blue origin

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s next-gen booster fails; Pegasus will fly again

atlas v, blue origin, china, falcon 9, long march 2f, new glenn, Northrop Grumman, pythom, rocket lab, rocket report, saab, Science, shenzhou, Space, spacex, starship, super heavy, united launch alliance / Tim Belzer / November 22, 2025

With the government shutdown over, the FAA has lifted its daytime launch curfew.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn booster arrives at Port Canaveral, Florida, for the first time Tuesday aboard the “Jacklyn” landing vessel. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.20 of the Rocket Report! For the second week in a row, Blue Origin dominated the headlines with news about its New Glenn rocket. After a stunning success November 13 with the launch and landing of the second New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos’ space company revealed a roadmap this week showing how engineers will supercharge the vehicle with more engines. Meanwhile, in South Texas, SpaceX took a step toward the first flight of the next-generation Starship rocket. There will be no Rocket Report next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We look forward to resuming delivery of all the news in space lift the first week of December.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

Northrop’s Pegasus rocket wins a rare contract. A startup named Katalyst Space Technologies won a $30 million contract from NASA in August to build a robotic rescue mission for the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in low-Earth orbit. Swift, in space since 2004, is a unique instrument designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The spacecraft lacks a propulsion system and its orbit is subject to atmospheric drag, and NASA says it is “racing against the clock” to boost Swift’s orbit and extend its lifetime before it falls back to Earth. On Wednesday, Katalyst announced it selected Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to send the rescue craft into orbit next year.

Make this make sense … At first glance, this might seem like a surprise. The Pegasus XL rocket hasn’t flown since 2021 and has launched just once in the last six years. The solid-fueled rocket is carried aloft under the belly of a modified airliner, then released to fire payloads of up to 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit. It’s an expensive rocket for its size, with Northrop charging more than $25 million per launch, according to the most recent public data available; the satellites best suited to launch on Pegasus will now find much cheaper tickets to orbit on rideshare missions using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. There are a few reasons none of this mattered much to Katalyst. First, the rescue mission must launch into a very specific low-inclination orbit to rendezvous with the Swift observatory, so it won’t be able to join one of SpaceX’s rideshare missions. Second, Northrop Grumman has parts available for one more Pegasus XL rocket, and the company might have been willing to sell the launch at a discount to clear its inventory and retire the rocket’s expensive-to-maintain L-1011 carrier aircraft. And third, smaller rockets like Rocket Lab’s Electron or Firefly’s Alpha don’t quite have the performance to place Katalyst’s rescue mission into the required orbit. (submitted by gizmo23)

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Ursa Major rakes in more cash. Aerospace and defense startup Ursa Major Technologies landed a $600 million valuation in a new fundraising round, the latest sign that investors are willing to back companies developing new rocket technology, Bloomberg reports. Colorado-based Ursa Major closed its Series E fundraising round with investments from the venture capital firms Eclipse, Woodline Partners, Principia Growth, XN, and Alsop Louie Partners. The company also secured $50 million in debt financing. Ursa Major is best known as a supplier of liquid-fueled rocket engines and solid rocket motors to power a range of commercial and government vehicles.

Hypersonic tailwinds … Ursa Major says it is positioned to provide the US industrial base with propulsion systems faster and more affordably than legacy contractors can supply. “The company will rapidly field its throttleable, storable, liquid-fueled hypersonic and space-based defense solution, as well as scale its solid rocket motor and sustained space mobility manufacturing capacity,” Ursa Major said in a press release. Its customers include BAE Systems, which will use Ursa Major’s solid rocket motors to power tactical military-grade rockets, and Stratolaunch, which uses Ursa Major’s liquid-fueled Hadley engine for its hypersonic Talon-A spaceplane.

Rocket Lab celebrates two launches in 48 hours. Rocket Lab launched a payload for an undisclosed commercial customer Thursday, just hours after the company announced plans for the launch, Space News reports. The launch from Rocket Lab’s primary spaceport in New Zealand used the company’s Electron rocket, but officials released little more information on the mission, other than its nickname: “Follow My Speed.” An artist’s illustration on the mission patch indicated the payload might have been the next in a line of Earth-imaging satellites from the remote sensing company BlackSky, although the firm’s previous satellites have not launched with such secrecy.

Two hemispheres … Thursday’s launch from the Southern Hemisphere came just two days after Rocket Lab’s previous mission lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia. That flight was a suborbital launch to support a hypersonic technology demonstration for the Defense Innovation Unit and the Missile Defense Agency. All told, Rocket Lab has now launched 18 Electron rockets this year with 100 percent mission success, a company record.

Spanish startup makes a big reveal. The Spanish company PLD Space released photos of a test version of its Miura 5 rocket Thursday, calling it a “decisive step forward in the orbital launcher validation campaign.” The full-scale qualification unit, called QM1, will allow engineers to complete subsystem testing under “real conditions” to ensure the rocket’s reliability before its first mission scheduled for 2026. The first stage of the qualification unit will undergo a full propellant loading test, while the second stage will undergo a destructive test in the United States to validate the rocket’s range safety destruct system. Miura 5 is designed to deliver a little more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Still a long way to go … “Presenting our first integrated Miura 5 unit is proof that our model works: vertical integration, proprietary infrastructure and a philosophy based on testing, learning, and improving,” said Raúl Torres, CEO and co-founder of PLD Space. The reveal, however, is just the first step in a qualification campaign that takes more than a year for most rocket companies. PLD Space aims to go much faster, with plans to complete a second qualification rocket by the end of December and unveil its first flight rocket in the first quarter of next year. “This unprecedented development cadence in Europe reinforces PLD Space’s position as the company that has developed an orbital launcher in the shortest time–just two years–whilst meeting the highest quality standards,” the company said in a statement. This would be a remarkable achievement, but history suggests PLD Space has a steep climb in the months ahead. (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

Sweden digs deep in pursuit of sovereign launch. In an unsettled world, many nations are eager to develop homegrown rockets to place their own satellites into orbit. These up-and-coming spacefaring nations see it as a strategic imperative to break free from total reliance on space powers like Russia, China, and the United States. Still, some decisions are puzzling. This week, the Swedish aerospace and defense contractor Saab announced a $10 million investment in a company named Pythom. If you’re not familiar with this business, allow me to link back to a 2022 story published by Ars about Pythom’s questionable safety practices. The company has kept quiet since then, until the name surprisingly popped up again in a press release from Saab, a firm with a reputation that seems to be diametrically opposed to that of Pythom.

Just enough … The statement from Saab suggests its $10 million contribution to Pythom will make it the “lead investor” in the company’s recent funding round. Pythom hasn’t said anything more about this funding round, but Saab said the investment will accelerate Pythom’s “development and deployment of its launch systems,” which include an initial rocket capable of putting up to 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of payload into low-Earth orbit. $10 million may be just enough to keep Pythom afloat for a couple more years but is far less than the money Pythom would need to get serious about fielding an orbital launcher. Pythom is headquartered in California, but it has Swedish roots. It was founded by the Swedish married couple Tina and Tom Sjögren. The company has a couple dozen employees, and a handful of them are based in Sweden, according to Pythom’s website. (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

China is about to launch an astronaut lifeboat. China is set to launch an uncrewed Shenzhou spacecraft to the Tiangong space station to provide the Shenzhou 21 astronauts with a means of returning home, Space News reports. The launch of China’s Shenzhou 22 mission is scheduled for Monday night, US time, aboard a Long March 2F rocket. Instead of carrying astronauts, the ship will ferry cargo to the Chinese Tiangong space station. More importantly, it will provide a safe ride home for the three astronauts living and working aboard the orbiting outpost.

How did we get here? … The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft currently docked to the Tiangong station was damaged by a suspected piece of space junk, cracking its window and rendering it unable to meet China’s safety standards for returning astronauts to Earth. The damage discovery occurred just before three outgoing crew members were supposed to ride Shenzhou 20 home earlier this month. Instead, those three astronauts departed the station and returned to Earth on the newer, undamaged Shenzhou 21 spacecraft. That left the other three crew members on Tiangong with only the damaged Shenzhou 20 spacecraft to get them home in the event of an emergency. Shenzhou 22 will replace Shenzhou 20, providing a lifeboat for the rest of the crew’s six-month stay in space. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Atlas V launches for Viasat. United Launch Alliance launched its Atlas V rocket on November 13 with a satellite for the California-based communications company Viasat, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch came a week after the mission was scrubbed due to a faulty liquid oxygen tank vent valve on the Atlas booster. ULA rolled the rocket back to the Vertical Integration Facility, replaced it with a new valve, and returned the rocket to the pad on November 12. The launch the following day was successful, with the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage deploying the ViaSat-3 F2 spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nearly three-and-a-half hours after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

End of an era … This was the final launch of an Atlas V rocket with a payload heading for geosynchronous orbit. These are the kinds of missions the Atlas V was designed for more than 25 years ago, but the market has changed. All of the Atlas V’s remaining 11 missions will target low-Earth orbit carrying broadband satellites for Amazon or Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft heading for the International Space Station. The Atlas V will be retired in the coming years in favor of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

SpaceX launches key climate change monitor. SpaceX launched a joint NASA-European environmental research satellite early Monday, the second in an ongoing billion-dollar project to measure long-term changes in sea level, a key indicator of climate change, CBS News reports. The first satellite, known as Sentinel-6 and named in honor of NASA climate researcher Michael Freilich, was launched in November 2020. The latest spacecraft, Sentinel-6B, was launched from California atop a Falcon 9 rocket this week. Both satellites are equipped with a sophisticated cloud-penetrating radar. By timing how long it takes beams to bounce back from the ocean 830 miles (1,336 kilometers) below, the Sentinel-6 satellites can track sea levels to an accuracy of about one inch while also measuring wave height and wind speeds. The project builds on earlier missions dating back to the early 1990s that have provided an uninterrupted stream of sea level data.

FAA restrictions lifted … The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a restriction on commercial space operations this week that limited launches and reentries to the late night and early morning hours, Spaceflight Now reports. The FAA imposed a daytime curfew on commercial launches as it struggled to maintain air traffic control during the recent government shutdown. Those restrictions, which did not affect government missions, were lifted Monday. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin’s New Glenn will grow larger. One week after the successful second launch of its large New Glenn booster, Blue Origin revealed a road map on Thursday for upgrades to the rocket, including a new variant with more main engines and a super-heavy lift capability, Ars reports. These upgrades to the rocket are “designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability,” the company said in an update published on its website. The enhancements will be phased in over time, starting with the third launch of New Glenn, which is likely to occur during the first half of 2026.

No timelines … The most significant part of the update concerned an evolution of New Glenn that will transform the booster into a super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The first stage of this evolved vehicle will have nine BE-4 engines instead of seven, and the upper stage will have four BE-3U engines instead of two. In its update, Blue Origin refers to the new vehicle as 9×4 and the current variant as 7×2, a reference to the number of engines in each stage. “New Glenn 9×4 is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance,” the company said. “The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9×4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.” The company did not specify a timeline for the debut of the 9×4 variant. A spokesperson for the company told Ars, “We aren’t disclosing a specific timeframe today. The iterative design from our current 7×2 vehicle means we can build this rocket quickly.”

Recently landed New Glenn returns to port. Blue Origin welcomed “Never Tell Me the Odds” back to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Thursday, where the rocket booster launched exactly one week prior, Florida Today reports. The New Glenn’s first stage booster landed on Blue Origin’s offshore recovery barge, which returned it to Port Canaveral on Tuesday with great fanfare. Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, rode the barge into port, posing for photos with the rocket and waving to onlookers viewing the spectacle from a nearby public pier. The rocket was lowered horizontally late Wednesday morning, as spectators watched alongside the restaurants and fishing boats at the port.

Through the gates … Officials from Blue Origin guided the 188-foot-long New Glenn booster to the Space Force station Thursday, making Blue Origin the only company besides SpaceX to return a space-flown booster through the gates. Once back at Blue Origin’s hangar, the rocket will undergo inspections and refurbishment for a second flight, perhaps early next year. “I could not be more excited to see the New Glenn launch, and Blue Origin recover that booster and bring it back,” Col. Brian Chatman, commander of Space Launch Delta 45, told Florida Today. “It’s all part of our certification process and campaign to certify more national security space launch providers, launch carriers, to get our most crucial satellites up on orbit.”

Meanwhile, down at Starbase. SpaceX rolled the first of its third-generation Super Heavy boosters out of the factory at Starbase, Texas, this week for a road trip to a nearby test site, according to NASASpaceflight.com. The booster rode SpaceX’s transporter from the factory a few miles down the road to Massey’s Test Site, where technicians prepared the rocket for cryogenic proof testing. However, during the initial phases of testing, the booster failed early on Friday morning.

Tumbling down … At the Starship launch site, ground teams are busy tearing down the launch mount at Pad 1, the departure point for all of SpaceX’s Starships to date. SpaceX will upgrade the pad for its next-generation, more powerful Super Heavy boosters, while Starship V3’s initial flights will take off from Pad 2, a few hundred meters away from Pad 1.

Next three launches

Nov. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-79 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 59 UTC

Nov. 23: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-30 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08: 00 UTC

Nov. 25: Long March 2F | Shenzhou 22 | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 11 UTC

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.

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s next-gen booster fails; Pegasus will fly again Read More »

Blue Origin revealed some massively cool plans for its New Glenn rocket

blue origin, new glenn, Space, super heavy lift rocket / Tim Belzer / November 20, 2025

One week after the successful second launch of its large New Glenn booster, Blue Origin revealed a roadmap on Thursday for upgrades to the rocket, including a new variant with more main engines and a super-heavy lift capability.

These upgrades to the rocket are “designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability,” the company said in an update published on its website. The enhancements will be phased in over time, starting with the third launch of New Glenn, which is likely to occur during the first half of 2026.

A bigger beast

The most significant part of the update concerned an evolution of New Glenn that will transform the booster into a super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The first stage of this evolved vehicle will have nine BE-4 engines instead of seven, and the upper stage four BE-3U engines instead of two. In its update, Blue Origin refers to the new vehicle as 9×4 and the current variant as 7×2, a reference to the number of engines in each stage.

“New Glenn 9×4 is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance,” the company said. “The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9×4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.”

The company did not specify a timeline for the debut of the 9×4 variant. A spokesperson for the company told Ars, “We aren’t disclosing a specific timeframe today. The iterative design from our current 7×2 vehicle means we can build this rocket quickly.”

A comparison of New Glenn 7×2, the Saturn V, and New Glenn 7.4 rockets. Credit: Blue Origin

One source familiar with the company’s plans said the internal timeline would allow for the 9×4 variant of New Glenn to take flight as early as 2027.

Such a booster would be a notable vehicle, with a lift capacity nearly on par with NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. However, it would have a fully reusable first stage with a larger payload fairing and would likely cost less than one-tenth the estimated $2.2 billion cost of NASA’s super-heavy rocket.

Blue Origin revealed some massively cool plans for its New Glenn rocket Read More »

With a new company, Jeff Bezos will become a CEO again

AI, Amazon, blue origin, Jeff Bezos, project prometheus, Tech / Rejus Almole / November 17, 2025

Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest and most famous tech CEOs, but he hasn’t actually been a CEO of anything since 2021. That’s now changing as he takes on the role of co-CEO of a new AI company, according to a New York Times report citing three people familiar with the company.

Grandiosely named Project Prometheus (and not to be confused with the NASA project of the same name), the company will focus on using AI to pursue breakthroughs in research, engineering, manufacturing, and other fields that are dubbed part of “the physical economy”—in contrast to the software applications that are likely the first thing most people in the general public think of when they hear “AI.”

Bezos’ co-CEO will be Dr. Vik Bajaj, a chemist and physicist who previously led life sciences work at Google X, an Alphabet-backed research group that worked on speculative projects that could lead to more product categories. (For example, it developed technologies that would later underpin Google’s Waymo service.) Bajaj also worked at Verily, another Alphabet-backed research group focused on life sciences, and Foresite Labs, an incubator for new AI companies.

With a new company, Jeff Bezos will become a CEO again Read More »

After last week’s stunning landing, here’s what comes next for Blue Origin

blue moon lander, blue origin, new glenn, Space / Paul Patrick / November 17, 2025

“They’re coming off the line at one a month right now, and then we’re ramping from there,” he said of the second stages, known internally as GS-2. “It would be ambitious to get to the upper level, but we want to be hardware rich. So, you know, we want to try to keep building as fast as we can, and then with practice I think our launch cadence can go up.”

The biggest part of increasing cadence is manufacturing. That means BE-4 rocket engines for the first stage, BE-3U engines for the upper stage, and the stages themselves.

“With rockets, it’s hard,” Limp said. “Building prototypes is easy but building a machine to make the machines in volume at rate is much harder. And so I do feel like, when I look at the factories, our engine factory in Huntsville, the rocket factory here at Rocket Park and Lunar Plant 1, I feel like when you walk the floor there’s a lot of energy.”

Since he joined Blue Origin about two years ago, Limp said increasing production has been among his foremost goals.

“You’re never done with manufacturing, but I feel on the engine front we’re incredibly strong,” he said. “We’re going to double the rate again next year. We’ve got work to do, but on second stages I feel like we’re getting there. With the booster, we’re getting there. The key is to be hardware rich, so even if some of these missions have anomalies, we can recover quickly.”

Next stop, the Moon

Blue Origin recovered the New Glenn first stage from last week’s flight and brought it into port on Monday. Although it looks much cleaner than a used Falcon 9 first stage, much of this is due to the use of methane propellant, which does not produce the soot that kerosene propellant does. It will take some time to determine if and when this recovered first stage will be able fly again, but if it’s not ready soon Blue Origin has a third first stage nearing completion.

After last week’s stunning landing, here’s what comes next for Blue Origin Read More »

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket came back home after taking aim at Mars

blue origin, escapade, launch, NASA, new glenn, ng-2, reusable rockets, rocket lab, Science, Space / Mike M. / November 15, 2025

“Never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try.”

Blue Origin’s 320-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Blue Origin

The rocket company founded a quarter-century ago by billionaire Jeff Bezos made history Thursday with the pinpoint landing of an 18-story-tall rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The on-target touchdown came nine minutes after the New Glenn rocket, built and operated by Bezos’ company Blue Origin, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 3: 55 pm EST (20: 55 UTC). The launch was delayed from Sunday, first due to poor weather at the launch site in Florida, then by a solar storm that sent hazardous radiation toward Earth earlier this week.

“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. “It turns out Never Tell Me The Odds (Blue Origin’s nickname for the first stage) had perfect odds—never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try. This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.”

The two-stage launcher set off for space carrying two NASA science probes on a two-year journey to Mars, marking the first time any operational satellites flew on Blue Origin’s new rocket, named for the late NASA astronaut John Glenn. The New Glenn hit its marks on the climb into space, firing seven BE-4 main engines for nearly three minutes on a smooth ascent through blue skies over Florida’s Space Coast.

Seven BE-4 engines power New Glenn downrange from Florida’s Space Coast. Credit: Blue Origin

The engines consumed super-cold liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen, producing more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust at full power. The BE-4s shut down, and the first stage booster released the rocket’s second stage, with dual hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines, to continue the mission into orbit.

The booster soared to an altitude of 79 miles (127 kilometers), then began a controlled plunge back into the atmosphere, targeting a landing on Blue Origin’s offshore recovery vessel named Jacklyn. Moments later, three of the booster’s engines reignited to slow its descent in the upper atmosphere. Then, moments before reaching the Atlantic, the rocket again lit three engines and extended its landing gear, sinking through low-level clouds before settling onto the football field-size deck of Blue Origin’s recovery platform 375 miles (600 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral.

A pivotal moment

The moment of touchdown appeared electric at several Blue Origin facilities around the country, which had live views of cheering employees piped in to the company’s webcast of the flight. This was the first time any company besides SpaceX has propulsively landed an orbital-class rocket booster, coming nearly 10 years after SpaceX recovered its first Falcon 9 booster intact in December 2015.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn landing also came almost exactly a decade after the company landed its smaller suborbital New Shepard rocket for the first time in West Texas. Just like Thursday’s New Glenn landing, Blue Origin successfully recovered the New Shepard on its second-ever attempt.

Blue Origin’s heavy-lifter launched successfully for the first time in January. But technical problems prevented the booster from restarting its engines on descent, and the first stage crashed at sea. Engineers made “propellant management and engine bleed control improvements” to resolve the problems, and the fixes appeared to work Thursday.

The rocket recovery is a remarkable achievement for Blue Origin, which has long lagged dominant SpaceX in the commercial launch business. SpaceX has now logged 532 landings with its Falcon booster fleet. Now, with just a single recovery in the books, Blue Origin sits at second in the rankings for propulsive landings of orbit-class boosters. Bezos’ company has amassed 34 landings of the suborbital New Shepard model, which lacks the size and doesn’t reach the altitude and speed of the New Glenn booster.

Blue Origin landed a New Shepard returning from space for the first time in November 2015, a few weeks before SpaceX first recovered a Falcon 9 booster. Bezos threw shade on SpaceX with a post on Twitter, now called X, after the first Falcon 9 landing: “Welcome to the club!”

Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder and owner, wrote this message on Twitter following SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 landing on December 21, 2015. Credit: X/Jeff Bezos

Finally, after Thursday, Blue Origin officials can say they are part of the same reusable rocket club as SpaceX. Within a few days, Blue Origin’s recovery vessel is expected to return to Port Canaveral, Florida, where ground crews will offload the New Glenn booster and move it to a hangar for inspections and refurbishment.

“Today was a tremendous achievement for the New Glenn team, opening a new era for Blue Origin and the industry as we look to launch, land, repeat, again and again,” said Jordan Charles, the company’s vice president for the New Glenn program, in a statement. “We’ve made significant progress on manufacturing at rate and building ahead of need. Our primary focus remains focused on increasing our cadence and working through our manifest.”

Blue Origin plans to reuse the same booster next year for the first launch of the company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar cargo lander. This mission is currently penciled in to be next on Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch schedule. Eventually, the company plans to have a fleet of reusable boosters, like SpaceX has with the Falcon 9, that can each be flown up to 25 times.

New Glenn is a core element in Blue Origin’s architecture for NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The rocket will eventually launch human-rated lunar landers to the Moon to provide astronauts with rides to and from the surface of the Moon.

The US Space Force will also examine the results of Thursday’s launch to assess New Glenn’s readiness to begin launching military satellites. The military selected Blue Origin last year to join SpaceX and United Launch Alliance as a third launch provider for the Defense Department.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn booster, 23 feet (7 meters) in diameter, on the deck of the company’s landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

Slow train to Mars

The mission wasn’t over with the buoyant landing in the Atlantic. New Glenn’s second stage fired its engines twice to propel itself on a course toward deep space, setting up for deployment of NASA’s two ESCAPADE satellites a little more than a half-hour after liftoff.

The identical satellites were released from their mounts on top of the rocket to begin their nearly two-year journey to Mars, where they will enter orbit to survey how the solar wind interacts with the rarefied uppermost layers of the red planet’s atmosphere. Scientists believe radiation from the Sun gradually stripped away Mars’ atmosphere, driving runaway climate change that transitioned the planet from a warm, habitable world to the global inhospitable desert seen today.

“I’m both elated and relieved to see NASA’s ESCAPADE spacecraft healthy post-launch and looking forward to the next chapter of their journey to help us understand Mars’ dynamic space weather environment,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley.

Scientists want to understand the environment at the top of the Martian atmosphere to learn more about what drove this change. With two instrumented spacecraft, ESCAPADE will gather data from different locations around Mars, providing a series of multipoint snapshots of solar wind and atmospheric conditions. Another NASA spacecraft, named MAVEN, has collected similar data since arriving in orbit around Mars in 2014, but it is only a single observation post.

ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, was developed and launched on a budget of about $80 million, a bargain compared to all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. The spacecraft were built by Rocket Lab, and the project is managed on behalf of NASA by the University of California, Berkeley.

The two spacecraft for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission at Rocket Lab’s factory in Long Beach, California. Credit: Rocket Lab

NASA paid Blue Origin about $20 million for the launch of ESCAPADE, significantly less than it would have cost to launch it on any other dedicated rocket. The space agency accepted the risk of launching on the relatively unproven New Glenn rocket, which hasn’t yet been certified by NASA or the Space Force for the government’s marquee space missions.

The mission was supposed to launch last year, when Earth and Mars were in the right positions to enable a direct trip between the planets. But Blue Origin delayed the launch, forcing a yearlong wait until the company’s second New Glenn was ready to fly. Now, the ESCAPADE satellites, each about a half-ton in mass fully fueled, will loiter in a unique orbit more than a million miles from Earth until next November, when they will set off for the red planet. ESCAPADE will arrive at Mars in September 2027 and begin its science mission in 2028.

Rocket Lab ground controllers established communication with the ESCAPADE satellites late Thursday night.

“The ESCAPADE mission is part of our strategy to understand Mars’ past and present so we can send the first astronauts there safely,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Understanding Martian space weather is a top priority for future missions because it helps us protect systems, robots, and most importantly, humans, in extreme environments.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket came back home after taking aim at Mars Read More »

The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board

atmosphere loss, bald eagle, Berkeley, blue origin, easter eggs, escapade, Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, hybrid magnetosphere, kiwi, Mars, NASA, new glenn, ng-2, plaques, plates, rocket lab, Space, Space exploration, space history, Space Sciences Laboratory, space weather, University of California / Tim Belzer / November 14, 2025

The mission aims to aid our understanding of Mars’ climate history and what was behind the loss of its conditions that once supported liquid water, potential oceans, and possibly life on the surface.

Plaques and partner patches

In addition to the kiwi-adorned plates, Rocket Lab also installed two more plaques on the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft.

“There are also two name plates (one in blue and one in gold) on each spacecraft listing Rocket Lab team members who’ve contributed to the mission, making it possible to get to Mars,” said McLaurin.

Mounted on the solar panels, the plaques use shading to also display the Latin initials (NSHO) of the Rocket Lab motto and form the company’s logo. Despite their diminutive size, each plate appears to include more than 200 names, including founder, president, and CEO Peter Beck.

Montage of photos and graphics illustrating the blue and gold metal plates attached a spacecraft — Additional plates in blue and gold display the names of the Rocket Lab team members behind the ESCAPADE spacecraft. Credit: UCB-SSL via collectSPACE.com

UC Berkeley adopted its colors in 1873. According to the school’s website, “blue for the California sky and ocean and for the Yale graduates who helped establish the university, gold for the ‘Golden State.’”

ESCAPADE also has its own set of colors, or rather, colorful patches.

The main mission logo depicts the twin spacecraft in orbit around Mars with the names of the primary partners listed along its border, including UCB-SSL (University of California, Berkeley-Space Science Laboratory); RL (Rocket Lab); ERAU (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which designed and built the langmuir probe, one of the mission’s science instruments); AdvSp (Advanced Space, which oversaw mission design and trajectory optimization); and NASA-GSFC (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center).

Rocket Lab also designed an insignia, which renders the two spacecraft in blue and gold, as well as shows their trajectory in the same colors and includes the company’s motto.

Lastly, Blue Origin’s New Glenn-2 (NG-2) patch features the launch vehicle and the two ESCAPADE satellites, using hues of orange to represent Mars.

Graphic montage of mission patches — Three mission patches represent the Mars ESCAPADE mission and its partners. Credit: NASA/Rocket Lab/Blue Origin/collectSPACE.com

The twin probes just launched toward Mars have an Easter egg on board Read More »

An explosion 92 million miles away just grounded Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket

blue origin, Commercial space, coronal mass ejection, escapade, launch, Mars, NASA, ng-2, Science, Solar Flare, Space, space weather, Sun / Tim Belzer / November 12, 2025

A series of eruptions from the Sun, known as coronal mass ejections, sparked dazzling auroral light shows Tuesday night. The eruptions sent a blast of material from the Sun, including charged particles with a strong localized magnetic field, toward the Earth at more than 1 million mph, or more than 500 kilometers per second.

A solar ultraviolet imager on one of NOAA’s GOES weather satellites captured this view of a coronal mass ejection from the Sun early Tuesday. Credit: NOAA

Satellites detected the most recent strong coronal mass ejection, accompanied by a bright solar flare, early Tuesday. It was expected to arrive at Earth on Wednesday.

“We’ve already had two of three anticipated coronal mass ejections arrive here at Earth,” said Shawn Dahl, a forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. The first two waves “packed quite a punch,” Dahl said, and were “profoundly stronger than we anticipated.”

The storm sparked northern lights that were visible as far south as Texas, Florida, and Mexico on Tuesday night. Another round of northern lights might be visible Wednesday night.

The storm arriving Wednesday was the “most energetic” of all the recent coronal mass ejections, Dahl said. It’s also traveling at higher speed, fast enough to cover the 92 million-mile gulf between the Sun and the Earth in less than two days. Forecasters predict a G4 level, or severe, geomagnetic storm Wednesday into Thursday, with a slight chance of a rarer extreme G5 storm, something that has only happened once in the last two decades.

The Aurora Borealis lights up the night sky over Monroe, Wisconsin, on November 11, 2025, during one of the strongest solar storms in decades. Credit: Ross Harried/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The sudden arrival of a rush of charged particles from the Sun can create disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field, affecting power grids, degrading GPS navigation signals, and disrupting radio communications. A G4 geomagnetic storm can trigger “possible widespread voltage control problems” in terrestrial electrical networks, according to NOAA, along with potential surface charging problems on satellites flying above the protective layers of the atmosphere.

It’s not easy to predict the precise impacts of a geomagnetic storm until it arrives on Earth’s doorstep. Several satellites positioned a million miles from Earth in the direction of the Sun carry sensors to detect the speed of the solar wind, its charge, and the direction of its magnetic field. This information helps forecasters know what to expect.

“These types of storms can be very variable,” Dahl said.

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Here’s how orbital dynamics wizardry helped save NASA’s next Mars mission

blue origin, Commercial space, escapade, launch, Mars, NASA, new glenn, ng-2, planetary science, rocket lab, Science, solar system, Space, uc berkeley / Paul Patrick / November 9, 2025

Blue Origin is counting down to launch of its second New Glenn rocket Sunday.

The New Glenn rocket rolls to Launch Complex-36 in preparation for liftoff this weekend. Credit: Blue Origin

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat.

That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay, and possible cancellation, after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year. ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, consists of two identical spacecraft setting off for the red planet as soon as Sunday with a launch aboard Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket.

“ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”

This wasn’t the original plan. When it was first designed, ESCAPADE was supposed to take a direct course from Earth to Mars, a transit that typically takes six to nine months. But ESCAPADE will now depart the Earth when Mars is more than 220 million miles away, on the opposite side of the Solar System.

The payload fairing of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, containing NASA’s two Mars-bound science probes. Credit: Blue Origin

The most recent Mars launch window was last year, and the next one doesn’t come until the end of 2026. The planets are not currently in alignment, and the proverbial stars didn’t align to get the ESCAPADE satellites and their New Glenn rocket to the launch pad until this weekend.

This is fine

But there are several reasons this is perfectly OK to NASA. The New Glenn rocket is overkill for this mission. The two-stage launcher could send many tons of cargo to Mars, but NASA is only asking it to dispatch about a ton of payload, comprising a pair of identical science probes designed to study how the planet’s upper atmosphere interacts with the solar wind.

But NASA got a good deal from Blue Origin. The space agency is paying Jeff Bezos’ space company about $20 million for the launch, less than it would for a dedicated launch on any other rocket capable of sending the ESCAPADE mission to Mars. In exchange, NASA is accepting a greater than usual chance of a launch failure. This is, after all, just the second flight of the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket, which hasn’t yet been certified by NASA or the US Space Force.

The ESCAPADE mission, itself, was developed with a modest budget, at least by the standards of interplanetary exploration. The mission’s total cost amounts to less than $80 million, an order of magnitude lower than all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. NASA officials would not entrust the second flight of the New Glenn rocket to launch a billion-dollar spacecraft, but the risk calculation changes as costs go down.

NASA knew all of this in 2023 when it signed a launch contract with Blue Origin for the ESCAPADE mission. What officials didn’t know was that the New Glenn rocket wouldn’t be ready to fly when ESCAPADE needed to launch in late 2024. It turned out Blue Origin didn’t launch the first New Glenn test flight until January of this year. It was a success. It took another 10 months for engineers to get the second New Glenn vehicle to the launch pad.

The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft undergoing final preparations for launch. Each spacecraft is about a half-ton fully fueled. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Aiming high

That’s where the rocket sits this weekend at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will take off Sunday afternoon during an 88-minute launch window opening at 2: 45 pm EST (19: 45 UTC). There is a 65 percent chance of favorable weather, according to Blue Origin.

Blue Origin’s launch team, led by launch director Megan Lewis, will oversee the countdown Sunday. The rocket will be filled with super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants beginning about four-and-a-half hours prior to liftoff. After some final technical and weather checks, the terminal countdown sequence will commence at T-minus 4 minutes, culminating in ignition of the rocket’s seven BE-4 main engines at T-minus 5.6 seconds.

The rocket’s flight computer will assess the health of each of the powerful engines, combining to generate more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust. If all looks good, hold-down restraints will release to allow the New Glenn rocket to begin its ascent from Florida’s Space Coast.

Heading east, the rocket will surpass the speed of sound in a little over a minute. After soaring through the stratosphere, New Glenn will shut down its seven booster engines and shed its first stage a little more than 3 minutes into the flight. Twin BE-3U engines, burning liquid hydrogen, will ignite to finish the job of sending the ESCAPADE satellites toward deep space. The rocket’s trajectory will send the satellites toward a gravitationally-stable location beyond the Moon, called the L2 Lagrange point, where it will swing into a loosely-bound loiter orbit to wait for the right time to head for Mars.

Meanwhile, the New Glenn booster, itself measuring nearly 20 stories tall, will begin maneuvers to head toward Blue Origin’s recovery ship floating a few hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. The final part of the descent will include a landing burn using three of the BE-4 engines, then downshifting to a single engine to control the booster’s touchdown on the landing platform, dubbed “Jacklyn” in honor of Bezos’ late mother.

The launch timeline for New Glenn’s second mission. Credit: Blue Origin

New Glenn’s inaugural launch at the start of this year was a success, but the booster’s descent did not go well. The rocket was unable to restart its engines, and it crashed into the sea.

“We’ve incorporated a number of changes to our propellant management system, some minor hardware changes as well, to increase our likelihood of landing that booster on this mission,” said Laura Maginnis, Blue Origin’s vice president of New Glenn mission management. “That was the primary schedule driver that kind of took us from from January to where we are today.”

Blue Origin officials are hopeful they can land the booster this time. The company’s optimism is enough for officials to have penciled in a reflight of this particular booster on the very next New Glenn launch, slated for the early months of next year. That launch is due to send Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon cargo lander to the Moon.

“Our No. 1 objective is to deliver ESCAPADE safely and successfully on its way to L2, and then eventually on to Mars,” Maginnis said in a press conference Saturday. “We also are planning and wanting to land our booster. If we don’t land the booster, that’s OK. We have several more vehicles in production. We’re excited to see how the mission plays out tomorrow.”

Tracing a kidney bean

ESCAPADE’s path through space, relative to the Earth, has the peculiar shape of a kidney bean. In the world of astrodynamics, this is called a staging or libration orbit. It’s a way to keep the spacecraft on a stable trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars late next year.

“ESCAPADE has identified that this is the way that we want to fly, so we launch from Earth onto this kidney bean-shaped orbit,” said Jeff Parker, a mission designer from the Colorado-based company Advanced Space. “So, we can launch on virtually any day. What happens is that kidney bean just grows and shrinks based on how much time you need to spend in that orbit. So, we traverse that kidney bean and at the very end there’s a final little loop-the-loop that brings us down to Earth.”

That’s when the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, will pass a few hundred miles above our planet. At the right moment, on November 7 and 9 of next year, the satellites will fire their engines to set off for Mars.

An illustration of ESCAPADE’s trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars. Credit: UC-Berkeley

There are some tradeoffs with this unique staging orbit. It is riskier than the original plan of sending ESCAPADE straight to Mars. The satellites will be exposed to more radiation, and will consume more of their fuel just to get to the red planet, eating into reserves originally set aside for science observations.

The satellites were built by Rocket Lab, which designed them with extra propulsion capacity in order to accommodate launches on a variety of different rockets. In the end, NASA “judged that the risk for the mission was acceptable, but it certainly is higher risk,” said Richard French, Rocket Lab’s vice president of business development and strategy.

The upside of the tradeoff is it will demonstrate an “exciting and flexible way to get to Mars,” Lillis said. “In the future, if we’d like to send hundreds of spacecraft to Mars at once, it will be difficult to do that from just the launch pads we have on Earth within that month [of the interplanetary launch window]. We could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering.”

Here’s how orbital dynamics wizardry helped save NASA’s next Mars mission Read More »

Blue Origin will ‘move heaven and Earth’ to help NASA reach the Moon faster, CEO says

artemis, blue origin, NASA, Space / Tim Belzer / November 8, 2025

Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, the company’s chief executive said Saturday in an interview with Ars.

“We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” said Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”

Limp spoke on Saturday, about 24 hours ahead of the company’s second launch of the large New Glenn rocket. Carrying the ESCAPADE spacecraft for NASA, the mission has a launch window that opens at 2: 45 pm ET (19: 45 UTC) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and runs for a little more than two hours.

NASA seeks a faster return

This year it has become increasingly apparent that, should NASA stick to its present plans for the Artemis III lunar landing mission, China is on course to beat the United States back to the Moon with humans. In recognition of this, about three weeks ago, NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy said the space agency was reopening the competition for a human lander.

SpaceX and Blue Origin both have existing contracts for human landers, but the government has asked each providers for an option to accelerate their timeline. NASA currently has a target landing date of 2027, but that is unrealistic using the present approach of SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s large Mk. 2 lander.

Ars exclusively reported in early October that Blue Origin had begun work on a faster architecture, involving multiple versions of its Mk. 1 cargo lander as well as a modified version of this vehicle tentatively called Mk 1.5. Limp said that after Duffy asked for revised proposals, Blue Origin responded almost immediately.

“We’ve sent our initial summary of that over, and we have a full report of that due here shortly,” he said. “I’m not going to go into the details because I think that’s probably for NASA to talk about, not us, but we have some ideas that we think could accelerate the path to the Moon. And I hope NASA takes a close look.”

Blue Origin will ‘move heaven and Earth’ to help NASA reach the Moon faster, CEO says Read More »

Rocket Report: Canada invests in sovereign launch; India flexes rocket muscles

ariane 6, Arianespace, blue origin, Canada, Commercial space, launch, NASA, relativity space, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship / Mike M. / November 8, 2025

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket gave an environmental monitoring satellite a perfect ride to space.

Rahul Goel, the CEO of Canadian launch startup NordSpace, poses with a suborbital demo rocket and members of his team in Toronto earlier this year. Credit: Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.18 of the Rocket Report! NASA is getting a heck of a deal from Blue Origin for launching the agency’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars. Blue Origin is charging NASA about $20 million for the launch on the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. A dedicated ride on any other rocket capable of the job would undoubtedly cost more.

But there are trade-offs. First, there’s the question of risk. The New Glenn rocket is only making its second flight, and it hasn’t been certified by NASA or the US Space Force. Second, the schedule for ESCAPADE’s launch has been at the whim of Blue Origin, which has delayed the mission several times due to issues developing New Glenn. NASA’s interplanetary missions typically have a fixed launch period, and the agency pays providers like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance a premium to ensure the launch happens when it needs to happen.

New Glenn is ready, the satellites are ready, and Blue Origin has set a launch date for Sunday, November 9. The mission will depart Earth outside of the usual interplanetary launch window, so orbital dynamics wizards came up with a unique trajectory that will get the satellites to Mars in 2027.

Canadian government backs launcher development. The federal budget released by the Liberal Party-led government of Canada this week includes a raft of new defense initiatives, including 182.6 million Canadian dollars ($129.4 million) for sovereign space launch capability, SpaceQ reports. The new funding is meant to “establish a sovereign space launch capability” with funds available this fiscal year and spent over three years. How the money will be spent and on what has yet to be released. As anticipated, Canada will have a new Defense Investment Agency (DIA) to oversee defense procurement. Overall, the government outlined 81.8 billion Canadian dollars ($58 billion) over five years for the Canadian Armed Forces. The Department of National Defense will manage the government’s cash infusion for sovereign launch capability.

Kick-starting an industry … Canada joins a growing list of nations pursuing homegrown launchers as many governments see access to space as key to national security and an opportunity for economic growth. International governments don’t want to be beholden to a small number of foreign launch providers from established space powers. That’s why startups in Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Australia are making a play in the launch arena, often with government support. A handful of Canadian startups, such as Maritime Launch Services, Reaction Dynamics, and NordSpace, are working on commercial satellite launchers. The Canadian government’s announcement came days after MDA Space, the largest established space company in Canada, announced its own multimillion-dollar investment in Maritime Launch Services.

Sign Me Up!

Money alone won’t solve Europe’s space access woes. Increasing tensions with Russia have prompted defense spending boosts throughout Europe that will benefit fledgling smallsat launcher companies across the continent. But Europe is still years away from meeting its own space access needs, Space News reports. Space News spoke with industry analysts from two European consulting firms. They concluded that a lack of experience, not a deficit of money, is holding European launch startups back. None of the new crop of European rocket companies have completed a successful orbital flight.

Swimming in cash … The German company Isar Aerospace has raised approximately $600 million, the most funding of any of the European launch startups. Isar is also the only one of the bunch to make an orbital launch attempt. Its Spectrum rocket failed less than 30 seconds after liftoff last March, and a second launch is expected next year. Isar has attracted more investment than Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Astra collectively raised on the private market before each of them successfully launched a rocket into orbit. In addition to Isar, several other European companies have raised more than $100 million on the road to developing a small satellite launcher. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Successful ICBM test from Vandenberg. Air Force Global Strike Command tested an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in the predawn hours of Wednesday, Air and Space Forces Magazine reports. The test, the latest in a series of launches that have been carried out at regular intervals for decades, came as Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the development of two new nuclear weapons and President Donald Trump has suggested in recent days that the US might resume nuclear testing. The ICBM launched from an underground silo at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and traveled some 4,200 miles to a test range in the Pacific Ocean after receiving launch orders from an airborne nuclear command-and-control plane.

Rehearsing for the unthinkable … The test, known as Glory Trip 254 (GT 254), provided a “comprehensive assessment” of the Minuteman III’s readiness to launch at a moment’s notice, according to the Air Force. “The data collected during the test is invaluable in ensuring the continued reliability and accuracy of the ICBM weapon system,” said Lt. Col. Karrie Wray, commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron. For Minuteman III tests, the Air Force pulls its missiles from the fleet of some 400 operational ICBMs. This week’s test used one from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, and the missile was equipped with a single unarmed reentry vehicle that carried telemetry instrumentation instead of a warhead, service officials said. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

One crew launches, another may be stranded. Three astronauts launched to China’s Tiangong space station on October 31 and arrived at the outpost a few hours later, extending the station’s four-year streak of continuous crew operations. The Shenzhou 21 crew spacecraft lifted off on a Chinese Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert. Shenzhou 21 is supposed to replace a three-man crew that has been on the Tiangong station since April, but China’s Manned Space Agency announced Tuesday the outgoing crew’s return craft may have been damaged by space junk, Ars reports.

Few details … Chinese officials said the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft will remain at the station while engineers investigate the potential damage. As of Thursday, China has not set a new landing date or declared whether the spacecraft is safe to return to Earth at all. “The Shenzhou 20 manned spacecraft is suspected of being impacted by small space debris,” Chinese officials wrote on social media. “Impact analysis and risk assessment are underway. To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou 20 return mission, originally scheduled for November 5, will be postponed.” In the event Shenzhou 20 is unsafe to return, China could launch a rescue craft—Shenzhou 22—already on standby at the Jiuquan space center.

Falcon 9 rideshare boosts Vast ambitions. A pathfinder mission for Vast’s privately owned space station launched into orbit Sunday and promptly extended its solar panel, kicking off a shakedown cruise to prove the company’s designs can meet the demands of spaceflight, Ars reports. Vast’s Haven Demo mission lifted off just after midnight Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit. Haven Demo was one of 18 satellites sharing a ride on SpaceX’s Bandwagon 4 mission, launching alongside a South Korean spy satellite and a small testbed for Starcloud, a startup working with Nvidia to build an orbital data center.

Subscale testing … After release from the Falcon 9, the half-ton Haven Demo spacecraft stabilized itself and extended its power-generating solar array. The satellite captured 4K video of the solar array deployment, and Vast shared the beauty shot on social media. “Haven Demo’s mission success has turned us into a proven spacecraft company,” Vast’s CEO, Max Haot, posted on X. “The next step will be to become an actual commercial space station company next year. Something no one has achieved yet.” Vast plans to launch its first human-rated habitat, named Haven-1, into low-Earth orbit in 2026. Haven Demo lacks crew accommodations but carries several systems that are “architecturally similar” to Haven-1, according to Vast. For example, Haven-1 will have 12 solar arrays, each identical to the single array on Haven Demo. The pathfinder mission uses a subset of Haven-1’s propulsion system, but with identical thrusters, valves, and tanks.

Lights out at Vostochny. One of Russia’s most important projects over the last 15 years has been the construction of the Vostochny spaceport as the country seeks to fly its rockets from native soil and modernize its launch operations. Progress has been slow as corruption clouded Vostochny’s development. Now, the primary contractor building the spaceport, the Kazan Open Stock Company (PSO Kazan), has failed to pay its bills, Ars reports. The story, first reported by the Moscow Times, says that the energy company supplying Vostochny cut off electricity to areas of the spaceport still under construction after PSO Kazan racked up $627,000 in unpaid energy charges. The electricity company did so, it said, “to protect the interests of the region’s energy system.”

A dark reputation … Officials at the government-owned spaceport said PSO Kazan would repay its debt by the end of November, but the local energy company said it intends to file a lawsuit against KSO Kazan to declare the entity bankrupt. The two operational launch pads at Vostochny are apparently not affected by the power cuts. Vostochny has been a fiasco from the start. After construction began in 2011, the project was beset by hunger strikes, claims of unpaid workers, and the theft of $126 million. Additionally, a man driving a diamond-encrusted Mercedes was arrested after embezzling $75,000. Five years ago, there was another purge of top officials after another round of corruption.

Ariane 6 delivers for Europe again. European launch services provider Arianespace has successfully launched the Sentinel 1D Earth observation satellite aboard an Ariane 62 rocket for the European Commission, European Spaceflight reports. Launched in its two-booster configuration, the Ariane 6 rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in South America on Tuesday. Approximately 34 minutes after liftoff, the satellite was deployed from the rocket’s upper stage into a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 693 kilometers (430 miles). Sentinel 1D is the newest spacecraft to join Europe’s Copernicus program, the world’s most expansive network of environmental monitoring satellites. The new satellite will extend Europe’s record of global around-the-clock radar imaging, revealing information about environmental disasters, polar ice cover, and the use of water resources.

Doubling cadence … This was the fourth flight of Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, and its third operational launch. Arianespace plans one more Ariane 62 launch to close out the year with a pair of Galileo navigation satellites. The company aims to double its Ariane 6 launch cadence in 2026, with between six and eight missions planned, according to David Cavaillès, Arianespace’s CEO. The European launch provider will open its 2026 manifest with the first flight of the more powerful four-booster variant of the rocket. If the company does manage eight Ariane 6 flights in 2026, it will already be close to reaching the stated maximum launch cadence of between nine and 10 flights per year.

India sets its own record for payload mass. The Indian Space Research Organization on Sunday successfully launched the Indian Navy’s advanced communication satellite GSAT-7R, or CMS-03, on an LVM3 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, The Hindu reports. The indigenously designed and developed satellite, weighing approximately 4.4 metric tons (9,700 pounds), is the heaviest satellite ever launched by an Indian rocket and marks a major milestone in strengthening the Navy’s space-based communications and maritime domain awareness.

Going heavy … The launch Sunday was India’s fourth of 2025, a decline from the country’s high-water mark of eight orbital launches in a year in 2023. The failure in May of India’s most-flown rocket, the PSLV, has contributed to this year’s slower launch cadence. India’s larger rockets, the GSLV and LVM3, have been more active while officials grounded the PSLV for an investigation into the launch failure. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin preps for second flight of New Glenn. The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer this week. The company confirmed it is targeting Sunday, November 9, for the launch of New Glenn from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This follows a successful test-firing of the rocket’s seven BE-4 main engines last week, Ars reports. Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust on the launch pad.

Fully integrated … With the launch date approaching, engineers worked this week to attach the rocket’s payload shroud containing two NASA satellites set to embark on a journey to Mars. Now that the rocket is fully integrated, ground crews will roll it back to Blue Origin’s Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) for final countdown preps. The launch window on Sunday opens at 2: 45 pm EST (19: 45 UTC). Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon.

Next three launches

Nov. 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-51 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 08: 30 UTC

Nov. 8: Long March 11H| Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 21: 00 UTC

Nov. 9: New Glenn | ESCAPADE | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 19: 45 UTC

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The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences

blue origin, Commercial space, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / Rejus Almole / November 7, 2025

The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.

The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”

The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.

Sharing the airspace

Vehicles traveling to and from space share the skies with aircraft, requiring close coordination with air traffic controllers to clear airspace for rocket launches and reentries. The FAA said its order restricting commercial air traffic, launches, and reentries is intended to “ensure the safety of aircraft and the efficiency of the [National Airspace System].”

In a statement explaining the order, the FAA said the air traffic control system is “stressed” due to the shutdown.

“With continued delays and unpredictable staffing shortages, which are driving fatigue, risk is further increasing, and the FAA is concerned with the system’s ability to maintain the current volume of operations,” the regulator said. “Accordingly, the FAA has determined additional mitigation is necessary.”

Beginning Monday, the FAA said commercial space launches will only be permitted between 10 pm and 6 am local time, when the national airspace is most calm. The order restricts commercial reentries to the same overnight timeframe. The FAA licenses all commercial launches and reentries.

The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences Read More »

New Glenn rocket has clear path to launch after test-firing at Cape Canaveral

blue origin, Commercial space, escapade, launch, Mars, NASA, new glenn, Space / Tim Belzer / October 31, 2025

The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer Thursday night with a success test-firing of the launcher’s seven main engines on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Standing on a seaside launch pad, the New Glenn rocket ignited its seven BE-4 main engines at 9: 59 pm EDT Thursday (01: 59 UTC Friday). The engines burned for 38 seconds while the rocket remained firmly on the ground, according to a social media post by Blue Origin.

The hold-down firing of the first stage engines was the final major test of the New Glenn rocket before launch day. Blue Origin previously test-fired the rocket’s second-stage engines. Officials have not announced a target launch date, but sources tell Ars the rocket could be ready for liftoff as soon as November 9.

“Love seeing New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines come alive! Congratulations to Team Blue on today’s hotfire,” the company’s CEO, Dave Limp, posted on X.

Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust. Limp said engineers extended this test-firing and shut down some of the BE-4 engines to simulate the booster’s landing burn sequence, which Blue Origin hopes will culminate in a successful touchdown on a barge floating downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

“This helps us understand fluid interactions between active and inactive engine feedlines during landing,” Limp wrote.

Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon. If Blue Origin fails to land this rocket, it’s unlikely a new first stage booster will be ready to launch until sometime later in 2026.

A few more things to do

With the test-firing complete, Blue Origin’s ground crew will lower the more than 320-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket and roll it back to a nearby hangar. There, technicians will inspect the vehicle and swap its payload fairing for another clamshell containing two NASA-owned spacecraft set to begin their journey to Mars.

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