Enlarge / A crew of six passengers, including former professional football player and television anchor Michael Strahan, stroll past the Blue Origin New Shepard booster they rode into space in December 2021. (credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images )

In 2004, Congress passed a law that established a moratorium on federal safety regulations for commercial astronauts and space tourists riding to space on new privately owned rockets and spacecraft. The idea was to allow time for new space companies to establish themselves before falling under the burden of regulations, an eventuality that spaceflight startups argued could impede the industry's development.

The moratorium is also known as a "learning period," a term that describes the purpose of the provision. It's supposed to give companies and the Federal Aviation Administration—the agency tasked with overseeing commercial human spaceflight, launch, and re-entry operations—time to learn how to safely fly in space and develop smart regulations, those that make spaceflight safer but don't restrict innovation.

Without action from Congress, by the end of September, the moratorium on human spaceflight regulations will expire. That has many in the commercial space industry concerned.

Enlarge / SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket stands on Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center before the launch of the Jupiter 3 communications satellite. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica)

The heaviest commercial communications satellite ever built is folded up for launch on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Wednesday night from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This satellite, owned by EchoStar and built by Maxar, tips the scales at about 9.2 metric tons, or more than 20,000 pounds. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will propel the spacecraft on its way toward an operating position in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

The action will begin at 11:04 p.m. EDT (03:04 UTC) with the ignition of the Falcon Heavy's 27 main engines on Launch Complex 39A. A few moments later, the Falcon Heavy will climb away from its launch pad and head downrange toward the east from the Kennedy Space Center. You can watch SpaceX's live webcast below.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket streaks into the sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission Sunday night to deploy 22 more Starlink internet satellites. (credit: SpaceX )

The late-night liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites on Sunday set a new record for the most flights by a SpaceX launch vehicle, with a first-stage booster flying for a 16th time. SpaceX now aims to fly its reusable Falcon 9 boosters as many as 20 times, double the company’s original goal.

The flight followed several months of inspections and refurbishment of SpaceX’s most-flown rocket, a process that included a “recertification” of the booster to prove, at least on paper, that it could fly as many as five more times after completing its 15th launch and landing last December.

Sunday night’s mission got the booster’s extended life off to a good start.

Enlarge / Because particles that astronauts breathe out can drift for a while before settling, most surfaces in the International Space Station eventually get microbial contamination. (credit: NASA )

On June 5, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off to the International Space Station with new supplies, including equipment for scientific research. Among the new scientific gear that has arrived at the ISS are four tablets covered with extremely thin films that could play a crucial role in the development of materials for future human space flights.

Testing these innovative films, which were developed by the French commission for atomic and renewable energy (CEA), is part of an ongoing project aimed at developing antibacterial materials for space habitats.

“MATISS (Microbial Aerosol Tethering on Innovative Surfaces in the International Space Station) consists of exposing these tablets in the ISS environments for a long time in order to collect the bacteria that gets deposited on them. These tablets are then returned to our laboratories for measuring the level of biocontamination,” says project manager Sebastien Rouquette of the French space agency CNES.

Enlarge / SpaceX's Starship launch site is located in coastal South Texas. (credit: SpaceX)

Several environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday, saying that the agency had not sufficiently regulated the launch of SpaceX's Starship rocket from South Texas.

In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, the groups say that the FAA failed to account for the damage caused by testing and launching the Starship rocket, which results in "intense heat, noise, and light that adversely affects surrounding habitat areas and communities, which included designated critical habitat for federally protected species as well as National Wildlife Refuge and State Park lands."

During the initial launch of the Starship rocket, on April 20, the environmental organizations say the launch "scattered debris and ash over a large area," including adjacent lands that provide a habitat for endangered species.

Enlarge / Super Heavy Booster 7 undergoes a test firing in December. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX moved the most flight-ready of its Starship rockets, Ship 24, to a launch site in South Texas on Saturday. While a launch is not imminent this week, it could take place as early as April 10, sources said.

Earlier this week, the company lifted the massive "Super Heavy" first stage of its launch system onto a launch mount at the pad. The next step will involve lifting the Starship upper stage into place, atop the first stage. While these vehicles have been previously stacked for testing, this should be the final time they are positioned on the launch pad before lifting off.

In recent weeks technicians have added shielding to protect the launch mount and tower from the extreme heating from the launch of Super Heavy, which is powered by 33 Raptor engines. The launch vehicle will have about double the thrust of the two most powerful rockets ever to reach orbit, NASA's Saturn V and Space Launch System rockets.

Enlarge / A Starlink mission launches on a Falcon 9 rocket Friday from Vandenberg Space Force Base. (credit: SpaceX)

Is it possible that SpaceX has succeeded in making orbital launches boring? Increasingly, the answer to this question appears to be yes .

On Friday the California-based company launched two Falcon 9 rockets within the span of just a little more than four hours. At 12:26 pm local time, a Falcon 9 rocket carried 52 of SpaceX's own Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit from a launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. A mere 4 hours and 12 minutes later, another Falcon 9 rocket delivered two large communications satellites into geostationary transfer orbit for the Luxembourg-based satellite company SES from Kennedy Space Center.

This broke SpaceX's own record for the shortest time duration between two launches. However, the overall record for the lowest time between two launches of the same rocket still belongs to the Russian-built Soyuz vehicle. In June 2013, Roscosmos launched a Soyuz booster from Kazakhstan, and Arianespace launched a Soyuz from French Guiana within two hours. Those launches were conducted by two separate space agencies, on separate continents, however.

Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish. (credit: Starlink)

SpaceX has offered a public explanation for why Starlink's actual service availability falls far short of what it claimed on the Federal Communications Commission's national broadband map.

SpaceX's FCC filings indicate it offers fixed broadband at virtually every address in the US even though the Starlink website's service map shows it has a waitlist in huge portions of the country. As we previously reported , SpaceX removed some homes from the FCC database when residents filed challenges because they were unable to order Starlink at addresses listed as served on the FCC map.

SpaceX tried to clear up the confusion in an FCC filing last week. The company says it followed FCC rules when submitting data and blamed the FCC system for not allowing it to report data more precisely. Under the map system rules, SpaceX argues that it is allowed to report an address as "served" even if the resident can only order Starlink's RV service.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | PM Images)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rejected Starlink's application to receive $885.51 million in broadband funding, essentially canceling a grant awarded by the FCC during then-Chairman Ajit Pai's tenure.

Starlink was tentatively awarded the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) grant in December 2020. But the satellite provider still needed FCC approval of a long-form application to receive the money, which is intended for areas with little or no high-speed broadband access.

We wrote about potential problems with the SpaceX grant a week after the FCC's reverse auction , in which ISPs bid on grants organized by census blocks. Consumer advocacy group Free Press accused Pai of "subsidiz[ing] broadband for the rich," pointing out that Starlink was awarded money in urban areas including locations at or adjacent to major airports.