There are myriad questions about how NASA’s budget process will play out in the coming weeks, with the start of the new fiscal year on October 1 looming.
For example, the Trump administration may seek to shut off dozens of science missions that are either already in space or in development. Although Congress has signaled a desire to keep these missions active, absent a confirmed budget, the White House has made plans to turn off the lights.
Some answers may be forthcoming this week, as the House Appropriations Committee will take up the Commerce, Justice, and Science budget bill on Wednesday morning. However great uncertainty remains about whether there will be a budget passed by October 1 (unlikely), a continuing resolution, or a government shutdown.
Behind the scenes, discussions are also taking place about NASA’s Artemis Program in general and the future of the Space Launch System rocket specifically.
$4 billion a launch is too much
From the beginning, the second Trump administration has sought to cancel the costly, expendable rocket. Some officials wanted to end the rocket immediately, but eventually the White House decided to push for cancellation after Artemis III. This seemed prudent because it allowed the United States the best possible chance to land humans back on the Moon before China got there, and then transition to a more affordable lunar program as quickly as possible.
Congress, particularly US Sen. Ted. Cruz, R-Texas, was not amenable. And so, in supplemental funding as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Cruz locked in billions of dollars to ensure that Artemis IV and Artemis V flew on the SLS rocket, with the promise of additional missions.
Since the release of its budget proposal in May, which called for an end to the SLS rocket after Artemis III, the White House has largely been silent, offering no response to Congress. However that changed last week, when interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy addressed the issue on a podcast hosted by one of the agency’s public relations officials, Gary Jordan:
It requires a sustained, consistent dataset to recognize trends. That’s why, for example, the US government has funded a series of Landsat satellites since 1972 to create an uninterrupted data catalog illustrating changes in global land use.
But NASA is now poised to shut off OCO-2 and OCO-3 instead of thinking about how to replace them when they inevitably cease working. The missions are now operating beyond their original design lives, but scientists say both instruments are in good health.
Can anyone replace NASA?
Research institutes in Japan, China, and Europe have launched their own greenhouse gas-monitoring satellites. So far, all of them lack the spatial resolution of the OCO instruments, meaning they can’t identify emission sources with the same precision as the US missions. A new European mission called CO2M will come closest to replicating OCO-2 and OCO-3, but it won’t launch until 2027.
Several private groups have launched their own satellites to measure atmospheric chemicals, but these have primarily focused on detecting localized methane emissions for regulatory purposes, and not on global trends.
One of the newer groups in this sector, known as the Carbon Mapper Coalition, launched its first small satellite last year. This nonprofit consortium includes contributors from JPL, the same lab that spawned the OCO instruments, as well as Planet Labs, the California Air Resources Board, universities, and private investment funds.
Government leaders in Montgomery County, Maryland, have set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2027, and 100 percent by 2035. Mark Elrich, the Democratic county executive, said the pending termination of NASA’s carbon-monitoring missions “weakens our ability to hold polluters accountable.”
“This decision would … wipe out years of research that helps us understand greenhouse gas emissions, plant health, and the forces that are driving climate change,” Elrich said in a press conference last month.
NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, said Thursday he has heard the recent talk about how some people are starting to believe that China will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program.
“We had testimony that said NASA will not beat China to the Moon,” Duffy remarked during an all-hands meeting with NASA employees. “That was shade thrown on all of NASA. I heard it, and I gotta tell you what, maybe I am competitive, I was angry about it. I can tell you what, I’ll be damned if that is the story that we write. We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.”
Duffy’s remarks followed a Congressional hearing on Wednesday during which former Congressman Jim Bridenstine, who served as NASA administrator during President Trump’s first term, said China had pulled ahead of NASA and the United States in the second space race.
“Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” said Bridenstine, who led the creation of the Artemis Program in 2019. China has said multiple times that it intends to land taikonuats on the Moon before the year 2030.
A lot of TV appearances
Duffy’s remarks were characteristic of his tenure since his appointment two months ago by Trump to serve as interim administrator of the space agency. He has made frequent appearances on Fox News and offered generally upbeat views of NASA’s position in its competition with China for supremacy in space. And on Friday, in a slickly produced video, he said, “I’m committed to getting us back to the Moon before President Trump leaves office.”
Sources have said Duffy, already a cabinet member as the secretary of transportation, is also angling to remove the “interim” from his NASA administrator title. Like Bridenstine, he has a capable political background and politics that align with the Trump administration. He is an excellent public speaker and knows the value of speaking to the president through Fox News. To date, however, he has shown limited recognition of the reality of the current competition with China.
“Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day.”
Image of a Starlink launch on Falcon 9 this week. Credit: SpaceX
Welcome to Edition 8.09 of the Rocket Report! The biggest news of the week happened inside the Beltway rather than on a launch pad somewhere. In Washington, DC, Congress has pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to stop flying the Space Launch System rocket after Artemis III. Congress made it clear that it wants to keep the booster in business for a long time. The big question now is whether the Trump White House will blink.
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.
Israel launches SAR satellite. The Israel Ministry of Defense, Israel Defense Forces, and Israel Aerospace Industries successfully launched the Ofek 19 satellite on Tuesday from the Palmachim Airbase. The launch was carried out by the country’s solid-propellant Shavit 2 rocket. Ofek 19 is a synthetic aperture radar observation satellite with enhanced capabilities, 7 Israel National News reports.
A unique launch posture … This was the seventh launch of the Shavit-2 vehicle, which made its debut in June 2007. The most recent launch prior to this week occurred in March 2023. Because of its geographic location and difficult relations with surrounding countries, Israel launches its rockets to the west, over the Mediterranean Sea. (submitted by MarkW98)
Canadian launch firm invests in launch site. Earlier this summer, Reaction Dynamics, an Ontario-based launch company, closed on a Series A funding round worth $10 million. This will support the next phase of development of the Canadian company’s hybrid propulsion system, of which an initial suborbital demonstration flight is planned for this winter. Now the company has taken some of this funding and invested in a launch site in Nova Scotia, SpaceQ reports.
Getting in on the ground floor … In a transaction worth $1.2 million, Reaction Dynamics is investing in Maritime Launch Services, which is developing the Spaceport Nova Scotia facility. Reaction Dynamics intends to launch its Aurora-8 rocket from the Canadian launch site. Bachar Elzein, the CEO of Reaction Dynamics, said the move made sense for two reasons. The first is that it secures “a spot to launch our very first orbital rocket,” with Elzein adding, “we believe in their vision,” and thus wanted to invest. That second factor had to do with all the work, the heavy lifting, MLS has done to date, to build a spaceport from the ground up. (submitted by JoeyS)
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MaiaSpace completes tank tests. French rocket builder and ArianeGroup subsidiary MaiaSpace announced the completion of a monthslong test campaign that subjected several subscale prototypes of its propellant tanks to high-pressure burst tests, European Spaceflight reports. Over the course of six months, the company conducted 15 “burst” tests of subscale propellant tanks. Burst tests push tanks to failure to assess their structural limits and ensure they can safely withstand pressures well beyond normal operating conditions.
Working toward space … The data collected will be used to validate mechanical models that will inform the final design of the full-scale propellant tanks. The tests come as MaiaSpace continues to work toward the debut flight of its Maia rocket, which could take place in 2027 from French Guiana. At present, the company intends the rocket to have a lift capacity of 1.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
Orienspace secures B+ round funding. Chinese commercial rocket company Orienspace has raised tens of millions of dollars in Series B+ financing as it moves towards a key test flight, Space News reports. Orienspace secured funding of between $27 million and $124 million, according to the Chinese-language Taibo Network. The capital will be used mainly for the follow-up development and mass production of the Gravity-2 medium-lift liquid launch vehicle.
Not a small rocket … The company will soon begin comprehensive ground verification tests for the Gravity-2 and is scheduled to carry out its first flight test by the end of this year. In July, Orienspace successfully conducted a hot fire test of a Gravity-2 kerosene-liquid oxygen first-stage engine, including gimbal and valve system evaluations. Gravity-2 is expected to lift on the order of 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.
Rocket Lab unveils Neutron launch complex. As Rocket Lab prepares to roll out its new Neutron, the firm recently unveiled the launch complex from which the vehicle will fly, DefenseNews reports. Located within the Virginia Space Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, the facility, dubbed Launch Complex 3, will support testing, launch, and return missions for the reusable rocket. Rocket Lab sees Neutron as a contender to help ease the bottleneck in demand from both commercial and military customers for a ride to space. Today, that demand is largely being met by a single provider in the medium-lift market, SpaceX.
A launch this year? … It sounds unlikely. During the event, Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said that although he believes the company’s plan to launch this year is within reach, the schedule is aggressive with no margin for error. Speaking with reporters at the launch site, Beck said the company has some key testing in the coming months to qualify key stages of the rocket, which will give it a better idea of whether it can meet that 2025 timeline. “Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day,” he said. This one is unlikely to break Berger’s Law, however.
SpaceX obtains approval to ramp up Falcon 9 cadence. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a record of decision on Wednesday approving SpaceX’s plan to more than double the number of Falcon 9 launches from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40), the busiest of the company’s four operational launch pads. The FAA concluded that the proposed launch rate “would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment,” Ars reports.
Reaching ludicrous speed … The environmental review paves the way for SpaceX to launch up to 120 Falcon 9 rockets per year from SLC-40, an increase from 50 launches covered in a previous FAA review in 2020. Since then, the FAA has issued SpaceX temporary approval to go beyond 50 launches from SLC-40. For example, SpaceX launched 62 of its overall 132 Falcon 9 flights last year from SLC-40. SpaceX’s goal for this year is 170 Falcon 9 launches, and the company is on pace to come close to this target.
NASA sets date for science mission. NASA said Thursday that a trio of spacecraft to study the Sun will launch no earlier than September 23, on a Falcon 9 rocket. The missions include NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1) spacecraft. After launching from Kennedy Space Center, the spacecraft will travel together to their destination at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L1), around 1 million miles from Earth toward the Sun.
Fun in the Sun … The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind and space weather, from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our Solar System. Research and observations from the missions will help us better understand the Sun’s influence on Earth’s habitability, map our home in space, and protect satellites and voyaging astronauts and airline crews from space weather impacts.
Starship’s heat shield shows promise. One of the key issues ahead of last week’s test of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle was the performance of the upper stage heat shield, Ars reports. When the vehicle landed in the Indian Ocean, it had a decidedly orange tint. So what gives? SpaceX founder Elon Musk provided some clarity after the flight, saying, “Worth noting that the heat shield tiles almost entirely stayed attached, so the latest upgrades are looking good! The red color is from some metallic test tiles that oxidized and the white is from insulation of areas where we deliberately removed tiles.”
A step toward the goal … The successful test and additional information from Musk suggest that SpaceX is making progress on developing a heat shield for Starship. This really is the key technology to make an upper stage rapidly reusable—NASA’s space shuttle orbiters were reusable but required a standing army to refurbish the vehicle between flights. To unlock Starship’s potential, SpaceX wants to be able to refly Starships within 24 hours.
Ted Cruz emerges as key SLS defender. All of the original US senators who created and sustained NASA’s Space Launch System rocket over the last 15 years—Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Richard Shelby—have either retired or failed to win reelection. However, Ars reports that a new champion has emerged to continue the fight: Texas Republican Ted Cruz. As part of its fiscal year 2026 budget, the White House sought to end funding for the Space Launch System rocket after the Artemis III mission, and also cancel the Lunar Gateway, an orbital space station that provides a destination for the rocket.
Money for future missions … However, Cruz subsequently crafted a NASA provision tacked onto President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” The Cruz addendum provided $6.7 billion in funding for two additional SLS missions, Artemis IV and Artemis V, and to continue Gateway construction. In several hearings this year, Cruz has made it clear that his priorities for human spaceflight are to beat China back to the Moon and maintain a presence there. However, it is now increasingly clear that he views this as only being possible through continued use of NASA’s SLS rocket.
SpaceX seeks to solve Starship prop demands. If SpaceX is going to fly Starships as often as it wants to, it’s going to take more than rockets and launch pads. Tanker trucks have traditionally delivered rocket propellant to launch pads at America’s busiest spaceports in Florida and California. SpaceX has used the same method of bringing propellant for the first several years of operations at Starbase. But a reusable Starship’s scale dwarfs that of other rockets. It stands more than 400 feet tall, with a capacity for more than a million gallons of super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants.
That’s a lot of gas … SpaceX also uses large quantities of liquid nitrogen to chill and purge the propellant loading system for Starship. It takes more than 200 tanker trucks traveling from distant refineries to deliver all of the methane, liquid oxygen, and liquid nitrogen for a Starship launch. SpaceX officials recognize this is not an efficient means of conveying these commodities to the launch pad. It takes time, emits pollution, and clogs roadways. SpaceX’s solution to some of these problems is to build its own plants to generate cryogenic fluids. In a new report, Ars explains how the company plans to do this.
Next three launches
September 5: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-57 | Kennedy Space Center Florida | 11: 29 UTC
September 5: Ceres 1 | Unknown payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 11: 35 UTC
September 6: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-9 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 15: 45 UTC
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
SpaceX’s goal for this year is 170 Falcon 9 launches, and the company is on pace to come close to this target. Most Falcon 9 launches carry SpaceX’s own Starlink broadband satellites into orbit. The FAA’s environmental approval opens the door for more flights from SpaceX’s busiest launch pad.
But launch pad availability is not the only hurdle limiting how many Falcon 9 flights can take off in a year. There’s also the rate of production for Falcon 9 upper stages, which are new on each flight, and the time it takes for each vessel in SpaceX’s fleet of drone ships (one in California, two in Florida) to return to port with a recovered booster and redeploy back to sea again for the next mission. SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on offshore drone ships after most of its launches and only brings the rocket back to an onshore landing on missions carrying lighter payloads to orbit.
When a Falcon 9 booster does return to landing on land, it targets one of SpaceX’s recovery zones at military-run spaceports in Florida and California. SpaceX’s landing zone at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is close to the Falcon 9 launch pad there.
The Space Force wants SpaceX, and potentially other future reusable rocket companies, to replicate the side-by-side launch and landing pads at Cape Canaveral.
To do that, the FAA also gave the green light Wednesday for SpaceX to construct and operate a new rocket landing zone at SLC-40 and conduct up to 34 first-stage booster landings there each year. The landing zone will consist of a 280-foot diameter concrete pad surrounded by a 60-foot-wide gravel apron. The landing zone’s broadest diameter, including the apron, will measure 400 feet.
The location of SpaceX’s new rocket landing pad is shown with the red circle, approximately 1,000 feet northeast of the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch pad at Space Launch Complex-40. Credit: Google Maps/Ars Technica
SpaceX is in an earlier phase of planning for a Falcon landing pad at historic Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, just a few miles north of SLC-40. SpaceX uses LC-39A as a launch pad for most Falcon 9 crew launches, all Falcon Heavy missions, and, in the future, flights of the company’s gigantic next-generation rocket, Starship. SpaceX foresees Starship as a replacement for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, but the company’s continuing investment in Falcon-related infrastructure shows the workhorse rocket will stick around for a while.
The hearing, titled “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race,” had no witnesses who disagreed with this viewpoint. They included Allen Cutler, CEO of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, the chief lobbying organization for SLS, Orion, and Gateway; Jim Bridenstine, former NASA Administrator who now leads government operations for United Launch Alliance; Mike Gold of Redwire, a Gateway contractor; and Lt. General John Shaw, former Space Command official.
The hearing before the committee chaired by Cruz, Commerce, Science, and Transportation, included the usual mishmash of parochial politics, lobbying for traditional space, back slapping, and fawning—at one point, Gold, a Star Trek fan, went so far as to assert that Cruz is the “Captain Kirk” of the US Senate.
Beyond this, however, there was a fair amount of teeth gnashing about the fact that the United States faces a serious threat from China, which appears to be on course to put humans on the Moon before NASA can return there with the Artemis Program. China aims to land humans at the South Pole before the year 2030.
NASA likely to lose “race”
Bridenstine, who oversaw the creation of the Artemis Program half a decade ago, put it most bluntly: “Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” he said.
Bridenstine and others on the panel criticized the complex nature of SpaceX’s Starship-based lunar lander, which NASA selected in April 2021 as a means to get astronauts down to the lunar surface and back. The proposal relies on Starship being refueled in low-Earth orbit by multiple Starship tanker launches.
The Pentagon says the move will save money, but acknowledges risk to military readiness.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office at the White House on September 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that US Space Command will be relocated from Colorado to Alabama, returning to the Pentagon’s plans for the command’s headquarters from the final days of Trump’s first term in the White House.
The headquarters will move to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office, flanked by Republican members of the Alabama congressional delegation.
The move will “help America defend and dominate the high frontier,” Trump said. It also marks another twist on a contentious issue that has pitted Colorado and Alabama against one another in a fight for the right to be home to the permanent headquarters of Space Command (SPACECOM), a unified combatant command responsible for carrying out military operations in space.
Space Command is separate from the Space Force and is made up of personnel from all branches of the armed services. The Space Force, on the other hand, is charged with supplying personnel and technology for use by multiple combatant commands. The newest armed service, established in 2019 during President Trump’s first term, is part of the Department of the Air Force, which also had the authority for recommending where to base Space Command’s permanent headquarters.
“US Space Command stands ready to carry out the direction of the president following today’s announcement of Huntsville, Alabama, as the command’s permanent headquarters location,” SPACECOM wrote on its official X account.
Military officials in the first Trump administration considered potential sites in Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Texas before the Air Force recommended basing Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, on January 13, 2021, a week before Trump left office.
Members of Colorado’s congressional delegation protested the decision, suggesting the recommendation was political. Trump won a larger share of votes in Alabama in 2016, 2020, and 2024 than in any of the other states in contention. On average, a higher percentage of Colorado’s citizens cast their votes against Trump than in the other five states vying for Space Command’s permanent headquarters.
Trump’s reasons
Trump cited three reasons Tuesday for basing Space Command in Alabama. He noted Redstone Arsenal’s proximity to other government and industrial space facilities, the persistence of Alabama officials in luring the headquarters away from Colorado, and Colorado’s use of mail-in voting, a policy that has drawn Trump’s ire but is wholly unrelated to military space matters.
“That played a big factor, also,” Trump said of Colorado’s mail-in voting law.
None of the reasons for the relocation that Trump mentioned in his remarks on Tuesday explained why Alabama is a better place for Space Command’s headquarters than Colorado, although the Air Force has pointed to cost savings as a rationale for the move.
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation concluded in 2022 that the Air Force did not follow “best practices” in formulating its recommendation to place Space Command at Redstone Arsenal, leading to “significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.”
A separate report in 2022 from the Pentagon’s own inspector general concluded the Air Force’s basing decision process was “reasonable” and complied with military policy and federal law, but criticized the decision-makers’ record-keeping.
Former President Joe Biden’s secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, stood by the recommendation in 2023 to relocate Space Command to Alabama, citing an estimated $426 million in cost savings due to lower construction and personnel costs in Huntsville relative to Colorado Springs. However, since then, Space Command achieved full operational capability at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.
Now-retired Army Gen. James Dickinson raised concerns about moving Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. Credit: US Space Force/Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman
“Mission success is highly dependent on human capital and infrastructure,” Dickinson wrote in a 2023 memorandum to the secretary of the Air Force. “There is risk that most of the 1,000 civilians, contractors, and reservists will not relocate to another location.”
One division chief within Space Command’s plans and policy directorate told the Pentagon’s inspector general in May 2024 that they feared losing 90 percent of their civilian workforce if the Air Force announced a relocation. A representative of another directorate told the inspector general’s office that they could say “with certainty” only one of 25 civilian employees in their division would move to a new headquarters location.
Officials at Redstone Arsenal and information technology experts at Space Command concluded it would take three to four years to construct temporary facilities in Huntsville with the same capacity, connectivity, and security as those already in use in Colorado Springs, according to the DoD inspector general.
Tension under Biden
Essentially, the inspector general reported, officials at the Pentagon made cost savings their top consideration in where to garrison Space Command. Leaders at Space Command prioritized military readiness.
President Biden decided in July 2023 that Space Command’s headquarters would remain in Colorado Springs. The decision, according to the Pentagon’s press secretary at the time, would “ensure peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period.” Alabama lawmakers decried Biden’s decision in favor of Colorado, claiming it, too, was politically motivated.
Space Command reached full operational capability at its headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, two years ahead of schedule in December 2023. At the time, Space Command leaders said they could only declare Space Command fully operational upon the selection of a permanent headquarters.
Now, a year-and-a-half later, the Trump administration will uproot the headquarters and move it more than 1,000 miles to Alabama. But it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Space Command in Colorado.
A new report by the GAO published in May said Space Command faced “ongoing personnel, facilities, and communications challenges” at Peterson, despite the command’s declaration of full operational capability. Space Command officials told the GAO the command’s posture at Peterson is “not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed” in Colorado Springs.
Space Command was originally established in 1985. The George W. Bush administration later transferred responsibility for military space activities to the US Strategic Command, as part of a post-9/11 reorganization of the military’s command structure. President Trump reestablished Space Command in 2019, months before Congress passed legislation to make the Space Force the nation’s newest military branch.
Throughout its existence, Space Command has been headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. But now, Pentagon officials say the growing importance of military space operations and potentially space warfare requires Space Command to occupy a larger headquarters than the existing facility at Peterson.
Peterson Space Force Base is also the headquarters of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, US Northern Command, and Space Operations Command, all of which work closely with Space Command. Space Command officials told the GAO there were benefits in being co-located with operational space missions and centers, where engineers and operators control some of the military’s most important spacecraft in orbit.
Several large space companies also have significant operations or headquarters in the Denver metro area, including Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, BAE Systems, and Sierra Space.
In Alabama, ULA and Blue Origin operate rocket and engine factories near Huntsville. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command are located at Redstone Arsenal itself.
The headquarters building at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Credit: US Space Force/Keefer Patterson
Colorado’s congressional delegation—six Democrats and four Republicans—issued a joint statement Tuesday expressing their disappointment in Trump’s decision.
“Today’s decision to move US Space Command’s headquarters out of Colorado and to Alabama will directly harm our state and the nation,” the delegation said in a statement. “We are united in fighting to reverse this decision. Bottom line—moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time.”
The relocation of Space Command headquarters is estimated to bring about 1,600 direct jobs to Huntsville, Alabama. The area surrounding the headquarters will also derive indirect economic benefits, something Colorado lawmakers said they fear will come at the expense of businesses and workers in Colorado Springs.
“Being prepared for any threats should be the nation’s top priority; a crucial part of that is keeping in place what is already fully operational,” the Colorado lawmakers wrote. “Moving Space Command would not result in any additional operational capabilities than what we have up and running in Colorado Springs now. Colorado Springs is the appropriate home for US Space Command, and we will take the necessary action to keep it there.”
Alabama’s senators and representatives celebrated Trump’s announcement Tuesday.
“The Air Force originally selected Huntsville in 2021 based 100 percent on merit as the best choice,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama). “President Biden reversed that decision based on politics. This wrong has been righted and Space Command will take its place among Huntsville’s world-renowned space, aeronautics, and defense leaders.”
Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement that the Trump administration should provide “full transparency” and the “full details of this poor decision.”
“We hope other vital military units and missions are retained and expanded in Colorado Springs. Colorado remains an ideal location for future missions, including Golden Dome,” Polis said, referring to the Pentagon’s proposed homeland missile defense system.
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.
One of the more curious aspects of the 10th flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket on Tuesday was the striking orange discoloration of the second stage. This could be observed on video taken from a buoy near the landing site as the vehicle made a soft landing in the Indian Ocean.
This color—so different from the silvery skin and black tiles that cover Starship’s upper stage—led to all sorts of speculation. Had heating damaged the stainless steel skin? Had the vehicle’s tiles been shucked off, leaving behind some sort of orange adhesive material? Was this actually NASA’s Space Launch System in disguise?
The answer to this question was rather important, as SpaceX founder Elon Musk had said before this flight that gathering data about the performance of this heat shield was the most important aspect of the mission.
We got some answers on Thursday. During the afternoon, the company posted some new high-resolution photos, taken by a drone in the vicinity of the landing location. They offered a clear view of the Starship vehicle with its heat shield intact, albeit with a rust-colored tint.
Musk provided some clarity on this discoloration on Thursday evening, writing on the social media site X, “Worth noting that the heat shield tiles almost entirely stayed attached, so the latest upgrades are looking good! The red color is from some metallic test tiles that oxidized and the white is from insulation of areas where we deliberately removed tiles.”
The new images and information from Musk suggest that SpaceX is making progress on developing a heat shield for Starship. This really is the key technology to make an upper stage rapidly reusable—NASA’s space shuttle orbiters were reusable but required a standing army to refurbish the vehicle between flights. To unlock Starship’s potential, SpaceX wants to be able to refly Starships within 24 hours.
Firefly Aerospace reveals why its Alpha booster exploded after launch in April.
Starship and its Super Heavy booster ascend through a clear sky over Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday evening. A visible vapor cone enveloped the rocket as it passed through maximum aerodynamic pressure and the speed of sound. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica
Welcome to Edition 8.08 of the Rocket Report! What a week it’s been for SpaceX. The company completed its first successful Starship test flight in nearly a year, and while it wasn’t perfect, it sets up SpaceX for far more ambitious tests ahead. SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, launched six times since our last edition of the Rocket Report. Many of these missions were noteworthy in their own right, including the launch of the US military’s X-37B spaceplane, an upgraded Dragon capsule to boost the International Space Station to a higher orbit, and the record 30th launch and landing of a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster. All told, that’s seven SpaceX launches in seven days.
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.
Firefly announces cause of Alpha launch failure. Firefly Aerospace closed the investigation into the failure of one of its Alpha rockets during an April mission for Lockheed Martin and received clearance from the FAA to resume launches, Payload reports. The loss of the launch vehicle was a dark cloud hanging over the company’s otherwise successful IPO this month. The sixth flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket launched in April from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and failed when its first stage booster broke apart milliseconds after stage separation. This created a shockwave that destroyed the engine nozzle extension on the second stage, damaging the engine before the second stage ran out of propellant seconds before it attained orbital velocity. Both stages ultimately fell into the Pacific Ocean.
Too much stress … Investigators concluded that “plume induced flow separation” caused the failure. The phenomenon occurs when a rocket’s exhaust disrupts airflow around the vehicle in flight. In this case, Firefly said the rocket was flying at a higher angle of attack than prior missions, which resulted in the flow separation and created intense heat that broke the first stage apart just after it jettisoned from the second stage. Firefly will increase heat shielding on the first stage of the rocket and fly at reduced angles of attack on future missions. Alpha has now launched six times since 2021, with only two complete successes. Firefly said it was working on setting a date for the seventh Alpha launch. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
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ESA books a ticket on European launchers. The European Space Agency has awarded launch service contracts to Avio and Isar Aerospace under its Flight Ticket Initiative, European Spaceflight reports. Announced in October 2023, the Flight Ticket Initiative is a program run jointly by ESA and the European Union that offers subsidized flight opportunities for European companies and organizations seeking to demonstrate new satellite technologies in orbit. The initiative is part of ESA’s strategy to foster the continent’s commercial space industry, offering institutional funding to support satellite and launch companies. Avio won contracts to launch three small European space missions as secondary payloads on Vega C rockets flying into low-Earth orbit. Isar Aerospace will launch two small satellite missions to orbit for European companies.
No other options … Avio and Isar Aerospace were the obvious contenders for the Flight Ticket Initiative from a pool of five European companies eligible for launch awards. The other companies, PLD Space, Orbex, and Rocket Factory Augsburg, haven’t launched their orbital-class rockets yet. Avio, based in Italy, builds the now-operational Vega C rocket, and Germany’s Isar Aerospace launched its first Spectrum rocket earlier this year, but it failed to reach orbit. Avio’s selection replaces Arianespace, which was originally part of the Flight Ticket Initiative. Arianespace was previously responsible for marketing and sales for the Vega rocket, but ESA transferred its Flight Ticket Initiative eligibility to Avio following its split from Arianespace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Canadian rocket company ready for launch. NordSpace is preparing to launch its 6-meter tall Taiga rocket from Newfoundland, CBC reports. It will be a suborbital launch, meaning it won’t orbit Earth, but NordSpace says the launch will be the first of a Canadian commercial rocket from a Canadian commercial spaceport. The rocket is powered by a 3D-printed liquid-fueled engine and is a stepping stone to an orbital-class rocket NordSpace is developing called Tundra, scheduled to debut in 2027. The smaller Taiga rocket will launch partially fueled and fire its engine for approximately 60 seconds, according to NordSpace.
Newfoundland to space … The launch site, called the Atlantic Spaceport Complex, is located on the Atlantic coast near the town of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. It will have two launch pads, one for suborbital flights like Taiga, and another for orbital missions by the Tundra rocket and other launch vehicles from US and European companies. The Taiga launch is scheduled no earlier than Friday morning at 5: 00 am EDT (09: 00 UTC). NordSpace says it is a “fully privately funded and managed initiative crucial for Canada to build a space launch capability that supports our security, economy, and sovereignty.” (submitted by Matthew P)
SpaceX’s reuse idea isn’t so dumb after all. A Falcon 9 rocket launched early Thursday from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites. These types of missions launch multiple times per week, but this flight was special. The first stage of the Falcon 9, designated Booster 1067, launched and landed on drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its 30th flight to space and back, Ars reports. This is a new record for a reusable orbital-class booster stage and comes less than 24 hours after a preceding SpaceX launch from Florida that marked the 400th Falcon 9 landing on a drone ship since the first offshore recovery in 2016.
30 going for 40 … SpaceX is now aiming for at least 40 launches per Falcon 9 first stage, four times as many flights as the company’s original target for Falcon 9 booster reuse. Many people in the industry were skeptical about SpaceX’s approach to reuse. In the mid-2010s, both the European and Japanese space agencies were looking to develop their next generation of rockets. In both cases, Europe with the Ariane 6 and Japan with the H3, the space agencies opted for traditional, expendable rockets instead of pushing toward reuse. In the United States, the main competitor to SpaceX has historically been United Launch Alliance. Their reaction to SpaceX’s plan to reuse first stages a decade ago was dismissive. ULA dubbed its plan to reuse just the engine section of its Vulcan rocket “Smart Reuse” a few years ago. But ULA hasn’t even attempted to recover the engines from the Vulcan core stage yet, and reuse is still at least several years away.
Russia nears debut of Soyuz-5 rocket. In recent comments to the Russian state-run media service TASS, the chief of Roscosmos said the country’s newest rocket, the Soyuz-5, should take flight for the first time before the end of this year, Ars reports. “Yes, we are planning for December,” said Dmitry Bakanov, the director of Roscosmos, Russia’s main space corporation. “Everything is in place.” According to the report, translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell, the debut launch of Soyuz-5 will mark the first of several demonstration flights, with full operational service not expected to begin until 2028. It will launch from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.
Breaking free of Ukraine … From an innovation standpoint, the Soyuz-5 vehicle does not stand out. It has been a decade in the making and is fully expendable, unlike a lot of newer medium-lift rockets coming online in the next several years. However, for Russia, this is an important advancement because it seeks to break some of the country’s dependency on Ukraine for launch technology. The new rocket is also named Irtysh, a river that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan. The rocket has been in development since 2016 and largely repurposes older technology. But for Russia, a key advantage is that it takes rocket elements formerly made in Ukraine and now manufactures them in Russia.
SpaceX launches mission to reboost the ISS. SpaceX completed its 33rd cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) early Monday, when a Dragon supply ship glided to an automated docking with more than 5,000 pounds of scientific experiments and provisions for the lab’s seven-person crew, Ars reports. The resupply flight is part of the normal rotation of cargo and crew missions that keep the space station operating, but this one carries something new. What’s different with this mission is a new rocket pack mounted inside the Dragon spacecraft’s rear trunk section. In the coming weeks, SpaceX and NASA will use this first-of-its-kind propulsion system to begin boosting the altitude of the space station’s orbit.
A rocket on a rocket … SpaceX engineers installed two small Draco rocket engines in the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft. The thrusters have their own dedicated propellant tanks and will operate independently of 16 other Draco thrusters used to maneuver Dragon on its journey to the ISS. When NASA says it’s the right time, SpaceX controllers will command the Draco thrusters to ignite and gently accelerate the massive 450-ton space station. All told, the reboost kit can add about 20 mph, or 9 meters per second, to the space station’s already-dizzying speed. Maintaining the space station’s orbit has previously been the responsibility of Russia.
X-37B rides with SpaceX again. The US military’s reusable winged spaceship rocketed back into orbit from Florida on August 21 atop a SpaceX rocket, kicking off a mission that will, among other things, demonstrate how future spacecraft can navigate without relying on GPS signals, Ars reports. The core of the navigation experiment is what the Space Force calls the “world’s highest performing quantum inertial sensor ever used in space.” The spaceplane also hosts a laser inter-satellite communications demo. This is the eighth flight of the X-37B spaceplane, and the third to launch with SpaceX.
Back to LEO … This mission launched on a Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit (LEO) a few hundred miles above the Earth. This marks a return to LEO after the previous X-37B mission flew on a Falcon Heavy rocket into a much higher orbit. Many of the spaceplane’s payloads have been classified, but officials typically identify a handful of unclassified experiments flying on each X-37B mission. Past X-37B missions have also deployed small satellites into orbit before returning to Earth for a runway landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Rocket Lab cuts the ribbon on Neutron launch pad. Launch Complex 3, the Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and home to Rocket Lab’s newest reusable rocket, Neutron, is now complete and celebrated its official opening Thursday, WAVY-TV reports. Officials said Launch Complex 3 is ready to bring the largest orbital launch capacity in the spaceport’s history with Neutron, Rocket Lab’s reusable launch vehicle, a medium-lift vehicle capable of launching 33,000 pounds (15 metric tons) to space for commercial constellations, national security, and interplanetary missions.
Not budging … “We’re trying as hard as we can to get this on the pad by the end of the year and get it away,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO. Beck is holding to his hope the Neutron rocket will be ready to fly in the next four months, but time is running out to make this a reality. The Neutron rocket will be Rocket Lab’s second orbital-class launch vehicle after the Electron, which can place payloads of several hundred pounds in orbit. Electron has a launch pad in Virginia, too, but most Electron rockets take off from New Zealand.
Starship completes a largely successful test flight. SpaceX launched the 10th test flight of the company’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening, sending the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world to an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean, Ars reports. The largely successful mission for the world’s largest rocket was an important milestone for SpaceX’s Starship program after months of repeated setbacks, including three disappointing test flights and a powerful explosion on the ground that destroyed the ship that engineers were originally readying for this launch.
Lessons to learn … For the first time, SpaceX engineers received data on the performance of the ship’s upgraded heat shield and control flaps during reentry back into the atmosphere. The three failed Starship test flights to start the year ended before the ship reached reentry. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has described developing a durable, reliable heat shield as the most pressing challenge for making Starship a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. But there were lessons to learn from Tuesday’s flight. A large section of the ship transitioned from its original silver color to a rusty hue of orange and brown by the time it reached the Indian Ocean. Officials didn’t immediately address this or say whether it was anticipated.
ULA recovering boosters, too. United Launch Alliance decided to pull four strap-on solid rocket boosters from the Atlantic Ocean after their use on the company’s most recent launch. Photos captured by Florida photographer Jerry Pike showed a solid rocket motor casing on a ship just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, wrote on X that the booster was one of four flown on the USSF-106 mission earlier this month, which marked the third flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and the first with a US national security payload.
A GEM from the sea … The boosters, built by Northrop Grumman, are officially called Graphite Epoxy Motors, or GEMs. They jettison from the Vulcan rocket less than two minutes after liftoff and fall into the ocean. They’re not designed for reuse, but ULA decided to recover this set of four from the Atlantic for inspections. The company also raised from the sea two motors from the previous Vulcan launch last year after one of them suffered a nozzle failure during launch. Bruno wrote on X that “performance and ballistics were spot on” with all four boosters from the more recent USSF-106 mission, but that engineers decided to go ahead and recover them to close out a “nice data set” from inspections of now six recovered motors—two from last year and four this year.
Next three launches
Aug. 30: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-7 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 09 UTC
Aug. 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-14 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 11: 15 UTC
Sept. 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-8 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02: 33 UTC
Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.
As SpaceX’s Starship vehicle gathered all of the attention this week, the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket continued to hit some impressive milestones.
Both occurred during relatively anonymous launches of the company’s Starlink satellites but are nonetheless notable because they underscore the value of first-stage reuse, which SpaceX has pioneered over the last decade.
The first milestone occurred on Wednesday morning with the launch of the Starlink 10-56 mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first stage that launched these satellites, Booster 1096, was making its second launch and successfully landed on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship. Strikingly, this was the 400th time SpaceX has executed a drone ship landing.
Then, less than 24 hours later, another Falcon 9 rocket launched the Starlink 10-11 mission from a nearby launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. This first stage, Booster 1067, subsequently returned and landed on another drone ship, A Shortfall of Gravitas.
This is a special booster, having made its debut in June 2021 and launching a wide variety of missions, including two Crew Dragon vehicles to the International Space Station and some Galileo satellites for the European Union. On Thursday, the rocket made its 30th flight, the first time a Falcon 9 booster has hit that level of experience.
A decade in the making
These milestones came about one decade after SpaceX began to have some success with first-stage reuse.
The company first made a controlled entry of the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage in September 2013, during the first flight of version 1.1 of the vehicle. This proved the viability of the concept of supersonic retropropulsion, which was, until that time, just theoretical.
This involves igniting the rocket’s nine Merlin engines while the vehicle is traveling faster than the speed of sound through the upper atmosphere, with external temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to the blunt force of this reentry, the engines in the outer ring of the rocket wanted to get splayed out, the company’s chief of propulsion at the time, Tom Mueller, told me for the book Reentry. Success on the first try seemed improbable.
He recalled watching this launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and observing reentry as a camera aboard SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s private jet tracked the rocket. The first stage made it all the way down, intact.
The ship made it all the way through reentry, turned to a horizontal position to descend through scattered clouds, then relit three of its engines to flip back to a vertical orientation for the final braking maneuver before splashdown.
Things to improve on
There are several takeaways from Tuesday’s flight that will require some improvements to Starship, but these are more akin to what officials might expect from a rocket test program and not the catastrophic failures of the ship that occurred earlier this year.
One of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 engines prematurely shut down during ascent. This has happened before, and while it didn’t affect the booster’s overall performance, engineers will investigate the failure to try to improve the reliability of SpaceX’s Raptor engines, each of which can generate more than a half-million pounds of thrust.
Later in the flight, cameras pointed at one of the ship’s rear flaps showed structural damage to the back of the wing. It wasn’t clear what caused the damage, but super-heated plasma burned through part of the flap as the ship fell deeper into the atmosphere. Still, the flap remained largely intact and was able to help control the vehicle through reentry and splashdown.
“We’re kind of being mean to this Starship a little bit,” Huot said on SpaceX’s live webcast. “We’re really trying to put it through the paces and kind of poke on what some of its weak points are.”
Small chunks of debris were also visible peeling off the ship during reentry. The origin of the glowing debris wasn’t immediately clear, but it may have been parts of the ship’s heat shield tiles. On this flight, SpaceX tested several different tile designs, including ceramic and metallic materials, and one tile design that uses “active cooling” to help dissipate heat during reentry.
A bright flash inside the ship’s engine bay during reentry also appeared to damage the vehicle’s aft skirt, the stainless steel structure that encircles the rocket’s six main engines.
“That’s not what we want to see,” Huot said. “We just saw some of the aft skirt just take a hit. So we’ve got some visible damage on the aft skirt. We’re continuing to reenter, though. We are intentionally stressing the ship as we go through this, so it is not guaranteed to be a smooth ride down to the Indian Ocean.
“We’ve removed a bunch of tiles in kind of critical places across the vehicle, so seeing stuff like that is still valuable to us,” he said. “We are trying to kind of push this vehicle to the limits to learn what its limits are as we design our next version of Starship.”
Shana Diez, a Starship engineer at SpaceX, perhaps summed up Tuesday’s results best on X: “It’s not been an easy year but we finally got the reentry data that’s so critical to Starship. It feels good to be back!”
“The underlying issue here is whether US missile defense should remain focused on the threat from rogue states and… accidental launches, and explicitly refrain from countering missile threats from China or Russia,” DesJarlais said. He called the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction “outdated.”
President Donald Trump speaks alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office at the White House on May 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. President Trump announced his plans for the Golden Dome, a national ballistic and cruise missile defense system. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Moulton’s amendment on nuclear deterrence failed to pass the committee in a voice vote, as did another Moulton proposal that would have tapped the brakes on developing space-based interceptors.
But one of Moulton’s amendments did make it through the committee. This amendment, if reconciled with the Senate, would prohibit the Pentagon from developing a privatized or subscription-based missile defense intercept capability. The amendment says the US military can own and operate such a system.
Ultimately, the House Armed Services Committee voted 55–2 to send the NDAA to a vote on the House floor. Then, lawmakers must hash out the differences between the House version of the NDAA with a bill written in the Senate before sending the final text to the White House for President Trump to sign into law.
More questions than answers
The White House says the missile shield will cost $175 billion over the next three years. But that’s just to start. A network of space-based missile sensors and interceptors, as prescribed in Trump’s executive order, will eventually number thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Congressional Budget Office reported in May that the Golden Dome program may ultimately cost up to $542 billion over 20 years.
The problem with all of the Golden Dome cost estimates is that the Pentagon has not settled on an architecture. We know the system will consist of a global network of satellites with sensors to detect and track missile launches, plus numerous interceptors in orbit to take out targets in space and during their “boost phase” when they’re moving relatively slowly through the atmosphere.
The Pentagon will order more sea- and ground-based interceptors to destroy missiles, drones, and aircraft as they near their targets within the United States. All of these weapons must be interconnected with a sophisticated command and control network that doesn’t yet exist.
Will Golden Dome’s space-based interceptors use kinetic kill vehicles to physically destroy missiles targeting the United States? Or will the interceptors rely on directed energy weapons like lasers or microwave signals to disable their targets? How many interceptors are actually needed?
These are all questions without answers. Despite the lack of detail, congressional Republicans approved $25 billion for the Pentagon to get started on the Golden Dome program as part of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill passed Congress with a party-line vote last month.
Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defense system intercepts a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip on May 11, 2021. Credit: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Moulton earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and master’s degrees in business and public administration from Harvard University. He served as a Marine Corps platoon leader in Iraq and was part of the first company of Marines to reach Baghdad during the US invasion of 2003. Moulton ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 but withdrew from the race before the first primary contest.
The text of our interview with Moulton is published below. It is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Ars: One of your amendments that passed committee would prevent the DoD from using a subscription or pay-for-service model for the Golden Dome. What prompted you to write that amendment?
Moulton: There were some rumors we heard that this is a model that the administration was pursuing, and there was reporting in mid-April suggesting that SpaceX was partnering with Anduril and Palantir to offer this kind of subscription service where, basically, the government would pay to access the technology rather than own the system. This isn’t an attack on any of these companies or anything. It’s a reassertion of the fundamental belief that these are responsibilities of our government. The decision to engage an intercontinental ballistic missile is a decision that the government must make, not some contractors working at one of these companies.
Ars: Basically, the argument you’re making is that war-fighting should be done by the government and the armed forces, not by contractors or private companies, right?
Moulton: That’s right, and it’s a fundamental belief that I’ve had for a long time. I was completely against contractors in Iraq when I was serving there as a younger Marine, but I can’t think of a place where this is more important than when you’re talking about nuclear weapons.
Ars: One of the amendments that you proposed, but didn’t pass, was intended to reaffirm the nation’s strategy of nuclear deterrence. What was the purpose of this amendment?
Moulton: Let’s just start by saying this is fundamentally why we have to have a theory that forms a foundation for spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. Golden Dome has no clear design, no real cost estimate, and no one has explained how this protects or enhances strategic stability. And there’s a lot of evidence that it would make strategic stability worse because our adversaries would no longer have confidence in Mutual Assured Destruction, and that makes them potentially much more likely to initiate a strike or overreact quickly to some sort of confrontation that has the potential to go nuclear.
In the case of the Russians, it means they could activate their nuclear weapon in space and just take out our Golden Dome interceptors if they think we might get into a nuclear exchange. I mean, all these things are horrific consequences.
Like I said in our hearing, there are two explanations for Golden Dome. The first is that every nuclear theorist for the last 75 years was wrong, and thank God, Donald Trump came around and set us right because in his first administration and every Democratic and Republican administration, we’ve all been wrong—and really the future of nuclear deterrence is nuclear defeat through defense and not Mutually Assured Destruction.
The other explanation, of course, is that Donald Trump decided he wants the golden version of something his friend has. You can tell me which one’s more likely, but literally no one has been able to explain the theory of the case. It’s dangerous, it’s wasteful… It might be incredibly dangerous. I’m happy to be convinced that Golden Dome is the right solution. I’m happy to have people explain why this makes sense and it’s a worthwhile investment, but literally nobody has been able to do that. If the Russians attack us… we know that this system is not going to be 100 percent effective. To me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t want to gamble on… which major city or two we lose in a scenario like that. I want to prevent a nuclear war from happening.
Several Chinese DF-5B intercontinental ballistic missiles, each capable of delivering up to 10 independently maneuverable nuclear warheads, are seen during a parade in Beijing on September 3, 2015. Credit: Xinhua/Pan Xu via Getty Images
Ars: What would be the way that an administration should propose something like the Golden Dome? Not through an executive order? What process would you like to see?
Moulton: As a result of a strategic review and backed up by a lot of serious theory and analysis. The administration proposes a new solution and has hearings about it in front of Congress, where they are unafraid of answering tough questions. This administration is a bunch of cowards who can who refuse to answer tough questions in Congress because they know they can’t back up their president’s proposals.
Ars: I’m actually a little surprised we haven’t seen any sort of architecture yet. It’s been six months, and the administration has already missed a few of Trump’s deadlines for selecting an architecture.
Moulton: It’s hard to develop an architecture for something that doesn’t make sense.
Ars: I’ve heard from several retired military officials who think something like the Golden Dome is a good idea, but they are disappointed in the way the Trump administration has approached it. They say the White House hasn’t stated the case for it, and that risks politicizing something they view as important for national security.
Moulton: One idea I’ve had is that the advent of directed energy weapons (such as lasers and microwave weapons) could flip the cost curve and actually make defense cheaper than offense, whereas in the past, it’s always been cheaper to develop more offensive capabilities rather than the defensive means to shoot at them.
And this is why the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in the early 1970s was so effective, because there was this massive arms race where we were constantly just creating a new offensive weapon to get around whatever defenses our adversary proposed. The reason why everyone would just quickly produce a new offensive weapon before that treaty was put into place is because it was easy to do.
My point is that I’ve even thrown them this bone, and I’m saying, ‘Here, maybe that’s your reason, right?” And they just look at me dumbfounded because obviously none of them are thinking about this. They’re just trying to be lackeys for the president, and they don’t recognize how dangerous that is.
Ars: I’ve heard from a chorus of retired and even current active duty military leaders say the same thing about directed energy weapons. You essentially can use one platform in space take take numerous laser shots at a missile instead of expending multiple interceptors for one kill.
Moulton: Yes, that’s basically the theory of the case. Now, my hunch is that if you actually did the serious analysis, you would determine that it still decreases state strategic stability. So in terms of the overall safety and security of the United States, whether it’s directed energy weapons or kinetic interceptors, it’s still a very bad plan.
But I’m even throwing that out there to try to help them out here. “Maybe this is how you want to make your case.” And they just look at me like deer in the headlights because, obviously, they’re not thinking about the national security of the United States.
Ars: I also wanted to ask about the Space Force’s push to develop weapons to use against other satellites in orbit. They call these counter-space capabilities. They could be using directed energy, jamming, robotic arms, anti-satellite missiles. This could take many different forms, and the Space Force, for the first time, is talking more openly about these issues. Are these kinds of weapons necessary, in your view, or are they too destabilizing?
Moulton: I certainly wish we could go back to a time when the Russians and Chinese were not developing space weapons—or were not weaponizing space, I should say, because that was the international agreement. But the reality of the world we live in today is that our adversaries are violating that agreement. We have to be prepared to defend the United States.
Ars: Are there any other space policy issues on your radar or things you have concerns about?
Moulton: There’s a lot. There’s so much going on with space, and that’s the reason I chose this subcommittee, even though people would expect me to serve on the subcommittee dealing with the Marine Corps, because I just think space is incredibly important. We’re dealing with everything from promotion policy in the Space Force to acquisition reform to rules of engagement, and anything in between. There’s an awful lot going on there, but I do think that one of the most important things to talk about right now is how dangerous the Golden Dome could be.
