Space

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SpaceX launches a pair of NASA satellites to probe the origins of space weather

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“This is going to really help us understand how to predict space weather in the magnetosphere.”

This artist’s illustration of the Earth’s magnetosphere shows the solar wind (left) streaming from the Sun, and then most of it being blocked by Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field lines seen here fold in toward Earth’s surface at the poles, creating polar cusps. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Two NASA satellites rocketed into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, commencing a $170 million mission to study a phenomenon of space physics that has eluded researchers since the dawn of the Space Age.

The twin spacecraft are part of the NASA-funded TRACERS mission, which will spend at least a year measuring plasma conditions in narrow regions of Earth’s magnetic field known as polar cusps. As the name suggests, these regions are located over the poles. They play an important but poorly understood role in creating colorful auroras as plasma streaming out from the Sun interacts with the magnetic field surrounding Earth.

The same process drives geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting GPS navigation, radio communications, electrical grids, and satellite operations. These outbursts are usually triggered by solar flares or coronal mass ejections that send blobs of plasma out into the Solar System. If one of these flows happens to be aimed at Earth, we are treated with auroras but vulnerable to the storm’s harmful effects.

For example, an extreme geomagnetic storm last year degraded GPS navigation signals, resulting in more than $500 million in economic losses in the agriculture sector as farms temporarily suspended spring planting. In 2022, a period of elevated solar activity contributed to the loss of 40 SpaceX Starlink satellites.

“Understanding our Sun and the space weather it produces is more important to us here on Earth, I think, than most realize,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division.

NASA’s two TRACERS satellites launched Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: SpaceX

The launch of TRACERS was delayed 24 hours after a regional power outage disrupted air traffic control over the Pacific Ocean near the Falcon 9 launch site on California’s Central Coast, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. SpaceX called off the countdown Tuesday less than a minute before liftoff, then rescheduled the flight for Wednesday.

TRACERS, short for Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites, will study a process known as magnetic reconnection. As particles in the solar wind head out into the Solar System at up to 1 million mph, they bring along pieces of the Sun’s magnetic field. When the solar wind reaches our neighborhood, it begins interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.

The high-energy collision breaks and reconnects magnetic field lines, flinging solar wind particles across Earth’s magnetosphere at speeds that can approach the speed of light. Earth’s field draws some of these particles into the polar cusps, down toward the upper atmosphere. This is what creates dazzling auroral light shows and potentially damaging geomagnetic storms.

Over our heads

But scientists still aren’t sure how it all works, despite the fact that it’s happening right over our heads, within the reach of countless satellites in low-Earth orbit. But a single spacecraft won’t do the job. Scientists need at least two spacecraft, each positioned in bespoke polar orbits and specially instrumented to measure magnetic fields, electric fields, electrons, and ions.

That’s because magnetic reconnection is a dynamic process, and a single satellite would provide just a snapshot of conditions over the polar cusps every 90 minutes. By the time the satellite comes back around on another orbit, conditions will have changed, but scientists wouldn’t know how or why, according to David Miles, principal investigator for the TRACERS mission at the University of Iowa.

“You can’t tell, is that because the system itself is changing?” Miles said. “Is that because this magnetic reconnection, the coupling process, is moving around? Is it turning on and off, and if it’s turning on and off, how quickly can it do it? Those are fundamental things that we need to understand… how the solar wind arriving at the Earth does or doesn’t transfer energy to the Earth system, which has this downstream effect of space weather.”

This is why the tandem part of the TRACERS name is important. The novel part of this mission is it features two identical spacecraft, each about the size of a washing machine flying at an altitude of 367 miles (590 kilometers). Over the course of the next few weeks, the TRACERS satellites will drift into a formation with one trailing the other by about two minutes as they zip around the world at nearly five miles per second. This positioning will allow the satellites to sample the polar cusps one right after the other, instead of forcing scientists to wait another 90 minutes for a data refresh.

With TRACERS, scientists hope to pick apart smaller, fast-moving changes with each satellite pass. Within a year, TRACERS should collect 3,000 measurements of magnetic reconnections, a sample size large enough to start identifying why some space weather events evolve differently than others.

“Not only will it get a global picture of reconnection in the magnetosphere, but it’s also going to be able to statistically study how reconnection depends on the state of the solar wind,” said John Dorelli, TRACERS mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This is going to really help us understand how to predict space weather in the magnetosphere.”

One of the two TRACERS satellites undergoes launch preparations at Millennium Space Systems, the spacecraft’s manufacturer. Credit: Millennium Space Systems

“If we can understand these various different situations, whether it happens suddenly if you have one particular kind of event, or it happens in lots of different places, then we have a better way to model that and say, ‘Ah, here’s the likelihood of seeing a certain kind of effect that would affect humans,'” said Craig Kletzing, the principal investigator who led the TRACERS science team until his death in 2023.

There is broader knowledge to be gained with a mission like TRACERS. Magnetic reconnection is ubiquitous throughout the Universe, and the same physical processes produce solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the Sun.

Hitchhiking to orbit

Several other satellites shared the ride to space with TRACERS on Wednesday.

These secondary payloads included a NASA-sponsored mission named PExT, a small technology demonstration satellite carrying an experimental communications package capable of connecting with three different networks: NASA’s government-owned Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) and commercial satellite networks owned by SES and Viasat.

What’s unique about the Polylingual Experimental Terminal, or PExT, is its ability to roam across multiple satellite relay networks. The International Space Station and other satellites in low-Earth orbit currently connect to controllers on the ground through NASA’s TDRS satellites. But NASA will retire its TDRS satellites in the 2030s and begin purchasing data relay services using commercial satellite networks.

The space agency expects to have multiple data relay providers, so radios on future NASA satellites must be flexible enough to switch between networks mid-mission. PExT is a pathfinder for these future missions.

Another NASA-funded tech demo named Athena EPIC was also aboard the Falcon 9 rocket. Led by NASA’s Langley Research Center, this mission uses a scalable satellite platform developed by a company named NovaWurks, using building blocks to piece together everything a spacecraft needs to operate in space.

Athena EPIC hosts a single science instrument to measure how much energy Earth radiates into space, an important data point for climate research. But the mission’s real goal is to showcase how an adaptable satellite design, such as this one using NovaWurks’ building block approach, might be useful for future NASA missions.

A handful of other payloads rounded out the payload list for Wednesday’s launch. They included REAL, a NASA-funded CubeSat project to investigate the Van Allen radiation belts and space weather, and LIDE, an experimental 5G communications satellite backed by the European Space Agency. Five commercial spacecraft from the Australian company Skykraft also launched to join a constellation of small satellites to provide tracking and voice communications between air traffic controllers and aircraft over remote parts of the world.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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Nearly 3,000 people are leaving NASA, and this director is one of them

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You can add another name to the thousands of employees leaving NASA as the Trump administration primes the space agency for a 25 percent budget cut.

On Monday, NASA announced that Makenzie Lystrup will leave her post as director of the Goddard Space Flight Center on Friday, August 1. Lystrup has held the top job at Goddard since April 2023, overseeing a staff of more than 8,000 civil servants and contractor employees and a budget last year of about $4.7 billion.

These figures make Goddard the largest of NASA’s 10 field centers primarily devoted to scientific research and development of robotic space missions, with a budget and workforce comparable to NASA’s human spaceflight centers in Texas, Florida, and Alabama. Officials at Goddard manage the James Webb and Hubble telescopes in space, and Goddard engineers are assembling the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, another flagship observatory scheduled for launch late next year.

“We’re grateful to Makenzie for her leadership at NASA Goddard for more than two years, including her work to inspire a Golden Age of explorers, scientists, and engineers,” Vanessa Wyche, NASA’s acting associate administrator, said in a statement.

Cynthia Simmons, Goddard’s deputy director, will take over as acting chief at the space center. Simmons started work at Goddard as a contract engineer 25 years ago.

Lystrup came to NASA from Ball Aerospace, now part of BAE Systems, where she managed the company’s work on civilian space projects for NASA and other federal agencies. Before joining Ball Aerospace, Lystrup earned a doctorate in astrophysics from University College London and conducted research as a planetary astronomer.

Formal dissent

The announcement of Lystrup’s departure from Goddard came hours after the release of an open letter to NASA’s interim administrator, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, signed by hundreds of current and former agency employees. The letter, titled the “The Voyager Declaration,” identifies what the signatories call “recent policies that have or threaten to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security, and undermine the core NASA mission.”

Nearly 3,000 people are leaving NASA, and this director is one of them Read More »

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After a partly successful test flight, European firm eyes space station mission

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Last month, the parachutes on Hélène Huby’s small spacecraft failed to deploy, and the vehicle and its cargo crashed into the ocean on Earth.

It was both a success and a failure.

The success was that after Huby founded The Exploration Company in Europe, she managed to move nimbly with the “Mission Possible” spacecraft such that it cost less than $25 million to build and reached space in less than three years. The vehicle ticked off a number of successes in spaceflight before making a controlled descent through the atmosphere.

But at 26 km above the planet, as the spacecraft slowed to Mach one, The Exploration Company lost contact. Huby was not sure how this loss would be received in Europe, where failures in spaceflight have not been traditionally well-tolerated.

“What was interesting is the feedback I got in Europe,” Huby said in an interview this week at the company’s offices in Houston. “The German Space Agency, the French space agency, the European Space Agency said, OK, that’s a great achievement. For the time and money we spent, performing 80 percent of that mission was a good investment.”

No drop tests

After the spacecraft was lost on June 24, the company established an independent investigation team. Huby said it is “99 percent” confirmed there was a problem with the deployment of the parachutes, either the drogue chutes or the main parachutes. The fault was not with the provider of the parachutes themselves, US-based Airborne Systems, but the company’s mechanism, she said.

To save time and money, The Exploration Company did not conduct any drop tests. Such a campaign would have added millions of dollars to a program that was trying to be lean, plus a year of schedule to a mission attempting to move fast.

“We made a mistake, basically, to underestimate the risks,” she said. In retrospect, Huby added, the company could have done more testing on the ground.

Now the firm faces a big decision: How to proceed from here. One option is building another small spacecraft, similar to Mission Possible, for testing purposes. But there is limited commonality in the parachute system for this vehicle and the larger Nyx spacecraft the company is building for operational missions. So if the Mission Possible parachutes were to work, that would not guarantee success for Nyx.

After a partly successful test flight, European firm eyes space station mission Read More »

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As White House talks about impounding NASA funding, Congress takes the threat seriously

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This year, given the recent action on the budget measures, it is possible that Congress could pass Appropriations legislation for most of the federal government, including NASA before October 1.

Certainly there is motivation to do so, because the White House and its Office of Management and Budget, led by Russ Vought, has indicated that in absence of Appropriations legislation it is planning to take measures that would implement the Presidents Budget Request, which set significantly lower spending levels for NASA and other federal agencies.

For example, as Ars reported earlier this month, the principal investigators of NASA science missions that White House seeks to kill have been told to create termination plans that could be implemented within three months, beginning as soon as October 1.

Whether there is a continuing resolution, or shutdown, then, the White House appears likely to go to court to implement its spending priorities at federal agencies, including NASA.

Congress acknowledges the threat

This week the Ranking Members of House committee with oversight over NASA raised the alarm publicly about this in a letter to Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation who was recently named interim administrator of NASA as well.

NASA appears to be acting in accordance with a fringe, extremist ideology emanating from the White House Office of Management and Budget that asserts a right to impound funds appropriated by Congress for the sake of executive branch priorities. Moreover, it now appears that the agency intends to implement funding cuts that were never enacted by Congress in order to “align” the agency’s present-day budget with the Trump Administration’s slash-and-burn proposed budget for the next fiscal year, with seemingly no concern for the devastation that will be caused by mass layoffs, widespread program terminations, and the possible closure of critical centers and facilities. These decisions are wrong, and they are not yours to make.

The letter reminds Duffy that Congress sets the budget, and federal agencies work toward those budget levels. However, the legislators say, NASA is moving ahead with funding freezes for various programs reducing employees across the agency. Approximately 2,700 employees have left the agency since the beginning of the Trump Administration.

As White House talks about impounding NASA funding, Congress takes the threat seriously Read More »

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Rocket Report: SpaceX won’t land at Johnston Atoll; new North Sea launch site

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All the news that’s fit to lift

“Europe is seizing the opportunity to lead.”

NASA astronauts Mike Fincke (left) and Zena Cardman (right), the pilot and commander of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission to the International Space Station, view a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of their spaceflight. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 8.03 of the Rocket Report! We are at an interesting stage in Europe, with its efforts to commercialize spaceflight. Finally, it seems the long-slumbering continent is waking up to the need to leverage private capital to drive down the costs of space access, and we are seeing more investment flow into European companies. But it is critical that European policymakers make strategic investments across the industry or companies like PLD Space, which outlined big plans this week, will struggle to get off the launch pad.

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.

Avio celebrates freedom from Arianespace. Representatives from Italy, Germany, and France met at the European Space Agency headquarters last week to sign the Launcher Exploitation Declaration, which officially began the transfer of Vega C launch operation responsibilities from Arianespace to the rocket’s builder, Avio, European Spaceflight reports. “It is a historic step that reinforces our nation’s autonomy in access to space and assigns us a strategic responsibility towards Europe,” said Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo. “We are ready to meet this challenge with determination, and we are investing in technologies, expertise, and infrastructure to ensure a competitive service.”

A breaking of long-term partnerships … In addition to securing control over the full exploitation of the Vega launch vehicle family, Italy, through Avio, is also investing in what comes next. The country has committed more than 330 million euros to the development of the MR60 methalox rocket engine and two demonstrator vehicles. These, along with the MR10 engine being developed under the Vega E programme, will support Avio’s preparation of a future reusable launch vehicle. Historically, France, Germany, and Italy have worked together on European launch vehicles. This appears to be another step in breaking up that long-term partnership toward more nationalistic efforts.

PLD Space outlines grand ambitions. PLD Space, Spain’s sole contestant in the European Launcher Challenge, unveiled its long-term strategy at the company’s Industry Days event this week, Payload reports. The company is targeting a production rate of 32 Miura 5 launchers annually by 2030. To achieve this output, PLD plans to deepen its vertical integration, consolidate its supplier network, and begin to serialize its manufacturing process beginning in 2027.

Building up the supply chain … The company’s production plans also call for the parallel development of Miura Next, a heavy-lift vehicle capable of bringing 13 tons to orbit. However, the company will start with the Miura 5 vehicle, which PLD expects to launch for the first time from French Guiana in 2026. Since the beginning of 2024, PLD has invested a total of 50 million euros in its Miura 5 supply chain, consisting of 397 industrial partners, many of which are located in Spain and other European countries.  These plans are great, but sooner or later, the 14-year-old company needs to start putting rockets in space. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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New consortium will study space plane. A UK-based space and defense consultant group, Frazer-Nash, will lead a program to design a vehicle and its integrated systems with the goal of building and flying a Mach 5-capable aircraft at the edge of space by early 2031. This so-called INVICTUS program was funded with a 7 million-euro grant from the European Space Agency and is seen as a stepping stone toward developing a reusable space plane that takes off and lands horizontally from a runway.

Seeking to lead a new era of flight … Over 12 months, INVICTUS has been tasked to deliver the concept and elements of the preliminary design of the full flight system. It will attempt to demonstrate the efficacy of hydrogen-fueled, precooled air-breathing propulsion at hypersonic speeds, technology that will ultimately enable horizontal take-off. “With INVICTUS, Europe is seizing the opportunity to lead in technologies that will redefine how we move across the planet and reach beyond it,” said Tommaso Ghidini, head of the Mechanical Department at the European Space Agency. (submitted by Jid)

ESA backs North Sea launch site. A private company developing a launch site in the North Sea, EuroSpaceport, has secured support from the European Space Agency. The company, founded five years ago, is developing a sea-based launch platform built on a repurposed offshore wind turbine service vessel, European Spaceflight reports. Rockets are envisioned to launch from a position 50 to 100 km offshore from the port of Esbjerg, in Denmark.

Seeing the forest for the trees … On Wednesday, EuroSpaceport announced that it had signed an agreement with the European Space Agency and Polish rocket builder SpaceForest to support the first launch from its Spaceport North Sea platform. The company will receive support from the agency through its Boost! Program. SpaceForest has been a recipient of Boost! funding, receiving 2.4 million euros in October 2024. SpaceForest said the mission will be used to verify the launch procedures of its Perun rocket under nominal suborbital conditions. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Amazon and SpaceX, best frenemies? Maybe not, but for the time being, they appear to be friends of convenience. A Falcon 9 rocket launched from Florida’s Space Coast early on Wednesday with a batch of Internet satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper network, thrusting a rival one step closer to competing with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service. With this launch, Amazon now has 78 Kuiper satellites in orbit, Ars reports. The full Kuiper constellation will consist of 3,232 satellites to provide broadband Internet service to most of the populated world, bringing Amazon in competition with SpaceX’s Starlink network.

Launch is not cheap … Kuiper is an expensive undertaking, estimated at between $16.5 billion and $20 billion by the industry analytics firm Quilty Space. Quilty has concluded that Amazon is spending $10 billion on launch alone, exceeding the company’s original cost estimate for the entire program. Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy the Kuiper constellation, but the company didn’t turn to SpaceX until it had to. A shareholder lawsuit filed in 2023 accused Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the company’s board of directors of breaching their “fiduciary duty” by not considering SpaceX as an option for launching Kuiper satellites. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged Amazon didn’t consider the Falcon 9 due to an intense and personal rivalry between Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Amazon bowed to the allegations and announced a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches in December 2023 to provide “additional capacity” for deploying the Kuiper network.

NASA targets end of July for Crew-11. NASA said Monday that it and SpaceX were targeting July 31 for the flight of SpaceX’s Crew-11 mission to the orbiting outpost, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission is led by NASA astronaut Zena Cardman. She will be flying along with fellow NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.

Pushing Dragon reuse … The mission was moved up from its previously planned August launch window to create more room in the manifest for the arrival of the Cargo Dragon flying the CRS-33 mission. That Dragon will perform a boost of the space station as a demonstration of some of the capabilities SpaceX will use on its US Deorbit Vehicle currently in work. Crew-11 will fly to the orbiting outpost on Crew Dragon Endeavour, which will be its sixth trip to the ISS. This will be the first Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly for a sixth time.

SpaceX won’t use Johnston Atoll for rocket cargo tests. Johnston Atoll, an unincorporated US territory and Pacific island wildlife refuge with a complicated military history, will no longer become a SpaceX reusable rocket test site, Popular Science reports. “The Department of the Air Force has elected to hold the preparation of the Johnston Atoll Environmental Assessment for a proposed rocket cargo landing demonstration on Johnston Atoll in abeyance while the service explores alternative options for implementation,” Air Force spokesperson Laurel Falls said.

Taking a toll on the atoll … Located roughly 860 miles southwest of Hawaii, Johnston Atoll has served as a base for numerous US military operations for over 90 years. Despite this, the atoll remains a home for 14 tropical bird species as part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. The site had been under consideration for tests as part of a military program to deliver cargo around the planet, using suborbital missions on rocket such as SpaceX’s Starship vehicle. The Johnston Atoll plans included the construction of two landing pads that were met with public backlash from wildlife experts and indigenous representatives. (submitted by Tfargo04)

Blue Origin confirms ESCAPADE is up next. On Thursday, Blue Origin said on social media that the second launch of its New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s ESCAPADE mission as its primary payload. This launch will support ESCAPADE’s science objectives as the twin spacecraft progress on their journey to the Red Planet. Also onboard is a technology demonstration from @Viasat in support of @NASASpaceOps’ Communications Services Project.

Left unsaid was when the launch will occur … The social media post confirms a report from Ars in June, which said the ESCAPADE spacecraft was up next on New Glenn. Previously, the company has said this second launch will take place no earlier than August 15. However, that is less than one month away. Late September is probably the earliest realistic launch date, with October or November more likely for the second flight of the company’s large rocket.

Next three launches

July 19: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-3 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 44 UTC

July 21: Falcon 9 | O3b mPOWER 9 & 10 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21: 00 UTC

July 22: Falcon 9 | NASA’s Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 18: 05 UTC

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

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The ISS is nearing retirement, so why is NASA still gung-ho about Starliner?

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NASA is doing all it can to ensure Boeing doesn’t abandon the Starliner program.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket before a test flight in 2019. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket before a test flight in 2019. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

After so many delays, difficulties, and disappointments, you might be inclined to think that NASA wants to wash its hands of Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft.

But that’s not the case.

The manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, Steve Stich, told reporters Thursday that Boeing and its propulsion supplier, Aerojet Rocketdyne, are moving forward with several changes to the Starliner spacecraft to resolve problems that bedeviled a test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) last year. These changes include new seals to plug helium leaks and thermal shunts and barriers to keep the spacecraft’s thrusters from overheating.

Boeing, now more than $2 billion in the hole to pay for all Starliner’s delays, is still more than a year away from executing on its multibillion-dollar NASA contract and beginning crew rotation flights to the ISS. But NASA officials say Boeing remains committed to Starliner.

“We really are working toward a flight as soon as early next year with Starliner, and then ultimately, our goal is to get into crew rotation flights with Starliner,” Stich said. “And those would start no earlier than the second crew rotation slot at the end of next year.”

That would be 11 years after Boeing officials anticipated the spacecraft would enter operational service for NASA when they announced the Starliner program in 2010.

Decision point

The next Starliner flight will probably transport only cargo to the ISS, not astronauts. But NASA hasn’t made any final decisions on the matter. The agency has enough crew rotation missions booked to fly on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to cover the space station’s needs until well into 2027 or 2028.

“I think there are a lot of advantages, I would say, to fly the cargo flight first,” Stich said. “If we really look at the history of Starliner and Dragon, I think Dragon benefited a lot from having earlier [cargo] flights before the crew contract was let for the space station.”

One drawback of flying a Starliner cargo mission is that it will use up one of United Launch Alliance’s remaining Atlas V rockets currently earmarked for a future Starliner crew launch. That means Boeing would have to turn to another rocket to accomplish its full contract with NASA, which covers up to six crew missions.

While Boeing says Starliner can launch on several different rockets, the difficulty of adapting the spacecraft to a new launch vehicle, such as ULA’s Vulcan, shouldn’t be overlooked. Early in Starliner’s development, Boeing and ULA had to overcome an issue with unexpected aerodynamic loads discovered during wind tunnel testing. This prompted engineers to design an aerodynamic extension, or skirt, to go underneath the Starliner spacecraft on top of its Atlas V launcher.

Starliner has suffered delays from the beginning. A NASA budget crunch in the early 2010s pushed back the program about two years, but the rest of the schedule slips have largely fallen on Boeing’s shoulders. The setbacks included a fuel leak and fire during a critical ground test, parachute problems, a redesign to accommodate unanticipated aerodynamic forces, and a computer timing error that cut short Starliner’s first attempt to reach the space station in 2019.

This all culminated in the program’s first test flight with astronauts last summer. But after running into helium leaks and overheating thrusters, the mission ended with Starliner returning to Earth empty, while the spacecraft’s two crew members remained on the International Space Station until they could come home on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft this year.

The outcome was a stinging disappointment for Boeing. Going into last year’s crew test flight, Boeing appeared to be on the cusp of joining SpaceX and finally earning revenue as one of NASA’s certified crew transportation providers for the ISS.

For several months, Boeing officials were strikingly silent on Starliner’s future. The company declined to release any statements on their long-term commitment to the program, and a Boeing program manager unexpectedly withdrew from a NASA press conference marking the end of the Starliner test flight last September.

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s president and CEO, testifies before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on April 2, 2025, in Washington, DC. Credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images

But that has changed in the last few months. Kelly Ortberg, who took over as Boeing’s CEO last year, told CNBC in April that the company planned “more missions on Starliner” and said work to overcome the thruster issues the spacecraft encountered last year is “pretty straightforward.”

“We know what the problems were, and we’re making corrective actions,” Ortberg said. “So, we hope to do a few more flights here in the coming years.”

Task and purpose

NASA officials remain eager for Starliner to begin these regular crew rotation flights, even as its sole destination, the ISS, enters its sunset years. NASA and its international partners plan to decommission and scuttle the space station in 2030 and 2031, more than 30 years after the launch of the lab’s first module.

NASA’s desire to bring Starliner online has nothing to do with any performance issues with SpaceX, the agency’s other commercial crew provider. SpaceX has met or exceeded all of NASA’s expectations in 11 long-duration flights to the ISS with its Dragon spacecraft. Since its first crew flight in 2020, SpaceX has established a reliable cadence with Dragon missions serving NASA and private customers.

However, there are some questions about SpaceX’s long-term plans for the Dragon program, and those concerns didn’t suddenly spring up last month, when SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk suggested on X that SpaceX would “immediately” begin winding down the Dragon program. The suggestion came as Musk and President Donald Trump exchanged threats and insults on social media amid a feud as the one-time political allies had a dramatic falling out months into Trump’s second term in the White House.

In a subsequent post on X, Musk quickly went back on his threat to soon end the Dragon program. SpaceX officials participating in NASA press conferences in the last few weeks have emphasized the company’s dedication to human spaceflight without specifically mentioning Dragon. SpaceX’s fifth and final human-rated Dragon capsule debuted last month on its first flight to the ISS.

“I would say we’re pretty committed to the space business,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability. “We’re committed to flying humans in space and doing it safely.”

There’s a kernel of truth behind Musk’s threat to decommission Dragon. Musk has long had an appetite to move on from the Dragon program and pivot more of SpaceX’s resources to Starship, the company’s massive next-generation rocket. Starship is envisioned by SpaceX as an eventual replacement for Dragon and the Falcon 9 launcher.

A high-resolution commercial Earth-imaging satellite owned by Maxar captured this view of the International Space Station on June 7, 2024, with Boeing’s Starliner capsule docked at the lab’s forward port (lower right). Credit: Satellite image (c) 2024 Maxar Technologies

NASA hopes commercial space stations can take over for the ISS after its retirement, but there’s no guarantee SpaceX will still be flying Dragon in the 2030s. This injects some uncertainty into plans for commercial space stations.

One possible scenario is that, sometime in the 2030s, the only options for transporting people to and from commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit could be Starliner and Starship. We’ll discuss the rationale for this scenario later in this story.

While the cost of a seat on SpaceX’s Dragon is well known, there’s low confidence in the price of a ticket to low-Earth orbit on Starliner or Starship. What’s more, some of the commercial outposts may be incompatible with Starship because of its enormous mass, which could overcome the ability of a relatively modest space station to control its orientation. NASA identified this as an issue with its Gateway mini-space station in development to fly in orbit around the Moon.

It’s impossible to predict when SpaceX will pull the plug on Dragon. The same goes with Boeing and Starliner. But NASA and other customers are interested in buying more Dragon flights.

If SpaceX can prove Starship is safe enough to launch and land with people onboard, Dragon’s days will be numbered. But Starship is likely at least several years from being human-rated for flights to and from low-Earth orbit. NASA’s contract with SpaceX to develop a version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon won’t require the ship to be certified for launches and landings on Earth. In some ways, that’s a more onerous challenge than the Moon mission because of the perils of reentering Earth’s atmosphere, which Starship won’t need to endure for a lunar landing, and the ship’s lack of a launch abort system.

Once operational, Starship is designed to carry significantly more cargo and people than Falcon 9 and Dragon, but it’s anyone’s guess when it might be ready for crew missions. Until then, if SpaceX wants to have an operational human spaceflight program, it’s Dragon or bust.

For the International Space Station, it’s also Dragon or bust, at least until Boeing gets going. SpaceX’s capsules are the only US vehicles certified to fly to space with NASA astronauts, and any more US government payments to Russia to launch Americans on Soyuz missions would be politically unpalatable.

From the start of the commercial crew program, NASA sought two contractors providing their own means of flying to and from the ISS. The main argument for this “dissimilar redundancy” was to ensure NASA could still access the space station in the event of a launch failure or some other technical problem. The same argument could be made now that NASA needs two options to avoid being at the whim of one company’s decisions.

Stretching out

All of this is unfolding as the Trump administration seeks to slash funding for the International Space Station, cut back on the lab’s research program, and transition to “minimal safe operations” for the final few years of its life. Essentially, the space station would limp to the finish line, perhaps with a smaller crew than the seven-person staff living and working in it today.

At the end of this month, SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Crew-11 mission—the 12th Dragon crew mission for NASA and the 11th fully operational crew ferry flight to the ISS. Two Americans, one Japanese astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut will ride to the station for a stay of at least six months.

NASA’s existing contract with SpaceX covers four more long-duration flights to the space station with Dragon, including the mission set to go on July 31.

One way NASA can save money in the space station’s budget is by simply flying fewer missions. Stich said Thursday that NASA is working with SpaceX to extend the Dragon spacecraft’s mission duration limit from seven months to eight months. The recertification of Dragon for a longer mission could be finished later this year, allowing NASA to extend Crew-11’s stay at the ISS if needed. Over time, longer stays mean fewer crew rotation missions.

“We can extend the mission in real-time as needed as we better understand… the appropriations process and what that means relative to the overall station manifest,” Stich said.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft backs away from the International Space Station on September 6, 2024, without its crew. Credit: NASA

Boeing’s fixed-price contract with NASA originally covered an unpiloted test flight of Starliner, a demonstration flight with astronauts, and then up to six operational missions delivering crews to the ISS. But NASA has only given Boeing the “Authority To Proceed” for three of its six potential operational Starliner missions. This milestone, known as ATP, is a decision point in contracting lingo where the customer—in this case, NASA—places a firm order for a deliverable. NASA has previously said it awards these task orders about two to three years prior to a mission’s launch.

If NASA opts to go to eight-month missions on the ISS with Dragon and Starliner, the agency’s firm orders for three Boeing missions and four more SpaceX crew flights would cover the agency’s needs into early 2030, not long before the final crew will depart the space station.

Stich said NASA officials are examining their options. These include whether NASA should book more crew missions with SpaceX, authorize Boeing to prepare for additional Starliner flights beyond the first three, or order no more flights at all.

“As we better understand the budget and better understand what’s in front of us, we’re working through that,” Stich said. “It’s really too early to speculate how many flights we’ll fly with each provider, SpaceX and Boeing.”

Planning for the 2030s

NASA officials also have an eye for what happens after 2030. The agency has partnered with commercial teams led by Axiom, Blue Origin, and Voyager Technologies on plans for privately owned space stations in low-Earth orbit to replace some of the research capabilities lost with the end of the ISS program.

The conventional wisdom goes that these new orbiting outposts will be less expensive to operate than the ISS, making them more attractive to commercial clients, ranging from pharmaceutical research and in-space manufacturing firms to thrill-seeking private space tourists. NASA, which seeks to maintain a human presence in low-Earth orbit as it turns toward the Moon and Mars, will initially be an anchor customer until the space stations build up more commercial demand.

These new space stations will need a way to receive cargo and visitors. NASA wants to preserve the existing commercial cargo and crew transport systems so they’re available for commercial space stations in the 2030s. Stich said NASA is looking at transferring the rights for any of the agency’s commercial crew missions that don’t fly to ISS over to the commercial space stations. Among NASA’s two commercial crew providers, it currently looks more likely that Boeing’s contract will have unused capacity than SpaceX’s when the ISS program ends.

This is a sweetener NASA could offer to its stable of private space station developers as they face other hurdles in getting their hardware off the ground. It’s unclear whether a business case exists to justify the expense of building and operating a commercial outpost in orbit or if the research and manufacturing customers that could use a private space station might find a cheaper option in robotic flying laboratories, such as those being developed by Varda Space Industries.

A rendering of Voyager’s Starlab space station. Credit: Voyager Space

NASA’s policies haven’t helped matters. Analysts say NASA’s financial support for private space station developers has lagged, and the agency’s fickle decision-making on when to retire the International Space Station has made private fundraising more difficult. It’s not a business for the faint-hearted. For example, Axiom has gone through several rounds of layoffs in the last year.

The White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 proposes a 25 percent cut to NASA’s overall budget, but the funding line for commercial space stations is an area marked for an increase. Still, there’s a decent chance that none of the proposed commercial outposts will be flying when the ISS crashes back to Earth. In that event, China would be the owner and operator of the only space station in orbit.

At least at first, transportation costs will be the largest expense for any company that builds and operates a privately owned space station. It costs NASA about 40 percent more each year to ferry astronauts and supplies to and from the ISS than it does to operate the space station. For a smaller commercial outpost with reduced operating costs, the gap will likely be even wider.

If Boeing can right the ship with Starliner and NASA offers a few prepaid crew missions to private space station developers, the money saved could help close someone’s business case and hasten the launch of a new era in commercial spaceflight.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

The ISS is nearing retirement, so why is NASA still gung-ho about Starliner? Read More »

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Congress moves to reject bulk of White House’s proposed NASA cuts

congress, human spaceflight, NASA, nasa budget, Science, solar system, Space, space policy, space science / /

Fewer robots, more humans

The House version of NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget includes $9.7 billion for exploration programs, a roughly 25 percent boost over NASA’s exploration budget for 2025, and 17 percent more than the Trump administration’s request in May. The text of the House bill released publicly doesn’t include any language explicitly rejecting the White House’s plan to terminate the SLS and Orion programs after two more missions.

Instead, it directs NASA to submit a five-year budget profile for SLS, Orion, and associated ground systems to “ensure a crewed launch as early as possible.” A five-year planning budget seems to imply that the House committee wants SLS and Orion to stick around. The White House budget forecast zeros out funding for both programs after 2028.

The House also seeks to provide more than $4.1 billion for NASA’s space operations account, a slight cut from 2025 but well above the White House’s number. Space operations covers programs like the International Space Station, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and funding for new privately owned space stations to replace the ISS.

Many of NASA’s space technology programs would also be salvaged in the House budget, which allocates $913 million for tech development, a reduction from the 2025 budget but still an increase over the Trump administration’s request.

The House bill’s cuts to science and space technology, though more modest than those proposed by the White House, would still likely result in cancellations and delays for some of NASA’s robotic space missions.

Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), the senior Democrat on the House subcommittee responsible for writing NASA’s budget, called out the bill’s cut to the agency’s science portfolio.

“As other countries are racing forward in space exploration and climate science, this bill would cause the US to fall behind by cutting NASA’s account by over $1.3 billion,” she said Tuesday.

Lawmakers reported the Senate spending bill to the full Senate Appropriations Committee last week by voice vote. Members of the House subcommittee advanced their bill to the full committee Tuesday afternoon by a vote of 9-6.

The budget bills will next be sent to the full appropriations committees of each chamber for a vote and an opportunity for amendments, before moving on to the floor for a vote by all members.

It’s still early in the annual appropriations process, and a final budget bill is likely months away from passing both houses of Congress and heading to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature. There’s no guarantee Trump will sign any congressional budget bill, or that Congress will finish the appropriations process before this year’s budget runs out on September 30.

Congress moves to reject bulk of White House’s proposed NASA cuts Read More »

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‘Not that into peace doves’: The Apollo-Soyuz patch NASA rejected

Alexei Leonov, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, ASTP, Bob McCall, Chris Calle, Deke Slayton, Jean Pinataro, mission patch, Paul Calle, peace, Space, space collectible, Space exploration, space history, space memorabilia, Thomas Stafford, Tim Gagnon, Valery Kubasov, Vance Brand / /

a black and white ink drawing of a man carrying an oversized space mission patch running towards a launching rocket

Paul Calle’s July 1975 cartoon poking fun at his own rejected mission patch for the joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Credit: Calle Space Art

Rejects and revivals

Calle’s patch design was not the only one ruled out by NASA’s officials.

At first, Stafford, Brand, and Slayton chose a design from a contest among the US space program’s workforce. The winner, Jean Pinataro of North American Rockwell (the prime contractor for the Apollo command module), came up with a concept that the astronauts liked, but the agency’s leaders rejected it for not having enough “international significance” (unofficially, it was also said to be “cartoonish”).

That led to NASA accepting the cost of hiring an artist from the NASA art program and Calle being invited to offer his ideas. It also resulted in the patch that flew.

When Calle stepped away, the decision was made to repurpose the work of Bob McCall, an artist who had designed the Apollo 17 mission patch and in 1974 had painted the scene of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft nearing a docking. McCall would go on to create similar art for a pair of postage stamps issued in the United States and the Soviet Union, while Pinataro adapted McCall’s original painting as the central image of the US ASTP emblem.

The cosmonauts had their own design—in fact, it was the first Russian mission patch to involve the crew’s input—but wore both their own and the US patch during their six days in space.

five colorful embroidered space patches each related to the 1975 Apollo -Soyuz Test Project

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) patches, from top left to right: 2021 embroidered replica of Jean Pinataro’s original design; the Soviet Soyuz 18 crew patch; the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project crew patch; souvenir ASTP program patch; and ASTP program patch. Credit: AB Emblem/Roscosmos/collectSPACE.com

Today, 50 years later, the McCall-inspired design, the cosmonauts’ patch, and the Apollo-Soyuz program insignia are used interchangeably to represent the mission. Calle’s designs have been largely forgotten but are now getting a revival for the golden anniversary.

“I wanted to reimagine them. Not redo them, but bring them to life,” said Chris.

Working with a fellow artist Tim Gagnon, who created a number of the mission patches worn by space shuttle and International Space Station crews, Chris has begun the process of producing a limited number of embroidered patches based on his and his late father’s ideas.

Chris primarily focused on Calle’s dove and olive branch design.

“It certainly keeps to the spirit of my dad’s original idea,” Chris said.

Chris Calle asks readers to contact him via his website to be kept informed of when the limited edition Apollo-Soyuz patches are available.

Click through to collectSPACE to see more of Paul Calle’s original designs and the reimagined versions by Chris Calle and Tim Gagnon.

‘Not that into peace doves’: The Apollo-Soyuz patch NASA rejected Read More »

we-saw-the-heart-of-pluto-10-years-ago—it’ll-be-a-long-wait-to-see-the-rest

We saw the heart of Pluto 10 years ago—it’ll be a long wait to see the rest

Kuiper belt, NASA, New Horizons, planetary science, Pluto, Science, solar system, Space / /

A 50-year wait for a second mission wouldn’t be surprising. Just ask Uranus and Neptune.

Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the spacecraft’s Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University/SWRI

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft got a fleeting glimpse of Pluto 10 years ago, revealing a distant world with a picturesque landscape that, paradoxically, appears to be refreshing itself in the cold depths of our Solar System.

The mission answered numerous questions about Pluto that have lingered since its discovery by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. As is often the case with planetary exploration, the results from New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, posed countless more questions. First and foremost, how did such a dynamic world come to be so far from the Sun?

For at least the next few decades, the only resources available for scientists to try to answer these questions will be either the New Horizons mission’s archive of more than 50 gigabits of data recorded during the flyby, or observations from billions of miles away with powerful telescopes on the ground or space-based observatories like Hubble and James Webb.

That fact is becoming abundantly clear. Ten years after the New Horizons encounter, there are no missions on the books to go back to Pluto and no real prospects for one.

A mission spanning generations

In normal times, with a stable NASA budget, scientists might get a chance to start developing another Pluto mission in perhaps 10 or 20 years, after higher-priority missions like Mars Sample Return, a spacecraft to orbit Uranus, and a probe to orbit and land on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. In that scenario, perhaps a new mission could reach Pluto and enter orbit before the end of the 2050s.

But these aren’t normal times. The Trump administration has proposed cutting NASA’s science budget in half, jeopardizing not only future missions to explore the Solar System but also threatening to shut down numerous operating spacecraft, including New Horizons itself as it speeds through an uncharted section of the Kuiper Belt toward interstellar space.

The proposed cuts are sapping morale within NASA and the broader space science community. If implemented, the budget reductions would affect more than NASA’s actual missions. They would also slash NASA’s funding available for research, eliminating grants that could pay for scientists to analyze existing data stored in the New Horizons archive or telescopic observations to peer at Pluto from afar.

The White House maintains funding for newly launched missions like Europa Clipper and an exciting mission called Dragonfly to soar through the skies of Saturn’s moon Titan. Instead, the Trump administration’s proposed budget, which still must be approved by Congress, suggests a reluctance to fund new missions exploring anything beyond the Moon or Mars, where NASA would focus efforts on human exploration and bankroll an assortment of commercial projects.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft undergoing launch preparations at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in September 2005. Credit: NASA

In this environment, it’s difficult to imagine the development of a new Pluto mission to begin any time in the next 20 years. Even if Congress or a future presidential administration restores NASA’s planetary science budget, a Pluto mission wouldn’t be near the top of the agency’s to-do list.

The National Academies’ most recent decadal survey prioritized Mars Sample Return, a Uranus orbiter, and an Enceladus “Orbilander” mission in their recommendations to NASA’s planetary science program through 2032. None of these missions has a realistic chance to launch by 2032, and it seems more likely than not that none of them will be in any kind of advanced stage of development by then.

The panel of scientists participating in the latest decadal survey—released in 2022—determined that a second mission to Pluto did not merit a technical risk and cost evaluation report, meaning it wasn’t even shortlisted for consideration as a science priority for NASA.

There’s a broad consensus in the scientific community that a follow-up mission to Pluto should be an orbiter, and not a second flyby. New Horizons zipped by Pluto at a relative velocity of nearly 31,000 mph (14 kilometers per second), flying as close as 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers).

At that range and velocity, the spacecraft’s best camera was close enough to resolve something the size of a football field for less than an hour. Pluto was there, then it was gone. New Horizons only glimpsed half of Pluto at decent resolution, but what it saw revealed a heart-shaped sheet of frozen nitrogen and methane with scattered mountains of water ice, all floating on what scientists believe is likely a buried ocean of liquid water.

Pluto must harbor a wellspring of internal heat to keep from freezing solid, something researchers didn’t anticipate before the arrival of New Horizons.

New Horizons revealed Pluto as a mysterious world with icy mountains and very smooth plains. Credit: NASA

So, what is Pluto’s ocean like? How thick are Pluto’s ice sheets? Are any of Pluto’s suspected cryovolcanoes still active today? And, what secrets are hidden on the other half of Pluto?

These questions, and more, could be answered by an orbiter. Some of the scientists who worked on New Horizons have developed an outline for a conceptual mission to orbit Pluto. This mission, named Persephone for the wife of Pluto in classical mythology, hasn’t been submitted to NASA as a real proposal, but it’s worth illustrating the difficulties in not just reaching Pluto, but maneuvering into orbit around a dwarf planet so far from the Earth.

Nuclear is the answer

The initial outline for Persephone released in 2020 called for a launch in 2031 on NASA’s Space Launch System Block 2 rocket with an added Centaur kick stage. Again, this isn’t a realistic timeline for such an ambitious mission, and the rocket selected for this concept doesn’t exist. But if you assume Persephone could launch on a souped-up super heavy-lift SLS rocket in 2031, it would take more than 27 years for the spacecraft to reach Pluto before sliding into orbit in 2058.

Another concept study led by Alan Stern, also the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission, shows how a future Pluto orbiter could reach its destination by the late 2050s, assuming a launch on an SLS rocket around 2030. Stern’s concept, called the Gold Standard, would reserve enough propellant to leave Pluto and go on to fly by another more distant object.

Persephone and Gold Standard both assume a Pluto-bound spacecraft can get a gravitational boost from Jupiter. But Jupiter moves out of alignment from 2032 until the early 2040s, adding a decade or more to the travel time for any mission leaving Earth in those years.

It took nine years for New Horizons to make the trip from Earth to Pluto, but the spacecraft was significantly smaller than an orbiter would need to be. That’s because an orbiter has to carry enough power and fuel to slow down on approach to Pluto, allowing the dwarf planet’s weak gravity to capture it into orbit. A spacecraft traveling too fast, without enough fuel, would zoom past Pluto just like New Horizons.

The Persephone concept would use five nuclear radioisotope power generators and conventional electric thrusters, putting it within reach of existing technology. A 2020 white paper authored by John Casani, a longtime project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who died last month, showed the long-term promise of next-generation nuclear electric propulsion.

A relatively modest 10-kilowatt nuclear reactor to power electric thrusters would reduce the flight time to Pluto by 25 to 30 percent, while also providing enough electricity to power a radio transmitter to send science data back to Earth at a rate four times faster, according to the mission study report on the Persephone concept.

However, nuclear electric propulsion technologies are still early in the development phase, and Trump’s budget proposal also eliminates any funding for nuclear rocket research.

A concept for a nuclear electric propulsion system to power a spacecraft toward the outer Solar System. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A rocket like SpaceX’s Starship might eventually be capable of accelerating a probe into the outer Solar System, but detailed studies of Starship’s potential for a Pluto mission haven’t been published yet. A Starship-launched Pluto probe would have its own unique challenges, and it’s unclear whether it would have any advantages over nuclear electric propulsion.

How much would all of this cost? It’s anyone’s guess at this point. Scientists estimated the Persephone concept would cost $3 billion, excluding launch costs, which might cost $1 billion or more if a Pluto mission requires a bespoke launch solution. Development of a nuclear electric propulsion system would almost certainly cost billions of dollars, too.

All of this suggests 50 years or more might elapse between the first and second explorations of Pluto. That is in line with the span of time between the first flybys of Uranus and Neptune by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1986 and 1989, and the earliest possible timeline for a mission to revisit those two ice giants.

So, it’s no surprise scientists are girding for a long wait—and perhaps taking a renewed interest in their own life expectancies—until they get a second look at one of the most seductive worlds in our Solar System.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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Rocket Report: SpaceX to make its own propellant; China’s largest launch pad

china, european space agency, international space station, interstellar technologies, Japan, launch, long march 10, rocket report, russia, Science, South Korea, soyuz, Space, Space shuttle, spacex, Starbase, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

United Launch Alliance begins stacking its third Vulcan rocket for the second time.

Visitors walk by models of a Long March 10 rocket, lunar lander, and crew spacecraft during an exhibition on February 24, 2023 in Beijing, China. Credit: Hou Yu/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.02 of the Rocket Report! It’s worth taking a moment to recognize an important anniversary in the history of human spaceflight next week. Fifty years ago, on July 15, 1975, NASA launched a three-man crew on an Apollo spacecraft from Florida and two Russian cosmonauts took off from Kazakhstan, on course to link up in low-Earth orbit two days later. This was the first joint US-Russian human spaceflight mission, laying the foundation for a strained but enduring partnership on the International Space Station. Operations on the ISS are due to wind down in 2030, and the two nations have no serious prospects to continue any partnership in space after decommissioning the station.

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.

Sizing up Europe’s launch challengers. The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent’s incumbent launch service provider, Ars reports. The five small launch companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar’s Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March. None of these companies is guaranteed an ESA contract or funding. Over the next several months, ESA and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA’s ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency’s budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.

Let’s rank ’em … Ars Technica’s space reporters ranked the five selectees for the European Launcher Challenge in order from most likely to least likely to reach orbit. We put Munich-based Isar Aerospace, the most well-funded of the group, at the top of the list after attempting its first orbital launch earlier this year. Paris-based MaiaSpace, backed by ArianeGroup, comes in second, with plans for a partially reusable rocket. Rocket Factory Augsburg, another Germany company, is in third place after getting close to a launch attempt last year before its first rocket blew up on a test stand. Spanish startup PLD Space is fourth, and Britain’s Orbex rounds out the list. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Japan’s Interstellar Technologies rakes in more cash. Interstellar Technologies raised 8.9 billion yen ($61.8 million) to boost development of its Zero rocket and research and development of satellite systems, Space News reports. The money comes from Japanese financial institutions, venture capital funds, and debt financing. Interstellar previously received funding through agreements with the Japanese government and Toyota, which Interstellar says will add expertise to scale manufacturing of the Zero rocket for “high-frequency, cost-effective launches.” The methane-fueled Zero rocket is designed to deploy a payload of up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. The unfortunate news from Interstellar’s fundraising announcement is that the company has pushed back the debut flight of the Zero rocket until 2027.

Straight up … Interstellar has aspirations beyond launch vehicles. The company is also developing a satellite communications business, and some of the money raised in the latest investment round will go toward this segment of the company. Interstellar is open about comparing its ambition to that of SpaceX. “On the satellite side, Interstellar is developing communications satellites that benefit from the company’s own launch capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Backed by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and JAXA’s Space Strategy Fund, the company is building a vertically integrated model, similar to SpaceX’s approach with Starlink.”

Korean startup completes second-stage qual testing. South Korean launch services company Innospace says it has taken another step toward the inaugural launch of its Hanbit-Nano rocket by the year’s end with the qualification of the second stage, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The second stage uses an in-house-developed 34-kilonewton (7,643-pound-thrust) liquid methane engine. Innospace says the engine achieved a combustion time of 300 seconds, maintaining stability of the fuel and oxidizer supply system, structural integrity, and the launch vehicle integrated control system.

A true micro-launcher … Innospace’s rocket is modest in size and capacity, even among its cohorts in the small launch market. The Hanbit-Nano rocket is designed to launch approximately 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload into Sun-synchronous orbit. “With the success of this second stage engine certification test, we have completed the development of the upper stage of the Hanbit-Nano launch vehicle,” said Kim Soo-jong, CEO of Innospace. “This is a very symbolic and meaningful technological achievement that demonstrates the technological prowess and test operation capabilities that Innospace has accumulated over a long period of time, while also showing that we have entered the final stage for commercial launch. Currently, all executives and staff are doing their best to successfully complete the first stage certification test, which is the final gateway for launch, and we will make every effort to prepare for a smooth commercial launch in the second half of the year.”

Two companies forge unlikely alliance in Dubai. Two German entrepreneurs have joined forces with a team of Russian expats steeped in space history to design a rocket using computational AI models, Payload reports. The “strategic partnership” is between LEAP 71, an AI-enabled design startup, and Aspire Space, a company founded by the son of a Soviet engineer who was in charge of launching Zenit rockets from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the 1980s. The companies will base their operations in Dubai. The unlikely pairing aims to develop a new large reusable launch vehicle capable of delivering up to 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. Aspire Space is a particularly interesting company if you’re a space history enthusiast. Apart from the connections of Aspire’s founder to Soviet space history, Aspire’s chief technology officer, Sergey Sopov, started his career at Baikonur working on the Energia heavy-lift rocket and Buran space shuttle, before becoming an executive at Sea Launch later in his career.

Trust the computer … It’s easy to be skeptical about this project, but it has attracted an interesting group of people. LEAP 71 has just two employees—its two German co-founders—but boasts lofty ambitions and calls itself a “pioneer in AI-driven engineering.” As part of the agreement with Aspire Space, LEAP 71 will use a proprietary software program called Noyron to design the entire propulsion stack for Aspire’s rockets. The company says its AI-enabled design approach for Aspire’s 450,000-pound-thrust engine will cut in half the time it took other rocket companies to begin test-firing a new engine of similar size. Rudenko forecasts Aspire’s entire project, including a launcher, reusable spacecraft, and ground infrastructure to support it all, will cost more than $1 billion. So far, the project is self-funded, Rudenko told Payload. (submitted by Lin Kayser)

Russia launches ISS resupply freighter. A Russian Progress supply ship launched July 3 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, NASASpaceflight reports. Packed with 5,787 pounds (2,625 kilograms) of cargo and fuel, the Progress MS-31 spacecraft glided to an automated docking at the International Space Station two days later. The Russian cosmonauts living aboard the ISS will unpack the supplies carried inside the Progress craft’s pressurized compartment. This was the eighth orbital launch of the year by a Russian rocket, continuing a downward trend in launch activity for the Russian space program in recent years.

Celebrating a golden anniversary … The Soyuz rocket that launched Progress MS-31 was painted an unusual blue and white scheme, as it was originally intended for a commercial launch that was likely canceled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also sported a logo commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975.

Chinese rocket moves closer to first launch. Chinese commercial launch firm Orienspace is aiming for a late 2025 debut of its Gravity-2 rocket following a recent first-stage engine hot fire test, Space News reports. The “three-in-one” hot fire test verified the performance of the Gravity-2 rocket’s first stage engine, servo mechanisms, and valves that regulate the flow of propellants into the engine, according to a press release from Orienspace. The Gravity-2 rocket’s recoverable and reusable first stage will be powered by nine of these kerosene-fueled engines. The recent hot fire test “lays a solid foundation” for future tests leading up to the Gravity-2’s inaugural flight.

Extra medium … Orienspace’s first rocket, the solid-fueled Gravity-1, completed its first successful flight last year to place multiple small satellites into orbit. Gravity-2 is a much larger vehicle, standing 230 feet (70 meters) tall, the same height as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Orienspace’s new rocket will fly in a core-only configuration or with the assistance of two solid rocket boosters. An infographic released by Orienspace in conjunction with the recent engine hot fire test indicates the Gravity-2 rocket will be capable of hauling up to 21.5 metric tons (47,400 pounds) of cargo into low-Earth orbit, placing its performance near the upper limit of medium-lift launchers.

Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal space shuttle. A political effort to remove space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian and place it on display in Texas encountered some pushback on Thursday, as a US senator questioned the expense of carrying out what he described as a theft, Ars reports. “This is not a transfer. It’s a heist,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) during a budget markup hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee. “A heist by Texas because they lost a competition 12 years ago.” In April, Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both representing Texas, introduced the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” that called for Discovery to be relocated from the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia and displayed at Space Center Houston. They then inserted an $85 million provision for the shuttle relocation into the Senate version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which, to comply with Senate rules, was more vaguely worded but was meant to achieve the same goal. That bill was enacted on July 4, when President Donald Trump signed it into law.

Dollar signs … As ridiculous as it is to imagine spending $85 million on moving a space shuttle from one museum to another, it’ll actually cost a lot more to do it safely. Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston. Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian’s collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred “all rights, interest, title, and ownership” for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian. “This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don’t have the right in Texas to claim this,” said Durbin.

Starbase keeps getting bigger. Cameron County, Texas, has given SpaceX the green light to build an air separator facility, which will be located less than 300 feet from the region’s sand dunes, frustrating locals concerned about the impact on vegetation and wildlife, the Texas Tribune reports. The commissioners voted 3–1 to give Elon Musk’s rocket company a beachfront construction certificate and dune protection permit, allowing the company to build a facility to produce gases needed for Starship launches. The factory will separate air into nitrogen and oxygen. SpaceX uses liquid oxygen as a propellant and liquid nitrogen for testing and operations.

Saving the roads … By having the facility on site, SpaceX hopes to make the delivery of those gases more efficient by eliminating the need to have dozens of trucks deliver them from Brownsville. The company says they need more than 200 trucks of liquid nitrogen and oxygen delivered for each launch, a SpaceX engineer told the county during a meeting last week. With their application, SpaceX submitted a plan to mitigate expected negative effects on 865 square feet of dune vegetation and 20 cubic yards of dunes, as well as compensate for expected permanent impacts to 7,735 square feet of dune vegetation and 465 cubic yards of dunes. While the project will be built on property owned by SpaceX, the county holds the authority to manage the construction that affects Boca Chica’s dunes.

ULA is stacking its third Vulcan rocket. A little more than a week after its most recent Atlas V rocket launch, United Launch Alliance rolled a Vulcan booster to the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on July 2 to begin stacking its first post-certification Vulcan rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. The operation, referred to by ULA as Launch Vehicle on Stand (LVOS), is the first major milestone toward the launch of the third Vulcan rocket. The upcoming launch will be the first operational flight of ULA’s new rocket with a pair of US military payloads, following two certification flights in 2024.

For the second time … This is the second time that this particular Vulcan booster was brought to Space Launch Complex 41 in anticipation of a launch campaign. It was previously readied in late October of last year in support of the USSF-106 mission, the Space Force’s designation for the first national security launch to use the Vulcan rocket. However, plans changed as the process of certifying Vulcan to fly government payloads took longer than expected, and ULA pivoted to launch two Atlas V rockets on commercial missions from the same pad before switching back to Vulcan launch preps.

Progress report on China’s Moon rocket. China’s self-imposed deadline of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030 is now just five years away, and we’re starting to see some tangible progress. Construction of the launch pad for the Long March 10 rocket, the massive vehicle China will use to launch its first crews toward the Moon, is well along at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. An image shared on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, and then reposted on X, shows the Long March 10’s launch tower near its final height. A mobile launch platform presumably for the Long March 10 is under construction nearby.

Super heavy … The Long March 10 will be China’s most powerful rocket to date, with the ability to dispatch 27 metric tons of payload toward the Moon, a number comparable to NASA’s Space Launch System. Designed for partial reusability, the Long March 10 will use an all-liquid propulsion system and stand more than 92 meters (300 feet) tall. The rocket will launch Chinese astronauts inside the nation’s next-generation Mengzhou crew capsule, along with a lunar lander to transport crew members from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon using an architecture similar to NASA’s Apollo program.

Next three launches

July 11: Electron | JAKE 4 | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 23: 45 UTC

July 13: Falcon 9 | Dror 1 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04: 31 UTC

July 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02: 27 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Rocket Report: SpaceX to make its own propellant; China’s largest launch pad Read More »

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It’s hunting season in orbit as Russia’s killer satellites mystify skywatchers

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“Once more, we play our dangerous game—a game of chess—against our old adversary.”

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state media agency Sputnik, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin gives a speech during the Victory Day military parade at Red Square in central Moscow on May 9, 2025. Credit: Yacheslav Prokofyev/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Russia is a waning space power, but President Vladimir Putin has made sure he still has a saber to rattle in orbit.

This has become more evident in recent weeks, when we saw a pair of rocket launches carrying top-secret military payloads, the release of a mysterious object from a Russian mothership in orbit, and a sequence of complex formation-flying maneuvers with a trio of satellites nearly 400 miles up.

In isolation, each of these things would catch the attention of Western analysts. Taken together, the frenzy of maneuvers represents one of the most significant surges in Russian military space activity since the end of the Cold War. What’s more, all of this is happening as Russia lags further behind the United States and China in everything from rockets to satellite manufacturing. Russian efforts to develop a reusable rocket, field a new human-rated spacecraft to replace the venerable Soyuz, and launch a megaconstellation akin to SpaceX’s Starlink are going nowhere fast.

Russia has completed just eight launches to orbit so far this year, compared to 101 orbital attempts by US launch providers and 36 from China. This puts Russia on pace for the fewest number of orbital launch attempts since 1961, the year Soviet citizen Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space.

For the better part of three decades, Russia’s space program could rely on money from Western governments and commercial companies to build rockets, launch satellites, and ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The money tap dried up after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia also lost access to Ukrainian-made components to go into their launch vehicles and satellites.

Chasing a Keyhole

Amid this retrenchment, Russia is targeting what’s left of its capacity for innovation in space toward pestering the US military. US intelligence officials last year said they believed Russia was pursuing a project to place a nuclear weapon in space. The detonation of a nuclear bomb in orbit could muck up the space environment for years, indiscriminately disabling countless satellites, whether they’re military or civilian.

Russia denied that it planned to launch a satellite with a nuclear weapon, but the country’s representative in the United Nations vetoed a Security Council resolution last year that would have reaffirmed a nearly 50-year-old ban on placing weapons of mass destruction into orbit.

While Russia hasn’t actually put a nuclear bomb into orbit yet, it’s making progress in fielding other kinds of anti-satellite systems. Russia destroyed one of its own satellites with a ground-launched missile in 2021, and high above us today, Russian spacecraft are stalking American spy satellites and keeping US military officials on their toes with a rapid march toward weaponizing space.

The world’s two other space powers, the United States and China, are developing their own “counter-space” weapons. But the US and Chinese militaries have largely focused on using their growing fleets of satellites as force multipliers in the terrestrial domain, enabling precision strikes, high-speed communications, and targeting for air, land, and naval forces. That is starting to change, with US Space Force commanders now openly discussing their own ambitions for offensive and defensive counter-space weapons.

Three of Russia’s eight orbital launches this year have carried payloads that could be categorized as potential anti-satellite weapons, or at least prototypes testing novel technologies that could lead to one. (For context, three of Russia’s other launches this year have gone to the International Space Station, and two launched conventional military communications or navigation satellites.)

One of these mystery payloads launched on May 23, when a Soyuz rocket boosted a satellite into a nearly 300-mile-high orbit perfectly aligned with the path of a US spy satellite owned by the National Reconnaissance Office. The new Russian satellite, designated Kosmos 2588, launched into the same orbital plane as an American satellite known to the public as USA 338, which is widely believed to be a bus-sized KH-11, or Keyhole-class, optical surveillance satellite.

A conceptual drawing of a KH-11 spy satellite, with internal views, based on likely design similarities to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: Giuseppe De Chiara/CC BY-SA 3.0

The governments of Russia and the United States use the Kosmos and USA monikers as cover names for their military satellites.

While their exact design and capabilities are classified, Keyhole satellites are believed to provide the sharpest images of any spy satellite in orbit. They monitor airfields, naval ports, missile plants, and other strategic sites across the globe. In the zeitgeist of geopolitics, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are the likeliest targets for the NRO’s Keyhole satellites. To put it succinctly, Keyhole satellites are some of the US government’s most prized assets in space.

Therefore, it’s not surprising to assume a potential military adversary might want to learn more about them or be in a position to disable or destroy them in the event of war.

Orbital ballet

A quick refresher on orbital mechanics is necessary here. Satellites orbit the Earth in flat planes fixed in inertial space. It’s not a perfect interpretation, but it’s easiest to understand this concept by imagining the background of stars in the sky as a reference map. In the short term, the position of a satellite’s orbit will remain unchanged on this reference map without any perturbation. For something in low-Earth orbit, Earth’s rotation presents a different part of the world to the satellite each time it loops around the planet.

It takes a lot of fuel to make changes to a satellite’s orbital plane, so if you want to send a satellite to rendezvous with another spacecraft already in orbit, it’s best to wait until our planet’s rotation brings the launch site directly under the orbital plane of the target. This happens twice per day for a satellite in low-Earth orbit.

That’s exactly what Russia is doing with a military program named Nivelir. In English, Nivelir translates to “dumpy level”—an optical instrument used by builders and surveyors.

The launch of Kosmos 2588 in May was precisely timed for the moment Earth’s rotation brought the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia underneath the orbital plane of the NRO’s USA 338 Keyhole satellite. Launches to the ISS follow the same roadmap, with crew and cargo vehicles lifting off at exactly the right time—to the second—to intersect with the space station’s orbital plane.

Since 2019, Russia has launched four satellites into bespoke orbits to shadow NRO spy satellites. None of these Russian Nivelir spacecraft have gotten close to their NRO counterparts. The satellites have routinely passed dozens of miles from one another, but the similarities in their orbits would allow Russia’s spacecraft to get a lot closer—and theoretically make physical contact with the American satellite. The Nivelir satellites have even maneuvered to keep up with their NRO targets when US ground controllers have made small adjustments to their orbits.

“This ensures that the orbital planes do not drift apart,” wrote Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archaeologist and university lecturer on space situational awareness. Langbroek runs a website cataloguing military space activity.

This is no accident

There’s reason to believe that the Russian satellites shadowing the NRO in orbit might be more than inspectors or stalkers. Just a couple of weeks ago, another Nivelir satellite named Kosmos 2558 released an unknown object into an orbit that closely mirrors that of an NRO spy satellite named USA 326.

We’ve seen this before. An older Nivelir satellite, Kosmos 2542, released a sub-satellite shortly after launching in 2019 into the same orbital plane as the NRO’s USA 245 satellite, likely a KH-11 platform similar to the USA 338 satellite now being shadowed by Kosmos 2588.

After making multiple passes near the USA 245 spacecraft, Kosmos 2542’s sub-satellite backed off and fired a mysterious projectile in 2020 at a speed fast enough to damage or destroy any target in its sights. US military officials interpreted this as a test of an anti-satellite weapon.

Now, another Russian satellite is behaving in the same way, with a mothership opening up to release a smaller object that could in turn reveal its own surprise inside like a Matryoshka nesting doll. This time, however, the doll is unnesting nearly three years after launch. With Kosmos 2542, this all unfolded within months of arriving in space.

The NRO’s USA 326 satellite launched in February 2022 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. It is believed to be an advanced electro-optical reconnaissance satellite, although the circumstances of its launch suggest a design different from the NRO’s classic Keyhole spy satellites. Credit: SpaceX

In just the last several days, the smaller craft deployed by Kosmos 2558—designated “Object C”—lowered its altitude to reach an orbit in resonance with USA 326, bringing it within 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the NRO satellite every few days.

While US officials are worried about Russian anti-satellite weapons, or ASATs, the behavior of Russia’s Nivelir satellites is puzzling. It’s clear that Russia is deliberately launching these satellites to get close to American spy craft in orbit, a retired senior US military space official told Ars on background.

“If you’re going to launch a LEO [low-Earth orbit] satellite into the exact same plane as another satellite, you’re doing that on purpose,” said the official, who served in numerous leadership positions in the military’s space programs. “Inclination is one thing. We put a bunch of things into Sun-synchronous orbits, but you have a nearly boundless number of planes you can put those into—360 degrees—and then you can go down to probably the quarter-degree and still be differentiated as being a different plane. When you plane-match underneath that, you’re doing that on purpose.”

But why?

What’s not as obvious is why Russia is doing this. Lobbing an anti-satellite, or counter-space, weapon into the same orbital plane as its potential target ties Russia’s hands. Also, a preemptive strike on an American satellite worth $1 billion or more could be seen as an act of war.

“I find it strange that the Russians are doing that, that they’ve invested their rubles in a co-planar LEO counter-space kind of satellite,” the retired military official said. “And why do I say that? Because when you launch into that plane, you’re basically committed to that plane, which means you only have one potential target ever.”

A ground-based anti-satellite missile, like the one Russia tested against one of its own satellites in 2021, could strike any target in low-Earth orbit.

“So why invest in something that is so locked into a target once you put it up there, when you have the flexibility of a ground launch case that’s probably even cheaper?” this official told Ars. “I’d be advocating for more ground-launched ASATs if I really wanted the flexibility to go after new payloads, because this thing can never go after anything new.”

“The only way to look at it is that they’re sending us messages. You say, ‘Hey, I’m going to just annoy the hell out of you. I’m going to put something right on your tail,'” the official said. “And maybe there’s merit to that, and they like that. It doesn’t make sense from a cost-benefit or an operational flexibility perspective, if you think about it, to lock in on a single target.”

Nevertheless, Russia’s Nivelir satellites have shown they could fire a projectile at another spacecraft in orbit, so US officials don’t dismiss the threat. Slingshot Aerospace, a commercial satellite tracking and analytics firm, went straight to the point in its assessment: “Kosmos 2588 is thought to be a Nivelir military inspection satellite with a suspected kinetic weapon onboard.”

Langbroek agrees, writing that he is concerned that Russia might be positioning “dormant” anti-satellite weapons within striking distance of NRO spy platforms.

“To me, the long, ongoing shadowing of what are some of the most prized US military space assets, their KH-11 Advanced Enhanced Crystal high-resolution optical IMINT (imaging intelligence) satellites, is odd for ‘just’ an inspection mission,” Langbroek wrote.

American pilot Francis Gary Powers, second from right, in a Moscow courtroom during his trial on charges of espionage after his U-2 spy plane was shot down while working for the CIA. Credit: Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images

The US military’s ability to spy over vast swaths of Russian territory has been a thorn in Russia’s side since the height of the Cold War.

“They thought they had the edge and shot down Gary Powers,” the retired official said, referring to the Soviet Union’s shoot-down of an American U-2 spy plane in 1960. “They said, ‘We’re going to keep those Americans from spying on us.’ And then they turn around, and we’ve got spy satellites. They’ve always hated them since the 1960s, so I think there’s still this cultural thing out there: ‘That’s our nemesis. We hate those satellites. We’re just going to fight them.'”

Valley of the dolls

Meanwhile, the US Space Force and outside analysts are tracking a separate trio of Russian satellites engaged in a complex orbital dance with one another. These satellites, numbered Kosmos 2581, 2582, and 2583, launched together on a single rocket in February.

While these three spacecraft aren’t shadowing any US spy satellites, things got interesting when one of the satellites released an unidentified object in March in a similar way to how two of Russia’s Nivelir spacecraft have deployed their own sub-satellites.

Kosmos 2581 and 2582 came as close as 50 meters from one another while flying in tandem, according to an analysis by Bart Hendrickx published in the online journal The Space Review earlier this year. The other member of the trio, Kosmos 2583, released its sub-satellite and maneuvered around it for about a month, then raised its orbit to match that of Kosmos 2581.

Finally, in the last week of June, Kosmos 2582 joined them, and all three satellites began flying close to one another, according to Langbroek, who called the frenzy of activity one of the most complex rendezvous and proximity operations exercises Russia has conducted in decades.

Higher still, two more Russian satellites are up to something interesting after launching on June 19 on Russia’s most powerful rocket. After more than 30 years in development, this was the first flight of Russia’s Angara A5 rocket, with a real functioning military satellite onboard, following four prior test launches with dummy payloads.

The payload Russia’s military chose to launch on the Angara A5 is unusual. The rocket deployed its primary passenger, Kosmos 2589, into a peculiar orbit hugging the equator and ranging between approximately 20,000 (12,500 miles) and 51,000 kilometers (31,700 miles) in altitude.

In this orbit, Kosmos 2589 completes a lap around the Earth about once every 24 hours, giving the satellite a synchronicity that allows it to remain nearly fixed in the sky over the same geographic location. These kinds of geosynchronous, or GEO, orbits are usually circular, with a satellite maintaining the same altitude over the equator.

The orbits of Kosmos 2589 and its companion satellite, illustrated in green and purple, bring the two Russian spacecraft through the geostationary satellite belt twice per day. Credit: COMSPOC

But Kosmos 2589 is changing altitude throughout its day-long orbit. Twice per day, on the way up and back down, Kosmos 2589 briefly passes near a large number of US government and commercial satellites in more conventional geosynchronous orbits but then quickly departs the vicinity. At a minimum, this could give Russian officials the ability to capture close-up views of American spy satellites.

Then, a few days after Kosmos 2589 reached orbit last month, commercial tracking sensors detected a second object nearby. Sound familiar? This new object soon started raising its altitude, and Kosmos 2589 followed suit.

Aiming higher

Could this be the start of an effort to extend the reach of Russian inspectors or anti-satellite weapons into higher orbits after years of mysterious activity at lower altitudes?

Jim Shell, a former NRO project manager and scientist at Air Force Space Command, suggested the two satellites seem positioned to cooperate with one another. “Many interesting scenarios here such as ‘spotter shooter’ among others. Certainly something to keep eyes on!” Shell posted Saturday on X.

COMSPOC, a commercial space situational awareness company, said the unusual orbit of Kosmos 2589 and its companion put the Russian satellites in a position to, at a minimum, spy on Western satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

“This unique orbit, which crosses two key satellite regions daily, may aid in monitoring objects in both GEO and graveyard orbits,” COMSPOC wrote on X. “Its slight 1° inclination could also reduce collision risks. While the satellite’s mission remains unclear, its orbit suggests interesting potential roles.”

Historically, Russia’s military has placed less emphasis on operating in geosynchronous orbit than in low-Earth orbit or other unique perches in space. Due to their positions near the equator, geosynchronous orbits are harder to reach from Russian spaceports because of the country’s high latitude. But Russia’s potential adversaries, like the United States and Europe, rely heavily on geosynchronous satellites.

Other Russian satellites have flown near Western communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit, likely in an attempt to eavesdrop on radio transmissions.

“So it is interesting that they may be doing a GEO inspector,” the retired US military space official told Ars. “I would be curious if that’s what it is. We’ve got to watch. We’ve got to wait and see.”

If you’re a fan of spy techno-thrillers, this all might remind you of the plot from The Hunt for Red October, where a new state-of-the-art Russian submarine leaves its frigid port in Murmansk with orders to test a fictional silent propulsion system that could shake up the balance of power between the Soviet and American navies.

Just replace the unforgiving waters of the North Atlantic Ocean with an environment even more inhospitable: the vacuum of space.

A few minutes into the film, the submarine’s commander, Marko Ramius, played by Sean Connery, announces his orders to the crew. “Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess, against our old adversary—the American Navy.”

Today, nearly 40 years removed from the Cold War, the old adversaries are now scheming against one another in space.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

It’s hunting season in orbit as Russia’s killer satellites mystify skywatchers Read More »

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“It’s a heist”: Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal shuttle from Smithsonian

Bring the Space Shutle Home Act, Chantilly, Dick Durbin, discovery, John Corbyn, NASA, National Air and Space Museum, One Big Beautiful Bill, senators, Smithsonian, Space, space center houston, Space exploration, space history, Space shuttle, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, ted cruz, texas, Virginia / /

Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once in Houston.

Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian’s collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred “all rights, interest, title, and ownership” for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian.

“This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don’t have the right in Texas to claim this,” said Durbin.

Houston was not the only city to miss out on displaying a retired space shuttle. In 2011, Durbin and fellow Illinois Senator Mark Kirk appealed to NASA to exhibit one of the winged spacecraft at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The agency ultimately decided to award the shuttles to the National Air and Space Museum, the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, and the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Houston, we have a problem

A prototype orbiter that was exhibited where Discovery is now was transferred to the Intrepid Museum in New York City.

To be able to bring up his points at Thursday’s hearing, Durbin introduced the “Houston, We Have a Problem” amendment to “prohibit the use of funds to transfer a decommissioned space shuttle from one location to another location.”

He then withdrew the amendment after having voiced his objections.

“I think we’re dealing with something called waste. Eighty-five million dollars worth of waste. I know that this is a controversial issue, and I know that there are other agencies, Smithsonian, NASA, and others that are interested in this issue; I’m going to withdraw this amendment, but I’m going to ask my colleagues be honest about it,” said Durbin. “I hope that we think about this long and hard.”

“It’s a heist”: Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal shuttle from Smithsonian Read More »