Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Sunday said that he hopes for a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet in 20 years’ time, as his space company prepares Starship to take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Musk said in a tweet: ‘I hope there is a self-sustaining city on Mars in 20 years!’
Last month, the world’s richest man said he was optimistic that ‘humanity will reach Mars in your lifetime’.
‘Without a common goal, humanity will fight itself. The Moon brought us together in 1969, Mars can do that in the future,’ Musk had said.
The Tesla CEO had stated that making multiplanetary life will help back up the ecosystems on Earth and added that apart from humans no other species can transport life to Mars.
Referring to Biblical patriarch Noah who built an Ark that survived the great flood on Earth, Musk said his Starship models will be ‘modern Noah’s Arks’, that can save ‘life from a calamity on Earth’.
SpaceX’s Starship consists of a giant first-stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) upper-stage spacecraft known as Starship. Both elements are designed to be fully reusable, and both will be powered by SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engines, 33 for Super Heavy and six for Starship.
Last week, it was reported that the much-awaited first orbital test flight of the Starship vehicle will not lift off this month as it has not yet received the necessary launch clearance.
Earlier, the launch was scheduled for July and was shifted to August later.
On August 2, Musk said that a successful orbital flight is probably ‘between 1 and 12 months from now.’
According to a radio-spectrum license application that the company filed with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX is targeting a six-month window that opens on September 1 for the highly anticipated mission.
SpaceX’s Starship and NASA’s SLS prepare for launch
That’s not to say we’re not nearing launch though. Starship is set to launch from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas. The company is preparing for lift-off, and it recently conducted a “static fire” engine test with both its first-stage Super Heavy booster, called Booster 7, and its Starship prototype, dubbed Ship 24. SpaceX fired up only one of Booster 7’s 33 engines on Tuesday, August 9, while Ship 24 ignited two of its six Raptor engines. While the company is making steady progress towards launch, there’s still a way to go before both are ready for lift-off.
Static fire test of two Raptor engines on Starship 24 https://t.co/NNpViztphI
Both Starship and Super Heavy are designed to be fully reusable, and they are powered by a total of 39 of SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engines. The improved efficiency of Raptor 2 alongside the full reusability of the launch elements is set to greatly reduce launch and operational costs, which is one of the main factors that will allow Starship to eventually take humans to Mars.
NASA, which may launch its own Space Launch System (SLS) around the moon this month — it’s targeting an August 29 launch date — has opted to use Starship for its upcoming Artemis III moon landing mission. SLS isn’t reusable, and it will be used for Artemis I and II, each of which will travel around the moon before returning to Earth. With preparations well underway, we’re on the verge of two historic launches that will likely usher in a bold new era for spaceflight.
Elon Musk shared a picture of a spacecraft on Twitter with the caption, “This will be Mars one day.”
SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known for his ambitious projects with his goal to colonize Mars being the most prominent one. The tech billionaire has, on various occasions, talked about taking humans to the Red Planet saying that it has a “great potential”. He once even proposed the idea of becoming a “multi-planetary species” by building a city on Mars.
In the latest from Mr Musk on his Mars obsession, he has envisioned the day when a rocket successfully lands on the Martian surface. He shared a picture of a spacecraft on Twitter with the caption, “This will be Mars one day.”
The rocket seen in the photo is SpaceX’s Starship project, a reusable rocket system that the company is currently working on. SpaceX recently conducted a static engine fire test of a Starship booster at its Starbase site in South Texas, US. According to SpaceX, the rocket system has been designed to “carry both crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.”
Elon Musk has not just imagined the possibility of colonizing Mars but seems pretty confident about it. In a recent tweet, he wrote that “Mars may be a fixer upper of a planet, but it has a great potential!”
Mars may be a fixer upper of a planet, but it has great potential!
Responding to this, a user asked him about the estimated timeframe for humans to create a civilization on Mars. He asked, “Elon, What do you think is the estimated timeframe for creating a self-sustaining civilization on Mars? 20 years? Self-sustaining meaning not relying/dependant on Earth for supplies.”
20 to 30 years from first human landing if launch rate growth is exponential.
Assumes transferring ~100k each rendezvous and ~1M total people needed.
Replying to the user, Elon Musk said that it would take two to three decades from the first human landing on Mars to set up a colony on the planet. “20 to 30 years from first human landing if launch rate growth is exponential,” Mr Musk wrote.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has made no secret of his plans to send humans to Mars by 2050. The tech titan has talked about his dream to make a human colony on the Red planet. In his latest post, Musk envisioned the day when a rocket successfully lands on the Martian surface. The billionaire shared a picture of a spacecraft and caption it, “This will be Mars one day.”
The rocket in the picture is SpaceX’s Starship project–a reusable rocket system on which the company is currently working at.
Last month, the SpaceX CEO wrote, “Mars may be a fixer-upper of a planet, but it has great potential.”
Mars may be a fixer upper of a planet, but it has great potential!
A Twitter user asked Musk about the estimated timeframe for human civilization on Marsh. Musk responded by saying, “20 to 30 years from first human landing if launch rate growth is exponential.”
20 to 30 years from first human landing if launch rate growth is exponential.
Assumes transferring ~100k each rendezvous and ~1M total people needed.
Yesterday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX won certification from the Pentagon’s Space Force to use recyclable boosters on its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch top-secret spy satellites.
The certification for SpaceX — which was issued in June but not previously disclosed — allows the recyclable first-stage side boosters to be used in sensitive national security launches requiring power performance beyond that of the company’s original Falcon 9. The Space Force found that the “recovery, refurbishment, and launch of SpaceX boosters utilizes well-established processes,” the service said in a statement.
The first classified National Security Space Launch mission using a Falcon Heavy with refurbished boosters is scheduled for sometime from October to December, according to the Space Force. It’s a mission to launch a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, which develops and manages spy satellites, according to a previous Space Force statement.
SpaceX has launched more than 100 missions using the Falcon 9 with reusable boosters, most of them commercial.
The reuse of previously flown boosters on Falcon 9 missions has “saved the US Space Force more than $64 million for GPS III missions and avoided additional costs for requirements changes while adding manifest flexibility for both the launch provider and our warfighters,” Walter Lauderdale, chief of the Falcon Division within the Space Systems Command’s “Assured Access to Space” organization, said in a statement.
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“From a high-level view, there are two obvious things that you could try to attack: the signature verification or the hash verification,” Wouters says. The glitch works against the signature verification process. “Normally you want to avoid shorts,” he says. “In this case we do it on purpose.”
Initially, Wouters attempted to glitch the chip at the end of its boot cycle—when the Linux operating system has fully loaded—but ultimately found it easier to cause the glitch at the start of the boot. This way was more reliable, Wouters says. To get the glitch to work, he says, he had to stop decoupling capacitors, which are used to smooth out the power supply, from operating. Essentially, the attack disables the decoupling capacitors, runs the glitch to bypass the security protections, and then enables the decoupling capacitors.
This process allows the researcher to run a patched version of Starlink’s firmware during the boot cycle and ultimately allows access to its underlying systems. In response to the research, Wouters says, Starlink offered him researcher-level access to the device’s software, although he says he declined as he had gone too deep with the work and wanted to build the modchip. (During testing, I hung the modified dish out of this research lab’s window and used a plastic bag as a makeshift waterproofing system.)
Starlink also issued a firmware update, Wouters says, that makes the attack harder, but not impossible, to execute. Anyone wanting to break into the dish in this way would have to put a lot of time and effort into doing so. While the attack isn’t as devastating as being able to take down satellite systems or connectivity, Wouters says it can be used to learn more about how the Starlink network operates.
“What I am working on now is communicating with the backend servers,” Wouters explains. Despite making the details of the modchip available for download on Github, Wouters does not have any plans to sell finished modchips, nor is he providing people with patched user terminal firmware or the exact details of the glitch he used.
As an increasing amount of satellites are launched—Amazon, OneWeb, Boeing, Telesat, and SpaceX are creating their own constellations—their security will come under greater scrutiny. In addition to providing homes with internet connections, the systems can also help to get ships online, and play a role in critical infrastructure. Malicious hackers have already shown that satellite internet systems are a target. As Russian troops invaded Ukraine, alleged Russian military hackers targeted the Via-Sat satellite system, deploying wiper malware that bricked people’s routers and knocked them offline. Around 30,000 internet connections in Europe were disrupted, including more than 5,000 wind turbines.
“I think it’s important to assess how secure these systems are because they are critical infrastructure,” Wouters says. “I don’t think it’s very far-fetched that certain people would try to do this type of attack because it is quite easy to get access to a dish like this.”
Update 5 pm ET August 10, 2022: After Wouters’ conference talk, Starlink published a six-page PDF explaining how it secures its systems. “We find the attack to be technically impressive, and it is the first attack of its kind that we are aware of in our system,” the paper says. “We expect attackers with invasive physical access to be able to take malicious actions on behalf of a single Starlink kit using its identity, so we rely on the design principle of ‘least privilege’ to constrain the effects in the broader system.”
Starlink reiterates that the attack needs physical access to a user terminal and emphasizes its secure boot system, which was compromised by the glitching process, is only impacted on that one device. Wider parts of the overall Starlink system are not impacted. “Normal Starlink users do not need to be worried about this attack affecting them, or take any action in response,” Starlink says.
The static fire test of Booster 7, in which one of the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines was ignited. photo: SpaceX
Engineers at SpaceX have performed the first static fire test of Booster 7, a prototype of the Super Heavy first stage. The test, in which just one of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines was ignited, moves the company closer to its first orbital test of the revolutionary Starship system.
The test happened on August 8 at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, according to a company tweet. Ground teams completed a single Raptor engine static fire test as the 227-foot-tall (69 meters) booster stood vertically at the “Mechazilla” launch tower. Booster 7 is equipped with 33 Raptor engines, but SpaceX, in a rare moment of caution, chose to ignite just one.
Encouragingly, a pair of spin-prime tests conducted earlier in the day did not result in an burst. SpaceX avoided a repeat of the July 11 incident in which a gaseous mixture of methane and oxygen was accidentally ignited, causing a significant explosion directly beneath the booster.
Spin-prime tests, in which propellants are pumped through the engines without igniting them, are typically done in preparation of static fire tests (static fire tests involve engine burns without an actual launch of the rocket). They’re done to test the plumbing, but the gasses produced during the July 11 spin-prime test got ignited by an unknown source. The resulting explosion damaged the prototype booster, sending it back to the Starbase factory for repairs.
Booster 7 returned to the launch pad on August 6 following the re-installation of 20 of the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines, accordingly to Teslarati. On August 8, “clearly indicative of a much more cautious second attempt at engine testing, SpaceX ‘primed’ just one of those 20 Raptors by flowing high-pressure gas through the engine to spin up its turbopumps without igniting its preburners (used to generate the gas that powers the turbopumps) or main combustion chamber,” as Teslarati reports.
Later that day, SpaceX ignited the lone Raptor engine. The company have you performed a static fire test of a Starship booster prototype before, but this marks the first static fire test of Booster 7, even if limited in scale. The test appeared to go smoothly, with the engine firing and shutting down following a four-second burn. Not content to stop there, SpaceX also performed static fire tests of two Raptors on an upper stage, namely the prototype Starship 24.
It’s a small step for Starship, but a potentially big leap for SpaceX, as it works to develop its revolutionary heavy launch system. The booster is the first stage of the fully reusable two-stage rocket, with the Starship spacecraft serving as the upper stage. SpaceX envisions Starship as a platform for delivering passengers and cargo to deep space, including future missions to Mars. It’s also NASA’s current first choice to serve as the human landing system for Artemis 3, scheduled for no earlier than 2025.
Both Starship stages are powered by Raptor engines, which are more powerful than the Merlin engines used on the company’s Falcon 9 rockets. The Starship upper stage has already completed a series of suborbital tests, including a successful vertical landing on May 5, 2021. A launch of the fully stacked system has yet to take place, but SpaceX expects to perform an orbital test at some point this year. CEO Elon Musk expects this test will fail, saying a successful orbital test could happen at some point within the next 12 months.
The sight of a single Raptor engine burn is impressive, making it hard to imagine what it’ll look like when all 33 Raptor engines are set to go-mode. The successful test on August 8 suggests a full-fledged static fire test of Booster 7 is closely approaching.
More: Gigantic Crowds Expected for Inaugural Launch of NASA’s Mega Rocket.
A SpaceX representative says a team will travel to Australia after the recent discovery of a large piece of space junk on an outback property, saying the incident is “within the expected analyzed space of what can happen.”
Key points:
SpaceX will send a team to Australia after their space debris was found in the NSW Snowy Mountains
The fragments were found after locals heard a sonic boom on July 9
A space law lecturer is calling on better communication between SpaceX and Australia
Fragments of the SpaceX Dragon capsule were found in the NSW Snowy Mountains, after locals heard a loud bang on July 9, believed to be caused by the spacecraft re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
Addressing reporters during a live streamed media conference from NASA’s Johnson Space Center on August 4, senior director of the SpaceX Human Spaceflight Program Benjamin Reed acknowledged the incident.
“We did get reports of debris of the Dragon trunk that had landed in the outback of Australia,” he said.
“We actually have a team that’s going to check that out.”
Mr Reed told the conference SpaceX had been working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Australian Space Agency as part of this process, saying the incident fell within expectations.
“The important news is of course there was no injury or damage,” he said.
“Also importantly is this was all within the expected analyzed space of what can happen.”
This piece of space junk is estimated to be about three meters long.(ABC South East NSW: Adriane Reardon)
Companies require permission from the US government prior to launching space craft, which includes filling out an orbital debris report.
Mr Reed alluded to that as part of his response.
“You have an expected path of where things may come down and this particular debris was within that analyzed space,” he said.
“It’s part of the process we do with NASA, with FAA, internally and we use models that are all jointly approved to predict and plan for these things.”
Mr Reed’s comments to the August 4 conference appear to be the only public comments that have been made by SpaceX about the incident so far. The ABC has contacted SpaceX.
so arrogant
The discovery of SpaceX debris has triggered both intrigue and concern from space experts about whether space activity needs to be better managed.
Space Law Lecturer at UNSW Canberra Duncan Blake says the explanation from Mr Reed about the incident was too vague.
“I’m not satisfied with that response,” he said.
“I think it’s a bit dismissive and I think that SpaceX ought to be doing more than simply saying that it was within their analysis.”
Duncan Blake is a space law lecturer at UNSW Canberra.(Supplied: Duncan Blake/UNSW Canberra)
Mr Blake believes the comments imply that SpaceX was aware before hand of the possibility of space debris would land in somewhere like Australia, and decided the risk was acceptable.
He says the company needs to be more open and communicative with Australia if that’s the case.
“I wonder whether they coordinated with Australia when they made that risk assessment,” he said.
“If they didn’t, then that seems somewhat arrogant to make a decision that affects Australia without consulting Australians.”
Coverage cost
Confirmation that SpaceX will eventually visit Australia has been welcomed, with an expectation the pieces will have to be repatriated back to the US.
“They need to come to Australia,” Mr Blake said.
“The space object belongs to SpaceX and they may want the space debris returned to them.”
“If there are any costs involved in doing that, in cleaning up, then they’re obliged to cover those costs.”
Jock Wallace found this piece of space junk on his sheep farm.(ABC South East NSW: Adriane Reardon)
As part of the media conference, SpaceX’s Mr Reed noted that there was always room for improvement.
“We look very closely at the data, we learn everything that we can,” he said.
“We always look for the ways we can improve things but again, this was within analyzed space, within expectation.”
The sky-watching world was thrown into a spin this week with multiple reports of space debris falling onto Australian farms.
Experts say as more satellites go up, it is only logical more will come down.
Key points:
The biggest pieces of space junk seen in Australia since 1979 were recently found in NSW
Researchers in Queensland are using wind tunnels to predict where space junk could land in the future
Experts say there are likely many more pieces of space junk in Australia, but the likelihood of finding them is “pretty small”
Mark Rigby, a former curator of the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium, agrees.
“The number of operational satellites has almost doubled in the last 18 months. That’s phenomenal,” he said.
But if you’re planning a “space debris” hunt, do not get your hopes up.
“Fortunately, most of our earth is covered in ocean. So, most space junk actually comes down harmlessly, and a lot of space junk vaporises before it even reaches the surface of our planet,” Mr Rigby said.
But sometimes it lands in a cow paddock.
James Stirton discovered wreckage from a rocket on his family property in south-west Queensland, near Quilpie in 2008.
Mr Stirton’s space junk is now on display at the Cosmos Center in Charleville.(Supplied: Cosmos Center)
At the time, he and his wife Sue took calls from all over the world and hosted visits from researchers keen to inspect the round fuel cell that landed near his cattle in the scrub.
“They checked it over for radiation, and wanted to take it away, and I said, ‘No, it’ll stay here’,” he explained.
The space wreckage, officially named 2006-047-C, lived in a farm shed until the couple retired.
It is now on permanent display at Charleville’s Cosmos Centre.
Ever the pragmatic farmer, Mr Stirton said his discovery did not lead to any further space-craft exploration on his property.
“It was during the drought years, so we had plenty of other things to do,” he said.
“And I figured it’d only happen once in my lifetime, so no, I never thought I’d find any more space junk.”
But he did.
“A few years later we found another one,” he said.
“Actually, I don’t think we’ve ever told anyone about that second find,” Ms Stirton laughed.
Serious area of study
A specialist project at the University of Southern Queensland was launched earlier this year focusing on space junk.
“We’re starting to see more and more of this stuff happening,” Fabian Zander, senior research fellow at the University of Southern Queensland, said.
Fabian Zander is using wind tunnels to study the “separation of objects in hypersonic flow”.(Supplied: University of Southern Queensland)
“I’d like to hope that there’s not too many more [incidents] like the SpaceX one… but we need a better understanding of the demise and the dispersion of things that re-enter the atmosphere.”
He said while most controlled re-entries aim for the “space graveyard” in the South Pacific, some non-functional satellites could come down anywhere.
“Even the impact of the sun shining onto the object can change the force and the trajectory of it,” he explained.
“The Earth’s atmosphere expands and retracts slightly depending on the weather.
“When something’s orbiting the upper reaches of the atmosphere the effect is marginally different depending on the particular atmospheric conditions, and that can’t be predicted with any certainty at this stage.”
But he said there was no need to worry about getting hit by “zombie” satellites when you stepped outside.
“There’s only ever been one person that’s been hit by space junk,” he said.
“A lady named Lottie Williams in the USA got hit by a piece on her shoulder, and it didn’t hurt her at all.”
Mark Rigby says the chance of finding space debris is “pretty small.”(Supplied: Mark Rigby)
Space junk hunting we will go?
Mr Rigby said the recent findings might inspire people to go hunting for debris, but the chances of finding something were “pretty small”.
“Even if you use satellite imagery to find those Skylab pieces that came down in 1979, that are no doubt still out there, you’re trying to find things that might be a meter across — or even smaller — in a vast country.
Farmers Mick Miners and Jock Wallace, along with ANU astrophysicist Brad Tucker, visit a site in NSW where two pieces of space junk were found.(ABC South East NSW: Adriane Reardon)
“So, I’d say good luck to you.”
I have also cautioned on the possible hazards.
“There may be space junk that’s come down that still has some toxic material. With these things, it’s quite often best to contact authorities if you found something you think is space junk.
“Get it checked out first before you go handling it.”
And if you find something, don’t get too attached to it.
“It still belongs to the originating country,” Mr Rigby said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested early Saturday that his acquisition deal with Twitter could still go through if the social media platform provided information about how it confirms that sampled accounts are real.
“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk tweeted. “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
Later he tweeted he was challenging the CEO of Twitter to a debate.
“I hereby challenge@paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!” Musk tweeted.
Musk also tweeted out a poll asking if less than 5 percent of daily users on Twitter were spam or fake.
The tweets from Musk are the latest in the drama between the SpaceX CEO and the social media platform following legal action over his bid to buy Twitter.
Earlier this year, Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but less than three months later, he terminated the deal. His legal team argued at the time there was inadequate information provided about bots on Twitter’s site. The team also alleged that the social media company had fired several employees in violation of their agreement and that its statements regarding bots were not accurate.
The social media platform sued Musk to force him to complete the acquisition.
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he—unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law—is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” the lawsuit against Musk said.
But Musk filed a countersuit earlier this month, with his lawyers alleging that he was not consulted on big decisions at the social media company and that the billionaire had entered into the agreement without knowing about the platform’s “misrepresentations or omissions,” which impacted his perception of the site’s value, according to The Associated Press.
Twitter hit back against the countersuit, saying that the argument was “imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive once the stock market—and along with it, his massive personal wealth—declined in value.”
The Australian Space Agency has confirmed debris found in the NSW Snowy Mountains belongs to SpaceX.
Key points:
Three pieces of debris have so far been located
Snowy Mountains residents have been told more pieces could be found
People are being told to contact a hotline if they do find more
Three pieces of space junk have so far been found in the region, which are considered to be the biggest pieces found in Australia since 1979.
Two pieces were inspected by technical experts from the Australian Space Agency and NSW Police on Saturday.
Police have since confirmed they were also aware of the third piece being found in the region.
This piece of space junk is estimated to be up to three meters long. (ABC South East NSW: Adriane Reardon)
Authorities believed the space debris belonged to SpaceX but had been awaiting confirmation.
“The agency has confirmed the debris is from a SpaceX mission and continues to engage with our counterparts in the US, as well as other parts of the Commonwealth and local authorities as appropriate,” an Australian Space Agency spokesperson said.
“The agency is operating under the Australian Government Space Re-entry Debris Plan which outlines roles and responsibilities for key Australian government agencies and committees in supporting the response to space re-entry debris.”
This third piece of space junk was also found in the NSW Snowy Mountains, near Jindabyne.(Supplied: Nick Lodge)
It comes after locals reported hearing a loud boom on July 9, which was considered to have been caused by the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which was launched in November 2020, re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
Locals in the regions are being told that there’s a possibility more pieces could still be found.
“If the community spots any further suspected debris they should not attempt to handle it or retrieve it,” the agency said.
“They should contact the SpaceX Debris Hotline at 1-866-623-0234 or at [email protected].”
SpaceX has been contacted for comment.
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Space junk has landed at two properties in the NSW Snowy Mountains.(ABC South East NSW: Adriane Reardon)
