artemis

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A taller, heavier, smarter version of SpaceX’s Starship is almost ready to fly

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Starship will test its payload deployment mechanism on its seventh test flight.

SpaceX’s first second-generation Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, could launch as soon as January 13. Credit: SpaceX

An upsized version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week.

The two-mile transfer moved the bullet-shaped spaceship one step closer to launch Monday from SpaceX’s Starbase test site in South Texas. The launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 2200 UTC). This will be the seventh full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft and the first of 2025.

In the coming days, SpaceX technicians will lift the ship on top of the Super Heavy booster already emplaced on the launch mount. Then, teams will complete the final tests and preparations for the countdown on Monday.

“The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades, attempt Starship’s first payload deployment test, fly multiple reentry experiments geared towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy booster,” SpaceX officials wrote in a mission overview posted on the company’s website.

The mission Monday will repeat many of the maneuvers SpaceX demonstrated on the last two Starship test flights. The company will again attempt to return the Super Heavy booster to the launch site and attempt to catch it with two mechanical arms, or “chopsticks,” on the launch tower approximately seven minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX accomplished this feat on the fifth Starship test flight in October but aborted a catch attempt on a November flight because of damaged sensors on the tower chopsticks. The booster, which remained healthy, diverted to a controlled splashdown offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX’s next Starship prototype, Ship 33, emerges from its assembly building at Starbase, Texas, early Thursday morning. Credit: SpaceX/Elon Musk via X

For the next flight, SpaceX added protections to the sensors on the tower and will test radar instruments on the chopsticks to provide more accurate ranging measurements for returning vehicles. These modifications should improve the odds of a successful catch of the Super Heavy booster and of Starship on future missions.

In another first, one of the 33 Raptor engines that will fly on this Super Heavy booster—designated Booster 14 in SpaceX’s fleet—was recovered from the booster that launched and returned to Starbase in October. For SpaceX, this is a step toward eventually flying the entire rocket repeatedly. The Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft are designed for full reusability.

After separation of the booster stage, the Starship upper stage will ignite six engines to accelerate to nearly orbital velocity, attaining enough energy to fly halfway around the world before gravity pulls it back into the atmosphere. Like the past three test flights, SpaceX will guide Starship toward a controlled reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia around one hour after liftoff.

New ship, new goals

The most significant changes engineers will test next week are on the ship, or upper stage, of SpaceX’s enormous rocket. The most obvious difference on Starship Version 2, or Block 2, is with the vehicle’s forward flaps. Engineers redesigned the flaps, reducing their size and repositioning them closer to the tip of the ship’s nose to better protect them from the scorching heat of reentry. Cameras onboard Starship showed heat damage to the flaps during reentry on test flights last year.

SpaceX is also developing an upgraded Super Heavy booster that is slightly taller than the existing model. The next version of the booster will produce more thrust and will be slightly taller than the current Super Heavy, but for the upcoming test flight, SpaceX will still use the first-generation booster design.

Starship Block 2 has smaller flaps than previous ships. The flaps are located in a more leeward position to protect them from the heat of reentry. Credit: SpaceX

For next week’s flight, Super Heavy and Starship combined will hold more than 10.5 million pounds of fuel and oxidizer. The ship’s propellant tanks have 25 percent more volume than previous iterations of the vehicle, and the payload compartment, which contains 10 mock-ups of Starlink Internet satellites on this launch, is somewhat smaller. Put together, the changes add nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters) to the rocket’s height, bringing the full stack to approximately 404 feet (123.1 meters).

This means SpaceX will break its own record for launching the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. And the company will do it again with the even larger Starship Version 3, which SpaceX says will have nine upper stage engines, instead of six, and will deliver up to 440,000 pounds (200 metric tons) of cargo to low-Earth orbit.

Other changes debuting with Starship Version 2 next week include:

• Vacuum jacketing of propellant feedlines

• A new fuel feedline system for the ship’s Raptor vacuum engines

• An improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors

• Redesigned inertial navigation and star tracking sensors

• Integrated smart batteries and power units to distribute 2.7 megawatts of power across the ship

• An increase to more than 30 cameras onboard the vehicle.

Laying the foundation

The enhanced avionics system will support future missions to prove SpaceX’s ability to refuel Starships in orbit and return the ship to the launch site. For example, SpaceX will fly a more powerful flight computer and new antennas that integrate connectivity with the Starlink Internet constellation, GPS navigation satellites, and backup functions for traditional radio communication links. With Starlink, SpaceX said Starship can stream more than 120Mbps of real-time high-definition video and telemetry in every phase of flight.

These changes “all add additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions,” SpaceX said. “The ship’s heat shield will also use the latest generation tiles and includes a backup layer to protect from missing or damaged tiles.”

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, a little more than 17 minutes into the flight, Starship will deploy 10 dummy payloads similar in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites. The mock-ups will soar around the world on a suborbital trajectory, just like Starship, and reenter over the unpopulated Indian Ocean. Future Starship flights will launch real next-gen Starlink satellites to add capacity to the Starlink broadband network, but they’re too big and too heavy to launch on SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX will again reignite one of the ship’s Raptor engines in the vacuum of space, repeating a successful test achieved on Flight 6 in November. The engine restart capability is important for several reasons. It gives the ship the ability to maneuver itself out of low-Earth orbit for reentry (not a concern for Starship’s suborbital tests), and will allow the vehicle to propel itself to higher orbits, the Moon, or Mars once SpaceX masters the technology for orbital refueling.

Artist’s illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

NASA has contracts with SpaceX to build a derivative of Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the Moon for the agency’s Artemis program. The NASA program manager overseeing SpaceX’s lunar lander contract, Lisa Watson-Morgan, said she was pleased with the results of the in-space engine restart demo last year.

“The whole path to the Moon, as we are getting ready to land on the Moon, we’ll perform a series of maneuvers, and the Raptors will have an environment that is very, very cold,” Morgan told Ars in a recent interview. “To that, it’s going to be important that they’re able to relight for landing purposes. So that was a great first step towards that.

“In addition, after we land, clearly, the Raptors will be off, and it will get very cold, and they will have to relight in a cold environment (to launch the crews off the lunar surface),” she said. “So that’s why that step was critical for the Human Landing System and NASA’s return to the Moon.”

“The biggest technology challenge remaining”

SpaceX continues to experiment with Starship’s heat shield, which the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has described as “the biggest technology challenge remaining with Starship.” In order for SpaceX to achieve its lofty goal of launching Starships multiple times per day, the heat shield needs to be fully and immediately reusable.

While the last three ships have softly splashed down in the Indian Ocean, some of their heat-absorbing tiles stripped away from the vehicle during reentry, when it’s exposed to temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius).

Engineers removed tiles from some areas of the ship for next week’s test flight in order to “stress-test” vulnerable parts of the vehicle. They also smoothed and tapered the edge of the tile line, where the ceramic heat shield gives way to the ship’s stainless steel skin, to address “hot spots” observed during reentry on the most recent test flight.

“Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry,” SpaceX said.

SpaceX is also flying rudimentary catch fittings on Starship to test their thermal performance on reentry. The ship will fly a more demanding trajectory during descent to probe the structural limits of the redesigned flaps at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure, according to SpaceX.

All told, SpaceX’s inclusion of a satellite deployment demo and ship upgrades on next week’s test flight will lay the foundation for future missions, perhaps in the next few months, to take the next great leap in Starship development.

In comments following the last Starship test flight in November, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X that the company could try to return the ship to a catch back at the launch site—something that would require the vehicle to complete at least one full orbit of Earth—as soon as the next flight following Monday’s mission.

“We will do one more ocean landing of the ship,” Musk posted. “If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

A taller, heavier, smarter version of SpaceX’s Starship is almost ready to fly Read More »

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NASA says Orion’s heat shield is good to go for Artemis II—but does it matter?

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“We have since determined that while the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere, as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield outer layer, leading to gases forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield,” said Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator. “This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer.”

An independent team of experts concurred with NASA’s determination of the root cause, Melroy said.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, Associate Administrator Jim Free, and Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman speak with reporters Thursday in Washington, DC. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Counterintuitively, this means NASA engineers are comfortable with the safety of the heat shield if the Orion spacecraft reenters the atmosphere at a slightly steeper angle than it did on Artemis I and spends more time subjected to higher temperatures.

When the Orion spacecraft climbed back out of the atmosphere during the Artemis I skip reentry, a period known as the skip dwell, NASA said heating rates decreased and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This generated gases inside the heat shield through a process known as pyrolysis. 

“Pyrolysis is just burning without oxygen,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars program. “We learned that as part of that reaction, the permeability of the Avcoat material is essential.”

During the skip dwell, “the production of those gases was higher than the permeability could tolerate, so as a result, pressure differential was created. That pressure led to cracks in plane with the outer mold line of the vehicle,” Kshatriya said.

NASA didn’t know this could happen because engineers tested the heat shield on the ground at higher temperatures than the Orion spacecraft encountered in flight to prove the thermal barrier could withstand the most extreme possible heating during reentry.

“What we missed was this critical region in the middle, and we missed that region because we didn’t have the test facilities to produce the low-level energies that occur during skip and dwell,” Kshatriya said Thursday.

During the investigation, NASA replicated the charring and cracking after engineers devised a test procedure to expose Avcoat heat shield material to the actual conditions of the Artemis I reentry.

So, for Artemis II, NASA plans to modify the reentry trajectory to reduce the skip reentry’s dwell time. Let’s include some numbers to help illustrate the difference.

The distance traveled by Artemis I during the reentry phase of the mission was more than 3,000 nautical miles (3,452 miles; 5,556 kilometers), according to Kshatriya. This downrange distance will be limited to no more than 1,775 nautical miles (2,042 miles; 3,287 kilometers) on Artemis II, effectively reducing the dwell time the Orion spacecraft spends in the lower heating regime that led to the cracking on Artemis I.

NASA’s inspector general report in May included new images of Orion’s heat shield that the agency did not initially release after the Artemis I mission. Credit: NASA Inspector General

With this change, Kshatriya said NASA engineers don’t expect to see the heat shield erosion they saw on Artemis I. “The gas generation that occurs during that skip dwell is sufficiently low that the environment for crack generation is not going to overwhelm the structural integrity of the char layer.”

For future Orion spaceships, NASA and its Orion prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, will incorporate changes to address the heat shield’s permeability problem.

Waiting for what?

NASA officials discussed the heat shield issue, and broader plans for the Artemis program, in a press conference in Washington on Thursday. But the event’s timing added a coat of incredulity to much of what they said. President-elect Donald Trump, with SpaceX founder Elon Musk in his ear, has vowed to cut wasteful government spending.

NASA says Orion’s heat shield is good to go for Artemis II—but does it matter? Read More »

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Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator

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President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator.

“I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology, and exploration.”

In a post on X, Isaacman said he was “honored” to receive Trump’s nomination.

“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” Isaacman wrote. “On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun.”

Top officials who served at NASA under President Trump and President Obama endorsed Isaacman as the next NASA boss.

“Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family,” said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump’s first term in the White House. “Jared’s vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him.”

Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman’s nomination was “terrific news,” adding that “he has the opportunity to build on NASA’s amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future.”

Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training. If the Senate confirms his nomination, Isaacman would become the 15th NASA administrator, and the fourth who has flown in space.

Trump nominates Jared Isaacman to become the next NASA administrator Read More »

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NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix

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A good sign

The readiness of the Orion crew capsule, where the four Artemis II astronauts will live during their voyage around the Moon, is driving NASA’s schedule for the mission. Officially, Artemis II is projected to launch in September of next year, but there’s little chance of meeting that schedule.

At the beginning of this year, NASA officials ruled out any opportunity to launch Artemis II in 2024 due to several technical issues with the Orion spacecraft. Several of these issues are now resolved, but NASA has not released any meaningful updates on the most significant problem.

This problem involves the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. During atmospheric reentry at the end of the uncrewed Artemis I test flight in 2022, the Orion capsule’s heat shield eroded and cracked in unexpected ways, prompting investigations by NASA engineers and an independent panel.

NASA’s Orion heat shield inquiry ran for nearly two years. The investigation has wrapped up, two NASA officials said last month, but they declined to discuss any details of the root cause of the heat shield issue or the actions required to resolve the problem on Artemis II.

These corrective options ranged from doing nothing to changing the Orion spacecraft’s reentry angle to mitigate heating or physically modifying the Artemis II heat shield. In the latter scenario, NASA would have to disassemble the Orion spacecraft, which is already put together and is undergoing environmental testing at Kennedy Space Center. This would likely delay the Artemis II launch by a couple of years.

In August, NASA’s top human exploration official told Ars that the agency would hold off on stacking the SLS rocket until engineers had a good handle on the heat shield problem. There are limits to how long the solid rocket boosters can remain stacked vertically. The joints connecting each segment of the rocket motors are certified for one year. This clock doesn’t actually start ticking until NASA stacks the next booster segments on top of the lowermost segments.

However, NASA waived this rule on Artemis I when the boosters were stacked nearly two years before the successful launch.

A NASA spokesperson told Ars on Wednesday that the agency had nothing new to share on the Orion heat shield or what changes, if any, are required for the Artemis II mission. This information should be released before the end of the year, she said. At the same time, NASA could announce a new target launch date for Artemis II at the end of 2025, or more likely in 2026.

But because NASA gave the “go” for SLS stacking now, it seems safe to rule out any major hardware changes on the Orion heat shield for Artemis II.

NASA is stacking the Artemis II rocket, implying a simple heat shield fix Read More »

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One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon

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Talking to the Moon —

“This has really been a transformational year for us.”

–

The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Enlarge / The second Intuitive Machines lander is prepared for hot-fire testing this week.

Intuitive Machines

One of the miracles of the Apollo Moon landings is that they were televised, live, for all the world to see. This transparency diffused doubts about whether the lunar landings really happened and were watched by billions of people.

However, as remarkable a technical achievement as it was to broadcast from the Moon in 1969, the video was grainy and black and white. As NASA contemplates a return to the Moon as part of the Artemis program, it wants much higher resolution video and communications with its astronauts on the lunar surface.

To that end, NASA announced this week that it had awarded a contract to Houston-based Intuitive Machines for “lunar relay services.” Essentially this means Intuitive Machines will be responsible for building a small constellation of satellites around the Moon that will beam data back to Earth from the lunar surface.

“One of the requirements is a 4K data link,” said Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, in an interview. “That kind of high fidelity data only comes from a data relay with a larger antenna than can be delivered to the surface of the Moon.”

About the plan

This is part of NASA’s plan to build a more robust “Near Space Network” for communications within 1 million miles of Earth (the Moon is about 240,000 miles from Earth). Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth as much as $4.82 billion over the next decade, depending on the level of communication services that NASA chooses to purchase.

The space agency is also expected to award a ground-based component of this network for large dishes to receive signals from near space, taking some of this burden off the Deep Space Network. Altemus said Intuitive Machines has also bid on this ground component contract.

The Houston company, with its IM-1 mission, made a largely successful landing on the Moon in February. A second lunar landing mission, IM-2, is scheduled to take place in late December or January, a few months from now. Funded largely by NASA, the IM-2 mission will carry a small drill to the South Pole of the Moon to search for water ice in Shackleton Crater.

Then, approximately 15 months from now, the company is planning to launch another lander, IM-3. This mission is likely to carry the first data-relay satellite—each is intended to be about 500 kg, Altemus said, but the final design of the vehicles is still being finalized—to lunar orbit. Assuming this first satellite works well, the two following IM missions will each carry two relay satellites, making for a constellation of five spacecraft orbiting the Moon.

Two of the satellites will go into polar orbits and serve NASA’s Artemis needs at the South Pole, Altemus said. Two more are likely to go into halo orbits, and a fifth satellite will be placed into an equatorial orbit. This will provide full coverage of the Moon not just for communications, but also for position, navigation, and timing.

Intuitive Machines rising

A former deputy director of Johnson Space Center, Altemus founded Intuitive Machines in 2013 along with an investor, Kam Ghaffarian, and an aerospace engineer named Tim Crain. It hasn’t always been easy. Development of Intuitive Machines’ Nova C lander took years longer than anticipated; there were setbacks such as a propellant tank failure, and money was at times tight.

In part to address these financial difficulties, the company went public in 2023, at the tail end of the mania in which space companies were becoming publicly traded via special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Many space companies that went public this way have struggled mightily, and Intuitive Machines has also faced similar pressures.

“It’s been a challenge,” Altemus said. “We went public in 2023, and navigating that was the story of last year, as well as getting to the launch pad.”

But then good things started happening. Despite some technical troubles, including the failure of its altimeter, the company’s first lander managed a soft touchdown on the Moon on its side. Even with this untinended orientation, the Intuitive Machines-1 mission still managed to complete the vast majority of its science objectives. In August, the company won its fourth task order from NASA—essentially a lunar delivery mission—under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

And then the company won the massive data relay contract this week.

“This has really been a transformational year for us,” Altemus said. “The vision for the company is finally coming together.”

One company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon Read More »

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A key NASA commercial partner faces severe financial challenges

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Station struggles —

“The business model had to change.”

–

Spacious zero-g quarters with a big TV.

Enlarge / Rendering of an individual crew quarter within the Axiom habitat module.

Axiom Space

Axiom Space is facing significant financial headwinds as the company attempts to deliver on two key commercial programs for NASA—the development of a private space station in low-Earth orbit and spacesuits that could one day be worn by astronauts on the Moon.

Forbes reports that Axiom Space, which was founded by billionaire Kam Ghaffarian and NASA executive Mike Suffredini in 2016, has been struggling to raise money to keep its doors open and has had difficulties meeting its payroll dating back to at least early 2023. In addition, the Houston-based company has fallen behind on payments to key suppliers, including Thales Alenia Space for its space station and SpaceX for crewed launches.

“The lack of fresh capital has exacerbated long-standing financial challenges that have grown alongside Axiom’s payroll, which earlier this year was nearly 1,000 employees,” the publication reports. “Sources familiar with the company’s operations told Forbes that co-founder and CEO Michael Suffredini, who spent 30 years at NASA, ran Axiom like a big government program instead of the resource-constrained startup it really was. His mandate to staff up to 800 workers by the end of 2022 led to mass hiring so detached from product development needs that new engineers often found themselves with nothing to do.”

The report underscores a lot of what Ars has been hearing about the financial struggles of Axiom in recent months. Dozens of employees have been laid off, and Thales officials have made no secret of their discontent at not being paid in full for the production of pressure modules for the Axiom space station. Although the departure of Suffredini as chief executive was framed as being his decision for personal reasons, it seems probable that he moved out of the company for performance reasons.

Space station troubles

All of this raises significant questions about Axiom’s ability to deliver on the primary reason the company was created—to build a successor to the International Space Station. Suffredini joined Ghaffarian in the venture after serving as manager of NASA’s space station program for more than a decade. When they founded the company in 2016, the plan was to launch an initial space station module in 2020.

The timeline for station development has since been delayed multiple times. Presently, Axiom plans to launch its first module to the International Space Station no earlier than late 2026. And the company’s ambitions have been downsized, according to the report. Instead of a four-module station that would be separated from the government-operated space station by 2030, Axiom is likely to go forward with a smaller station consisting of just two elements. This station would have lower power and reduced commercial potential, according to the article.

“The business model had always counted on having significant power for microgravity research, semiconductor production, and pharmaceutical production, plus supporting life in space,” a source told the publication. “The business model had to change… and that has continued to make it challenging for the company to get around its cash flow issues.”

Axiom is one of several companies—alongside Blue Origin, Voyager Space, Vast Space, and potentially SpaceX—working with NASA to devise commercial replacements for the International Space Station after that facility retires in 2030.

NASA plans to issue a “request for proposals” for the second round of commercial space station contracts in 2025 and make an award the following year. Multiple sources have indicated that the space agency would like to award at least two companies in this second phase. However, Ghaffarian told Forbes that he would prefer NASA to decide next year and award a single competitor.

“Today there’s not enough market for more than one,” he said.

This may be true, although some of Axiom’s competitors may dispute it. Nevertheless, Ghaffarian’s desire for an award next year, and for a sole winner, underscores the evident urgency of Axiom’s fundraising needs.

Dragons and spacesuits

The report also notes that Axiom has lost significant amounts of funding on three private astronaut missions it has flown to the International Space Station to date. Ghaffarian said these missions were conducted at a loss to build relationships with global space agencies. This does make some sense, as space agencies in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere are likely to be customers of commercial space stations in the next decade. However, Axiom is ill-positioned to absorb such launches financially.

The publication reveals that Axiom is due to pay $670 million to SpaceX for four Crew Dragon missions, each of which includes a launch and ride for four astronauts to and from the station encompassing a one- to two-week period. This equates to $167.5 million per launch, or $41.9 million per seat.

Axiom’s other major line of business is a $228 million development contract with NASA to develop spacesuits for the Artemis Program, which will allow astronauts to venture outside the Starship lunar lander on the Moon’s surface. According to the Forbes report, this initiative has pulled resources away from the space station program.

Multiple sources have told Ars that, from a financial and technical standpoint, this spacesuit program is on better footing than the station program. And at this point, the spacesuit program is probably the one element of Axiom’s business that NASA views as essential going forward.

A key NASA commercial partner faces severe financial challenges Read More »

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Rocket delivered to launch site for first human flight to the Moon since 1972

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Rocket delivered to launch site for first human flight to the Moon since 1972

The central piece of NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. Agency officials intend to start stacking the towering launcher in the next couple of months for a mission late next year carrying a team of four astronauts around the Moon.

The Artemis II mission, officially scheduled for September 2025, will be the first voyage by humans to the vicinity of the Moon since the last Apollo lunar landing mission in 1972. NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian mission specialist Jeremy Hansen will ride the SLS rocket away from Earth, then fly around the far side of the Moon and return home inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

“The core is the backbone of SLS, and it’s the backbone of the Artemis mission,” said Matthew Ramsey, NASA’s mission manager for Artemis II. “We’ve been waiting for the core to get here because all the integrated tests and checkouts that we do have to have the core stage. It has the flight avionics that drive the whole system. The boosters are also important, but the core is really the backbone for Artemis. So it’s a big day.”

The core stage rolled off of NASA’s Pegasus barge at Kennedy early Wednesday, following a weeklong ocean voyage from New Orleans, where Boeing builds the rocket under contract to NASA.

Ramsey told Ars that ground teams hope to begin stacking the rocket’s two powerful solid rocket boosters on NASA’s mobile launcher platform in September. Each booster, supplied by Northrop Grumman, is made of five segments with pre-packed solid propellant and a nose cone. All the pieces for the SLS boosters are at Kennedy and ready for stacking, Ramsey said.

The SLS upper stage, built by United Launch Alliance, is also at the Florida launch site. Now, the core stage is at Kennedy. In August or September, NASA plans to deliver the two remaining elements of the SLS rocket to Florida. These are the adapter structures that will connect the core stage to the upper stage, and the upper stage to the Orion spacecraft.

A heavy-duty crane inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) will hoist each segment of the SLS boosters into place on the launch platform. Once the boosters are fully stacked, ground teams will lift the 212-foot (65-meter) core stage vertical in the transfer aisle running through the center of the VAB. A crane will then lower the core stage between the boosters. That could happen as soon as December, according to Ramsey.

Then comes the launch vehicle stage adapter, the upper stage, the Orion stage adapter, and finally, the Orion spacecraft itself.

Moving toward operations

NASA’s inspector general reported in 2022 that NASA’s first four Artemis missions will each cost $4.1 billion. Subsequent documents, including a Government Accountability Office report last year, suggest the expendable SLS core stage is responsible for at least a quarter of the cost for each Artemis flight.

The core stage for Artemis II is powered by four hydrogen-fueled RS-25 engines produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Two of the reusable engines for Artemis II have flown on the space shuttle, and the other two RS-25s were built in the shuttle era but never flew. Each SLS launch will put the core stage and its engines in the Atlantic Ocean.

Steve Wofford, who manages the stages office for the SLS program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, told Ars there are “no major configuration differences” between the core stages for Artemis I and Artemis II. The only minor differences involve instrumentation that NASA wanted on Artemis I to measure pressures, accelerations, vibrations, temperatures, and other parameters on the first flight of the Space Launch System.

“We are still working off some flight observations that we made on Artemis I, but no showstoppers,” Wofford said. “On the first article, the test flight, Artemis I, we really loaded it up. That’s a golden opportunity to learn as much as you can about the vehicle and the flight regime, and anchor all your models… As you progress, you need less and less of that. So Core Stage 2 will have less development flight instrumentation than Core Stage 1, and then Core Stage 3 will have less still.”

Rocket delivered to launch site for first human flight to the Moon since 1972 Read More »

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We take a stab at decoding SpaceX’s ever-changing plans for Starship in Florida

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SpaceX's Starship tower (left) at Launch Complex 39A dwarfs the launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket (right).

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Starship tower (left) at Launch Complex 39A dwarfs the launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket (right).

There are a couple of ways to read the announcement from the Federal Aviation Administration that it’s kicking off a new environmental review of SpaceX’s plan to launch the most powerful rocket in the world from Florida.

The FAA said on May 10 that it plans to develop an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for SpaceX’s proposal to launch Starships from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The FAA ordered this review after SpaceX updated the regulatory agency on the projected Starship launch rate and the design of the ground infrastructure needed at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), the historic launch pad once used for Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.

Dual environmental reviews

At the same time, the US Space Force is overseeing a similar EIS for SpaceX’s proposal to take over a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a few miles south of LC-39A. This launch pad, designated Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37), is available for use after United Launch Alliance’s last Delta rocket lifted off there in April.

On the one hand, these environmental reviews often take a while and could cloud Elon Musk’s goal of having Starship launch sites in Florida ready for service by the end of 2025. “A couple of years would not be a surprise,” said George Nield, an aerospace industry consultant and former head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

Another way to look at the recent FAA and Space Force announcements of pending environmental reviews is that SpaceX finally appears to be cementing its plans to launch Starship from Florida. These plans have changed quite a bit in the last five years.

The environmental reviews will culminate in a decision on whether to approve SpaceX’s proposals for Starship launches at LC-39A and SLC-37. The FAA will then go through a separate licensing process, similar to the framework used to license the first three Starship test launches from South Texas.

NASA has contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop a human-rated version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon on the first two Artemis lunar landing flights later this decade. To do that, SpaceX must stage a fuel depot in low-Earth orbit to refuel the Starship lunar lander before it heads for the Moon. It will take a series of Starship tanker flights—perhaps 10 to 15—to fill the depot with cryogenic propellants.

Launching that many Starships over the course of a month or two will require SpaceX to alternate between at least two launch pads. NASA and SpaceX officials say the best way to do this is by launching Starships from one pad in Texas and another in Florida.

Earlier this week, Ars spoke with Lisa Watson-Morgan, who manages NASA’s human-rated lunar lander program. She was at Kennedy Space Center this week for briefings on the Starship lander and a competing lander from Blue Origin. One of the topics, she said, was the FAA’s new environmental review before Starship can launch from LC-39A.

“I would say we’re doing all we can to pull the schedule to where it needs to be, and we are working with SpaceX to make sure that their timeline, the EIS timeline, and NASA’s all work in parallel as much as we can to achieve our objectives,” she said. “When you’re writing it down on paper just as it is, it looks like there could be some tight areas, but I would say we’re collectively working through it.”

Officially, SpaceX plans to perform a dress rehearsal for the Starship lunar landing in late 2025. This will be a full demonstration, with refueling missions, an uncrewed landing of Starship on the lunar surface, then a takeoff from the Moon, before NASA commits to putting people on Starship on the Artemis III mission, currently slated for September 2026.

So you can see that schedules are already tight for the Starship lunar landing demonstration if SpaceX activates launch pads in Florida late next year.

We take a stab at decoding SpaceX’s ever-changing plans for Starship in Florida Read More »

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NASA confirms “independent review” of Orion heat shield issue

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The Orion spacecraft after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Artemis I mission.

Enlarge / The Orion spacecraft after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Artemis I mission.

NASA has asked a panel of outside experts to review the agency’s investigation into the unexpected loss of material from the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft on a test flight in 2022.

Chunks of charred material cracked and chipped away from Orion’s heat shield during reentry at the end of the 25-day unpiloted Artemis I mission in December 2022. Engineers inspecting the capsule after the flight found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry stripped away pieces of the heat shield as temperatures built up to 5,000° Fahrenheit.

This was the most significant discovery on the Artemis I, an unpiloted test flight that took the Orion capsule around the Moon for the first time. The next mission in NASA’s Artemis program, Artemis II, is scheduled for launch late next year on a test flight to send four astronauts around the far side of the Moon.

Another set of eyes

The heat shield, made of a material called Avcoat, is attached to the base of the Orion spacecraft in 186 blocks. Avcoat is designed to ablate, or erode, in a controlled manner during reentry. Instead, fragments fell off the heat shield that left cavities resembling potholes.

Investigators are still looking for the root cause of the heat shield problem. Since the Artemis I mission, engineers conducted sub-scale tests of the Orion heat shield in wind tunnels and high-temperature arcjet facilities. NASA has recreated the phenomenon observed on Artemis I in these ground tests, according to Rachel Kraft, an agency spokesperson.

“The team is currently synthesizing results from a variety of tests and analyses that inform the leading theory for what caused the issues,” said Rachel Kraft, a NASA spokesperson.

Last week, nearly a year and a half after the Artemis I flight, the public got its first look at the condition of the Orion heat shield with post-flight photos released in a report from NASA’s inspector general. Cameras aboard the Orion capsule also recorded pieces of the heat shield breaking off the spacecraft during reentry.

NASA’s inspector general said the char loss issue “creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions.”

“Those pictures, we’ve seen them since they were taken, but more importantly… we saw it,” said Victor Glover, pilot of the Artemis II mission, in a recent interview with Ars. “More than any picture or report, I’ve seen that heat shield, and that really set the bit for how interested I was in the details.”

NASA confirms “independent review” of Orion heat shield issue Read More »

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NASA lays out how SpaceX will refuel Starships in low-Earth orbit

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Artist's illustration of two Starships docked belly-to-belly in orbit.

Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of two Starships docked belly-to-belly in orbit.

SpaceX

Some time next year, NASA believes SpaceX will be ready to link two Starships in orbit for an ambitious refueling demonstration, a technical feat that will put the Moon within reach.

SpaceX is under contract with NASA to supply two human-rated Starships for the first two astronaut landings on the Moon through the agency’s Artemis program, which aims to return people to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The first of these landings, on NASA’s Artemis III mission, is currently targeted for 2026, although this is widely viewed as an ambitious schedule.

Last year, NASA awarded a contract to Blue Origin to develop its own human-rated Blue Moon lunar lander, giving Artemis managers two options for follow-on missions.

Designers of both landers were future-minded. They designed Starship and Blue Moon for refueling in space. This means they can eventually be reused for multiple missions, and ultimately, could take advantage of propellants produced from resources on the Moon or Mars.

Amit Kshatriya, who leads the “Moon to Mars” program within NASA’s exploration division, outlined SpaceX’s plan to do this in a meeting with a committee of the NASA Advisory Council on Friday. He said the Starship test program is gaining momentum, with the next test flight from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas expected by the end of May.

“Production is not the issue,” Kshatriya said. “They’re rolling cores out. The engines are flowing into the factory. That is not the issue. The issue is it is a significant development challenge to do what they’re trying to do … We have to get on top of this propellant transfer problem. It is the right problem to try and solve. We’re trying to build a blueprint for deep space exploration.”

Road map to refueling

Before getting to the Moon, SpaceX and Blue Origin must master the technologies and techniques required for in-space refueling. Right now, SpaceX is scheduled to attempt the first demonstration of a large-scale propellant transfer between two Starships in orbit next year.

There will be at least several more Starship test flights before then. During the most recent Starship test flight in March, SpaceX conducted a cryogenic propellant transfer test between two tanks inside the vehicle. This tank-to-tank transfer of liquid oxygen was part of a demonstration supported with NASA funding. Agency officials said this demonstration would allow engineers to learn more about how the fluid behaves in a low-gravity environment.

Kshatriya said that while engineers are still analyzing the results of the cryogenic transfer demonstration, the test on the March Starship flight “was successful by all accounts.”

“That milestone is behind them,” he said Friday. Now, SpaceX will move out with more Starship test flights. The next launch will try to check off a few more capabilities SpaceX didn’t demonstrate on the March test flight.

These will include a precise landing of Starship’s Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico, which is necessary before SpaceX tries to land the booster back at its launch pad in Texas. Another objective will likely be the restart of a single Raptor engine on Starship in flight, which SpaceX didn’t accomplish on the March flight due to unexpected roll rates on the vehicle as it coasted through space. Achieving an in-orbit engine restart—necessary to guide Starship toward a controlled reentry—is a prerequisite for future launches into a stable higher orbit, where the ship could loiter for hours, days, or weeks to deploy satellites and attempt refueling.

In the long run, SpaceX wants to ramp up the Starship launch cadence to many daily flights from multiple launch sites. To achieve that goal, SpaceX plans to recover and rapidly reuse Starships and Super Heavy boosters, building on expertise from the partially reusable Falcon 9 rocket. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, is keen on reusing ships and boosters as soon as possible. Earlier this month, Musk said he is optimistic SpaceX can recover a Super Heavy booster in Texas later this year and land a Starship back in Texas sometime next year.

NASA lays out how SpaceX will refuel Starships in low-Earth orbit Read More »

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NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue

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Flight rationale —

“When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t.”

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NASA's Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2021, at the end of the Artemis I mission.

Enlarge / NASA’s Orion spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean on December 11, 2021, at the end of the Artemis I mission.

NASA

NASA officials declared the Artemis I mission successful in late 2021, and it’s hard to argue with that assessment. The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft performed nearly flawlessly on an unpiloted flight that took it around the Moon and back to Earth, setting the stage for the Artemis II, the program’s first crew mission.

But one of the things engineers saw on Artemis I that didn’t quite match expectations was an issue with the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. As the capsule streaked back into Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the mission, the heat shield ablated, or burned off, in a different manner than predicted by computer models.

More of the charred material than expected came off the heat shield during the Artemis I reentry, and the way it came off was somewhat uneven, NASA officials said. Orion’s heat shield is made of a material called Avcoat, which is designed to burn off as the spacecraft plunges into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph (40,000 km per hour). Coming back from the Moon, Orion encountered temperatures up to 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius), hotter than a spacecraft sees when it reenters the atmosphere from low-Earth orbit.

Despite heat shield issue, the Orion spacecraft safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Engineers discovered the uneven charring during post-flight inspections.

No answers yet

Amit Kshatriya, who oversees development for the Artemis missions in NASA’s exploration division, said Friday that the agency is still looking for the root cause of the heat shield issue. Managers want to be sure they understand the cause before proceeding with Artemis II, which will send astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day flight around the far side of the Moon.

This will be the first time humans fly near the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. In January, NASA announced a delay in the launch of Artemis II from late 2024 until September 2025, largely due to the unresolved investigation into the heat shield issue.

“We are still in the middle of our investigation on the performance of the heat shield from Artemis I,” Kshatriya said Friday in a meeting with a committee of the NASA Advisory Council.

Engineers have performed sub-scale heat shield tests in wind tunnels and arc jet facilities to better understand what led to the uneven charring on Artemis I. “We’re getting close to the final answer in terms of that cause,” Kshatriya said.

NASA officials previously said it is unlikely they will need to make changes to the heat shield already installed on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis II, but haven’t ruled it out. A redesign or modifications to the Orion heat shield on Artemis II would probably delay the mission by at least a year.

Instead, engineers are analyzing all of the possible trajectories the Orion spacecraft could fly when it reenters the atmosphere at the end of the Artemis II mission. On Artemis I, Orion flew a skip reentry profile, where it dipped into the atmosphere, skipped back into space, and then made a final descent into the atmosphere, sort of like a rock skipping across a pond. This profile allows Orion to make more precise splashdowns near recovery teams in the Pacific Ocean and reduces g-forces on the spacecraft and the crew riding inside. It also splits up the heat load on the spacecraft into two phases.

The Apollo missions flew a direct reentry profile. There is also a reentry mode available called a ballistic entry, in which the spacecraft would fly through the atmosphere unguided.

Ground teams at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission into an altitude chamber earlier this month.

Enlarge / Ground teams at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission into an altitude chamber earlier this month.

The charred material began flying off the heat shield in the first phase of the skip reentry. Engineers are looking at how the skip reentry profile affected the performance of the Orion heat shield. NASA wants to understand how the Orion heat shield would perform during each of the possible reentry trajectories for Artemis II.

“What we have the analysis teams off doing is saying, ‘OK, independent of what the constraints are going to be, what can we tolerate?” Kshatriya said.

Once officials understand the cause of the heat shield charring, engineers will determine what kind of trajectory Artemis II needs to fly on reentry to minimize risk to the crew. Then, managers will look at building what NASA calls flight rationale. Essentially, this is a process of convincing themselves the spacecraft is safe to fly.

“When we stitch it all together, we’ll either have flight rationale or we won’t,” Kshatriya said.

Assuming NASA approves the flight rationale for Artemis II, there will be additional discussions about how to ensure Orion heat shields are safe to fly on downstream Artemis missions, which will have higher-speed reentry profiles as astronauts return from landings on the Moon.

In the meantime, preparations on the Orion spacecraft for Artemis II continue at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The crew and service modules for Artemis II were mated together earlier this year, and the entire Orion spacecraft is now inside a vacuum chamber for environmental testing.

NASA still doesn’t understand root cause of Orion heat shield issue Read More »

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Rocket Report: A new estimate of Starship costs; Japan launches spy satellite

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A bigger tug —

One space tug company runs into financial problems; another says go big or go home.

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An H-IIA rocket lifts off with the IGS Optical-8 spy satellite.

Enlarge / An H-IIA rocket lifts off with the IGS Optical-8 spy satellite.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Welcome to Edition 6.27 of the Rocket Report! This week, we discuss an intriguing new report looking at Starship. Most fascinating, the report covers SpaceX’s costs to build a Starship and how these costs will come down as the company ramps up its build and launch cadence. At the other end of the spectrum, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has a plan to get astronauts back to the Moon that would wholly ignore the opportunities afforded by Starship.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

The problem at America’s military spaceports. The Biden administration is requesting $1.3 billion over the next five years to revamp infrastructure at the Space Force’s ranges in Florida and California, Ars reports. This will help address things like roads, bridges, utilities, and airfields that, in many cases, haven’t seen an update in decades. But it’s not enough, according to the Space Force. Last year, Cape Canaveral was the departure point for 72 orbital rocket launches, and officials anticipate more than 100 this year. The infrastructure and workforce at the Florida spaceport could support about 150 launches in a year without any major changes, but launch activity is likely to exceed that number within a few years.

Higher fees incoming … Commercial launch companies operating from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, pay fees to the Space Force to reimburse for direct costs related to rocket launches. These cover expenses like weather forecast services, surveillance to ensure airplanes and boats stay out of restricted areas, and range safety support. “What that typically meant was anything we did that was specifically dedicated to that launch,” said Col. James Horne, deputy commander of the Space Force’s assured access to space directorate. This is about to change after legislation passed by Congress in December allows the Space Force to charge indirect fees to commercial providers. This money will go into a fund to pay for maintenance and upgrades to infrastructure used by all launch companies at the spaceports.

Momentus is running out of money. Momentus, a company that specializes in “last mile” satellite delivery services, announced on January 12 that it is running out of money and does not have a financial lifeline, CNBC reports. The company was once valued at more than $1 billion before going public via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) in 2021 but now has a market capitalization of less than $10 million. Momentus has developed a space tug called Vigoride, designed to place small satellites into bespoke orbits after deploying from a larger rocket on a rideshare mission, such as a SpaceX Falcon 9. Now, Momentus is abandoning plans for its next mission that was due for launch in March. In December, the company laid off about 20 percent of its workforce to reduce costs.

Fatal blow? … Momentus may have received a potentially fatal blow after losing the US Space Development Agency’s recent competition for 18 so-called Tranche 2 satellites, Aviation Week reports. Instead, the SDA made recent satellite manufacturing contract awards to Rocket Lab, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, and Sierra Space. On Wednesday, Momentus announced it closed a $4 million stock sale. This should keep Momentus afloat for a while longer but won’t provide the level of capital needed to undertake any significant manufacturing or technical development work. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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Orbex may go bigger. UK-based launch startup Orbex hasn’t yet flown its small satellite launcher, called Prime, but is already looking at what’s next, according to reports by European Spaceflight and the Financial Times. New Orbex CEO Phil Chambers, who was officially appointed earlier this month, told the Financial Times that the company was already discussing the possibility of developing a larger vehicle. Speaking to European Spaceflight, Chambers described the business model to deliver orbital launch services with Prime as “robust.” Despite this, he admitted that the small launch industry was only a small sliver of the overall launch market.

Learning to walk before running … While future growth is on Orbex’s radar, its near-term focus is completing construction of a spaceport in Scotland, launching a maiden flight of Prime, and delivering on the six flights the company has already sold. The two-stage Prime rocket, fueled by “bio-propane,” will be capable of hauling a payload of approximately 180 kilograms (nearly 400 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. But Orbex has been shy about releasing updates on the progress of the Prime rocket’s development since unveiling a full-scale mock-up of the launch vehicle in 2022. Last year, the CEO who led Orbex since its founding resigned. Its most recent significant funding round was valued at 40.4 million pounds in late 2022. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: A new estimate of Starship costs; Japan launches spy satellite Read More »