Space

ula-aimed-to-launch-up-to-10-vulcan-rockets-this-year—it-will-fly-just-once

ULA aimed to launch up to 10 Vulcan rockets this year—it will fly just once

launch, military space, Science, Space, united launch alliance, US Space Force, vulcan / /

Engineers traced the problem to a manufacturing defect in an insulator on the solid rocket motor, and telemetry data from all four boosters on the following flight in August exhibited “spot-on” performance, according to Bruno. But officials decided to recover the spent expendable motor casings from the Atlantic Ocean for inspections to confirm there were no other surprises or close calls.

The hangup delaying the next Vulcan launches isn’t in rocket production. ULA has hardware for multiple Vulcan rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Instead, one key reason for Vulcan’s past delays has been the rocket’s performance, particularly its solid rocket boosters. It isn’t clear whether the latest delays are related to the readiness of the Space Force’s GSSAP satellites (the next GPS satellite to fly on Vulcan has been available for launch since 2022), the inspections of Vulcan’s solid rocket motors, or something else.

Vulcan booster cores in storage at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: United Launch Alliance

A Space Systems Command spokesperson told Ars that “appropriate actions are being executed to ensure a successful USSF-87 mission … The teams analyze all hardware as well as available data from previous missions to evaluate space flight worthiness of future missions.”

The spokesperson did not provide a specific answer to a question from Ars about inspections on the solid rocket motors from the most recent Vulcan flight.

ULA’s outfitting of a new rocket assembly hangar and a second mobile launch platform for the Vulcan rocket at Cape Canaveral has also seen delays. With so many launches in its backlog, ULA needs capacity to stack and prepare at least two rockets in different buildings at the same time. Eventually, the company’s goal is to launch at an average clip of twice per month.

On Monday, ground crews at Cape Canaveral moved the second Vulcan launch platform to the company’s launch pad for fit checks and “initial technical testing.” This is a good sign that the company is moving closer to ramping up the Vulcan launch cadence, but it’s now clear it won’t happen this year.

Vulcan’s slow launch rate since its first flight in January 2024 is not unusual for new rockets. It took 28 months for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and ULA’s Atlas V to reach their fourth flight, a timeline that the Vulcan vehicle will reach in May 2026.

The Delta IV rocket from ULA flew its fourth mission 25 months after debuting in 2002. Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket reached its fourth flight in 16 months, but it shares more in common with its predecessor than the others. SpaceX’s Starship also had a faster ramp-up, with its fourth test flight coming less than 14 months after the first.

ULA aimed to launch up to 10 Vulcan rockets this year—it will fly just once Read More »

russia’s-soyuz-5-will-soon-come-alive.-but-will-anyone-want-to-fly-on-it?

Russia’s Soyuz 5 will soon come alive. But will anyone want to fly on it?

rockets, russia, soyuz-5, Space / /

The Soyuz 5 rocket, also named Irtysh for a river that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan, answers to that purpose. Its first stage is powered by a single RD-171MV engine, which at sea level has three times the thrust of a single Raptor 3 engine, and is part of a family of engines that are the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engines in the world. The RD-171MV uses only Russian components.

Russian officials also plan to use the Soyuz 5 rocket as the “boost” stage of a super-heavy lift rocket, known as Yenisei, that would be used for a human lunar program. However the Yenisei rocket seems to be one of those Russian space initiatives that is forever mired in a nebulous development stage—often talked about as a national priority, but rarely advanced.

What market is there?

But the Soyuz 5 rocket now is very real, and it should launch within the next month. The question is, what market will it serve? Russia presently has the Soyuz 2, which has about half the lift capacity, for crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station, as well as the launch of smaller spacecraft. There is also the line of Angara rockets that has come online during the last decade.

The Soyuz 5 slots in between the Soyuz 2 and Angara A5 rocket in terms of performance. So what demand is there for a rocket with 18 tons of capacity to low-Earth orbit? One concern is that the number of geostationary satellites launched annually, once the bread and butter of the Proton vehicle, has dropped precipitously.

Another is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has taken Russian rockets off the table for many Western satellite operators. At the same time, international competition in the medium-lift market has stiffened. China has an increasing number of government and commercial options, and India’s launch offerings are growing as well. And for any company or country mostly concerned about price, Russia almost certainly can’t beat the reusable Falcon 9 booster offered by SpaceX.

Russia’s Soyuz 5 will soon come alive. But will anyone want to fly on it? Read More »

china-launches-an-emergency-lifeboat-to-bring-three-astronauts-back-to-earth

China launches an emergency lifeboat to bring three astronauts back to Earth

china, human spaceflight, long march, long march 2f, shenzhou, Space, tiangong / /

And then, last year, Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule suffered a series of helium leaks and propulsion problems that made NASA managers uncomfortable with its ability to safely return to Earth with astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. The two astronauts remained on the ISS as Starliner made a successful uncrewed landing in September 2024, while SpaceX launched an already-scheduled Crew Dragon mission to the station with two of its four seats unoccupied. The Dragon spacecraft brought Wilmore and Williams home in March.

The incidents with Shenzhou 20 and Soyuz MS-22 highlight the risks of space junk in low-Earth orbit, especially tiny debris fragments that evade detection by tracking telescopes and radars. A minuscule piece of space debris traveling at several miles per second can pack a punch. Crews at the Tiangong outpost ventured outside the station multiple times in the last few years to install space debris shielding to protect the outpost from such impacts.

Luckily, the damage to Shenzhou 20’s window and Soyuz MS-22’s dramatic coolant leak were unmistakable. Tiny impacts on other unseen parts of a spacecraft would be more difficult to find.

Chinese astronauts Zhang Hongzhang, Wu Fei, and Zhang Lu (left to right) attend a send-off ceremony at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China before their launch on October 31, 2025. Credit: Lian Zhen/Xinhua via Getty Images

China’s first human spaceflight emergency

It has been 22 years since China sent Yang Liwei, its first astronaut, into orbit on the Shenzhou 5 mission. Since then, China’s human spaceflight program has seemingly executed its missions like clockwork. Chinese astronauts performed the program’s first spacewalk in 2008, then China launched a pair of mini-space labs in 2011 and 2016, each hosting Shenzhou crews for stays lasting several weeks.

China started launching modules for Tiangong, its first permanently occupied space station, in 2021 and completed the lab’s initial assembly in 2022. Since then, Chinese astronauts have maintained a permanent presence in low-Earth orbit.

Chinese state media previously reported that the China Manned Space Agency, managed by the country’s military, kept a rocket and Shenzhou spacecraft on standby in the event of an emergency in space. Chinese officials tapped into this rescue capability with Shenzhou 22 this month.

China’s actions with the Shenzhou program this month are evidence of a mature human spaceflight program. In parallel with operations on the Tiangong space station, China is developing new rockets, a deep space capsule, and a human-rated lunar lander to carry astronauts to the Moon by 2030.

Updated at 4 pm EST (21: 00 UTC) with more details from the China Manned Space Agency.

China launches an emergency lifeboat to bring three astronauts back to Earth Read More »

rivals-object-to-spacex’s-starship-plans-in-florida—who’s-interfering-with-whom?

Rivals object to SpaceX’s Starship plans in Florida—who’s interfering with whom?

cape canaveral space force station, Kennedy Space Center, launch, military space, NASA, new glenn, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance, US Space Force / /

“We’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency.”

Artist’s illustration of Starships stacked on two launch pads at the Space Force’s Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: SpaceX

The commander of the military unit responsible for running the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida expects SpaceX to begin launching Starship rockets there next year.

Launch companies with facilities near SpaceX’s Starship pads are not pleased. SpaceX’s two chief rivals, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, complained last year that SpaceX’s proposal of launching as many as 120 Starships per year from Florida’s Space Coast could force them to routinely clear personnel from their launch pads for safety reasons.

This isn’t the first time Blue Origin and ULA have tried to throw up roadblocks in front of SpaceX. The companies sought to prevent NASA from leasing a disused launch pad to SpaceX in 2013, but they lost the fight.

Col. Brian Chatman, commander of a Space Force unit called Space Launch Delta 45, confirmed to reporters on Friday that Starship launches will sometimes restrict SpaceX’s neighbors from accessing their launch pads—at least in the beginning. Space Launch Delta 45, formerly known as the 45th Space Wing, operates the Eastern Range, which oversees launch safety from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s nearby Kennedy Space Center.

Chatman’s unit is responsible for ensuring all personnel remain outside of danger areas during testing and launch operations. The range’s responsibility extends to public safety outside the gates of the spaceport.

“There is no better time to be here on the Space Coast than where we are at today,” Chatman said. “We are breaking records on the launch manifest. We are getting capability on orbit that is essential to national security, and we’re doing that at a time of strategic challenge.”

SpaceX is well along in constructing a Starship launch site on NASA property at Kennedy Space Center within the confines of Launch Complex-39A, where SpaceX also launches its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The company wants to build another Starship launch site on Space Force property a few miles to the south.

“Early to mid-next year is when we anticipate Starship coming out here to be able to launch,” Chatman said. “We’ll have the range ready to support at that time.”

Enter the Goliath

Starship and its Super Heavy booster combine to form the largest rocket ever built. Its newest version stands more than 400 feet (120 meters) tall with more than 11 million pounds (5,000 metric tons) of combustible methane and liquid oxygen propellants. That will be replaced by a taller rocket, perhaps as soon as 2027, with about 20 percent more propellant onboard.

While there’s also risk with Starships and Super Heavy boosters returning to Cape Canaveral from space, safety officials worry about what would happen if a Starship and Super Heavy booster detonated with their propellant tanks full. The concern is the same for all rockets, which is why officials evacuate predetermined keep-out zones around launch pads that are fueled up for flight.

But the keep-out zones around SpaceX’s Starship launch pads will extend farther than those around the other launch sites at Cape Canaveral. First, Starship is simply much bigger and uses more propellant than any other rocket. Secondly, Starship’s engines consume methane fuel in combination with liquid oxygen, a blend commonly known as LOX/methane or methalox.

And finally, Starship lacks the track record of older rockets like the Falcon 9, adding a degree of conservatism to the Space Force’s risk calculations. Other launch pads will inevitably fall within the footprint of Starship’s range safety keep-out zones, also known as blast danger areas, or BDAs.

SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy booster lift off from Starbase, Texas, in March 2025. Credit: SpaceX

The danger area will be larger for an actual launch, but workers will still need to clear areas closer to Starship launch pads during static fire tests, when the rocket fires its engines while remaining on the ground. This is what prompted ULA and Blue Origin to lodge their protests.

“They understand neighboring operations,” Chatman said in a media roundtable on Friday. “They understand that we will allow the maximum efficiency possible to facilitate their operations, but there will be times that we’re not going to let them go to their launch complex because it’s neighboring a hazardous activity.”

The good news for these other companies is that Eastern Range’s keep-out zones will almost certainly get smaller by the time SpaceX gets anywhere close to 120 Starship launches per year. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is currently launching at a similar cadence. The blast danger areas for those launches are small and short-lived because the Space Force’s confidence in the Falcon 9’s safety is “extremely high,” Chatman said.

“From a blast damage assessment perspective, specific to the Falcon 9, we know what that keep-out area is,” Chatman said. “It’s the new combination of new fuels—LOX/methane—which is kind of a game-changer as we look at some of the heavy vehicles that are coming to launch. We just don’t have the analysis on to be able to say, ‘Hey, from a testing perspective, how small can we reduce the BDA and be safe?’”

Methane has become a popular fuel choice, supplanting refined kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid fuels commonly used on previous generations of rockets. Methane leaves behind less soot than kerosene, easing engine reusability, while it’s simpler to handle than liquid hydrogen.

Aside from Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan rockets use liquified natural gas, a fuel very similar to methane. Both rockets are smaller than Starship, but Blue Origin last week unveiled the design of a souped-up New Glenn rocket that will nearly match Starship’s scale.

A few years ago, NASA, the Space Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration decided to look into the explosive potential of methalox rockets. There had been countless tests of explosions of gaseous methane, but data on detonations of liquid methane and liquid oxygen was scarce at the time—just a couple of tests at less than 10 metric tons, according to NASA. So, the government’s default position was to assume an explosion would be equivalent to the energy released by the same amount of TNT. This assumption drives the large keep-out zones the Space Force has drawn around SpaceX’s future Starship launch pads, one of which is seen in the map below.

This map from a Space Force environmental impact statement shows potential restricted access zones around SpaceX’s proposed Starship launch site at Space Launch Complex-37. The restricted zones cover launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space. Credit: SpaceX

Spending millions to blow stuff up

Chatman said the Space Force is prepared to update its blast danger areas once its government partners, SpaceX, and Blue Origin complete testing and analyze their results. Over dozens of tests, engineers are examining how methane and liquid oxygen react to different kinds of accidents, such as impact velocity, pressure, mass ratio, or how much propellant is in the mix.

“That is ongoing currently,” Chatman said. “[We are] working in close partnership with SpaceX and Blue Origin on the LOX/methane combination and the explicit equivalency to identify how much we can … reduce that blast radius. Those discussions are happening, have been happening the last couple years, and are looking to culminate here in ’26.

“Until we get that data from the testing that is ongoing and the analysis that needs to occur, we’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency, and have a maximized keep-out zone, simply from a public safety perspective,” Chatman said.

The data so far show promising results. “We do expect that BDA to shrink,” he said. “We expect that to shrink based on some of the initial testing that has been done and the initial data reviews that have been done.”

That’s imperative, not just for Starship’s neighbors at the Cape Canaveral spaceport, but for SpaceX itself. The company forecasts a future in which it will launch Starships more often than the Falcon 9, requiring near-continuous operations at multiple launch pads.

Chatman mentioned one future scenario in which SpaceX might want to launch Starships in close proximity to one another from neighboring pads.

“At that point in the future, I do anticipate the blast damage assessments to shrink down based on the testing that will have been accomplished and dataset will have been reviewed, [and] that we’ll be in a comfortable set to be able to facilitate all launch operations. But until we have that data, until I’m comfortable with what that data shows, with regards to reducing the BDA, keep-out zone, we’re going to continue with the 100 percent TNT equivalency just from a public safety perspective.”

SpaceX has performed explosive LOX/methane tests, including the one seen here, at its development facility in McGregor, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

The Commercial Space Federation, a lobbying group, submitted written testimony to Congress in 2023 arguing the government should be using “existing industry data” to inform its understanding of the explosive potential methane and liquid oxygen. That data, the federation said, suggests the government should set its TNT blast equivalency to no greater than 25 percent, a change that would greatly reduce the size of keep-out zones around launch pads. The organization’s members include prominent methane users SpaceX, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, all of which have launch sites at Cape Canaveral.

The government’s methalox testing plans were expected to cost at least $80 million, according to the Commercial Space Federation.

The concern among engineers is that liquid oxygen and methane are highly miscible, meaning they mix together easily, raising the risk of a “condensed phase detonation” with “significantly higher overpressures” than rockets with liquid hydrogen or kerosene fuels. Small-scale mixtures of liquid oxygen and liquified natural gas have “shown a broad detonable range with yields greater than that of TNT,” NASA wrote in 2023.

SpaceX released some basic results of its own methalox detonation tests in September, before the government draws its own conclusions on the matter. The company said it conducted “extensive testing” to refine blast danger areas to “be commensurate with the physics of new launch systems.”

Like the Commercial Space Federation, SpaceX said government officials are relying on “highly conservative approaches to establishing blast danger areas, simply because they lack the data to make refined, accurate clear zones. In the absence of data, clear areas of LOX/methane rockets have defaulted to very large zones that could be disruptive to operations.”

More like an airport

SpaceX said it has conducted sub-scale methalox detonation tests “in close collaboration with NASA,” while also gathering data from full-scale Starship tests in Starbase, Texas, including information from test flights and from recent ground test failures. SpaceX controls much of the land around its South Texas facility, so there’s little interruption to third parties when Starships launch from there.

“With this data, SpaceX has been able to establish a scientifically robust, physics-based yield calculation that will help ‘fill the gap’ in scientific knowledge regarding LOX/methane rockets,” SpaceX said.

The company did not disclose the yield calculation, but it shared maps showing its proposed clear areas around the future Starship launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. They are significantly smarter than the clear areas originally envisioned by the Space Force and NASA, but SpaceX says it uses “actual test data on explosive yield and include a conservative factor of safety.”

The proposed clear distances will have no effect on any other operational launch site or on traffic on the primary north-south road crossing the spaceport, the company said. “SpaceX looks forward to having an open, honest, and reasonable discussion based on science and data regarding spaceport operations with industry colleagues.”

SpaceX will have that opportunity next month. The Space Force and NASA are convening a “reverse industry day” in mid-December during which launch companies will bring their ideas for the future of the Cape Canaveral spaceport to the government. The spaceport has hosted 101 space launches so far this year, an annual record dominated by SpaceX’s rapid-fire Falcon 9 launch cadence.

Chatman anticipates about the same number—perhaps 100 to 115 launches—from Florida’s Space Coast next year, and some forecasts show 300 to 350 launches per year by 2035. The numbers could go down before they rise again. “As we bring on larger lift capabilities like Starship and follow-on large launch capabilities out here to the Eastern Range, that will reduce the total number of launches, because we can get more mass to orbit with heavier lift vehicles,” Chatman said.

Blue Origin’s first recovered New Glenn booster returned to the company’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, last week after a successful launch and landing. Credit: Blue Origin

Launch companies have some work to do to make those numbers become real. Space Force officials have identified their own potential bottlenecks, including a shortage of facilities for preparing satellites for launch and the flow of commodities like propellants and high-pressure gases into the spaceport.

Concerns as mundane as traffic jams are now enough of a factor to consider using automated scanners at vehicle inspection points and potentially adding a dedicated lane for slow-moving transporters carrying rocket boosters from one place to another across the launch base, according to Chatman. This is becoming more important as SpaceX, and now Blue Origin, routinely shuttle their reusable rockets from place to place.

Space Force officials largely attribute the steep climb in launch rates at Cape Canaveral to the launch industry’s embrace of automated self-destruct mechanisms. These pyrotechnic devices have largely replaced manual flight termination systems, which require ground support from a larger team of range safety engineers, including radar operators and flight control officers with the authority to send a destruct command to the rocket if it flies off course. Now, that is all done autonomously on most US launch vehicles.

The Space Force mandated that launch companies using military spaceports switch to autonomous safety systems by October 1 2025, but military officials issued waivers for human-in-the-loop destruct devices to continue flying on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System, and the US Navy’s ballistic missile fleet. That means those launches will be more labor-intensive for the Space Force, but the Atlas V is nearing retirement, and the SLS and the Navy only occasionally appear on the Cape Canaveral launch schedule.

Listing image: SpaceX

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Rivals object to SpaceX’s Starship plans in Florida—who’s interfering with whom? Read More »

it’s-official:-boeing’s-next-flight-of-starliner-will-be-allowed-to-carry-cargo-only

It’s official: Boeing’s next flight of Starliner will be allowed to carry cargo only

Boeing, dragon, NASA, Space, space.starliner / /

The US space agency ended months of speculation about the next flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, confirming Monday that the vehicle will carry only cargo to the International Space Station.

NASA and Boeing are now targeting no earlier than April 2026 to fly the uncrewed Starliner-1 mission, the space agency said. Launching by next April will require completion of rigorous test, certification, and mission readiness activities, NASA added in a statement.

“NASA and Boeing are continuing to rigorously test the Starliner propulsion system in preparation for two potential flights next year,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a statement.

Reducing crewed missions

NASA also said it has reached an agreement with Boeing to modify the Commercial Crew contract, signed in 2014, that called for six crewed flights to the space station following certification of the spacecraft. Now the plan is to fly Starliner-1 carrying cargo, and then up to three additional missions before the space station is retired.

“This modification allows NASA and Boeing to focus on safely certifying the system in 2026, execute Starliner’s first crew rotation when ready, and align our ongoing flight planning for future Starliner missions based on station’s operational needs through 2030,” Stich said.

SpaceX and Boeing were both awarded contracts in 2014 to develop crewed spacecraft and fly six operational missions to the space station. SpaceX, with its Crew Dragon vehicle, flew a successful crew test flight in mid-2020 and its first operational mission before the end of that year. Most recently, the Crew-11 mission launched in August, with Crew-12 presently scheduled for February 15.

It’s official: Boeing’s next flight of Starliner will be allowed to carry cargo only Read More »

rocket-lab-chief-opens-up-about-neutron-delays,-new-glenn’s-success,-and-nasa-science

Rocket Lab chief opens up about Neutron delays, New Glenn’s success, and NASA science

pete beck, rocket lab, Space / /

“In the end of the day, NASA has to capture the public’s imagination.”

Peter Beck, founder and chief executive officer of Rocket Lab, during TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on October 28, 2024. Credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The company that pioneered small launch has had a big year.

Rocket Lab broke its annual launch record with the Electron booster—17 successful missions this year, and counting—and is close to bringing its much larger Neutron rocket to the launch pad.

The company also expanded its in-space business, including playing a key role in supporting the landing of Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission on the Moon and building two small satellites just launched to Mars.

Overall, it has been quite a ride for the company founded nearly two decades ago in New Zealand by Peter Beck. A new book about the company’s origins and aspirations, The Launch of Rocket Lab, tells the story of the company’s rise in words and grand images.

Ars recently spoke with Beck about Rocket Lab’s past, present, and future. This interview has been edited lightly for clarity.

Ars: In reading through the book and considering the history of Rocket Lab, I’m continually amazed that a handful of engineers in the country with no space program, no space heritage, built the world’s second most accomplished commercial launch company. What do you attribute that success to?

Peter Beck: It’s hard to know. But there’s a few elements within Rocket Lab that have always remained steadfast, no matter what we do or how big we get. And I think a lot of space companies have tried to see how much they can get away with. And it turns out, in this industry, you just can’t get away with taking very many shortcuts at all. So I think that’s part of it. The attitude of our organization is like, nothing’s too big, nothing’s too hard. We just make it happen. The team works extremely hard. If you drive past the Rocket Lab car park on a Sunday, it looks just like the SpaceX car park on a Sunday. And, you know, the team is very mission-driven. They’re always fighting for a goal, which I think is important. And then, above anything, I just think we can never outspend Elon (Musk) and Jeff (Bezos). We have to out-hustle. And that’s just the reality. The Rocket Lab hustle comes down to just not accepting no as an answer. If a barrier comes up a lot of space companies, or a lot of companies in general, whether its regulatory or technical, it’s easy to submit to the problem, rather than just continue to attack it.

Ars: Electron keeps going. In fact, you’ve just flown a record 17th mission this year, and you continue to sign large deals. How has Electron survived the era of rideshare missions on the Falcon 9?

Beck: We’ve always had the thesis that there is a need for a dedicated small launch. You can put as many Bandwagons and as many Transporters as you want, and you can reduce the price to unsustainably low levels as long as you want. It doesn’t make any difference to us, because it’s a totally different product. As folks are building out constellations, it’s no use just getting dumped out in one orbit. So a lot of Electrons these days are just building out constellations for folks where they have optimized for a specific altitude and inclination and so forth. And we can hit those every time. And if you amortize the cost of launch over the actual lifetime of that constellation and the service that it can provide, it’s cheap, and it’s something rideshares can never deliver.

Ars: It’s surprising to me that after so many years and so many startups, there really isn’t a viable competitor in Electron’s class anywhere in the world.

Beck: It’s pretty hard to build a small rocket. I call it the pressure transducer equilibrium. A pressure transducer on a little rocket is a meaningful amount of mass. A pressure transducer on Neutron is totally irrelevant. Just throw 10 at them, and who cares? But on Electron, if you throw 10 pressure transducers at a problem, then you know, you’ve added a kilo. That’s a meaningful portion of the lift capacity of the vehicle. And there’s no super-magic store where you can go and buy a pressure transducer that scales with the size of the rocket. So you end up with a bunch of stuff that just doesn’t scale, that contributes meaningful mass to the vehicle. If you look at Electron’s payload performance, it’s really high for the size of that rocket. So that’s really hard to do because in an instance where you would throw 10 pressure transducers at a problem, we can only afford to throw one at Electron, but we still want the same redundancy and the same reliability and all of those kinds of things. So that just drives really, really difficult engineering solutions.

And then from a financial standpoint, it’s got a sticker price of $8.5 million, let’s call it. Your flight safety team doesn’t care if it’s a big rocket or a little rocket. Your range team doesn’t care if they’re opening a 12-inch valve or a 2-inch valve. All those teams just have to become ruthlessly efficient at doing that work. So if you go to a big rocket, you might have a flight safety team of 20 people. You come here, it has to be like three. So you have to find ways of really streamlining all those processes. And every little person and dollar and gram has to be ringed out.

Rocket Lab launches an Electron booster with a previously flown engine on Thursday.

Credit: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab launches an Electron booster with a previously flown engine on Thursday. Credit: Rocket Lab

Ars: What’s going on with the Electron reuse program? My sense is that you’ve kind of learned what you needed to know and are moving on.

Beck: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. It was a hugely valuable learning tool, but if you look at an Electron recovery, we might recover sort of a million dollars worth of stage one booster. And of course, the more we make, the cheaper they get, because we’re continuing to scale so that it’s ever decreasing that return. Quite frankly, and honestly, it’s just like, do we have reusability and recovery teams working on something that returns a million dollars every time it flies? Or, do we have them working on Neutron, where it’s tens of millions of dollars every time you fly? So it’s just about, you know, directing the resource for the biggest bang for the buck.

Ars: I listened to your recent earnings call where you discussed Neutron’s development and delay into 2026. What are the biggest issues you face in getting Neutron over the finish line?

Beck: It would be actually easier if there was an issue, because then I could just say something blew up, or this is a problem. But there’s no real issues. It’s just that we’re not going to put something on the pad that doesn’t meet kind of the standard that’s made us successful. Say something might pass the qualification test, but if we see something in a strain gauge on the back of the panel, or something that we don’t understand, we just don’t move on. We’re not going to move on unless we understand every little element of what’s going on. Maybe I’m on some kind of spectrum for details, but that’s what’s kept us successful. It’s just a bigger rocket, and it’s got more unique features like hungry hippo (the payload fairing opening mechanism) and giant carbon structures. So, you know, it’s not like anything has shit the bed. It’s just a big machine, and there’s some new stuff, and we want to make sure we don’t lose the magic of what we created. A little bit of time now can save a huge amount of heartbreak later on.

Ars: Toward the end of the book, you say that Rocket Lab is best positioned to compete with SpaceX in medium-lift launch, and break up the Falcon 9 monopoly. What is your sense of the competitive landscape going forward? We just saw a New Glenn launch and land, and that was really impressive—

Beck: Bloody impressive. Jeff (Bezos) laid down a new bar. That was incredible. People forget that he’s been working on it for 22 years, but even so, that was impressive.

Ars: Yes, it’s been a journey for them. Anyway, there’s also Vulcan, but that’s only flown one time this year, so they’ve got a ways to go. Then Stoke and Relativity are working at it. What’s your view of your competition going forward?

Beck: I hate comparing it to aviation, but I call medium-class lifters the Boeing 737 of the industry. Then you got your A380s, which are your Starships and your New Glenns. And then you’ve got your Electrons, which are your private jets. And you know, if you look at the aviation sector, nobody comes in and just brings an airplane in and wipes everybody out, because there’s different needs and different missions. And just like there’s a 737 there’s an A320 and that’s kind of what Neutron is intending to be. We had a tremendous pull from our customers, both government and commercial, for alternatives to what’s out there.

The other thing to remember is, for our own aspirations, we need a high-cadence, reusable, low-cost, multi-ton lift capability. I think I’ve been clear that I think the large space companies of the future are going to be a little bit blurry. Are they a space company, or are they something else? But there’s one thing that is absolutely sure, that if you have multi-ton access to orbit in a reusable, low-cost way, it’s going to be very, very difficult to compete with if you’re someone who doesn’t have that capability. And if you look at our friends at SpaceX, yeah, Starlinks are great satellites and all the rest of it. But what really enabled Starlink was the Falcon 9. Launch is a difficult business. It’s kind of lumpy and deeply complex, but at the end of the day, it is the access to orbit. And, you know, having multi-ton access to orbit is just critical. If you’re thinking that you want to try and build one of the biggest space companies in the world, then you just have to have that.

Ars: Rocket Lab has expressed interest in Mars recently, both the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter and a Mars Sample Return mission. As Jared Isaacman and NASA think about commercial exploration of Mars, what would you tell them about what Rocket Lab could bring to the table?

Beck: I’m a great believer that government should do things for which it makes no sense for commercial entities to do, and commercial should do the things that it makes no sense for governments to do. Consider Mars Sample Return, we looked at that, and the plan was $11 billion and 20 years? It’s just, come on. It was crazy. And I don’t want to take the shine off. It is a deeply technical, deeply difficult mission to do. But it can be done, and it can be done commercially, and it can be done at a fraction of the price. So let industry have at it.

And look, Eric, I love planetary science, right? I love exploring the planets, and I think that if you have a space company that’s capable of doing it, it’s almost your duty for the knowledge of the species to go and do those sorts of things. Now, we’re a publicly traded company, so we have to make margin along the way. We’ve proven we can do that. Look at ESCAPADE. All up, it was like $50 million cost, launched, and on its way to Mars. I mean, that’s the sort of thing we need to be doing, right? That’s great bang for your buck. And you know, as you mentioned, we’re pushing hard on the MTO. The reality is that if you’re going to do anything on Mars, whether it’s scientific or human, you’ve got to have the comms there. It’s just basic infrastructure you’ve got to have there first. It’s all very well to do all the sexy stuff and put some humans in a can and send them off to Mars. That’s great. But everybody expects the communication just to be there, and you’ve got to put the foundations in first. So we think that’s a really important mission, and something that we can do, and something we can contribute to the first humans landing on Mars.

Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket is shown in this rendering delivering a stack of satellites into orbit.

Credit: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket is shown in this rendering delivering a stack of satellites into orbit. Credit: Rocket Lab

Ars: You mentioned ESCAPADE. How’s your relationship with Jeff Bezos? I heard there was some tension last year because Rocket Lab was being asked to prepare the satellite for launch, even when it was clear New Glenn was not going to make the Mars window.

Beck: I know you want me to say yes, there is, but the honest truth is absolutely zero. I know David (Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO) super well. We’re great friends. Jeff and I were texting backwards and forwards during the launch. There’s just honestly none. And you know that they gave us a great ride. They were bang on the numbers. It was awesome. Yeah, sure, it would have been great to get there early. But it’s a rocket program, right? Nobody can show me a rocket program that turned up exactly on time. And yep, it may have been obvious that it might not have been able to launch on the first (window), but we knew there’s always other ways. Worst-case scenario, we have to go into storage for a little bit. These missions are years and years long. So what’s a little bit longer?

Ars: Speaking of low-cost science missions, I know Isaacman is interested in commercial planetary missions. Lots of $4 billion planetary missions just aren’t sustainable. If NASA commits to commercial development of satellite buses and spacecraft like it did to commercial cargo and crew, what could planetary exploration look like a decade from now?

Beck: I think that’d be tremendously exciting. One of the reasons why we did CAPSTONE was to prove that you can go to the Moon for $10 million. Now, we lost a lot of money on that mission, so that ultimately didn’t prove to be true. But it wasn’t crazy amounts, and we still got there miles cheaper than anybody else could have ever got there. And ESCAPADE, we have good margins on, and it’s just a true success, right? Touch wood to date, like we’ve got a long way to go, but success in the fact that the spacecraft were built, delivered, launched, and commissioned.

This is the thing. Take your billion-dollar mission. How many $50 million missions, or $100 million missions, could you do? Imagine the amount of science you can do. I think part of the reason why the public gets jaded with some of these science missions is because they happen once a decade, and they’ve got billions of dollars of price tags attached to them. It’s kind of transitorily exciting when they happen, but they’re so far apart. In the end of the day, NASA has to capture the public’s imagination, because the public are funding it. So it has to seem relevant, relevant to mum and dad at home. And you know, when mum and dad are home and it’s tough, and then they just hear billions of dollars and, you know, years of overrun and all the rest of it, how can they feel good about that? Whereas, if they can spend much less and deliver it on time and have a constant stream of really interesting missions in science, I think that it’s great for public justification. I think it’s great for planetary science, because obviously you’re iterating on your results, and it’s great for the whole community to just have a string of missions. And also, I think it’s great for US space supremacy to be blasting around the Solar System all the time, rather than just now and again.

Ars: Ok Pete, it’s November 18. How confident should we be in a Neutron launch next year? 50/50?

Beck: Hopefully better than 50/50. That would be a definite fail. We’re taking the time to get it right. I always caveat anything, Eric, that it’s a rocket program, and we’ve got some big tests in front of us. But to date, if you look at the program, it’s been super smooth; like we haven’t exploded tanks, we haven’t exploded engines. We haven’t had any major failure, especially when we’re pushing some new boundaries and some new technology. So I think it’s going really, really smoothly, and as long as it continues to go smoothly, then I think we’re in good shape.

Photo of Eric Berger

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.

Rocket Lab chief opens up about Neutron delays, New Glenn’s success, and NASA science Read More »

rocket-report:-spacex’s-next-gen-booster-fails;-pegasus-will-fly-again

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s next-gen booster fails; Pegasus will fly again

atlas v, blue origin, china, falcon 9, long march 2f, new glenn, Northrop Grumman, pythom, rocket lab, rocket report, saab, Science, shenzhou, Space, spacex, starship, super heavy, united launch alliance / /

With the government shutdown over, the FAA has lifted its daytime launch curfew.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn booster arrives at Port Canaveral, Florida, for the first time Tuesday aboard the “Jacklyn” landing vessel. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.20 of the Rocket Report! For the second week in a row, Blue Origin dominated the headlines with news about its New Glenn rocket. After a stunning success November 13 with the launch and landing of the second New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos’ space company revealed a roadmap this week showing how engineers will supercharge the vehicle with more engines. Meanwhile, in South Texas, SpaceX took a step toward the first flight of the next-generation Starship rocket. There will be no Rocket Report next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We look forward to resuming delivery of all the news in space lift the first week of December.

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.

Northrop’s Pegasus rocket wins a rare contract. A startup named Katalyst Space Technologies won a $30 million contract from NASA in August to build a robotic rescue mission for the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in low-Earth orbit. Swift, in space since 2004, is a unique instrument designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The spacecraft lacks a propulsion system and its orbit is subject to atmospheric drag, and NASA says it is “racing against the clock” to boost Swift’s orbit and extend its lifetime before it falls back to Earth. On Wednesday, Katalyst announced it selected Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to send the rescue craft into orbit next year.

Make this make sense … At first glance, this might seem like a surprise. The Pegasus XL rocket hasn’t flown since 2021 and has launched just once in the last six years. The solid-fueled rocket is carried aloft under the belly of a modified airliner, then released to fire payloads of up to 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit. It’s an expensive rocket for its size, with Northrop charging more than $25 million per launch, according to the most recent public data available; the satellites best suited to launch on Pegasus will now find much cheaper tickets to orbit on rideshare missions using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. There are a few reasons none of this mattered much to Katalyst. First, the rescue mission must launch into a very specific low-inclination orbit to rendezvous with the Swift observatory, so it won’t be able to join one of SpaceX’s rideshare missions. Second, Northrop Grumman has parts available for one more Pegasus XL rocket, and the company might have been willing to sell the launch at a discount to clear its inventory and retire the rocket’s expensive-to-maintain L-1011 carrier aircraft. And third, smaller rockets like Rocket Lab’s Electron or Firefly’s Alpha don’t quite have the performance to place Katalyst’s rescue mission into the required orbit. (submitted by gizmo23)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox.

Sign Me Up!

Ursa Major rakes in more cash. Aerospace and defense startup Ursa Major Technologies landed a $600 million valuation in a new fundraising round, the latest sign that investors are willing to back companies developing new rocket technology, Bloomberg reports. Colorado-based Ursa Major closed its Series E fundraising round with investments from the venture capital firms Eclipse, Woodline Partners, Principia Growth, XN, and Alsop Louie Partners. The company also secured $50 million in debt financing. Ursa Major is best known as a supplier of liquid-fueled rocket engines and solid rocket motors to power a range of commercial and government vehicles.

Hypersonic tailwinds … Ursa Major says it is positioned to provide the US industrial base with propulsion systems faster and more affordably than legacy contractors can supply. “The company will rapidly field its throttleable, storable, liquid-fueled hypersonic and space-based defense solution, as well as scale its solid rocket motor and sustained space mobility manufacturing capacity,” Ursa Major said in a press release. Its customers include BAE Systems, which will use Ursa Major’s solid rocket motors to power tactical military-grade rockets, and Stratolaunch, which uses Ursa Major’s liquid-fueled Hadley engine for its hypersonic Talon-A spaceplane.

Rocket Lab celebrates two launches in 48 hours. Rocket Lab launched a payload for an undisclosed commercial customer Thursday, just hours after the company announced plans for the launch, Space News reports. The launch from Rocket Lab’s primary spaceport in New Zealand used the company’s Electron rocket, but officials released little more information on the mission, other than its nickname: “Follow My Speed.” An artist’s illustration on the mission patch indicated the payload might have been the next in a line of Earth-imaging satellites from the remote sensing company BlackSky, although the firm’s previous satellites have not launched with such secrecy.

Two hemispheres … Thursday’s launch from the Southern Hemisphere came just two days after Rocket Lab’s previous mission lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia. That flight was a suborbital launch to support a hypersonic technology demonstration for the Defense Innovation Unit and the Missile Defense Agency. All told, Rocket Lab has now launched 18 Electron rockets this year with 100 percent mission success, a company record.

Spanish startup makes a big reveal. The Spanish company PLD Space released photos of a test version of its Miura 5 rocket Thursday, calling it a “decisive step forward in the orbital launcher validation campaign.” The full-scale qualification unit, called QM1, will allow engineers to complete subsystem testing under “real conditions” to ensure the rocket’s reliability before its first mission scheduled for 2026. The first stage of the qualification unit will undergo a full propellant loading test, while the second stage will undergo a destructive test in the United States to validate the rocket’s range safety destruct system. Miura 5 is designed to deliver a little more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Still a long way to go … “Presenting our first integrated Miura 5 unit is proof that our model works: vertical integration, proprietary infrastructure and a philosophy based on testing, learning, and improving,” said Raúl Torres, CEO and co-founder of PLD Space. The reveal, however, is just the first step in a qualification campaign that takes more than a year for most rocket companies. PLD Space aims to go much faster, with plans to complete a second qualification rocket by the end of December and unveil its first flight rocket in the first quarter of next year. “This unprecedented development cadence in Europe reinforces PLD Space’s position as the company that has developed an orbital launcher in the shortest time–just two years–whilst meeting the highest quality standards,” the company said in a statement. This would be a remarkable achievement, but history suggests PLD Space has a steep climb in the months ahead. (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

Sweden digs deep in pursuit of sovereign launch. In an unsettled world, many nations are eager to develop homegrown rockets to place their own satellites into orbit. These up-and-coming spacefaring nations see it as a strategic imperative to break free from total reliance on space powers like Russia, China, and the United States. Still, some decisions are puzzling. This week, the Swedish aerospace and defense contractor Saab announced a $10 million investment in a company named Pythom. If you’re not familiar with this business, allow me to link back to a 2022 story published by Ars about Pythom’s questionable safety practices. The company has kept quiet since then, until the name surprisingly popped up again in a press release from Saab, a firm with a reputation that seems to be diametrically opposed to that of Pythom.

Just enough … The statement from Saab suggests its $10 million contribution to Pythom will make it the “lead investor” in the company’s recent funding round. Pythom hasn’t said anything more about this funding round, but Saab said the investment will accelerate Pythom’s “development and deployment of its launch systems,” which include an initial rocket capable of putting up to 330 pounds (150 kilograms) of payload into low-Earth orbit. $10 million may be just enough to keep Pythom afloat for a couple more years but is far less than the money Pythom would need to get serious about fielding an orbital launcher. Pythom is headquartered in California, but it has Swedish roots. It was founded by the Swedish married couple Tina and Tom Sjögren. The company has a couple dozen employees, and a handful of them are based in Sweden, according to Pythom’s website. (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

China is about to launch an astronaut lifeboat. China is set to launch an uncrewed Shenzhou spacecraft to the Tiangong space station to provide the Shenzhou 21 astronauts with a means of returning home, Space News reports. The launch of China’s Shenzhou 22 mission is scheduled for Monday night, US time, aboard a Long March 2F rocket. Instead of carrying astronauts, the ship will ferry cargo to the Chinese Tiangong space station. More importantly, it will provide a safe ride home for the three astronauts living and working aboard the orbiting outpost.

How did we get here? … The Shenzhou 20 spacecraft currently docked to the Tiangong station was damaged by a suspected piece of space junk, cracking its window and rendering it unable to meet China’s safety standards for returning astronauts to Earth. The damage discovery occurred just before three outgoing crew members were supposed to ride Shenzhou 20 home earlier this month. Instead, those three astronauts departed the station and returned to Earth on the newer, undamaged Shenzhou 21 spacecraft. That left the other three crew members on Tiangong with only the damaged Shenzhou 20 spacecraft to get them home in the event of an emergency. Shenzhou 22 will replace Shenzhou 20, providing a lifeboat for the rest of the crew’s six-month stay in space. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Atlas V launches for Viasat. United Launch Alliance launched its Atlas V rocket on November 13 with a satellite for the California-based communications company Viasat, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch came a week after the mission was scrubbed due to a faulty liquid oxygen tank vent valve on the Atlas booster. ULA rolled the rocket back to the Vertical Integration Facility, replaced it with a new valve, and returned the rocket to the pad on November 12. The launch the following day was successful, with the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage deploying the ViaSat-3 F2 spacecraft into a geosynchronous transfer orbit nearly three-and-a-half hours after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

End of an era … This was the final launch of an Atlas V rocket with a payload heading for geosynchronous orbit. These are the kinds of missions the Atlas V was designed for more than 25 years ago, but the market has changed. All of the Atlas V’s remaining 11 missions will target low-Earth orbit carrying broadband satellites for Amazon or Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft heading for the International Space Station. The Atlas V will be retired in the coming years in favor of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

SpaceX launches key climate change monitor. SpaceX launched a joint NASA-European environmental research satellite early Monday, the second in an ongoing billion-dollar project to measure long-term changes in sea level, a key indicator of climate change, CBS News reports. The first satellite, known as Sentinel-6 and named in honor of NASA climate researcher Michael Freilich, was launched in November 2020. The latest spacecraft, Sentinel-6B, was launched from California atop a Falcon 9 rocket this week. Both satellites are equipped with a sophisticated cloud-penetrating radar. By timing how long it takes beams to bounce back from the ocean 830 miles (1,336 kilometers) below, the Sentinel-6 satellites can track sea levels to an accuracy of about one inch while also measuring wave height and wind speeds. The project builds on earlier missions dating back to the early 1990s that have provided an uninterrupted stream of sea level data.

FAA restrictions lifted … The Federal Aviation Administration lifted a restriction on commercial space operations this week that limited launches and reentries to the late night and early morning hours, Spaceflight Now reports. The FAA imposed a daytime curfew on commercial launches as it struggled to maintain air traffic control during the recent government shutdown. Those restrictions, which did not affect government missions, were lifted Monday. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin’s New Glenn will grow larger. One week after the successful second launch of its large New Glenn booster, Blue Origin revealed a road map on Thursday for upgrades to the rocket, including a new variant with more main engines and a super-heavy lift capability, Ars reports. These upgrades to the rocket are “designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability,” the company said in an update published on its website. The enhancements will be phased in over time, starting with the third launch of New Glenn, which is likely to occur during the first half of 2026.

No timelines … The most significant part of the update concerned an evolution of New Glenn that will transform the booster into a super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The first stage of this evolved vehicle will have nine BE-4 engines instead of seven, and the upper stage will have four BE-3U engines instead of two. In its update, Blue Origin refers to the new vehicle as 9×4 and the current variant as 7×2, a reference to the number of engines in each stage. “New Glenn 9×4 is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance,” the company said. “The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9×4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.” The company did not specify a timeline for the debut of the 9×4 variant. A spokesperson for the company told Ars, “We aren’t disclosing a specific timeframe today. The iterative design from our current 7×2 vehicle means we can build this rocket quickly.”

Recently landed New Glenn returns to port. Blue Origin welcomed “Never Tell Me the Odds” back to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Thursday, where the rocket booster launched exactly one week prior, Florida Today reports. The New Glenn’s first stage booster landed on Blue Origin’s offshore recovery barge, which returned it to Port Canaveral on Tuesday with great fanfare. Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos, rode the barge into port, posing for photos with the rocket and waving to onlookers viewing the spectacle from a nearby public pier. The rocket was lowered horizontally late Wednesday morning, as spectators watched alongside the restaurants and fishing boats at the port.

Through the gates … Officials from Blue Origin guided the 188-foot-long New Glenn booster to the Space Force station Thursday, making Blue Origin the only company besides SpaceX to return a space-flown booster through the gates. Once back at Blue Origin’s hangar, the rocket will undergo inspections and refurbishment for a second flight, perhaps early next year. “I could not be more excited to see the New Glenn launch, and Blue Origin recover that booster and bring it back,” Col. Brian Chatman, commander of Space Launch Delta 45, told Florida Today. “It’s all part of our certification process and campaign to certify more national security space launch providers, launch carriers, to get our most crucial satellites up on orbit.”

Meanwhile, down at Starbase. SpaceX rolled the first of its third-generation Super Heavy boosters out of the factory at Starbase, Texas, this week for a road trip to a nearby test site, according to NASASpaceflight.com. The booster rode SpaceX’s transporter from the factory a few miles down the road to Massey’s Test Site, where technicians prepared the rocket for cryogenic proof testing. However, during the initial phases of testing, the booster failed early on Friday morning.

Tumbling down … At the Starship launch site, ground teams are busy tearing down the launch mount at Pad 1, the departure point for all of SpaceX’s Starships to date. SpaceX will upgrade the pad for its next-generation, more powerful Super Heavy boosters, while Starship V3’s initial flights will take off from Pad 2, a few hundred meters away from Pad 1.

Next three launches

Nov. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-79 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 59 UTC

Nov. 23: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-30 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08: 00 UTC

Nov. 25: Long March 2F | Shenzhou 22 | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 11 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Rocket Report: SpaceX’s next-gen booster fails; Pegasus will fly again Read More »

newest-starship-booster-is-significantly-damaged-during-testing-early-friday

Newest Starship booster is significantly damaged during testing early Friday

booster, explostion, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship / /

Friday morning’s failure was less energetic than an explosion of a Starship upper stage during testing at Massey’s in June. That incident caused widespread damage at the test site and a complete loss of the vehicle. The Booster 18 problem on Friday appeared to cause less damage to test infrastructure, and no Raptor engines had yet been installed on the vehicle.

Nevertheless, this is the point in the rocket development program at which SpaceX sought to be accelerating with development of Starship and reaching a healthy flight cadence in 2026. Many of the company’s near-term goals rely on getting Starship flying regularly and reliably.

A full view of super heavy booster 18’s catastrophic damage during testing tonight. Very significant damage to the entire LOX tank section.

11/21/25 pic.twitter.com/Kw8XeZ2qXW

— Starship Gazer (@StarshipGazer) November 21, 2025

With this upgraded vehicle, SpaceX wants to demonstrate booster landing and reuse, an upper stage tower catch next year, the beginning of operational Starlink deployment missions, and a test campaign for NASA’s Artemis Program. To keep this Moon landing program on track, it is critical that SpaceX and NASA conduct an on-orbit refueling test of Starship, which nominally was slated for the second half of 2026.

On this timeline, the company was aiming to conduct a crewed lunar landing for NASA during the second half of 2028. From an outside perspective, before this most recent failure, that timeline already seemed to be fairly optimistic.

One of the core attributes of SpaceX is that it diagnoses failure quickly, addresses problems, and gets back to flying as rapidly as possible. No doubt its engineers are already poring over the data captured Friday morning and quite possibly have already diagnosed the problem. The company is resilient, and it has ample resources.

Nevertheless, this is also a maturing program. The Starship vehicle launched for the first time in 2023, and its first stage made a successful flight two years ago. Losing the first stage of the newest generation of the vehicle, during the initial phases of testing, can only be viewed as a significant setback for a program with so much promise and so much to accomplish so soon.

Newest Starship booster is significantly damaged during testing early Friday Read More »

stoke-space-goes-for-broke-to-solve-the-only-launch-problem-that-“moves-the-needle”

Stoke Space goes for broke to solve the only launch problem that “moves the needle”

andy lapsa, cape canaveral, Features, nova rocket, Space, stoke space / /

“Does the world really need a 151st rocket company?”

Stoke Space’s full-flow staged combustion is tested in Central Washington in 2024. Credit: Stoke Space

Stoke Space’s full-flow staged combustion is tested in Central Washington in 2024. Credit: Stoke Space

LAUNCH COMPLEX 14, Cape Canaveral, Fla.—The platform atop the hulking steel tower offered a sweeping view of Florida’s rich, sandy coastline and brilliant blue waves beyond. Yet as captivating as the vista might be for an aspiring rocket magnate like Andy Lapsa, it also had to be a little intimidating.

To his right, at Launch Complex 13 next door, a recently returned Falcon 9 booster stood on a landing pad. SpaceX has landed more than 500 large orbital rockets. And next to SpaceX sprawled the launch site operated by Blue Origin. Its massive New Glenn rocket is also reusable, and founder Jeff Bezos has invested tens of billions of dollars into the venture.

Looking to the left, Lapsa saw a graveyard of sorts for commercial startups. Launch Complex 15 was leased to a promising startup, ABL Space, two years ago. After two failed launches, ABL Space pivoted away from commercial launch. Just beyond lies Launch Complex 16, where Relativity Space aims to launch from. The company has already burned through $1.7 billion in its efforts to reach orbit. Had billionaire Eric Schmidt not stepped in earlier this year, Relativity would have gone bankrupt.

Andy Lapsa may be a brainy rocket scientist, but he is not a billionaire. Far from it.

“When you start a company like this, you have no idea how far you’re going to be able to make it, you know?” he admitted.

Lapsa and another aerospace engineer, Tom Feldman, founded Stoke Space a little more than five years ago. Both had worked the better part of a decade at Blue Origin and decided they wanted to make their mark on the industry. It was not an easy choice to start a rocket company at a time when there were dozens of other entrants in the field.

Andy Lapsa speaks at the Space Economy Summit in November 2025.

Credit: The Economist Group

Andy Lapsa speaks at the Space Economy Summit in November 2025. Credit: The Economist Group

“It was a huge question in my head: Does the world really need a 151st rocket company?” he said. “And in order for me to say yes to that question, I had to very systematically go through all the other players, thinking about the economics of launch, about the business plan, about the evolution of these companies over time. It was very non-intuitive to me to start another launch company.”

So why did he do it?

I traveled to Florida in November to answer this question and to see if the world’s 151st rocket company had any chance of success.

Launch Complex 14

It takes a long time to build a launch site. Probably longer than you might think.

Lapsa and Feldman spent much of 2020 working on the basic design of a rocket that would eventually be named Nova and deciding whether they could build a business around it. In December of that year, they closed their seed round of funding, raising $9.1 million. After this, finding somewhere to launch from became a priority.

They zeroed in on Cape Canaveral because it’s where the majority of US launch companies and customers are, as well as the talent to assemble and launch rockets. They learned in 2021 that the US Space Force was planning to lease an old pad, Space Launch Complex 14, to a commercial company. This was not just a good location to launch from; it was truly a historic location—John Glenn launched into orbit from here in 1962 aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft. It was retired in 1967 and designated a National Historic Landmark.

But in recent years, the Space Force has sought to support the flourishing US commercial space industry, and it has offered Launch Complex 14. After the competition opened in 2021, Stoke Space won the lease a year later. Then began the long and arduous process of conducting an Environmental Assessment. It took nearly two years, and it was not until October 20, 2024, that Stoke was allowed to break ground.

None of the structures on the site were usable, and aside from the historic blockhouse dating to the Mercury program, everything else had to be demolished and cleared before work could begin.

As we walked the large ring encompassing the site, Lapsa explained that all of the tanks and major hardware needed to support a Nova launch were now on site. There is a large launch tower, as well as a launch mount upon which the rocket will be stood up. The company has mostly turned toward integrating all of the ground infrastructure and wiring up the site. A nearby building to assemble rockets and process payloads is well underway.

Lapsa seemed mostly relieved. “A year ago, this was my biggest concern,” he said.

He need not have worried. A few months before the company completed its environmental permitting, a tall, lanky, thickly bearded engineer named Jonathan Lund hired on. A Stanford graduate who got his start with the US Army Corps of Engineers, Lund worked at SpaceX during the second half of the 2010s, helping to lead the reconstruction of one launch pad, the crew tower project at Launch Complex 39A, and a pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base. He also worked on multiple landing sites for the Falcon 9 rocket. Lund arrived to lead the development of Stoke’s site.

This is Lund’s fifth launch pad. Each one presents different challenges. In Florida, for example, the water table lies only a few feet below the ground. But for most rockets, including Nova, a large trench must be dug to allow flames from the rocket engines to be carried away from the vehicle at ignition and liftoff. As we stood in this massive flame diverter, there were a few indications of water seeping in.

Still, the company recently completed a major milestone by testing the water suppression system, which dampens the energy of a rocket at liftoff to protect the launch pad. Essentially, the plume from the rocket’s engines flows downward where it meets a sheet of water, turning it into steam. This creates an insulating barrier of sorts.

Water suppression test at LC-14 complete. ✅ Flowed the diverter and rain birds in a “launch like” scenario. pic.twitter.com/rs1lEloPul

— Stoke Space (@stoke_space) October 21, 2025

The water comes from large pipes running down the flame diverter, each of which has hundreds of holes not unlike a garden sprinkler hose. Lund said the pipes and the frame they rest on were built near where we stood.

“We fabricated these pieces on site, at the north end of the flame trench,” Lund explained. “Then we built this frame in Cocoa Beach and shipped it in four different sections and assembled it on site. Then we set the frame on the ramp, put together this surface (with the pipes), and then Egyptian-style we slide it down the ramp right into position. We used some old-school methods, but simple sometimes works best. Nothing fancy.”

At this point, Lapsa interrupted. “I was pretty nervous,” he said. “The way you’re describing this sounded good on a PowerPoint. But I wasn’t sure it actually would work.”

But it did.

Waiting on Nova

So if the pad is rounding into shape, how’s that rocket coming?

It sounds like Stoke Space is doing the right things. Earlier this year, the company shipped a full-scale version of its second stage to its test site at Moses Lake in central Washington. There, it underwent qualification testing, during which the vehicle is loaded with cryogenic fuels on multiple occasions, pressurized, and put through other exercises. Lapsa said that testing went well.

The company also built a stubby version of its first stage. The tanks and domes had full-size diameters, but the stage was not its full height. That vehicle also underwent qualification testing and passed.

The company has begun building flight hardware for the first Nova rocket. The vehicle’s software is maturing. Work is well underway on the development of an automated flight termination system. “Having a team that’s been through this cycle many times, it’s something we started putting attention on very early,” Lapsa said. “It’s on a good path as well.”

And yet the final, frenetic months leading to a debut launch are crunch time for any rocket company: first assembly of the full vehicle, first time test-firing it all. Things will inevitably go wrong. The question is how bad will the problems be?

For as long as I’ve known Lapsa, he has been cagey about launch dates for Stoke. This is smart because in reality, no one knows. And seasoned industry people (and journalists) know that projected launch dates for new rockets are squishy. The most precise thing Lapsa will say is that Stoke is targeting “next year” for Nova’s debut.

The company has a customer for the first flight. If all goes well, its first mission will sail to the asteroid belt. Asteroid mining startup AstroForge has signed on for Nova 1.

Stoke Space isn’t shooting for the Moon. It’s shooting for something 1 million times farther.

Too good to believe it’s true?

Stoke Space is far from the first company to start with grand ambitions. And when rocket startups think too big, it can be their undoing.

A little more than a decade ago, Firefly Space Systems in Texas based the design of its Alpha rocket on an aerospike engine, a technology that had never been flown to space before. Although this was theoretically a more efficient engine design, it also brought more technical risk and proved a bridge too far. By 2017, the company was bankrupt. When Ukrainian investor Max Polyakov rescued Firefly later that year, he demanded that Alpha have a more conventional rocket engine design.

Around the same time that Firefly struggled with its aerospike engine, another launch company, Relativity Space, announced its intent to 3D-print the entirety of its rockets. The company finally launched its Terran 1 rocket after eight years. But it struggled with additively manufacturing rockets. Relativity was on the brink of bankruptcy before a former Google executive, Eric Schmidt, stepped in to rescue the company financially. Relativity is now focused on a traditionally manufactured rocket, the Terran R.

Stoke Space’s Hopper 2 takes to the skies in September 2023 in Moses Lake, Washington.

Credit: Stoke Space

Stoke Space’s Hopper 2 takes to the skies in September 2023 in Moses Lake, Washington. Credit: Stoke Space

So what to make of Stoke Space, which has an utterly novel design for its second stage? The stage is powered by a ring of 24 thrusters, an engine collectively named Andromeda. Stoke has also eschewed a tile-based heat shield to protect the vehicle during atmospheric reentry in favor of a regeneratively cooled design.

In this, there are echoes of Firefly, Relativity, and other companies with grand plans that had to be abandoned in favor of simpler designs to avoid financial ruin. After all, it’s hard enough to reach orbit with a conventional rocket.

But the company has already done a lot of testing of this design. Its first iteration of Andromeda even completed a hop test back in 2023.

“Andromeda is wildly new,” Lapsa said. “But the question of can it work, in my opinion, is a resounding yes.”

The engineering team had all manner of questions when designing Andromeda several years ago. How will all of those thrusters and their plumbing interact with one another? Will there be feedback? Is the heat shield idea practical?

“Those are the kind of unknowns that we knew we were walking into from an engineering perspective,” Lapsa said. “We knew there should be an answer in there, but we didn’t know exactly what it would be. It’s very hard to model all that stuff in the transient. So you just had to get after it, and do it, and we were able to do that. So can it work? Absolutely yes. Will it work out of the box? That’s a different question.”

First stage, too

Stoke’s ambitions did not stop with the upper stage. Early on, Lapsa, Feldman, and the small engineering team also decided to develop a full-flow staged combustion engine. This, Lapsa acknowledges, was a “risky” decision for the company. But it was a necessary one, he believes.

Full-flow staged combustion engines had been tested before this decade but were never flown. From an engineering standpoint, they are significantly more complex than a traditional staged combustion engine in that the oxidizer and propellant—which began as cryogenic liquids—arrive in the combustion chamber in a fully gaseous state. This interaction between two gases is more efficient and produces less wear and tear on turbines within the engine.

“You want to get the highest efficiency you can without driving the turbine temperature to a place where you have a short lifetime,” Lapsa said. “Full-flow is the right answer for that. If you do anything else, it’s a distraction.”

Stoke Space successfully tests its advanced full-flow staged combustion rocket engine, designed to power the Nova launch vehicle’s first stage.

Credit: Stoke Space

Stoke Space successfully tests its advanced full-flow staged combustion rocket engine, designed to power the Nova launch vehicle’s first stage. Credit: Stoke Space

It was also massively unproven. When Stoke Space was founded in 2020, no full-flow staged combustion engine had ever gotten close to space. SpaceX was developing the Raptor engine using the technology, but it would not make its first “spaceflight” until the spring of 2023 on the Super Heavy rocket that powers Starship. Multiple Raptors failed shortly after ignition.

But for a company choosing full reusability of its rocket, as SpaceX sought to do with Starship, there ultimately is no choice.

“Anything you build for full and rapid reuse needs to find margin somewhere in the system,” Lapsa said. “And really that’s fuel efficiency. It makes fuel efficiency a very strong, very important driver.”

In June 2024, Stoke Space announced it had just completed a successful hot fire test of its full-flow, staged combustion engine for Nova’s first stage. The propulsion team had, Lapsa said at the time, “worked tirelessly” to reach that point.

Not just another launch company?

Stoke Space got to the party late. After SpaceX’s success with the first Falcon 9 in 2010, a wave of new entrants entered the field over the next decade. They were drawing down billions in venture capital funding, and some were starting to go public at huge valuations as special purpose acquisition companies. But by 2020, the market seemed saturated. The gold rush for new launch companies was nearing the cops-arrive-to-bust-up-the-festivities stage.

Every new company seemed to have its own spin on how to conquer low-Earth orbit.

“There were a lot of other business plans being proposed and tried,” Lapsa said. “There were low-cost, mass-produced disposable rockets. There were rockets under the wings of aircraft. There were rocket engine companies that were going to sell to 150 launch companies. All of those ideas raised big money and deserve to be considered. The question is, which one is the winner in the end?”

And that’s the question he was trying to answer in his own mind. He was in his 30s. He had a family. And he was looking to commit his best years, professionally, to solving a major launch problem.

“What’s the thing that fundamentally moves the needle on what’s out there already today?” he said. “The only thing, in my opinion, is rapid reuse. And once you get it, the economics are so powerful that nothing else matters. That’s the thing I couldn’t get out of my head. That’s the only problem I wanted to work on, and so we started a company in order to work on it.”

Stoke was one of many launch companies five years ago. But in the years since, the field has narrowed considerably. Some promising companies, such as Virgin Orbit and ABL Space, launched a few times and folded. Others never made it to the launch pad. Today, by my count, there are fewer than 10 serious commercial launch companies in the United States, Stoke among them. The capital markets seem convinced. In October, Stoke announced a massive $510 million Series D funding round. That was a lot of money in a challenging time to raise launch firm funding.

So Stoke has the money it needs. It has a team of sharp engineers and capable technicians. It has a launch pad and qualified hardware. That’s all good because this is the point in the journey for a launch startup where things start to get very, very difficult.

Photo of Eric Berger

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.

Stoke Space goes for broke to solve the only launch problem that “moves the needle” Read More »

blue-origin-revealed-some-massively-cool-plans-for-its-new-glenn-rocket

Blue Origin revealed some massively cool plans for its New Glenn rocket

blue origin, new glenn, Space, super heavy lift rocket / /

One week after the successful second launch of its large New Glenn booster, Blue Origin revealed a roadmap on Thursday for upgrades to the rocket, including a new variant with more main engines and a super-heavy lift capability.

These upgrades to the rocket are “designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability,” the company said in an update published on its website. The enhancements will be phased in over time, starting with the third launch of New Glenn, which is likely to occur during the first half of 2026.

A bigger beast

The most significant part of the update concerned an evolution of New Glenn that will transform the booster into a super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The first stage of this evolved vehicle will have nine BE-4 engines instead of seven, and the upper stage four BE-3U engines instead of two. In its update, Blue Origin refers to the new vehicle as 9×4 and the current variant as 7×2, a reference to the number of engines in each stage.

“New Glenn 9×4 is designed for a subset of missions requiring additional capacity and performance,” the company said. “The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9×4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.”

The company did not specify a timeline for the debut of the 9×4 variant. A spokesperson for the company told Ars, “We aren’t disclosing a specific timeframe today. The iterative design from our current 7×2 vehicle means we can build this rocket quickly.”

A comparison of New Glenn 7×2, the Saturn V, and New Glenn 7.4 rockets.

Credit: Blue Origin

A comparison of New Glenn 7×2, the Saturn V, and New Glenn 7.4 rockets. Credit: Blue Origin

One source familiar with the company’s plans said the internal timeline would allow for the 9×4 variant of New Glenn to take flight as early as 2027.

Such a booster would be a notable vehicle, with a lift capacity nearly on par with NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. However, it would have a fully reusable first stage with a larger payload fairing and would likely cost less than one-tenth the estimated $2.2 billion cost of NASA’s super-heavy rocket.

Blue Origin revealed some massively cool plans for its New Glenn rocket Read More »

rocket-lab-electron-among-first-artifacts-installed-in-ca-science-center-space-gallery

Rocket Lab Electron among first artifacts installed in CA Science Center space gallery

California Science Center, electron, Endeavour, Kent Kresa Space Gallery, Los Angeles, rocket lab, Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, solid rocket booster, Space, Space exploration, space history, Space shuttle, space shuttle main engine, SRB, SSME, walkthrough / /

It took the California Science Center more than three years to erect its new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, including stacking NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour for its launch pad-like display.

Now the big work begins.

“That’s completing the artifact installation and then installing the exhibits,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center in Los Angeles, in an interview. “Most of the exhibits are in fabrication in shops around the country and audio-visual production is underway. We’re full-on focused on exhibits now.”

On Tuesday, the science center is marking the addition of the first artifacts to the Kent Kresa Space Gallery. Named for the former chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman and former chairman of General Motors, the completed gallery will complement the Samuel Oschin Shuttle Gallery (featuring Endeavour) with three areas devoted to the themes of “Rocket Science,” “Robots in Space,” and “Humans in Space.”

Now in place are a space shuttle main engine (SSME), a walk-through segment of a shuttle solid rocket booster, and a Rocket Lab Electron rocket.

Erecting Electron

“The biggest thing we have put in—other than the space shuttle—was the Electron, which we think is really significant,” said Rudolph. “We’re really happy to show next-generation technologies from startup companies with new launch vehicles, particularly if the company is based in California. Our goal is to inspire and motivate the next generation, and we think that showing folks that there are still a lot of innovative things going on, happening in their backyard, is a really great opportunity to inspire kids and people of all ages.”

a large yellow crane is used to lift a long, black cylindrical artifact into place inside a museum

Credit: California Science Center

Founded in New Zealand in 2006 and now based in Long Beach, Rocket Lab developed the Electron as the first carbon-composite launch vehicle intended to service the small satellite market. It was also the first orbital-class rocket to use electric pump-fed engines. Having now flown 75 successful missions (including five suborbital flights), the Electron is the third most-launched small-lift rocket in history.

Of course, “small” can be relative. At 59 feet tall (18 meters), one floor of the Kresa gallery was not enough.

“The Electron rocket is actually at the center of a staircase, a section which is open all the way from level two, where you enter, to the lower level, which is 25 feet (7.6 meters) below. The Electron is standing up in that opening and it pretty much fills the whole thing,” said Rudolph.

Rocket Lab Electron among first artifacts installed in CA Science Center space gallery Read More »

after-last-week’s-stunning-landing,-here’s-what-comes-next-for-blue-origin

After last week’s stunning landing, here’s what comes next for Blue Origin

blue moon lander, blue origin, new glenn, Space / /

“They’re coming off the line at one a month right now, and then we’re ramping from there,” he said of the second stages, known internally as GS-2. “It would be ambitious to get to the upper level, but we want to be hardware rich. So, you know, we want to try to keep building as fast as we can, and then with practice I think our launch cadence can go up.”

The biggest part of increasing cadence is manufacturing. That means BE-4 rocket engines for the first stage, BE-3U engines for the upper stage, and the stages themselves.

“With rockets, it’s hard,” Limp said. “Building prototypes is easy but building a machine to make the machines in volume at rate is much harder. And so I do feel like, when I look at the factories, our engine factory in Huntsville, the rocket factory here at Rocket Park and Lunar Plant 1, I feel like when you walk the floor there’s a lot of energy.”

Since he joined Blue Origin about two years ago, Limp said increasing production has been among his foremost goals.

“You’re never done with manufacturing, but I feel on the engine front we’re incredibly strong,” he said. “We’re going to double the rate again next year. We’ve got work to do, but on second stages I feel like we’re getting there. With the booster, we’re getting there. The key is to be hardware rich, so even if some of these missions have anomalies, we can recover quickly.”

Next stop, the Moon

Blue Origin recovered the New Glenn first stage from last week’s flight and brought it into port on Monday. Although it looks much cleaner than a used Falcon 9 first stage, much of this is due to the use of methane propellant, which does not produce the soot that kerosene propellant does. It will take some time to determine if and when this recovered first stage will be able fly again, but if it’s not ready soon Blue Origin has a third first stage nearing completion.

After last week’s stunning landing, here’s what comes next for Blue Origin Read More »