Matthew Kuhns

Onboard views from Starship and Super Heavy V3, which are equipped with upgraded cameras capable of streaming 4K video through every phase of flight via @Starlink

🚀What a week! We have a new perspective on Starship flying in orbit — from a satellite it deployed through the "Pez Dispenser." The satellite has cameras and bright flashlights facing back toward Starship for full-body inspection in space.

First full stack of Starship V3

Three years since the first flight of Starship, the next generation is here. New ship. New booster. New engines. New pad and new test site. SpaceX engineers are working to solve one of the most difficult engineering challenges in history: developing a fully, rapidly reusable rocket

Purdue announces SpaceX team as inaugural recipients of the Neil Armstrong Space Prize. Lars Blackmore, senior principal Mars landing engineer. Shana Diez, senior director, Starship reliability. Jon Edwards, senior vice president of Falcon and Dragon projects. Yoshi Kuwata, principal guidance, navigation and control engineer. Eduardo Velazquez, director, Crew Starship engineering. purdue.edu/newsroom/2026/…

@FutureJurvetson Steve I just bought a piece of this meteor as well. It’s such a beautiful and fascinating piece of solar system history!

A Rare Moon Rock Evidencing Subsurface Water🌖 While it is not possible to obtain rocks brought back by the Apollo program, we can get random samples when a meteorite hits the moon and ejects lunar material toward Earth. Oued El Hamim 001 (OEH 001) was found in Ajdabiya, Libya in 2024. It has been officially classified in the Meteoritical Bulletin as a lunar frag breccia, one of only 48 such classifications on Earth. From the various analyses performed by Dr. Carl Agee at the University of New Mexico: “Electron microprobe analysis and imagery indicate a lunar fragmental breccia with clasts of minerals and rocklets.” Further setting this meteorite apart is the presence of aqueous alteration—almost unheard of in lunar specimens. Dr. Agee’s analysis revealed olivine crystals transformed into an iddingsite-like phase, evidence of interaction with water below the lunar surface. Distinct boundaries between altered and unaltered zones reveal a unique geological record, offering insights into rare processes on the Moon. From a follow up email with Dr. Agee, “Yes, OEH 001 and NWA 15192 have alteration phases that are found in hydrothermal systems on Earth. The most common occurrence that I have seen are olivine grains that have been transformed to iddingsite-like hydrous secondary minerals. This is not the sort of thing that simply happens by adding water like what causes a nail to rust in the rain. It usually is thought to require some high temperatures to get the reaction kinetics moving to alter a mineral like olivine.” While we have precious few of these water-altered moon rocks on Earth, the Russian robotic lunar landers Luna 20 and 24 found evidence as well for this novel hypothesis. From the 2018 paper from the Russian Academy of Sciences titled Signs of Hydrothermal Activity in Lunar Rocks according to the Data of a Regolith Investigation: “4.2–3.1 Ga ago, the water content in lunar magmas was comparable to that in the current Earth basalts. Thus, Lunar magmatism should be accompanied in a natural way by hydrothermal processes corresponding to its water contents." This is the largest central slice of the OED 001 meteorite, weighing 1.28kg, and it is delightful time capsule from our ancient Moon, and perhaps, a more Earth-like Moon.

For the first time in our existence, we possess the means, technology, and, for the moment, the will to establish a permanent human presence beyond Earth. Starship is designed to make this future a reality → #moon-and-beyond" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">spacex.com/updates/#moon-…

@maxhaot Epic!

We are investing in the infrastructure to build America's successor to the ISS: The first time we tested a primary structure, it took us over six months to get the procedures and stand fully dialed in. Now, we can ship, acceptance test and return a flight grade primary structure in just 1.5 weeks.

Dragon and its new “boost trunk” performed a 15 minute burn yesterday, providing 1.62 m/s of delta-v to the ISS for station-keeping (a job typically performed by Roscosmos via the Zvezda Service Module or visiting Progress vehicles). Great photo by American (and Crew-11) astronaut Zena Cardman @zenanaut!

California will keep fighting on behalf of all our people including in the courts. If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there. Trump and his loyalists thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.

Quite the beat!

@DrPhiltill I think you’re underestimating the cost of the rockets and testing. I would double that to at least $600 million.

A rough guess how much money was saved developing Supersonic Retro Propulsion by simply trying it and crashing rockets into barges instead of using a perfectionists, failure-averse development method. About 1/3 of a billion dollars.

View under the launch mount as Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines ignite on Starship's eighth flight test

Don (@astro_Pettit) and I decided to demo how spaceships could transfer rocket fuel (AKA propellant) in space using water bottles, water, and Alka-Seltzer . . . what could go wrong?

Go PlanetVac! Exciting to see something I got to help with go to the Moon.

Wishing you a warm holiday season and a lit New Year

We need all good men to show up for your wives, daughters!! #ElectionDay #Election2024

Vote. Please.

The Dem Govs all coordinating to dress up as Tim Walz for Halloween is the greatest thing ever.