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Despite an explosive week, Elon Musk’s two-decades long mission to colonise Mars just got one giant leap closer - and makers of futuristic space stations Airbus must be stoked. 🛸 Before SpaceX fell on their sword with a ‘rapidly unscheduled disassembly’ of their non-crewed Starship 39 km above the Gulf of Mexico, the ‘most powerful rocket ever built’ enjoyed a enthusiastically applauded four-minute long liftoff. 🚀
Yet while Starship was scheduled to partially loop Earth, the inaugural flight of the megarocket - with its 33 Raptor engines and 16.5 million tonnes of thrust - was not necessarily expected to succeed. So Musk tweeting of their ‘successful failure’ that they ‘learned a lot’ is not mere spin. Those four critical minutes of flight sent thousands of data sets that will inform the next rocket off the ranks, scheduled in a few months, and ultimately, rocketing towards the final frontier, life on Mars. 👽
Meanwhile back on planet Earth, high country musterers, people in weather-devastated regions and Earthlings out of range of the Sky Tower, have fresh hope on the horizon - literally. This April, One NZ announced a deal with SpaceX’s globetrotting satellite chain, Starlink. 🌏
Owned by NZX-listed Infratil (IFT) and Brookfield Asset Management (BAM), the 50/50 Aotearoa Canadian-owned telco, which shed their Vodafone shackles to this year become One NZ, will give Kiwis access to 100% emergency and mobile coverage - first by text, then voice call - by 2024. 🆘 Making less of a bang in the news, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 last week transported 21 new Starlink V2 mini satellites in their 25th launch of the year. 🛰️
For stargazers hopeful of a different moonshot, the Kiwi-founded company that launched a 3D ‘space revolution’, Rocket Lab (RKLB), has their sights set skyward aiming to launch their HASTE rocket (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) by mid this year. #tothemoon 🌕
