Space

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Capitol Hill is abuzz with talk of the “Athena” plan for NASA

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In recent weeks, copies of an intriguing policy document have started to spread among space lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The document bears the title “Athena,” and it purports to summarize the actions that private astronaut Jared Isaacman would have taken, were his nomination to become NASA administrator confirmed.

The 62-page plan is notable both for the ideas to remake NASA that it espouses as well as the manner in which it has been leaked to the space community.

After receiving a copy of this plan from an industry official, I spoke with multiple sources over the weekend to understand what is happening. Based upon this reporting there are clearly multiple layers to the story, which I want to unpack.

In the big picture, this leak appears to be part of a campaign by interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy to either hold onto the high-profile job or, at the very least, prejudice the re-nomination of Isaacman to lead the space agency. Additionally, it is also being spread by legacy aerospace contractors who seek to protect their interests from the Trump administration’s goal of controlling spending and leaning into commercial space.

The Athena plan’s origin

The leaked document is 62 pages long and, according to sources, represents a pared-down version of a more comprehensive “Athena” plan devised by Isaacman and his advisors early in 2025, after President Trump nominated him to become NASA administrator.

The Athena plan lays out a blueprint for Isaacman’s tenure at NASA, seeking to return the space agency to “achieving the near impossible,” focusing on leading the world in human space exploration, igniting the space economy, and becoming a force multiplier for science.

Isaacman’s nomination was pulled in late May, largely for political reasons. Trump then appointed his Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, to oversee NASA on an interim basis in early July. As a courtesy, in August, Isaacman’s team edited a shorter version of the plan down to 62 pages and gave a copy to Duffy and his chief of staff, Pete Meachum.

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NASA test flight seeks to help bring commercial supersonic travel back

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The X-59 has successfully completed its inaugural flight.

Credit: Lockheed Martin/Michael Jackson

About an hour after sunrise over the Mojave Desert of Southern California, NASA’s newest experimental supersonic jet took to the skies for the first time on Tuesday. The X-59 Quesst (Quiet SuperSonic Technology) is designed to decrease the noise of a sonic boom when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, paving the way for future commercial jets to fly at supersonic speeds over land.

The jet, built by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, took off from US Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. Flown by Nils Larson, NASA’s lead test pilot for the X-59, the inaugural flight validated the jet’s airworthiness and safety before landing about an hour after takeoff near NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

“X-59 is a symbol of American ingenuity,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said in a statement. “It’s part of our DNA—the desire to go farther, faster, and even quieter than anyone has ever gone before.”

Commercial planes are prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land in the US due to the disruption that breaking the sound barrier causes on the ground, releasing a loud sonic boom that can rattle windows and trigger alarms. The Concorde, which was the only successful commercial supersonic jet, was limited to flying at supersonic speeds only over the oceans.

When a plane approaches the speed of sound, pressure waves build up on the surface of the aircraft. These areas of high pressure coalesce into large shock waves when the plane goes supersonic, producing the double thunderclap of a sonic boom.

The X-59 is capable of reaching supersonic speeds, without the supersonic boom.

Credit: Lockheed Martin/Gary Tice

The X-59 is capable of reaching supersonic speeds, without the supersonic boom. Credit: Lockheed Martin/Gary Tice

The X-59 will generate a lower “sonic thump” thanks to its unique design. It was given a long, slender nose that accounts for about a third of the total length and breaks up pressure waves that would otherwise merge on other parts of the airplane. The engine was mounted on top of the X-59’s fuselage, rather than underneath as on a fighter jet, to keep a smooth underside that limits shock waves and also to direct sound waves up into the sky rather than down toward the ground. NASA aims to provide key data to aircraft manufacturers so they can build less noisy supersonic planes.

A jet like no other

The X-59 is a single-seat, single-engine jet. It is 99.7 feet long and 29.5 feet wide, making it almost twice as long as an F-16 fighter jet but with a slightly smaller wingspan. The X-59’s cockpit and ejection seat come from the T-38 jet trainer, its landing gear from an F-16, and its control stick from the F-117 stealth attack aircraft. Its engine, a modified General Electric F414 from the F/A-18 fighter jet, will allow the plane to cruise at Mach 1.4, about 925 mph, at an altitude of 55,000 feet. This is nearly twice as high and twice as fast as commercial airliners typically fly.

Perhaps the most striking change on the X-59 is that it does not have a glass cockpit window. Instead, the cockpit is fully enclosed to be as aerodynamic as possible, and the pilot watches a camera feed of the outside world on a 4K monitor known as the eXternal Visibility System.

“You can’t see very clearly through glass when you look at it at a very shallow angle, and so you need to have a certain steepness of the view screen to have good optical qualities, and that would develop a strong shock wave that would really corrupt the low-boom characteristics of the airplane,” says Michael Buonanno, the air vehicle lead for the X-59 at Lockheed Martin.

The X-59 has repurposed components of other NASA aircrafts.

Credit: Lockheed Martin

The X-59 has repurposed components of other NASA aircrafts. Credit: Lockheed Martin

For this first flight, the X-59 flew at a lower altitude and at about 240 mph, according to NASA. During future tests, the jet will gradually increase its speed and altitude until it goes supersonic, NASA said, which occurs at about 659 mph at 55,000 feet, or 761 mph at sea level. The speed of sound varies according to temperature and to a lesser degree pressure, causing it to decrease at higher altitudes.

“The primary objective on a first flight is really just to land,” James Less, a project pilot for the X-59 who will be conducting future flights, tells WIRED. Less flew an F-15 fighter jet in formation with the X-59 as a support aircraft during the flight, observing the new experimental jet for any issues.

“I’m looking for anything external to the airplane that the pilot can’t see,” Less says. Generally the first thing he would check for is that the landing gear retracted successfully, but on this initial flight the X-59 intentionally left the landing gear down. “If the aircraft is leaking any kind of fluids, be it fuel or hydraulics, as a chase pilot, you can usually see that… Also I’m looking for other traffic, air traffic, just to point that out to him.”

Following the X-59’s successful touchdown at Armstrong, NASA and Lockheed Martin engineers will review the flight data to prepare for the jet’s future, faster flights.

The design of the X-59 includes a nose that makes up most of the length of the craft, designed to help reduce noise.

Credit: NASA/Steve Freeman

The design of the X-59 includes a nose that makes up most of the length of the craft, designed to help reduce noise. Credit: NASA/Steve Freeman

The future of supersonic flight

The eXternal Visibility System is just one of the modern technologies needed to build a low-boom airplane like the X-59. Decades of computational fluid dynamics research and wind tunnel testing were also required to arrive at the final design.

“We’ve really had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the computational fluid dynamics application to these low-boom aircraft,” Lori Ozoroski, the commercial supersonic technology project manager at NASA, tells WIRED. “We’ve gone from this computational domain around an aircraft of something that’s got a couple of million cells as you divide up the space around it to… things with a couple million cells, and now we’re pushing a billion cells.”

Once the X-59 gets up to speed, the next step will be to make sure the quieter sonic thumps really are tolerable for people on the ground.

“We have been planning a test campaign where we will fly over various communities in the US, polling them with a survey and understanding how annoyed people are,” Ozoroski says. The flights will produce both loud and quiet sonic booms to see how people react, she explains.

“Our plan is to gather all this data, doing approximately one-month tests in a couple of locations around the country, and then providing all that data to the FAA and the international regulatory community to try to establish a sound limit, rather than the speed limit.”

If the program is a success, it could pave the way for new commercial supersonic aircraft that would cut travel times in half, something that companies such as Boom Supersonic are trying to achieve.

The jet has joined the ranks of innovative NASA X-planes, dating back almost 80 years to the Bell X-1 that Chuck Yeager piloted on the first faster-than-sound flight in 1947.

“I grew up reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and reading about the X-planes out at Edwards, and never imagined that I’d be in a position to do something like this,” says Less, who is eagerly awaiting his turn at the X-59’s stick. “This will be the highlight of my career.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Photo of WIRED

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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SpaceX teases simplified Starship as alarms sound over Moon landing delays

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“SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible.”

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

SpaceX on Thursday released the most detailed public update in nearly two years on its multibillion-dollar contract to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA, amid growing sentiment that China is likely to beat the United States back to the lunar surface with humans.

In a lengthy statement published on SpaceX’s website Thursday, the company said it “will be a central enabler that will fulfill the vision of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to establish a lasting presence on the lunar surface… and ultimately forge the path to land the first humans on Mars.”

Getting to Mars is SpaceX’s overarching objective, a concise but lofty mission statement introduced by Elon Musk at the company’s founding nearly a quarter-century ago. Musk has criticized NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return US astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the last Apollo lunar mission in 1972, as unambitious and too reliant on traditional aerospace contractors.

Is this a priority for SpaceX?

The Starship rocket and its massive Super Heavy booster are supposed to be SpaceX’s solution for fulfilling Musk’s mission of creating a settlement on Mars. The red planet has been the focus each time Musk has spoken at length about Starship in the last couple of years, with Moon missions receiving little or no time in his comments, whether they’re scripted or off the cuff.

In the background, SpaceX’s engineers have been busy developing a version of the Starship rocket to fly crews to and from the surface of the Moon for NASA. The agency’s current architecture calls for astronauts to transit from the Earth to the vicinity of the Moon inside NASA’s Orion spacecraft, made by Lockheed Martin, then link up with Starship in lunar orbit for a ride to the Moon’s south pole.

After completing their mission on the surface, the astronauts will ride Starship back into space and dock with Orion to bring them home. Starship and Orion may also link together by docking at the planned Gateway mini-space station orbiting the Moon, but Gateway’s future is in question as NASA faces budget cuts.

NASA has contracts with SpaceX valued at more than $4 billion to land two astronaut crews on the Moon on NASA’s Artemis III and Artemis IV missions. The contract also covers milestones ahead of any human mission, such as an uncrewed Starship landing and takeoff at the Moon, to prove the vehicle is ready.

SpaceX’s Starship descends toward the Indian Ocean at the conclusion of Flight 11 on October 3. Credit: SpaceX

The fresh update from SpaceX lists recent achievements the company has accomplished on the path to the Moon, including demos of life support and thermal control systems, the docking adapter to link Starship with Orion, navigation hardware and software, a landing leg structural test, and engine firings in conditions similar to what the ship will see at the Moon.

Many of these milestones were completed ahead of schedule, SpaceX said. But the biggest tests, such as demonstrating in-orbit refueling, remain ahead. Some NASA officials believe mastering orbital refueling will take many tries, akin to SpaceX’s iterative two steps forward, one step back experience with its initial Starship test flights.

The first test to transfer large amounts of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen between two Starships in low-Earth orbit is now planned for next year. This time a year ago, SpaceX aimed to launch the first orbital refueling demo before the end of 2025.

Orbital refueling is key to flying Starship to the Moon or Mars. The rocket consumes all of its propellant getting to low-Earth orbit, and it needs more gas to go farther. For lunar missions, SpaceX will launch a Starship-derived propellant depot into orbit, refill it with perhaps a dozen or more Starship tankers, and then dock the Starship lander with it to load its tanks before heading off to the Moon.

Officials haven’t given a precise number of tanker flights required for a Starship lunar lander. It’s likely engineers won’t settle on an exact number until they obtain data on how much of the super-cold liquid propellant boils off in space, and how efficient it is to transfer from ship to ship. Whatever the number, SpaceX says Starship’s design for recovery and rapid reuse will facilitate a fast-paced launch and refueling campaign.

SpaceX tests the elevator to be used on Starship. Credit: SpaceX

The upshot of overcoming the refueling hurdle is Starship’s promise of becoming a transformative vehicle. Starship is enormous compared to any other concept for landing on the Moon. One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, or more than 21,000 cubic feet, roughly two-thirds that of the entire International Space Station, according to SpaceX. Starship will have dual airlocks, or pathways for astronauts and equipment to exit and enter the spacecraft.

An elevator will lower people and cargo down to the lunar surface from the crew cabin at the top of the 15-story-tall spacecraft. For pure cargo missions, SpaceX says Starship will be capable of landing up to 100 metric tons of cargo directly on the Moon’s surface. This would unlock the ability to deliver large rovers, nuclear reactors, or lunar habitats to the Moon in one go. In the long run, the Starship architecture could allow landers to be reused over and over again. All of this is vital if NASA wants to build a permanent base or research outpost on the Moon.

A competition in more ways than one

But hard things take time. SpaceX dealt with repeated setbacks in the first half of this year: three in-flight failures of Starship and one Starship explosion on the ground at the company’s development facility in South Texas. Since then, teams have reeled off consecutive successful Starship test flights ahead of the debut of an upgraded Starship variant called Version 3 in the coming months. Starship Version 3 will have the accoutrements for refueling, and SpaceX says this will also be the version to fly to the Moon.

The recent Starship delays, coupled with the scope of work to go, have raised concerns that the Artemis program is falling behind China’s initiative to land its own astronauts on the Moon. China’s goal is to do it by 2030, a schedule reiterated in Chinese state media this week. The Chinese program relies on an architecture more closely resembling NASA’s old Apollo designs.

The official schedule for the first Artemis crew landing, on Artemis III, puts it in 2027, but that timeline is no longer achievable. Starship and new lunar spacesuits developed by Axiom Space won’t be ready, in part because NASA didn’t award the contracts to SpaceX and Axiom until 2021 and 2022.

All of this adds up to waning odds that the United States can beat China back to the Moon, according to a growing chorus of voices in the space community. Last month, former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, who led the agency during the first Trump administration, told Congress the United States was likely to lose the second lunar space race.

At a space conference earlier this week, Bridenstine suggested the Trump administration use its powers to fast-track a lunar landing, even floating the idea of invoking the Defense Production Act, a law that grants the president authority to marshal industrial might to meet pressing national needs.

An executive order from President Donald Trump could authorize such an effort and declare a “national security imperative that we’re going to beat China to the Moon,” Bridenstine said at the American Astronautical Society’s von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

Charlie Bolden, NASA’s administrator under former President Barack Obama, also expressed doubts that NASA could land humans on the Moon before China, or by the end of Trump’s term in the White House. “Let’s be real, OK? Everybody in this room knows, to say we’re going to do it by the end of the term, or we’re going to do it before the Chinese, that doesn’t help industry.”

But Bolden said maybe it’s not so terrible if China lands people on the Moon before NASA can return with astronauts. “We may not make 2030, and that’s OK with me, as long as we get there in 2031 better than they are with what they have there.”

Sean Duffy, NASA’s acting administrator, doesn’t see it the same way. Duffy said last week he would give contractors until this Wednesday to propose other ways of landing astronauts on the Moon sooner than the existing plan. SpaceX and Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos, confirmed they submitted updated plans to NASA this week.

SpaceX released a new rendering of the internal crew cabin for the Starship lunar lander. Credit: SpaceX

Blue Origin has a separate contract with NASA to provide its own human-rated lunar lander—Blue Moon Mark 2—for entry into service on the Artemis V mission, likely not to occur before the early 2030s. A smaller unpiloted lander—Blue Moon Mark 1—is on track to launch on Blue Origin’s first lunar landing attempt next year.

Blue Moon Mark 1 is still a big vehicle, standing taller than the lunar lander used by NASA during the Apollo program. But it doesn’t match the 52-foot (16-meter) height of Blue Origin’s Mark 2 lander, and tops out well short of the roughly 165-foot-tall (50-meter) Starship lander.

What’s more, Blue Moon Mark 1 won’t need to be refueled after launch, unlike Starship and Mark 2. Jacki Cortese, senior director of civil space at Blue Origin, confirmed Tuesday that her company is looking at employing a “more incremental approach” using Mark 1 to accelerate an Artemis crew landing. Ars first reported Blue Origin was studying how to modify Blue Moon Mark 1 for astronauts.

All of this is a reminder of something Blue Origin said in 2021, when NASA passed over Bezos’ company to award the first Artemis lander contract to SpaceX. Blue Origin protested the award and filed a lawsuit against the government, triggering a lunar lander work stoppage that lasted several months until a federal judge dismissed the suit.

Blue Origin said SpaceX’s approach with numerous refueling sorties was “immensely complex and high risk” and argued its proposal was the better option for NASA. The statement has taken on a meme-worthy status among fans of Starship.

But SpaceX bid a lower cost, and NASA officials said it was the only proposal the agency could afford at the time. And then, when Blue Origin won a contract from NASA in 2023 to provide a second lander option, the company’s concept also hinged on refueling the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander in space.

Now, SpaceX is making a new offering to NASA. Like Blue Origin, SpaceX said it has sent in a proposal for a “simplified architecture” for landing astronauts on the Moon, but did not provide details.

“We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety,” the company said.

Since NASA selected SpaceX for the Human Landing System contract in 2021, the company said it has been “consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis III have changed.”

For example, NASA originally required SpaceX to only demonstrate it could land Starship on the Moon before moving forward with a crew mission. Lori Glaze, who leads NASA’s human exploration division, said in July that the agency is now requiring the uncrewed landing demo to also include an ascent from the Moon’s surface. NASA wants to know if Starship can not just land astronauts on the Moon, but also get them back.

“Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the Moon and a core enabler of the Artemis program’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” SpaceX said. “SpaceX shares the goal of returning to the Moon as expeditiously as possible, approaching the mission with the same alacrity and commitment that returned human spaceflight capability to America under NASA’s Commercial Crew program.”

An artist’s illustration of multiple Starships on the lunar surface, with a Moon base in the background. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX has built a reputation for doing things quickly. One example has been the rapid-fire launch cadence of the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX is setting up launch pads and factories to manufacture and launch Super Heavy and Starship—combining together to make the largest rocket ever built—at an even faster rate than Falcon 9.

The company has launched 11 full-scale test flights of Starship/Super Heavy since April 2023. “This campaign has quickly matured the core Starship and has produced numerous feats,” SpaceX said. The company listed some of them:

  • Multiple successful ascents of the world’s most powerful rocket
  • The launch, return, catch, and reuse of that rocket to unlock the high launch rate cadence needed for lunar missions
  • The transfer of approximately 5 metric tons of cryogenic propellant between tanks while in space
  • Successful in-space relights of the Raptor engines that are critical for the maneuvers that will send Starship to the Moon
  • Multiple controlled reentries through Earth’s atmosphere

It’s true that these feats have come fast. Many more remain on the road ahead before SpaceX can make good on its commitment to NASA.

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

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Rocket Report: SpaceX surpasses shuttle launch total; Skyroot has big ambitions

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All the news that’s fit to lift

“I do think we’re rapidly approaching the point where it will be a significant impact.”

Expedition 1’s Soyuz-U launch vehicle is transported to its launch pad in October 2000. Credit: NASA

Welcome to Edition 8.17 of the Rocket Report! Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the first crewed launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur. Since this time, humans have lived in space continuously, even through spacecraft accidents and wars on Earth. This is a remarkable milestone that all of humanity can celebrate.

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.

Skyroot nearing first launch with big ambitions. Three years after India opened up its space sector to private companies, Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace is targeting its first full-scale commercial satellite launch mission in January 2026, Mint reports. After this debut flight, Skyroot is targeting a launch every three months next year, and one every month from 2027. Each satellite launch mission is expected to generate the company nearly $5 million, according to Skyroot chief executive Pawan Chandana.

A promising start … Skyroot became India’s first space startup to demonstrate a rocket launch when it sent up a smaller version of its satellite vehicle from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh in November 2022. There are several other Indian launch startups, but Skyroot appears to be the most promising. Even so, a launch cadence of every three months next year seems highly ambitious. A single, successful launch in 2026 would be a great step forward.

Canadian spaceport gets infusion of cash. Maritime Launch Services will receive a senior credit facility for up to 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.1 million) from Canada’s government-owned export credit agency for defense, telecommunications, and weather-monitoring needs, Payload reports. Spaceport Nova Scotia, which is the Atlantic launching facility for MLS, will use the money to build out infrastructure and a launch pad for orbital missions. Half of the money will be advanced immediately, with more available as construction costs arise.

Going up from up there … Canada used to have a Manitoba spaceport when the United States was in a “space race” for military supremacy in the 1950s and 1960s. After hosting decades of Black Brant sounding rocket flights, officials closed the spaceport in 1985. Canada now mainly uses foreign launchers, in part because the government deemed building sovereign capability too costly. But Canadian companies (inspired by SpaceX) are moving to build their own facilities and rockets. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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ArcaSpace is dead, replaced by … a fashion company. Somehow I missed this news when it came out a year ago, but I’m including it now for completeness. For a quarter of a century, a Romania-based rocket organization, ArcaSpace, had been promising to revolutionize spaceflight. But that meme dream ended in late 2024 when the group rebranded itself as ArcaFashion. “The ArcaFashion products are designed and manufactured on the shoulders of innovation and cutting-edge technological achievements, using the vast aerospace capabilities of ArcaSpace,” the group said. Their early products look, well, you decide.

But wait, there’s more … Before it went away, ArcaSpace released a video of its “accomplishments” to date, meant to be a sizzle reel of sorts. This popped into my feed this week because the madlads at Arca apparently aren’t done in aerospace. They put out a new video showing some bonkers-looking vehicle they’re calling “ArcaBoard2,” which purports to be a vertical takeoff personal electric vehicle. Maybe don’t be one of the early customers for this.

HTV-launch launches, docks with space station. Japan’s H3 rocket launched a new spacecraft, the HTV-X, last weekend from a launch pad on Tanegashima Island. This cargo ship pulled alongside the International Space Station on Wednesday, maneuvering close enough for the lab’s robotic arm to reach out and grab it, Ars reports. The HTV-X spacecraft is an upgraded cargo freighter replacing Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, which successfully resupplied the space station nine times between 2009 and 2020.

An improved design … At the conclusion of the first HTV program, Japan’s space agency preferred to focus its resources on designing a new cargo ship with more capability at a lower cost. That’s what HTV-X is supposed to be, and Wednesday’s high-flying rendezvous marked the new ship’s first delivery to the ISS. At 26 feet (8 meters) long, the HTV-X is somewhat shorter than the vehicle it replaces. But an improved design gives the HTV-X more capacity, with the ability to accommodate more than 9,000 pounds (4.1 metric tons) inside its pressurized cargo module, about 25 percent more than the HTV. (submitted by tsunam)

India seeks dramatic increase in launch cadence. The chairman of the Indian space agency, V. Narayanan, has told The Times of India that the country seeks to dramatically scale up its annual launch cadence to 50 missions a year. He said the goal is to grow the country’s ecosystem of government-sponsored and private launches, and that the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has set a goal of 50 launches a year by the end of this decade.

A big step up … “We are working on it,” Narayanan said of his government’s request. He said the country currently has just two active launch sites, which is a constraint on activity, but that new facilities will soon come online. By the end of 2027, he said that 30 launches a year will be possible. Given that India has recently averaged about five launches annually, this would represent a significant step up in overall activity.

SpaceX breaks Vandenberg turnaround record, twice. SpaceX continued its rapid pace of launches Monday with the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Starlink 11-21 flight broke the record for the fastest pad turnaround for SpaceX’s West Coast launch pad, flying two days, 10 hours, 22 minutes, and 59 seconds since the Starlink 11-12 mission on Saturday, Spaceflight Now reports.

Going fast, and then faster … And oh, by the way, the previous record beaten by Monday’s flight was two days, 18 hours, 52 minutes, and 20 seconds, which was set during the past week. This milestone comes after the company set another turnaround record over at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station earlier this month. SpaceX clearly is continuing to seek to optimize Falcon 9 operations and is having some success.

Ariane 6 upper stage engine production moves to Germany. ArianeGroup will transfer responsibility for the assembly of Ariane 6 Vinci upper-stage engines from Vernon, France, to Lampoldshausen, Germany, European Spaceflight reports. The agreement will also see the transfer of responsibility for the development of the Ariane 6 oxygen turbopump from Avio’s headquarters in Colleferro to Vernon.

A whole seven launches per year … Each Vinci engine for Ariane 6 will now be assembled, integrated, and tested at Lampoldshausen. To support this process, a new production facility will be built. The engines will then be transferred to Bremen for integration with the rocket’s upper stage. According to ArianeGroup, the transfer will “optimize the competitiveness of Ariane 6,” helping to secure the “financial viability of Ariane 6 with a rate of 7 launches per year.”

SpaceX surpasses 2024 launch total. On Saturday morning, SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink satellites that marked the company’s 135th Falcon 9 launch of the year, Spaceflight Now reports. This broke the company’s record number of orbital launches achieved in all of 2024. The mission came nearly a week after SpaceX launched its 10,000th Starlink satellite to date.

A big number in another way … The number 135 is symbolic in another way. That’s equal to the number of NASA’s space shuttles over the 30-year lifetime of the program. That is to say, SpaceX will launch more Falcon 9 rockets this year than shuttles launched by NASA in three decades. The contours of spaceflight have certainly changed.

Amid shutdown, NASA trying to keep Artemis II on schedule. It has been nearly one month since many parts of the federal government shut down after lawmakers missed a budget deadline at the end of September, but so far, NASA’s most critical operations have been unaffected by the political impasse in Washington, DC. That may change soon, Ars reports. Federal civil servants and NASA contractors are not getting paid during the shutdown, even if agency leaders have deemed their tasks essential and directed them to continue working.

A significant impact soon … Many employees at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida remain at work, where their job is to keep the Artemis II mission on schedule for launch as soon as next February. Even while work continues, the government shutdown is creating inefficiencies that, if left unchecked, will inevitably impact the Artemis II schedule. And some officials are starting to sound the alarm. Kirk Shireman, vice president and program manager for Orion at Lockheed Martin, said this week, “I do think we’re rapidly approaching the point where it will be a significant impact.”

Variant of China’s Moon rocket to take flight. China aims to conduct the first launch of its Long March 10 rocket and a lunar-capable crew spacecraft next year, Space News reports. “The Long March 10 carrier rocket, the Mengzhou crew spacecraft, the Lanyue lunar lander, the Wangyu lunar suit, and the Exploration crew lunar rover have completed the main work of the prototype stage,” Zhang Jingbo, spokesperson for China’s human spaceflight program, said Thursday at a pre-launch press conference for the Shenzhou-21 mission at Jiuquan spaceport.

China appears on track for pre-2030 landing … Though not explicitly stated, Mengzhou will likely fly on a two-stage, single-stick variant of the Long March 10, which is used for low Earth orbit (LEO) missions. The full, three-stage, 92.5-meter-tall Long March 10 for lunar flights will use three 5-meter-diameter first stages bundled together, each powered by seven YF-100K variable thrust kerosene-liquid oxygen engines. Zhang did not state if the first flight would be crewed or uncrewed, nor if the mission would head to the Tiangong space station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

October 31: Long March 2 | Shenzhou 21 crewed flight | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China| 15: 44 UTC

October 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-23 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 20: 06 UTC

Nov. 2: Falcon 9 | Bandwagon-4 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 05: 09 UTC

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 Report: SpaceX surpasses shuttle launch total; Skyroot has big ambitions Read More »

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New Glenn rocket has clear path to launch after test-firing at Cape Canaveral

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The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer Thursday night with a success test-firing of the launcher’s seven main engines on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Standing on a seaside launch pad, the New Glenn rocket ignited its seven BE-4 main engines at 9: 59 pm EDT Thursday (01: 59 UTC Friday). The engines burned for 38 seconds while the rocket remained firmly on the ground, according to a social media post by Blue Origin.

The hold-down firing of the first stage engines was the final major test of the New Glenn rocket before launch day. Blue Origin previously test-fired the rocket’s second-stage engines. Officials have not announced a target launch date, but sources tell Ars the rocket could be ready for liftoff as soon as November 9.

“Love seeing New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines come alive! Congratulations to Team Blue on today’s hotfire,” the company’s CEO, Dave Limp, posted on X.

Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust. Limp said engineers extended this test-firing and shut down some of the BE-4 engines to simulate the booster’s landing burn sequence, which Blue Origin hopes will culminate in a successful touchdown on a barge floating downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

“This helps us understand fluid interactions between active and inactive engine feedlines during landing,” Limp wrote.

Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon. If Blue Origin fails to land this rocket, it’s unlikely a new first stage booster will be ready to launch until sometime later in 2026.

A few more things to do

With the test-firing complete, Blue Origin’s ground crew will lower the more than 320-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket and roll it back to a nearby hangar. There, technicians will inspect the vehicle and swap its payload fairing for another clamshell containing two NASA-owned spacecraft set to begin their journey to Mars.

New Glenn rocket has clear path to launch after test-firing at Cape Canaveral Read More »

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Elon Musk on data centers in orbit: “SpaceX will be doing this”

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Interest is growing rapidly

“The amount of momentum from heavyweights in the tech industry is very much worth paying attention to,” said Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, in an interview. “If they start putting money behind it, we could see another transformation of what’s done in space.”

The essential function of a data center is to store, process, and transmit data. Historically, satellites have already done a lot of this, Henry said. Telecommunications satellites specialize in transmitting data. Imaging satellites store a lot of data and then dump it when they pass over ground stations. In recent years, onboard computers have gotten more sophisticated at processing data. Data centers in space could represent the next evolution of that.

Critics rightly note that it would require very large satellites with extensive solar panels to power data centers that rival ground-based infrastructure. However, SpaceX’s Starlink V3 satellites are unlike any previous space-based technology, Henry said.

A lot more capacity

SpaceX’s current Starlink V2 mini satellites have a maximum downlink capacity of approximately 100 Gbps. The V3 satellite is expected to increase this capacity by a factor of 10, to 1 Tbps. This is not unprecedented in satellite capacity, but it certainly is at scale.

For example, Viasat contracted with Boeing for the better part of a decade, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, to build Viasat-3, a geostationary satellite with a capacity of 1 Tbps. This single satellite may launch next week on an Atlas V rocket.

SpaceX plans to launch dozens of Starlink V3 satellites—Henry estimates the number is about 60—on each Starship rocket launch. Those launches could occur as soon as the first half of 2026, as SpaceX has already tested a satellite dispenser on its Starship vehicle.

“Nothing else in the rest of the satellite industry that comes close to that amount of capacity,” Henry said.

Exactly what “scaling up” Starlink V3 satellites might look like is not clear, but it doesn’t seem silly to expect it could happen. The very first operational Starlink satellites launched a little more than half a decade ago with a mass of about 300 kg and a capacity of 15Gbps. Starlink V3 satellites will likely mass 1,500 kg.

Elon Musk on data centers in orbit: “SpaceX will be doing this” Read More »

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Space station astronauts eager to open “golden treasure box” from Japan

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And without the ISS, Russia’s human spaceflight program might be dead today.

Ins and outs of HTV-X

Yui used the outpost’s robotic arm to grapple the HTV-X spacecraft at 11: 58 am EDT (15: 58 UTC) on Wednesday. The capture capped a three-and-a-half-day transit from a launch pad on Tanegashima Island in southern Japan.

The spacecraft flew to space atop Japan’s H3 rocket, replacing the H-II launcher family used for Japan’s previous resupply missions to the ISS. The H3 and HTV-X are both manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Japan’s H3 rocket launched Sunday (local time) from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, carrying the first HTV-X spacecraft into orbit en route to the International Space Station. Credit: JAXA

Once in orbit, HTV-X unfurled its power-generating solar panels. This is one of the new ship’s most significant differences from the HTV, which had its solar panels mounted directly on the body of the spacecraft. By all accounts, the HTV-X’s modified computers, navigation sensors, and propulsion system all functioned as intended, leading to the mission’s on-time arrival at the ISS.

Rob Navias, a NASA spokesperson, called the HTV-X’s first flight “flawless” during the agency’s streaming commentary of the rendezvous: “Everything went by the book.”

At 26 feet (8 meters) long, the HTV-X is somewhat shorter than the vehicle it replaces. But an improved design gives the HTV-X more capacity, with the ability to accommodate more than 9,000 pounds (4.1 metric tons) inside its pressurized cargo module, about 25 percent more than the HTV. The new spacecraft boasts a similar enhancement in carrying capacity for external cargo, such as spares and science instruments, to be mounted on the outside of the space station.

Japan provides resupply services to the space station to help reimburse NASA for its share of the research lab’s operating costs. In addition to space station missions in low-Earth orbit, Japanese officials say the HTV-X spacecraft could haul logistics to the future Gateway mini-space station near the Moon.

Officials plan to launch at least three HTV-X missions to the ISS to cover Japan’s share of the station’s operating expenses. There are tentative plans for a fourth and fifth HTV-X that could launch before 2030. The second HTV-X mission will attempt Japan’s first automated docking with the space station, a prerequisite for any future resupply missions to the Gateway.

Space station astronauts eager to open “golden treasure box” from Japan Read More »

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25 years, one website: ISS in Real Time captures quarter-century on space station

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25 Years of a Continuous Human Presence in Orbit

From the makers of Apollo in Real Time comes a site with 500 times more data.

The ISS in Real Time website was built by the same team behind Apollo 11 in Real Time but with more than 500 times the data from 25 years on board the International Space Station. Credit: collectSPACE.com

With the milestone just days away, you are likely to hear this week that there has now been a continuous human presence on the International Space Station (ISS) for the past 25 years. But what does that quarter of a century actually encompass?

If only there was a way to see, hear, and experience each of those 9,131 days.

Fortunately, the astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station have devoted some of their work time and a lot of their free time to taking photos, filming videos, and calling down to Earth. Much of that data has been made available to the public, but in separate repositories, with no real way to correlate or connect it with the timeline on which it was all created.

That is, not until now. Two NASA contractors, working only during their off hours, have built a portal into all of those resources to uniquely represent the 25-year history of ISS occupancy.

ISS in Real Time, by Ben Feist and David Charney, went live on Monday (October 27), ahead of the November 2 anniversary. In its own way, the new website may be as impressive a software engineering accomplishment as the station is an aerospace engineering marvel.

ISS in Real Time – Overview

Scraping space station data

“Everything that is on the website was already public. It’s already on another website somewhere, with some of it tucked away in some format or another. What we did was a lot of scraping of that data, to get it pulled into the context of every day on the space station,” said Feist in an interview with collectSPACE.com.

As an info box on the front page of ISS in Real Time tallies, at its debut the site contained mission data for 9,064 days out of the 9,131 (99.32 percent coverage); 4,739 days with full space-to-ground audio coverage; 4,561,987 space-to-ground comm calls in 69 languages; 6,931,369 photos taken in space over 8,525 days; 10,908 articles across 7,711 days; and 930 videos across 712 days.

Or, to put it another way, particularly appropriate for the history it spans, had this project relied only on the technology that existed when Expedition 1 began, the data archive would fill 3,846 CD-ROMs.

an info graphic sho

Statistical data about the contents of the ISS in Real Time website at its debut. Credit: ISS in Real Time

And they did all this in a period of about 11 months, but only in the hours when they were not at work writing software (Feist) or designing user interfaces (Charney) for Mission Control, the EVA (Extravehicular Activity, or spacewalk) Office, or other communities supporting the ISS and Artemis programs at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“Being inside NASA actually didn’t help at all,” said Feist. “If you’re inside NASA and you want to use data, you have to make sure that it’s public data. And because there’s this concept in the government of export control, you have to never, ever make the mistake of publishing an image or something else that you found somewhere else without knowing if it’s already public.”

“So even though we were at NASA, what we had to do was pretend we weren’t there and find the data anywhere we could find it in the public already,” he said.

As it turned out, that worked fairly well for days beginning in 2008 and onward. ISS occupancy, however, pre-dates a lot of the multimedia archives we take for granted today.

“This was the problem,” said Feist. “If stuff was released publicly back then, it was done to media on tape. There was no such thing as streaming video in 2000—YouTube wasn’t invented until 2005. So there’s just no way to go back in time on the Internet and go find the treasure trove that we know exists internally. We know NASA has full days archived on tape, but it just hasn’t been exported yet.”

Even after the change to digital photography and video, there still remained the challenge of linking each file to the day, hour, minute, and second that it was captured. For example, while the Internet Archive has been a tremendous source for the project, only sometimes do the videos it holds include the unique identifier that is needed to determine when the video was taken.

two men pose together for a photo in a mission control room

ISS in Real Time creators Ben Feist (at right) and David Charney stand inside the International Space Station control room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Credit: ISS in Real Time

In other situations, Feist turned to artificial intelligence to sort through the tens of thousands of files to learn if they were appropriate for inclusion.

“We know that NASA publishes all of its PAO [public affairs office] photos to Flickr. Right now, there are about 80,000 photos in just the Johnson Space Center collection on Flickr alone. So we scraped those, and then I wrote an AI process as part of the pipeline to figure out which of those photos were flight photos and which of them were ground photos, so that we only show flight photos,” he said.

Visualizing 25 years

As Feist was figuring out how to import all the data, Charney was figuring out how the public would access it all.

This is not the first project of its type that Feist and Charney have brought online. In 2019, they introduced Apollo 11 in Real Time, which did for the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing what ISS in Real Time does for the 25 years of human occupancy. Apollo 13 and Apollo 17 sites followed (and more Apollo missions are still to come, Feist and Charney say).

They also built a version of ISS in Real Time for NASA, called Coda, which has been in use internally at the space agency for the past four years.

Even with all of that as a foundation, designing the user interface for ISS in Real Time required Charney to wrap his head around all of the different ways people would be using the site.

“The entire site is an experience,” Charney told collectSPACE. “Just the idea that we could visualize 25 years of what went on, or that we even have every day over the past 25 years in here, is something we wanted to explore and feel the data throughout those 25 years.”

ISS in Real Time begins 25 years ago on Nov. 2, 2000, with the ISS Expedition 1 crew’s arrival at the space station. Credit: collectSPACE.com

One of the questions was what users would find if they picked a day when no data is available. How could they still make it interesting and still play as though you were in Mission Control?

“Some days have all of the media available—video and tons of photos. And then there are other days where there is no data. There are a lot of days that have at least a photo, but for others, we found there are a lot of great articles we could use so that even on a day that doesn’t have a lot of media, there is some interesting information you can access,” said Charney.

Through Charney’s design, in addition to the data coming from the space station, users can also see where the ISS was in its orbit over Earth, which astronauts were aboard the station, and what spacecraft were docked at any given moment. Visitors can also access transcripts of the space-to-ground comm audio, including translations when the discussion is not in English.

Feist and Charney plan to continue to build out the site and add more data as it is released by NASA, so it remains as close to as “in real time” as possible. They also have ideas for other data sets they could add, including the archived and live telemetry that provide the status of systems and conditions aboard the ISS.

Ultimately, it is the longevity of ISS in Real Time that sets it apart, they said.

“One thing that’s cool about this is you can go to the first day that the Expedition One crew was aboard and let it play. It will then play all the way through that day’s timeline and go to the next day, and then play all the way through that timeline and go to the next day,” said Charney. “So if you start on November 2 and have 25 years to go, the space station, as currently planned, will likely have long met its end before you reach the end.”

“So this might be the longest interactive experience ever built,” said Feist.

Photo of Robert Pearlman

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a daily news publication and online community focused on where space exploration intersects with pop culture. He is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He is on the leadership board for For All Moonkind and is a member of the American Astronautical Society’s history committee.

25 years, one website: ISS in Real Time captures quarter-century on space station Read More »

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Satellite shows what’s really happening at the East Wing of the White House

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“Now it looks like the White House is physically being destroyed.”

The facade of the East Wing of the White House is demolished by work crews on October 22, 2025. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

You need to go up—way up—to fully appreciate the changes underway at the White House this week.

Demolition crews starting tearing down the East Wing of the presidential mansion Tuesday to clear room for the construction of a new $300 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a recent priority of President Donald Trump. The teardown drew criticism and surprise from Democratic lawmakers, former White House staffers, and members of the public.

It was, after all, just three months ago that President Donald Trump defended his ballroom plan by saying it wouldn’t affect the existing structure at the White House. “It won’t interfere with the current building,” he said in July. “It’ll be near it but not touching it—and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”

So it shocked a lot of people when workers took a wrecking ball to the East Wing. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters Thursday that the “optics are bad” as the Trump administration demolishes part of the White House, especially during a government shutdown.

“People are saying, ‘Oh, the government’s being destroyed,’” she said. “Well, now it looks like the White House is physically being destroyed.”

The US Secret Service on Thursday closed access to the Ellipse, a public park overlooking the South Lawn of the White House. Journalists were capturing “live images” of the East Wing destruction from the Ellipse before the Secret Service ushered them out of the park, according to CNN’s Jim Sciutto. Employees at the Treasury Building, just across the street from the East Wing, were instructed not to share photos of the demolition work, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Some Trump supporters used their social media accounts to push back against the outcry, claiming only a small section of the East Wing’s facade would be torn down. An image taken from space revealed the reality Thursday.

Eyes always above

Without press access to see the demolition firsthand, it fell to a camera hundreds of miles above the White House to see what was really happening at the East Wing. Planet Labs released an image taken Thursday morning from one of its SkySat satellites showing the 123-year-old annex leveled.

This image taken Thursday from a SkySat Earth observation satellite shows that the East Wing of the White House is gone. Credit: Planet Labs PBC

What became known as the East Wing was first constructed in 1902 and was then rebuilt in 1942 during the Franklin Roosevelt administration to create more office space and provide cover for a bunker during World War II. In modern presidencies, the East Wing was typically home to the first lady’s staff.

Planet Labs, based in San Francisco, operates a fleet of hundreds of small Earth-imaging satellites mapping the planet every day. The company sells its imagery to commercial customers and the US government, including intelligence agencies, which use the imagery to augment the surveillance capabilities of more exquisite government-owned spy satellites.

Users often turn to satellite imagery from companies like Planet Labs to find out what’s going on in war zones, countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Satellite constellations like Planet Labs scan for changes across the globe every day, making it virtually impossible to hide a large construction project.

The SkySat satellite used for Thursday’s examination of the White House flies at an altitude of approximately 295 miles (475 kilometers). It can capture imagery with a resolution of about 20 inches (50 centimeters) per pixel. Planet Labs owns 15 SkySats, each with three overlapping 5.5-megapixel imaging sensors fitted under a downward-facing 14-inch-diameter (35-centimeter) telescope, according to the company.

Who’s paying?

It turns out some of Planet Labs’ cohorts among the government’s cadre of defense and aerospace contractors are actually funding the construction of the new White House ballroom. Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon’s largest defense contractor, is on the list of donors released by the White House. At least two other companies with business relating to defense and aerospace were also on the list: Booz Allen Hamilton and Palantir Technologies.

Palantir has invested in BlackSky, one of Planet’s competitors in the commercial remote sensing market.

People watch along a fence line Thursday as crews demolish the East Wing of the White House. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

The Trump administration has said no public money will go toward the new ballroom, but officials haven’t said how much each donor is contributing. Many donors have business dealings with the federal government, raising ethical concerns that those paying for the ballroom might win favor in future contract decisions.

Trump said he will also contribute an undisclosed sum for the ballroom.

Regardless of whether the donors are buying influence, they are funding the most significant overhaul of the White House grounds since former President Harry Truman renovated the mansion’s interior and added a balcony to the South Portico. The Truman-era changes were approved by Congress, which established a commission to oversee the work. There’s been no such oversight from Congress this time.

The new ballroom will be nearly twice the size of the most iconic element of the White House grounds: the two-century-old executive residence.

“It’s going to turn the executive mansion into an annex to the party space,” said Edward Lengel, who served as chief historian of the White House Historical Association during Trump’s first term. “I think all the founders would have been disgusted by this,” he told CNN.

    Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, shared a different point of view in an interview with Fox News earlier this week.

    “I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” Leavitt said.

    An official White House fact sheet published Tuesday used similar sensationalized language, accusing “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies” of “clutching their pearls over President Donald J. Trump’s visionary addition of a grand, privately-funded ballroom to the White House.”

    President Donald Trump displays a rendering of the White House ballroom as he meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (left) in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

    It’s true that every president has put their own mark on the White House, but all of the updates cost at least an order of magnitude less than Trump’s ballroom. Most amounted to little more than redecorating, and none were as destructive as this week’s teardown. Former President Barack Obama repainted the lines of the White House tennis court and installed hoops to turn it into a basketball court. During the George W. Bush administration, the White House press briefing room got a significant makeover. Taxpayers and media companies shared the bill. It’s hard to imagine that happening today.

    Former President Gerald Ford had an outdoor swimming pool built near the West Wing. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy famously spearheaded the redesign of the White House Rose Garden and East Garden, which was later renamed in her honor. The grass in the Rose Garden was paved over with stone tiles earlier this year, and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden was razed this week, the result of which was also visible from space.

    In July, Leavitt said the East Wing would be “modernized.” Like Trump, she did not mention plans for demolition, only saying: “The necessary construction will take place.”

    Thanks to satellites and commercial space, we now know what necessary construction really meant.

    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.

    Satellite shows what’s really happening at the East Wing of the White House Read More »

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    Rocket Report: China tests Falcon 9 lookalike; NASA’s Moon rocket fully stacked

    artemis II, blue origin, china, falcon 9, LandSpace, launch, NASA, new glenn, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex / /

    A South Korean rocket startup will soon make its first attempt to reach low-Earth orbit.

    The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission is lowered on top of the Space Launch System rocket at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

    Welcome to Edition 8.16 of the Rocket Report! The 10th anniversary of SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing is coming up at the end of this year. We’re still waiting for a second company to bring back an orbital-class booster from space for a propulsive landing. Two companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and China’s LandSpace, could join SpaceX’s exclusive club as soon as next month. (Bezos might claim he’s already part of the club, but there’s a distinction to be made.) Each company is in the final stages of launch preparations—Blue Origin for its second New Glenn rocket, and LandSpace for the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket. Blue Origin and LandSpace will both attempt to land their first stage boosters downrange from their launch sites. They’re not exactly in a race with one another, but it will be fascinating to see how New Glenn and Zhuque-3 perform during the uphill and downhill phases of flight, and whether one or both of the new rockets stick the landing.

    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.

    The race for space-based interceptors. The Trump administration’s announcement of the Golden Dome missile defense shield has set off a race among US companies to develop and test space weapons, some of them on their own dime, Ars reports. One of these companies is a 3-year-old startup named Apex, which announced plans to test a space-based interceptor as soon as next year. Apex’s concept will utilize one of the company’s low-cost satellite platforms outfitted with an “Orbital Magazine” containing multiple interceptors, which will be supplied by an undisclosed third-party partner. The demonstration in low-Earth orbit could launch as soon as June 2026 and will test-fire two interceptors from Apex’s Project Shadow spacecraft. The prototype interceptors could pave the way for operational space-based interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles. (submitted by biokleen)

    Usual suspects … Traditional defense contractors are also getting in the game. Northrop Grumman’s CEO, Kathy Warden, said earlier this year that her company is already testing space-based interceptor components on the ground. This week, Lockheed Martin announced it is on a path to test a space-based interceptor in orbit by 2028. Neither company has discussed as much detail of their plans as Apex revealed this week.

    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.

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    Lockheed Martin’s latest “New Space” investment. As interest grows in rotating detonation engines for hypersonic flight, a startup specialist in the technology says it will receive backing from Lockheed Martin’s corporate venture capital arm, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The strategic investment by Lockheed Martin Ventures “reflects the potential of Venus’s dual-use technology” in an era of growing defense and space spending, Venus Aerospace said in a statement. Venus said its partnership with Lockheed Martin combines the former’s startup mindset with the latter’s resources and industry expertise. The companies did not announce the value of Lockheed’s investment, but Venus said it has raised $106 million since its founding in 2020. Lockheed Martin Ventures has made similar investments in other rocket startups, including Rocket Lab in 2015.

    What’s this actually for? … Houston-based Venus Aerospace completed a high-thrust test flight of its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) in May from Spaceport America, New Mexico. Rotating detonation engine technology is interesting because it has the potential to significantly increase fuel efficiency in various applications, from Navy carriers to rocket engines, Ars reported earlier this year. The engine works by producing a shockwave with a flow of detonation traveling through a circular channel. The engine harnesses these supersonic detonation waves to generate thrust. “Venus has proven in flight the most efficient rocket engine technology in history,” said Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace. “With support from Lockheed Martin Ventures, we will advance our capabilities to deliver at scale and deploy the engine that will power the next 50 years of defense, space, and commercial high-speed aviation.”

    South Korean startup receives permission to fly. Innospace announced on October 20 that it has received South Korea’s first private commercial launch permit from the Korea AeroSpace Administration,” the Chosun Daily reports. Accordingly, Innospace will launch its independently developed “HANBIT-Nano” launch vehicle from a Brazilian launch site as early as late this month. Innospace stated that the launch window for this mission has been set for October 28 through November 28. The launch site is the Alcântara Space Center, operated by the Brazilian Air Force.

    Aiming for LEO … This will be the first flight of Innospace’s HANBIT-Nano launch vehicle, standing roughly 72 feet (22 meters) tall with a diameter of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters). The two-stage rocket is powered by hybrid propulsion, consuming a mixture of paraffin and liquid oxygen. For its debut flight, the rocket will target an orbit about 300 kilometers (186 miles) high with a batch of small satellites from customers in South Korea, Brazil, and India. According to Innospace, HANBIT-Nano can lift about 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload into orbit.

    A new record for rocket reuse. SpaceX’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on October 19 set a new record for reusable rockets, Ars reports. It marked the 31st launch of the company’s most-flown Falcon 9 booster. The rocket landed on SpaceX’s recovery ship in the Atlantic Ocean to be returned to Florida for a 32nd flight. Several more rockets in SpaceX’s inventory are nearing their 30th launch. In all, SpaceX has more than 20 Falcon 9 boosters in its fleet on both the East and West Coasts. SpaceX engineers are now certifying the Falcon 9 boosters for up to 40 flights apiece.

    10,000 and counting … SpaceX’s two launches last weekend weren’t just noteworthy for Falcon 9 lore. Hours after setting the new booster reuse record, SpaceX deployed a batch of 28 Starlink satellites from a different rocket after lifting off from California. This mission propelled SpaceX’s Starlink program past a notable milestone. With the satellites added to the constellation on Sunday, the company has delivered more than 10,000 mass-produced Starlink spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. The exact figure stands at 10,006 satellites, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who expertly tracks comings and goings between Earth and space. About 8,700 of these Starlink satellites are still in orbit, with SpaceX adding more every week.

    China is on the cusp of something big. Launch startup LandSpace is in the final stages of preparations for the first flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket and a potentially landmark mission for China, Space News reports. LandSpace said it completed the first phase of the Zhuque-3 rocket’s inaugural launch campaign this week. The Zhuque-3 is the largest commercial rocket developed to date in China, nearly matching the size and performance of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with nine first stage engines and a single upper stage engine. One key difference is that the Zhuque-3 burns methane fuel, while Falcon 9’s engines consume kerosene. Most notably, LandSpace will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster at a location downrange from the launch site, similar to the way SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on drone ships at sea. Zhuque-3’s first stage will aim for a land-based site in an experiment that could pave the way for LandSpace to reuse rockets in the future.

    Testing status … The recent testing at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China included a propellant loading demonstration and a static fire test of the rocket’s first stage engines. Earlier this week, LandSpace integrated the payload fairing on the rocket. The company said it will return the rocket to a nearby facility “for inspection and maintenance in preparation for its upcoming orbital launch and first stage recovery.” The launch is expected to happen as soon as next month.

    Uprated Ariane 6 won’t launch until next year. Arianespace has confirmed that the first flight of the more powerful, four-booster variant of the Ariane 6 rocket will not be launched until 2026, European Spaceflight reports. The first Ariane 64 rocket had been expected to launch in late 2025, carrying the first batch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites. On October 16, Arianespace announced the fourth and final Ariane 6 flight of the year would carry a pair of Galileo satellites for Europe’s global satellite navigation system in December. This will follow an already-scheduled Ariane 6 launch scheduled for November 4. Both of the upcoming flights will employ the same Ariane 6 configuration used on all of the rocket’s flights to date. This version, known as Ariane 62, has two strap-on solid rocket boosters.

    Kuiper soon … The Ariane 64 variant will expose the rocket to stronger forces coming from four solid rocket boosters, each producing about a million pounds (4,500 kilonewtons) of thrust. ArianeGroup, the rocket’s manufacturer, said a year ago that it completed qualification of the Ariane 6 upper stage to withstand the stronger launch loads. Arianespace didn’t offer any explanation of the Ariane 64’s delay from this year to next, but it did confirm the uprated rocket will be the company’s first flight of 2026. The mission will be the first of 18 Arianespace flights dedicated to launching Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellites, adding Ariane 6 to the mix of rockets deploying the Internet network in low-Earth orbit.

    Duffy losing confidence in Starship. NASA acting Administrator Sean Duffy made two television appearances on Monday morning in which he shook up the space agency’s plans to return humans to the Moon, Ars reports. Speaking on Fox News, where the secretary of transportation frequently appears in his acting role as NASA chief, Duffy said SpaceX has fallen behind in developing the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. Duffy also indirectly acknowledged that NASA’s projected target of a 2027 crewed lunar landing is no longer achievable. Accordingly, he said he intended to expand the competition to develop a lander capable of carrying humans down to the Moon from lunar orbit and back.

    The rest of the story … “They’re behind schedule, and so the President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy said of SpaceX. “He wants to get there in his term. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved, and maybe others. We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually lead us back to the Moon first.” The timing of Duffy’s public appearances on Monday seems tailored to influence a fierce, behind-the-scenes battle to hold onto the NASA leadership position. Jared Isaacman, who Trump nominated and then withdrew for the NASA posting, is again under consideration at the White House to become the agency’s next full-time administrator. (submitted by zapman987)

    Rocket fully stacked for Artemis II. “The last major hardware component before Artemis II launches early next year has been installed,” NASA’s acting Administrator Sean Duffy posted on X Monday. Over the weekend, ground teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida hoisted the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission atop its Space Launch System rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. This followed the transfer of the Orion spacecraft to the VAB from a nearby processing facility last week. With Orion installed, the rocket is fully assembled to its complete height of 322 feet (98 meters) tall.

    Four months away? … NASA is still officially targeting no earlier than February 5, 2026, for the launch of the Artemis II mission. This will be the first flight of astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972, and the first glimpse of human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit for several generations. Upcoming milestones in the Artemis II launch campaign include a countdown demonstration inside the VAB, where the mission’s four-person crew will take their seats in the Orion spacecraft to simulate what they’ll go through on launch day.

    New Glenn staged for rollout. Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, posted a video this week of the company’s second New Glenn rocket undergoing launch preparations inside a hangar at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket’s first and second stages are now mated together and installed on the transporter erector that will carry them from the hangar to the launch pad. “We will spend the next days on final checkouts and connecting the umbilicals. Stay tuned for rollout and hotfire!” Limp wrote.

    “Big step toward launch” … The connection of New Glenn’s stages and integration on the transporter erector marks a “big step toward launch,” Limp wrote. A launch sometime in November is still possible if engineers can get through a smooth test-firing of the rocket’s seven main engines on the launch pad. The rocket will send two NASA spacecraft on a journey to Mars.

    China launches clandestine satellite. China launched a Long March 5 rocket Thursday with a classified military satellite heading toward geosynchronous orbit, Space News reports. The satellite is named TJS-20, and the circumstances of the launch—using China’s most powerful operational rocket—suggest TJS-20 could be the next in a line of signals intelligence-gathering missions. The previous satellite of this line, TJS-11, launched in February 2024, also on a Long March 5.

    Doing a lot … This launch continued China’s increasing use of the Long March 5 and its sister variant, the Long March 5B. The Long March 5 is expendable, and although we don’t know how much it costs, it can’t be cheap. It is a complex rocket powered by 10 engines on its core stage and four boosters, some burning liquid hydrogen fuel and others burning kerosene. The second stage also has two cryogenically fueled engines. The Long March 5 has now flown 16 times in nine years and seven times within the last two years. The uptick in launches is largely due to China’s use of the Long March 5 to launch satellites for the Guowang megaconstellation.

    Next three launches

    Oct. 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-12 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14: 00 UTC

    Oct. 26: H3 | HTV-X 1 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 00: 00 UTC

    Oct. 26: Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center | 03: 50 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: China tests Falcon 9 lookalike; NASA’s Moon rocket fully stacked Read More »

    elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-nasa’s-acting-administrator,-apparently

    Elon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently

    china, isaacman, NASA, Sean Duffy, Space / /

    “Sean said that NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet.”

    NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, left, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen watch as Jared Isaacman testifies before a Senate Committee in 2025. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

    The clock just ticked past noon here in Houston, so it’s acceptable to have a drink, right?

    Because after another turbulent morning of closely following the rough-and-tumble contest to become the next NASA administrator, I sure could use one.

    What has happened now? Why, it was only SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who is NASA’s most important contractor, referring to the interim head of the space agency, Sean Duffy, as “Sean Dummy” and suggesting Duffy was trying to kill NASA. Musk later added, “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

    This is all pretty bonkers, so I want to try to contextualize what I believe is going on behind the scenes. This should help us make sense of what is happening in public.

    It all boils down to this

    The most important through line for all of this is as follows: the contest to become the next NASA administrator. This has, as the British like to say, hotted up of late. And people are starting to take sides.

    In one corner stands the private astronaut and billionaire, Jared Isaacman. He was nominated by Donald Trump to become NASA administrator last year, and after a lengthy process, he was on the cusp of confirmation when the president pulled his nomination for political reasons in late May. In the other corner is Sean Duffy, a former congressman with minimal space experience, whom Trump appointed as interim administrator after yanking Isaacman. Duffy was already secretary of transportation.

    Since then, a lot has happened, but it boils down to this. Duffy was, nominally, supposed to be running the space agency while searching for a permanent replacement. The biggest move he has made is naming Amit Kshatriya, a long-time employee, as NASA’s associate administrator. Kshatriya now has a lot of power within the agency and comes with the mindset of a former flight director. He is not enamored with using SpaceX’s Starship as a lunar lander.

    After Isaacman’s dismissal, key figures within Trump’s orbit continued to vouch for the former astronaut. They liked his flight experience, his financial background, and his vigor to modernize NASA and lean into the country’s dynamic commercial space industry in the effort to remain ahead of China in spaceflight. Trump listened. He met with Isaacman multiple times since, all positive experiences. A re-nomination seemed possible, even likely.

    Duffy likes running NASA

    However, Duffy was finding that he liked running NASA. There were lots of opportunities to go on television and burnish his credentials. Spaceflight often receives more positive coverage than air traffic controller strikes. His chief of staff at the Department of Transportation, Pete Meachum, has also enjoyed exercising power at NASA. Neither appears ready to relinquish their influence.

    To be clear, Duffy is not saying this publicly. Asked whether Duffy wishes to remain NASA administrator, a spokesperson for the agency gave Ars the following statement on Tuesday morning:

    Sean is grateful that the President gave him the chance to lead NASA. At the President’s direction, Sean has focused the agency on one clear goal — making sure America gets back to the Moon before China. Sean said that NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet, maybe even within the Department of Transportation, but he’s never said he wants to keep the job himself. The President asked him to talk with potential candidates for Administrator, and he’s been happy to help by vetting people and giving his honest feedback. The bottom line is that Secretary Duffy is here to serve the President, and he will support whomever the President nominates.

    But based on discussions with numerous sources, it seems clear that Duffy wants to keep the job. He has not taken significant steps toward identifying a replacement.

    His appearances on Fox News and CNBC on Monday morning buttress this fact. It is not typical for a NASA administrator to go on television and criticize one of the space agency’s most important contractors. In this case, Duffy said he was reworking the agency’s lunar lander contracts because SpaceX had fallen behind.

    It is true that SpaceX is behind in developing a lunar lander version of Starship. Nevertheless, this was a pretty remarkable thing for Duffy to do, at least in the context of the US space community. NASA projects run late all the time, every time. There was no mention of spacesuits needed for the lunar landing, which also almost certainly will not be ready by 2027.

    There seem to be two clear reasons why Duffy did this. One, he wanted to show President Trump he was committed to reaching the Moon again before China gets there. And secondly, with his public remarks, Duffy sought to demonstrate to the rest of the space community that he was willing to stand up to SpaceX.

    How do we know this? Because Duffy and Meachum had just spent the weekend calling around to SpaceX’s competitors in the industry, asking for their support in his quest to remain at NASA. For example, he called Blue Origin’s leadership and expressed support for their plans to accelerate a lunar landing program. Then he went on TV to demonstrate in public what he was saying in private.

    Musk unloads

    By Tuesday morning, Musk appears to have had enough.

    The acting administrator had gone on TV and publicly shamed Musk’s company, which has self-invested billions of dollars into Starship. (By contrast, Lockheed has invested little or nothing in the Orion spacecraft, and Boeing also has little skin in the game with the Space Launch System rocket. Similarly, a ‘government option’ lunar lander would likely need to be cost-plus in order to attract Lockheed as a bidder.) Then Duffy praised Blue Origin, which, for all of its promise, has yet to make meaningful achievements in orbit. All the while, it is only thanks to SpaceX and its Dragon spacecraft that NASA does not have to go hat-in-hand to Russia for astronaut transportation.

    So Musk channeled his inner Trump and called out “Sean Dummy.” It’s crass language, but will it be effective?

    We really don’t know the extent to which Musk and Trump are on speaking terms at this point, but certainly Musk is a huge Republican donor, and there will be plenty of people in Congress who do not want to see another food fight between the world’s most powerful person and its richest person.

    The widespread assumption is that Musk is advocating for Isaacman to become his administrator, since he originally put the astronaut forward for the position. However, the reality is that they don’t speak regularly, and although Isaacman is deeply appreciative of what SpaceX has achieved, he seems to genuinely want Blue Origin and other private space companies to succeed as well. Most likely, then, Musk was lashing out in frustration on Tuesday morning, feeling spurned by a space agency he has done a lot for.

    Isaacman, for his part, has been keeping a relatively low profile. Trump, who will ultimately make a decision on NASA’s leadership, has also largely been silent about all of this.

    Not a super augury

    The war of words may be entertaining and a spectacle, but this is pretty dreadful for NASA. The space agency is already down 20 percent of its workforce due to cuts and voluntary retirements. Morale remains low, and the uncertainty over long-term leadership is unhelpful. The first year of the Trump presidency, to many in space, feels like a lost year.

    There is also the possibility of a significant restructuring. NASA is an independent federal agency, but my sources (The Wall Street Journal also reported this last night) have indicated that Duffy has sought to move NASA within the Department of Transportation. In his new statement today, Duffy confirmed this. Folding NASA into the Department of Transportation would allow him to maintain oversight of the agency, and Duffy could recommend a leader who is loyal to him.

    So this is where we are. A fierce, behind-the-scenes battle rages on among camps supporting Duffy and Isaacman to decide the leadership of NASA. The longer this process drags on, the messier it seems to get. In the meantime, NASA is twisting in the wind, trying to run in molasses while wearing lead shoes as China marches onward and upward.

    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.

    Elon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently Read More »

    satellite-operators-will-soon-join-airlines-in-using-starlink-in-flight-wi-fi

    Satellite operators will soon join airlines in using Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi

    Commercial space, muon space, Space, spacex, starlink / /

    So long, data limits

    Lasers have other benefits over ground stations. Optical links offer significantly more throughput than traditional radio communication systems, and they’re not constrained by regulations on radio spectrum usage.

    “What it does for our customers and for the company is we are able to get more than 10x, maybe even 50x, the amount of data that they’re able to bring down, and we’re able to offer them that on a latency of nearly instant,” Stang said in an interview with Ars.

    SpaceX’s mini-lasers are designed to achieve link speeds of 25Gbps at distances up to 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers). These speeds will “open new business models” for satellite operators who can now rely on the same “Internet speed and responsiveness as cloud providers and telecom networks on the ground,” Muon said in a statement.

    Muon’s platform, called Halo, comes in different sizes, with satellites ranging up to a half-ton. “With persistent optical broadband, Muon Halo satellites will move from being isolated vehicles to becoming active, real‑time nodes on Starlink’s global network,” Stang said in a press release. “That shift transforms how missions are designed and how fast insights flow to decision‑makers on Earth.”

    Muon said the first laser-equipped satellite will launch in early 2027 for an undisclosed customer.

    “We like to believe part of why SpaceX trusts us to be the ones to be able to lead on this is because our system is designed to really deal with very different levels of requirements,” Smirin said. “As far as we’re aware, this is the first integration into a satellite. We have a ton of interest from commercial customers for our capabilities in general, and we expect this should just boost that quite significantly.”

    FireSat is one of the missions where Starlink connectivity would have an impact by rapidly informing first responders of a wildfire, Smirin said. According to Muon, using satellite laser links would cut FireSat data latency from an average of 20 minutes to near real-time.

    “It’s not just for the initial detection,” Smirin said. “It’s also once a fire is ongoing, [cutting] the time and the latency for seeing the intensity and direction of the fire, and being able to update that in near real-time. It has incredible value to incident commanders on the ground, because they’re trying to figure out a way to position their equipment and their people.”

    Thinking big

    Ubiquitous connectivity in space could eventually lead to new types of missions. “Now, you’ve got a data center in space,” Smirin said. “You can do AI there. You can connect with data centers on the ground.”

    While this first agreement between Muon and SpaceX covers commercial data relay, it’s easy to imagine other applications, such as continuous live drone-like high-resolution streaming video from space for surveillance or weather monitoring. Live video from space has historically been limited to human spaceflight missions or rocket-mounted cameras that operate for a short time.

    One example of that is the dazzling live video beamed back to Earth, through Starlink, from SpaceX’s Starship rockets. The laser terminals on Starship operate through the extreme heat of reentry, returning streaming video as plasma envelops the vehicle. This environment routinely causes radio blackouts for other spacecraft as they reenter the atmosphere. With optical links, that’s no longer a problem.

    “This starts to enable a whole new category of capabilities, much the same way as when terrestrial computers went from dial-up to broadband,” Smirin said. “You knew what it could do, but we blew through bulletin boards very quickly to many different applications.”

    Satellite operators will soon join airlines in using Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi Read More »