Space – Page 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sealing the deal

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

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As Moon interest heats up, two companies unveil plans for a lunar “harvester”

astrolab, interlune, lunar rover, Space / Kris Guyer / March 3, 2026

Starting smaller with FLIP

This is not the first time the two companies have worked together. Last August, Interlune announced that it would fly a multispectral camera on a smaller prototype rover being built by Astrolab. This camera will be used to estimate helium-3 quantities and concentration in Moon dirt, or regolith.

This FLIP rover, about the size of a go-kart, is due to launch later this year on a lunar lander built by Astrobotic. It will fly atop the Griffin lander, taking the place of NASA’s VIPER rover, which has been moved to another spacecraft.

The mission will therefore be a learning exercise for both Astrolab, in testing out its software and other features of a small lunar rover, as well as Interlune, which will seek to ground truth data about the concentration of Helium-3 that has previously been estimated from samples returned to Earth during the Apollo program.

In addition to FLIP, Astrolab is developing a larger rover, FLEX, that is about the size of a minivan. This vehicle has a horseshoe-shaped chassis that can accommodate about 3 cubic meters of payload. This allows for a broad array of activities, from carrying multiple scientific instruments across the Moon and providing a long-distance rover for two astronauts, to moving large equipment or, in the case of Interlune, serving as a mobile harvester.

“Our thesis is to make the most versatile platform possible so we can serve a wide array of customers and achieve NASA’s goal of being one customer among many,” said Jaret Matthews, Astrolab founder and chief executive, in an interview. “So we have essentially a modular approach that allows us to either pick up cargo or implements or payloads. And so in this case, the excavating equipment that Interlune is developing would basically go under the belly of the rover.”

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Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding

bridenstine, launch, NASA, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / March 2, 2026

A highly regarded administrator

A former Republican House member from Oklahoma, Bridenstine served a generally well-regarded term as NASA administrator from April 2018 to January 2021 during President Trump’s first term.

The high point of his tenure in office came in May 2020, thanks to SpaceX. That summer, with the Crew Dragon vehicle, SpaceX and NASA successfully flew two astronauts to the International Space Station, breaking America’s dependence on Russia for low-Earth orbit transportation. Bridenstine relished this with an oft-repeated mantra of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil.

However, after leaving NASA, Bridenstine has appeared to become hostile to the dominant company founded by Elon Musk. He joined the board of a competitor, Viasat. Later, Bridenstine became the executive of Government Operations for United Launch Alliance, while his firm also collected a hefty lobbying fee.

All of this is not particularly abnormal for the revolving door in Washington, DC, where senior officials go between government positions and industry. Nevertheless, some observers were surprised by the striking nature of Bridenstine’s attack on NASA for the decision to award a Human Landing System contract to SpaceX in April 2021, three months after he left office. A new administrator had not yet been confirmed at NASA at the time, so a senior NASA engineer, Steve Jurczyk, served as acting administrator for the space agency.

Attacking his own process

Bridenstine sharply criticized this lander decision during testimony before Cruz’s committee last September.

“There was a moment in time when we had no NASA administrator,” he said at 42 minutes into the hearing. “It was after I was gone, and before Senator Nelson became the NASA administrator. An architecture was selected. And I don’t know how this happens, but the biggest decision in the history of NASA, at least since I’ve been paying attention, the biggest decision happened in the absence of a NASA administrator. And that decision was, instead of buying a Moon lander, we’re gonna buy a big rocket.”

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NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return

artemis, blue origin, Boeing, NASA, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / Rejus Almole / March 1, 2026

“Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success.”

Artist’s illustration of the Boeing-developed Exploration Upper Stage, with four hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on Friday morning, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage.

The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission, and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is ever-increasing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

“NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.”

Shaking things up

The announced changes to the Artemis program include:

Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

At the core of Isaacman’s concerns is the low flight rate of the SLS rocket and Artemis missions. During past exploration missions, from Mercury through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program, NASA has launched humans on average about once every three months. It has been nearly 3.5 years since Artemis I launched.

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

A senior NASA official, speaking on background to Ars, noted that the space agency has experienced hydrogen and helium leaks during both the Artemis I and Artemis II pre-launch preparations, and these problems have led to monthslong delays in launch.

“If I recall, the timing between Apollo 7 and 8 was nine weeks,” the official said. “Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success. Certainly, making each one of them a work of art with some major configuration change is also not helpful in the process, and we’re clearly seeing the results of it, right?”

The goal, therefore, is to standardize the SLS rocket into a single configuration to make it as reliable as possible and to launch it as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launch crew to the Moon, perhaps through Artemis V as Congress has mandated, or perhaps even a little longer.

Is everyone on board?

The NASA official said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

The biggest opposition to these proposals would seemingly come from Boeing, which is the prime contractor for the Exploration Upper Stage, a contract worth billions of dollars to develop a more powerful rocket that was due to launch for the first time later this decade. However, in a NASA news release, Boeing appeared to offer at least some support for the revised plans.

“Boeing is a proud partner to the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” said Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security president and CEO, in the news release. “The SLS core stage remains the world’s most powerful rocket stage, and the only one that can carry American astronauts directly to the moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs.”

Solid reasons for changing Artemis III

NASA’s new approach to Artemis reflects a return to the philosophy of the Apollo program. During the late 1960s, the space agency flew a series of preparatory crewed missions before the Apollo 11 lunar landing. These included Apollo 7 (a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft), Apollo 8 (a lunar orbiting mission), Apollo 9 (a low-Earth orbit rendezvous with the lunar lander), and Apollo 10 (a test of the lunar lander descending to the Moon, without touching down).

With its previous Artemis template, NASA skipped the steps taken by Apollo 7, 9, and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this leap from Artemis II—a crewed lunar flyby of the Moon testing only the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft—to Artemis III and a full-on lunar landing was enormous and risky.

The new approach will, in NASA parlance, “buy down” some of the risk for a 21st-century lunar landing, including performance and handling of a lunar lander, rendezvous and docking, communications, spacesuit performance, and more.

It will also increase the challenges for NASA. In particular, the timeline to bring the Orion spacecraft to readiness for a mid-2027 launch will need to be accelerated, and efforts to integrate that vehicle with one or both lander providers will need serious attention.

For the Artemis IV lunar landing mission, NASA will also need to human-rate a new upper stage for the SLS rocket. The vehicle currently uses a modified Delta IV upper stage manufactured by United Launch Alliance. But that rocket production line is closed, and NASA only has two more of these stages. With the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, NASA will now procure a new stage commercially. NASA officials only said they will seek a “standardized” upper stage. As Ars has previously reported, the most likely replacement would be the Centaur V upper stage currently flying on Vulcan rockets.

What of the Lunar Gateway?

Friday’s announcement—which, for the space community, is the equivalent of a major earthquake—left some key details unaddressed. For example, NASA has been developing a larger launch tower to support the Block 1B version of the SLS rocket, with its more powerful upper stage. Development of this tower, finally underway, has been a clown show, with project costs ballooning from an initial estimate of $383 million to $1.8 billion, and delays stacked on delays. Will this tower be scrapped or repurposed?

Isaacman and other NASA officials were also mum on the Lunar Gateway, a proposed space station in a high orbit around the Moon. Key elements of this space station are under construction. However, cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage raises questions about its future. The main purpose of the Block 1B version of SLS was to launch heavier payloads, most notably elements of the Gateway along with Orion.

“The whole Gateway-Moon base conversation is not for today,” the senior NASA official said. “We, I can assure you, will talk about the Moon base in the weeks ahead. I would just not overly read into this, because we had manifested some Gateway modules on Falcon Heavy already. The implications of standardizing SLS and increasing launch rate are about the ability to return to the Moon. I don’t think we necessarily have to speculate too much on what the other downstream implications are.”

The Gateway program office is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the lunar station is viewed as a successor to the International Space Station in terms of flight operations.

Key politicians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have been supportive of this new station. But during some recent congressional hearings, Cruz has indicated he is open to a lunar space station or an outpost on the lunar surface. He just wants to be sure NASA has an enduring presence on or near the Moon. One industry source said Isaacman could be laying the groundwork to replace the Gateway Program with a Moon Base program office in Houston. It is unclear how much of a political battle this would ultimately be.

Some of this has been well-predicted

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

In April 2024, Ars reported that some senior NASA officials were considering an Earth-orbit rendezvous between Orion and Starship as a means to buy down risk for a lunar landing. NASA ultimately punted on the idea before it was revived by Isaacman this month.

Additionally, in October 2024, Ars offered a guide to saving the “floundering” Artemis program by canceling the Block 1B upgrade for the SLS rocket, replacing its upper stage with a Centaur V, and canceling the Lunar Gateway. This would free up an estimated $2 billion annually to focus on accelerating a lunar landing, the publication estimated.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

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 Air Force’s new ICBM is nearly ready to fly, but there’s nowhere to put it

ICBM, Northrop Grumman, rockets, sentinel, Space, strategic command, US Air Force / Paul Patrick / February 28, 2026

“There were assumptions that were made in the strategy that obviously didn’t come to fruition.”

An unarmed Minuteman III missile launches during an operational test at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, on September 2, 2020. Credit: US Air Force

DENVER—The US Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is on track for its first test flight next year, military officials reaffirmed this week.

But no one is ready to say when hundreds of new missile silos, dug from the windswept Great Plains, will be finished, how much they cost, or, for that matter, how many nuclear warheads each Sentinel missile could actually carry.

The LGM-35A Sentinel will replace the Air Force’s Minuteman III fleet, in service since 1970, with the first of the new missiles due to become operational in the early 2030s. But it will take longer than that to build and activate the full complement of Sentinel missiles and the 450 hardened underground silos to house them.

Amid the massive undertaking of developing a new ICBM, defense officials are keeping their options open for the missile’s payload unit. Until February 5, the Air Force was barred from fitting ballistic missiles with Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) under the constraints of the New START nuclear arms control treaty cinched by the US and Russia in 2010. The treaty expired three weeks ago, opening up the possibility of packaging each Sentinel missile with multiple warheads, not just one.

Senior US military officials briefed reporters on the Sentinel program this week at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Warfare Symposium near Denver. There was a lot to unpack.

This cutaway graphic shows the major elements of the Sentinel missile. Credit: Northrop Grumman

Into the breach

Two years ago, the Air Force announced the Sentinel program’s budget had grown from $77.7 billion to nearly $141 billion. This was after something known as a “Nunn-McCurdy breach,” referring to the names of two lawmakers behind legislation mandating reviews for woefully overbudget defense programs. In 2024, the Pentagon determined that the Sentinel program was too essential to national security to cancel.

“We’ve gotten all the capability that we can out of the Minuteman,” said Gen. Stephen “S.L.” Davis, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command. Potential enemy threats to the Minuteman ICBM have “evolved significantly” since its initial deployment in the Cold War, Davis said.

The $141 billion figure is already out of date, as the Air Force announced last year that it would need to construct new silos for the Sentinel missile. The original plan was to adapt existing Minuteman III silos for the new weapons, but engineers determined that it would take too long and cost too much to modify the aging Minuteman facilities.

Instead, the Air Force, in partnership with contractors and the US Army Corps of Engineers, will dig hundreds of new holes across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The new silos will include 24 new forward launch centers, three centralized wing command centers, and more than 5,000 miles of fiber connections to wire it all together, military and industry officials said.

Sentinel, which had its official start in 2016, will be the largest US government civil works project since the completion of the interstate highway system, and is the most complex acquisition program the Air Force has ever undertaken, wrote Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) in a 2024 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal.

Gen. Dale White, the Pentagon’s director of critical major weapons systems, said Wednesday the Defense Department plans to complete a “restructuring” of the Sentinel program by the end of the year. Only then will an updated budget be made public.

The military stopped constructing new missile silos in the late 1960s and hasn’t developed a new ICBM since the 1980s. It shows.

“It’s been a very, very long time since we’ve done this,” White said. “At the very core, there were assumptions that were made in the strategy that obviously didn’t come to fruition.”

Military planners also determined it would not be as easy as they hoped to maintain the existing Minuteman III missiles on alert while converting their silos for Sentinel. Building new silos will keep the Minuteman III online—perhaps until as late as 2050, according to a government watchdog—as the Air Force activates Sentinel emplacements. The Minuteman III was previously supposed to retire around 2036.

“We’re not reusing the Minuteman III silos, but at the same time that obviously gives much greater operational flexibility to the combatant commander,” White said. “So, we had to take a step back and have a more enduring look at what we were trying to do, what capability is needed, making sure we do not have a gap in capability.”

341st Missile Maintenance Squadron technicians connect a reentry system to a spacer on an intercontinental ballistic missile during a Simulated Electronic Launch-Minuteman test September 22, 2020, at a launch facility near Great Falls, Montana. Credit: US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Daniel Brosam

Decommissioning the Minuteman III silos will come with its own difficulties. An Air Force official said on background that commanders recently took one Minuteman silo off alert to better gauge how long it will take to decommission each location. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman, Sentinel’s prime contractor, broke ground on the first “prototype” Sentinel silo in Promontory, Utah, earlier this month.

The Air Force has ordered 659 Sentinel missiles from Northrop Grumman, including more than 400 to go on alert, plus spares and developmental missiles for flight testing. The first Sentinel test launch from a surface pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, is scheduled for 2027.

To ReMIRV or not to ReMIRV

For the first time in more than 50 years, the world’s two largest nuclear forces have been unshackled from any arms control agreements. New START was the latest in a series of accords between the United States and Russia, and with it came the ban on MIRVs aboard land-based ICBMs. The Air Force removed the final MIRV units from Minuteman III missiles in 2014.

The Trump administration wants a new agreement that includes Russia as well as China, which was not part of New START. US officials were expected to meet with Russian and Chinese diplomats this week to discuss the topic. There’s no guarantee of any agreement between the three powers, and even if there is one, it may take the form of an informal personal accord among leaders, rather than a ratified treaty.

“The strategic environment hasn’t changed overnight, from before New START was in effect, until it has lapsed, and within our nation’s nuclear deterrent,” said Adm. Rich Correll, head of US Strategic Command. “We have the flexibility to address any adjustments to the security environment as a result of that treaty lapsing.”

This flexibility includes the option to “reMIRV” missiles to accommodate more than one nuclear warhead, Correll said. “We have the ability to do that. That’s obviously a national-level decision that would go up to the president, and those policy levers, if needed, provide additional resiliency within the capabilities that we have.”

MIRVs are more difficult for missile defense systems to counter, and allow offensive missile forces to package more ordnance in a single shot. With New START gone, there’s no longer any mechanism for international arms inspections. Russia may now also stack more nukes on its ICBMs. Gone, too, is the limitation for the United States and Russia to deploy no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads at one time.

“The expiration of this treaty is going to lead us into a world for the first time since 1972 where there are no limits on the sizes of those arsenals,” said Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“I think this opens up the question of whether we’re going to be heading into a world that’s just going to be a lot more unpredictable and dangerous when you have countries like the United States and Russia that have a lot less transparency into each other’s nuclear arsenals, and fundamentally, as a result, a lot less predictability about the world that they’re operating in,” Panda continued.

Mk21 reentry vehicles on display in the Missile and Space Gallery at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Credit: US Air Force

Some strategists have questioned the need for land-based ICBMs in the modern era. The locations of the Air Force’s missile fields are well known, making them juicy targets for an adversary seeking to take out a leg of the military’s nuclear triad. The stationary nature of the land-based missile component contrasts with the mobility and stealth of the nation’s bomber and submarine fleets. Also, bombers and subs can already deliver multiple nukes, something land-based missiles couldn’t do under New START.

Proponents of maintaining the triad say the ICBM missile fields serve an important, if not macabre, function in the event of the unimaginable. They would soak up the brunt of any large-scale nuclear attack. Hundreds of miles of the Great Plains would be incinerated.

“The main rationale for maintaining silo-based ICBMs is to complicate an adversary’s nuclear strategy by forcing them to target 400 missile silos dispersed throughout the United States to limit a retaliatory nuclear strike, which is why ICBMs are often referred to as the ‘nuclear sponge,’” the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation wrote in 2021. “However, with the development of sea-based nuclear weapons, which are essentially undetectable, and air-based nuclear weapons, which provide greater flexibility, ground-based ICBMs have become increasingly technologically redundant.”

Policymakers in power do not agree. The ICBM program has powerful backers in Congress, and Sentinel has enjoyed support from the Obama, Biden, and both Trump administrations. The Pentagon is also developing the B-21 Raider strategic bomber and a new generation of “Columbia-class” nuclear-armed subs.

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: Vulcan “many months” from flying; Falcon 9 extends reuse milestone

rocket report, Space / Kris Guyer / February 28, 2026

All the news that’s fit to lift

“As the original architect of Vector’s vision, it’s deeply meaningful to bring these assets home.”

Rocket Lab has completed qualification testing of its “Hungry Hippo” payload fairing. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 8.31 of the Rocket Report! We have some late-breaking news this week with an update Thursday afternoon from Rocket Lab on the timing of its much-anticipated Neutron rocket. Following the failure of a first stage tank during testing, the company is pushing the medium-lift rocket’s debut into the fourth quarter of this year. Effectively that probably means 2027 for the booster, which is disappointing because we all very much want to see another reusable rocket take flight.

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.

The ghost of Vector lives on. Tucson, Arizona-based satellite and rocket developer Phantom Space, co-founded by Jim Cantrell in 2019, has acquired the remnants of Vector Launch, Space News reports. The announcement is notable because Cantrell left Vector as its finances deteriorated in 2019. Cantrell said some of the assets, comprising flight-proven design elements, engineering data, and other technology originally developed for Vector, will be immediately integrated into Phantom’s Daytona vehicle architecture to reduce development risk.

What’s your vector, Victor? … “As the original architect of Vector’s vision, it’s deeply meaningful to bring these assets home to Phantom,” Cantrell said in a statement. “This acquisition isn’t just about technology, it’s about momentum. We’re accelerating Daytona, creating high-tech aerospace jobs in Tucson, and moving faster toward orbital capability.” The small-lift Daytona rocket could use some acceleration since it has been delayed year after year for a while now. At present, it is slated to debut during the second half of 2027.

UK limits launch liability. An amendment to the United Kingdom’s Space Industry Act will mandate that limits are set on how much launch operators are financially liable if something goes wrong, European Spaceflight reports. According to Sarah Madden, a space lawyer at the London-based law firm Winckworth Sherwood, the amendment to the legislation removes the risk that operators launching from the UK might face unlimited liability.

Putting policy into law … Although the legislation provided certainty, all three launch operator licenses issued to date by the UK Civil Aviation Authority include a cap on indemnity to the government. Virgin Orbit’s 2022 horizontal launch license capped this at $250 million, while the vertical launch licenses granted to Skyrora and Rocket Factory Augsburg in 2025 set the cap at £10.5 million ($14.2 million). However, these limits were imposed as a matter of policy rather than law.

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PLD nabs launch contract. Spanish satellite operator Sateliot has signed a launch services agreement with PLD Space to launch its first two high-capacity 5G D2D (Direct-to-Device) Tritó satellites aboard a dedicated MIURA 5 mission, European Spaceflight reports. PLD Space is working toward the first flight of its 35.7-meter-tall MIURA 5 rocket in 2026. The rocket is designed to deliver payloads of up to 1,040 kilograms to low-Earth orbit and will initially launch from a new multi-user facility being built on the grounds of the Guiana Space Centre’s former Diamant launch complex.

Two at a time … PLD Space will attempt to carry its first two Tritó satellites to orbit aboard a dedicated MIURA 5 mission in 2027. According to the company, Sateliot selected PLD Space “based on MIURA 5’s ability to provide an independent, dedicated service tailored to the client’s specific needs, ensuring optimal launch conditions for deploying its space infrastructure.” Each Tritó satellite will have a mass of approximately 160 kilograms.

Neutron rocket launch slips to Q4 2026. As part of its quarterly earnings guidance update on Thursday, Rocket Lab provided a new launch target for the medium-lift Neutron rocket. Following the failure of first stage tank during testing, Neutron’s first launch is now targeted for “Q4 2026,” the company said. This is a notable slip, given that it was only last November that Rocket Lab announced a slip from the end of 2025 to “mid-2026.”

Invoking Berger’s Law … In its news release regarding the fourth quarter of 2025 earnings, the company said it completed successful qualification for Neutron’s thrust structure and entered the qualification phase for the interstage, and successfully qualified Neutron’s Hungry Hippo fairing and delivered it to the Assembly and Integration Complex in Virginia. I hate to do it, but I’m afraid that I am compelled to invoke Berger’s Law for rockets on this one, which states, “If a rocket is predicted to make its debut in Q4 of a calendar year, and that quarter is six or more months away, the launch will be delayed.” Since its inception in 2022, the law has been undefeated.

Falcon 9 extends its reuse milestone. SpaceX’s most-flown Falcon 9 rocket booster launched once again Saturday night, making its 33rd mission to space and back, Spaceflight Now reports. The 33rd flight of Falcon 9 booster 1067 came about two and a half months after its previous launch in early December. Its previous missions include four flights for NASA, the European Commission’s Galileo L13, and 20 batches of Starlink satellites.

Lordy, lordy, Falcon 9 is turning 40? … Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1067 landed on the drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas, positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 143rd landing on this vessel and the 575th booster landing to date for SpaceX. At present, SpaceX says it is working to certify its first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket for up to 40 flights.

Pentagon happy with military rockets. The Space Force officer tasked with overseeing more than $24 billion in research and development spending says the Pentagon is more interested in supporting startups building new space sensors and payloads than adding yet another rocket company to its portfolio, Ars reports. “We’re on path for mass-produced launch,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy said at a space finance conference in Dallas.

Help needed to speed up payloads … Payloads, Purdy told Ars after his talk, are “the last frontier” for scaling space missions. “I remain convinced that we’re going to think about the mission that we need, and we’re going to need satellites out the door and launched and in orbit within the week, at scale,” Purdy said. “I’m very convinced that that’s the path that we’re going to move down on the commercial and government side.”

New data on how rockets pollute the atmosphere. New research bolsters growing concerns about the pollution produced by rocket launches, Ars reports. The new study in Nature analyzed a plume of pollution trailing part of a Falcon rocket that crashed through the upper atmosphere on February 19, 2025, after SpaceX lost control of its reentry. The authors said it is the first time debris from a specific spacecraft disintegration has been traced and measured in the near-space region about 80 to 110 kilometers above Earth. Changes there can affect the stratosphere, where ozone and climate processes operate. Until recent years, human activities had little impact on that region.

Studying the Ignorosphere … “I was surprised how big the event was, visually,” lead author Robin Wing, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said via email. He said people across northern Europe captured images of the burning debris, which was concentrated enough to enable high-resolution observations and to use atmospheric models to trace the lithium to its source. The study shows that instruments can detect rocket pollution “in the ‘Ignorosphere’ (upper atmosphere near space),” he wrote. “There is hope that we can get ahead of the problem and that we don’t run blind into a new era of emissions from space.”

Ambitious Chinese launch company moves into development. Chinese launch startup Space Epoch has secured B-round funding as the company moves toward a first orbital launch and recovery attempt late this year, Space News reports. The company says the funding means Space Epoch has entered a stage of large-scale development. “Three Yuanxingzhe-1 rockets already in production will undergo ground testing in the second half of the year, with the goal of achieving a successful first orbital launch and recovery by year’s end,” Space Epoch said in a statement.

Funding amount undisclosed … Yuanxingzhe-1 (YXZ-1) is a methane-liquid oxygen rocket designed for reusability. Space Epoch says it has a payload capacity of 13,800 kilograms to a 200-kilometer orbit and 9,000 kg to a 1,100 km orbit—the latter altitude being one associated with the national Guowang megaconstellation. It also claims a price of no more than 20,000 yuan per kilogram (about $2,900 per kg), with the rocket designed to be reusable 20 times. The company conducted a vertical takeoff and splashdown test in May 2025 using a YXZ-1 verification rocket, carrying out a reuse test two months later.

Vulcan likely “many months” from flying again. Twice, once in 2024 and again earlier this month, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket experienced issues with the nozzle on one of its solid rocket boosters during a launch. In both cases, the rocket’s main engines compensated for the issues, but the US military is not eager to test Vulcan’s ability to overcome such a dramatic problem again, Ars reports. “Any time there’s an anomaly, my team is going to be actively engaged with the contractors to make sure we understand what happened and we correct that issue,” said Col. Eric Zarybnisky, program acquisition executive for Space Systems Command’s space access program.

A nettlesome nozzle issue … Zarybnisky spoke with reporters Wednesday in a roundtable at the Air Force and Space Force Association’s Warfare Symposium near Denver. He said it was too early to provide details on the direction of the investigation but predicted it would be a “many months process” to identify the “exact technical issue” and the corrective actions required to prevent it from happening again. After the first booster issue in 2024, investigators identified a manufacturing defect in a carbon composite insulator, or heat shield, inside the nozzle. The latest incident suggests the defect was not fixed or that there is a separate problem with Northrop’s boosters. (submitted by philip verdieck)

SLS rocket rolls back to hangar. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced this week that a new problem with the Space Launch System rocket will require the removal of the rocket from its launch pad in Florida. The large booster, with the Orion spacecraft stacked on top, then rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building. The latest issue appeared on the evening of February 20, when data showed an interruption in helium flow into the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket, Ars reports. NASA officials were eyeing a launch attempt for Artemis II as soon as March 6, the first of five launch opportunities available in March.

Marching into April … There are approximately five days per month that the mission can depart the Earth after accounting for the position of the Moon in its orbit, the flight’s trajectory, and thermal and lighting constraints. The next series of launch dates begins on April 1. The space agency bypassed launch opportunities earlier this month after a fueling test on the SLS rocket revealed a hydrogen leak. After replacing seals in the fuel line leading into the SLS core stage, NASA completed a second fueling test last week with no significant leaks, raising hopes the mission could take off next month. With the discovery of the helium issue last Friday night, the March launch dates are now off the table.

Next three launches

February 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-108 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 10: 20 UTC

March 1: Alpha | Stairway to Seven | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 50 UTC

March 1: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-23 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08: 00 UTC

Rocket Report: Vulcan “many months” from flying; Falcon 9 extends reuse milestone Read More »

Hyperion author Dan Simmons dies from stroke at 77

culture, dan simmons, Hyperion, obituary, Space / Rejus Almole / February 27, 2026

Dan Simmons, the author of more than three dozen books, including the famed Hyperion Cantos, has died from a stroke. He was 77.

Simmons, who worked in elementary education before becoming an author in the 1980s, produced a broad portfolio of writing that spanned several genres, including horror fiction, historical fiction, and science fiction. Often, his books included elements of all of these. This obituary will focus on what is generally considered his greatest work, and what I believe is possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, Hyperion.

Published in 1989, Hyperion is set in a far-flung future in which human settlement spans hundreds of planets. The novel feels both familiar, in that its structure follows Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and utterly unfamiliar in its strange, far-flung setting.

Seven characters, seven stories

At its heart are the background stories of seven characters on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs, which move backward in time. There, they may possibly confront a legendary, mythical, terrifying, and time-bending creature known as the Shrike. Each of the stories told by the seven characters is done so in a different subgenre, from tragedy to political thriller to military science fiction, and so on.

I went into Hyperion blind, decades ago, knowing almost nothing about it. I was never the same after finishing it. For a book that is, essentially, “hard” science fiction, Hyperion is also one of the most emotional books I have ever read.

The first tale is that of a priest, Lenar Hoyt, and the dying religion of Catholicism. By the end of this story of cruciforms, isolated civilizations, tesla trees, and more, I was floored. And that was just the first story of seven! Most powerful, for me, was the Scholar’s Tale, the story of Sol Weintraub and his daughter, Rachel. The first of my two daughters had just been born when I read this book, and for the first time ever, when reading, I cried. Cried like a baby.

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NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return

artemis, blue origin, Boeing, NASA, Space, spacex, Staff, united launch alliance / Kris Guyer / February 27, 2026

“Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success.”

Artist’s illustration of the Boeing-developed Exploration Upper Stage, with four hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on Friday morning, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage.

Shaking things up

The announced changes to the Artemis program include:

Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

Is everyone on board?

The NASA official said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

Solid reasons for changing Artemis III

What of the Lunar Gateway?

The Gateway program office is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the lunar station is viewed as a successor to the International Space Station in terms of flight operations.

Some of this has been well-predicted

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return Read More »

A non-public document reveals that science may not be prioritized on next Mars mission

mars telecommunications network, mars telecommunications orbiter, rocket lab, Space / Tim Belzer / February 26, 2026

The way this document is written suggests that when NASA scores bidders for the Mars Telecommunications Network, the addition of a camera or other scientific payloads won’t be a net positive. However, if they pose an overall risk to the mission, they would be a net negative.

New award to Rocket Lab may complicate things

One of the other intriguing parts of this mission is that it sets up a battle royale of sorts for some of NASA’s most prominent contractors. Rocket Lab and Blue Origin have both waged very public campaigns that tout their solutions to NASA’s needs. SpaceX is also interested in winning a Mars mission for its Starship launch system. Then there are traditional contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, which have a long and storied history of building robust (if costly) Mars missions.

If NASA is going to launch the Mars Telecommunications Network by late 2028 to make the next “window” to the red planet, it must move quickly with this solicitation. In particular, industry protests after a decision is made could hold up the project for months and would almost certainly doom NASA’s hopes of making the 2028 launch opportunity.

On Monday, the space agency awarded Rocket Lab a $390,936 contract to study “Mars End-to-End Communication Service Architectures.” The award is not significant monetarily, but it does indicate that NASA is interested in Rocket Lab’s ideas for improving communications between Earth and Mars, and potentially a Mars Sample Return mission down the road. However, one source suggested to Ars that the award is a potential conflict of interest.

The contracting office for the Rocket Lab award is Goddard Space Flight Center, which is also responsible for managing the Mars Telecommunications Network. That Rocket Lab, alone, received an award like this from the NASA center that will also decide on the orbiting spacecraft—coterminous when such a decision will be made—is surely to be the basis of one or more protests should Rocket Lab win the Mars Telecommunications Network contract, the source told Ars.

A non-public document reveals that science may not be prioritized on next Mars mission Read More »

Pentagon buyer: We’re happy with our launch industry, but payloads are lagging

Commercial space, military space, Science, Space, space force, US Space Force / Paul Patrick / February 23, 2026

“The point is to get missions out the door as fast as possible. Two to three years is too slow.”

Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy oversees the Space Force’s acquisition programs at the Pentagon. Credit: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images

DALLAS—The Space Force officer tasked with overseeing more than $24 billion in research and development spending says the Pentagon is more interested in supporting startups building new space sensors and payloads than adding yet another rocket company to its portfolio.

The statement, made at a space finance conference in Dallas last week, was one of several points Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy wanted to get across to a room full of investors and commercial space executives.

The other points on Purdy’s agenda were that the Space Force is more interested in high-volume production than spending money to develop the latest technologies, and that the military has, at least for now, lost one of its most important tools for supporting and diversifying the space industrial base.

The rhetoric around prioritizing payloads over launchers aligns with the Space Force’s recent history of supporting small startups. Since 2020, SpaceWERX, the Space Force’s commercial innovation program, has awarded 23 funding agreements—called Strategic Funding Increases (STRATFIs)—to commercial space startups developing new sensors, software, satellite components, spacecraft buses, and orbital transfer vehicles. SpaceWERX awarded a single STRATFI agreement to a launch company—ABL Space Systems—and that firm has since exited the space launch market.

“We’re on path for mass-produced launch,” said Purdy, the military deputy for space acquisition in the Department of the Air Force. “We have got our ranges situated so we can do mass-produced launch. We’ve got our data centers and our data structure for mass-production. We’ve got AI pieces that are mass-produced, satellite buses are nearly there, and our payloads are the last element. Payloads at mass-produced affordability, at scale, is the key element.”

K2’s Gravitas satellite, set for launch next month, will test the company’s Hall-effect thruster, solar arrays, and other systems. Credit: K2

Putting the money in

Payloads, Purdy told Ars after his talk, are “the last frontier” for scaling space missions. “The point is to get missions out the door as fast as possible. Two to three years is too slow. We’ve got to get down to one week. I’m not talking about super exquisite [payloads]. That’s not most of our missions. The commercial industry, your Kuipers [Amazon LEO], your Starlinks, have sort of got the comm piece down, but we’re still struggling in a lot of other stuff.”

One kind of payload Purdy identified was infrared sensors. Infrared sensors often come with cryocoolers to chill detectors to temperatures cold enough to provide sensitivity to faint targets, such as distant missile plumes, fires, explosions, or other objects in space. The technology isn’t as eye-catching as a rocket launch, but it will be key to many Space Force programs, including the Golden Dome missile defense shield backed by the Trump administration.

“I remain convinced that we’re going to think about the mission that we need, and we’re going to need satellites out the door and launched and in orbit within the week, at scale,” Purdy said. “I’m very convinced that that’s the path that we’re going to move down on the commercial and government side.”

The companies that come closest to that pace of satellite manufacturing are the ones Purdy mentioned: SpaceX’s Starlink and the Amazon LEO broadband networks. SpaceX and Amazon produce multiple satellites per day, but the spacecraft are identical. The Space Force needs plenty of rockets and communications satellites, but it also needs payloads and sensors to ride those launch vehicles and produce the data to be routed through relay stations in orbit.

Before President Trump ever uttered the words “Golden Dome,” the Space Force’s Space Development Agency was already striving to deploy a network of at least several hundred government-owned missile-detection, tracking, and data-relay satellites. Those satellites have suffered delays due to supply chain issues, particularly long lead times and delays in satellite buses, infrared payloads, laser communication terminals, and radiation-hardened processors.

Singing the blues

But the Space Force has lost access to one of the tools it used to help solve these problems. Many space mission components come from small businesses, and some parts come from overseas. The Space Force used STRATFIs, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants to pay companies for basic research, experimentation, and scaling up manufacturing capacity. STRATFIs, SBIRs, and STTRs provided seed funding for high-risk, high-reward research and development.

Congress last year failed to reauthorize these programs, which are also used by NASA and other federal agencies. Opponents to a clean extension wanted legislation to cap how much funding can go to each grant recipient.

“I’ve got to get SBIRs and STRATFIs reauthorized, so I need the community’s help to get that done,” Purdy said. “There are some valid concerns that need to be addressed. All that needs to be addressed, but it affects the space industrial base a lot more than the other areas, and so I need everyone to kind of pile on and help get that done.”

Purdy took a victory lap by listing several STRATFIs that have, so far, yielded major results, at least for investors. K2 Space, a company developing high-power, low-cost satellite platforms, received $30 million in funding from the Space Force and Air Force in 2024. A year later, K2 closed a $250 million fundraising round at a company valuation of $3 billion. Apex Space, another startup looking to scale satellite manufacturing, received $11 million in strategic funding in 2024. A year later, Apex became a unicorn, exceeding a valuation of $1 billion. Impulse Space, which is working on in-space propulsion, received a STRATFI funding commitment from the Pentagon in 2024, helping propel the startup to a valuation of $1.8 billion.

“Years of SBIRs and STRATFIs have set the stage … We’ve been doing that for three or four or five years, we’ve produced a nice pool of 60 or 70 different companies that can help bid on all our upcoming new contracts, which is really nice,” Purdy said.

Under the Trump administration, the Defense Department has taken more steps to get cash in the hands of defense contractors. The Pentagon announced last month a $1 billion “direct-to-supplier” investment in L3Harris to expand production capacity of US solid rocket motors. This gives the federal government a direct equity stake in L3Harris’s missile business.

A Trump executive order last month also excoriated the defense industry for ballooning executive salaries, stock buybacks, and systemic lethargy. “You see some strong language through executive order and other mechanisms to say, ‘Hey, companies, you need to put in more CapEx yourselves. You need to kick in more yourselves.’ We’re no longer just going to provide you billions of dollars just for you to go build buildings,” Purdy said.

“And there’s some threat language on the back end of that. You’re going to do that, or else we’re going to start cutting you off. We’re going to start looking at other providers. That’s out in the open and subject for debate. But there’s a big carrot coming along with that, and that’s multi-year procurements. Multi-year procurements are the carrot to allow the investing community to have some amount of confidence,” Purdy continued.

“We’re not looking to be your R&D arm.”

Pentagon buyer: We’re happy with our launch industry, but payloads are lagging Read More »

Study shows how rocket launches pollute the atmosphere

industrial waste, Space, space pollution, spacex, syndication / Kris Guyer / February 22, 2026

Atmospheric scientist Laura Revell, with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, presented research showing that rocket exhaust in the atmosphere can erase some of the hard-won gains in mitigating ozone depletion.

In a high-growth scenario for the space industry, there could be as many as 2,000 launches per year, which her modeling shows could result in about 3 percent ozone loss, equal to the atmospheric impacts of a bad wildfire season in Australia. She said most of the damage comes from chlorine-rich solid rocket fuels and black carbon in the plumes.

The black carbon could also warm parts of the stratosphere by about half-a-degree Celsius as it absorbs sunlight. That heats the surrounding air and can shift winds that steer storms and areas of precipitation.

“This is probably not a fuel type that we want to start using in massive quantities in the future,” she added.

Researchers at the conference estimated that in the past five years, the mass of human‑made material injected into the upper atmosphere by re‑entries has doubled to nearly a kiloton a year. For some metals like lithium, the amount is already much larger than that contributed by disintegrating meteors.

In the emerging field of space sustainability science, researchers say orbital space and near-space should be considered part of the global environment. A 2022 journal article co-authored by Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the upper reaches of the atmosphere are experiencing increased impacts from human activities.

The expanding commercial use of what appears to be a free resource is actually shifting its real costs onto others, the article noted.

At last year’s European Geosciences Union conference, Leonard Schulz, who studies space pollution at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany, said, “If you put large amounts of catalytic metals in the atmosphere, I immediately think about geoengineering.”

There may not be time to wait for more scientific certainty, Schulz said: “In 10 years, it might be too late to do anything about it.”

Bob Berwyn is an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Study shows how rocket launches pollute the atmosphere Read More »

NASA says it needs to haul the Artemis II rocket back to the hangar for repairs

Science, Space / Rejus Almole / February 21, 2026

The helium system on the SLS upper stage—officially known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS)—performed well during both of the Artemis II countdown rehearsals. “Last evening, the team was unable to get helium flow through the vehicle. This occurred during a routine operation to repressurize the system,” Isaacman wrote.

The Space Launch System rocket emerges from the Vehicle Assembly Building to begin the rollout to Launch Pad 39B last month. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Another molecule, another problem

Helium is used to purge the upper stage engine and pressurize its propellant tanks. The rocket is in a “safe configuration,” with a backup system providing purge air to the upper stage, NASA said in a statement.

NASA encountered a similar failure signature during preparations for launch of the first SLS rocket on the Artemis I mission in 2022. On Artemis I, engineers traced the problem to a failed check valve on the upper stage that needed replacement. NASA officials are not sure yet whether the helium issue Friday was caused by a similar valve failure, a problem with an umbilical interface between the rocket and the launch tower, or a fault with a filter, according to Isaacman.

In any case, technicians are unable to reach the problem area with the rocket at the launch pad. Inside the VAB, ground teams will extend work platforms around the rocket to provide physical access to the upper stage and its associated umbilical connections.

NASA said moving into preparations for rollback now will allow managers to potentially preserve the April launch window, “pending the outcome of data findings, repair efforts, and how the schedule comes to fruition in the coming days and weeks.”

It’s not clear if NASA will perform another fueling test on the SLS rocket after it returns to Launch Pad 39B, or whether technicians will do any more work on the delicate hydrogen umbilical near the bottom of the rocket responsible for recurring leaks during the Artemis I and Artemis II launch campaigns. Managers were pleased with the performance of newly-installed seals during Thursday’s countdown demonstration, but NASA officials have previously said vibrations from transporting the rocket to and from the pad could damage the seals.

NASA says it needs to haul the Artemis II rocket back to the hangar for repairs Read More »