Hello and welcome back to Max Q! There was a lot of Starship news this week, thanks in part to an informative Twitter Spaces with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Read on for all the juicy details.
In this issue:
A coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over its handling of the environmental assessment of SpaceX’s launch plans in southeast Texas.
The FAA gave the green-light to SpaceX’s Starship launch program last summer, with the stipulation that the company perform a series of measures to mitigate environmental impacts to the surrounding area. But the lawsuit says this analysis, and the mitigating measures it required, are not sufficient to offset or even fully understand the full effects of repeat Starship launches.
While the FAA has grounded Starship pending an investigation into the April 20 flight test that ended in a mid-air explosion, the suit is asking the court to rescind SpaceX’s launch license to fly the rocket altogether, until a full environmental assessment is complete.
Dozens of established players and newer entrants are competing to bring the most cutting-edge remote sensing data to customers. These companies may use hyperspectral, thermal, radar or optical instruments — but none, as of yet, use light detection and ranging (lidar), a technology that’s best-known for its use in self-driving cars. Nuview, a geospatial technology company that emerged from stealth, wants to change that.
The company aims to build out a constellation of 20 commercial satellites outfitted with its proprietary lidar system. The “endgame,” as Nuview founder and CEO Clint Graumann put it, is to map the entire land surface of the Earth with lidar — on an annual basis.
Global satellite communications. Conceptual representation of a global network of communications satellites, such as the Starlink satellites. Image Credits: Getty Images
Global satellite communications. Conceptual representation of a global network of communications satellites, such as the Starlink satellites. Image Credits: Getty Images
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Source @TechCrunch
