Technologies

Next Launch of SpaceX Starship Faces More Potential Delays

An investigation into April’s explosive test flight has closed, but another agency needs time to review upgrades to Elon Musk’s big rocket.

While the Federal Aviation Administration has been working closely with SpaceX to approve the next launch of Starship, a required environmental review by a different federal agency could keep the vehicle grounded for months longer.

The US Fish and Wildlife service told Bloomberg on Monday that it has yet to begin its review of a new water deluge system that SpaceX plans to operate during its next launch. The agency is working with the FAA to complete its part of the permitting process, but said it has not yet received all the materials it needs to begin the review, which could take anywhere from one to four months.

The new deluge system is meant to dampen some of the significant heat and force from the launch. Starship’s first orbital launch attempt in April essentially destroyed much of the launch pad at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas.

Meanwhile, the head of the FAA is positive about Starship’s progress toward another flight.

«We’re working well with them and have been in good discussions,» interim FAA Administrator Polly Trottenberg told reporters Sept. 13, according to Reuters.

The FAA said on Sept. 8 it had closed its investigation into the «mishap» ending of Starship’s first orbital flight attempt on April 20. That test ended with the vehicle being intentionally destroyed after the first stage Super Heavy booster failed to separate from the main Starship itself.

The FAA, which oversees commercial spaceflight in the US, sent a letter to SpaceX outlining a list of 63 corrective actions to be taken before a launch license will be issued for the next Starship orbital flight attempt.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said most of those changes are done and he’s ready to blast off.

To be clear, the list of changes was developed in cooperation with SpaceX engineers and approved by the FAA. The way the process actually works is that SpaceX determines what it thinks caused the mishap and submits a report, including corrective actions, to the FAA. That report was submitted Aug. 21. As part of its side of the investigation, the FAA reviewed that report and sent over a final list of required changes to SpaceX last week.

«Corrective actions include redesigns of vehicle hardware to prevent leaks and fires, redesign of the launch pad to increase its robustness, incorporation of additional reviews in the design process, additional analysis and testing of safety critical systems,» the FAA said in a statement.

The agency emphasized that «the closure of the mishap investigation does not signal an immediate resumption of Starship launches.»

Just days before the FAA announcement, SpaceX and Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) that a new Starship prototype, dubbed Ship 25, had been stacked atop a new Super Heavy booster and that the mated pair was ready to launch.

Elon Musk Shows Off the Shiny SpaceX Starship

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SpaceX later released a statement of its own that pinpointed the failure of the April 20 test flight.

«During ascent, the vehicle sustained fires from leaking propellant in the aft end of the Super Heavy booster, which eventually severed connection with the vehicle’s primary flight computer,» the statement reads. «This led to a loss of communications to the majority of booster engines and, ultimately, control of the vehicle.»

So when will Starship fly?

The company says it has since made numerous fixes, upgrades and other mitigations to Starship, its testing regime and its launch infrastructure. The launch pad at the SpaceX Starbase facility in south Texas was partially destroyed during the April blastoff.

Musk said on X on Sept. 10 that the SpaceX team had completed 57 of the improvements required by the FAA and that the remaining six items refer to future actions for later flights.

However, the FAA’s letter sent to SpaceX on Sept. 7, which was shared with myself and other reporters,implied that the company has not yet submitted its application for a launch license for Starship’s next attempt at reaching space.

So it appears Starship is getting closer to launching again, but there’s still some work to be done, including the Fish and Wildlife Service’s environmental review, which now seems to be the highest hurdle to clear.

If the agency begins that review soon, we could still see an October launch under the best case scenario. It’s also conceivable it gets pushed to 2024.

Stay tuned.

Technologies

Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

Technologies

Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

Technologies

Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea.

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»