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Weapons of war are launching from Cape Canaveral for the first time since 1988

cape canaveral, hypersonic missile, leidos, Lockheed Martin, military space, national security, Pentagon, Space, us army / /

Unlike a recent hypersonic missile test, officials didn’t immediately confirm Friday’s flight was a success.

File photo of a previous launch of the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on December 12, 2024. Credit: Department of Defense

The US military launched a long-range hypersonic missile Friday morning from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on a test flight that, if successful, could pave the way for the weapon’s operational deployment later this year.

The Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon fired out of a canister on a road-mobile trailer shortly after sunrise on Florida’s Space Coast, then headed east over the Atlantic Ocean propelled by a solid-fueled rocket booster. Local residents shared images of the launch on social media.

Designed for conventional munitions, the new missile is poised to become the first ground-based hypersonic weapon fielded by the US military. Russia has used hypersonic missiles in combat against Ukraine. China has “the world’s leading hypersonic missile arsenal,” according to a recent Pentagon report on Chinese military power. After a successful test flight from Cape Canaveral last year, the long-range hypersonic weapon (LRHW)—officially named “Dark Eagle” by the Army earlier this week—will give the United States the ability to strike targets with little or no warning.

The Dark Eagle missile rapidly gained speed and altitude after launch Friday morning, then soon disappeared from the view of onlookers at Cape Canaveral. Warning notices advising pilots and mariners to steer clear of the test area indicated the missile and its hypersonic glide vehicle were supposed to splash down in the mid-Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles north and northeast of Puerto Rico.

Success not guaranteed

A US defense official did not answer questions from Ars about the outcome of the test flight Friday.

“A combined team of government, academic, and industry partners conducted a test on behalf of the Department of Defense from a test site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,” the official said. “We are currently evaluating the results of the test.”

Liftoff of the LRHW Dark Eagle this morning 🚀 https://t.co/lCJhUXxT84 pic.twitter.com/YJXXuSxmJK

— Jerry Pike (@JerryPikePhoto) April 25, 2025

This missile launch and a similar one in December are the first tests of land-based offensive weapons at Cape Canaveral since 1988, when the military last tested Pershing ballistic missiles there. The launch range in Florida continues to support offshore tests of submarine-launched Trident missiles, and now is a center for hypersonic missile testing.

The Pentagon has a long-standing policy of not publicizing hypersonic missile tests before they happen, except for safety notices for civilian airplanes and ships downrange. But the Defense Department declared the previous Dark Eagle test flight a success within a few hours of the launch, and did not do so this time.

Hypersonic missiles offer several advantages over conventional ballistic missiles. These new kinds of weapons are more maneuverable and dimmer than other missiles, so they are more difficult for an aerial defense system to detect, track, and destroy. They are designed to evade an adversary’s missile warning sensors. These sensors were originally activated to detect larger, brighter incoming ballistic missiles, which have a predictable trajectory toward their targets after boosting themselves out of the atmosphere and into space.

A hypersonic weapon is different. It can skim through the upper atmosphere at blistering speeds, producing a much dimmer heat signature that is difficult to see with an infrared sensor on a conventional missile warning satellite. At these altitudes, the glide vehicle can take advantage of aerodynamic forces for maneuvers. This is why the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency is spending billions of dollars to deploy a network of missile tracking satellites in low-Earth orbit, putting hundreds of sophisticated sensors closer to the flight path of hypersonic weapons.

Dark Eagle is designed to fly at speeds exceeding Mach 5, or 3,800 mph, with a reported range of 1,725 miles (2,775 kilometers), sufficient to reach Taiwan from Guam, or NATO’s borders with Russia from Western Europe. The US military says it has no plans to outfit its hypersonic weapons with nuclear warheads.

In a statement on Thursday, the Department of Defense said the weapon’s official name pays tribute to the eagle, known for its speed, stealth, and agility. Dark Eagle offers a similar mix of attributes: velocity, accuracy, maneuverability, survivability, and versatility, the Pentagon said.

“The word ‘dark’ embodies the LRHW’s ability to dis-integrate adversary capabilities,” the statement said. “Hypersonic weapons will complicate adversaries’ decision calculus, strengthening deterrence,” said Patrick Mason, senior official performing the duties of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology

A US Army soldier lifts the hydraulic launching system on the new long-range hypersonic weapon (LRHW) during Operation Thunderbolt Strike at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on March 3, 2023. Credit: Spc. Chandler Coats, US Army

Dark Eagle is the land-based component of the Pentagon’s effort to field hypersonic missiles for combat. The Navy will use the same system on its ships to provide a sea-launched version of the hypersonic weapon called Conventional Prompt Strike, which will be placed on destroyers and submarines.

The Army and Navy programs will use an identical two-stage missile, which will jettison after depleting its rocket motors, freeing a hypersonic glide vehicle to steer toward its target. The entire rocket and glide vehicle are collectively called an “All Up Round.”

“The use of a common hypersonic missile and joint test opportunities allow the services to pursue a more aggressive timeline for delivery and to realize cost savings,” the Defense Department said in a statement.

A long road to get here

The Congressional Budget Office reported in 2023 that purchasing 300 intermediate-range hypersonic missiles would cost $41 million per missile. Dynetics, a subsidiary of the defense contractor Leidos, is responsible for developing the Common Hypersonic Glide Body for the Army’s Dark Eagle and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike programs. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor charged with integrating the entire weapon system.

The military canceled an air-launched hypersonic weapon program in 2023 after it ran into problems during testing.

The Pentagon said Army commanders will use Dark Eagle to “engage adversary high-payoff and time-sensitive targets.” The hypersonic weapon could be used against an adversary’s mobile missile forces if US officials determine they are preparing for launch, or it could strike well-defended targets out of reach of other weapons in the US arsenal. Once in the field, the missile’s use will fall under the authority of US Strategic Command, with the direction of the president and the secretary of defense.

Defense News, an industry trade publication, reported in February that the Army aimed to deliver the first Dark Eagle missiles to a combat unit before October 1, pending final decisions by the Pentagon’s new leadership under the Trump administration.

This illustration from the Government Accountability Office compares the trajectory of a ballistic missile with those of a hypersonic glide vehicle and a hypersonic cruise missile. Credit: GAO

Dark Eagle suffered multiple test failures in 2021 and 2022, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Military crews aborted several attempts to launch the missile from Cape Canaveral in 2023 due to a problem with the weapon’s launcher. The program achieved two successes last year with test flights from Hawaii and Florida.

The December launch from Cape Canaveral was an important milestone. “This test builds on several flight tests in which the Common Hypersonic Glide Body achieved hypersonic speed at target distances and demonstrates that we can put this capability in the hands of the warfighter,” said Christine Wormuth, then-secretary of the army, in a Pentagon statement announcing the result of the test flight.

The Dark Eagle readiness tests build on more than a decade of experimental hypersonic flights by multiple US defense agencies. Hypersonic flight is an unforgiving environment, where the outer skin of glide vehicles must withstand temperatures of 3,000° Fahrenheit. It’s impossible to re-create such an extreme environment through modeling or tests on the ground.

While the Army and Navy hope to soon deploy the first US hypersonic missile for use in combat, the military continues pursuing more advanced hypersonic technology. In January, the Pentagon awarded a contract worth up to $1.45 billion to Kratos Defense & Security Solutions for the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program.

Kratos partners with other companies, like Leidos, Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Stratolaunch, to test hypersonic technologies in their operating environment. The program aims for a rapid cadence of suborbital test flights, some of which have already launched with Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. With these experiments, engineers can see how individual components and technologies work in flight before using them on real weapons.

The Biden administration requested $6.9 billion for the Pentagon’s hypersonic research programs in fiscal year 2025, up from $4.7 billion in 2023. The Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 is scheduled for release next month.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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

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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.

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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

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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

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Reusable rockets are here, so why is NASA paying more to launch stuff to space?

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• 1998: Deep Space 1 — Delta II rocket — $86 million

• 1999: Mars Polar Lander — Delta II rocket — $88 million

• 2001: Mars Odyssey — Delta II rocket — $96 million

• 2003: Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers — two Delta II rockets — $87 million per launch

• 2004: Swift — Delta II rocket — $90 million

• 2005: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — Atlas V rocket — $147 million

• 2007: Phoenix Mars lander — Delta II rocket — $132 million

Launch prices for NASA missions soared after the late 2000s, following the creation of United Launch Alliance through a merger of the Atlas and Delta rocket programs developed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The merger eliminated competition for most of NASA’s launch contracts until SpaceX’s Falcon 9 became available for NASA science missions in the mid-2010s. Here’s a sample of missions as examples of the rising costs, with contract values adjusted for inflation from the time of their award to reflect 2025 dollars:

• 2009: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — Atlas V rocket — $220 million

• 2012: Radiation Belt Storm Probes — Atlas V rocket — $226 million (averaged from a bulk buy)

• 2014: Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 — Delta II rocket — $191 million (averaged from a bulk buy)

• 2016: OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission — Atlas V rocket — $252 million

• 2017: TDRS-M data relay satellite — Atlas V rocket — $179 million

• 2017: JPSS-2 weather satellite — Atlas V rocket — $224 million

• 2018: InSight Mars lander — Atlas V rocket — $220 million

• 2018: ICESAT-2 — Delta II rocket — $134 million

Again, the missions listed above would likely launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets if NASA awarded these contracts today. So, how do SpaceX’s more recent Falcon 9 prices compare? Let’s take a look. These contract values are adjusted for inflation from the time of their award to reflect 2025 dollars:

• 2016: Jason 3 oceanography satellite — Falcon 9 rocket — $114 million

• 2018: Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite — Falcon 9 rocket — $118 million

• 2020: Sentinel-6A — Falcon 9 rocket — $126 million

• 2021: Double Asteroid Redirection Test — Falcon 9 rocket — $86 million

• 2021: Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer — Falcon 9 rocket — $62 million

• 2022: Surface Water and Ocean Topography — Falcon 9 rocket — $148 million

• 2024: PACE Earth sciences mission — Falcon 9 rocket — $99 million

• 2025: SPHEREx astronomy mission — Falcon 9 rocket — $99 million

And here are a few future launches NASA has booked to fly on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Some of these contracts were awarded in the last 12 months, and those have not been adjusted for inflation. The others reflect 2025 dollars:

• 2025: Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe — Falcon 9 rocket — $134 million

• 2025: Sentinel-6B — Falcon 9 rocket — $101 million

• 2027: NEO Surveyor — Falcon 9 rocket — $100 million

• 2027: JPSS-4 weather satellite — Falcon 9 rocket — $113 million

• 2027: Compton Spectrometer and Imager — Falcon 9 rocket — $69 million

There are a few other things worth noting when we chart NASA’s launch prices. One is that SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, used for NASA’s heaviest missions, costs more than a Falcon 9 rocket. For example, two identical weather satellites launched in 2022 and 2024 on ULA’s Atlas V and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for $207 million and $178 million, respectively, again adjusted for inflation.

Reusable rockets are here, so why is NASA paying more to launch stuff to space? Read More »

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Tuesday Telescope: Hera today, gone to Deimos

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Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

I’ll bet you don’t spend a ton of time thinking about Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian moons, which is named after the Ancient Greek god that personified dread.

And who could blame you? Of the two Martian moons, Phobos gets more attention, including as a possible waystation for human missions to Mars. Phobos is larger than Deimos, with a radius of 11 km, and closer to the Martian surface, a little more than 9,000 km away.

By contrast, Deimos is tiny, with a radius of 6 km, and quite a bit further out, more than 23,000 km from the surface. It is so small that, on the surface of Mars, Deimos would only appear about as bright in the night sky as Venus does from Earth.

But who doesn’t love a good underdog story? Scientists have dreamed up all kinds of uses for Deimos, including using its sands for aerobraking large missions to Mars, returning samples from the tiny moon. So maybe Deimos will eventually get its day.

Recently, we got one of our best views yet of the tiny moon when a European mission named Hera, en route to the asteroid Didymos, flew through the Martian system for a gravity assist. During this transit, the spacecraft came within just 300 km of Deimos. And its Asteroid Framing Camera captured this lovely image, which was, admittedly, artificially colored.

Anyway, it’s a rare glimpse at one of the smallest known moons in the Solar System, and I think it’s spectacular.

Source: European Space Agency

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

Tuesday Telescope: Hera today, gone to Deimos Read More »

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A Chinese-born crypto tycoon—of all people—changed the way I think of space

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“Are we the first generation of digital nomad in space?”

Chun Wang orbits the Earth inside the cupola of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. Credit: Chun Wang via X

For a quarter-century, dating back to my time as a budding space enthusiast, I’ve watched with a keen eye each time people have ventured into space.

That’s 162 human spaceflight missions since the beginning of 2000, ranging from Space Shuttle flights to Russian Soyuz missions, Chinese astronauts’ first forays into orbit, and commercial expeditions on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Yes, I’m also counting privately funded suborbital hops launched by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

Last week, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin captured headlines—though not purely positive—with the launch of six women, including pop star Katy Perry, to an altitude of 66 miles (106 kilometers). The capsule returned to the ground 10 minutes and 21 seconds later. It was the first all-female flight to space since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s solo mission in 1963.

Many commentators criticized the flight as a tone-deaf stunt or a rich person’s flex. I won’t make any judgments, except to say two of the passengers aboard Blue Origin’s capsule—Aisha Bowe and Amanda Nguyen—have compelling stories worth telling.

Immerse yourself

Here’s another story worth sharing. Earlier this month, an international crew of four private astronauts took their own journey into space aboard a Dragon spacecraft owned and operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Like Blue Origin’s all-female flight, this mission was largely bankrolled by a billionaire.

Actually, it was a couple of billionaires. Musk used his fortune to fund a large portion of the Dragon spacecraft’s development costs alongside a multibillion-dollar contribution from US taxpayers. Chun Wang, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire, paid SpaceX an undisclosed sum to fly one of SpaceX’s ships into orbit with three of his friends.

So far, this seems like another story about a rich guy going to space. This is indeed a major part of the story, but there’s more to it. Chun, now a citizen of Malta, named the mission Fram2 after the Norwegian exploration ship Fram used for polar expeditions at the turn of the 20th century. Following in the footsteps of Fram, which means “forward” in Norwegian, Chun asked SpaceX if he could launch into an orbit over Earth’s poles to gain a perspective on our planet no human eyes had seen before.

Joining Chun on the three-and-a-half-day Fram2 mission were Jannicke Mikkelsen, a Norwegian filmmaker and cinematographer who took the role of vehicle commander. Rabea Rogge, a robotics researcher from Germany, took the pilot’s seat and assisted Mikkelsen in monitoring the spacecraft’s condition in flight. Wang and Eric Philips, an Australian polar explorer and guide, flew as “mission specialists” on the mission.

Chun’s X account reads like a travelogue, with details of each jet-setting jaunt around the world. His propensity for sharing travel experiences extended into space, and I’m grateful for it.

The Florida peninsula, including Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, through the lens of Chun’s iPhone. Credit: Chun Wang via X

Usually, astronauts might share their reflections from space by writing posts on social media, or occasionally sharing pictures and video vignettes from the International Space Station (ISS). This, in itself, is a remarkable change from the way astronauts communicated with the public from space just 15 years ago.

Most of these social media posts involve astronauts showcasing an experiment they’re working on or executing a high-flying tutorial in physics. Often, these videos include acrobatic backflips or show the novelty of eating and drinking in microgravity. Some astronauts, like Don Pettit, who recently came home from the ISS, have a knack for gorgeous orbital photography.

Chun’s videos offer something different. They provide an unfiltered look into how four people live inside a spacecraft with an internal volume comparable to an SUV, and the awe of seeing something beautiful for the first time. His shares have an intimacy, authenticity, and most importantly, an immediacy I’ve never seen before in a video from space.

One of the videos Chun recorded and posted to X shows the Fram2 crew members inside Dragon the day after their launch. The astronauts seem to be enjoying themselves. Their LunchBot meal kits float nearby, and the capsule’s makeshift trash bin contains Huggies baby wipes and empty water bottles, giving the environment a vibe akin to a camping trip, except for the constant hum of air fans.

Later, Chun shared a video of the crew opening the hatch leading to Dragon’s cupola window, a plexiglass extension with panoramic views. Mikkelsen and Chun try to make sense of what they’re seeing.

“Oh, Novaya Zemlya, do you see it?” Mikkelsen asks. “Yeah. Yeah. It’s right here,” Chun replies. “Oh, damn. Oh, it is,” Mikkelsen says.

Chun then drops a bit of Cold War trivia. “The largest atomic bomb was tested here,” he says. “And all this ice. Further north, the Arctic Ocean. The North Pole.”

Flight Day 3 pic.twitter.com/vLlbAKIOvl

— Chun (@satofishi) April 3, 2025

On the third day of the mission, the Dragon spacecraft soared over Florida, heading south to north on its pole-to-pole loop around the Earth. “I can see our launch pad from here,” Mikkelsen says, pointing out NASA’s Kennedy Space Center several hundred miles away.

Flying over our launch site. pic.twitter.com/eHatUsOJ20

— Chun (@satofishi) April 3, 2025

Finally, Chun capped his voyage into space with a 30-second clip from his seat inside Dragon as the spacecraft fires thrusters for a deorbit burn. The capsule’s small rocket jets pulsed repeatedly to slow Dragon’s velocity enough to drop out of orbit and head for reentry and splashdown off the coast of California.

Lasers in LEO

It wasn’t only Chun’s proclivity for posting to social media that made this possible. It was also SpaceX’s own Starlink Internet network, which the Dragon spacecraft connected to with a “Plug and Plaser” terminal mounted in the capsule’s trunk. This device allowed Dragon and its crew to transmit and receive Internet signals through a laser link with Starlink satellites orbiting nearby.

Astronauts have shared videos similar to those from Fram2 in the past, but almost always after they are back on Earth, and often edited and packaged into a longer video. What’s unique about Chun’s videos is that he was able to immediately post his clips, some of which are quite long, to social media via the Starlink Internet network.

“With a Starlink laser terminal in the trunk, we can theoretically achieve speeds up to 100 or more gigabits per second,” said Jon Edwards, SpaceX’s vice president for Falcon launch vehicles, before the Fram2 mission’s launch. “For Fram2, we’re expecting around 1 gigabit per second.”

Compare this with the connectivity available to astronauts on the International Space Station, where crews have access to the Internet with uplink speeds of about 4 to 6 megabits per second and 500 kilobits to 1 megabit per second of downlink, according to Sandra Jones, a NASA spokesperson. The space station communications system provides about 1 megabit per second of additional throughput for email, an Internet telephone, and video conferencing. There’s another layer of capacity for transmitting scientific and telemetry data between the space station and Mission Control.

So, Starlink’s laser connection with the Dragon spacecraft offers roughly 200 to 2,000 times the throughput of the Internet connection available on the ISS. The space station sends and receives communication signals, including the Internet, through NASA’s fleet of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites.

The laser link is also cheaper to use. NASA’s TDRS relay stations are dedicated to providing communication support for the ISS and numerous other science missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope, while Dragon plugs into the commercial Starlink network serving millions of other users.

SpaceX tested the Plug and Plaser device for the first time in space last year on the Polaris Dawn mission, which was most notable for the first fully commercial spacewalk in history. The results of the test were “phenomenal,” said Kevin Coggins, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation.

“They have pushed a lot of data through in these tests to demonstrate their ability to do data rates just as high as TDRS, if not higher,” Coggins said in a recent presentation to a committee of the National Academies.

Artist’s illustration of a laser optical link between a Dragon spacecraft and a Starlink satellite. Credit: SpaceX

Edwards said SpaceX wants to make the laser communication capability available for future Dragon missions and commercial space stations that may replace the ISS. Meanwhile, NASA is phasing out the government-owned TDRS network. Coggins said NASA’s relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit will remain active through the remaining life of the International Space Station, and then will be retired.

“Many of these spacecraft are far beyond their intended service life,” Coggins said. “In fact, we’ve retired one recently. We’re getting ready to retire another one. In this period of time, we’re going to retire TDRSs pretty often, and we’re going to get down to just a couple left that will last us into the 2030s.

“We have to preserve capacity as the constellation gets smaller, and we have to manage risks,” Coggins said. “So, we made a decision on November 8, 2024, that no new users could come to TDRS. We took it out of the service catalog.”

NASA’s future satellites in Earth orbit will send their data to the ground through a commercial network like Starlink. The agency has agreements worth more than $278 million with five companies—SpaceX, Amazon, Viasat, SES, and Telesat—to demonstrate how they can replace and improve on the services currently provided by TDRS (pronounced “tee-dress”).

These companies are already operating or will soon deploy satellites that could provide radio or laser optical communication links with future space stations, science probes, and climate and weather monitoring satellites. “We’re not paying anyone to put up a constellation,” Coggins said.

After these five companies complete their demonstration phase, NASA will become a subscriber to some or all of their networks.

“Now, instead of a 30-year-old [TDRS] constellation and trying to replenish something that we had before, we’ve got all these new capabilities, all these new things that weren’t possible before, especially optical,” Coggins said. “That’s going to that’s going to mean so much with the volume and quality of data that you’re going to be able to bring down.”

Digital nomads

Chun and his crewmates didn’t use the Starlink connection to send down any prize-winning discoveries about the Universe, or data for a comprehensive global mapping survey. Instead, the Fram2 crew used the connection for video calls and text messages with their families through tablets and smartphones linked to a Wi-Fi router inside the Dragon spacecraft.

“Are we the first generation of digital nomad in space?” Chun asked his followers in one X post.

“It was not 100 percent available, but when it was, it was really fast,” Chun wrote of the Internet connection in an email to Ars. He told us he used an iPhone 16 Pro Max for his 4K videos. From some 200 miles (300 kilometers) up, the phone’s 48-megapixel camera, with a simulated optical zoom, brought out the finer textures of ice sheets, clouds, water, and land formations.

While the flight was fully automated, SpaceX trained the Fram2 crew how to live and work inside the Dragon spacecraft and take over manual control if necessary. None of Fram2 crew members had a background in spaceflight or in any part of the space industry before they started preparing for their mission. Notably, it was the first human spaceflight mission to low-Earth orbit without a trained airplane pilot onboard.

Chun Wang, far right, extends his arm to take an iPhone selfie moments after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: SpaceX

Their nearly four days in orbit was largely a sightseeing expedition. Alongside Chun, Mikkelsen put her filmmaking expertise to use by shooting video from Dragon’s cupola. Before the flight, Mikkelsen said she wanted to create an immersive 3D account of her time in space. In some of Wang’s videos, Mikkelsen is seen working with a V-RAPTOR 8K VV camera from Red Digital Cinema, a device that sells for approximately $25,000, according to the manufacturer’s website.

The crew spent some of their time performing experiments, including the first X-ray of a human in space. Scientists gathered some useful data on the effects of radiation on humans in space because Fram2 flew in a polar orbit, where the astronauts were exposed to higher doses of ionizing radiation than a person might see on the International Space Station.

After they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the mission, the Fram2 astronauts disembarked from the Dragon capsule without the assistance of SpaceX ground teams, which typically offer a helping hand for balance as crews readjust to gravity. This demonstrated how people might exit their spaceships on the Moon or Mars, where no one will be there to greet them.

Going into the flight, Chun wanted to see Antarctica and Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago where he lives north of the Arctic Circle. In more than 400 human spaceflight missions from 1961 until this year, nobody ever flew in an orbit directly over the poles. Sophisticated satellites routinely fly over the polar regions to take high-resolution imagery and measure things like sea ice.

The Fram2 astronauts’ observations of the Arctic and Antarctic may not match what satellites can see, but their experience has some lasting catchet, standing alone among all who have flown to space before.

“People often refer to Earth as a blue marble planet, but from our point of view, it’s more of a frozen planet,” Chun told Ars.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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Trump official to Katy Perry and Bezos’ fiancée: “You cannot identify as an astronaut”

astronaut, Space / /

Secretary of Transportation weighs in

That was pretty much how things stood until Thursday evening, when the Secretary of the US Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, shared some thoughts on the social media site X.

“The last FAA guidelines under the Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program were clear: Crewmembers who travel into space must have ‘demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety,'” Duffy wrote. “The crew who flew to space this week on an automated flight by Blue Origin were brave and glam, but you cannot identify as an astronaut. They do not meet the FAA astronaut criteria.”

So there it was: The leading US official on transportation declaring that Perry et. al. were not astronauts. This is a pretty striking statement.

For starters the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency within the US Department of Transportation Duffy leads, has previously said it will take no part in determining whether people who fly on suborbital flights are astronauts. The agency makes this clear on its human spaceflight page, stating: “The FAA no longer designates anyone as an ‘astronaut.’ In addition, the FAA does not define where space begins.”

To step back just a little bit, the FAA created a commercial “Astronaut Wings” program back in 2004 to recognize the two pilots of SpaceShipOne, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, who flew the vehicle above 50 statute miles (80 km). After that time, the program recognized private citizens who flew on Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s orbital Crew Dragon vehicle. You flew, and you got astronaut wings.

Then, in December 2021, the agency stopped issuing wings. “With the advent of the commercial space tourism era, starting in 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration will now recognize individuals who reach space on its website instead of issuing Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,” the agency said. “Any individual who is on an FAA-licensed or permitted launch and reaches 50 statute miles above the surface of the Earth will be listed on the site.”

Trump official to Katy Perry and Bezos’ fiancée: “You cannot identify as an astronaut” Read More »

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Rocket Report: Daytona rocket delayed again; Bahamas tells SpaceX to hold up

rocket report, Space / /

A Falcon 9 core has now launched as many times as there are Merlins on a Falcon Heavy.

NS-31 Astronaut Katy Perry celebrates a successful mission to space. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.40 of the Rocket Report! One of the biggest spaceflight questions in my mind right now is when Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will fly again. The company has been saying “late spring.” Today, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said they were told June. Several officials have suggested to Ars that the next launch will, in reality, occur no earlier than October. So when will we see New Glenn again?

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.

Phantom Space delays Daytona launch, again. In a story that accepts what Phantom Space Founder Jim Cantrell says at face value, Payload Space reports that the company is “an up-and-coming launch provider and satellite manufacturer” and has “steadily built a three-pronged business model to take on the industry’s powerhouses.” It’s a surprisingly laudatory story for a company that has yet to accomplish much in space yet.

Putting the brakes on Daytona … What caught my eye is the section on the Daytona rocket, a small-lift vehicle the company is developing. “The company expects to begin flying Daytona late next year or early 2027, and already has a Daytona II and III in the works,” the publication reports. Why is this notable? Because in an article published less than two years ago, Cantrell said Phantom was hoping to launch an orbital test flight in 2024. In other words, the rocket is further from launch today than it was in 2023. I guess we’ll see what happens. (submitted by BH)

It appears the Minotaur IV rocket still exists. A Northrop Grumman Minotaur IV rocket successfully launched multiple classified payloads for the US National Reconnaissance Office on Wednesday, marking a return to Vandenberg Space Force Base for the solid-fueled launch vehicle after more than a decade, Space News reports. The mission, designated NROL-174, lifted off at 3: 33 p.m. Eastern from Space Launch Complex 8 at Vandenberg, California. The launch was successful.

Back on the California Coast … The Minotaur IV is a four-stage vehicle derived in part from decommissioned Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles. The first three stages are government-furnished Peacekeeper solid rocket motors, while the upper stage is a commercial Orion solid motor built by Northrop Grumman. NROL-174 follows previous NRO missions flown on Minotaur rockets—NROL-129 in 2020 and NROL-111 in 2021—both launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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French launch firm gets some funding runway. The French government has awarded Latitude funding to support the construction of its new rocket factory in Reims, which is expected to open in 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Latitude first announced plans to develop a larger rocket factory in late 2023, when it expanded its original site from 1,500 to 3,000 square meters. The new facility is expected to span approximately 25,000 square meters and will support a production capacity of up to 50 Zephyr rockets per year.

Working toward a launch next year … The Zephyr rocket is designed to deliver payloads of up to 200 kilograms to low Earth orbit. It could make its debut in 2026 if all goes well. Latitude did not disclose the exact amount of funding it received for the construction of its new factory. However, it is known that while part of the funding will be awarded as a straight grant, a portion will take the form of a recoverable loan. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

RFA gets a new CEO. German launch vehicle startup Rocket Factory Augsburg has replaced its chief executive as it works toward a second chance for its first launch, Space News reports. Last Friday, RFA announced that Stefan Tweraser, who had been chief executive since October 2021, had been replaced by Indulis Kalnins.

Working toward a second launch attempt … The announcement did not give a reason for the change, but it suggested that the company was seeking someone with expertise in the aerospace industry to lead the company. Kalnins is on the aerospace faculty of a German university, Hochschule Bremen, and has been managing director of OHB Cosmos, which focused on launch services. RFA is working toward a second attempt at a first flight for RFA ONE later this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin launches all-female mission. Blue Origin’s 11th human flight—and first with an all-female flight team—blasted off from West Texas’ Launch Site One Monday morning on a flight that lasted about 10 minutes, Travel + Leisure reports. Katy Perry and Gayle King were joined by aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist and scientist Amanda Nguyễn, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez.

I kissed a Kármán line … “This experience has shown me you never know how much love is inside of you, how much love you have to give, and how loved you are, until the day you launch,” Perry said in her post-flight interview on the Blue Origin livestream, calling the experience “second only to being a mom” and rating it “10 out of 10.”

Bahamas to SpaceX: Let’s press pause. The Bahamas government said on Tuesday it is suspending all SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket landings in the country, pending a full post-launch investigation of the latest Starship mishap, Reuters reports. “No further clearances will be granted until a full environmental assessment is reviewed,” Bahamian Director of Communications Latrae Rahming said.

Falling from the sky … The Bahamian government said in February, after SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 first stage landing in the country, that it had approved 19 more throughout 2025, subject to regulatory approval. The Bahamas’ post-launch investigation comes after a SpaceX Starship spacecraft exploded in space last month, minutes after lifting off from Texas. Following the incident, the Bahamas said debris from the spacecraft fell into its airspace.

NASA will fly on Soyuz for a while longer. NASA and Roscosmos have extended a seat barter agreement for flights to the International Space Station into 2027 that will feature longer Soyuz missions to the station, Space News reports. Under the no-exchange-of-funds barter agreement, NASA astronauts fly on Soyuz spacecraft and Roscosmos cosmonauts fly on commercial crew vehicles to ensure that there is at least one American and one Russian on the station should either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles be grounded for an extended period. “NASA and Roscosmos have amended the integrated crew agreement to allow for a second set of integrated crew missions in 2025, one set of integrated crew missions in 2026, and a SpaceX Dragon flight in 2027,” an agency spokesperson said.

Flying fewer times per year. One change with the agreement is the cadence of Soyuz missions. While Roscosmos had been flying Soyuz missions to the ISS every six months, missions starting with Soyuz MS-27 this April will spend eight months at the station. Neither NASA nor Roscosmos offered a reason for the change, which means that Roscosmos will fly one fewer Soyuz mission over a two-year period: three instead of four. I presume that this is a cost-saving measure. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9 sets reuse record. SpaceX notched another new rocket reuse record with its midnight Starlink flight on Sunday night from Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. The Falcon 9 rocket booster with the tail number 1067 launched for a record-setting 27th time, further cementing its position as the flight leader among SpaceX’s fleet.

Approaching 500 launches … It supported the launch of 27 Starlink V2 Mini satellites heading into low Earth orbit. The 27th outing for B1067 comes nearly four years after it launched its first mission, CRS-22 on June 3, 2021. Its three most recent missions were all in support of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. The Starlink 6-73 mission was also the 460th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket to date. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The real story behind the Space Shuttle legislation. Last week, two US senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, filed the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current location at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston. After the senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock. This was soon followed by: why? Ars spoke with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a sense of what is really happening here.

Bill is not going anywhere … The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against Ken Paxton. The legislation is, in DC parlance, a “messaging bill.” Cornyn is behind this, and Cruz simply agreed to go along. The goal in Cornyn’s campaign is to use the bill as a way to show Texans that he is fighting for them in Washington, DC, against the evils there. Presumably, he will blame the Obama administration, even though it is quite clear in hindsight that there were no political machinations behind the decision to not award a space shuttle to Houston. Space Center Houston, which would be responsible for hosting the shuttle, was not even told about the legislation before it was filed.

Next three launches

April 18: Long March 4B | Unknown payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 22: 55 UTC

April 19: Falcon 9 | NROL-145 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 10: 41 UTC

April 21: Falcon 9 | CRS-32 | Cape Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 08: 15 UTC

Photo of Eric Berger

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

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There’s a secret reason the Space Force is delaying the next Atlas V launch

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The Space Force is looking for responsive launch. This week, they’re the unresponsive ones.

File photo of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in 2022. Credit: SpaceX

Pushed by trackmobile railcar movers, the Atlas V rocket rolled to the launch pad last week with a full load of 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper internet megaconstellation. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Last week, the first operational satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband network were minutes from launch at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

These spacecraft, buttoned up on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, are the first of more than 3,200 mass-produced satellites Amazon plans to launch over the rest of the decade to deploy the first direct US competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink internet network.

However, as is often the case on Florida’s Space Coast, bad weather prevented the satellites from launching April 9. No big deal, right? Anyone who pays close attention to the launch industry knows delays are part of the business. A broken component on the rocket, a summertime thunderstorm, or high winds can thwart a launch attempt. Launch companies know this, and the answer is usually to try again the next day.

But something unusual happened when ULA scrubbed the countdown last Wednesday. ULA’s launch director, Eric Richards, instructed his team to “proceed with preparations for an extended turnaround.” This meant ULA would have to wait more than 24 hours for the next Atlas V launch attempt.

But why?

At first, there seemed to be a good explanation for the extended turnaround. SpaceX was preparing to launch a set of Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket around the same time as Atlas V’s launch window the next day. The Space Force’s Eastern Range manages scheduling for all launches at Cape Canaveral and typically operates on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Space Force accommodated 93 launches on the Eastern Range last year—sometimes on the same day—an annual record that military officials are quite proud of achieving. This is nearly six times the number of launches from Cape Canaveral in 2014, a growth rate primarily driven by SpaceX. In previous interviews, Space Force officials have emphasized their eagerness to support more commercial launches. “How do we get to yes?” is often what range officials ask themselves when a launch provider submits a scheduling request.

It wouldn’t have been surprising for SpaceX to get priority on the range schedule since it had already reserved the launch window with the Space Force for April 10. SpaceX subsequently delayed this particular Starlink launch for two days until it finally launched on Saturday evening, April 12. Another SpaceX Starlink mission launched Monday morning.

There are several puzzling things about what happened last week. When SpaceX missed its reservation on the range twice in two days, April 10 and 11, why didn’t ULA move back to the front of the line?

ULA, which is usually fairly transparent about its reasons for launch scrubs, didn’t disclose any technical problems with the rocket that would have prevented another launch attempt. ULA offers access to listen to the launch team’s audio channel during the countdown, and engineers were not discussing any significant technical issues.

The company’s official statement after the scrub said: “A new launch date will be announced when approved on the range.”

Also, why can’t ULA make another run at launching the Kuiper mission this week? The answer to that question is also a mystery, but we have some educated speculation.

Changes in attitudes

A few days ago, SpaceX postponed one of its own Starlink missions from Cape Canaveral without explanation, leaving the Florida spaceport with a rare week without any launches. SpaceX plans to resume launches from Florida early next week with the liftoff of a resupply mission to the International Space Station. The delayed Starlink mission will fly a few days later.

Meanwhile, the next launch attempt for ULA is unknown.

Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, wrote on X that questions about what is holding up the next Atlas V launch are best directed toward the Space Force. A spokesperson for ULA told Ars the company is still working with the range to determine the next launch date. “The rocket and payload are healthy,” she said. “We will announce the new launch date once confirmed.”

While the SpaceX launch delay this week might suggest a link to the same range kerfuffle facing United Launch Alliance, it’s important to point out a key difference between the companies’ rockets. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 uses an automated flight termination system to self-destruct the rocket if it flies off course, while ULA’s Atlas V uses an older human-in-the-loop range safety system, which requires additional staff and equipment. Therefore, the Space Force is more likely to be able to accommodate a SpaceX mission near another activity on the range.

One more twist in this story is that a few days before the launch attempt, ULA changed its launch window for the Kuiper mission on April 9 from midday to the evening hours due to a request from the Eastern Range. Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, the range commander, spoke with reporters in a roundtable meeting last week. After nearly 20 years of covering launches from Cape Canaveral, I found a seven-hour time change so close to launch to be unusual, so I asked Panzenhagen about the reason for it, mostly out of curiosity. She declined to offer any details.

File photo of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch in 2022. Credit: SpaceX

“The Eastern Range is huge,” she said. “It’s 15 million square miles. So, as you can imagine, there are a lot of players that are using that range space, so there’s a lot of de-confliction … Public safety is our top priority, and we take that very seriously on both ranges. So, we are constantly de-conflicting, but I’m not going to get into details of what the actual conflict was.”

It turns out the range conflict now impacting the Eastern Range is having some longer-lasting impacts. While a one- or two-week launch delay doesn’t seem serious, it adds up to deferred or denied revenue for a commercial satellite operator. National security missions get priority on range schedules at Cape Canaveral and at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, but there are significantly more commercial missions than military launches from both spaceports.

Clearly, there’s something out of the ordinary going on in the Eastern Range, which extends over much of the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, east, and northeast of Cape Canaveral. The range includes tracking equipment, security forces, and ground stations in Florida and downrange sites in Bermuda and Ascension Island.

One possibility is a test of one or more submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, which commonly occur in the waters off the east coast of Florida. But those launches are usually accompanied by airspace and maritime warning notices to ensure pilots and sailors steer clear of the test. Nothing of the sort has been publicly released in the last couple of weeks.

Maybe something is broken at the Florida launch base. When launches were less routine than today, the range at Cape Canaveral would close for a couple of weeks per year for upgrades and refurbishment of critical infrastructure. This is no longer the case. In 2023, Panzenhagen told Ars that the Space Force changed the policy.

“When the Eastern Range was supporting 15 to 20 launches a year, we had room to schedule dedicated periods for maintenance of critical infrastructure,” she said at the time. “During these periods, launches were paused while teams worked the upgrades. Now that the launch cadence has grown to nearly twice per week, we’ve adapted to the new way of business to best support our mission partners.”

Perhaps, then, it’s something more secret, like a larger-scale, multi-element military exercise or war game that either requires Eastern Range participation or is taking place in areas the Space Force needs to clear for safety reasons for a rocket launch to go forward. The military sometimes doesn’t publicize these activities until they’re over.

A Space Force spokesperson did not respond to Ars Technica’s questions on the matter.

While we’re still a ways off from rocket launches becoming as routine as an airplane flight, the military is shifting in the way it thinks about spaceports. Instead of offering one-off bespoke services tailored to the circumstances of each launch, the Space Force wants to operate the ranges more like an airport.

“We’ve changed the nomenclature from calling ourselves a range to calling ourselves a spaceport because we see ourselves more like an airport in the future,” one Space Force official told Ars for a previous story.

In the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, Congress gave the Space Force the authority to charge commercial launch providers indirect fees to help pay for common infrastructure at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg—things like roads, electrical and water utilities, and base security used by all rocket operators at each spaceport. The military previously could only charge rocket companies direct fees for the specific services it offered in support of a particular launch, while the government was on the hook for overhead costs.

Military officials characterize the change in law as a win-win for the government and commercial launch providers. Ideally, it will grow the pool of money available to modernize the military’s spaceports, making them more responsive to all users, whether it’s the Space Force, SpaceX, ULA, or a startup new to the launch industry.

Whatever is going on in Florida or the Atlantic Ocean this week, it’s something the Space Force doesn’t want to talk about in detail. Maybe there are good reasons for that.

Cape Canaveral is America’s busiest launch base. Extending the spaceport-airport analogy a little further, the closure of America’s busiest airport for a week or more would be a big deal. One of the holy grails the Space Force is pursuing is the capability to launch on demand.

This week, there’s demand for launch slots at Cape Canaveral, but the answer is no.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

There’s a secret reason the Space Force is delaying the next Atlas V launch Read More »

why-are-two-texas-senators-trying-to-wrest-a-space-shuttle-from-the-smithsonian?

Why are two Texas senators trying to wrest a Space Shuttle from the Smithsonian?

Space, space center houston, Space Shuttle Discovery / /

Should the city of Houston, which proudly bills itself as “Space City,” have a prized Space Shuttle orbiter on public display?

More than a decade ago, arguably, the answer was yes. After all, the Space Shuttle program was managed from Johnson Space Center, in southeastern Houston. All the astronauts who flew on the shuttle trained there. And the vehicle was operated out of Mission Control at the Houston-based facility.

But when the final decisions were being made to distribute the shuttles 15 years ago, the Houston community dragged its feet on putting together a competitive proposal. There were also questions about the ability of Space Center Houston to raise funding to house the shuttle within a new display area, which magnified concerns that the historical vehicle, like a Saturn V rocket before it, would be left outside in the region’s humid environment. Finally, other cities offered better proposals for displaying the shuttles to the public.

In the end, the four shuttles were sent to museums in Washington, DC, New York, Florida, and California.

Bring it back home

And that was all more or less settled until last week when the two US senators from Texas, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, filed the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current location the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Houston.

The space collectibles news site, CollectSpace, has a good overview of why this move is stupidly impractical. Essentially, it would easily cost $1 billion to get one of the two shuttle aircraft carriers back into service and move Discovery, it is unclear where the shuttle could survive such a journey in its current state, and the Smithsonian is the nation’s premier museum. There’s a reason that Discovery, the most historical of the three remaining shuttles that have gone to space, was placed there.

After the senators announced their bill, the collective response from the space community was initially shock. This was soon followed by: why? And so I’ve spoken with several people on background, both from the political and space spheres, to get a sense of what is really happening here. The short answer is that it is all political, and the timing is due to the reelection campaign for Cornyn, who faces a stiff runoff against Ken Paxton.

Why are two Texas senators trying to wrest a Space Shuttle from the Smithsonian? Read More »

here’s-how-a-satellite-ended-up-as-a-ghostly-apparition-on-google-earth

Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth

airbus, Earth, france, Google, google maps, pleiades, Science, Space, spacex, starlink / /

Regardless of the identity of the satellite, this image is remarkable for several reasons.

First, despite so many satellites flying in space, it’s still rare to see a real picture—not just an artist’s illustration—of what one actually looks like in orbit. For example, SpaceX has released photos of Starlink satellites in launch configuration, where dozens of the spacecraft are stacked together to fit inside the payload compartment of the Falcon 9 rocket. But there are fewer well-resolved views of a satellite in its operational environment, with solar arrays extended like the wings of a bird.

This is changing as commercial companies place more and more imaging satellites in orbit. Several companies provide “non-Earth imaging” services by repurposing Earth observation cameras to view other objects in space. These views can reveal information that can be useful in military or corporate espionage.

Secondly, the Google Earth capture offers a tangible depiction of a satellite’s speed. An object in low-Earth orbit must travel at more than 17,000 mph (more than 27,000 km per hour) to keep from falling back into the atmosphere.

While the B-2’s motion caused it to appear a little smeared in the Google Earth image a few years ago, the satellite’s velocity created a different artifact. The satellite appears five times in different colors, which tells us something about how the image was made. Airbus’ Pleiades satellites take pictures in multiple spectral bands: blue, green, red, panchromatic, and near-infrared.

At lower left, the black outline of the satellite is the near-infrared capture. Moving up, you can see the satellite in red, blue, and green, followed by the panchromatic, or black-and-white, snapshot with the sharpest resolution. Typically, the Pleiades satellites record these images a split-second apart and combine the colors to generate an accurate representation of what the human eye might see. But this doesn’t work so well for a target moving at nearly 5 miles per second.

Here’s how a satellite ended up as a ghostly apparition on Google Earth Read More »

should-we-settle-mars,-or-is-it-a-dumb-idea-for-humans-to-live-off-world?

Should we settle Mars, or is it a dumb idea for humans to live off world?

Debate, Mars, settlement, Space / /

Mars is back on the agenda.

During his address to a joint session of Congress in March, President Donald Trump said the United States “will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”

What does this mean? Manifest destiny is the belief, which was particularly widespread in 1800s America, that US settlers were destined to expand westward across North America. Similarly, then, the Trump administration believes it is the manifest destiny of Americans to settle Mars. And he wants his administration to take steps toward accomplishing that goal.

Should the US Prioritize Settling Mars?

But should we really do this?

I recently participated in a debate with Shannon Stirone, a distinguished science writer, on this topic. The debate was sponsored by Open to Debate, and professionally moderated by Emmy award-winning journalist John Donvan. Spoiler alert: I argued in favor of settlement. I hope you learned as much as I did.

Should we settle Mars, or is it a dumb idea for humans to live off world? Read More »

lunar-gateway’s-skeleton-is-complete—its-next-stop-may-be-trump’s-chopping-block

Lunar Gateway’s skeleton is complete—its next stop may be Trump’s chopping block

Science, Space / /

Officials blame changing requirements for much of the delays and rising costs. NASA managers dramatically changed their plans for the Gateway program in 2020, when they decided to launch the PPE and HALO on the same rocket, prompting major changes to their designs.

Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, declined to commit to the Gateway program during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on April 9. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the committee’s chairman, pressed Isaacman on the Lunar Gateway. Cruz is one of the Gateway program’s biggest backers in Congress since it is managed by Johnson Space Center in Texas. If it goes ahead, Gateway would guarantee numerous jobs at NASA’s mission control in Houston throughout its 15-year lifetime.

“That’s an area that if I’m confirmed, I would love to roll up my sleeves and further understand what’s working right?” Isaacman replied to Cruz. “What are the opportunities the Gateway presents to us? And where are some of the challenges, because I think the Gateway is a component of many programs that are over budget and behind schedule.”

The pressure shell for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module arrived in Gilbert, Arizona, last week for internal outfitting. Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel

Checking in with Gateway

Nevertheless, the Gateway program achieved a milestone one week before Isaacman’s confirmation hearing. The metallic pressure shell for the HALO module was shipped from its factory in Italy to Arizona. The HALO module is only partially complete, and it lacks life support systems and other hardware it needs to operate in space.

Over the next couple of years, Northrop Grumman will outfit the habitat with those components and connect it with the Power and Propulsion Element under construction at Maxar Technologies in Silicon Valley. This stage of spacecraft assembly, along with prelaunch testing, often uncovers problems that can drive up costs and trigger more delays.

Ars recently spoke with Jon Olansen, a bio-mechanical engineer and veteran space shuttle flight controller who now manages the Gateway program at Johnson Space Center. A transcript of our conversation with Olansen is below. It is lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Ars: The HALO module has arrived in Arizona from Italy. What’s next?

Olansen: This HALO module went through significant effort from the primary and secondary structure perspective out at Thales Alenia Space in Italy. That was most of their focus in getting the vehicle ready to ship to Arizona. Now that it’s in Arizona, Northrop is setting it up in their facility there in Gilbert to be able to do all of the outfitting of the systems we need to actually execute the missions we want to do, keep the crew safe, and enable the science that we’re looking to do. So, if you consider your standard spacecraft, you’re going to have all of your command-and-control capabilities, your avionics systems, your computers, your network management, all of the things you need to control the vehicle. You’re going to have your power distribution capabilities. HALO attaches to the Power and Propulsion Element, and it provides the primary power distribution capability for the entire station. So that’ll all be part of HALO. You’ll have your standard thermal systems for active cooling. You’ll have the vehicle environmental control systems that will need to be installed, [along with] some of the other crew systems that you can think of, from lighting, restraint, mobility aids, all the different types of crew systems. Then, of course, all of our science aspects. So we have payload lockers, both internally, as well as payload sites external that we’ll have available, so pretty much all the different systems that you would need for a human-rated spacecraft.

Ars: What’s the latest status of the Power and Propulsion Element?

Olansen: PPE is fairly well along in their assembly and integration activities. The central cylinder has been integrated with the propulsion tanks… Their propulsion module is in good shape. They’re working on the avionics shelves associated with that spacecraft. So, with both vehicles, we’re really trying to get the assembly done in the next year or so, so we can get into integrated spacecraft testing at that point in time.

Ars: What’s in the critical path in getting to the launch pad?

Olansen: The assembly and integration activity is really the key for us. It’s to get to the full vehicle level test. All the different activities that we’re working on across the vehicles are making substantive progress. So, it’s a matter of bringing them all in and doing the assembly and integration in the appropriate sequences, so that we get the vehicles put together the way we need them and get to the point where we can actually power up the vehicles and do all the testing we need to do. Obviously, software is a key part of that development activity, once we power on the vehicles, making sure we can do all the control work that we need to do for those vehicles.

[There are] a couple of key pieces I will mention along those lines. On the PPE side, we have the electrical propulsion system. The thrusters associated with that system are being delivered. Those will go through acceptance testing at the Glenn Research Center [in Ohio] and then be integrated on the spacecraft out at Maxar; so that work is ongoing as we speak. Out at ESA, ESA is providing the HALO lunar communication system. That’ll be delivered later this year. That’ll be installed on HALO as part of its integrated test and checkout and then launch on HALO. That provides the full communication capability down to the lunar surface for us, where PPE provides the communication capability back to Earth. So, those are key components that we’re looking to get delivered later this year.

Jon Olansen, manager of NASA’s Gateway program at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/Andrew Carlsen

Ars: What’s the status of the electric propulsion thrusters for the PPE?

Olansen: The first one has actually been delivered already, so we’ll have the opportunity to go through, like I said, the acceptance testing for those. The other flight units are right on the heels of the first one that was delivered. They’ll make it through their acceptance testing, then get delivered to Maxar, like I said, for integration into PPE. So, that work is already in progress. [The Power and Propulsion Element will have three xenon-fueled 12-kilowatt Hall thrusters produced by Aerojet Rocketdyne, and four smaller 6-kilowatt thrusters.]

Ars: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) outlined concerns last year about keeping the mass of Gateway within the capability of its rocket. Has there been any progress on that issue? Will you need to remove components from the HALO module and launch them on a future mission? Will you narrow your launch windows to only launch on the most fuel-efficient trajectories?

Olansen: We’re working the plan. Now that we’re launching the two vehicles together, we’re working mass management. Mass management is always an issue with spacecraft development, so it’s no different for us. All of the things you described are all knobs that are in the trade space as we proceed, but fundamentally, we’re working to design the optimal spacecraft that we can, first. So, that’s the key part. As we get all the components delivered, we can measure mass across all of those components, understand what our integrated mass looks like, and we have several different options to make sure that we’re able to execute the mission we need to execute. All of those will be balanced over time based on the impacts that are there. There’s not a need for a lot of those decisions to happen today. Those that are needed from a design perspective, we’ve already made. Those that are needed from enabling future decisions, we’ve already made all of those. So, really, what we’re working through is being able to, at the appropriate time, make decisions necessary to fly the vehicle the way we need to, to get out to NRHO [Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit, an elliptical orbit around the Moon], and then be able to execute the Artemis missions in the future.

Ars: The GAO also discussed a problem with Gateway’s controllability with something as massive as Starship docked to it. What’s the latest status of that problem?

Olansen: There are a number of different risks that we work through as a program, as you’d expect. We continue to look at all possibilities and work through them with due diligence. That’s our job, to be able to do that on a daily basis. With the stack controllability [issue], where that came from for GAO, we were early in the assessments of what the potential impacts could be from visiting vehicles, not just any one [vehicle] but any visiting vehicle. We’re a smaller space station than ISS, so making sure we understand the implications of thruster firings as vehicles approach the station, and the implications associated with those, is where that stack controllability conversation came from.

The bus that Maxar typically designs doesn’t have to generally deal with docking. Part of what we’ve been doing is working through ways that we can use the capabilities that are already built into that spacecraft differently to provide us the control authority we need when we have visiting vehicles, as well as working with the visiting vehicles and their design to make sure that they’re minimizing the impact on the station. So, the combination of those two has largely, over the past year since that report came out, improved where we are from a stack controllability perspective. We still have forward work to close out all of the different potential cases that are there. We’ll continue to work through those. That’s standard forward work, but we’ve been able to make some updates, some software updates, some management updates, and logic updates that really allow us to control the stack effectively and have the right amount of control authority for the dockings and undockings that we will need to execute for the missions.

Lunar Gateway’s skeleton is complete—its next stop may be Trump’s chopping block Read More »