The agency hopes to bolster its team with specialists who will take part in future expeditions to the Moon and in preparations for establishing a permanent base there.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has selected Qualcomm as its technology partner for the roll-out of the Starlink Mobile 5G terrestrial network in the US. The nationwide roll-out is scheduled to begin in 2027, and the multi-year agreement envisages the installation of tens of thousands of base stations.
The start-up Starcloud, backed by the chip manufacturer and, incidentally, the world’s largest company by market capitalisation — Nvidia — is set to become a pioneer in mining and the development of crypto infrastructure in space. The main reason for this bold move is the hope of reducing the cost of electricity, vast amounts of which are required for Bitcoin mining. Representatives from Nvidia believe that moving data centres beyond Earth will enable electricity costs to be reduced tenfold.
Elon Musk has stated that the super-heavy Starship rocket will, in the long term, make it possible to launch significantly larger space telescopes into orbit and, in the future, to build giant telescopes on the Moon. According to him, the increased capabilities of the launch vehicle have the potential to expand the scope of fundamental physics research.
Elon Musk stated that the integration of Starlink V5 with the Tesla Cybercab robotaxi will allow passengers to stream 4K video directly whilst on the move. Starlink had previously announced plans to build V5 equipment directly into vehicles.
China and Russia are accelerating the development of commercial space technologies, putting additional pressure on the United States’ long-standing leadership. In August, the Chinese private company LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of an orbital rocket on land for the first time, while Russia is expanding its own Rassvet constellation of low-Earth-orbit communications satellites.
SpaceX’s stock price has fallen by half since its post-IPO peak.
A joint U.S.-Russian crew returned to Earth on Sunday after an eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Elon Musk raised the possibility of a merger between Tesla and SpaceX, stating that the ties between the two companies are growing ever closer. The Tesla CEO noted that the number of joint projects with the space company continues to grow, but emphasized that any decisions of this magnitude must go through official corporate procedures.
Elon Musk has once again drawn attention to one of the most ambitious technological concepts—harvesting solar energy in space. In his view, if humanity learns to harness this resource on an industrial scale, the economic value of such technology will exceed the size of Earth’s entire modern economy.
