In a reversal of a deal local officials had touted as a win for Los Angeles tech, SpaceX will no longer build its Mars spaceship and rocket booster system at the Port of Los Angeles. Instead, work to develop and test the prototype will be done in south Texas. SpaceX said in a statement Wednesday that the decision was made to “streamline operations.”

SpaceX will lay off up to 10 percent of its work force, the company said Friday evening. The company characterized the job cuts as "a strategic realignment," designed to ensure it is positioned to succeed for the long term. They were announced to employees Friday in an e-mail from company president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell. The company has a work force of more than 6,000 employees.

Eleven months ago—just after SpaceX astonished the world by launching and landing its titanic Falcon Heavy rocket while beaming back images of a red Tesla leaving Earth orbit—company founder Elon Musk had already begun to look beyond the moment. The Falcon Heavy was a big, capable rocket. But it wasn't large enough to fulfill his aspirations of reaching Mars. Neither did the company have a spacecraft capable of landing there.

"Starship will look like liquid silver."

Elon Musk wants to nuke Mars to transform the atmosphere and make it more suitable for human life. The SpaceX CEO made a new reference to his grand plan on Friday, as he joked with a TV producer on Twitter that the Korolev crater “needs a warmup.” The crater was shared in an image from the European Space Agency on Thursday, taken by the Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera. The 50-mile-wide site, filled with ice, is situated in the northern lowlands of Mars.

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says a redesigned test vehicle for the company's next-generation reusable launch system could be ready for initial flights early next year. In a tweet early Dec. 24, Musk posted a photo of two parts of that initial test article, a conical section next to a cylindrical unit with landing legs. "Stainless Steel Starship," he wrote.

SpaceX’s futuristic Starship interplanetary craft may embody the golden age of sci-fi in more ways than one: in addition to (theoretically) taking passengers from planet to planet, it may sport a shiny stainless steel skin that makes it look like the pulp covers of old. Founder and CEO Elon Musk teased the possibility in a picture posted to Twitter, captioned simply “Stainless Steel Starship.” To be clear, this isn’t a full-on spacecraft, just part of a test vehicle that the company plans to use during the short “hopper” flights in 2019 to evaluate various systems.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has suggested that the company’s newly revamped Starship and Super Heavy rocket (previously known as BFR) could perform its first integrated launches – placing Starship into orbit – as few as 12-24 months from today. Musk indicated that the odds of Starship reaching orbit as early as 2020 are now as high as “60% [and] rising rapidly”, thanks in no small part to the flurry of radical changes the spacecraft and booster have both undergone over the course of 2018.

Musk fired SpaceX managers, aims to stay on schedule for mid-2019 launch.

Elon Musk captured the world's attention by launching rockets from Cape Canaveral and California air bases. But all along, his company has been trying to realize its own home base by the Mexican border.

The first satellite launched into orbit, Sputnik, launched from a spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Central Asian country was then a Soviet republic. Later, the first human to fly into space, Yuri Gagarin, also launched from Kazakhstan. Today, despite its independence, this spaceport remains the primary launch site for the Russian space program. However, when Kazakhstan wanted to get a small scientific satellite named KazSaySat and a technology satellite called KazistiSat into space...

NASA has certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 (likely F9 v1.2) to launch the space agency’s most valuable and critical scientific spacecraft, opening up the floor for SpaceX to routinely compete for missions comparable to Hubble Space Telescope, the Curiosity Mars rover (Mars Science Laboratory), Cassini (a Saturn orbiter), and James Webb Space Telescope, among many others.

SpaceX today received US approval to deploy 7,518 broadband satellites, in addition to the 4,425 satellites that were approved eight months ago. The Federal Communications Commission voted to let SpaceX launch 4,425 low-Earth orbit satellites in March of this year. SpaceX separately sought approval for 7,518 satellites operating even closer to the ground, saying that these will boost capacity and reduce latency in heavily populated areas. That amounts to 11,943 satellites in total for SpaceX's Starlink broadband service.

Elon Musk, age 47, told "Axios on HBO" that he sees a 70% chance that he'll live to ride one of his SpaceX rockets to Mars. "I know exactly what to do," he said. "I’m talking about moving there." The big picture: That prediction is dismissed as fantasy by some experts. But Musk said he can envision a flight as soon as seven years from now, with a ticket price of "around a couple hundred thousand dollars."

As Mars colonization inches ever closer to becoming a reality, some have argued that the ability to afford a ticket to the Red Planet is a luxury afforded only to the wealthiest members of society. Billionaire Elon Musk has said it’ll run potential Mars inhabitants traveling with his company SpaceX hundreds of thousands of dollars to get there. But in a new interview, he rebuffed the assertion that a one-way ticket to Mars is an easy ticket out for the rich.

When it comes to events in space, 2019 is going to be an extraordinary year. That’s not to say 2018 will be an easy act to follow. After all, SpaceX debuted the world’s most powerful operational launch system (called Falcon Heavy), sent a car beyond Mars, and helped lift off more orbital rockets than in any year since 1990.

SpaceX is ready to deploy 64 satellites in one fell swoop — a record-setting mission. Elon Musk's company is scheduled to launch a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Monday between 1:32 pm and 2 pm ET after a series of delays triggered by bad weather and last-minute inspections for the rocket. It will be one of the largest satellite ride-sharing missions ever launched, and the most crowded single mission in US history, according to Spaceflight, SpaceX's customer for the launch.

IN FEBRUARY 2017, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted through low clouds, pushing a Dragon capsule toward orbit. Among the spare parts and food, an important piece of scientific cargo, called SAGE III, rumbled upward. Once installed on the International Space Station, SAGE would peer back and measure ozone molecules and aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere. Its older siblings (SAGEs I and II) had revealed both the growth of the gaping ozone hole and, after humans decided to stop spraying Freon everywhere, its subsequent recovery.

Today -- Dec. 8, 2018 -- marks a big anniversary in SpaceX history. It's been more than 12 years since SpaceX launched its first rocket, an experimental Falcon 1, from Kwajalein Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to ensure it wouldn't hurt anyone if it blew up. (Spoiler: It blew up). It would be two more years before SpaceX succeeded in getting a rocket into orbit, and two more years after that before SpaceX built a rocket big enough to carry significant commercial payloads.

Drawn in by Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin’s most recent photos of Port of LA Falcon 9 recovery operations SpaceX is in the midst of, CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter on December 8th to discuss titanium grid fins and – more importantly – answer a miscellaneous handful of questions about the status of BFR’s development.

SpaceX’s most significant US Air Force launch contract yet is set to kick off with a (NET) December 18 launch of the first of 10 next-gen GPS satellites, known as GPS III Space Vehicle 1 (SV01). Thus far, SpaceX has won all five competitive GPS III launch contracts offered thus far by the USAF and – depending on Falcon 9’s performance this launch – could win several more. Aside from contract victories, SpaceX’s first GPS III launch will be marked by yet another first for the company’s May 2018-debuted Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket.

Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is set to raise $500 million at a $30.5 billion valuation, in a bid to help get a satellite-internet service off the ground.

In rocketry, what goes up usually comes down in pieces. The cost of getting to orbit is exorbitant, because the rocket, with its multimillion-dollar engines, ends up as trash in the ocean after one launching.

paceX had to scrub Tuesday's attempt to launch a Falcon 9 rocket carrying cargo to the International Space Station and make a historic rocket landing in the process. The landing experiment would have involved bringing the first stage of the two-stage rocket down onto a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. Such a feat has never been done before. A successful maneuver would have marked a significant step toward making rockets more reusable...

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is one step closer to flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX has passed NASA's "certification baseline review," which required the California-based company to outline exactly how it plans to ferry crews to and from the orbiting lab using the Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket under SpaceX's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract with the space agency.

After a lot of publicity and one aborted launch attempt, SpaceX tried to land its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone barge this morning. 'Tried' very much being the key word.

Last week, SpaceX tried to land its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone barge and failed. Now Elon Musk has posted footage of the crash landing on Twitter. It isn't pretty.

SpaceX's quest for rocket reusability is on the right track, having pinpointed the problems that led to the destruction of a used Falcon9 rocket last week.

Despite the 80s hard rock soundtrack—or maybe because of it—SpaceX's new 3D animation showing their future Falcon Heavy in action, complete with the landing of three of its stages back on Earth, is freaking cool. I can't wait for Elon Musk's bandits to solve all problems and see this happening in real time.

SpaceX plans to convert a launch pad into a landing pad for the reusable rocket boosters it is developing to power its Falcon family of rockets.

SpaceX aims to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a soft touchdown on an unmanned "spaceport drone ship" in the Atlantic Ocean after the booster sends Dragon on its way toward the orbiting lab Monday April 13th.

SpaceX once again successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket with supplies for the International Space Station. The booster that launched the payload was then supposed to return, landing on a platform (at sea). Well, that didn’t go so well. The booster crashed on landing. Landing a rocket in this manner is clearly a difficult task. ( Here is my previous explanation.) Maneuvering a tall rocket using the main thrusters would be like balancing a vertical broom on your hand and then...

NASA has formally certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch all but the space agency’s most costly robotic science missions, beginning with a a U.S.-French oceanography satellite set for liftoff from California in July.

NASA has announced that the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft was successfully released from the International Space Station's robotic arm this morning at 7:04am ET, by Expedition 43 robotic arm operator Scott Kelly.

The US Air Force has certified the private company SpaceX to launch military and spy satellites. A joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing has had a monopoly on those launches since 2006. Founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX has already won contracts with NASA to ferry cargo and crews to the International Space Station. The approval from the US military followed two years of intensive reviews by the US Air Force.