SpaceX expansion November 11, 2026 · Cameron County · Public meetings

Three chances to be heard on SpaceX's plans at Boca Chica, starting Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2026

Three public bodies have SpaceX items before them in the next four weeks, and each one takes comments from the public: Cameron County on a tax abatement notice, the FAA on more Starship launches, and the City of Starbase on a tax deal for a power plant and computing site.

• Tue., Nov. 17, 2026, 9:30 a.m. CT, Cameron County: commissioners take up item 4.H, authorizing a notice of intent to consider a Chapter 312 tax abatement with SpaceX (our Nov. 10, 2026 story). The meeting is in the courtroom on the second floor of the Dancy Building, 1100 E. Monroe St., Brownsville. To speak in person or by video, the agenda says you must email a request to publiccomment@co.cameron.tx.us by 8:45 a.m. that day.
• Nov. 17 to 19, 2026, FAA: five online scoping meetings on SpaceX's proposal to raise Starship launches from Boca Chica, up to 456 a year in a second phase. All five are now virtual, with Zoom registration required, and speakers get up to three minutes. Written comments run through Mon., Dec. 7, 2026, at regulations.gov, Docket No. FAA-2026-12808, or by mail.
• Wed., Dec. 9, 2026, 7 p.m. CT, City of Starbase: a public hearing on a Chapter 312 tax abatement and a Chapter 380 agreement with SpaceX for a "gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility" on about 444 acres between Boca Chica Blvd. and the Port of Brownsville. The notice puts the initial phases at "approximately $24 billion" and says "interested persons are invited to attend the meeting and to be heard." The hearing is at 48491 State Highway 4 (our Nov. 9, 2026 explainer).

FAA meeting times (CT): Tue., Nov. 17, 1 to 3 p.m. and 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.; Wed., Nov. 18, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.; Thu., Nov. 19, 1 to 3 p.m. and 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The FAA says the same presentation runs at each one. Registration links are on the FAA's project page.

Good to know: the FAA warns that a comment, including any address or phone number in it, "may be made publicly available at any time."

What's next: we'll post the county's notice, the FAA's scoping record and Starbase's agreements as each is published.

Around the world

Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, signed a deal with Japan's Synspective for up to 10 launches of its Alpha rocket through 2030, Firefly announced Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. Each Alpha will carry two of Synspective's synthetic aperture radar satellites, up to 20 in all, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions signed a long-term deal to fly from Seagate Space's initial Gateway offshore launch platform, with its first mission from the platform planned for 2027, Kratos announced Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. Kratos plans to use the platform first for defense-related launch and target missions.

A DARPA-funded robot built by Caltech has assembled a structure in orbit without astronauts, the first section of a 1.4-meter reflector antenna, Caltech said Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. Time limits held the team to that first section, and Caltech says finishing the full truss before the mission ends in December looks unlikely. Team leader Sergio Pellegrino: "This is the first time that a structure has been autonomously constructed in space."

Two studies led by NASA astrophysicists, published Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in The Astrophysical Journal, show how LISA, a gravitational wave observatory led by ESA and slated to launch in the mid-2030s, could find planets orbiting pairs of white dwarf stars. It could detect a Jupiter-mass planet in such systems up to thousands of light-years away, NASA says.

SpaceX is targeting 9:35 p.m. ET (8:35 p.m. CT) Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026, to launch the USSF-627 mission on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, at the open of a four-hour window. The backup is 9:21 p.m. ET (8:21 p.m. CT) Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026.

Sources: Cameron County Commissioners Court, agenda for Nov. 17, 2026, filed Nov. 10, 2026 (PDF) · FAA, SpaceX Starship project page, updated Nov. 10, 2026 · City of Starbase, Notice of Public Hearing, posted Nov. 6, 2026 (PDF)

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