tens of millions of units, and is working toward a commercial service.
Associated Press
Beyond these tantalizing profits, I think there's another strategic motive driving Amazon's satellite ambitions: It doesn't want to depend on Musk.
Starlink's ability to beam internet service around the world, combined with SpaceX's unmatched launch capability, has made this company a potent geopolitical tool. Β
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Starlink service to this war-torn area became so strategically important that the Pentagon had to negotiate directly with Musk to maintain internet communications there.Β
This is the type of power that catches the attention of Big Tech companies that rely on the internet to reach customers. I can imagine the prospect of going through Elon to reach users might make most tech CEOs queasy.
Reliable and strong internet access is especially important for Amazon. The company's cloud business, Amazon Web Services, is the backbone of its profits, and it controls a growing share of global digital infrastructure. Relying on Starlink for some broadband access could be a major risk. The same Starlink terminals that provide residential internet also serve military and enterprise customers, including some that Amazon might wish to court.
Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, has been clear on this. While acknowledging Starlink's success, he has emphasized that demand for internet access is insatiable and leaves room for multiple winners. But underneath the diplomacy is a business logic that's impossible to ignore: Amazon needs its own highway to the cloud. Kuiper offers that.
Moreover, by owning the infrastructure from space to server, Amazon can better control quality, pricing, and reach β especially in areas where terrestrial internet is unreliable. It also reduces geopolitical and commercial dependencies on third-party providers that might not share Amazon's priorities.
Project Kuiper is far from a vanity play. It's a strategic moonshot aimed squarely at two objectives: unlocking a high-margin business with billion-dollar upside and insulating Amazon from dependence on an unpredictable rival.
As Starlink proves the model and Amazon begins scaling Kuiper's constellation, this once head-scratching bet is starting to look like a savvy move.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
California is turning to a novel solution to battle massive wildfires fuelled by global warming: AI-powered satellites.
Deadly wildfires devastated the Los Angeles region earlier this year, forcing over 100,000 people to evacuate and razing thousands of homes.
Driven by freak environmental conditions, including prolonged drought and strong winds, the LA fires quickly grew to the point they were nigh-on impossible to contain, pushing firefighters and fire-monitoring systems to their absolute limit.
As the city rebuilds, California's fire-fighting division is looking to change that.
The state's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire, is partnering with a group of organizations building the Firesat network, a constellation of over 50 low-orbit satellites that aims to revolutionize the way we tackle mega-blazes.
The fast-growing, wind-driven fires that devastated Los Angeles are only going to become more common as the climate crisis continues, with similar infernos breaking out in Colorado and Greece in recent years.
In these fires, every second counts. Brian Collins, executive director of the Earth Fire Alliance, the nonprofit organization behind Firesat, told Business Insider that current fire monitoring systems are often too slow to give firefighters a clear picture of these rapidly unfolding conflagrations.
"In extreme circumstances, like we see in California with wind-driven fires, you have very little time to make those critical decisions. The faster you can make them, the easier it is to contain that fire," Collins said.
He said Firesat would significantly improve the ability to track wildfires compared to the current system, which is mostly made up of weather satellites, some of which are run by the US and European Union.
Muon Space
Collins said these satellites are designed to track large, intense fires and scan the globe relatively infrequently.
By contrast, the infrared sensors on Firesat's satellites will be able to track smaller low-intensity fires the size of a classroom and β once the 50-satellite network is up and running β will be able to observe the entire globe in 15-20-minute intervals.
"In terms of fire detection, that is a dramatic, hundred-fold difference from current systems," said Collins.
Space startup Muon Space is designing and building the satellites.
On March 14, it successfully launched a pathfinder prototype satellite aboard a SpaceX rocket. The prototype launch lays the ground for the planned launch of the first three Firesat satellites into orbit in June 2026.
Muon Space president Gregory Smirin told BI in an interview before the launch that this initial first phase will be able to scan every point in the globe twice a day, and be able to identify fires as small as five by five meters.
"We have sparse data, to be polite about it, as to how many fires there are all over the world and what the incident rate is. The goal is to be able to get to a point where we can get a much richer dataset about what the actual behavior is," said Smirin.
"If you're able to track hot spots and fires early, you can even identify where there are maybe fires that might be smoldering or low intensity ahead of high wind events," he said, adding that this would allow firefighters to send resources to these smaller blazes before they become too large to contain.
Firesat also has backing from Google Research, and last week's launch was praised by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google's parent company Alphabet.
Collins said Google's AI and machine learning expertise would play a crucial role in sifting through the vast quantities of data the constellation is expected to generate.
He added that with the funding the Earth Fire Alliance has received from partners such as Google's philanthropy arm and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the group was committed to providing the data from Firesat to public safety agencies for free.
Collins said the Alliance was already partnering with fire responders such as Cal Fire to understand how they might use the data.
A spokesperson for Cal Fire confirmed the agency's interest in Firesat to Business Insider.
Muon Space
They added that the agency's primary interest in the satellite network was in providing more persistent coverage of fires that are actively growing or being contained.
Smirin said he believed Cal Fire was interested in integrating Firesat into its emergency dispatch service, allowing the agency to validate which fires were growing quickly rather than wasting resources by dispatching crews to check on them.
"We're definitely getting more extreme weather and more frequent fire, and we're getting fire spreading in areas that it didn't use to," said Smirin.
"I think you're just seeing more extreme weather in all sorts of ways, and it's putting a lot more pressure on firefighters to figure out how to respond, he added.
The constellation will keep a close eye on wildfires, eventually imaging nearly all of the Earthβs surface once every 20 minutes.
Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
vla Getty Images
A vast network of military satellites belonging to the US has long underpinned its dominance in space. But China is challenging the US status as the space superpower, and its satellite system is in the crosshairs.
Defense News reported last month that the US Navy is moving forward with plans to build a network of fully autonomous satellites that are able to navigate independently without GPS or ground control.
Analysts say that AI could help the US stay ahead, providing its satellites with the capacity to evade the consequences of a potentially crippling attack, as well as more power to collect and analyze large amounts of data.
The stakes in the battle for satellite supremacy are high, Melanie Garson, an associate professor in International Conflict Resolution & International Security at University College London, told Business Insider.
The winner would control a vital aspect of space infrastructure, which would also provide an advantage in intelligence gathering and precision strikes in the event of a war.
AI "will provide additional capabilities for surveillance and espionage as well as being able to interfere with the other's space assets through spectrum warfare or cyberattacks," Garson said.
The US has hundreds of military satellites in orbit, with China and Russia not far behind.
If a war were to break out between the US and China, military experts say that China has the capability to do serious damage to US space-based assets through a range of anti-satellite, or ASAT, capabilities, including programming its satellites to attack others.
A CIA report that leaked in 2023 said China was focusing its efforts in the event of a war on hacking the systems used to control US satellite networks.
Systems confrontation and destruction warfare is believed to be a preferred Chinese military tactic for 21st-century warfare.
Crippling these systems would leave satellites unable to transfer communications and data, or even coordinate with each other, the report said.
AI for satellites could be crucial to preserving US capabilities. Unlike satellites that require human input, autonomous satellites can operate independently, processing and analyzing data to make their own decisions.
The autonomy makes them less vulnerable to possible attacks on bases or communications networks or to being cut off from operators by electronic warfare like signal jamming, said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"Decentralized decision-making may add resilience by decreasing the reliance on ground-based infrastructure," Krista Langeland, deputy lead of the RAND Space Enterprise Initiative, told BI. "AI capabilities could also help with detection and characterization of an attack."
Another advantage is that AI could help process vast amounts of data in space, and identify potentially hostile satellites more quickly.
"Space is huge," Swope said, "so AI will help satellites better understand what's happening around them and keep track of what other satellites are doing."
"That could help US satellites maneuver to avoid accidental collisions but also stay clear of potentially hostile adversarial satellites," he said.
The power of the technology to revolutionize US satellite technology and security is significant, Alison Grey, a satellites expert at PA Consulting, told BI.
"Ultimately, AI-enabled automation can enable a network to react and recover from various threats in space," she said, "whether that's from natural phenomena, anomalies in one's own system, or potentially hostile activity."
However, while the technology is already being applied in some military satellites, realizing its full potential is likely to be some way off.
Space Force's former top acquisition official, Frank Calvelli, told an event last year that he expects satellites to be "significantly more autonomous" within the next 10 to 15 years.
Even so, efforts are intensifying to begin realizing its potential. Defense News said that the US Navy is researching a fully autonomous model, the Autosat, and wants to take the tests further.
"We've done a demo of this and proven out the principles and are looking for the next step," Steven Meier, director of space technology at the Naval Research Laboratory, said at a recent summit in Virginia. "We want to get funding to actually build a system along these lines and launch it."
Getty Images
For decades, a vast network of largely undefended subsea cables has underpinned the internet. It's looking more and more vulnerable.
A series of recent mysterious cases of cables severed in the Baltic Sea, blamed by Western officials on Russian sabotage, has highlighted their exposure to attack.
On Christmas Day, a Baltic undersea power cable and several telecommunications cables were severed underscoring the threat.
Officials in Finland are investigating a Russia-linked tanker, that they say may have severed the cables by dragging its anchor for dozens of miles across the seabed.
The incidents have sparked a race to safeguard the infrastructure, whose security many analysts say has been neglected.
At the forefront is a NATO-funded project: the Hybrid Space/Submarine Architecture Ensuring Information Security of Telecommunications, or HEIST.
The initial test project is due to cost some $2 million, including $400,000 from NATO. It is being developed by academics alongside the satellite broadband firms Viasat and SpaceX.
If tests are successful, countries and companies would then buy into the network to fund a much wider rollout.
The core idea is simple: To use satellites to transmit some data, making the West less reliant on undersea cables.
"Our ultimate ambition is to redefine the backbone of the internet," said Gregory Falco, an engineering professor at Cornell University working on HEIST.
"Instead of requiring all of our data to flow through subsea cables (of which 95% of the internet is reliant on) we would like to enable an ecosystem of options," he said.
"While one may argue that submarine communication cables are very efficient, they are not very resilient to natural or human-made threats."
"Overall, any measures to increase the resilience of our communications architecture is fundamentally needed. The multilayered approach of the HEIST program is a good start," Melanie Garson, Associate Professor in Conflict Resolution & International Security at University College London told BI.
The plan works by fitting existing cables with sensors to detect disruptions, either from sabotage or natural events and accidents.
In an outage, they would automatically re-route the data via a network of satellites.
It could act as a deterrent, giving hostile vessels less incentive to approach the cables in the first place.
Falco said the tech would be tested in January. From there, the plan is to have "end-to-end functional capability" by December 2026, he said.
Sybille Reuter via Getty images
SpaceX already has its vast network of Starlink satellites beaming internet around the world to commercial customers and some militaries. But the service doesn't feature the rerouting concept HEIST is investigating.
Neither SpaceX or Viasat responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
In the meantime, Russia poses a threat to the cables, and has a motive to damage them.
Russia, analysts say, could seek to punish the West for its support for Ukraine by targeting crucial infrastructure like the cables.
Business Insider in August reported that a secret Russian undersea sabotage unit, the GUGI, had been surveilling the cables, which analysts warned that the West is ill-equipped to defend.
Though having two methods is better than one, satellites are hardly immune from disruption themselves.
Space weather events and collisions with debris (including manmade "space junk") can damage satellites β as well as attacks by rival powers like China.
Russia, for its part, would likely target satellites if direct fighting were ever to break out between it and the US, experts have warned.
In response, the race is on to defend satellite systems as well, with the Pentagon seeking to employ anti-jamming technology should they come under attack.
Falco told BI a key part of the HEIST project ensuring the backup satellites themselves were secure, too.
And there are formidable technical challenges.
A combination of satellites and subsea cables has long been used for communicating highly sensitive data. However, figuring out how to reroute the data is a challenge on a different scale.
Falco said that, at first, HEIST would need to focus on the highest-priority data because it would be impossible to transfer everything.
Another computer science expert working on HEIST, Professor Henric Johnson of the Blekinge Institute of Technology, agreed that the challenge was substantial.
He cited the complexity of integrating the technology into existing infrastructure while staying ahead of quickly evolving threats.
"Adversaries are continuously developing new attack vectors, such as exploiting supply chain weaknesses or leveraging advanced AI tools, which require ongoing updates and refinements to the system," he said.
Johnson said that HEIST shouldn't be seen as a quick fix but as part of an ongoing process to secure Western infrastructure.
"It's important to acknowledge that security is a continuous process. HEIST is not a one-time solution but part of an evolving strategy to adapt to emerging risks," he said.
NATO did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
