Enlarge/ In the U.S., a folding phone has you carrying around nearly $2,000 of fragile, folding OLED phone. In China and export-friendly countries, the Mate XT adds $1,000 and yet another hinge.
Huawei
Huawei’s Mate XT Ultimate is a phone that does not flip or fold, at least in the way of its Samsung or Google contemporaries. You could say it collapses, really, across two hinges, from a full 10.2-inch diagonal rectangle (about a half-inch short of a standard iPad) down to a traditional 6.4-inch rectangle phone slab. There’s also an in-between single-fold configuration at 7.9 inches. And there’s an optional folding keyboard.
This phone, which Huawei calls a “trifold,” would cost you the USD equivalent of $2,800 (19,999 yuan) if you could buy it in the US. Most notably, the phone launched just hours after Apple’s iPhone 16 event. As noted by The New York Times, Huawei’s product launches are often timed for maximum pushback against the US, which has sanctioned and attempted to stymie Huawei’s chip tech.
“It’s a piece of work that everyone has thought of but never managed to create,” Richard Yu, Huawei’s consumer group chairman, said during the Mate XT livestream unveiling. “I have always had a dream to put our tablet in my pocket, and we did it.”
The Mate XT looks incredibly thin on all three panels. You can seemingly unfold the whole thing, or do just two panels.
Huawei
If you can afford the $2,800 Mate XT, a first-generation trifold phone, you can survive every one of your holdings being in the red today.
Alternately, you can afford the Mate XT because you are at an “investing in art” level of wealth.
Huawei
As a folded-up phone, the Mate XT looks rather normal. The circular camera bump gives off early-2000s point-and-shoot digicam vibes.
Huawei
A shot of the Mate XT from Huawei’s promotional trailer, folded up.
Huawei
Another look at the folding style, this one on white.
Huawei
For the price of two really good gaming PCs, you get 256GB storage (with pricier upgrades available), 16GB RAM, a 5,600 mAh battery, a 50-megapixel main camera, and two 12 MP ultrawide and periscope cameras. It weights 298 grams, is just 3.6 mm thick when unfolded, and its screen is an LTPO OLED with 120 Hz refresh. There are, just like US flagship phones, a lot of AI-powered promises stuck onto the software and camera.
The “Tiangong” hinge system inside the Mate XT Ultimate.
Huawei
Beyond the price, the size, and the AI promises, the Mate XT Ultimate will be most interesting in how its hinges hold up. Huawei named its hinges after the Tiangong space station and says it allows for “internal and external bending” across dual tracks. It is made of a composite laminate and non-Newtonian fluid bits.
The Verge notes that the Mate XT Ultimate has seen some 3.7 million pre-orders through Chinese retailer Vmall—before a price was announced. It does not seem likely that the phone will be released outside China.
In an age when you can get just about anything online, it’s probably no surprise that you can buy a diamond-making machine for $200,000 on Chinese eCommerce site Alibaba. If, like me, you haven’t been paying attention to the diamond industry, it turns out that the availability of these machines reflects an ongoing trend toward democratizing diamond production—a process that began decades ago and continues to evolve.
The history of lab-grown diamonds dates back at least half a century. According to Harvard graduate student Javid Lakha, writing in a comprehensive piece on lab-grown diamonds published in Works in Progress last month, the first successful synthesis of diamonds in a laboratory setting occurred in the 1950s. Lakha recounts how Howard Tracy Hall, a chemist at General Electric, created the first lab-grown diamonds using a high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) process that mimicked the conditions under which diamonds form in nature.
Since then, diamond-making technology has advanced significantly. Today, there are two primary methods for creating lab-grown diamonds: the HPHT process and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Both types of machines are now listed on Alibaba, with prices starting at around $200,000, as pointed out in a Hacker News comment by engineer John Nagle (who goes by “Animats” on Hacker News). A CVD machine we found is more pricey, at around $450,000.
An image of a “HPHT Cubic Press Synthetic Diamond Making Machine” made by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind Co., Ltd. in China.
A photo of part of a “HPHT Cubic Press Synthetic Diamond Making Machine” made by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind Co., Ltd. in China.
A photo of a factory full of HPHT Cubic Press Synthetic Diamond Making Machines, made by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind Co., Ltd. in China.
Not a simple operation
While the idea of purchasing a diamond-making machine on Alibaba might be intriguing, it’s important to note that operating one isn’t as simple as plugging it in and watching diamonds form. According to Lakha’s article, these machines require significant expertise and additional resources to operate effectively.
For an HPHT press, you’d need a reliable source of high-quality graphite, metal catalysts like iron or cobalt, and precise temperature and pressure control systems. CVD machines require a steady supply of methane and hydrogen gases, as well as the ability to generate and control microwaves or hot filaments. Both methods need diamond seed crystals to start the growth process.
Moreover, you’d need specialized knowledge to manage the growth parameters, handle potentially hazardous materials and high-pressure equipment safely, and process the resulting raw diamonds into usable gems or industrial components. The machines also use considerable amounts of energy and require regular maintenance. Those factors may make the process subject to some regulations that are far beyond the scope of this piece.
In short, while these machines are more accessible than ever, turning one into a productive diamond-making operation would still require significant investment in equipment, materials, expertise, and safety measures. But hey, a guy can dream, right?
Enlarge/ A “selfie” photo of China’s Zhurong rover and the Tianwen-1 landing platform on Mars in 2021.
China plans to launch two heavy-lift Long March 5 rockets with elements of the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission in 2028, the mission’s chief designer said Thursday.
In a presentation at a Chinese space exploration conference, the chief designer of China’s robotic Mars sample return project described the mission’s high-level design and outlined how the mission will collect samples from the Martian surface. Reports from the talk published on Chinese social media and by state-run news agencies were short on technical details and did not discuss any of the preparations for the mission.
Public pronouncements by Chinese officials on future space missions typically come true, but China is embarking on challenging efforts to explore the Moon and Mars. China aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030 in a step toward eventually building a Moon base called the International Lunar Research Station.
Liu Jizhong, chief designer of the Tianwen-3 mission, did not say when China could have Mars samples back on Earth. In past updates on the Tianwen-3 mission, the launch date has alternated between 2028 and 2030, and officials previously suggested the round-trip mission would take about three years. This would suggest Mars rocks could return to Earth around 2031, assuming an on-time launch in 2028.
NASA, meanwhile, is in the middle of revamping its architecture for a Mars sample return mission in cooperation with the European Space Agency. In June, NASA tapped seven companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, to study ways to return Mars rocks to Earth for less than $11 billion and before 2040, the cost and schedule for NASA’s existing plan for Mars sample return.
That is too expensive and too long to wait for Mars sample return, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in April. Mars sample return is the highest priority for NASA’s planetary science division and has been the subject of planning for decades. The Perseverance rover currently on Mars is gathering several dozen specimens of rock powder, soil, and Martian air in cigar-shaped titanium tubes for eventual return to Earth.
This means China has a shot at becoming the first country to bring pristine samples from Mars back to Earth, and China doesn’t intend to stop there.
“If all the missions go as planned, China is likely to become the first country to return samples from Mars,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, in a July interview with Chinese state television. “And we will explore giant planets, such as Jupiter. We will also explore some of the asteroids, including sample return missions from an asteroid, and build an asteroid defense system.”
The asteroid sample return mission is known as Tianwen-2, and is scheduled for launch next year. Tianwen means “questions to heaven.”
China doesn’t have a mission currently on Mars gathering material for its Tianwen-3 sample return mission. The country’s first Mars mission, Tianwen-1, landed on the red planet in May 2021 and deployed a rover named Zhurong. China’s space agency hasn’t released any update on the rover since 2022, suggesting it may have succumbed to the harsh Martian winter.
So, the Tianwen-3 mission must carry everything it needs to land on Mars, collect samples, package them for return to Earth, and then launch them from the Martian surface back into space. Then, the sample carrier will rendezvous with a return vehicle in orbit around Mars. Once the return spacecraft has the samples, it will break out of Mars orbit, fly across the Solar System, and release a reentry capsule to bring the Mars specimens to the Earth.
All of the kit for the Tianwen-3 mission will launch on two Long March 5 rockets, the most powerful operational launcher in China’s fleet. One Long March 5 will launch the lander and ascent vehicle, and another will propel the return spacecraft and Earth reentry capsule toward Mars.
Liu, Tianwen-3’s chief designer, said an attempt to retrieve samples from Mars is the most technically challenging space exploration mission since the Apollo program, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. Liu said China will adhere to international agreements on planetary protection to safeguard Mars, Earth, and the samples themselves from contamination. The top scientific goal of the Tianwen-3 mission is to search for signs of life, he said.
Tianwen-3 will collect samples with a robotic arm and a subsurface drill, and Chinese officials previously said the mission may carry a helicopter and a mobile robot to capture more diverse Martian materials farther away from the stationary lander.
Liu said China is open to putting international payloads on Tianwen-3 and will collaborate with international scientists to analyze the Martian samples the mission returns to Earth. China is making lunar samples returned by the Chang’e 5 mission available for analysis by international researchers, and Chinese officials have said they anticipate a similar process to loan out samples from the far side of the Moon brought home by the Chang’e 6 mission earlier this year.
Enlarge/ Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, speaks earlier this year at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.
The head of US Space Command said Wednesday he would like to see more transparency from the Chinese government on space debris, especially as one of China’s newer rockets has shown a propensity for breaking apart and littering low-Earth orbit with hundreds of pieces of space junk.
Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, said he’s observed some improvement in the dialogue between US and Chinese military officials this year. But the disintegration of the upper stage from a Long March 6A rocket earlier this month showed China could do more to prevent the creation of space debris, and communicate openly about it when it happens.
The Chinese government acknowledged the breakup of the Long March 6A rocket’s upper stage in a statement by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 14, more than a week after the rocket’s launch August 6 with the first batch of 18 Internet satellites for a megaconstellation of thousands of spacecraft analogous to SpaceX’s Starlink network.
Space Command reported it detected more than 300 objects associated with the breakup of the upper stage in orbit, and LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket.
“I hope the next time there’s a rocket like that, that leaves a lot of debris, that it’s not our sensors that are the first to detect that, but we’re getting communications to help us understand that, just like we communicate with others,” Whiting said at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute marking the fifth anniversary of the reestablishment of Space Command.
Whiting said he didn’t have any technical details about why the Long March 6A rocket’s upper stage broke apart, but it happened after the rocket deployed all of its payloads. “They had already released the satellites at that point, and it seems like the mission was overall successful, but all this debris gets left in orbit,” he said. “We certainly don’t want to see that kind of debris.”
Due regard
The Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron, located at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, is responsible for tracking objects in Earth orbit, maintaining a catalog of all satellites and space junk, and monitoring for potential collisions between spacecraft or debris. Space Command regularly issues warnings of conjunctions, or close approaches, between objects to commercial companies and foreign governments.
“For decades now, the United States has so cared about the space domain that we have made available the vast majority of tracking data that we have, for free, for the world,” Whiting said. “Every day, we screen every active satellite against all that debris, and we provide notifications out to everyone, including the Chinese and Russians.
“People sometimes ask, ‘Well, why do you do that?’ Well, it’s because we don’t want satellites to run into pieces of debris and create more debris. So we think it’s really important, and we have a set of responsible behaviors that we follow each and every day. We provide these notifications to the Chinese,” Whiting said.
The Commerce Department plans to take over some of the military’s role in space traffic management, but Space Command will maintain its own catalog and will remain responsible for working with foreign militaries on space debris matters, according to Whiting.
Enlarge/ Still from a Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.
It’s no secret that despite significant investment from companies like OpenAI and Runway, AI-generated videos still struggle to achieve convincing realism at times. Some of the most amusing fails end up on social media, which has led to a new response trend on Chinese social media platforms TikTok and Bilibili where users create videos that mock the imperfections of AI-generated content. The trend has since spread to X (formerly Twitter) in the US, where users have been sharing the humorous parodies.
In particular, the videos seem to parody image synthesis videos where subjects seamlessly morph into other people or objects in unexpected and physically impossible ways. Chinese social media replicate these unusual visual non-sequiturs without special effects by positioning their bodies in unusual ways as new and unexpected objects appear on-camera from out of frame.
This exaggerated mimicry has struck a chord with viewers on X, who find the parodies entertaining. User @theGioM shared one video, seen above. “This is high-level performance arts,” wrote one X user. “art is imitating life imitating ai, almost shedded a tear.” Another commented, “I feel like it still needs a motorcycle the turns into a speedboat and takes off into the sky. Other than that, excellent work.”
An example Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.
While these parodies poke fun at current limitations, tech companies are actively attempting to overcome them with more training data (examples analyzed by AI models that teach them how to create videos) and computational training time. OpenAI unveiled Sora in February, capable of creating realistic scenes if they closely match examples found in training data. Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha suffers a similar fate: It can create brief clips of convincing video within a narrow set of constraints. This means that generated videos of situations outside the dataset often end up hilariously weird.
An AI-generated video that features impossibly-morphing people and animals. Social media users are imitating this style.
It’s worth noting that actor Will Smith beat Chinese social media users to this trend in February by poking fun at a horrific 2023 viral AI-generated video that attempted to depict him eating spaghetti. That may also bring back memories of other amusing video synthesis failures, such as May 2023’s AI-generated beer commercial, created using Runway’s earlier Gen-2 model.
An example Chinese social media video featuring two people imitating imperfect AI-generated video outputs.
While imitating imperfect AI videos may seem strange to some, people regularly make money pretending to be NPCs (non-player characters—a term for computer-controlled video game characters) on TikTok.
For anyone alive during the 1980s, witnessing this fast-changing and often bizarre new media world can cause some cognitive whiplash, but the world is a weird place full of wonders beyond the imagination. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” as Hamlet once famously said. “Including people pretending to be video game characters and flawed video synthesis outputs.”
Enlarge/ Debris from the upper stage of China’s Long March 6A rocket captured from the ground by Slingshot Aerospace.
The upper stage from a Chinese rocket that launched a batch of Internet satellites Tuesday has broken apart in space, creating a debris field of at least 700 objects in one of the most heavily-trafficked zones in low-Earth orbit.
US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit with a network of radars and optical sensors, confirmed the rocket breakup Thursday. Space Command initially said the event created more than 300 pieces of trackable debris. The military’s ground-based radars are capable of tracking objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches).
Later Thursday, LeoLabs, a commercial space situational awareness company, said its radars detected at least 700 objects attributed to the Chinese rocket. The number of debris fragments could rise to more than 900, LeoLabs said.
The culprit is the second stage of China’s Long March 6A rocket, which lifted off Tuesday with the first batch of 18 satellites for a planned Chinese megaconstellation that could eventually number thousands of spacecraft. The Long March 6A’s second stage apparently disintegrated after placing its payload of 18 satellites into a polar orbit.
Space Command said in a statement it has “observed no immediate threats” and “continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain.” According to LeoLabs, radar data indicated the rocket broke apart at an altitude of 503 miles (810 kilometers) at approximately 4: 10 pm EDT (20: 10 UTC) on Tuesday, around 13-and-a-half hours after it lifted off from northern China.
At this altitude, it will take decades or centuries for the wispy effect of aerodynamic drag to pull the debris back into the atmosphere. As the objects drift lower, their orbits will cross paths with SpaceX’s Starlink Internet satellites, the International Space Station and other crew spacecraft, and thousands more pieces of orbital debris, putting commercial and government satellites at risk of collision.
A new debris field of nearly 1,000 objects would be a significant addition to the approximately 46,000 objects Space Command tracks in Earth orbit. According to statistics compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who monitors global launch and spaceflight activity, this would rank in the top five of all debris-generation events since the dawn of the Space Age.
This rocket has a track record
The medium-class Long March 6A rocket has launched seven times since debuting in March 2022, and military and commercial satellite tracking organizations have reported several breakups of the rocket’s upper stage. In November 2022, a Long March 6A upper stage disintegrated in orbit, creating a debris field of more than 500 trackable objects, according to NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office.
Commercial satellite tracking companies observed smaller debris fields following several other Long March 6A flights this year.
In its space environment statistics report, the European Space Agency says there have been more than 640 “breakups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation” in orbit. So these things happen frequently. But it’s not clear what makes the Long March 6A, which has a relatively short flight history, particularly vulnerable to creating debris.
Enlarge/ A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.
Most rockets operating today either reignite their engines to reenter the atmosphere after deploying their payloads, or if that’s not feasible, they “passivate” themselves to empty their propellant tanks and drain their batteries to reduce the risk of an explosion.
In a report last year, NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office said the Long March 6A upper stage has a mass of about 5,800 kilograms (12,800 pounds) without kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants. It is powered by a single YF-115 engine.
The launch Tuesday began the deployment of China’s “Thousand Sails” Internet network, which will initially consist of 1,296 satellites, with the possibility to expand to more than 14,000 spacecraft. This will require numerous launches, some of which will presumably use the Long March 6A.
“If even a fraction of the launches needed to field this Chinese megaconstellation generate as much debris as this first launch, the result would be a notable addition to the space debris population in LEO (low-Earth orbit),” said Audrey Schaffer, vice president of strategy and policy at Slingshot Aerospace, a commercial satellite tracking and analytics firm.
China has been responsible for several space debris incidents beyond the latest problems with the Long March 6A rocket. In 2007, China destroyed one of its own spacecraft in an anti-satellite missile test. This was the worst-ever instance of creating space debris, resulting in more than 3,000 trackable objects, and an estimate 150,000 or more smaller fragments.
On four occasions from 2020 through 2022, the massive core stage of China’s heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket has reentered the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner, raising concerns that falling debris could put people and property at risk on Earth.
China plans more flights with its Long March 5B and Long March 6A rockets. China continued flying the Long March 5B rocket despite the risk it posed to people on the ground. Debris fields in orbit, however, don’t directly threaten any people on Earth, but they do raise the risk to satellites of all nations, including China’s own spacecraft.
“Events like this highlight the importance of adherence to existing space debris mitigation guidelines to reduce the creation of new space debris and underscore the need for robust space domain awareness capabilities to rapidly detect, track, and catalog newly-launched space objects so they can be screened for potential conjunctions,” Schaffer said in a statement.
This story was updated with the detection of additional debris fragments by LeoLabs.
Enlarge/ A Long March 6A rocket launches the first 18 Internet satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, broadband network.
Chinese officials have long signaled their interest in deploying a satellite network, or maybe several, to beam broadband Internet signals across China and other nations within its sphere of influence.
Two serious efforts are underway in China to develop a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink network, which the Chinese government has banned in its territory. The first batch of 18 satellites for one of those Chinese networks launched into low-Earth orbit Tuesday.
A Long March 6A rocket delivered the 18 spacecraft into a polar orbit following liftoff at 2: 42 am EDT (06: 42 UTC) from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China’s Shanxi province. The Long March 6A is one of China’s newest rockets—and the country’s first to employ strap-on solid rocket boosters—with the ability to deploy a payload of up to 4.5 metric tons (9,900 pounds) into a 700-kilometer (435-mile) Sun-synchronous orbit.
The rocket placed its payload of 18 Qianfan satellites into the proper orbit, and the launch mission was a complete success, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest state-owned contractor for the Chinese space program.
Qianfan translates to “Thousand Sails,” and the 18 satellites launched Tuesday are the first of potentially thousands of spacecraft planned by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a company backed by Shanghai’s municipal government. The network developed by SSST is also called the “Spacesail Constellation.”
Shanghai officials only began releasing details of this constellation last year. A filing with the International Telecommunication Union suggests the developers of Shanghai-based megaconstellation initially plan to deploy 1,296 satellites at an altitude of about 1,160 kilometers (721 miles).
Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, said the constellation “will provide global users with low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband Internet services.”
Opening the floodgates?
SSST’s network was previously known as G60 Starlink, referencing a major cross-country highway in China and the project’s intent to imitate SpaceX’s broadband service.
Thousand Sails may eventually consist of more than 14,000 satellites, but like other Internet megaconstellations, the size of the fleet will likely grow at a rate commensurate with demand. It will take many years for SSST to deploy a 14,000-satellite constellation, if it ever does. SpaceX has rolled out several generations of Starlink satellites to offer new services and more capacity to meet customer uptake.
Chinese officials have released few details about the Qianfan satellites. But the project’s backers have said the spacecraft has a “standardized and modular” flat-panel design. “It meets the needs of stacking multiple satellites with one rocket,” said Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, a joint venture set up by SSST and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to oversee manufacturing of Qianfan satellites.
This sounds a lot like the design of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which are flat-packed for launch on Falcon 9 rockets. SpaceX pioneered this way of launching and deploying large numbers of satellites. The approach used for Starlink, and apparently for Qianfan, streamlines the integration of multiple satellites with their launcher on the ground. It also simplifies their separation from the rocket once in orbit.
The new Qianfan satellite factory in Shanghai can produce up to 300 spacecraft per year, project officials said in December. Officials previously said the first 108 satellites for the Thousand Sails constellation would launch this year.
SSST announced in February it had raised more than $900 million from Chinese state-backed investment funds, Shanghai’s municipal government, and sources of venture capital. SSST’s origin is linked to a Chinese joint venture with a Germany-based company called KLEO Connect, which intended to develop a smaller constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites for data relay services.
China launched four technology demonstration satellites, purportedly related to the KLEO Connect venture, to test telecom hardware and electric propulsion systems in orbit. The joint venture fell apart with a flurry of lawsuits, and the German government last year blocked a complete takeover of KLEO Connect by its Chinese investors.
Now, SSST is going it alone with the Thousand Sails network. It has rapidly scaled up satellite manufacturing capacity in Shanghai. But outside of Starlink, companies with ideas for megaconstellations have run into serious headwinds.
OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in 2020 before eventually launching its entire first-generation network of 633 Internet satellites. Amazon has pushed back the full-scale deployment of its Project Kuiper megaconstellation, and the launch of the first operational Kuiper Internet satellites may be delayed again to 2025. The future of the European Union’s IRIS² satellite Internet network is in doubt after disagreements among European governments on funding the project.
The Thousand Sails constellation is less well-known than another planned Chinese satellite Internet network known as Guowang, or “national network,” which is supported by China’s central government. Guowang is owned by a state-backed company called SatNet, and its architecture will consist of 13,000 satellites. However, China has not yet launched any spacecraft for the Guowang project.
It’s unclear if the Thousand Sails network and the Guowang constellation will be direct competitors. They could be geared to different segments of the broadband market. In either case, China’s restrictive Internet policies with terrestrial networks will likely spill over into the satellite segment.
Chinese officials recognize the military utility of satellite Internet services like Starlink, which has supported Ukrainian military forces fighting Russian troops since 2022. A homegrown Starlink-like service would, no doubt, prove useful for China’s military.
Alongside potential domestic civilian users, China could use its satellite Internet networks as a diplomatic tool to build on existing partnerships between the Chinese government and developing countries. This could “lead to a leapfrogging moment, where African countries opt for the Chinese Internet constellation over Western providers due to the fact that much of their infrastructure is already Chinese-built,” the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think tank, wrote in a report last year.
While there are open questions about how China will use its satellite megaconstellations, their deployment will require a significant increase in the country’s launch capacity, driving the development of new commercial rockets, including reusable boosters, to lower costs and increase their flight rate.
Enlarge/ The core stage for NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket rolls aboard a barge that will take it from New Orleans to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Welcome to Edition 7.03 of the Rocket Report! One week ago, SpaceX suffered a rare failure of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. In fact, it was the first time the latest version of the Falcon 9, known as the Block 5, has ever failed on its prime mission after nearly 300 launches. The world’s launch pads have been silent since the grounding of the Falcon 9 fleet after last week’s failure. This isn’t surprising, but it’s noteworthy. After all, the Falcon 9 has flown more this year than all of the world’s other rockets combined and is fundamental to much of what the world does in space.
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.
Astra finally goes private, again. A long-simmering deal for Astra’s founders to take the company private has been finalized, the company announced Thursday, capping the rocket launch company’s descent from blank-check darling to delisting in three years, Bloomberg reports. The launch company’s valuation peaked at $3.9 billion in 2021, the year it went public, and was worth about $12.2 million at the end of March, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Astra’s chief executive officer, Chris Kemp, and chief technology officer, Adam London, founded the company in 2016 with the goal of essentially commoditizing launch services for small satellites. But Astra’s rockets failed to deliver and fell short of orbit five times in seven tries.
Spiraling … Astra’s stock price tanked after the spate of launch failures, drying up its funding spigot as Kemp tried to pivot toward a slightly larger, more reliable rocket. Astra acquired a company named Apollo Fusion in 2021, entering a new business segment to produce electric thrusters for small satellites. But Astra’s launch business faltered, and last November Kemp and London submitted an offer to retake ownership of the company. Astra announced the closure of the take-private deal Thursday, with Kemp and London acquiring the company’s outstanding shares for 50 cents per share in cash, below the stock’s final listing price of 53 cents. “We will now focus all of our attention on a successful launch of Rocket 4, delivering satellite engines to our customers, and building a company of consequence,” Kemp said. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)
Firefly chief leaves company. Launch startup Firefly Aerospace parted ways with CEO Bill Weber, Payload reports. The announcement of Weber’s departure late Wednesday came two days after Payload reported Firefly was investigating claims of an alleged inappropriate relationship between him and a female employee. “Firefly Aerospace’s Board of Directors announced that Bill Weber is no longer serving as CEO of the company, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement Wednesday night. Peter Schumacher takes over as interim CEO while Firefly searches for a new permanent chief executive. Schumacher was an interim CEO at Firefly before Weber’s hiring in 2022.
Two days and gone … Payload published the first report of Weber’s alleged improper relationship with a female employee Monday. Two days later, Weber was gone. Payload reported an executive brought his concerns about the alleged relationship to Firefly’s board and resigned because he lost confidence in leadership at the company. Citing four current and former employees, Payload reported Firefly’s culture became “chaotic” since Weber took the helm in 2022 after its acquisition by AE Industrial Partners. The Texas-based company achieved some success during Weber’s tenure, with four orbital launches of its Alpha rocket, although two of the flights ended up in lower-than-planned orbits. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
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Themis hop tests delayed to next year. The initial hop tests of the European Themis reusable booster, developed by ArianeGroup and funded by ESA, won’t start until next year, European Spaceflight reports. The Swedish Space Corporation, which operates the space center in Sweden where Themis will initially fly, confirmed the schedule change. Once ArianeGroup moves on to higher altitude flights, the testing will be moved to the Guiana Space Center. ESA awarded the first development contract for the Themis booster in 2019, and the first hop tests were then scheduled for 2022. Themis’ hops will be similar to SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket, which performed a series of up-and-down atmospheric test flights before SpaceX started recovering and reusing Falcon 9 boosters.
Fate of Themis … The Themis booster is powered by the methane-fueled Prometheus engine, also funded by ESA. A large European reusable rocket is unlikely to fly until the 2030s, but a subsidiary of ArianeGroup named MaiaSpace is developing a smaller partially reusable two-stage rocket slated to debut as soon as next year. The Maia rocket will use a modified Themis booster as its first stage. “As a result, for MaiaSpace, the continued and rapid development of the Themis program is essential to ensure it can hit its projected target of an inaugural flight of Maia in 2025,” European Spaceflight reports. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Enlarge/ Four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines power Firefly’s Alpha rocket off the pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Welcome to Edition 7.01 of the Rocket Report! We’re compiling this week’s report a day later than usual due to the Independence Day holiday. Ars is beginning its seventh year publishing this weekly roundup of rocket news, and there’s a lot of it this week despite the holiday here in the United States. Worldwide, there were 122 launches that flew into Earth orbit or beyond in the first half of 2024, up from 91 in the same period last year.
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.
Firefly launches its fifth Alpha flight. Firefly Aerospace placed eight CubeSats into orbit on a mission funded by NASA on the first flight of the company’s Alpha rocket since an upper stage malfunction more than half a year ago, Space News reports. The two-stage Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California late Wednesday, two days after an issue with ground equipment aborted liftoff just before engine ignition. The eight CubeSats come from NASA centers and universities for a range of educational, research, and technology demonstration missions. This was the fifth flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket, capable of placing about a metric ton of payload into low-Earth orbit.
Anomaly resolution … This was the fifth flight of an Alpha rocket since 2021 and the fourth Alpha flight to achieve orbit. But the last Alpha launch in December failed to place its Lockheed Martin payload into the proper orbit due to a problem during the relighting of its second-stage engine. On this week’s launch, Alpha deployed its NASA-sponsored payloads after a single burn of the second stage, then completed a successful restart of the engine for a plane change maneuver. Engineers traced the problem on the last Alpha flight to a software error. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Two companies added to DoD’s launch pool. Blue Origin and Stoke Space Technologies — neither of which has yet reached orbit — have been approved by the US Space Force to compete for future launches of small payloads, Breaking Defense reports. Blue Origin and Stoke Space join a roster of launch companies eligible to compete for launch task orders the Space Force puts up for bid through the Orbital Services Program-4 (OSP-4) contract. Under this contract, Space Systems Command buys launch services for payloads 400 pounds (180 kilograms) or greater, enabling launch from 12 to 24 months of the award of a task order. The OSP-4 contract has an “emphasis on small orbital launch capabilities and launch solutions for Tactically Responsive Space mission needs,” said Lt. Col. Steve Hendershot, chief of Space Systems Command’s small launch and targets division.
An even dozen … Blue Origin aims to launch its orbital-class New Glenn rocket for the first time as soon as late September, while Stoke Space aims to fly its Nova rocket on an orbital test flight next year. The addition of these two companies means there are 12 providers eligible to bid on OSP-4 task orders. The other companies are ABL Space Systems, Aevum, Astra, Firefly Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and X-Bow. (submitted by Ken the Bin and brianrhurley)
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Italian startup test-fires small rocket. Italian rocket builder Sidereus Space Dynamics has completed the first integrated system test of its EOS rocket, European Spaceflight reports. This test occurred Sunday, culminating in a firing of the rocket’s kerosene/liquid oxygen MR-5 main engine for approximately 11 seconds. The EOS rocket is a novel design, utilizing a single-stage-to-orbit architecture, with the reusable booster returning to Earth from orbit for recovery under a parafoil. The rocket stands less than 14 feet (4.2 meters) tall and will be capable of delivering about 29 pounds (13 kilograms) of payload to low-Earth orbit.
A lean operation … After it completes integrated testing on the ground, the company will conduct the first low-altitude EOS test flights. Founded in 2019, Sidereus has raised 6.6 million euros ($7.1 million) to fund the development of the EOS rocket. While this is a fraction of the funding other European launch startups like Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, and Orbex have attracted, the Sidereus’s CEO, Mattia Barbarossa, has previously stated that the company intends to “reshape spaceflight in a fraction of the time and with limited resources.” (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)
Enlarge/ SpaceX’s 10th Falcon Heavy rocket climbs into orbit with a new US government weather satellite.
Welcome to Edition 6.50 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX launched its 10th Falcon Heavy rocket this week with the GOES-U weather satellite for NOAA, and this one was a beauty. The late afternoon timing of the launch and atmospheric conditions made for great photography. Falcon Heavy has become a trusted rocket for the US government, and its next flight in October will deploy NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft on the way to explore one of Jupiter’s enigmatic icy moons.
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.
Sir Peter Beck dishes on launch business. Ars spoke with the recently knighted Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, on where his scrappy company fits in a global launch marketplace dominated by SpaceX. Rocket Lab racked up the third-most number of orbital launches by any US launch company (it’s headquartered in California but primarily assembles and launches rockets in New Zealand). SpaceX’s rideshare launch business with the Falcon 9 rocket is putting immense pressure on small launch companies like Rocket Lab. However, Beck argues his Electron rocket is a bespoke solution for customers desiring to put their satellite in a specific place at a specific time, a luxury they can’t count on with a SpaceX rideshare.
Ruthlessly efficient … A word that Beck returned to throughout his interview with Ars was “ruthless.” He said Rocket Lab’s success is a result of the company being “ruthlessly efficient and not making mistakes.” At one time, Rocket Lab was up against Virgin Orbit in the small launch business, and Virgin Orbit had access to capital through billionaire Richard Branson. Now, SpaceX is the 800-pound gorilla in the market. “We have a saying here at Rocket Lab that we have no money, so we have to think. We’ve never been in a position to outspend our competitors. We just have to out-think them. We have to be lean and mean.”
Firefly reveals plans for new launch sites. Firefly Aerospace plans to use the state of Virginia-owned launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility for East Coast launches of its Alpha small-satellite rocket, Aviation Week reports. The company plans to use Pad 0A for US military and other missions, particularly those requiring tight turnaround between procurement and launch. This is the same launch pad previously used by Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, and it’s the soon-to-be home of the Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV) jointly developed by Northrop and Firefly. The launch pad will be configured for Alpha launches beginning in 2025, according to Firefly, which previously planned to develop an Alpha launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Now, Alpha and MLV rockets will fly from the same site on the East Coast, while Alpha will continue launching from the West Coast at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Hello, Sweden… A few days after the announcement for launches from Virginia, Firefly unveiled a collaborative agreement with Swedish Space Corporation to launch Alpha rockets from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden as soon as 2026. Esrange has been the departure point for numerous suborbital and sounding rocket for nearly 50 years, but the spaceport is being upgraded for orbital satellite launches. A South Korean startup named Perigee Aerospace announced in May it signed an agreement to be the first user of Esrange’s orbital launch capability. Firefly is the second company to make plans to launch satellites from the remote site in northern Sweden. (submitted by Ken the Bin and brianrhurley)
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China hops closer to reusable rockets. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), part of China’s apparatus of state-owned aerospace companies, has conducted the country’s highest altitude launch and landing test so far as several teams chase reusable rocket capabilities, Space News reports. A 3.8-meter-diameter (9.2-foot) test article powered by three methane liquid-oxygen engines lifted off from the Gobi Desert on June 23 and soared to an altitude of about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) before setting down successfully for a vertical propulsive touchdown on landing legs at a nearby landing area. SAST will follow up with a 70-kilometer (43.5-mile) suborbital test using grid fins for better control. A first orbital flight of the new reusable rocket is planned for 2025.
Lots of players … If you don’t exclusively follow China’s launch sector, you should be forgiven for being unable to list all the companies working on new reusable rockets. Late last year, a Chinese startup named iSpace flew a hopper rocket testbed to an altitude of several hundred meters as part of a development program for the company’s upcoming partially reusable Hyperbola 2 rocket. A company named Space Pioneer plans to launch its medium-class Tianlong 3 rocket for the first time later this year. Tianlong 3 looks remarkably like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and its first stage will eventually be made reusable. China recently test-fired engines for the government’s new Long March 10, a partially reusable rocket planned to become China’s next-generation crew launch vehicle. These are just a few of the reusable rocket programs in China. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Spanish launch startup invests in Kourou. PLD Space says it is ready to start construction at a disused launch complex at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. The Spanish launch startup announced this week a 10 million euro ($10.7 million) investment in the launch complex for its Miura 5 rocket, with preparations of the site set to begin “after the summer.” The launch pad was previously used by the French Diamant rocket in the 1970s and is located several miles away from the launch pads used by the European Ariane 6 and Vega rockets. PLD Space is on track to become the first fully commercial company to launch from the spaceport in South America.
Free access to space … Also this week, PLD Space announced a new program to offer space aboard the first two flights of its Miura 5 rocket for free, European Spaceflight reports. The two-stage Miura 5 rocket will be capable of delivering about a half-ton of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. PLD Space will offer free launch services aboard the first two Miura 5 flights, which are expected to take place in late 2025 and early 2026. The application process will close on July 30, and winning proposals will be announced on November 30. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)
The resurrection of a car plant in Brazil’s poor northeast stands as a symbol of China’s global advance—and the West’s retreat.
BYD, the Shenzhen-based conglomerate, has taken over an old Ford factory in Camaçari, which was abandoned by the American automaker nearly a century after Henry Ford first set up operations in Brazil.
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, visited China last year, he met BYD’s billionaire founder and chair, Wang Chuanfu. After that meeting, BYD picked the country for its first carmaking hub outside of Asia.
Under a $1 billion-plus investment plan, BYD intends to start producing electric and hybrid automobiles this year at the site in Bahia state, which will also manufacture bus and truck chassis and process battery materials.
The new Brazil plant is no outlier—it falls into a wave of corporate Chinese investment in electric vehicle manufacturing supply chains in the world’s most important developing economies.
Financial Times
The inadvertent result of rising protectionism in the US and Europe could be to drive many emerging markets into China’s hands.
Last month, Joe Biden issued a new broadside against Beijing’s deep financial support of Chinese industry as he unveiled sweeping new tariffs on a range of cleantech products—most notably, a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles. “It’s not competition. It’s cheating. And we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said.
The measures were partly aimed at boosting Biden’s chances in his presidential battle with Donald Trump. But the tariffs, paired with rising restrictions on Chinese investment on American soil, will have an immense impact on the global auto market, in effect shutting China’s world-leading EV makers out of the world’s biggest economy.
The EU’s own anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese electric cars is expected to conclude next week as Brussels tries to protect European carmakers by stemming the flow of low-cost Chinese electric vehicles into the bloc.
Government officials, executives, and experts say that the series of new cleantech tariffs issued by Washington and Brussels are forcing China’s leading players to sharpen their focus on markets in the rest of the world.
This, they argue, will lead to Chinese dominance across the world’s most important emerging markets, including Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and the remaining Western economies that are less protectionist than the US and Europe.
“That is the part that seems to be lost in this whole discussion of ‘can we raise some tariffs and slow down the Chinese advance.’ That’s only defending your homeland. That’s leaving everything else open,” says Bill Russo, the former head of Chrysler in Asia and founder of Automobility, a Shanghai consultancy.
“Those markets are in play and China is aggressively going after those markets.”
Enlarge/ OpenAI said it was committed to uncovering disinformation campaigns and was building its own AI-powered tools to make detection and analysis “more effective.”
FT montage/NurPhoto via Getty Images
OpenAI has revealed operations linked to Russia, China, Iran and Israel have been using its artificial intelligence tools to create and spread disinformation, as technology becomes a powerful weapon in information warfare in an election-heavy year.
The San Francisco-based maker of the ChatGPT chatbot said in a report on Thursday that five covert influence operations had used its AI models to generate text and images at a high volume, with fewer language errors than previously, as well as to generate comments or replies to their own posts. OpenAI’s policies prohibit the use of its models to deceive or mislead others.
The content focused on issues “including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Indian elections, politics in Europe and the United States, and criticisms of the Chinese government by Chinese dissidents and foreign governments,” OpenAI said in the report.
The networks also used AI to enhance their own productivity, applying it to tasks such as debugging code or doing research into public social media activity, it said.
Social media platforms, including Meta and Google’s YouTube, have sought to clamp down on the proliferation of disinformation campaigns in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 win in the US presidential election when investigators found evidence that a Russian troll farm had sought to manipulate the vote.
Pressure is mounting on fast-growing AI companies such as OpenAI, as rapid advances in their technology mean it is cheaper and easier than ever for disinformation perpetrators to create realistic deepfakes and manipulate media and then spread that content in an automated fashion.
As about 2 billion people head to the polls this year, policymakers have urged the companies to introduce and enforce appropriate guardrails.
Ben Nimmo, principal investigator for intelligence and investigations at OpenAI, said on a call with reporters that the campaigns did not appear to have “meaningfully” boosted their engagement or reach as a result of using OpenAI’s models.
But, he added, “this is not the time for complacency. History shows that influence operations which spent years failing to get anywhere can suddenly break out if nobody’s looking for them.”
Microsoft-backed OpenAI said it was committed to uncovering such disinformation campaigns and was building its own AI-powered tools to make detection and analysis “more effective.” It added its safety systems already made it difficult for the perpetrators to operate, with its models refusing in multiple instances to generate the text or images asked for.
In the report, OpenAI revealed several well-known state-affiliated disinformation actors had been using its tools. These included a Russian operation, Doppelganger, which was first discovered in 2022 and typically attempts to undermine support for Ukraine, and a Chinese network known as Spamouflage, which pushes Beijing’s interests abroad. Both campaigns used its models to generate text or comment in multiple languages before posting on platforms such as Elon Musk’s X.
It flagged a previously unreported Russian operation, dubbed Bad Grammar, saying it used OpenAI models to debug code for running a Telegram bot and to create short, political comments in Russian and English that were then posted on messaging platform Telegram.
X and Telegram have been approached for comment.
It also said it had thwarted a pro-Israel disinformation-for-hire effort, allegedly run by a Tel Aviv-based political campaign management business called STOIC, which used its models to generate articles and comments on X and across Meta’s Instagram and Facebook.
Meta on Wednesday released a report stating it removed the STOIC content. The accounts linked to these operations were terminated by OpenAI.
