One of NASA’s three large WB-57 aircraft made an emergency landing at Ellington Field on Tuesday morning in southeastern Houston.
Video captured by KHOU 11 television showed the aircraft touching down on the runway without its landing gear extended. The pilot then maintains control of the vehicle as it slides down the runway, slowing the aircraft through friction. The crew was not harmed, NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said.
WB-57 landing.
“Today, a mechanical issue with one of NASA’s WB-57s resulted in a gear-up landing at Ellington Field,” she said. “Response to the incident is ongoing, and all crew are safe at this time. As with any incident, a thorough investigation will be conducted by NASA into the cause. NASA will transparently update the public as we gather more information.”
The B-57 line of aircraft dates back to 1944, when the English Electric Company began developing the plane. After the Royal Air Force showcased the B-57 in 1951 by crossing the Atlantic in a record four hours and 40 minutes and becoming the first jet-powered aircraft to span the Atlantic without refueling, the United States Air Force began buying them to replace its aging Douglas B-26 Invader.
Now used for science
The aircraft performed bombing missions in Vietnam and other military campaigns, and a variant that later became the WB-57 was designed with longer wings that could fly even higher, up to 62,000 feet. This proved useful for weather reconnaissance and, around the world, to sample the upper atmosphere for evidence of nuclear debris where US officials suspected the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.
Another partially reusable Chinese rocket, the Long March 12B, is nearing its first test flight.
An Archimedes engine for Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket is test-fired at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. Credit: Rocket Lab
Welcome to Edition 8.26 of the Rocket Report! The past week has been one of advancements and setbacks in the rocket business. NASA rolled the massive rocket for the Artemis II mission to its launch pad in Florida, while Chinese launchers suffered back-to-back failures within a span of approximately 12 hours. Rocket Lab’s march toward a debut of its new Neutron launch vehicle in the coming months may have stalled after a failure during a key qualification test. We cover all this and more in this week’s Rocket Report.
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.
Australia invests in sovereign launch. Six months after its first orbital rocket cleared the launch tower for just 14 seconds before crashing back to Earth, Gilmour Space Technologies has secured 217 million Australian dollars ($148 million) in funding that CEO Adam Gilmour says finally gives Australia a fighting chance in the global space race, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. The funding round, led by the federal government’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation and superannuation giant Hostplus with $75 million each, makes the Queensland company Australia’s newest unicorn—a fast-growth start-up valued at more than $1 billion—and one of the country’s most heavily backed private technologyventures.
Homegrown rocket… “We’re a rocket company that has never had access to the capital that our American competitors have,” Gilmour told the newspaper. “This is the first raise where I’ve actually raised a decent amount of capital compared to the rest of the world.” The investment reflects growing concern about Australia’s reliance on foreign launch providers—predominantly Elon Musk’s SpaceX—to put government, defense, and commercial satellites into orbit. With US launch queues stretching beyond two years and geopolitical tensions reshaping access to space infrastructure, Canberra has identified sovereign launch capability as a strategic priority. Gilmour’s first Eris rocket lifted off from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland on July 30 last year. It achieved 14 seconds of flight before falling back to the ground, a result Gilmour framed as a partial success in an industry where first launches routinely fail.
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Isar Aerospace postpones test flight. Isar Aerospace scrubbed a potential January 21 launch of its Spectrum rocket to address a technical fault, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Hours before the launch window was set to open, the German company said that it was addressing “an issue with a pressurization valve.” A valve issue was one of the factors that caused a Spectrum to crash moments after liftoff on Isar’s first test flight last year. “The teams are currently assessing the next possible launch opportunities and a new target date will be announced shortly,” the company wrote in a post on its website. The Spectrum rocket, designed to haul cargoes of up to a metric ton (2,200 pounds) to low-Earth orbit, is awaiting liftoff from Andøya Spaceport in Norway.
Geopolitics at play... The second launch of Isar’s Spectrum rocket comes at a time when Europe’s space industry looks to secure the continent’s sovereignty in spaceflight. European satellites are no longer able to launch on Russian rockets, and the continent’s leaders don’t have much of an appetite to turn to US rockets amid strained trans-Atlantic relations. Europe’s satellite industry is looking for more competition for the Ariane 6 and Vega C rockets developed by ArianeGroup and Avio, and Isar Aerospace appears to be best positioned to become a new entrant in the European launch market. “I’m well aware that it would be really good for us Europeans to get this one right,” said Daniel Metzler, Isar’s co-founder and CEO.
A potential buyer for Orbex? UK-based rocket builder Orbex has signed a letter of intent to sell its business to European space logistics startup The Exploration Company, European Spaceflight reports. Orbex was founded in 2015 and is developing a small launch vehicle called Prime. The company also began work on a larger medium-lift launch vehicle called Proxima in December 2024. On Wednesday, Orbex published a brief press release stating that a letter of intent had been signed and that negotiations had begun. The company added that all details about the transaction remain confidential at this stage.
Time’s up... A statement from Orbex CEO Phil Chambers suggests that the company’s financial position factored into its decision to pursue a buyer. “Our Series D fundraising could have led us in many directions,” said Chambers. “We believe this opportunity plays to the strengths of both businesses, and we look forward to sharing more when the time is right.” The Exploration Company, headquartered near Munich, Germany, is developing a reusable space capsule to ferry cargo to low-Earth orbit and a high-thrust reusable rocket engine. It is one of the most well-financed space startups in Europe. Orbex is one of five launch startups in Europe selected by the European Space Agency last year to compete in the European Launcher Challenge and receive funding from ESA member states. But the UK company’s financial standing is in question. Orbex’s Danish subsidiary is filing for bankruptcy, and its main UK entity is overdue in filing its 2024 financial accounts. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
A bad day for Chinese rockets. China suffered a pair of launch failures January 16, seeing the loss of a classified Shijian satellite and the failed first launch of the Ceres-2 rocket, Space News reports. The first of the two failures involved the attempted launch of a Shijian military satellite aboard a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang launch base in southwestern China. The Shijian 32 satellite was likely heading for a geostationary transfer orbit, but a failure of the Long March 3B’s third stage doomed the mission. The Long March 3B is one of China’s most-flown rockets, and this was the first failure of a Long March 3-series vehicle since 2020, ending a streak of 50 consecutive successful flights of the rocket.
And then… Less than 12 hours later, another Chinese rocket failed on its climb to orbit. This launch, using a Ceres-2 rocket, originated from the Jiuquan space center in northwestern China. It was the first flight of the Ceres-2, a larger variant of the light-class Ceres-1 rocket developed and operated by a Chinese commercial startup named Galactic Energy. Chinese officials did not disclose the payloads lost on the Ceres-2 rocket.
Neutron in neutral. Rocket Lab suffered a structural failure of the Neutron rocket’s Stage 1 tank during testing, setting back efforts to get to the inaugural flight for the partially reusable launcher, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The mishap occurred during a hydrostatic pressure trial, the company said Wednesday. “There was no significant damage to the test structure or facilities,” Rocket Lab added. Rocket Lab last year pushed the first Neutron mission from 2025 to 2026, citing the volume of testing ahead. The US-based company said it is now analyzing what transpired to determine the impact on Neutron launch plans. Rocket Lab said it would provide an update during its next quarterly financials, due in a few weeks.
Where to go from here?… The Neutron rocket is designed to catapult Rocket Lab into more direct competition with legacy rocket companies like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. “The next Stage 1 tank is already in production, and Neutron’s development campaign continues,” the company said. Setbacks like this one are to be expected during the development of new rockets. Rocket Lab has publicized aggressive, or aspirational, launch schedules for the first Neutron rocket, so it’s likely the company will hang onto its projection of a debut launch in 2026, at least for now. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Falcon 9 launches NRO spysats. SpaceX executed a late night Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base on January 16, carrying an undisclosed number of intelligence-gathering satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, NROL-105, hauled a payload of satellites heading to low-Earth orbit, which are believed to be Starshield, a government variant of the Starlink satellites. “Today’s mission is the twelfth overall launch of the NRO’s proliferated architecture and first of approximately a dozen NRO launches scheduled throughout 2026 consisting of proliferated and national security missions,” the NRO said in a post-launch statement.
Mysteries abound… A public accounting of the agency’s proliferated constellation suggests it now numbers nearly 200 satellites with the ability to rapidly image locations around the world. The NRO has dozens more satellites serving other functions. “Having hundreds of NRO satellites on orbit is critical to supporting our nation and its partners,” the agency said in a statement. “This growing constellation enhances mission resilience and capability through reduced revisit times, improved persistent coverage, and accelerated processing and delivery of critical data.” What was unusual about the January 16 mission is it may have only carried two satellites, well short of the 20-plus Starshield satellites launched on most previous Falcon 9 launches, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist and expert tracker of global space launch activity.
Long March 12B hot-fired at Jiuquan. China’s main space contractor performed a static fire test of a new reusable Long March rocket Friday, paving the way for a test flight, Space News reports. The test-firing of the Long March 12B rocket’s first stage engines occurred on a launch pad at the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone at Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China. The mere existence of the Long March 12B rocket was not publicly known until recently. The new rocket was developed by a subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science Technology Corporation, with the capacity to carry a payload of 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode. It’s unknown if the first Long March 12B test flight will include a booster landing attempt.
Another one… The Long March 12B has a reusable first stage with landing legs, similar to the recovery architecture of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The booster is designed to land downrange at a recovery zone in the Gobi Desert. The Long March 12B is the latest in a line of partially reusable Chinese rockets to reach the launch pad, following soon after the debut launches of the Long March 12A and Zhuque 3 rocket last month. Several more companies in China are working on their own reusable boosters. Of them all, the Long March 12B appears to be the closest to a clone of SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Like the Falcon 9, the Long March 12B will have nine kerosene-fueled first stage engines and a single kerosene-fueled upper stage engine. Chinese officials have not announced when the Long March 12B will launch.
Artemis II rolls to the launch pad. Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward last weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad, Ars reports. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth.
Key test ahead… “This is the start of a very long journey,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We ended our last human exploration of the Moon on Apollo 17.” The Artemis II mission will set several notable human spaceflight records. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will travel farther from Earth than any human in history as they travel beyond the far side of the Moon. They won’t land. That distinction will fall to the next mission in line in NASA’s Artemis program. This will be the first time astronauts have flown on the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The launch window opens February 6, but the exact date of Artemis II’s liftoff will be determined by the outcome of a critical fueling test of the SLS rocket scheduled for early February.
Blue Origin confirms rocket reuse plan. Blue Origin confirmed Thursday that the next launch of its New Glenn rocket will carry a large communications satellite into low-Earth orbit for AST SpaceMobile, Ars reports. The rocket will launch the next-generation Block 2 BlueBird satellite “no earlier than late February” from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. However, the update from Blue Origin appears to have buried the real news toward the end: “The mission follows the successful NG-2 mission, which included the landing of the ‘Never Tell Me The Odds’ booster. The same booster is being refurbished to power NG-3,” the company said.
Impressive strides… The second New Glenn mission launched on November 13, just 10 weeks ago. If the company makes the late-February target for the next mission—and Ars was told last week to expect the launch to slip into March—it will represent a remarkably short turnaround for an orbital booster. By way of comparison, SpaceX did not attempt to refly the first Falcon 9 booster it landed in December 2015. Instead, initial tests revealed that the vehicle’s interior had been somewhat torn up. It was scrapped and inspected closely so that engineers could learn from the wear and tear.
Next three launches
Jan. 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-20 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 15: 17 UTC
Jan. 26: Falcon 9 | GPS III SV09 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04: 46 UTC
Jan. 26: Long March 7A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 21: 00 UTC
Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.
SpaceX successfully landed its second Falcon 9 booster in April 2016, on the 23rd overall flight of the Falcon 9 fleet. This booster was refurbished and, after a lengthy series of inspections, it was reflown successfully in March 2017, nearly 11 months later.
Reshuffling the manifest
With New Glenn, Blue Origin is seeking to refly a booster on just the third overall flight of the New Glenn fleet and turn the rocket around in less than four months. Even for a well-capitalized program with the benefit of learning from both Blue Origin’s own suborbital New Shepard rocket and the industry’s experience with the Falcon 9, this represents an impressive turnaround in first stage reuse.
Blue Origin originally planned to launch its MK1 lunar lander on the third flight of New Glenn, but it pivoted to a commercial launch as the lunar vehicle continues preparatory work.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it had completed the integration of the MK1 vehicle and put it on a barge bound for Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, it will undergo vacuum chamber testing before a launch later this spring—or, more likely, sometime this summer.
The announcement came out of the blue, from Blue, on Wednesday.
The space company founded by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, said it was developing a new megaconstellation named TeraWave to deliver data speeds of up to 6Tbps anywhere on Earth. The constellation will consist of 5,408 optically interconnected satellites, with a majority in low-Earth orbit and the remainder in medium-Earth orbit.
The satellites in low-Earth orbit will provide up to 144Gbps through radio spectrum, whereas those in medium-Earth orbit will provide higher data rates through optical links.
“This provides the reliability and resilience needed for real-time operations and massive data movement,” Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said on social media. “It also provides backup connectivity during outages, keeping critical operations running. Plus, the ability to scale on demand and rapidly deploy globally while maintaining performance.”
Going for the enterprise market
Unlike other megaconstellations, including SpaceX’s Starlink, Blue Origin’s new constellation will not serve consumers or try to provide direct-to-cell communications. Rather, TeraWave will seek to serve “tens of thousands” of enterprise, data center, and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations.
The announcement was surprising for several reasons, but it may also represent a shrewd business decision.
It was surprising because Bezos’ other company, Amazon, has already spent more than half a decade developing its own megaconstellation, now known as Amazon Leo, which is presently authorized to deploy 3,236 satellites into low-Earth orbit. This service is intended to compete with Starlink, both through customer terminals and by providing services such as in-flight Wi-Fi.
However, the emergence of increased data needs from AI data centers and other operations must have convinced Bezos that Blue Origin should enter the competition for lucrative enterprise customers—an area in which Amazon Leo is also expected to compete.
The Helix Nebula is one of the most well-known and commonly photographed planetary nebulae because it resembles the “Eye of Sauron.” It is also one of the closest bright nebulae to Earth, located approximately 655 light-years from our Solar System.
You may not know what this particular nebula looks like when reading its name, but the Hubble Space Telescope has taken some iconic images of it over the years. And almost certainly, you’ll recognize a photograph of the Helix Nebula, shown below.
Like many objects in astronomy, planetary nebulae have a confusing name, since they are formed not by planets but by stars like our own Sun, though a little larger. Near the end of their lives, these stars shed large amounts of gas in an expanding shell that, however briefly in cosmological time, put on a grand show.
This is one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s iconic images of the Helix Nebula
Credit: NASA
This is one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s iconic images of the Helix Nebula Credit: NASA
Now the James Webb Space Telescope has turned its sights on the Helix Nebula, and, oh my, does it have a story to tell. NASA released the new images of the nebula on Tuesday.
In this image, there are vibrant pillars of gas along the inner region of the nebula’s expanding shell of gas. According to the space agency, this is what we’re seeing:
“We have a very strong incentive to send a crew as quickly as we can safely do so.”
The Haven-1 space station seen here in the Vast Space clean room. Credit: Vast Space
The Haven-1 space station seen here in the Vast Space clean room. Credit: Vast Space
As Ars reported last week, NASA’s plan to replace the International Space Station with commercial space stations is running into a time crunch.
The sprawling International Space Station is due to be decommissioned less than five years from now, and the US space agency has yet to formally publish rules and requirements for the follow-on stations being designed and developed by several different private companies.
Although there are expected to be multiple bidders in “phase two” of NASA’s commercial space station program, there are at present four main contenders: Voyager Technologies, Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Vast Space. At some point later this year, the space agency is expected to select one, or more likely two, of these companies for larger contracts that will support their efforts to build their stations.
To get a sense of the overall landscape as the competition heats up, Ars recently interviewed Voyager chief executive Dylan Taylor about his company’s plans for a private station, Starlab. Today we are publishing an interview with Max Haot, the chief executive of Vast. The company is furthest along in terms of development, choosing to build a smaller, interim space station, Haven-1, capable of short-duration stays. Eventually, NASA wants facilities capable of continuous habitation, but it is not clear whether that will be a requirement starting in 2030.
Until today, Haven-1 had a public launch date of mid-2026. However, as Haot explained in our interview, that launch date is no longer tenable.
Max Haot: This is obviously our first space station, and we’re moving as safely and as fast as we can. That’s the date right now that we are confident we will meet. We’ve been tracking that date, without slip, for quite a while. And that’s still a year, probably two years or even more, ahead of anyone else. It will be building the world’s first commercial space station from scratch, from an empty building and no team, in under four years.
Ars: Where are you with the hardware?
Haot: Last Saturday (January 10) we reached the key milestone of fully completing the primary structure, and some of the secondary structure; all of the acceptance testing occurred in November as well. Now we are starting clean room integration, which starts with TCS (thermal control system), propulsion, interior shells, and then moving on to avionics. And then final close out, which we expect will be done by the fall, and then we have on the books with NASA a full test campaign at the end of the year at Plum Brook. Then the launch in Q1 next year.
Ars: What happens after you launch Haven-1?
Haot: We are not launching Haven-1 with crew inside. It’s a 15-ton, very valuable and expensive satellite, but still no humans involved, launching on a Falcon 9. So then we have a period that we can monitor it and control it uncrewed and confirm everything is functioning perfectly, right? We are holding pressure. We are controlling attitude. These checkouts can happen in as little as two weeks.
At the end of it, we have to basically convince SpaceX, both contractually and with many verification events, that it will be safe to dock Dragon. And if they agree with the data we provide them, they will put a fully trained crew on board Dragon and bring them up. It could be as early as two weeks after, and it could be as late as any time within three years, which is a lifetime of Haven-1. But we have a very strong incentive to send a crew as quickly as we can safely do so.
The Haven-1 space station undergoes acceptance testing.
Credit: Vast Space
The Haven-1 space station undergoes acceptance testing. Credit: Vast Space
Ars: Have you picked the crew yet?
Haot: We are in deep negotiations, maybe more than that, with both private individuals and nation states. But there’s nothing we are ready to announce yet. Especially with the Q1 launch date, in our desire to follow with the crew right after, this is now becoming pretty urgent. We believe, with our partner at SpaceX, one year for training is very comfortable, and we think we can compress it to maybe as little as six months for both training on Dragon and Haven-1 so long as we have an experienced crew. So we have a bit of time left to announce it.
Ars: You mentioned Haven-1 has a three-year lifetime. How many crews will you try to cycle through?
Haot: The nominal plan is for a two-week mission, and we have one fully contracted with SpaceX, as well as a second one that we have a deposit and an option on. And then we plan to do two more. That’s assuming they are 10-day missions with two days of transfer on either side. So two-week missions. We also have the option to maybe do a 30-day mission if we want. So the exact duration and makeup will be decided as we make progress with customers and potentially NASA.
Ars: What is the plan after Haven-1?
Haot: If you look at the first module of our second station, what will be the difference? We have two docking ports, not one. We expect to have more power, and potentially more volume, depending on the launch vehicle. What you see on our website and what we do might be different. We have a lot of optionality. But other than that, it’s all of the exact same components of Haven demo and Haven-1, which are basically being iterated on. And so that’s the key. The life support system, the air revitalization system, the software, the primary structure—the first module of Haven-2 will be just tweaks on Haven-1. That’s why we think we’re in the best position of all of the competitors. And that’s not been enabled by chance, right? It’s been enabled by a billion-dollar investment in 1,000 employees and all the facilities to mass produce the follow-on modules.
Ars: NASA is nearing the second phase of its competition for commercial space stations, known as CLDs. Do you plan to compete with Haven-1 or Haven-2 for these contracts?
Haot: We have not decided because, as you know, it’s unclear yet what the requirements will be. Will they be asking for a 30-day demonstration flight? On our end it’s unclear if we want to bid that 30-day demonstration with Haven-1, or Haven-2 with two or three modules. If they ask for a 30-day mission, we have the option to offer it on Haven-1 in 2027 if we want to.
Ars: Last week a key space staffer in the US Senate, Maddy Davis, said she was “begging” for NASA to release the phase two “request for proposals” that would set the ground rules for the CLD competition. Do you feel the same way?
Haot: Vast is dedicated to ensuring we have continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit after the ISS is retired. The date we are aiming at is end of 2030. Maddy mentioned an ISS extension. We agree, for America, if no one is ready it should be extended. But in our view, we will be ready, and we need to make sure we’re ready to start a continuous crewed mission by the end of 2030. That’s less than five years away now, right? So we definitely agree with the sentiment, and I think the full industry agrees, and I’m pretty sure Jared Isaacman also agrees that it is overdue and it’s time to make a decision and release an RFP.
Ars: What do you hope to see in that RFP when it comes to requirements?
Haot: We obviously can’t decide what NASA will do, and we will be competitive in whatever they decide. But there’s a few key recommendations we feel strongly about. The first one is that, as they consider whether they proceed with a demonstration mission or something else, we think they should focus on what is right for the country. What we are hearing is that they are trying to tweak the approach to do something fair to all of the bidders. And I don’t think it should matter whether people have been doing a right thing or wrong thing, and whether what’s right for the country puts somebody in a better position or not.
The second piece, obviously, is to move faster, which we just talked about. The third piece is that we think it’s really important that they require a demonstration. If you look at every human space flight program in history, none of them went straight from the program starting to a long-duration mission on a spacecraft. They all had a stepping stone, and right now none of us has proven we can have humans safely on orbit in a space station. And so in our view, they should require demonstration, and not on the eve of January 1, 2031. They should require a demonstration with crew as quickly as possible before they buy services.
Ars: You mentioned doing the “right thing for the country.” What does that mean for NASA?
Haot: It means you’re focused on commercial stations being ready by 2030, so there is not a need to extend the ISS. And it means ensuring we have not just one winner, but two, in case history repeats itself, such as Boeing and SpaceX in crew transportation.
Ars: Do you think the government has committed enough funding to make the commercial space station program a success?
Haot: I’m a vendor, and obviously I’d like as much buffer as possible, and as much funding as possible. With the current budget we don’t think more than two winners is reasonable, but it should absolutely be two in the best interest of the country. If there was a bigger budget, obviously, three would be great. And so if you look at the CLD budget line, which is approved for next year—projected over five years for development, and you assume two winners, and then services that come later—we are confident we can be successful and profitable with two companies operating.
Obviously, we also need international customers, right? We need Europe. We need Japan, where we just opened a subsidiary. We need all the new emerging human spaceflight nations in the Middle East, in Europe, in Asia. And a little bit of private spaceflight. We’re not in a space tourism era, in orbit, but there are still some private individuals willing to fund a mission and do important work. With that, we get to profitability.
We think a big differentiator of Vast is that we are really excited and eager to unlock the orbital economy. I’m talking about in-space semiconductor, fiber, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and so on. We think that’s our upside. We want to unlock it. But we don’t know how quickly it will happen or how big it will be. What we do know is, whoever has a platform up there with flight crew, facilities, and power will be the one unlocking it. But in our business model, if that’s delayed, we can still be profitable.
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.
After a remarkably smooth launch campaign, Artemis II reached its last stop before the Moon.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket rolls to Launch Complex 39B on Saturday. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida—Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad.
The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. At the end of its nearly 10-day tour through cislunar space, the Orion capsule on top of the rocket will exceed 25,000 mph as it plunges into the atmosphere to bring its four-person crew back to Earth.
“This is the start of a very long journey,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “We ended our last human exploration of the moon on Apollo 17.”
The Artemis II mission will set several notable human spaceflight records. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will travel farther from Earth than any human in history. They won’t land. That distinction will fall to the next mission in line in NASA’s Artemis program.
But the Artemis II astronauts will travel more than 4,000 miles beyond the far side of the Moon (the exact distance depends on the launch date), setting up for a human spaceflight speed record during their blazing reentry over the Pacific Ocean a few days later. Koch will become the first woman to fly to the vicinity of the Moon, and Hansen will be the first non-US astronaut to do the same.
“We really are ready to go,” said Wiseman, the Artemis II commander, during Saturday’s rollout to the launch pad. “We were in a sim [in Houston] for about 10 hours yesterday doing our final capstone entry and landing sim. We got in T-38s last night and we flew to the Cape to be here for this momentous occasion.”
The rollout began around sunrise Saturday, with NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule riding a mobile launch platform and a diesel-powered crawler transporter along a throughway paved with crushed Alabama river rock. Employees, VIPs, and guests gathered along the crawlerway to watch the 11 million-pound stack inch toward the launch pad. The rollout concluded about an hour after sunset, when the crawler transporter’s jacking system lowered the mobile launch platform onto pedestals at Pad 39B.
Hitting the launch window
The rollout keeps the Artemis II mission on track for liftoff as soon as next month, when NASA has a handful of launch opportunities on February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11.
The big milestone leading up to launch day will be a practice countdown or Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), currently slated for around February 2, when NASA’s launch team will pump more than 750,000 gallons of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket. NASA had trouble keeping the cryogenic fluids at the proper temperature, then encountered hydrogen leaks when the launch team first tried to fill the rocket for the unpiloted Artemis I mission in 2022. Engineers implemented the same fixes on Artemis II that they used to finally get over the hump with propellant loading on Artemis I.
So, what are the odds NASA can actually get the Artemis II mission off the ground next month?
“We’ll have to have things go right,” said Matt Ramsey, NASA’s Artemis II mission manager, in an interview with Ars on Saturday. “There’s a day of margin there for weather. There’s some time after WDR that we’ve got for data reviews and that sort of thing. It’s not unreasonable, but I do think it’s a success-oriented schedule.”
The Moon has to be in the right position in its orbit for the Artemis II launch to proceed. There are also restrictions on launch dates to ensure the Orion capsule returns to Earth and reenters the atmosphere at an angle safe for the ship’s heat shield. If the launch does not happen in February, NASA has a slate of backup launch dates in early March.
Ars was at Kennedy Space Center for the rocket’s move to the launch pad Saturday. The photo gallery below shows the launcher emerging from the Vehicle Assembly Building, the same facility once used to stack Saturn V rockets during the Apollo Moon program. The Artemis II astronauts were also on hand for a question and answer session with reporters.
Around the clock
The first flight of astronauts on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft is running at least five years late. The flight’s architecture, trajectory, and goals have changed multiple times, and technical snags discovered during manufacturing and testing repeatedly shifted the schedule. The program’s engineering and budgetary problems are well documented.
But the team readying the rocket and spacecraft for launch has hit a stride in recent months. Technicians inside the Vehicle Assembly Building started stacking the SLS rocket in late 2024, beginning with the vehicle’s twin solid-fueled boosters. Then ground teams added the core stage, upper stage, and finally installed the Orion spacecraft on top of the rocket last October.
Working nearly around the clock in three shifts, it took about 12 months for crews at Kennedy to assemble the rocket and prepare it for rollout. But the launch campaign inside the VAB was remarkably smooth. Ground teams shaved about two months off the time it took to integrate the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission, which launched on the program’s first full-up unpiloted test flight in 2022.
“About a year ago, I was down here and we set the rollout date, and we hit it within a day or two,” said Matt Ramsey, NASA’s mission manager for Artemis II. “Being able to stay on schedule, it was a daily grind to be able to do that.”
Engineers worked through a handful of technical problems last year, including an issue with a pressure-assisted device used to assist the astronauts in opening the Orion hatch in the event of an emergency. More recently, NASA teams cleared a concern with caps installed on the rocket’s upper stage, according to Ramsey.
The most significant engineering review focused on proving the Orion heat shield is safe to fly. That assessment occurred in the background from the perspective of the technicians working on Artemis II at Kennedy.
The Artemis II team is now focused on activities at the launch pad. This week, NASA plans to perform a series of tests extending and retracting the crew access mark. Next, the Artemis II astronauts will rehearse an emergency evacuation from the launch pad. That will be followed by servicing of the rocket’s hydraulic steering system.
The big question mark
All of this leads up to the crucial practice countdown early next month. The astronauts won’t be aboard the rocket for the test, but almost everything else will look like launch day. The countdown will halt around 30 seconds prior to the simulated liftoff.
It took repeated tries to get through the Wet Dress Rehearsal for the Artemis I mission. There were four attempts at the countdown practice run before the first actual Artemis I launch countdown. After encountering hydrogen leaks on two scrubbed launch attempts, NASA performed another fueling test before finally successfully launching Artemis I in November 2022.
The launch team repaired a leaky hydrogen seal and introduced a gentler hydrogen loading procedure to overcome the problem. Hydrogen is an extremely efficient fuel for rockets, but its super-cold temperature and the tiny size of hydrogen molecules make it prone to leakage. The hydrogen feeds the SLS rocket’s four core stage engines and single upper stage engine.
“Artemis I was a test flight, and we learned a lot during that campaign getting to launch,” said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, NASA’s Artemis II launch director. “The things that we’ve learned relative to how to go load this vehicle, how to load LOX (liquid oxygen), how to load hydrogen, have all been rolled in to the way in which we intend to load the Artemis II vehicle.”
NASA is hesitant to publicly set a target launch date until the agency gets through the dress rehearsal, but agency officials say a February launch remains feasible.
“We’ve held schedule pretty well getting to rollout today,” Isaacman said. “We have zero intention of communicating an actual launch date until we get through wet dress. But look, that’s our first window, and if everything is tracking accordingly, I know the teams are prepared, I know this crew is prepared, we’ll take it.”
“Wet dress is the driver to launch,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “With a wet dress that is without significant issues, if everything goes to plan, then certainly there are opportunities within February that could be achievable.”
One constraint that threw a wrench into NASA’s Artemis I launch campaign is no longer a significant factor for Artemis II. On Artemis I, NASA had to roll the rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) after the wet dress rehearsal to complete final installation and testing on its flight termination system, which consists of a series of pyrotechnic charges designed to destroy the rocket if it flies off course and threatens populated areas after liftoff.
The US Space Force’s Eastern Range, responsible for public safety for all launches from Florida’s Space Coast, requires the flight termination system be retested after 28 to 35 days, a clock that started ticking last week before rollout. During Artemis I, technicians could not access the parts of the rocket they needed to in order to perform the retest at the launch pad. NASA now has structural arms to give ground teams the ability to reach parts higher up the rocket for the retest without returning to the hangar.
With this new capability, Artemis II could remain at the pad for launch opportunities in February and March before officials need to bring it back to the VAB to replace the flight termination system’s batteries, which still can’t be accessed at the pad.
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.
I have been writing about the Giant Magellan Telescope for a long time. Nearly two decades ago, for example, I wrote that time was “running out” in the race to build the next great optical telescope on the ground.
At the time the proposed telescope was one of three contenders to make a giant leap in mirror size from the roughly 10-meter diameter instruments that existed then, to approximately 30 meters. This represented a huge increase in light-gathering potential, allowing astronomers to see much further into the universe—and therefore back into time—with far greater clarity.
Since then the projects have advanced at various rates. An international consortium to build the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii ran into local protests that have bogged down development. Its future came further into question when the US National Science Foundation dropped support for the project in favor of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Meanwhile the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has advanced on a faster schedule, and this 39.5-meter telescope could observe its first light in 2029.
This leaves the Magellan telescope. Originally backers of the GMT intended it to be fully operational by now, but it has faced funding and technology challenges. It has a price tag of approximately $2 billion, and although it is smaller than the European project, the 25.4-meter telescope now represents the best avenue for US-based astronomy to remain competitive in the field.
Given all of this, I recently spoke with University of Texas at Austin astronomer Dan Jaffe, who is the new president of the telescope’s executive team, to get an update on things. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Ars Technica: What should we know about the Giant Magellan Telescope?
Dan Jaffe: This is going to be one of the premier next-generation optical infrared telescopes in the world. It will give the United States astronomical community access that helps us to be a leading nation in this field, inspire students to go into science and engineering, and really enrich the human experience through the new knowledge that we get about the nature of the universe. So I think it covers both this kind of aspiration that we have to enrich humanity in some way, to help foster the future economy by bringing more people into these technical fields, and also by driving technology in some areas. The kinds of work we’re doing on adaptive optics, for example, in building sensitive detector systems and spectrometers, drive the frontier of what you can do with these systems.
“Putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the Moon, this is going be our first step toward a sustained lunar presence,” Honeycutt said. “It’s 10 days [and] four astronauts going farther from Earth than any other human has ever traveled. We’ll be validating the Orion spacecraft’s life support, navigation and crew systems in the really harsh environments of deep space, and that’s going to pave the way for future landings.”
NASA’s 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building on the eve of rollout to Launch Complex 39B.
Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
NASA’s 322-foot-tall (98-meter) SLS rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building on the eve of rollout to Launch Complex 39B. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
There is still much work ahead before NASA can clear Artemis II for launch. At the launch pad, technicians will complete final checkouts and closeouts before NASA’s launch team gathers in early February for a critical practice countdown. During this countdown, called a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), Blackwell-Thompson and her team will oversee the loading of the SLS rocket’s core stage and upper stage with super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.
The cryogenic fluids, particularly liquid hydrogen, gave fits to the Artemis launch team as NASA prepared to launch the Artemis I mission—without astronauts—on the SLS rocket’s first test flight in 2022. Engineers resolved the issues and successfully launched the Artemis I mission in November 2022, and officials will apply the lessons for the Artemis II countdown.
“Artemis I was a test flight, and we learned a lot during that campaign getting to launch,” Blackwell-Thompson said. “And the things that we’ve learned relative to how to go load this vehicle, how to load LOX (liquid oxygen), how to load hydrogen, have all been rolled in to the way in which we intend to do for the Artemis II vehicle.”
Finding the right time to fly
Assuming the countdown rehearsal goes according to plan, NASA could be in a position to launch the Artemis II mission as soon as February 6. But the schedule for February 6 is tight, with no margin for error. Officials typically have about five days per month when they can launch Artemis II, when the Moon is in the right position relative to Earth, and the Orion spacecraft can follow the proper trajectory toward reentry and splashdown to limit stress on the capsule’s heat shield.
In February, the available launch dates are February 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11, with launch windows in the overnight hours in Florida. If the mission isn’t off the ground by February 11, NASA will have to stand down until a new series of launch opportunities beginning March 6. The space agency has posted a document showing all available launch dates and times through the end of April.
John Honeycutt, chair NASA’s Mission Management Team for the Artemis II mission, speaks during a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2026.
Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
John Honeycutt, chair NASA’s Mission Management Team for the Artemis II mission, speaks during a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2026. Credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
NASA’s leaders are eager for Artemis II to fly. NASA is not only racing China, a reality the agency’s former administrator acknowledged during the Biden administration. Now, the Trump administration is pushing NASA to accomplish a human landing on the Moon by the end of his presidential term on January 20, 2029.
One of Honeycutt’s jobs as chair of the Mission Management Team (MMT) is ensuring all the Is are dotted and Ts are crossed amid the frenzy of final launch preparations. While the hardware for Artemis II is on the move in Florida, the astronauts and flight controllers are wrapping up their final training and simulations at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“I think I’ve got a good eye for launch fever,” he said Friday.
“As chair of the MMT, I’ve got one job, and it’s the safe return of Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy. I consider that a duty and a trust, and it’s one I intend to see through.”
“We are fundamentally shifting our approach to securing our munitions supply chain.”
SpaceX launched the Pandora satellite for NASA on Sunday. Credit: SpaceX
Welcome to Edition 8.25 of the Rocket Report! All eyes are on Florida this weekend as NASA rolls out the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to its launch site in Florida for the Artemis II mission. NASA has not announced a launch date yet, and this will depend in part on how well a “wet dress rehearsal” goes with fueling the rocket. However, it is likely the rocket has a no-earlier-than launch date of February 8. Our own Stephen Clark will be in Florida for the rollout on Saturday, so be sure and check back here for coverage.
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.
MaiaSpace scores a major launch deal. The ArianeGroup subsidiary, created in 2022, has inked a major new launch contract with satellite operator Eutelsat, Le Monde reports. A significant portion of the 440 new satellites ordered by Eutelsat from Airbus to renew or expand its OneWeb constellation will be launched into orbit by the new Maia rocket. MaiaSpace previously signed two contracts: one with Exotrail for the launch of an orbital transfer, and the other for two satellites for the Toutatis mission, a defense system developed by U-Space.
A big win for the French firm … The first test launch of Maia is scheduled for the end of 2026, a year later than initially planned, at the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana. The first flights carrying OneWeb satellites are therefore likely to launch no earlier than 2027. Powered by liquid oxygen-methane propellant, Maia aims to be able to deliver up to 500 kg to low-Earth orbit when the first stage is recovered, and 1,500 kg when fully expendable.
Firefly announces Alpha upgrade plan. Firefly Aerospace said this week it was planning a “Block II” upgrade to its Alpha rocket that will “focus on enhancing reliability, streamlining producibility, and improving launch operations to further support commercial, civil, and national security mission demand.” Firefly’s upcoming Alpha Flight 7, targeted to launch in the coming weeks, will be the last flown in the current configuration and will serve as a test flight with multiple Block II subsystems in shadow mode.
Too many failures … “Firefly worked closely with customers and incorporated data and lessons learned from our first six Alpha launches and hundreds of hardware tests to make upgrades that increase reliability and manufacturability with consolidated parts, key configuration updates, and stronger structures built with automated machinery,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace. Speaking bluntly, reliability upgrades are needed. Of Alpha’s six launches to date, only two have been a complete success. (submitted by TFargo04)
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Another PSLV launch failure. India’s first launch of 2026 ended in failure due to an issue with the third stage of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, designated PSLV-C62, was also the second consecutive failure of this four-stage rocket, with both anomalies affecting the third stage. This time, 16 satellites were lost, including those of other nations. ISRO said it initiated a “detailed analysis” to determine the root cause of the anomaly.
Has been India’s workhorse rocket … The four-stage launch vehicle is a mixture of solid- and liquid- fueled stages. Both the first and third stages are solid-fueled, while the second and fourth stages are powered by liquid propulsion. The PSLV Rocket has flown in multiple configurations since it debuted in September 1993 and achieved 58 fully successful launches, with the payloads on those missions reaching their intended orbit.
US military invests in L3Harris rocket motors. The US government will invest $1 billion in L3Harris Technologies’ growing rocket motor business, guaranteeing a steady supply of the much-needed motors used in a wide range of missiles such as Tomahawks and Patriot interceptors, CNBC reports. L3Harris said on Tuesday it is planning an IPO of its growing rocket motor business into a new publicly traded company backed by a $1 billion government convertible security investment. The securities will automatically convert to common equity when the company goes public later in 2026.
Shifting investment strategy … “We are fundamentally shifting our approach to securing our munitions supply chain,” said Michael Duffey, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. “By investing directly in suppliers we are building the resilient industrial base needed for the Arsenal of Freedom.” However, the government’s equity position in L3Harris could face blowback from L3Harris’ rivals, given that it creates a potentially significant conflict of interest for the US government. The Pentagon will have an ownership stake in a company that regularly bids on major defense and other government contracts.
First Ariane 64 to launch next month. Arianespace announced Thursday that it plans to launch the first variant of the Ariane 6 rocket with four solid rocket boosters on February 12 from French Guiana. The mission will also be the company’s first launch of Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) satellites. This is the first of 18 Ariane 6 launches that Arianespace sold to Amazon for the broadband communications megaconstellation.
A growing cadence … The Ariane 6 rocket has launched five times, including its debut flight in July 2024. All of the launches were a success, although the first flight failed to relight the upper stage in order to make a controlled reentry. Arianespace increased the cadence to four launches last year and will seek to try to double that this year.
Falcon 9 launches the Pandora mission. NASA’s Pandora satellite rocketed into orbit early Sunday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, Ars reports. It hitched a ride with around 40 other small payloads aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launching into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit before deploying at an altitude of roughly 380 miles (613 kilometers).
A satellite that can carry a tune … Pandora will augment the capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Over the next few weeks, ground controllers will put Pandora through a series of commissioning and calibration steps before turning its eyes toward deep space. From low-Earth orbit, Pandora will observe exoplanets and their stars simultaneously, allowing astronomers to correct their measurements of the planet’s atmospheric composition and structure based on the ever-changing conditions of the host star itself.
ArianeGroup seeking ideas for Ariane 6 reuse. In this week’s newsletter, we’ve already had a story about MaiaSpace and another item about the Ariane 6 rocket. So why not combine the two and also have a report about an Ariane 6 mashup with the Maia rocket? As it turns out, there’s a relatively new proposal to retrofit the existing Ariane 6 rocket design for partial reuse with Maia rockets as side boosters, Ars reports.
Sir, maia I have some cost savings? … It’s infeasible to recover the Ariane 6’s core stage for many reasons. Chief among them is that the main stage burns for more than seven minutes on an Ariane 6 flight, reaching speeds about twice as fast as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster achieves during its two-and-a-half minutes of operation during launch. Swapping out Ariane 6’s solid rocket motors for reusable liquid boosters makes some economic sense for ArianeGroup. The proposal would bring the development and production of the boosters under full control of ArianeGroup and its French subsidiary, cutting Italy’s solid rocket motor developer, Avio, out of the program. All the same, we’ll believe this when we see it.
Meet the EtherealX Razor Crest Mk-1. I learned that there is a rocket company founded in Bengaluru, India, named Ethereal Exploration Guild, or EtherealX. (Did you see what they did there?) I found this out because the company announced (via email) that it had raised an oversubscribed $20.5 million Series A round led by TDK Ventures and BIG Capital. So naturally, I went to the EtherealX website looking for more information.
Let me say, I was not disappointed … As you might expect from a company named EtherealX, its proposed rocket has nine engines, is powered by liquid oxygen and kerosene, and has a maximum capacity of 24.8 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. (Did you see what they did there?) The website does not include much information, but there is this banger of a statement: “The EtherealX Razor Crest Mk-1 will house 9 of the most powerful operational liquid rocket engines in Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa, South America, and Antarctica – Stallion.” And let’s be honest, when you’ve bested Antarctica in engine development, you know you’re cooking. Alas, what I did not see on the website was much evidence of real hardware.
NASA topples historic Saturn and shuttle infrastructure. Two historic NASA test facilities used in the development of the Saturn V and space shuttle launch vehicles have been demolished after towering over the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama since the start of the Space Age, Ars reports. The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, which was erected in 1957—the same year the first artificial satellite entered Earth orbit—and the Dynamic Test Facility, which has stood since 1964, were brought down by a coordinated series of implosions on Saturday, January 10.
Out with the old, in with the new … Located in Marshall’s East Test Area on the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, the two structures were no longer in use and, according to NASA, had a backlog of $25 million in needed repairs. “This work reflects smart stewardship of taxpayer resources,” Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, said in a statement. “Clearing outdated infrastructure allows NASA to safely modernize, streamline operations and fully leverage the infrastructure investments signed into law by President Trump to keep Marshall positioned at the forefront of aerospace innovation.”
Space Force swaps Vulcan for Falcon 9. The next Global Positioning System satellite is switching from a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket to a SpaceX Falcon 9, a spokesperson for the US Space Force Space Systems Command System Delta 80 said Tuesday, Spaceflight Now reports. SpaceX could launch the GPS III Space Vehicle 09 (SV09) within the next few weeks, as the satellite was entering the final stages of pre-flight preparations.
The trade is logical … SV09 was originally awarded to ULA as part of order-year five of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract, which was announced on October 31, 2023. This isn’t the first time that the Space Force has shuffled timelines and switched launch providers for GPS missions. In May 2025, SpaceX launched the GPS III SV08 spacecraft, which was originally assigned to ULA in June 2023. In exchange, ULA was given the SV11 launch, which would have flown on a Falcon Heavy rocket. The changes have been driven largely by repeated delays in Vulcan readiness.
Next three launches
January 16: Long March 3B | Unknown payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China | 16: 55 UTC
January 17: Ceres 2 | Demo flight | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 05 UTC
January 17: Falcon 9 | NROL-105 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 06: 18 UTC
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.
“Because the astronaut is absolutely stable, this is not an emergent evacuation,” said James “JD” Polk, NASA’s chief medical officer, in a press conference last week. “We’re not immediately disembarking and getting the astronaut down.”
Amit Kshatriya, the agency’s associate administrator, called the situation a “controlled medical evacuation” in a briefing with reporters.
But without a confirmed diagnosis of the astronaut’s medical issue, there was some “lingering risk” for the astronaut’s health if they remained in orbit, Polk said. That’s why NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and his deputies agreed to call an early end to the Crew-11 mission.
A first for NASA
The Crew-11 mission launched on August 1 and was supposed to stay on the space station until around February 20, a few days after the scheduled arrival of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission with a team of replacement astronauts. But the early departure means the space station will operate with a crew of three until the launch of Crew-12 next month.
NASA astronaut Chris Williams will be the sole astronaut responsible for maintaining the US segment of the station. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev launched with Williams in November on a Russian Soyuz vehicle. The Crew Dragon was the lifeboat for all four Crew-11 astronauts, so standard procedure called for the entire crew to return with the astronaut suffering the undisclosed medical issue.
The space station regularly operated with just three crew members for the first decade of its existence. The complex has been permanently staffed since 2000, sometimes with as few as two astronauts or cosmonauts. The standard crew size was raised to six in 2009, then to seven in 2020.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean under four main parachutes.
Credit: NASA
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean under four main parachutes. Credit: NASA
Williams will have his hands full until reinforcements arrive. The scaled-down crew will not be able to undertake any spacewalks, and some of the lab’s science programs may have to be deferred to ensure the crew can keep up with maintenance tasks.
This is the first time NASA has called an early end to a space mission for medical reasons, but the Soviet Union faced similar circumstances several times during the Cold War. Russian officials cut short an expedition to the Salyut 7 space station in 1985 after the mission’s commander fell ill in orbit. A similar situation occurred in 1976 with the Soyuz 21 mission to the Salyut 5 space station.
A company called GRU Space publicly announced its intent to construct a series of increasingly sophisticated habitats on the Moon, culminating in a hotel inspired by the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco.
On Monday, the company invited those interested in a berth to plunk down a deposit between $250,000 and $1 million, qualifying them for a spot on one of its early lunar surface missions in as little as six years from now.
It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late December when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, a single full-time employee aside from himself. And Chan, in fact, only recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.
All of this could therefore be dismissed as a lark. But I must say that I am a sucker for these kinds of stories. Chan is perfectly earnest about all of this. And despite all of the talk about lunar resources, my belief is that the surest long-term commercial activity on the Moon will be lunar tourism—it would be an amazing destination.
So when I interviewed Chan, I did so with an open mind.
Who are the customers?
Like many younger people, Chan grew up wanting to become an astronaut. But along the way, in high school and later college, he came to believe that he could lead a more impactful life by enabling everyone to go to space, not just himself.
“I realized I was born in this time where we can actually become interplanetary, and that is probably the singular most impactful thing one person could do with their time,” Chan said. “So I charged towards building the systems necessary and technology to enable that future. That’s actually what led me to go to Berkeley to study electrical engineering and computer science.”
