News
SpaceX Falcon fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven tests out new limbs at sea
After a week or so spent installing a new and moderately ambiguous arm on the nose of Falcon fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven, SpaceX’s recovery crew performed a number of high-speed sea trials a few miles off the shore of Port of Los Angeles, testing out something.
Just a few days later, Mr. Steven returned to the general region surrounding Catalina Island, where – by all appearances – SpaceX technicians performed the most recent Falcon fairing drop/catch test. Using a helicopter to pick up the test-dedicated fairing half from a barge, eventually dropping it from around 10,000 feet, this offers Mr. Steven a much higher volume of controlled attempts at both catching a parasailing fairing and optimizing the technology and recovery methods involved.
Mr Steven arriving back at port after some sea trials (with some new hardware near his nose). Such an elegant ship. The drop-test fairing is back in view on the dock as well. Soooooon……#spacex #mrsteven @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/qsmEy2Kk2a
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) November 12, 2018
Over the last few weeks, Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin has reliably kept up with Mr. Steven, documenting a variety of recent physical changes to the vessel. Most notably, these changes include the installation of a visible and quite curious stanchion (or arm) at the ship’s aft tip (nose). Simply due to a lack of any real information about the experiences of operating Mr. Steven and attempting to catch Falcon fairings, it’s all but impossible to know for sure what this new limb accomplishes or why it was needed in the first place.
Armed to the teeth
More clear are general visual observations and the reasonable extrapolations that can be derived from them. At the simplest level, this new limb is clearly well-reinforced, at least no less so than any of Mr. Steven’s other arms and attachment points. Aside from a basic off-the-shelf ladder for crew and technician access, the stanchion plays host to four basic swinging arms with what looks like one or maybe one and a half degrees of freedom, allowing them to pivot roughly 180 degrees along the plane of the angle they were installed at.
-
- An overview of Mr. Steven on November 10th, shortly after his new arm’s cables were attached. (Pauline Acalin)
-
- A good closeup of Mr. Steven’s new limb and its associated cables, cable linkages, and arm attachments. (Pauline Acalin, 11/10/18)
-
- A different view of the arm-cable attachment fixtures. (Pauline Acalin)
Secured to the ends of those four simple arms are four heavy-duty coiled metal cables, themselves attached to the center of Mr. Steven’s two foremost arms (two cables per arm). Curiously, the ship’s Nov. 12 sea trials were conducted with just the bottom two cables attached to each respective arm, visible in photos of the outing. Upon returning from a Nov. 14 fairing drop-and-catch test, both upper and lower cable sets were seen attached to his aft arms. During the nearby sea trials, no clearly abnormal behavior – compared against previous trials at similar speeds and the same location – was observed, although the new metal cables were visibly taut or nearly so.
Given just how seemingly nuanced the utility of this new arm and cable combo seems to be, a few obvious conclusions and possible explanations can be drawn. Perhaps Mr. Steven experiences inconvenient arm bouncing while sailing at high speeds, particularly in high speeds, and holding his arms down serves to grease the metaphorical gears of fairing recovery. Maybe the recovery net – stretched between four large arms – is tensioned more than SpaceX fairing recovery engineers and technicians would like, partially shrinking the usable catching area by pulling each arm towards the center. Even more nuanced still, it may be the case that these new tensioning steel cables and stanchion make it easier for fairing halves to be processed after landing in Mr. Steven’s net, allowing the crew to accurately and rapidly move the fairing to an optimal section of the net.
-
- (Pauline Acalin)
-
- Note the duo of cables connected to the arm attachment jig. (Pauline Acalin)
More questions than answers
Regardless, none of these best-case, simple explanations for the new hardware satisfactorily mesh with the known facts surrounding Mr. Steven and Falcon fairing recovery in general. For any of the above scenarios to be true, one must essentially assume that SpaceX has already nailed down fairing recovery and catches or believes that the path to solving those problems is almost totally clear of obstacles. If not, it would feel more than a little like putting the cart before the horse (or the fairing before the net) to be optimizing Mr. Steven for operations that are – as of yet – out of reach.
If SpaceX were so close to closing the fairing recovery gap, one would generally expect Mr. Steven to attempt fairing recoveries after all true Falcon 9 launches while also performing controlled drop test catch attempts. However, no such attempt was made after the October 7 launch of SAOCOM-1A and – according to CEO Elon Musk – Mr. Steven will not be attempting to catch Falcon 9’s fairing(s) after the imminent launch of SSO-A, expected to occur sometime after Thanksgiving (later this week).
Will try again next month
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2018
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.
Energy
Tesla Energy gains UK license to sell electricity to homes and businesses
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
Tesla Energy has received a license to supply electricity in the United Kingdom, opening the door for the company to serve homes and businesses in the country.
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
According to Ofgem, the license took effect at 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday and applies to Great Britain.
The approval allows Tesla’s energy business to sell electricity directly to customers in the region, as noted in a Bloomberg News report.
Tesla has already expanded similar services in the United States. In Texas, the company offers electricity plans that allow Tesla owners to charge their vehicles at a lower cost while also feeding excess electricity back into the grid.
Tesla already has a sizable presence in the UK market. According to price comparison website U-switch, there are more than 250,000 Tesla electric vehicles in the country and thousands of Tesla home energy storage systems.
Ofgem also noted that Tesla Motors Ltd., a separate entity incorporated in England and Wales, received an electricity generation license in June 2020.
The new UK license arrives as Tesla continues expanding its global energy business.
Last year, Tesla Energy retained the top position in the global battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator market for the second consecutive year. According to Wood Mackenzie’s latest rankings, Tesla held about 15% of global market share in 2024.
The company also maintained a dominant position in North America, where it captured roughly 39% market share in the region.
At the same time, competition in the energy storage sector is increasing. Chinese companies such as Sungrow have been expanding their presence globally, particularly in Europe.
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
