SpaceX

General Motors is partnering with Ventec Life Systems to help increase production of ventilators that are needed in hospitals dealing with patients who have the novel coronavirus, the companies announced Friday. In the most severe cases of COVID-19 infection, patients need the assistance of ventilators to breathe, and there are…

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has been sharing regular updates about how his agency is approaching the rapidly changing global coronavirus pandemic situation. This week, NASA escalated its response multiple times due to changing circumstances, including changing the state of working conditions at all of its facilities across the country. On…

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made a direct plea to Elon Musk, asking the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX to produce ventilators to help alleviate a shortage at hospitals gearing up to combat COVID-19. Updated below with comment from mayor’s office.  The mayor’s tweet came out of a…

SpaceX staff work on the Crew Dragon reusable spacecraft in October 2019.Photo: Philip Pacheco (AFP via Getty Images)NASA and SpaceX are still planning on conducting the first manned commercial crew program launch to space as early as May, indicating that the timetable for the mission has not shifted despite the…

SpaceX is launching its latest Starlink mission today, with a takeoff time of 8:16 AM EDT (5:16 AM PDT) currently scheduled to take place at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch will carry 60 more Starlink broadband internet satellites to their low Earth orbit destination, using a Falcon 9…

This image of a distant galaxy group from Arizona's Lowell Observatory is marred by diagonal lines from the trails of Starlink satellites, shortly after their launch in May. Victoria Girgis/Lowell Observatory A well-known astronomer and satellite tracker says observatories that scan the sky for potentially hazardous asteroids could be impacted…

President Trump is preparing a massive stimulus proposal, Amazon adjusts to COVID-19 and HashiCorp is now valued at more than $5 billion. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 17, 2020. 1. Trump administration proposes $850B stimulus package to stabilize the economy The Trump administration is heading to Congress to ask…

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, shown above, at the moment when it was supposed to take off. Screenshot: SpaceX (YouTube)A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket aborted a planned launch on Sunday morning at the last second due to an engine power issue. The event produced confusion at the Kennedy Space Center in…

A Falcon 9 rocket stands on pad 39A seconds after an aborted launch Sunday. Credit: SpaceXThe countdown for a planned launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida automatically aborted in the last second before liftoff Sunday after an on-board computer detected unexpected data…

The Rubin Observatory currently under construction in Chile.Image: Rubin ObservatoryAs astronomers eagerly await the opening of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, anxious operators have run tests to see how well the system might work when low Earth orbit is cluttered with satellite megaconstellations, similar to the one being…