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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pitched President Donald Trump and other American officials on helping Ukraine win permission from tech titan Elon Musk to use his Starlink satellite communications system to guide strikes inside Russia. The push for expanded use of Starlink comes as Zelenskyy looks for alternate ways to mitigate the need for US Patriot air defence systems to thwart the steady barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian territory. The interceptors are in shorter supply as the US and Israeli war against Iran continues to rage, and Trump on Friday appeared to back away from a recent commitment to give Ukraine a license to produce them. Zelenskyy made the request directly to Trump in an Oval Office meeting this week during his whirlwind trip to Washington, according to one person familiar with the matter. He also told lawmakers later on Capitol Hill that he wanted Starlink to help with targeting inside Russia, according to a person in the room. .
Towering 407 feet (124 metres), Starship soared from the company's base at the southern tip of Texas. NASA monitored the flight, a critical step toward using the Starship as a lunar lander for moon crews. Elon Musk's SpaceX replaced six of the 33 engines on the first-stage booster after they failed to ignite last week, resulting in a last-second launch abort. The previous Starship flight in May also experienced engine trouble, which prevented the booster from making a controlled return. It was the 13th flight of the world's biggest and most powerful rocket, and the second this year of the new version dubbed V3. Like the previous demo that climbed as high as 125 miles (200 kilometres), neither the booster nor spacecraft was being saved, instead ditching into the sea. The booster was bound for the Gulf of Mexico and the stainless steel, retro-looking spacecraft for the Indian Ocean more than 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometres) from where the hourlong flight began. The Starlinks had a job
SpaceX's mega Starship rocket came within a few seconds of blasting off on a test flight, but some of the engines failed to start triggering a launch abort. Elon Musk's company said on Thursday that it will have to figure out what went wrong before making another attempt to send Starship on a space-skimming flight halfway around the world. It was supposed to be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 metres) tall with 33 main engines is the world's biggest and most powerful rocket. Twenty of SpaceX's newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship's heat shield. Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea. NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years.
Billionaire Elon Musk likely broke Wisconsin law when he handed out USD 1 million checks to voters in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, a bipartisan panel has found. The Wisconsin Elections Commission last week referred two complaints to the Brown County district attorney's office, which can choose to bring criminal charges over violating the state law against election bribery. Prosecutors have 40 days to report back to the commission. Musk, the founder of SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, was deeply involved in the effort to flip majority control of the highest court in battleground Wisconsin. The tech titan and groups he supported spent at least USD 20 million on the candidate backed by Republicans, Brad Schimel. However, he lost by 10 percentage points to Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford. A month after the lopsided loss, Musk announced that he would be spending far less on political campaigns. Spending on the election topped USD 100 million, making it the most expensive ..