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SpaceX has its sights set on Mars, but that doesn’t mean it has forgotten about Earth. Elon Musk’s company yesterday outlined its plan to put a network of internet-providing satellites around our planet, stating in a Senate hearing on broadband infrastructure that it wanted to start sending the craft into space in 2019, before the full network came online in 2024. SpaceX’s vice president of satellite government affairs, Patricia Cooper, said that the company was aiming to get a prototype satellite into space this year, before launching another in the early months of 2018. These prototypes will be used to demonstrate that the custom-built craft are capable of providing internet for Earth dwellers, but assuming the tests go successfully, SpaceX plans to start building the network proper in 2019. The company will launch additional satellites in phases until 2024, at which point Cooper says the network should have reached full capacity, with the craft operating on the Ka- and Ku-ban...

SpaceX, the ambitious rocket company headed by Elon Musk, wants to send a couple of tourists around the moon and back to Earth before the end of next year. If they manage that feat, the passengers would be the first humans to venture that far into space in more than 40 years. Mr. Musk made the announcement on Monday in a telephone news conference. He said two private individuals approached the company to see if SpaceX would be willing to send them on a weeklong cruise, which would fly past the surface of the moon — but not land — and continue outward before gravity turned the spacecraft around and brought it back to Earth for a landing. “This would do a long loop around the moon,” Mr. Musk said. The company is aiming to launch this moon mission in late 2018. The two people would spend about a week inside one of SpaceX’s Dragon 2 capsules, launched on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The spacecraft would be automated, but the travelers would undergo training for emergencies. Mr....