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RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory

anti-vaccine, fauci, germ theory, health, Infectious disease, miasma, robert f kennedy jr, Science / Kris Guyer / May 1, 2025

In his 2021 book vilifying Anthony Fauci, RFK Jr. lays out support for an alternate theory.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at a news conference on removing synthetic dyes from America’s food supply, at the Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC on April 22, 2025. Credit: Getty | Nathan Posner

With the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., brain worms have gotten a bad rap.

A year ago, the long-time anti-vaccine advocate and current US health secretary famously told The New York Times that a parasitic worm “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” The startling revelation is now frequently referenced whenever Kennedy says something outlandish, false, or offensive—which is often. For those who have followed his anti-vaccine advocacy, it’s frightfully clear that, worm-infested or not, Kennedy’s brain is marinated in wild conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation.

While it’s certainly possible that worm remnants could impair brain function, it remains unknown if the worm is to blame for Kennedy’s cognitive oddities. For one thing, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, which can cause brain damage, too. As prominent infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said last June in a conversation with political analyst David Axelrod: “I don’t know what’s going on in [Kennedy’s] head, but it’s not good.”

The trouble is that now that Kennedy is the country’s top health official, his warped ideas are contributing to the rise of a dystopian reality. Federal health agencies are spiraling into chaos, and critical public health services for Americans have been brutally slashed, dismantled, or knee-capped—from infectious disease responses, the lead poisoning team, and Meals on Wheels to maternal health programs and anti-smoking initiatives, just to name a few. The health of the nation is at stake; the struggle to understand what goes on in Kennedy’s head is vital.

While we may never have definitive answers on his cognitive situation, one thing is plain: Kennedy’s thoughts and actions make a lot more sense when you realize he doesn’t believe in a foundational scientific principle: germ theory.

Dueling theories

Germ theory is, of course, the 19th-century proven idea that microscopic germs—pathogenic viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi—cause disease. It supplanted the leading explanation of disease at the time, the miasma theory, which suggests that diseases are caused by miasma, that is, noxious mists and vapors, or simply bad air arising from decaying matter, such as corpses, sewage, or rotting vegetables. While the miasma theory was abandoned, it is credited with spurring improvements in sanitation and hygiene—which, of course, improve health because they halt the spread of germs, the cause of diseases.

Germ theory also knocks back a lesser-known idea called the terrain theory, which we’ve covered before. This is a somewhat ill-defined theory that generally suggests diseases stem from imbalances in the internal “terrain” of the body, such as malnutrition or the presence of toxic substances. The theory is linked to ideas by French scientist Antoine Béchamp and French physiologist Claude Bernard.

Béchamp, considered a bitter crank and rival to famed French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, is perhaps best known for wrongly suggesting the basic unit of organisms is not the cell, but nonexistent microanatomical elements he called “microzyma.” While the idea was largely ignored by the scientific community, Béchamp suggested that disruptions to microzyma are a predisposition to disease, as is the state of the body’s “terrain.” French physiologist Claude Bernard, meanwhile, came up with an idea of balance or stability of the body’s internal environment (milieu intérieur), which was a precursor to the concept of homeostasis. Ideas from the two figures came together to create an ideology that has been enthusiastically adopted by modern-day germ theory denialists, including Kennedy.

It’s important to note here that our understanding of Kennedy’s disbelief in germ theory isn’t based on speculation or deduction; it’s based on Kennedy’s own words. He wrote an entire section on it in his 2021 book vilifying Fauci, titled The Real Anthony Fauci. The section is titled “Miasma vs. Germ Theory,” in the chapter “The White Man’s Burden.”

But, we did reach out to Health and Human Services to ask how Kennedy’s disbelief in germ theory influences his policy decisions. HHS did not respond.

Kennedy’s beliefs

In the chapter, Kennedy promotes the “miasma theory” but gets the definition completely wrong. Instead of actual miasma theory, he describes something more like terrain theory. He writes: “‘Miasma theory’ emphasizes preventing disease by fortifying the immune system through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins and stresses.”

Kennedy contrasts his erroneous take on miasma theory with germ theory, which he derides as a tool of the pharmaceutical industry and pushy scientists to justify selling modern medicines. The abandonment of miasma theory, Kennedy bemoans, realigned health and medical institutions to “the pharmaceutical paradigm that emphasized targeting particular germs with specific drugs rather than fortifying the immune system through healthy living, clean water, and good nutrition.”

According to Kennedy, germ theory gained popularity, not because of the undisputed evidence supporting it, but by “mimicking the traditional explanation for disease—demon possession—giving it a leg up over miasma.”

To this day, Kennedy writes, a “$1 trillion pharmaceutical industry pushing patented pills, powders, pricks, potions, and poisons, and the powerful professions of virology and vaccinology led by ‘Little Napoleon’ himself, Anthony Fauci, fortify the century-old predominance of germ theory.”

In all, the chapter provides a clear explanation of why Kennedy relentlessly attacks evidence-based medicines; vilifies the pharmaceutical industry; suggests HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and antidepressants are behind mass shootings; believes that vaccines are harmful, not protective; claims 5G wireless networks cause cancer; suggests chemicals in water are changing children’s gender identities; and is quick to promote supplements to prevent and treat diseases, such as recently recommending vitamin A for measles and falsely claiming children who die from the viral infection are malnourished.

A religious conviction

For some experts, the chapter was like a light bulb going on. “I thought ‘it now all makes sense’… I mean, it all adds up,” Paul Offit, pediatrician and infectious disease expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told Ars Technica. It’s still astonishing, though, he added. “It’s so unbelievable, because you can’t imagine that someone who’s the head of Health and Human Services doesn’t believe that specific viruses or bacteria cause specific diseases, and that the prevention or treatment of them is lifesaving.”

Offit has a dark history with Kennedy. Around 20 years ago, Kennedy called Offit out of the blue to talk with him about vaccine safety. Offit knows a lot about it—he’s not only an expert on vaccines, he’s the co-inventor of one. The vaccine he co-developed, RotaTeq, protects against rotaviruses, which cause deadly diarrheal disease in young children and killed an estimated 500,000 people worldwide each year before vaccines were available. RotaTeq has been proven safe and effective and is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives around the world each year.

Kennedy and Offit spent about an hour talking, mostly about thimerosal, an ethylmercury-containing preservative that was once used in childhood vaccines but was mostly abandoned by 2001 as a precautionary measure. RotaTeq doesn’t and never did contain thimerosal—because it’s a live, attenuated viral vaccine, it doesn’t contain any preservatives. But Kennedy has frequently used thimerosal as a vaccine bogeyman over the years, claiming it causes harms (there is no evidence for this).

After their conversation, Kennedy published a story in Rolling Stone and Salon.com titled “Deadly Immunity,” which erroneously argued that thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism. The article was riddled with falsehoods and misleading statements. It described Offit as “in the pocket” of the pharmaceutical industry and claimed RotaTeq was “laced” with thimerosal. Rolling Stone and Salon amended some of the article’s problems, but eventually Salon retracted it and Rolling Stone deleted it.

Looking back, Offit said he was sandbagged. “He’s a liar. He lied about who he was; he lied about what he was doing. He was just wanting to set me up,” Offit said.

Although that was the only time they had ever spoken, Kennedy has continued to disparage and malign Offit over the years. In his book dedicated to denigrating Fauci, Kennedy spends plenty of time spitting insults at Offit, calling him a “font of wild industry ballyhoo, prevarication, and outright fraud.” He also makes the wildly false claim that RotaTeq “almost certainly kills and injures more children in the United States than the rotavirus disease.”

Inconvincible

Understanding that Kennedy is a germ theory denialist and terrain theory embracer makes these attacks easier to understand—though no less abhorrent or dangerous.

“He holds these beliefs like a religious conviction,” Offit said. “There is no shaking him from that,” regardless of how much evidence there is to prove him wrong. “If you’re trying to talk him out of something that he holds with a religious conviction—that’s never going to happen. And so any time anybody disagrees with him, he goes, ‘Well, of course, they’re just in the pocket of industry; that’s why they say that.'”

There are some aspects of terrain theory that do have a basis in reality. Certainly, underlying medical conditions—which could be considered a disturbed bodily “terrain”—can make people more vulnerable to disease. And, with recent advances in understanding the microbiome, it has become clear that imbalances in the microbial communities in our gastrointestinal tracts can also predispose people to infections.

But, on the whole, the evidence against terrain theory is obvious and all around us. Terrain theorists consider disease a symptom of an unhealthy internal state, suggesting that anyone who gets sick is unhealthy and that all disease-causing germs are purely opportunistic. This is nonsense: Plenty of people fall ill while being otherwise healthy. And many germs are dedicated pathogens, with evolved, specialized virulence strategies such as toxins, and advanced defense mechanisms such as antibacterial resistance. They are not opportunists.

(There are some terrain theory devotees who do not believe in the existence of microbes at all—but Kennedy seems to accept that bacteria and viruses are real.)

Terrain theory applied

Terrain theory’s clash with reality has become painfully apparent amid Kennedy’s handling—or more accurately, mishandling—of the current measles situation in the US.

Most health experts would consider the current measles situation in the US akin to a five-alarm fire. An outbreak that began at the end of January in West Texas is now the largest and deadliest the country has seen in a quarter-century. Three people have died, including two unvaccinated young children who were otherwise healthy. The outbreak has spread to at least three other states, which also have undervaccinated communities where the virus can thrive. There’s no sign of the outbreak slowing, and the nation’s overall case count is on track to be the highest since the mid-1990s, before measles was declared eliminated in 2000. Modeling indicates the country will lose its elimination status and that measles will once again become endemic in the US.

Given the situation, one might expect a vigorous federal response—one dominated by strong and clear promotion of the highly effective, safe measles vaccine. But of course, that’s not the case.

“When those first two little girls died of measles in West Texas, he said immediately—RFK Jr.—that they were malnourished. It was the doctors that stood up and said ‘No, they had no risk factors. They were perfectly well-nourished,'” Offit points out.

Kennedy has also heavily pushed the use of vitamin A, a fat-soluble vitamin that accumulates in the body and can become toxic with large or prolonged doses. It does not prevent measles and is mainly used as supportive care for measles in low-income countries where vitamin A deficiency is common. Nevertheless, vaccine-hesitant communities in Texas have embraced it, leading to reports from doctors that they have had to treat children for vitamin A toxicity.

Poisons

Despite the raging outbreak, Kennedy spent part of last week drumming up fanfare for a rickety plan to rid American foods of artificial food dyes, which are accused of making sugary processed foods more appealing to kids, in addition to posing their own health risks. It’s part of his larger effort to improve Americans’ nutrition, a tenet of terrain theory. Though Kennedy has organized zero news briefings on the measles outbreak, he appeared at a jubilant press conference on removing the dyes.

The conference was complete with remarks from people who seem to share similar beliefs as Kennedy, including famed pseudoscience-peddler Vani Hari, aka “Food Babe,” and alternative-medicine guru and fad diet promoter Mark Hyman. Wellness mogul and special government employee Cally Meads also took to the podium to give a fury-filled speech in which he claimed that 90 percent of FDA’s spending is because we are “poisoning our children,” echoing a claim Kennedy has also made.

Kennedy, for his part, declared that “sugar is poison,” though he acknowledged that the FDA can’t ban it. While the conference was intended to celebrate the removal of artificial food dyes, he also acknowledged that there is no ban, nor forthcoming regulations, or even an agreement with food companies to remove the dyes. Kennedy instead said he simply had “an understanding” with food companies. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary explained the plan by saying: “I believe in love, and let’s start in a friendly way and see if we can do this without any statutory or regulatory changes.” Bloomberg reported the next day that food industry lobbyists said there is no agreement to remove the dyes.

However feeble the move, a focus on banning colorful cereal during a grave infectious disease outbreak makes a lot of sense if you know that Kennedy is a germ theory denialist.

But then again, there’s also the brain worm.

Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

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Firefly’s rocket suffers one of the strangest launch failures we’ve ever seen

alpha rocket, Commercial space, Firefly Aerospace, launch, Lockheed Martin, Science, Space, Vandenberg space force base / Rejus Almole / April 30, 2025

The rocket’s first stage may have exploded moments after it separated from the upper stage.

Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket on its launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: Jack Beyer/Firefly Aerospace

Firefly Aerospace launched its two-stage Alpha rocket from California early Tuesday, but something went wrong about two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, rendering the rocket unable to deploy an experimental satellite into orbit for Lockheed Martin.

The Alpha rocket took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base about 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles at 6: 37 am PDT (9: 37 am EDT; 13: 37 UTC), one day after Firefly called off a launch attempt due to a technical problem with ground support equipment.

Everything appeared to go well with the rocket’s first-stage booster, powered by four kerosene-fueled Reaver engines, as the launcher ascended through fog and arced on a southerly trajectory over the Pacific Ocean. The booster stage jettisoned from Alpha’s upper stage two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff, and that’s when things went awry.

A blast from below

A bright cloud of white vapor appeared high in the sky, indicating an explosion, or something close to it. A moment later, the upper stage’s single Lightning engine ignited for a six-minute burn to accelerate into orbit.

A ground-based infrared camera caught a glimpse of debris in the wake of the upper stage, and then Firefly’s live video stream switched to a camera onboard the rocket. The rear-facing view showed the Lightning engine stripped of its exhaust nozzle but still firing. Shards of debris were visible behind the rocket, but the video did not show any sign of the discarded first stage booster, which was expected to fall into the Pacific south of Vandenberg.

The upper stage engine kept firing for more than six minutes, when it shut down and Firefly announced that the rocket reached orbit. The rocket was programmed to release its single payload, a nearly 2-ton technology demonstration satellite built by Lockheed Martin, approximately 13 minutes into the mission. Firefly ended its live webcast of the launch before confirming separation of the satellite.

A short time later, Firefly released a statement acknowledging a “mishap during first stage separation… that impacted the Stage 2 Lightning engine nozzle.” As a result, the rocket achieved an orbit lower than its target altitude, Firefly said. The privately held Texas-based launch company amended its statement later Tuesday morning to remove the clause about the lower-than-planned orbit.

Another update from Firefly early Tuesday afternoon confirmed the launch failed. The company said the rocket “experienced a mishap between stage separation and second stage ignition that led to the loss of the Lightning engine nozzle extension, substantially reducing the engine’s thrust.”

The launcher reached an altitude of nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) but did not reach orbital velocity, according to Firefly.

“The stage and payload have now safely impacted the Pacific Ocean in a cleared zone north of Antarctica,” Firefly said. “Firefly recognizes the hard work that went into payload development and would like to thank our mission partners at Lockheed Martin for their continued support. The team is working closely with our customers and the FAA to conduct an investigation and determine root cause of the anomaly.”

While Firefly’s live video of the launch lacked a clear, stable view of first-stage separation, the appearance of white vapor is a sign that the rocket was likely emitting propellant. It wasn’t immediately obvious whether the first stage recontacted the upper stage after separation or if the booster exploded and harmed the upper stage engine.

You can watch a replay of Firefly’s stage separation below.

Whatever the case, it’s an interesting mode of failure. Maybe it’s not as bizarre as Astra’s sideways launch in 2021, something every rocket geek should know about. Also, there’s the time Astra’s upper stage launched itself through a half-open payload fairing in 2022. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket lost a nozzle from one of its solid rocket boosters on a test flight last year, but the launch vehicle persevered and continued its climb into orbit.

The third flight of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket failed in 2008 when its first stage collided with its upper stage moments after separation. An investigation determined residual thrust after shutdown of the first-stage engine pushed the booster into the bottom of Falcon 1’s upper stage, so SpaceX lengthened the time between main engine cutoff and staging. SpaceX’s next flight was successful, making Falcon 1 the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit.

The only time a rocket’s first stage has exploded after separation, at least in recent memory, was in 2023, when a North Korean booster blew up before it fell into the sea. The explosion did not damage the rocket’s upper stage, which continued into orbit on North Korea’s only successful satellite launch in nearly a decade. The incident fueled speculation that North Korea intentionally destroyed the booster to prevent South Korea or the United States from recovering it for inspections.

Great expectations

Firefly is one of just a handful of active US launch companies with rockets that have reached low-Earth orbit, but its Alpha rocket hasn’t established a reliable track record. In six flights, Alpha has amassed just two unqualified successes. Two prior Alpha launches deployed their payloads in lower-than-planned orbits, and the rocket’s debut test flight in 2021 failed soon after liftoff.

Now, Alpha has again missed its aim and didn’t reach orbit at all.

The Alpha rocket is capable of hauling a payload of up to 2,270 pounds (1,030 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit, putting Firefly’s launcher in a performance class above Rocket Lab’s Electron booster and below larger rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9. There’s no reliable commercial launch vehicle in the United States in this middle-of-the-road performance range. One potential competitor—ABL Space Systems—abandoned the satellite launch business last year to focus on missile defense and hypersonic testing.

There are several European launchers in operation or development—Arianespace’s Vega, Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum, and Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA One—with lift capacities comparable or slightly higher than Firefly’s Alpha.

File photo of a Firefly Alpha rocket lifting off in 2023. The launch on Tuesday occurred in foggy conditions.

Firefly argues that its Alpha rocket services a niche in the market for satellites too large to fly with Rocket Lab or too small to merit a dedicated flight with SpaceX. Firefly has some contract wins to bear this out. The launch on Tuesday was the first of up to 25 Alpha flights booked by Lockheed Martin to launch a series of tech demo satellites. The first of these was Lockheed Martin’s 3,836-pound (1,740-kilogram) LM-400 satellite, which was lost on Tuesday’s mission.

NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Reconnaissance Office, the US Space Force, and several more commercial customers have also reserved slots on Firefly’s launch schedule. With these contracts, Firefly has the fourth-largest launch confirmed backlog of any US launch company, following SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Rocket Lab.

While Firefly continues flying the Alpha rocket, its engineers are developing a larger Medium Launch Vehicle in partnership with Northrop Grumman. Last month, Firefly celebrated the most significant accomplishment in its 11-year history—the first fully successful landing on the Moon by a commercial entity.

But while Firefly’s first missions at its founding were to build rocket engines and launch small satellites, other markets may ultimately prove more lucrative.

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, argues rockets like Firefly’s Alpha are in a “no man’s land” in the launch market. “It’s too small to be a useful rideshare mission, and it’s too big to be a useful dedicated rocket” for smallsats, Beck told Space News.

Firefly might have a good strategy to prove Beck wrong. But first, it needs a more reliable rocket.

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.

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Spain is about to face the challenge of a “black start”

black start, blackout, Energy, grid management, Portugal, power grid, Science, spain / Rejus Almole / April 29, 2025

Local conditions

While the grids in Spain and Portugal are connected to each other, they have limited connections to elsewhere. The only sources of external power to the grid come from France and Morocco, which are small connections, but they could be used to help black start some plants. Both blacked-out countries have significant hydropower, with Spain seeing it cover 10 percent of its demand and Portugal 25 percent. That’s useful because hydro plants need very little in the way of an external power supply to start operating.

Beyond that, both countries have invested heavily in renewables, with Portugal supplying about half of its power from wind and hydro, having closed its last coal plant in 2021. Spain receives about 40 percent of its power from renewables at present.

Solar is not an ideal power source for black-starting the grid, given that it’s unavailable for a significant chunk of the day. But solar panels produce direct current, with electronic systems matching it to the alternating current of the grid. With the right electronics, it can play a key role in keeping frequencies stable as grid segments are repowered. In productive areas, wind can provide black start power to other plants, and doesn’t need much external power to begin operations. It’s unclear, however, whether the local wind hardware is equipped for black starts, or if the local weather will cooperate (a quick check of the weather in various cities suggests it’s relatively calm there).

Batteries have the potential to be incredibly helpful, since they also provide direct current that can be converted to any frequency needed, and so used for both starting up power plants or for frequency stabilization as segments of the grid are brought back online. Unfortunately, neither country has installed much grid-scale battery hardware yet. That’s expected to change over the next few years in parallel with dramatically expanded solar power. But, at the moment, batteries will not be a huge help.

Regardless of how precisely the grid operators manage to handle this task in Spain and Portugal, they face a monumental challenge at the moment. If you’re seeing estimates of several days for the restoration of power, it’s because failing to meet this challenge will leave things back in the state they’re in now.

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50 years later, Vietnam’s environment still bears the scars of war

Science, syndication, vietnam war / Rejus Almole / April 29, 2025

Large amounts of Agent Orange had been stored at the Da Nang airport during the war and contaminated the soil with dioxin. The cleanup project, including heating contaminated soil to high temperatures, was completed in 2018. Credit: Richard Nyberg, USAID

Another major hot spot is the heavily contaminated Biên Hoà airbase, where local residents continue to ingest high levels of dioxin through fish, chicken and ducks.

Agent Orange barrels were stored at the base, which leaked large amounts of the toxin into soil and water, where it continues to accumulate in animal tissue as it moves up the food chain. Remediation began in 2019; however, further work is at risk with the Trump administration’s near elimination of USAID, leaving it unclear if there will be any American experts in Vietnam in charge of administering this complex project.

Laws to prevent future ‘ecocide’ are complicated

While Agent Orange’s health effects have understandably drawn scrutiny, its long-term ecological consequences have not been well studied.

Current-day scientists have far more options than those 50 years ago, including satellite imagery, which is being used in Ukraine to identify fires, flooding, and pollution. However, these tools cannot replace on-the-ground monitoring, which often is restricted or dangerous during wartime.

The legal situation is similarly complex.

In 1977, the Geneva Conventions governing conduct during wartime were revised to prohibit “widespread, long term, and severe damage to the natural environment.” A 1980 protocol restricted incendiary weapons. Yet oil fires set by Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991, and recent environmental damage in the Gaza Strip, Ukraine, and Syria indicate the limits of relying on treaties when there are no strong mechanisms to ensure compliance.

Remediation work to remove dioxin contamination was just getting started at the former Biên Hoà Air Base in Vietnam when USAID’s staff was dismantled in 2025. Credit: USAID Vietnam

An international campaign currently underway calls for an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to add ecocide as a fifth prosecutable crime alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression.

Some countries have adopted their own ecocide laws. Vietnam was the first to legally state in its penal code that “Ecocide, destroying the natural environment, whether committed in time of peace or war, constitutes a crime against humanity.” Yet the law has resulted in no prosecutions, despite several large pollution cases.

Both Russia and Ukraine also have ecocide laws, but these have not prevented harm or held anyone accountable for damage during the ongoing conflict.

Lessons for the future

The Vietnam War is a reminder that failure to address ecological consequences, both during war and after, will have long-term effects. What remains in short supply is the political will to ensure that these impacts are neither ignored nor repeated.

Pamela McElwee, Professor of Human Ecology, Rutgers University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Rocket Report: The pitfalls of rideshare; China launches next Tiangong crew

Arianespace, astra, blue origin, china, human spaceflight, launch, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / Rejus Almole / April 25, 2025

This week, engineers ground-tested upgrades for Blue Origin’s New Glenn and Europe’s Ariane 6.

A Long March 2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on April 24, 2025. Credit: Photo by Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 7.41 of the Rocket Report! NASA and its contractors at Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue building a new mobile launch tower for the Space Launch System Block 1B rocket, a taller, upgraded version of the SLS rocket being used for the agency’s initial Artemis lunar missions. Workers stacked another segment of the tower a couple of weeks ago, and the structure is inching closer to its full height of 355 feet (108 meters). But this is just the start. Once the tower is fully assembled, it must be outfitted with miles of cabling, tubing, and piping, then tested before it can support an SLS launch campaign. Last year, NASA’s inspector general projected the tower won’t be ready for a launch until the spring of 2029 and its costs could reach $2.7 billion. The good news, if you can call it that, is there probably won’t be an SLS Block 1B rocket that needs to use it in 2029, whether it’s due to delays or cancellation.

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.

Fresh details on Astra’s strategic pivot. Astra, the once high-flying rocket startup that crashed back to Earth with investors before going private last year, has unveiled new details about its $44 million contract with the Department of Defense, Space News reports. The DOD contract announced last year supports the development of Rocket 4, a two-stage, mobile launch vehicle with ambitions to deliver cargo across the globe in under an hour. While Astra’s ill-fated Rocket 3 focused on launching small satellites to low-Earth orbit, Astra wants to make Rocket 4 a military utility vehicle. Rocket 4 will still be able to loft conventional satellites, but Astra’s most lucrative contract for the new launch vehicle involves using the rocket for precise point-to-point delivery of up to 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of supplies from orbit via specialized reentry vehicles. The military has shown interest in developing a rocket-based rapid global cargo delivery system for several years, and has a contract with SpaceX to study how the much larger Starship rocket could do a similar job.

Back from the brink … The Alameda, California-based company, which was delisted from Nasdaq in June 2024 after its shares collapsed, is now targeting the first test flight of Rocket 4 in 2026. Astra’s arrangement with the Defense Innovation Unit includes two milestones: one suborbital (point-to-point), and the other orbital with the option to launch from a location outside the United States, as Astra is developing a mobile launcher. Chris Kemp, Astra’s co-founder and CEO, told Space News the orbital launch will likely originate from Australia. Astra’s first launches with the new-retired Rocket 3 vehicle were based from Alaska and Florida.

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox.

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The Army has a catchy name for its newest weapon. The Long Range Hypersonic Weapon has a new name: Dark Eagle. The US Army announced the popular name for the service’s quick strike missile this week. “Part of the name pays tribute to the eagle—a master hunter known for its speed, stealth and agility—due to the LRHW’s combination of velocity, accuracy, maneuverability, survivability and versatility,” the Army said in a press release. “In addition, the bald eagle—our national bird—represents independence, strength and freedom.” The Dark Eagle is designed to strike targets little or no warning with a hypersonic glide vehicle capable of maneuvering in the upper atmosphere after an initial launch with a conventional missile. The hypersonic weapon’s ability to overcome an adversary’s air and missile defenses is embodied in the word “dark” in Dark Eagle, the Army said.

Flying again soon … The Army tested the hypersonic weapon’s “all-up round” during a missile launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in December. The test was delayed more than a year due to unspecified issues. The Army appears to be preparing for another Dark Eagle test from Florida’s Space Coast as soon as Friday, according to airspace and maritime warning notices in the Atlantic Ocean. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Northrop’s niche with Minotaur. Ars mentioned in last week’s Rocket Report that Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur IV rocket launched April 16 with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. This was the first Minotaur IV launch in nearly five years, and the first orbital Minotaur launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, in 14 years. The low-volume Minotaur IV uses solid rocket motors from the Air Force’s stockpile of retired Peacekeeper ballistic missiles, turning part of a weapon of mass destruction into, this case, a tool to support the US government’s spy satellite agency. The Minotaur IV’s lift capability fits neatly between the capacity of smaller commercial rockets, like Firefly’s Alpha or Rocket Lab’s Electron, and larger rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The most recent Minotaur IV launch contract cost the Space Force roughly $30 million, more than a mission with Firefly but less than a dedicated ride on a Falcon 9.

Minotaur IV will keep flying … The Space Force has at least two more missions reserved to launch on the expendable Minotaur IV rocket. One of the missions will launch multiple small satellites for the US military’s Space Test Program, and the other will place a military weather satellite into orbit. Both missions will launch from California, with planning launch dates in 2026, a Space Systems Command spokesperson told Ars. “We do have multiple launches planned using Minotaur family launch vehicles between our OSP-4 (Orbital/Suborbital Program) and SRP-4 (Sounding Rocket Program) contracts,” the spokesperson said. “We will release more information on those missions as we get closer to launch.” The Commercial Space Act of 1998 prohibits the use of surplus ICBM motors for commercial launches and limits their use to only specific kinds of military launches. The restrictions were intended to encourage NASA and commercial satellite operators to use privately-developed launch vehicles.

NASA’s launch prices have somehow gone up. In an era of reusable rockets and near-daily access to space, NASA is still paying more than it did 30 years ago to launch missions into orbit, according to a study soon to be published in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica. Adjusted for inflation, the prices NASA pays for launch services rose at an annual average rate of 2.82 percent from 1996 to 2024, the report says. “Furthermore, there is no evidence of shift in the launch service costs trend after the introduction of a new launch service provider [SpaceX] in 2016.” Ars analyzed NASA’s launch prices in a story published Thursday.

Why is this? … One might think SpaceX’s reuse of Falcon 9 rocket components would drive down launch prices, but no. Rocket reuse and economies of scale have significantly reduced SpaceX’s launch costs, but the company is charging NASA roughly the same it did before booster reuse became commonplace. There are a few reasons this is happening. One is that SpaceX hasn’t faced any meaningful competition for NASA launch contracts in the last six years. That should change soon with the recent debuts of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher. NASA levies additional requirements on its commercial launch providers, and the agency must pay for them. These include schedule priority, engineering oversight, and sometimes special payload cleanliness requirements and the choice of a particular Falcon 9 booster from SpaceX’s inventory.

What’s holding up ULA’s next launch? After poor weather forced ULA to scrub a launch attempt April 9, the company will have to wait nearly three weeks for another try to launch an Atlas V rocket with Amazon’s first full-up load of 27 Kuiper broadband satellites, Ars reports. The rocket and satellites are healthy, according to ULA. But the military-run Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, is unable to accommodate ULA until Monday, April 28. The Space Force is being unusually cagey about the reasons for the lengthy delay, which isn’t affecting SpaceX launches to the same degree.

Finally, a theory … The publishing of airspace and maritime warning notices for an apparent test launch of the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or Dark Eagle, might explain the range’s unavailability. The test launch could happen as soon as Friday, and offshore keep-out zones cover wide swaths of the Atlantic Ocean. If this is the reason for the long Atlas V launch delay, we still have questions. If this launch is scheduled for Friday, why has it kept ULA from launching the last few weeks? Why was SpaceX permitted to launch multiple times in the same time period? And why didn’t the first test flight of the Dark Eagle missile in December result in similar lengthy launch delays on the Eastern Range?

Shenzhou 20 bound for Tiangong. A spaceship carrying three astronauts docked Thursday with China’s space station in the latest crew rotation, approximately six hours after their launch on a Long March 2F rocket from the Gobi Desert, the Associated Press reports. The Shenzhou 20 mission is commanded by Chen Dong, who is making his third flight. He is accompanied by fighter pilot Chen Zhongrui and engineer Wang Jie, both making their maiden voyages. They will replace three astronauts currently on the Chinese Tiangong space station. Like those before them, they will stay on board for roughly six months.

Finding a rhythm … China’s human spaceflight missions have launched like clockwork since the country’s first domestic astronaut launch in 2003. Now, with the Tiangong space station fully operational, China is launching fresh crews at six-month intervals. While in space, the astronauts will conduct experiments in medical science and new technologies and perform spacewalks to carry out maintenance and install new equipment. Their tasks will include adding space debris shielding to the exterior of the Tiangong station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX resupplies the ISS. SpaceX launched an uncrewed Cargo Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station early Monday on a resupply mission with increased importance after a transportation mishap derailed a flight by another US cargo ship, Spaceflight Now reports. The Dragon cargo vessel docked at the space station early Tuesday with 4,780 pounds (2,168 kilograms) of pressurized cargo and 1,653 pounds (750 kilograms) of unpressurized payloads in the vehicle’s trunk. NASA adjusted the Dragon spacecraft’s payload because an upcoming flight by Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply freighter was canceled after the Cygnus cargo module was damaged during transport to the launch site.

Something strange … The payloads aboard this Dragon cargo mission—the 32nd by SpaceX—include normal things like fresh food (exactly 1,262 tortillas), biomedical and pharmaceutical experiments, and the technical demonstration of a new atomic clock. However, there’s something onboard nobody at NASA or SpaceX wants to talk about. A payload package named STP-H10 inside Dragon’s trunk section will be installed to a mounting post outside of the space station to perform a mission for the US military’s Space Test Program. STP-H10 wasn’t mentioned in NASA’s press kit for this mission, and SpaceX didn’t show the usual views of Dragon’s trunk when the spacecraft deployed from its Falcon 9 rocket shortly after launch. These kinds of Space Test Program experiment platforms have launched to the ISS before without any secrecy. Stranger still is the fact that the STP-H10 experiments are unclassified. You can see the list here. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

There are some drawbacks to rideshare. SpaceX launched its third “Bandwagon” rideshare mission into a mid-inclination orbit Monday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Space News reports. The payloads included a South Korean military radar spy satellite, a small commercial weather satellite, and the most interesting payload: an experimental reentry vehicle from a German startup named Atmos Space Cargo. The startup’s Phoenix vehicle, fitted with an inflatable heat shield, separated from the Falcon 9’s upper stage about 90 minutes after liftoff and, roughly a half-hour later, began reentry for a splashdown in the South Atlantic Ocean about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) off the coast of Brazil. Until last month, the Phoenix vehicle was supposed to reenter over the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, near the island of Réunion. The late change to the mission’s trajectory meant Atmos could not recover the spacecraft after splashdown.

Changes in longitude … Five weeks before the launch, SpaceX informed Atmos of a change in trajectory because of “operational constraints” of the primary payload, a South Korean reconnaissance satellite. Smaller payloads on rideshare launches benefit from lower launch prices, but their owners have no control over the schedule or trajectory of the launch. The change for this mission resulted in a splashdown well off the coast of Brazil, ruling out any attempt to recover Phoenix after splashdown. It also meant a steeper reentry than previously planned, creating higher loads on the spacecraft. The company lined up new ground stations in South America to communicate with the spacecraft during key phases of flight leading up to reentry. In addition, it chartered a plane to attempt to collect data during reentry, but the splashdown location was beyond the range of the aircraft. Some data suggests that the heat shield inflated as planned, but Atmos’s CEO said the company needed more time to analyze the data it had, adding that it was “very difficult” to get data from Phoenix in the final phases of its flight given its distance from ground stations.

Ariane 6 is gonna need a bigger booster. A qualification motor for an upgraded solid rocket booster for Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket successfully fired up for the first time on a test stand Thursday in Kourou, French Guiana, according to the European Space Agency. The new P160C solid rocket motor burned for more than two minutes, and ESA declared the test-firing a success. ESA’s member states approved development of the P160C motor in 2022. The upgraded motor is about 3 feet (1 meter) longer than the P120C motor currently flying on the Ariane 6 rocket, and carries about 31,000 pounds (14 metric tons) more solid propellant. The Ariane 6 rocket can fly with two or four of these strap-on boosters. Officials plan to introduce the P160C on Ariane 6 flights next year, giving the rocket’s heaviest version the ability to haul up to 4,400 pounds (2 metric tons) of additional cargo mass to orbit.

A necessary change … The heavier P160C solid rocket motor is required for Arianespace to fulfill its multi-mission launch contract with Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite broadband network. Alongside similar contracts with ULA and Blue Origin, Amazon reserved 18 Kuiper launches on Ariane 6 rockets, and 16 of them must use the upgraded P160C booster to deliver additional Kuiper satellites to orbit. The P160C is a joint project between ArianeGroup and Avio, which will use the same motor design on Europe’s smaller Vega C rocket to improve its performance. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Progress toward the second flight of New Glenn. Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, said his team completed a full duration 15-second hot-fire test Thursday of the upper stage for the company’s second New Glenn rocket. In a post on X, Limp wrote that the upper stage for the next New Glenn flight will have “enhanced performance.” The maximum power of its hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engine will increase from 173,000 pounds to 175,000 pounds of thrust. Two BE-3U engines fly on New Glenn’s second stage.

A good engine … The BE-3U engine is a derivative of the BE-3 engine flying on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. Limp wrote that the upper stage on the first New Glenn launch in January “performed remarkably” and achieved an orbital injection with less than 1 percent deviation from its target. So, when will New Glenn launch again? We’ve heard late spring, June, or October, depending on the source. I’ll note that Blue Origin test-fired the New Glenn upper stage for the rocket’s first flight about four months before it launched.

Next three launches

April 27: Alpha | “Message in a Booster” | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13: 37 UTC

April 27: Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China | 15: 55 UTC

April 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-9 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 20: 55 UTC

Rocket Report: The pitfalls of rideshare; China launches next Tiangong crew Read More »

A 2,000-year-old battle ended in fire, and a tree species never recovered

ancient china, ancient warfare, Archaeology, endangered species, han dynasty, save the trees, Science / Tim Belzer / April 25, 2025

Then everything changed when the Fire Nation—sorry, the Han Empire—attacked.

Han rose to power in the wake of Qin’s collapse, after a short war with a rival dynasty called Chu, and spent the next century smugly referring to Nanyue as a vassal state and occasionally demanding tribute. At times, the rulers of Nanyue played along, but it all came to a head around 111 BCE, in the wake of an attempted coup and a series of assassinations. The Han Emperor sent an army of between 100,000 and 200,000 soldiers to invade Nanyue under a general named Lu Bode.

The troops marched across the countryside from five directions, converging outside Nanyue’s capital city of Panyou, which stood in the Pearl River Delta, near the modern city of Guangzhou. An enterprising company commander named Yang Pu got the bright idea to set the city on fire, and it ended badly.

“The fire not only destroyed the city but also ran out of control to the surrounding forests,” write Wang and colleagues. The cypress trees burned down to the waterline, leaving only their submerged stumps behind.

map of a coastal area showing elevation and the location of ancient forests — The brown dots mark the known sites of buried forests, and the orange diamonds mark those confirmed to be ancient. The two yellow diamonds are Wang and colleagues’ study sites. Credit: Wang et al. 2025

After war came fire and rice

At the time of the invasion, the land around Panyou was mostly swamp, forested with cypress trees. People had lived there for thousands of years, and had been growing rice for about 2,000 years. Bits of charcoal in the peat layers Wang and colleagues sampled reveal that they practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, but on a small scale, rotating their fields so the cypress forest could start to recover after a season or two.

The small burns are nothing like the forest fire Yang Pu unleashed, or the massive burning and reworking of the landscape that came after.

The stumps of the burned cypress trees slowly disappeared under several meters of peat, while above the buried ancient forest, life went on. Tigers, elephants, rhinos, and green peafowl no longer walked here. Instead, grains of pollen from the layers of clay above the peat reveal a sudden influx of plants from the grassy Poaceae family, which includes rice, wheat, and barley.

A 2,000-year-old battle ended in fire, and a tree species never recovered Read More »

Can the legal system catch up with climate science?

attribution, climate change, costs, liability, Science / Mike M. / April 24, 2025

Similarly, it’s possible to calculate the impact of emissions within a limited number of years. For example, Callahan and Mankin note that internal oil company research suggested that climate change would be a problem back around 1980, and calculated the impact of emissions that occurred after people knew they were an issue. So, the approach is extremely flexible.

From there, the researchers could use empirical information that links elevated temperatures to economic damage. “Recent peer-reviewed work has used econometrics to infer causal relationships between climate hazards and outcomes such as income loss, reduced agricultural yields, increased human mortality, and depressed economic growth,” Callahan and Mankin write. These metrics can be used to estimate the cost of things like flooding, crop losses, and other economic damages. Alternately, the researchers could analyze the impact on individual climate events where the financial costs have been calculated separately.

Massive damages

To implement their method, the researchers perform lots of individual models, collectively providing the most probable costs and the likely range around them. First, they translate each company’s emissions into the impact on the global mean surface temperature. That gets translated to an impact on extreme temperatures, producing an estimate of what the days with the five most extreme temperatures would look like. That, in turn, is translated to economic damages associated with extreme heat.

Callahan and Mankin use Chevron as an example. By 2020, Chevron’s emissions were responsible for 0.025° C of the warming that year. If you perform a similar analysis for the ears between 1991 and 2020, the researchers come up with a range of damages that runs from a low of about $800 billion all the way up to $3.6 trillion. Most of the damage affected nations in the tropics.

Carrying on through the five companies that have led to the most carbon emissions, they calculate that Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Chevron, and Exxon Mobile have all produced damages of about $2 trillion. BP brings up the rear, with “just” $1.45 trillion in damage. For the full list of 111 carbon majors, Callahan and Mankin place the total damages at roughly $28 trillion.

Can the legal system catch up with climate science? Read More »

Universities (finally) band together, fight “unprecedented government overreach”

culture, funding, Science, Trump, universities / Tim Belzer / April 23, 2025

We speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education… We must reject the coercive use of public research funding…

American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom… In their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

This is fine, as far as it goes. But what are all these institutions going to do about the funding cuts, attempts to revoke their nonprofit status, threats not to hire their graduates, and student speech-based deportations? They are going to ask the Trump administration for “constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.”

This sounds lovely, if naive, and I hope it works out well for every one of them as they seek good-faith dialogue with a vice president who has called universities the “enemy” and an administration that demanded Harvard submit to the vetting of every department for unspecified “viewpoint diversity.”

As a first step to finding common ground and speaking with a common voice, the statement is a start. But statements, like all words, can be cheap. We’ll see what steps schools actually take—and how much they can speak and act in concert—as Trump’s pressure campaign continues to ratchet.

Universities (finally) band together, fight “unprecedented government overreach” Read More »

Drunk man walks into climate change, burns the bottoms of his feet off

asphalt, burns, climate change, health, Science / Kris Guyer / April 23, 2025

In the burn unit, doctors gave the man a pain reliever, cleaned the burns, treated them with a topical antibiotic, and gave them an antimicrobial foam dressing. At a follow-up appointment, the wounds appeared to be healing without complications.

While the man recovered from the injury, the author of the case study—Jeremy Hess, an expert in emergency medicine and global environmental health at the University of Washington—warned that the risk of such injuries will only grow as climate change continues.

“Extreme heat events increase the risk of contact burns from hot surfaces in the environment,” he wrote. “Young children, older adults, unhoused persons, and persons with substance use disorder are at elevated risk for these types of burns.”

Last year, The New York Times reported that burn centers in the southwest have already begun seeing larger numbers of burns from contact with sidewalks and asphalt during heat waves. In some cases, the burns can turn fatal if people lose consciousness on hot surfaces—for instance, from overdoses, heat stroke, intoxication, or other health conditions. “Your body just literally sits there and cooks,” Clifford Sheckter, surgeon and a burn prevention researcher at Stanford University, told the Times last year. “When somebody finally finds you, you’re already in multisystem organ failure.”

Drunk man walks into climate change, burns the bottoms of his feet off Read More »

Harvard sues to block government funding cuts

First Amendment, Harvard, lawsuit, Policy, research funding, Science, Title VI, trump administration / Paul Patrick / April 23, 2025

The suit also claims that the funding hold, made in retaliation for Harvard’s letter announcing its refusal to accept these conditions, punishes Harvard for exercising free speech.

Separately, the lawsuit focuses on Title VI, part of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the government from funding organizations that engage in racial discrimination. It’s Harvard’s alleged tolerance for antisemitism that would enable the government to put a hold on these funds. But the suit spells out the requirements for cutting funding—hearings, a 30-day waiting period, notification of Congress—that the law requires before funding can be cut. And, quite obviously, the government has done none of them.

Harvard also alleges that the government’s decision to hold research funds is arbitrary and capricious: “The Government has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen.”

Finally, the court is asked to consider an issue that’s central to a lot of the questions regarding Trump Administration actions: Can the executive branch stop the flow of money that was allocated by Congress? “Defendants do not have any inherent authority to terminate or freeze appropriated federal funding,” the suit claims.

Remedies

The suit seeks various remedies. It wants the government’s actions declared illegal, the freeze order vacated, and prohibitions put in place that will prevent the government from accomplishing the freeze through some other means. Harvard would also like any further reactions to allegations of antisemitism to follow the procedures mandated by Title VI and to have the government cover its attorney’s fees.

It also wants the ruling expedited, given the potential for damage to university-hosted research. The suit was filed in the District of Massachusetts, which is the same venue that has been used for other suits seeking to restrain the Trump administration’s attack on federally funded research. So far, those have resulted in rapid responses and injunctions that have put damaging funding cuts on hold. So, there’s a good chance we’ll see something similar here.

Harvard sues to block government funding cuts Read More »

Are these chimps having a fruity booze-up in the wild?

animal behavior, Biology, chimpanzees, primates, Science / Rejus Almole / April 22, 2025

Is there anything more human than gathering in groups to share food and partake in a fermented beverage or two (or three, or….)? Researchers have caught wild chimpanzees on camera engaging in what appears to be similar activity: sharing fermented African breadfruit with measurable alcoholic content. According to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, the observational data is the first evidence of the sharing of alcoholic foods among nonhuman great apes in the wild.

The fruit in question is seasonal and comes from Treculia africana trees common across the home environment of the wild chimps in Cantanhez National Park in Guinea-Bissau. Once mature, the fruits drop from the tree to the ground and slowly ripen from a hard, deep green exterior to a yellow, spongier texture. Because the chimps are unhabituated, the authors deployed camera traps at three separate locations to record their feeding and sharing behavior.

They recorded 10 instances of selective fruit sharing among 17 chimps, with the animals exhibiting a marked preference for riper fruit. Between April and July 2022, the authors measured the alcohol content of the fruit with a handy portable breathalyzer and found almost all of the fallen fruit (90 percent) contained some ethanol, with the ripest containing the highest levels—the equivalent of 0.61 percent ABV (alcohol by volume).

That’s comparatively low to alcoholic drinks typically consumed by humans, but then again, fruit accounts for as much as 60 to 80 percent of the chimps’ diet, so the amount of ethanol consumed could add up quickly. It’s highly unlikely the chimps would get drunk, however. It wouldn’t confer any evolutionary advantage, and per the authors, there is evidence in the common ancestor of African apes of a molecular mechanism that increases the ability to metabolize alcohol.

Are these chimps having a fruity booze-up in the wild? Read More »

Ghost forests are growing as sea levels rise

ghost forest, rising sea, Science, sea level rise, syndication / Paul Patrick / April 20, 2025

Like giant bones planted in the earth, clusters of tree trunks, stripped clean of bark, are appearing along the Chesapeake Bay on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast. They are ghost forests: the haunting remains of what were once stands of cedar and pine. Since the late 19th century, an ever-widening swath of these trees have died along the shore. And they won’t be growing back.

These arboreal graveyards are showing up in places where the land slopes gently into the ocean and where salty water increasingly encroaches. Along the United States’ East Coast, in pockets of the West Coast, and elsewhere, saltier soils have killed hundreds of thousands of acres of trees, leaving behind woody skeletons typically surrounded by marsh.

What happens next? That depends. As these dead forests transition, some will become marshes that maintain vital ecosystem services, such as buffering against storms and storing carbon. Others may become home to invasive plants or support no plant life at all—and the ecosystem services will be lost. Researchers are working to understand how this growing shift toward marshes and ghost forests will, on balance, affect coastal ecosystems.

Many of the ghost forests are a consequence of sea level rise, says coastal ecologist Keryn Gedan of George Washington University in Washington, DC, coauthor of an article on the salinization of coastal ecosystems in the 2025 Annual Review of Marine Science. Rising sea levels can bring more intense storm surges that flood saltwater over the top of soil. Drought and sea level rise can shift the groundwater table along the coast, allowing saltwater to journey farther inland, beneath the forest floor. Trees, deprived of fresh water, are stressed as salt accumulates.

Yet the transition from living forest to marsh isn’t necessarily a tragedy, Gedan says. Marshes are important features of coastal ecosystems, too. And the shift from forest to marsh has happened throughout periods of sea level rise in the past, says Marcelo Ardón, an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

“You would think of these forests and marshes kind of dancing together up and down the coast,” he says.

Marshes provide many ecosystem benefits. They are habitats for birds and crustaceans, such as salt marsh sparrows, marsh wrens, crabs, and mussels. They are also a niche for native salt-tolerant plants, like rushes and certain grasses, which provide food and shelter for animals.

Ghost forests are growing as sea levels rise Read More »