Space

FCC chair blasts Amazon after it criticizes SpaceX megaconstellation

Amazon, FCC, megaconstellation, Policy, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / March 11, 2026

In addition to parrying with SpaceX over its proposed, vastly larger orbital data center constellation, Amazon is seeking some regulatory relief of its own. Most pressing for Amazon is a deadline to deploy half of its Amazon Leo constellation, intended to ultimately comprise 3,236 satellites, by July 30. The company will not meet this deadline, with only a little more than three months to go, and Amazon has requested an extension, asking for it to be moved to July 30, 2028.

Carr pulls up

On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr injected himself into the SpaceX-Amazon fracas over megaconstellations.

“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr said on X, the social media network owned by Musk.

There are arguments to be made in favor of both SpaceX and Amazon regarding their competing concerns. For example, SpaceX is likely to be able to greatly accelerate the rate at which it launches satellites with the forthcoming Starship rocket. So saying it will take centuries to put its data centers into space is not likely true.

However, it is valid to criticize SpaceX’s application for 1 million satellites, which is an extraordinary number of spacecraft that would completely change many things about low-Earth orbit. The SpaceX application did not contain critical information about the size, mass, and other details needed to evaluate the constellation for safety and other concerns.

It cannot be comfortable for Amazon and Bezos to see Carr weighing in so publicly and favorably on Musk’s side. Legally, Carr is allowed to have strongly held policy views. But he is not supposed to single out companies for preferential treatment.

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Reentry of NASA satellite will exceed the agency’s own risk guidelines

NASA, reentry, Space, space debris, Van Allen belts, van allen probe / Kris Guyer / March 10, 2026

No one on the ground has ever been injured by falling space junk, but there are examples of space debris causing property damage.

NASA’s two Van Allen Probes launched into elliptical orbits ranging from a few hundred miles above Earth up to an apogee, or high point, of nearly 20,000 miles. The orbits are inclined 10 degrees to the equator, limiting the risk of injury or damage to a swath of the tropics. NASA ended the mission in 2019 when the satellites ran out of fuel.

At that time, NASA engineers expected the spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere in 2034. But higher-than-anticipated solar activity caused the atmosphere to swell outward, increasing atmospheric drag on the satellites beyond initial estimates, according to NASA. Van Allen Probe B is expected to reenter no earlier than 2030, with a similar risk to the public.

The two spacecraft were built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. NASA said the mission made several major discoveries, including “the first data showing the existence of a transient third radiation belt, which can form during times of intense solar activity.”

Several NASA satellites have reentered the atmosphere without complying with the government’s risk standard. One of the satellites, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, fell out of orbit in 2018 with a 1-in-1,000 chance of harming someone on the ground. No one was hurt. RXTE was launched in 1995, just four months before NASA issued its first standard on orbital debris mitigation and reentry risk management.

While NASA has exceeded its standards before, the US government is not a top offender when it comes to unmitigated reentry risks. China launched four heavy-lift Long March 5B rockets between 2020 and 2022, and left its massive core stages in orbit to fall back to Earth. The four abandoned rocket cores, each nearly 24 tons in mass, reentered the atmosphere uncontrolled. Two of them dropped wreckage on land—in the Ivory Coast and Borneo—but no injuries were reported.

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NASA and SpaceX disagree about manual controls for lunar lander

blue moon, blue origin, human landing system, NASA, Space / Tim Belzer / March 10, 2026

The report notes that during every one of the Apollo program’s crewed lunar landings, astronauts engaged the backup manual control method. (Of course, this occurred six decades ago, when flight software was considerably less sophisticated than today.)

As NASA and SpaceX near a key decision point, known as Critical Design Review, the issue remains unresolved. The new report suggests that this may result in automation being the only landing method.

A similar fight over Dragon

The space agency and SpaceX engaged in a similar back-and-forth during the design process for the Crew Dragon spacecraft a decade ago. SpaceX initially wanted touchscreens only, with limited flight commands available to astronauts. NASA pushed back and wanted what were essentially joysticks for astronauts to fly the vehicles like previous spacecraft. A former NASA astronaut then working at SpaceX, Garret Reisman, helped broker a compromise by which astronauts could manually fly the vehicles using controls on touchscreens.

However, the new report says the flight controls for Dragon were built on many successful missions by a cargo version of the vehicle that flew to the International Space Station.

“Starship will not have the same level of proven flight heritage in the actual operating environment for its crewed lunar missions,” the report states. “Incorporating this system capability is a key element of HLS’s human-rating certification and part of an essential crew survival strategy.”

A design for Blue Origin’s manual control has not yet been made, according to the inspector general.

There is other interesting information in the report, including details on the uncrewed demonstration flights that SpaceX and Blue Origin are both required to fly before human missions can take place. The inspector general notes that these flights will not require life support systems and airlocks, as human missions will. Nor will the tall Starship vehicle be required to test an elevator to bring crew down to the surface.

There will also be a limited ability to test the abrasive impact of lunar dust, expected to be returned inside the vehicles after Moonwalks, on life support equipment during these uncrewed demonstrations.

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After falling far behind the rest of industry, Blue Origin creates new stock option plan

blue origin, employee incentive plan, Space, stock options / Paul Patrick / March 9, 2026

“It’s a big fat middle finger for those that thought they had something.”

Jeff Bezos, shown here in 2018, apparently characterizing the value of Blue Origin’s original stock option plan. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Two years after he founded his space company in the summer of 2004, Jeff Bezos penned a letter that greeted new employees with the message, “Welcome to Blue Origin!” A copy of this letter was subsequently given to new employees for nearly two decades.

At one point in the letter, Bezos questioned whether Blue Origin was a good investment.

“I accept that Blue Origin will not meet a reasonable investor’s expectations for return on investment over a typical investing horizon,” Bezos wrote. “It’s important to the peace of mind of those at Blue to know I won’t be surprised or disappointed when this prediction comes true. On the other hand, I do expect that over a very long-term horizon—perhaps even decades from now—Blue will be self-sustaining and operationally profitable, and will yield returns.”

Decades later, Blue Origin is still not operationally profitable. Although the company’s finances are not public, by various estimates, Bezos is still investing at least a few billion dollars annually to keep the lights on.

Recently, Blue Origin has made impressive strides and seen financial returns from the sale of BE-4 engines and commercial launches, such as a forthcoming mission for AST SpaceMobile on its New Glenn rocket. However, as revenues rise, so have expenses, with the company continually expanding its facilities and workforce, now totaling more than 11,000 employees.

Top aerospace engineers and technicians do not come cheap, and Blue Origin competes in a heated market for the best talent. Bezos has a lot to offer prospective employees: a compelling mission, high salaries, a demanding but not suffocating work environment, and more. But when it comes to one key aspect of retaining talent, Blue Origin rates far behind the rest of the industry.

Imagine you are a super-bright rocket scientist. A decade ago, you and a buddy both graduated from the University of Southern California as hotshot engineers. You had your pick of space companies. Your friend went to SpaceX and climbed the ladder there into a senior engineering role. You followed a similar arc at Blue Origin. Along the way, your friend racked up stock options that, after SpaceX goes public in the next year, may be worth tens of millions of dollars.

But what about you? How much are your stock options at Blue Origin worth? The answer to this (spoiler alert: zero) raises questions about Blue Origin’s competitiveness in an increasingly competitive space industry.

Equity incentive plan

From the beginning, SpaceX offered employee stock options. Initially, employees did not place too much value in them. For example, Bob Reagan was a machinist hired to lead the company’s in-house manufacturing, and later oversaw the build-out of the company’s large factory in Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave Reagan a hard deadline of October 2007 to have the building ready for move-in, and the machinist exhausted himself to have everything ready. His reward? Stock options.

“He gave me a ten-thousand-share bonus, and I was so pissed off because I thought that was nothing,” Reagan told me in the book Liftoff. Several years later, Reagan was able to retire wealthy. Laughing at the memory of his anger about the options in an interview in 2019, Reagan said of Musk, “I guess he took care of me.”

Over the years, SpaceX employees have been able to periodically sell stock options at private liquidity events, when SpaceX sought to raise money from the capital markets. Those shares will become even more valuable when the company goes public, with many engineers becoming worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.

As stock-option plans became more common in the space industry, Blue Origin sought to offer its own plan a decade ago. Launched on February 22, 2016, the “Blue Origin Equity Incentive Plan” gave employees the chance to “participate in Blue Origin’s growth and success, and to encourage them to remain in the service of Blue Origin.”

The 19-page document outlining the terms of this plan laid out the rules of the stock option plan. In some ways, the plan was fairly conventional, but in other ways, it was markedly different from most plans out there. Perhaps the biggest change from most plans was this: “All Options, whether vested or unvested, shall expire on the tenth anniversary of their Vesting Commencement Date unless such Options expire earlier.”

In other words, regardless of whether an employee remained with the company, all options expired after 10 years from the date of issuance. The first options expired last month.

There was another problem with the Blue Origin plan. Stock options could only be exercised “upon a liquidity event,” which was defined as a sale of the Blue Origin business or an Initial Public Offering. Neither of which has happened.

Initial excitement turns into frustration

Blue Origin offered options initially at a strike price of $4 a share, meaning that if there were a liquidity event at something like $10 a share, employees could exercise their options and sell their shares at a significantly higher price. Over the years, this strike price increased to $5.36 a share, still a good deal.

Most employees tucked these options away, not expecting too much from them. If anything, several current and former employees said, they were viewed as a lottery ticket. It was typical for an employee to receive 2,000 shares initially, which would grow over a decade to 10,000 shares.

Employees always understood Bezos was unlikely to sell the company or bring on new investors. But they were nonetheless interested. During Blue Origin’s company-wide town halls, one or two questions would invariably come up about stock options. The answers were always the same: There were no expectations of a liquidity event.

In the years following 2016, perception of the options as an “incentive” began to sour, especially as Blue Origin employees saw peers at other space companies cash in options for meaningful rewards. At SpaceX, even long-time baristas could end up millionaires. Blue employees began to refer to their options as “Monopoly money” with increasing scorn.

When Blue Origin awarded those first options in 2016, the company was still fairly small, having just begun its transition to a large aerospace player. Only a few hundred employees remain a decade later from that initial round, and they are some of Blue’s most dedicated engineers, the people who built the engines and rockets powering the company’s recent success. Now their options have been yanked away.

It would be simple enough to extend the options to at least allow employees to retain some hope. That’s all that many of the people who have stuck with the company for so long have asked for. However, in response to requests to extend the options, Blue issued a form letter that essentially said, “Sorry.” For many of these employees, it feels like a betrayal.

“It’s a big fat middle finger for those that thought they had something, and now they are stuck with empty pockets after spending years working here,” a current employee told Ars.

Blue Origin did not respond to a request for comment on its original equity incentive plan.

Retention may be a challenge

In the early years, before the program’s perception changed, the incentive plan proved a useful recruiting tool. Some employees, especially for a few years after 2016, negotiated lower salaries in favor of more stock options. For these employees, the expiring options are not just a lost lottery ticket but have significantly dented their earning power.

Over time, Blue Origin recruiters stopped emphasizing the options package as part of the company’s benefits. On May 1, 2023, the company told employees it would no longer issue options.

The reasons cited for this were curious. The company told employees that, after a recent review, it had determined that offering equity as part of a hiring package was no longer appropriate. An FAQ further stated that a finite number of shares were available, and that as the company rapidly grew (this was during an intense period when Blue sought to bring the BE-4 rocket engine online and build the New Glenn rocket), it ran out of shares.

Employees wondered whether there would be any other form of compensation or equity offered as an incentive to stay at Blue Origin?

Since then, the issue has not gone away, and long-term incentives remain a question that pops up at town hall meetings with the company’s relatively new chief executive, Dave Limp. He has offered a variety of platitudes that boil down to, “We are looking into things.”

It turns out Limp was telling the truth. On Monday, he emailed the entire company, revealing Blue had created a new stock option plan.

“We are at a pivotal inflection point in our journey to become a world-class manufacturing company, producing at rate and consistently delivering products and services for our customers,” Limp wrote. “We cannot accomplish this without employees that demonstrate high ownership, are driven to achieve our most critical goals, and are motivated to build enduring value at Blue.”

The company will begin granting stock options to employees this spring. “This program is structured to provide opportunities for liquidity events enabling each of you to convert vested stock options into realized value,” Limp wrote.

He promised to offer more information during a company-wide meeting on April 17. It is unclear what will happen to the options under the original equity plan.

The details will matter

In the hypercompetitive aerospace industry, where there is a constant battle to recruit and retain talented engineers, such compensation matters.

Blue Origin has greatly expanded its facilities in Florida, on the Space Coast, where it assembles and launches New Glenn rockets, and is building a series of lunar landers. In this area, the company must compete not just with SpaceX—which is building large launch towers and mega-factories for its Starship vehicles—but also with new space companies such as Relativity Space and Stoke Space, as well as NASA and traditional space powers such as United Launch Alliance.

The competitive nature of the industry has been going on for a long time. In the mid-2010s, as Blue Origin began scaling up, it hired a number of engineers from SpaceX who had experience with building and launching the Falcon 9 for similar operations with New Glenn. Blue Origin lured them away with higher salaries and a (somewhat) more relaxed work environment.

“The folks that left SpaceX to go to Blue are bitter,” one industry source said. “Yes, they got higher pay, but they worked like crazy. And now that they got New Glenn off, they’re wondering where’s their bonus?”

Weeks after the successful launch of New Glenn, Blue Origin instead cut its workforce by 10 percent.

The email from Limp did not provide details about the new plan, other than saying, “As Blue achieves its goals and increase in value your equity will grow alongside it.”

To compete with SpaceX, Blue must continue to grow. The exact numbers that SpaceX will target with its IPO have not been set, but the company is likely to seek a valuation in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion, which would raise between $30 billion and $50 billion in cash. This is on top of SpaceX’s estimated 2026 revenue of $22 billion to $24 billion.

This gives SpaceX CEO Elon Musk a massive pile of capital to throw at his Starship rocket, Starlink constellation, AI, and orbital data centers.

Bezos has expressed an interest in all of these technologies, too, with his 9×4 New Glenn rocket, lunar lander program, TeraWave constellation, and space-based data centers.

But—and yes, this is a strange thing to write about one of the top five richest people in the world—Bezos does not have the resources to match SpaceX. Blue Origin’s annual revenues are not publicly known, but they are likely on the order of $1 billion a year. Bezos is pumping multiples of that annually to fund the company, but this total is still dwarfed by SpaceX’s annual revenue. And that’s before an IPO.

Until a few years ago, Bezos could more or less match the revenues SpaceX had available with annual contributions to Blue Origin. Both companies had a workforce of over 10,000 people and broad ambitions. But as Starlink sprints ahead, and with an IPO on the horizon, SpaceX is taking a significant leap upward.

All of this raises the possibility that Bezos may finally consider taking on outside investment if he wants Blue Origin to remain competitive with SpaceX.

“He’s never really talked about going for outside investment,” said Chris Davenport, author of Rocket Dreams, about Bezos. “The fact that Elon has had a number of liquidity events is going to put some pressure on Jeff and Blue Origin to at least think about it.”

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 falling far behind the rest of industry, Blue Origin creates new stock option plan Read More »

With Gateway likely gone, where will lunar landers rendezvous with Orion?

artemis, blue moon, human landing system, NASA, Space, starship / Kris Guyer / March 7, 2026

Drink up, astrodynamicists!

“We will challenge every requirement, clear every obstacle, delete every blocker.”

Artist’s illustration of Starship on the surface of the Moon. Credit: SpaceX

Last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman unveiled a major shakeup in the Artemis Program, intended to put the nation on a better path back to the Moon. The changes focused largely on increasing the launch cadence of NASA’s large SLS rocket and putting a greater emphasis on lunar surface activities. Days later, the US Senate indicated that it broadly supported these plans.

This is all well and good, but it neglects a critical element of the Artemis program: a lander capable of taking astronauts down to the lunar surface from an orbit around the Moon and back up to rendezvous with Orion. NASA has contracted with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop these landers, Starship and Blue Moon MK2, respectively.

As part of his announcement, Isaacman said a revamped Artemis III mission will now be used to test one or both of these landers near Earth before they are called upon to land humans on the Moon later this decade.

NASA will launch Artemis III next year, he said, to be followed by one or possibly even two lunar landings in 2028. A single landing before the end of 2028 seems like a stretch, even for glass-half-full optimists in the space community. And for there to be a chance of happening, SpaceX or Blue Origin, or both, need to get hustling quickly.

Can they?

“Challenge every requirement”

Isaacman is mindful of these challenges, and one of his first moves as administrator was meeting with engineers from SpaceX and Blue Origin to hear their ideas for accelerating NASA’s Artemis timeline.

After this meeting on January 13, Isaacman said NASA would do what it could to facilitate the faster development of a Human Landing System: “We will challenge every requirement, clear every obstacle, delete every blocker and empower the team to deliver… and we will do it with time to spare.”

What does this actually mean? It suggests that Isaacman has directed his teams to make working with NASA less cumbersome for SpaceX and Blue Origin.

For example, to reach the Moon during the initial Artemis missions, a lander must dock with the Orion spacecraft. That may sound routine, as spacecraft have been rendezvousing and docking in space for six decades.

However, Orion is saddled with thousands of requirements, and virtually every decision point regarding docking must be signed off on by the lander company—SpaceX or Blue Origin—as well as NASA, Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin, and the European service module contractor Airbus. Additionally, Orion has a lot of sensitive elements to work around, such as the plumes of its thrusters, and engineers have spent a lot of time working on issues such as ensuring consistent cabin pressures between vehicles. In short, it gets complicated fast.

A carbonated orbit emerges

One way NASA is helping the lander companies is by no longer requiring them to dock with Orion in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, an elliptical orbit that comes as close as 3,000 km to the surface of the Moon and as far as 70,000 km. This is where NASA planned to construct the Lunar Gateway space station, which is now likely to be canceled. It’s a boon for lunar landers since it required more energy to first stop there before dropping down to the surface.

Why not simply have Orion meet the landers in a low-lunar orbit, similar to the Apollo Program? This would allow the landers to consume less propellant on the way down and back up from the Moon. The reason is that, due to a number of poor decisions over the last 15 years, the Orion spacecraft’s service module does not have the performance needed to reach low-lunar orbit and then return safely to Earth. Hence the use of a near-rectilinear halo orbit.

A comparison between the NRHO and EPO/CoLA orbits. Credit: American Astronautical Society conference paper

However, a research paper published in July 2022 by NASA engineers at Johnson Space Center analyzes several other circular and elliptical orbits that Orion could reach with its present propulsive capabilities. Out of this analysis came another useful orbit with a name that just rolls off the tongue: Elliptical Polar Orbit with Coplanar Line of Apsides, or EPO/CoLA.

There are many details about the EPO/CoLA orbit in the research paper, but critically, its closest point to the Moon lies just 100 km above the Moon’s surface (the apolune distance is 6,500 km). For many landing sites, the paper notes, a Human Landing System vehicle can perform a single burn to reach a much lower orbit.

As part of his change in plans, Isaacman said the Space Launch System rocket’s upper stage would be “standardized” for Artemis IV and beyond. That means the first lunar landing mission will use a new upper stage, likely the Centaur V built by United Launch Alliance. This will have more propulsive capabilities than the current rocket, so it is possible that for Artemis IV, Orion could reach an even more favorable orbit (i.e., closer to the Moon, requiring less energy to reach the surface) than EPO/CoLA.

Can Starship be accelerated?

At the end of the day, it’s helpful to find new orbits and relax requirements where appropriate. But it will still be up to the lander contractors to deliver the goods, and for NASA, the sooner the better.

Last November, Ars looked at several ways Starship might be brought online faster as a lunar lander. Perhaps the biggest problem with using Starship as a lander is the need to fly multiple uncrewed tanker missions to refuel Starship in low-Earth orbit before it transits to the Moon and awaits a crew aboard Orion. This necessitates an estimated one- or two-dozen launches.

The best solution we could come up with was flying an optimized, expendable Starship tanker stage that would maximize propellant delivery per flight. When asked about this, though, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shot down the idea. Once Starship begins flying at rate, Musk believes, a dozen or more tanker missions per lunar flight will not pose a major impediment.

So it should come as no surprise that SpaceX has not proposed significant changes to its Human Landing System hardware. In response to NASA’s desire to accelerate the Artemis timeline, the company has indicated that it will prioritize the Human Landing System more as part of the Starship program. The company also suggested that eliminating the requirement to dock in near-rectilinear halo orbit could open up new mission plans, including potentially docking with Orion in orbit around Earth rather than the Moon.

What about Blue Origin?

Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, has been more responsive. Last October, Ars reported that the company had started working on a faster architecture that would not require orbital refueling. A month later, Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said the company “would move heaven and Earth” to help NASA reach the Moon sooner.

Based on recent documents reviewed by Ars, the company is continuing to refine its plan for a human lunar landing. Without a requirement to rendezvous in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, a lunar landing could potentially be accomplished with as few as three launches of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. This would require the more powerful 9×4 variant of the New Glenn rocket now in development. The EPO/CoLA orbit described above enables such a mission profile.

One mission plan seen by Ars shows the launch of a simplified MK2 lander on one rocket, and two more launches of transfer stages, which subsequently dock in low-Earth orbit. The first transfer stage pushes this stack out of low-Earth orbit before separating. The second transfer stage pushes the lander into EPO/CoLA, where it docks with Orion and two astronauts move on board MK2. This second transfer stage then moves the lander to a 15 x 100 km lunar orbit before separating. MK2 then flies down to the Moon.

After a short stay on the Moon, the interim MK2 lander would ascend back to the EPO/CoLA, where it meets up with Orion.

There are plenty of questions about the readiness of the Blue Origin hardware, of course. And there are a lot of moving pieces now with the Moon landing moving to Artemis IV and the probable use of new orbits for a rendezvous with Orion near the Moon. So all of this remains very notional.

Neither NASA nor Blue Origin has spoken publicly about their accelerated landing plans. Hopefully, that will change soon, because it’s entirely possible that NASA’s best chance to reach the Moon before China will come down to the ability of a company that proudly sports a turtle as a mascot to move a little more quickly.

Note: This story was updated at 11: 30 am ET Friday with additional information.

With Gateway likely gone, where will lunar landers rendezvous with Orion? Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad

ICBM, launch, pld space, rocket report, roscosmos, sentinel, soyuz, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Tim Belzer / March 7, 2026

It looks like United Launch Alliance will build more upper stages for NASA’s SLS rocket.

A welder works on repairs to the Soyuz launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Roscosmos

Welcome to Edition 8.32 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week is NASA’s shake-up of the Artemis program. On paper, at least, the changes appear to be quite sensible. Canceling the big, new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket and replacing it with a commercial upper stage, almost certainly United Launch Alliance’s Centaur stage, should result in cost savings. The changes also relieve some of the pressure for SpaceX and Blue Origin to rapidly demonstrate cryogenic refueling in low-Earth orbit. The Artemis III mission is now a low-Earth orbit mission, using SLS and the Orion spacecraft to dock with one or both of the Artemis program’s human-rated lunar landers just a few hundred miles above the Earth—no refueling required. Artemis IV will now be the first lunar landing attempt.

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.

Sentinel missile nears first flight. The US Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is on track for its first test flight next year, military officials reaffirmed last week. The LGM-35A Sentinel will replace the Air Force’s Minuteman III fleet, in service since 1970, with the first of the new missiles due to become operational in the early 2030s. But it will take longer than that to build and activate the full complement of Sentinel missiles and the 450 hardened underground silos to house them, Ars reports.

Nowhere to put them... No one is ready to say when hundreds of new missile silos, dug from the windswept Great Plains, will be finished, how much they cost, or, for that matter, how many nuclear warheads each Sentinel missile could actually carry. The program’s cost has swelled from $78 billion to an official projection of $141 billion, but that figure is already out of date, as the Air Force announced last year that it would need to construct new silos for the Sentinel missile. The original plan was to adapt existing Minuteman III silos for the new weapons, but engineers determined that it would take too long and cost too much to modify the aging Minuteman facilities. Instead, the Air Force, in partnership with contractors and the US Army Corps of Engineers, will dig hundreds of new holes across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The new silos will include 24 new forward launch centers, three centralized wing command centers, and more than 5,000 miles of fiber connections to wire it all together, military and industry officials said.

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Space One is now 0-for-3. Japan’s Space One said its Kairos small ‌rocket self-destructed 69 seconds after liftoff on Thursday, failing to achieve the country’s first entirely commercial satellite launch for the third attempt in a row, Reuters reports. Three months after a failure of Japan’s flagship H3 rocket, the unsuccessful flight of the smaller Kairos launcher dealt a fresh blow to Japan’s efforts to establish domestic launch options and reduce its reliance on American rockets amid rising space security needs to counter China. Kairos measures about 59 feet (18 meters) long with three solid-fueled boost stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage to inject small satellites into low-Earth orbit. The rocket is capable of placing a payload of about 330 pounds (150 kilograms) into a Sun-synchronous orbit.

Accidental detonation... The Kairos rocket terminated its flight Thursday at an altitude of approximately 18 miles (29 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean, just downrange from Space One’s spaceport on the southern coast of Honshu, the largest of Japan’s main islands. “No significant abnormalities were found in the flight or onboard equipment” before the self-destruction, Space One’s vice president, Nobuhiro Sekino, told a press conference, suggesting that the rocket’s autonomous flight termination system went wrong. This is a rare mode of failure in rocketry, but it has happened before. The first flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket was terminated erroneously in 2017, despite no issues with the launch vehicle itself. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

PLD Space raises $209 million. PLD Space has raised 180 million euros ($209 million) to ramp up production of the Spanish startup’s Miura 5 launch vehicle, marking the largest funding round for a European space business announced this year, Space News reports. PLD said the Series C equity funding round is led by Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, with co-investment from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and the Spanish public funds management company Cofides. The startup has now raised more than 350 million euros ($400 million) to date. Miura 5 has not flown yet, but PLD says it is designed to place more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload mass into low-Earth orbit.

All about scaling... The fresh cash will support PLD’s “transition to commercial operations and the scaling of its industrial and launch capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Miura 5 was designed to address a clear and growing capacity gap in the market, and this investment support strengthens our ability to transition into commercial operations,” said Ezequiel Sánchez, PLD Space’s executive president. “It accelerates the build‑out of the industrial and launch infrastructure required to deliver reliable access to space for an expanding pipeline of global customers.” (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

MaiaSpace delays first launch. Another European launch startup, the French company MaiaSpace, has announced the first flight of its two-stage Maia rocket will take place in 2027, slipping from a previously expected late 2026 launch, European Spaceflight reports. MaiaSpace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which builds Europe’s flagship Ariane 6 rocket. The Maia rocket will be partially reusable, with a recoverable first stage. Just two months ago, MaiaSpace said it was targeting an initial suborbital demonstration flight of the Maia rocket in late 2026.

Ensemble de lancement... On February 24, officials from MaiaSpace and the French space agency CNES gathered at the site of the former Soyuz launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, to sign a temporary occupancy agreement allowing MaiaSpace to begin dismantling Soyuz-specific infrastructure at the site. During the event, MaiaSpace officials revealed they expected to host the inaugural flight of Maia from the facility in 2027. When asked for comment by European Spaceflight, a representative explained that the company remained committed to launching its first rocket less than five years after the company’s creation in April 2022. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Korean company eyes launching from Canada. South Korean launch newcomer Innospace is exploring a planned spaceport in Nova Scotia, Canada, as a potential facility to expand operations to North America, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The company, which has yet to successfully fly its Hanbit-Nano rocket, said on March 4 that it has reached a nonbinding, preliminary “letter of intent” with Canada’s Maritime Launch Services. Innospace said the letter of intent “establishes a strategic framework” for Korean and Canadian officials to “assess the technical, regulatory, and commercial feasibility” of launching Hanbit rockets from Nova Scotia. The first flight of the Hanbit-Nano rocket failed shortly after liftoff last year from a spaceport in Brazil, and Innospace already has preliminary agreements for potential launch sites in Europe and Australia.

Looking abroad... Several launch startups are looking at establishing additional launch sites beyond their initial operating locations. Firefly Aerospace is looking at Sweden, and Rocket Lab has already inaugurated a second launch site for its Electron rocket in Virginia after basing its first flights in New Zealand. Innospace is unique, though, in that the South Korean rocket company’s first launch pad is already halfway around the world from its home base. Meanwhile, Canada is investing in its own sovereign orbital launch capability. “We look forward to working with Innospace to evaluate how our strategic position on the Eastern Atlantic rim of North America can support their launch program while advancing reliable, repeatable access to orbit and strengthening Canada’s commercial launch capability,” said Stephen Matier, president and CEO of Maritime Launch Services.

Russia completes launch pad repairs. Late last year, a Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts to orbit from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But post-launch inspections revealed significant damage. A service structure underneath the rocket was unsecured during the launch of the three-man crew to the International Space Station. The structure fell into the launch pad’s flame trench, leaving the complex without the service cabin technicians use to work on the Soyuz rocket before liftoff. But Russia made quick repairs to the launch pad, the only site outfitted to launch Russian spacecraft to the ISS. Rockets will soon start flying from Pad 31 again, if all goes to plan, Space.com reports.

Restored to service... Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced Tuesday that the launch pad has been repaired. More than 150 employees from the agency’s Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure and representatives from four contractors have wrapped up work at the damaged launch pad. Roscosmos said 2,350 square meters of structures were prepared and painted, and more than 250 linear meters of welds were completed during the repair. Meanwhile, the head of the Roscosmos ground infrastructure division told a Russian TV channel in January that “multiple members” of the launch pad team were under criminal investigation after leaving the service structure unsecured during the November launch, according to Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak. The first launch from the restored pad is scheduled for March 22, when a Soyuz rocket will boost a Progress supply ship to the ISS. A Soyuz crew launch will follow this summer.

SpaceX price hike. SpaceX recently increased launch prices from $70 million to $74 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 ride, and $6,500 per kilogram to $7,000 per kilogram for a rideshare slot, Payload reports. The company has long signaled a steady pace of price bumps, so the move does not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, the increase (along with the lack of real alternatives) highlights a tough truth in the industry: Access to orbit has gotten significantly more expensive in recent years despite all the hoopla and hopium of falling launch prices.

Keeping up… The price of a dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 has risen about 20 percent since 2021, in line with US inflation. A rideshare slot, on the other hand, now costs about 40 percent more than it did in 2021, doubling the rate of inflation, according to Payload. Rideshare pricing is the far more important number to track here. Without a price-competitive alternative, the broader space startup community has relied almost exclusively on Falcon 9 Transporter and Bandwagon missions to get to space over the last five years. Ars has previously reported on how NASA pays more for launch services than it did 30 years ago, a trend partly driven by the agency’s requirement for dedicated launches for many of its robotic science missions.

NASA aims for standardized SLS rocket. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on February 27, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage, Ars reports. The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is growing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

CU later, EUS… “NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” The announced changes to the Artemis program include the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket, and future SLS missions, starting with Artemis IV, will use a “standardized” commercial upper stage. Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon. Instead, the Orion spacecraft will launch on SLS and dock with SpaceX’s Starship and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit.

NASA favors ULA upper stage. United Launch Alliance’s Centaur V upper stage, used on the company’s Vulcan rocket, will replace the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) on SLS missions beginning with Artemis IV, Bloomberg reports. ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, also built the interim upper stages flying on the Artemis I, II, and III missions. Those stages were based on designs used for ULA’s now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket. With that production line shut down, ULA will now provide Centaur Vs to NASA. This means Boeing, which was on contract to develop the EUS, will still have a role in supplying upper stages for the SLS rocket. Boeing is also the prime contractor for the rocket’s massive core stage.

Building on a legacy… The Centaur V upper stage is the latest version of a design that dates back to the 1960s. Centaurs began flying in 1962, and the Centaur V is the most powerful variant, with a wider diameter and two hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. The Centaur V still uses the ultra-thin, pressure-stabilized stainless steel structure used on all Centaur upper stages. The Centaur has a reliable track record, and the Centaur V’s predecessor, the Centaur III, was human-rated for launches of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule.

Artemis II helium issue fixed. NASA has fixed the problem that forced it to remove the rocket for the Artemis II mission from its launch pad last month, but it will be a couple of weeks before officials are ready to move the vehicle back into the starting blocks at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. Ground teams moved the SLS rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building last month to repair an issue with the upper stage’s helium system. Inspections revealed that a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from ground systems into the rocket, was obstructing the pathway, according to NASA. “The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved,” NASA said in an update posted Tuesday.

Targeting April 1… NASA is not expected to return the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to the launch pad until later this month. Inside the VAB, technicians will complete several other tasks to “refresh” the rocket for the next series of launch opportunities. NASA has not said whether the launch team will conduct another countdown rehearsal after it returns to Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy. The first of five launch opportunities in early April is on April 1, with a two-hour launch window opening at 6: 24 pm EDT (22: 24 UTC). There are additional launch dates available on April 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Next three launches

March 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-18 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 10: 58 UTC

March 10: Alpha | Stairway to Seven | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 50 UTC

March 10: Falcon 9 | EchoStar XXV | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 14 UTC

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

Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad Read More »

Ding-dong! The Exploration Upper Stage is dead

Boeing, exploration upper stage, NASA, Space / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Now, you might think NASA would ask industry for solutions to this problem. After all, United Launch Alliance was developing a more powerful upper stage for its Vulcan rocket, the Centaur V, that used the same propellant as the core stage of the SLS rocket. And Blue Origin was also developing a powerful upper stage engine, the BE-3U, powered by hydrogen. These options were cheaper, available, and … summarily ignored.

10 years, billions of dollars, and not much to show for it

Congress, smelling jobs, wanted NASA to develop a brand new upper stage. So in 2016, lawmakers allocated $85 million for preliminary work on the upper stage, and have since awarded more than $3.5 billion.

For the development of a rocket’s second stage.

With engines (RL-10s) that have been flying in space for six decades.

And after all of this, a decade later, the upper stage remains years from being ready to fly.

In some ways, the Exploration Upper Stage was the perfect vehicle for pork. It not only spread largesse among Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne (for the engines), but it also necessitated a massive new launch tower in Florida. That was good for the Exploration Ground Systems program at Kennedy Space Center.

The original cost estimates of these projects are always instructive to look back on. Boeing’s initial contract to build the Exploration Upper Stage started at $962 million, and NASA planned to launch the rocket on the second flight of the SLS in 2021. Oops. As for the launch tower, the initial estimate for its cost was $383 million, but as of late, it was heading north of $2 billion. So we are talking billions and billions and billions of dollars for a relatively straightforward upper stage, using off-the-shelf engines and a large launch tower.

Ding-dong! The Exploration Upper Stage is dead Read More »

Satellite firm pauses imagery after revealing Iran’s attacks on US bases

Iran, satellite data, satellite imagery, Space / Rejus Almole / March 6, 2026

Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.

The company, which brands itself as Planet, operates a fleet of several hundred Earth-imaging satellites designed to record views of every landmass on Earth at least once per day. Its customers include think tanks, NGOs, academic institutions, news media, and commercial users in the agriculture, forestry, and energy industries, among others.

Planet also holds lucrative contracts selling overhead imagery to the US military and US government intelligence agencies.

“In response to the conflict in the Middle East, Planet is implementing temporary restrictions on data access within specific areas of the affected region,” Planet said in a statement emailed to Ars. “Effective immediately, all new imagery collected over the Gulf States, Iraq, Kuwait, and adjacent conflict zones will be subject to a mandatory 96-hour delay before it is made available in our archive.”

Imagery over Iran will remain available as soon as it is acquired, the company said. “This change applies to all users except authorized government users who maintain immediate access for mission-critical operations.”

Infographic with satellite images showing damage at a selection of four US military sites, or sites hosting US personnel, in the Middle East in the context of Iranian strikes since February 28, 2026, using images from Planet Labs. Credit: Graphic by Nalini Lepetit-Chella and Sabrina Blanchard/AFP via Getty Images)/© 2026 Planet Labs/AFP

Overhead intelligence

In the last few days, Planet’s satellite imagery showed the aftermath of Iranian missile and drone strikes on US and allied bases in the region, including damage to the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and to a $1 billion US-built early warning radar in Qatar used for tracking incoming projectiles. Planet said it wants to prevent “adversarial actors” from using its data for “Battle Damage Assessment (BDA)” purposes. In other words, the company doesn’t want to help Iran’s military know where it succeeded and where it failed.

Satellite firm pauses imagery after revealing Iran’s attacks on US bases Read More »

Congress extends ISS and tells NASA to get moving on private space stations

axiom space, blue origin, commercial space stations, cruz, NASA, Senate, Space, vast, Voyager / Mike M. / March 5, 2026

Nominally, NASA plans to have one or more of these companies operating a commercial space station in low-Earth orbit by 2030. This is the date at which the US space agency has stated it will retire the aging laboratory, some elements of which are now nearly three decades old. However, some space policy officials have questioned whether any of the companies might be ready by then.

Cruz and other senators on the committee appear to share those concerns, as their legislation extends the International Space Station’s lifespan from 2030 to 2032 (an extension must still be approved by international partners, including Russia). Moreover, the authorization bill states, “The Administrator shall not initiate the de-orbit of the ISS until the date on which a commercial low-Earth orbit destination has reached an initial operational capability.”

With this legislation, the US Senate is making clear that it views a permanent human presence in low-Earth orbit as a high priority. This version of the authorization legislation must still be passed by the full Senate and work its way through the House of Representatives.

Reaction from the companies

After the legislation passed the Commerce committee, Axiom Space said on social media that it welcomes the changes: “Axiom Space is proud to support the NASA Authorization Act of 2026. The bill is a clear indicator that Chairman @SenTedCruz and the Senate Commerce Committee are determined to ensure the success of the entire human spaceflight enterprise.”

In an interview, the chief executive of Vast, Max Haot, said his company also welcomed the clarifying legislation—both for its language on commercial space stations as well as its reflection of the fact that NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has been working overtime to set the Artemis lunar program on a better path for success.

“We are really impressed by what Jared has been able to do with the American space program and aligning all of the stakeholders,” he said. “As it relates to commercial space stations, we were happy to see the renewed commitment to transition from the ISS to commercial alternatives.”

Haot said there should not be a hard date for de-orbiting the International Space Station but that it should depend on the readiness of the commercial providers. He said Vast is confident that, should NASA issue an RFP and awards for private providers this year, Vast will be ready to support a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit by the end of 2030.

Congress extends ISS and tells NASA to get moving on private space stations Read More »

Space Command chief throws cold water on the question of UAPs in space

military space, Science, Space, space command, space force, UAP / Paul Patrick / March 4, 2026

Judging from recent comments from Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, we shouldn’t expect anything like that in whatever the government might release in response to Trump’s pending order.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command. Credit: US Air Force/Eric Dietrich

“I can say, I, personally, was very interested in the president’s announcement,” Whiting told reporters last week at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium in Colorado. “I look forward to seeing what data does come out. I can also tell you, as a space operator now of 36 years, having spent a lot of time with space domain awareness sensors, tracking things in space, I’ve never seen anything in space other than manmade objects, so I am not aware of anything that is extraterrestrial, other than comets and things like that.

“But I’m fascinated in the topic,” he continued. “And if something’s revealed, I’ll be interested as an American citizen.”

Space Command’s charge includes an area of responsibility (AOR) that extends from the top of Earth’s atmosphere to the Moon and beyond. One of its missions is to track, monitor, and catalog objects in space. Whiting suggested that everything he’s seen in orbit is attributable to a human-made or natural origin.

“We will respond to any presidential direction to go look at our files, but I think the term of art now is UAP, and the A is aerial, so these are things that are below the Kármán line (100 kilometers), that are in the atmosphere,” Whiting said. “I’ve seen some of the same videos and radar data that all of you have, and my guess is those relevant services and combatant commands will turn that data over. I’m very interested in the topic, but I have no personal experience with any of those phenomena.”

Space Command chief throws cold water on the question of UAPs in space Read More »

The US Senate empowers NASA to fully engage in lunar space race

artemis, isaacman, NASA, Senate, Space / Tim Belzer / March 4, 2026

During a brief hearing on Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation spent only a few minutes “marking up” new legislation that provides guidance to NASA for its various initiatives, including the Artemis program to land humans on the Moon.

“Our bill authorizes critical funding for, and gives strategic direction to, the agency in line with the priorities of administrator Isaacman and the Trump administration,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz, (R-Texas).

The duration of the hearing, however, seems to be the inverse of its significance.

Elements of the legislation, now branded as The NASA Authorization Act of 2026 (see full text), have undergone significant revisions since just last week. The sweeping changes follow NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s announcement on Friday that he was shuffling the Artemis program to ensure that the US space agency would beat China back to the Moon and establish a long-term presence at the lunar south pole. In large part, the Senate’s bill endorses Isaacman’s plan of action.

“NASA faces a series of challenges,” Cruz said Wednesday. “Those challenges culminated in an announcement last Friday that NASA was making major changes to the Artemis missions and our eventual return to the lunar surface. Today, the Commerce committee will help guide those changes.”

Major changes to Artemis approved

With the revised legislation, Cruz and the Senate committee have empowered Isaacman and NASA to make significant changes to the Artemis Program. The revised plan for the space agency will likely lead to more launches and a much greater emphasis on the lunar surface.

The US Senate empowers NASA to fully engage in lunar space race Read More »

No fooling: NASA targets April 1 for Artemis II launch to the Moon

artemis, artemis II, human spaceflight, Kennedy Space Center, moon, NASA, Space, space launch system / Tim Belzer / March 3, 2026

NASA has fixed the problem that forced the removal of the rocket for the Artemis II mission from its launch pad last month, but it will be a couple of weeks before officials are ready to move the vehicle back into the starting blocks at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket could have launched as soon as this week after it passed a key fueling test on February 21. During that test, NASA loaded the Space Launch System rocket with super-cold propellants without any major problems, apparently overcoming a persistent hydrogen leak that prevented the mission from launching in early February.

However, another problem cropped up just one day after the successful fueling demo. Ground teams were unable to flow helium into the rocket’s upper stage. Unlike the connections to the core stage, which workers can repair at the launch pad, the umbilical lines leading to the upper stage higher up the rocket are only accessible inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy.

Mission managers quickly decided to roll the rocket back to the assembly building for troubleshooting. The rocket returned to the VAB on February 25, and within a week, engineers found the source of the helium flow issue. Inspections revealed that a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from ground systems into the rocket, was obstructing the pathway, according to NASA.

Sealing the deal

“The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved,” NASA said in an update posted Tuesday. “Engineers are assessing what allowed the seal to become dislodged to prevent the issue from recurring.”

No fooling: NASA targets April 1 for Artemis II launch to the Moon Read More »