Space – Page 5

NASA’s acting leader seeks to keep his job with new lunar lander announcement

administrator, duffy, NASA, Space / Kris Guyer / October 20, 2025

NASA would not easily be able to rip up its existing HLS contracts with SpaceX and Blue Origin, as especially with the former much of the funding has already been awarded for milestone payments. Rather, Duffy would likely have to find new funding from Congress. And it would not be cheap. This NASA analysis, from 2017, estimates that a cost-plus, sole-source lunar lander would cost $20 billion to $30 billion, or nearly 10 times what NASA awarded to SpaceX in 2021.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk, responding to Duffy’s comments, seemed to relish the challenge posed by industry competitors.

“SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry,” Musk said on the social media site he owns, X. “Moreover, Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission. Mark my words.”

The timing

Duffy’s remarks on television on Monday morning, although significant for the broader space community, also seemed intended for an audience of one—President Trump.

The president appointed Duffy, already leading the Department of Transportation, to lead NASA on an interim basis in July. This came six weeks after the president rescinded his nomination of billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman, for political reasons, to lead the space agency.

Trump was under the impression that Duffy would use this time to shore up NASA’s leadership while also looking for a permanent chief of the space agency. However, Duffy appears to have not paid more than lip service to finding a successor.

Since late summer there has been a groundswell of support for Isaacman in the White House, and among some members of Congress. The billionaire has met with Trump several times, both at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, and sources report that the two have a good rapport. There has been some momentum toward the president re-nominating Isaacman, with Trump potentially making a decision soon. Duffy’s TV appearances on Monday morning appear to be part of an effort to forestall this momentum by showing Trump he is actively working toward a lunar landing during his second term, which ends in January 2029.

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SpaceX launches 10,000th Starlink satellite, with no sign of slowing down

Space / Mike M. / October 20, 2025

Two Falcon 9 rockets lifted off from spaceports in Florida and California on Sunday afternoon, adding 56 more satellites to SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.

The second of these two launches—originating from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California—propelled SpaceX’s Starlink program past a notable milestone. With the satellites added to the constellation 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. This number includes dozens of Starlink demo satellites, but not the dummy spacecraft carried on SpaceX’s recent Starship test flights.

The Starlink network surpassed 7 million global subscribers in August, primarily beaming Internet connectivity to homes and businesses. SpaceX is now aggressively pushing to broaden its service direct to smartphones.

The first two Starlink prototypes, named Tintin A and Tintin B, launched in 2018 as pathfinders. SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites with a radically different design in 2019, initially flying 60 satellites at a time. The number of spacecraft per launch has gone down as the satellites grew larger and more capable, with the Falcon 9’s capacity now maxed out at 28 satellites per flight.

The first of two Falcon 9 launches Sunday, each carrying 28 Starlink satellites. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s launch director nodded at the moment the Falcon 9 took off from California Sunday: “From Tintin to 10,000. Go Starlink, go Falcon, go SpaceX.”

A little more than an hour later, SpaceX confirmed the successful deployment of the rocket’s 28 satellites about 160 miles (260 kilometers) above the Earth. They were expected to unfurl their solar arrays and activate their plasma engines to begin climbing to their operational altitude of 332 miles (535 kilometers).

By the numbers

SpaceX is decommissioning aging and obsolete Starlink satellites as the company adds to the fleet. The retired satellites reenter the atmosphere, where they’re designed to burn up without any debris reaching the ground. Taking into account all the reentries, here are McDowell’s numbers for the Starlink fleet as it stands Monday, October 20:

8,680 total Starlink satellites in orbit
8,664 functioning Starlink satellites in orbit (including newly launched satellites not yet operational)
7,448 Starlink satellites in operational orbit

SpaceX launches 10,000th Starlink satellite, with no sign of slowing down Read More »

Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah

737 max, aviation, in-flight strike, Space, space debris, windshield / Mike M. / October 19, 2025

The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Sunday that it is investigating an airliner that was struck by an object in its windscreen, mid-flight, over Utah.

“NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data,” the federal agency said on the social media site X. “Windscreen being sent to NTSB laboratories for examination.”

The strike occurred Thursday, during a United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles. Images shared on social media showed that one of the two large windows at the front of a 737 MAX aircraft was significantly cracked. Related images also reveal a pilot’s arm that has been cut multiple times by what appear to be small shards of glass.

Object’s origin not confirmed

The captain of the flight reportedly described the object that hit the plane as “space debris.” This has not been confirmed, however.

pic.twitter.com/qpoRaWA6Ab

— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) October 18, 2025

After the impact, the aircraft safely landed at Salt Lake City International Airport after being diverted.

Images of the strike showed that an object made a forceful impact near the upper right part of the window, showing damage to the metal frame. Because aircraft windows are multiple layers thick, with laminate in between, the window pane did not shatter completely. The aircraft was flying above 30,000 feet—likely around 36,000 feet—and the cockpit apparently maintained its cabin pressure.

Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah Read More »

Rocket Report: China launches with no advance warning; Europe’s drone ship

rocket report, Space / Tim Belzer / October 18, 2025

Starlink, Kuiper, and the US military all saw additions to their mega-constellations this week.

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

Welcome to Edition 8.15 of the Rocket Report! This year has been, at best, one of mixed results for SpaceX’s Starship program. There have been important steps forward, including the successful reuse of the rocket’s massive Super Heavy booster. Clearly, SpaceX is getting really good at launching and recovering the 33-engine booster stage. But Starship itself, part spacecraft and part upper stage, hasn’t fared as well—at least it hadn’t until the last couple of months. After four Starships were destroyed in flight and on the ground in the first half of 2025, the last two missions ended with pinpoint splashdowns in the Indian Ocean. The most recent mission this week was arguably the most successful yet for Starship, which returned to Earth with little damage, suggesting SpaceX’s improvements to the heat shield are working.

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.

SpaceX vet will fly with Blue Origin. Hans Koenigsmann is one of SpaceX’s earliest, longest-tenured, and most-revered employees. He worked at Elon Musk’s space company for nearly two decades, rising to the role of vice president for mission assurance and safety before leaving SpaceX in 2021. He led the investigations into every Falcon rocket failure, mentored young engineers, and became a public face for SpaceX through numerous presentations and press conferences. And now he has announced he is going to space on a future suborbital flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, Ars reports.

Due diligence … Koenigsmann will fly to space alongside his friend Michaela “Michi” Benthaus as early as next month. She’s notable in her own right—a mountain biking accident in 2018 left her with a spinal cord injury, but she did not let this derail her from her dream. She will become the first wheelchair user to fly in space. Koenigsmann said one of his main concerns with the flight was safety, but meeting with Blue Origin engineers gave him confidence to climb aboard New Shepard. “When we met them, I asked a lot of technical questions on the safety side, and I feel like they answered the majority of them thoughtfully and correctly.” So, what’s it like for a long-time SpaceXer to work with a former competitor, Blue Origin? Read Eric Berger’s interview with Koenigsmann to learn more.

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Europe’s drone ship. The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a contract for the design of a reusable rocket stage recovery vessel to the Italian aerospace and defense systems company Ingegneria Dei Sistemi (IDS), European Spaceflight reports. The project is part of a broader contract awarded to the Italian rocket builder Avio for the development of a reusable rocket upper stage, which Ars reported on last month. The contract covers preliminary design work for the launch system and the ground system, and could be applied to a reusable evolution of Avio’s Vega family of rockets.

Looks familiar … On Wednesday, IDS announced that it had been awarded the contract to design the project’s recovery vessel, which falls under the systems ground segment. The company has subcontracted Italian naval systems consultancy Cetena and Norwegian shipbuilder Vard to assist with the project. An artist’s illustration of the vessel gives it a familiar look. It appears similar to the recovery ships that SpaceX used to attempt recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairings, with giant nets to catch the hardware falling from space under parachute. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

JAXA looks abroad. The Japanese space agency JAXA has selected Rocket Lab to launch a set of technology demonstration satellites on Electron rockets after continued delays with a Japanese launch vehicle, Space News reports. The agreement covers two launches from New Zealand, the first in December with JAXA’s 242-pound (110-kilogram) Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite-4 (RAISE-4) technology demonstration satellite, and the second in early 2026 with a batch of eight smaller satellites for educational, ocean monitoring, and other demonstrations.

No more waiting … These satellites were supposed to launch on Japan’s solid-fueled Epsilon S rocket, but JAXA looked to another launch provider after lengthy delays with the Epsilon program. Epsilon S is an upgraded version of Japan’s Epsilon rocket, which has flown six times. The first flight of Epsilon S was originally expected in 2023, but back-to-back ground test failures of the vehicle’s second stage solid rocket motor have effectively grounded the rocket. Japanese officials are considering ditching the upgraded second stage design and going back to the original Epsilon configuration, but a launch is still at least a year away.

An update on a German launch startup. German rocket builder HyImpulse announced Thursday that it had secured $53 million (45 million euros) in new funding to continue developing its SL-1 rocket, European Spaceflight reports. HyImpulse said it will use the new capital to “drive forward the development and commercialization of the SL1 orbital rocket and expand its production capacities.” HyImpulse is one of a handful of serious European launch startups, having raised more than $86 million (74 million euros) since its foundation in 2018.

Still years away … The SL1 rocket will consist of three stages with hybrid propulsion, capable of delivering up to more than 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms) of payload to low-Earth orbit. The first flight of HyImpulse’s orbital rocket is scheduled for 2027. SL1 builds on the company’s SR75 suborbital rocket, which made its first test flight from Australia in 2024.

iRocket touts rapid build. Innovative Rocket Technologies Inc. (iRocket) reports a successful flight test of the company’s 2.75-inch (70-millimeter) diameter IRX-100 version of the Hydra 70 rocket system from a launch tube under its own power to exercise a range of motor and missile properties, Aviation Week & Space Technology Reports. The IRX-100 is iRocket’s version of the Hydra 70 short-range unguided missile primarily used on military helicopters. Asad Malik, iRocket’s CEO, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that the company designed and launched the rocket in just 30 days. “Speed, precision, and innovation are what define our team,” Malik wrote.

Pathfinder … The IRX-100 rocket launched from a desert location in California and reached an altitude of more than 12,000 feet, according to iRocket. We’ve reported on iRocket in several recent editions of the Rocket Report. In July, the company announced it was going public in a deal with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company founded by former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. But the SPAC and iRocket itself appear to have little money. Company officials hope the IRX-100 might offer a short-term source of revenue through military sales. iRocket’s longer-term goals include the development of a reusable orbital-class rocket, named Shockwave.

SpaceX launches for Kuiper. After more than a week of launch delays, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with two dozen of Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband Internet satellites onboard Monday night, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, dubbed Kuiper Falcon 03 or KF-03, faced several days of launch delays due to poor weather both at the Cape as well as offshore. This was the third and final Kuiper launch currently booked on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, and the sixth launch of operational Kuiper satellites overall. Amazon now has 153 of its planned 3,232 Kuiper satellites in orbit.

SDA, too … Two days later, SpaceX launched a different Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, to add 21 satellites to the Space Development Agency’s burgeoning low-Earth orbit constellation, Spaceflight Now reports. These satellites were built by Lockheed Martin, and they will join a batch of 21 similar spacecraft manufactured by York Space Systems launched last month. The satellites form the foundation for the Pentagon’s proliferated missile tracking and data relay network.

China launches another mysterious satellite. China conducted an orbital launch Monday with no apparent advance indication, successfully sending the Shiyan-31 remote sensing test satellite into orbit, Space News reports. The mission lifted off aboard a Long March 2D rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The Long March 2D can deliver up to 3.5 metric tons (7,700 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit. Shiyan-31 is believed to have an optical surveillance mission, and US tracking data indicated it was flying in an orbit about 300 miles (500 kilometers) above the Earth.

Surprise! … What was unusual about this launch was the fact that China did not publicize it in advance. Like most spacefaring nations, China typically issues airspace and maritime warning notices for airplanes and ships to steer clear of downrange zones where rocket debris may fall. No such warnings were released for this launch.

Starship flirts with perfection. SpaceX closed a troubled but instructive chapter in its Starship rocket program Monday with a near-perfect test flight that carried the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world from South Texas to the Indian Ocean, Ars reports. This was the 11th full-scale test flight of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, and it was arguably the most successful Starship test flight to date. It comes after a rough start to the year with a series of Starship failures and explosions that set the program back by at least six months.

Close to pristine … This time, Starship came back through the atmosphere with little sign of visible damage. The previous test flight in August also nailed its splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but it came down with a banged-up heat shield. This was the final flight of the second generation of Starship, called Starship V2. SpaceX plans to debut the larger, more powerful Starship V3 configuration in early 2026. If all goes well, SpaceX could be in position to attempt to recover Starship on land next year.

Orion’s other options. The Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket have been attached at the hip for the better part of two decades. The big rocket lifts, the smaller spacecraft flies, and Congress keeps the money rolling in. But now there are signs that the twain may, in the not-too-distant future, split, Ars reports. This is because Lockheed Martin has begun to pivot toward a future in which the Orion spacecraft—thanks to increasing reusability, a focus on cost, and openness to flying on different rockets—fits into commercial space applications. In interviews, company officials said that if NASA wanted to buy Orion missions as a “service,” rather than owning and operating the spacecraft, they were ready to work with the space agency.

Staying power … This represents a significant change. Since the US Congress called for the creation of the Space Launch System rocket a decade and a half ago, Orion and this rocket have been discussed in tandem, forming the backbone of an expendable architecture that would launch humans to the Moon and return them to Earth inside Orion. But time is running out for the uber-expensive SLS rocket, with differing proposals from the Trump administration and Congress to terminate the program after either two or perhaps four more flights. This appears to be one reason Lockheed is exploring alternative launch vehicles for Orion. If the spacecraft is going to be competitive on price, it needs a rocket that does not cost more than $2 billion per launch. Any near-term plan to send astronauts to the Moon will still require Orion.

Doubling up at Vandenberg. The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX’s plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Ars reports. This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California’s Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year’s number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s. Military officials have now authorized SpaceX to double its annual launch rate at Vandenberg from 50 to 100, with up to 95 missions using the Falcon 9 rocket and up to five launches of the larger Falcon Heavy.

No big rush … There’s more to the changes at Vandenberg than launching additional rockets. The authorization gives SpaceX the green light to redevelop Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. SpaceX plans to demolish unneeded structures at SLC-6 (pronounced “Slick 6”) and construct two new landing pads for Falcon boosters on a bluff overlooking the Pacific just south of the pad. SLC-6 would become the West Coast home for Falcon Heavy, but SpaceX currently has no confirmed contracts to fly the heavy-lifter from Vandenberg.

Next three launches

Oct. 18: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-19 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 46 UTC

Oct. 19: Kinetica 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 03: 30 UTC

Oct. 19: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-17 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 14: 52 UTC

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

Rocket Report: China launches with no advance warning; Europe’s drone ship Read More »

NASA’s next Moonship reaches last stop before launch pad

artemis, artemis II, human spaceflight, Kennedy Space Center, launch, Lockheed Martin, moon, NASA, orion, Science, Space, space launch system, vehicle assembly building / Kris Guyer / October 17, 2025

The Orion spacecraft, which will fly four people around the Moon, arrived inside the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida late Thursday night, ready to be stacked on top of its rocket for launch early next year.

The late-night transfer covered about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from one facility to another at the Florida spaceport. NASA and its contractors are continuing preparations for the Artemis II mission after the White House approved the program as an exception to work through the ongoing government shutdown, which began on October 1.

The sustained work could set up Artemis II for a launch opportunity as soon as February 5 of next year. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will be the first humans to fly on the Orion spacecraft, a vehicle that has been in development for nearly two decades. The Artemis II crew will make history on their 10-day flight by becoming the first people to travel to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972.

Where things stand

The Orion spacecraft, developed by Lockheed Martin, has made several stops at Kennedy over the last few months since leaving its factory in May.

First, the capsule moved to a fueling facility, where technicians filled it with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants, which will feed Orion’s main engine and maneuvering thrusters on the flight to the Moon and back. In the same facility, teams loaded high-pressure helium and ammonia coolant into Orion propulsion and thermal control systems.

The next stop was a nearby building where the Launch Abort System was installed on the Orion spacecraft. The tower-like abort system would pull the capsule away from its rocket in the event of a launch failure. Orion stands roughly 67 feet (20 meters) tall with its service module, crew module, and abort tower integrated together.

Teams at Kennedy also installed four ogive panels to serve as an aerodynamic shield over the Orion crew capsule during the first few minutes of launch.

The Orion spacecraft, with its Launch Abort System and ogive panels installed, is seen last month inside the Launch Abort System Facility at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

It was then time to move Orion to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where a separate team has worked all year to stack the elements of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket. In the coming days, cranes will lift the spacecraft, weighing 78,000 pounds (35 metric tons), dozens of stories above the VAB’s center aisle, then up and over the transom into the building’s northeast high bay to be lowered atop the SLS heavy-lift rocket.

NASA’s next Moonship reaches last stop before launch pad Read More »

SpaceX has plans to launch Falcon Heavy from California—if anyone wants it to

Commercial space, falcon 9, falcon heavy, launch, military space, Science, slc-6, Space, space force, spacex, Vandenberg space force base / Tim Belzer / October 16, 2025

There’s more to the changes at Vandenberg than launching additional rockets. The authorization gives SpaceX the green light to redevelop Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. SpaceX plans to demolish unneeded structures at SLC-6 (pronounced “Slick 6”) and construct two new landing pads for Falcon boosters on a bluff overlooking the Pacific just south of the pad.

SpaceX currently operates from a single pad at Vandenberg—Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC-4E)—a few miles north of the SLC-6 location. The SLC-4E location is not configured to launch the Falcon Heavy, an uprated rocket with three Falcon 9 boosters bolted together.

SLC-6, cocooned by hills on three sides and flanked by the ocean to the west, is no stranger to big rockets. It was first developed for the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in the 1960s, when the military wanted to put a mini-space station into orbit for astronauts to spy on the Soviet Union. Crews readied the complex to launch military astronauts on top of Titan rockets, but the Pentagon canceled the program in 1969 before anything actually launched from SLC-6.

NASA and the Air Force then modified SLC-6 to launch space shuttles. The space shuttle Enterprise was stacked vertically at SLC-6 for fit checks in 1985, but the Air Force abandoned the Vandenberg-based shuttle program after the Challenger accident in 1986. The launch facility sat mostly dormant for nearly two decades until Boeing, and then United Launch Alliance, took over SLC-6 and began launching Delta IV rockets there in 2006.

The space shuttle Enterprise stands vertically at Space Launch Complex-6 at Vandenberg. NASA used the shuttle for fit checks at the pad, but it never launched from California. Credit: NASA

ULA launched its last Delta IV Heavy rocket from California in 2022, leaving the future of SLC-6 in question. ULA’s new rocket, the Vulcan, will launch from a different pad at Vandenberg. Space Force officials selected SpaceX in 2023 to take over the pad and prepare it to launch the Falcon Heavy, which has the lift capacity to carry the military’s most massive satellites into orbit.

No big rush

Progress at SLC-6 has been slow. It took nearly a year to prepare the Environmental Impact Statement. In reality, there’s no big rush to bring SLC-6 online. SpaceX has no Falcon Heavy missions from Vandenberg in its contract backlog, but the company is part of the Pentagon’s stable of launch providers. To qualify as a member of the club, SpaceX must have the capability to launch the Space Force’s heaviest missions from the military’s spaceports at Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX has plans to launch Falcon Heavy from California—if anyone wants it to Read More »

Once unthinkable, NASA and Lockheed now consider launching Orion on other rockets

NASA, orion, reuse, sls rocket, Space / Rejus Almole / October 15, 2025

“We’re trying to crawl, then walk, then run into our reuse strategy.”

The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission, seen here with its solar arrays installed for flight, just prior to their enclosure inside aerodynamic fairings to protect them during launch. Credit: NASA/Rad Sinyak

The Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket have been attached at the hip for the better part of two decades. The big rocket lifts, the smaller spacecraft flies, and Congress keeps the money rolling in.

But now there are signs that the twain may, in the not too distant future, split.

This is because Lockheed Martin has begun to pivot toward a future in which the Orion spacecraft—thanks to increasing reusability, a focus on cost, and openness to flying on different rockets—fits into commercial space applications. In interviews, company officials said that if NASA wanted to buy Orion missions as a “service,” rather than owning and operating the spacecraft, they were ready to work with the space agency.

“Our message is we absolutely support it, and we’re starting that discussion now,” said Anthony Byers, director of Strategy and Business Development for Lockheed Martin, the principal contractor for Orion.

This represents a significant change. Since the US Congress called for the creation of the Space Launch System rocket a decade and a half ago, Orion and this rocket have been discussed in tandem, forming the backbone of an expendable architecture that would launch humans to the Moon and return them to Earth inside Orion. Through cost-plus contracts, NASA would pay for the rockets and spacecraft to be built, closely supervise all of this, and then operate the vehicles after delivery.

Moving to a ‘services’ model

But the landscape is shifting. In President Trump’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, the White House sought to terminate funding for Orion and the SLS rocket after the Artemis III mission, which would mean there are just two flights remaining. Congress countered by saying that NASA should continue flying the spacecraft and rocket through Artemis V.

Either way, the writing on the wall seems pretty clear.

“Given the President’s Budget Request guidance, and what we think NASA’s ultimate direction will be, they’re going to need to move to a commercial transportation option similar to commercial crew and cargo,” Byers said. “So when we talk about Orion services, we’re talking about taking Orion and flying that service-based mission, which means we provide a service, from boots on the ground on Earth, to wherever we’re going to go and dock to, and then bringing the crew home.”

By contrast, there has been little movement on an effort to commercialize the rocket.

In 2022, Boeing, the contractor for the SLS core stage, and Northrop Grumman, which manufactures the side boosters, created “Deep Space Transport LLC” to build the rockets and sell them to NASA on a more services-based approach. However, despite NASA’s stated intent to award a launch services contract to Deep Space Transport by the end of 2023, no such contract has been given out. It appears that the joint venture to commercialize the SLS rocket is defunct. Moreover, there are no plans to modify the rocket for reuse.

Wanted: a heavy lift rocket

This appears to be one reason Lockheed is exploring alternative launch vehicles for Orion. If the spacecraft is going to be competitive on price, it needs a rocket that does not cost in excess of $2 billion per launch.

Orion has a launch mass, including its abort system, of 35 metric tons. The company has looked at rockets that could launch that much mass and boost it to the Moon, as well as alternatives that might see one rocket launch Orion, and another provide a tug vehicle to push it out to the Moon. So far, the company has not advanced to performing detailed studies of vibrations, acoustics, thermal loads, and other assessments of compatibility, said Kirk Shireman, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and program manager for Orion.

“Could you create architectures to fly on other vehicles? Yes, we know we can,” Shireman said. “But when you start talking about those other environmental things, we have not done any of that work.”

So what else is being done to control Orion’s costs? Lockheed officials said incorporating reuse into Orion’s plans is “absolutely critical.” This is a philosophy that has evolved over time, especially after SpaceX began reflying its Dragon spacecraft.

NASA first contracted with Lockheed nearly two decades ago to start preliminary development work on Orion. At the outset, spacecraft reuse was not a priority. Byers, who has been involved with the Orion program at Lockheed on and off since its inception, said initially NASA asked Lockheed to assess the potential for reusing components of Orion.

“Whenever the vehicle would come back, NASA’s assumption was that we would disassemble the vehicle and harvest the components, and they would go into inventory,” Byers said. “Then they would go into a new structure for a future flight. Well, as the program progressed and we saw what others were doing, we really started to introduce the idea of reusing the crew module.”

How to reuse a spacecraft

The updated plan agreed to by NASA and Lockheed calls for a step-by-step approach.

“There’s a path forward,” said Howard Hu, NASA’s Orion program manager, in an interview. “We’re trying to crawl, then walk, then run into our reuse strategy. We want to make sure that we’re increasing our reusability, which we know is the path to sustainability and lower cost.”

The current plan is as follows:

Artemis II: A brand-new spacecraft, it will reuse 11 avionics components refurbished from the Artemis I Orion spacecraft; after landing, it will be used for testing purposes.

Artemis III: A brand-new spacecraft.

Artemis IV: A brand-new spacecraft.

Artemis V: Will reuse approximately 250 components, primarily life support and avionics equipment, from Artemis II.

Artemis VI: Will reuse primary structure (pressure vessel) and secondary structures (gussets, panels, brackets, plates) from Artemis III Orion, and approximately 3,000 components.

Lockheed plans to build a fleet of three largely reusable spacecraft, which will make their debuts on the Artemis III, IV, and V missions, respectively. Those three vehicles would then fly future missions, and if Lockheed needs to expand the fleet to meet demand, it could.

This photo, from 2023, shows the Orions for Artemis II, III, and IV all together. Credit: Lockheed Martin

Of course, Orion can never be made fully reusable. The service module, built by Europe-based Airbus and providing propulsion, separates from Orion before reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and burns up.

“We probably should call it maximum reuse, because there are some things that are consumed,” Shireman said. “For instance, the heat shield is consumed as the ablative material is ablated. But we are, ultimately, going to reuse the structure of the heat shield itself.”

Vectoring along a new path

Orion is always going to be relatively expensive. However, officials said they are on track to trim the cost of producing an Orion by 50 percent from the Artemis II to Artemis V vehicles and in follow-on missions to bring this down by 30 percent further or more. Minimizing refurbishment will be key to this.

Lockheed will never achieve “full and rapid reusability” for Orion like SpaceX is attempting with its Starship vehicle. That’s just not the way Orion was designed, nor what NASA wants. The space agency seeks a safe and reliable ride into deep space for its astronauts.

For the time being, only Orion can provide that. In the future, Starship may well provide that capability. Blue Origin and other providers may develop a deep space-capable human vehicle. But Orion is here and ready for its first astronauts in 2026. It will be years before any alternative becomes available.

It is nice to see that Lockheed recognizes this advantage won’t last forever and that it’s moving—or should we say, Vectoring—toward a more sustainable future.

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.

Once unthinkable, NASA and Lockheed now consider launching Orion on other rockets Read More »

Starship’s elementary era ends today with mega-rocket’s 11th test flight

Commercial space, launch, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, starship flight 11, super heavy / Kris Guyer / October 13, 2025

Future flights of Starship will end with returns to Starbase, where the launch tower will try to catch the vehicle coming home from space, similar to the way SpaceX has shown it can recover the Super Heavy booster. A catch attempt with Starship is still at least a couple of flights away.

In preparation for future returns to Starbase, the ship on Flight 11 will perform a “dynamic banking maneuver” and test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to its final engine burn to brake for splashdown. If all goes according to plan, the flight will end with a controlled water landing in the Indian Ocean approximately 66 minutes after liftoff.

Turning point

Monday’s test flight will be the last Starship launch of the year as SpaceX readies a new generation of the rocket, called Version 3, for its debut sometime in early 2026. The new version of the rocket will fly with upgraded Raptor engines and larger propellant tanks and have the capability for refueling in low-Earth orbit.

Starship Version 3 will also inaugurate SpaceX’s second launch pad at Starbase, which has several improvements over the existing site, including a flame trench to redirect engine exhaust away from the pad. The flame trench is a common feature of many launch pads, but all of the Starship flights so far have used an elevated launch mount, or stool, over a water-cooled flame deflector.

The current launch complex is expected to be modified to accommodate future Starship V3s, giving the company two pads to support a higher flight rate.

NASA is counting on a higher flight rate for Starship next year to move closer to fulfilling SpaceX’s contract to provide a human-rated lander to the agency’s Artemis lunar program. SpaceX has contracts worth more than $4 billion to develop a derivative of Starship to land NASA astronauts on the Moon.

But much of SpaceX’s progress toward a lunar landing hinges on launching numerous Starships—perhaps a dozen or more—in a matter of a few weeks or months. SpaceX is activating the second launch pad in Texas and building several launch towers and a new factory in Florida to make this possible.

Apart from recovering and reusing Starship itself, the program’s most pressing near-term hurdle is the demonstration of in-orbit refueling, a prerequisite for any future Starship voyages to the Moon or Mars. This first refueling test could happen next year but will require Starship V3 to have a smoother introduction than Starship V2, which is retiring after Flight 11 with, at best, a 40 percent success rate.

Starship’s elementary era ends today with mega-rocket’s 11th test flight Read More »

Hans Koenigsmann, who investigated all of SpaceX’s rocket failures, is going to space

blue origin, hans koengismann, new shepard, Space / Rejus Almole / October 13, 2025

Then she kind of asked me, “Do you think I could be an astronaut?” I mean, technically, you don’t need your legs, and so on and so forth. When I realized that she meant New Shepard, I said, ‘Well, let me talk to people I know.’ So I called Audrey Powers (a Blue Origin engineer), and she said she loved the project. In a very subtle and slippery slope, I thought about this and said, “Actually, I think I can do this, too.”

The logic, for me, is that it doesn’t keep me from flying orbital. I’ve thought about this for a long time now because obviously I’m a risk person, so all kinds of things go through my head, right? And then there’s SpaceX and Blue, and all kinds of things go through my head there, too. So I talked to a lot of people, and there was not a single person who said, “No, you shouldn’t do that.” Yeah? That doesn’t mean that it’s right. But I asked people I’m not friends with, too, and they all said, “Well, why not?” So that’s how we ended up on this mission together.

Ars: What were your primary concerns about flying yourself? Was it safety? Was it the fact that you worked for SpaceX for 20 years and you were going to fly on Blue Origin?

Hans Koenigsmann: All of the above. I don’t know what they did for safety. I know what SpaceX did for safety. So I talked to a few people who worked there. And it all came down to the point that they would all fly on New Shepard. But for me, the ultimate discriminator is if you would let your children fly on it. And later, when we met them, I asked a lot of technical questions on the safety side, and I feel like they answered the majority of them thoughtfully and correctly. So on the safety side, I felt better after a while.

Hans Koenigsmann, who investigated all of SpaceX’s rocket failures, is going to space Read More »

Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck

blue origin, falcon 9, Gilmour space, NASA, new glenn, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, stoke space, united launch alliance / Tim Belzer / October 11, 2025

The long, winding road for Franklin Chang-Diaz’s plasma rocket engine takes another turn.

Blue Origin’s second New Glenn booster left its factory this week for a road trip to the company’s launch pad a few miles away. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 8.14 of the Rocket Report! We’re now more than a week into a federal government shutdown, but there’s been little effect on the space industry. Military space operations are continuing unabated, and NASA continues preparations at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for the launch of the Artemis II mission around the Moon early next year. The International Space Station is still flying with a crew of seven in low-Earth orbit, and NASA’s fleet of spacecraft exploring the cosmos remain active. What’s more, so much of what the nation does in space is now done by commercial companies largely (but not completely) immune from the pitfalls of politics. But the effect of the shutdown on troops and federal employees shouldn’t be overlooked. They will soon miss their first paychecks unless political leaders reach an agreement to end the stalemate.

Danger from dead rockets. A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions, Ars reports. “The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

Littering in LEO … The disturbing trends mainly revolve around China’s actions in low-Earth orbit. “The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we’ve had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars. China is responsible for leaving behind 21 of those 26 rockets. Overall, Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

Sign Me Up!

New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, launched its sixth crewed New Shepard flight so far this year Wednesday as the company works to increase the vehicle’s flight rate, Space News reports. This was the 36th flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. The passengers included: Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Will Lewis, Aaron Newman, and Vitalii Ostrovsky. Blue Origin said it has now flown 86 humans (80 individuals) into space. The New Shepard booster returned to a pinpoint propulsive landing, and the capsule parachuted into the desert a few miles from the launch site near Van Horn, Texas.

Two-month turnaround … This flight continued Blue Origin’s trend of launching New Shepard about once per month. The company has two capsules and two boosters in its active inventory, and each vehicle has flown about once every two months this year. Blue Origin currently has command of the space tourism and suborbital research market as its main competitor in this sector, Virgin Galactic, remains grounded while it builds a next-generation rocket plane. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

NASA still interested in former astronaut’s rocket engine. NASA has awarded the Ad Astra Rocket Company a $4 million, two-year contract for the continued development of the company’s Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) concept, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Ad Astra, founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, claims the vehicle has the potential to reach Mars with human explorers within 45 days using a nuclear power source rather than solar power. The new contract will enable federal funding to support development of the engine’s radio frequency, superconducting magnet, and structural exoskeleton subsystems.

Slow going … Houston-based Ad Astra said in a press release that it sees the high-power plasma engine as “nearing flight readiness.” We’ve heard this before. The VASIMR engine has been in development for decades now, beset by a lack of stable funding and the technical hurdles inherent in designing and testing such demanding technology. For example, Ad Astra once planned a critical 100-hour, 100-kilowatt ground test of the VASIMR engine in 2018. The test still hasn’t happened. Engineers discovered a core component of the engine tended to overheat as power levels approached 100 kilowatts, forcing a redesign that set the program back by at least several years. Now, Ad Astra says it is ready to build and test a pair of 150-kilowatt engines, one of which is intended to fly in space at the end of the decade.

Gilmour eyes return to flight next year. Australian rocket and satellite startup Gilmour Space Technologies is looking to return to the launch pad next year after the first attempt at an orbital flight failed over the summer, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. “We are well capitalized. We are going to be launching again next year,” Adam Gilmour, the company’s CEO, said October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney.

What happened? … Gilmour didn’t provide many details about the cause of the launch failure in July, other than to say it appeared to be something the company didn’t test for ahead of the flight. The Eris rocket flew for 14 seconds, losing control and crashing a short distance from the launch pad in the Australian state of Queensland. If there’s any silver lining, Gilmour said the failure didn’t damage the launch pad, and the rocket’s use of a novel hybrid propulsion system limited the destructive power of the blast when it struck the ground.

Stoke Space’s impressive funding haul. Stoke Space announced a significant capital raise on Wednesday, a total of $510 million as part of Series D funding. The new financing doubles the total capital raised by Stoke Space, founded in 2020, to $990 million, Ars reports. The infusion of money will provide the company with “the runway to complete development” of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding.

A futuristic design … Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket’s innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle’s second stage. In fully reusable mode, Nova will have a payload capacity of 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and up to 7 tons in fully expendable mode. Stoke is building a launch pad for the Nova rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

SpaceX took an unusual break from launching. SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket from Florida in 12 days during the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch gap was highlighted by a run of persistent, daily storms in Central Florida and over the Atlantic Ocean, including hurricanes that prevented deployment of SpaceX’s drone ships to support booster landings. The break ended with the launch of 28 more Starlink broadband satellites. SpaceX launched three Starlink missions in the interim from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Weather still an issue … Weather conditions on Florida’s Space Coast are often volatile, particularly in the evenings during summer and early autumn. SpaceX’s next launch from Florida was supposed to take off Thursday evening, but officials pushed it back to no earlier than Saturday due to a poor weather forecast over the next two days. Weather still gets a vote in determining whether a rocket lifts off or doesn’t, despite SpaceX’s advancements in launch efficiency and the Space Force’s improved weather monitoring capabilities at Cape Canaveral.

ArianeGroup chief departs for train maker. Current ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion has been named the new head of French train maker Alstom. He will officially take up the role in April 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Sion assumed the role as ArianeGroup’s chief executive in 2023, replacing the former CEO who left the company after delays in the debut of its main product: the Ariane 6 rocket. Sion’s appointment was announced by Alstom, but ArianeGroup has not made any official statement on the matter.

Under pressure … The change in ArianeGroup’s leadership comes as the company ramps up production and increases the launch cadence of the Ariane 6 rocket, which has now flown three times, with a fourth launch due next month. ArianeGroup’s subsidiary, Arianespace, seeks to increase the Ariane 6’s launch cadence to 10 missions per year by 2029. ArianeGroup and its suppliers will need to drastically improve factory throughput to reach this goal.

New Glenn emerges from factory. Blue Origin rolled the first stage of its massive New Glenn rocket from its hangar on Wednesday morning in Florida, kicking off the final phase of the campaign to launch the heavy-lift vehicle for the second time, Ars reports. In sharing video of the rollout to Launch Complex-36 on Wednesday online, the space company did not provide a launch target for the mission, which seeks to put two small Mars-bound payloads into orbit. The pair of identical spacecraft to study the solar wind at Mars is known as ESCAPADE. However, sources told Ars that on the current timeline, Blue Origin is targeting a launch window of November 9 to November 11. This assumes pre-launch activities, including a static-fire test of the first stage, go well.

Recovery or bust? … Blue Origin has a lot riding on this booster, named “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which it will seek to recover and reuse. Despite the name of the booster, the company is quietly confident that it will successfully land the first stage on a drone ship named Jacklyn. Internally, engineers at Blue Origin believe there is about a 75 percent chance of success. The first booster malfunctioned before landing on the inaugural New Glenn test flight in January. Company officials are betting big on recovering the booster this time, with plans to reuse it early next year to launch Blue’s first lunar lander to the Moon.

SpaceX gets bulk of this year’s military launch orders. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying.

Vulcan getting more expensive … A closer examination of this year’s National Security Space Launch contracts reveals some interesting things. The Space Force is paying SpaceX $714 million for the five launches awarded Friday, for an average of roughly $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million for each launch. That’s about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX’s price per mission. This is in line with the prices the Space Force paid SpaceX and ULA for last year’s contracts. However, look back a little further and you’ll find ULA’s prices for military launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In late 2023, the Space Force awarded a $1.3 billion deal to ULA for a batch of 11 launches at an average cost per mission of $119 million. A few months earlier, Space Systems Command assigned six launches to ULA for $672 million, or $112 million per mission.

Starship Flight 11 nears launch. SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy booster for the next test flight of the company’s Starship mega-rocket out to the launch pad in Texas this week. The booster stage, with 33 methane-fueled engines, will power the Starship into the upper atmosphere during the first few minutes of flight. This booster is flight-proven, having previously launched and landed on a test flight in March.

Next steps … With the Super Heavy booster installed on the pad, the next step for SpaceX will be the rollout of the Starship upper stage. That is expected to happen in the coming days. Ground crews will raise Starship atop the Super Heavy booster to fully stack the rocket to its total height of more than 400 feet (120 meters). If everything goes well, SpaceX is targeting liftoff of the 11th full-scale test flight of Starship and Super Heavy as soon as Monday evening. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin takes on a new line of business. Blue Origin won a US Space Force competition to build a new payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. Under the terms of the $78.2 million contract, Blue Origin will build a new facility capable of handling payloads for up to 16 missions per year. The Space Force expects to use about half of that capacity, with the rest available to NASA or Blue Origin’s commercial customers. This contract award follows a $77.5 million agreement the Space Force signed with Astrotech earlier this year to expand the footprint of its payload processing facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Important stuff … Ground infrastructure often doesn’t get the same level of attention as rockets, but the Space Force has identified bottlenecks in payload processing as potential constraints on ramping up launch cadences at the government’s spaceports in Florida and California. Currently, there are only a handful of payload processing facilities in the Cape Canaveral area, and most of them are only open to a single user, such as SpaceX, Amazon, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NASA. So, what exactly is payload processing? The Space Force said Blue Origin’s new facility will include space for “several pre-launch preparatory activities” that include charging batteries, fueling satellites, loading other gaseous and fluid commodities, and encapsulation. To accomplish those tasks, Blue Origin will create “a clean, secure, specialized high-bay facility capable of handling flight hardware, toxic fuels, and explosive materials.”

Next three launches

Oct. 11: Gravity 1 | Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 02: 15 UTC

Oct. 12: Falcon 9 | Project Kuiper KF-03 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 00: 41 UTC

Oct. 13: Starship/Super Heavy | Flight 11 | Starbase, Texas | 23: 15 UTC

Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck Read More »

Putin OKs plan to turn Russian spacecraft into flying billboards

advertising, launch, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space / Rejus Almole / October 10, 2025

These are tough times for Russia’s civilian space program. In the last few years, Russia has cut back on the number of Soyuz crew missions it is sending to the International Space Station, and a replacement for the nearly 60-year-old Soyuz spacecraft remains elusive.

While the United States and China are launching more space missions than ever before, Russia’s once-dominant launch cadence is on a downhill slide.

Russia’s access to global markets dried up after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The fallout from the invasion killed several key space partnership between Russia and Europe. Russia’s capacity to do new things in space seems to be focused on military programs like anti-satellite weapons.

The Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia’s official space agency, may have a plan to offset the decline. Late last month, Putin approved changes to federal laws governing advertising and space activities to “allow for the placement of advertising on spacecraft,” Roscosmos posted on its official Telegram account.

We’ve seen this before

The Russian State Duma, dominated by Putin loyalists, previously approved the amendments.

“According to the amendments, Roscosmos has been granted the right, effective January 1, 2026, to place advertising on space objects owned by both the State Corporation itself and federally,” Roscosmos said. “The amendments will create a mechanism for attracting private investment in Russian space exploration and reduce the burden on the state budget.”

The law requires that advertising symbols not affect spacecraft safety. The Russian government said it will establish a fee structure for advertising on federally owned space objects.

Roscosmos didn’t say this, but advertisers eligible for the offer will presumably be limited to Russia and its allies. Any ads from the West would likely violate sanctions.

Rocket-makers have routinely applied decals, stickers, and special paint jobs to their vehicles. This is a particularly popular practice in Russia. Usually, these logos represent customers and suppliers. Sometimes they honor special occasions, like the 60th anniversary of the first human spaceflight mission by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Putin OKs plan to turn Russian spacecraft into flying billboards Read More »

We’re about to find many more interstellar interlopers—here’s how to visit one

alan stern, comet, comet interceptor, european space agency, Features, interstellar object, juno, NASA, Science, Space, swri / Kris Guyer / October 9, 2025

“You don’t have to claim that they’re aliens to make these exciting.”

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

A few days ago, an inscrutable interstellar interloper made its closest approach to Mars, where a fleet of international spacecraft seek to unravel the red planet’s ancient mysteries.

Several of the probes encircling Mars took a break from their usual activities and turned their cameras toward space to catch a glimpse of an object named 3I/ATLAS, a rogue comet that arrived in our Solar System from interstellar space and is now barreling toward perihelion—its closest approach to the Sun—at the end of this month.

This is the third interstellar object astronomers have detected within our Solar System, following 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov discovered in 2017 and 2019. Scientists think interstellar objects routinely transit among the planets, but telescopes have only recently had the ability to find one. For example, the telescope that discovered Oumuamua only came online in 2010.

Detectable but still unreachable

Astronomers first reported observations of 3I/ATLAS on July 1, just four months before reaching its deepest penetration into the Solar System. Unfortunately for astronomers, the particulars of this object’s trajectory will bring it to perihelion when the Earth is on the opposite side of the Sun. The nearest 3I/ATLAS will come to Earth is about 170 million miles (270 million kilometers) in December, eliminating any chance for high-resolution imaging. The viewing geometry also means the Sun’s glare will block all direct views of the comet from Earth until next month.

The James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on August 6 with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. Credit: NASA/James Webb Space Telescope

Because of that, the closest any active spacecraft will get to 3I/ATLAS happened Friday, when it passed less than 20 million miles (30 million kilometers) from Mars. NASA’s Perseverance rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were expected to make observations of 3I/ATLAS, along with Europe’s Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter missions.

The best views of the object so far have been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, positioned much closer to Earth. Those observations helped astronomers narrow down the object’s size, but the estimates remain imprecise. Based on Hubble’s images, the icy core of 3I/ATLAS is somewhere between the size of the Empire State Building to something a little larger than Central Park.

That may be the most we’ll ever know about the dimensions of 3I/ATLAS. The spacecraft at Mars lack the exquisite imaging sensitivity of Webb and Hubble, so don’t expect spectacular views from Friday’s observations. But scientists hope to get a better handle on the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the object, giving it the appearance of a comet. Spectroscopic observations have shown the coma around 3I/ATLAS contains water vapor and an unusually strong signature of carbon dioxide extending out nearly a half-million miles.

On Tuesday, the European Space Agency released the first grainy images of 3I/ATLAS captured at Mars. The best views will come from a small telescope called HiRISE on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The images from NASA won’t be released until after the end of the ongoing federal government shutdown, according to a member of the HiRISE team.

Europe’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter turned its eyes toward interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it passed close to Mars on Friday, October 3. The comet’s coma is visible as a fuzzy blob surrounding its nucleus, which was not resolved by the spacecraft’s camera. Credit: ESA/TGO/CaSSIS

Studies of 3I/ATLAS suggest it was probably kicked out of another star system, perhaps by an encounter with a giant planet. Comets in our Solar System sometimes get ejected into the Milky Way galaxy when they come too close to Jupiter. It roamed the galaxy for billions of years before arriving in the Sun’s galactic neighborhood.

The rogue comet is now gaining speed as gravity pulls it toward perihelion, when it will max out at a relative velocity of 152,000 mph (68 kilometers per second), much too fast to be bound into a closed orbit around the Sun. Instead, the comet will catapult back into the galaxy, never to be seen again.

We need to talk about aliens

Anyone who studies planetary formation would relish the opportunity to get a close-up look at an interstellar object. Sending a mission to one would undoubtedly yield a scientific payoff. There’s a good chance that many of these interlopers have been around longer than our own 4.5 billion-year-old Solar System.

One study from the University of Oxford suggests that 3I/ATLAS came from the “thick disk” of the Milky Way, which is home to a dense population of ancient stars. This origin story would mean the comet is probably more than 7 billion years old, holding clues about cosmic history that are simply inaccessible among the planets, comets, and asteroids that formed with the birth of the Sun.

This is enough reason to mount a mission to explore one of these objects, scientists said. It doesn’t need justification from unfounded theories that 3I/ATLAS might be an artifact of alien technology, as proposed by Harvard University astrophysicist Avi Loeb. The scientific consensus is that the object is of natural origin.

Loeb shared a similar theory about the first interstellar object found wandering through our Solar System. His statements have sparked questions in popular media about why the world’s space agencies don’t send a probe to actually visit one. Loeb himself proposed redirecting NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter on a mission to fly by 3I/ATLAS, and his writings prompted at least one member of Congress to write a letter to NASA to “rejuvenate” the Juno mission by breaking out of Jupiter’s orbit and taking aim at 3I/ATLAS for a close-up inspection.

The problem is that Juno simply doesn’t have enough fuel to reach the comet, and its main engine is broken. In fact, the total boost required to send Juno from Jupiter to 3I/ATLAS (roughly 5,800 mph or 2.6 kilometers per second) would surpass the fuel capacity of most interplanetary probes.

Ars asked Scott Bolton, lead scientist on the Juno mission, and he confirmed that the spacecraft lacks the oomph required for the kind of maneuvers proposed by Loeb. “We had no role in that paper,” Bolton told Ars. “He assumed propellant that we don’t really have.”

Avi Loeb, a Harvard University astrophysicist. Credit: Anibal Martel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

So Loeb’s exercise was moot, but his talk of aliens has garnered public attention. Loeb appeared on the conservative network Newsmax last week to discuss his theory of 3I/ATLAS alongside Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.). Predictably, conspiracy theories abounded. But as of Tuesday, the segment has 1.2 million views on YouTube. Maybe it’s a good thing that people who approve government budgets, especially those without a preexisting interest in NASA, are eager to learn more about the Universe. We will leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions on that matter.

Loeb’s calculations also help illustrate the difficulty of pulling off a mission to an interstellar object. So far, we’ve only known about an incoming interstellar intruder a few months before it comes closest to Earth. That’s not to mention the enormous speeds at which these objects move through the Solar System. It’s just not feasible to build a spacecraft and launch it on such short notice.

Now, some scientists are working on ways to overcome these limitations.

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

One of these people is Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer and planetary scientist at the University of Edinburgh. A few years ago, he helped propose to the European Space Agency a mission concept that would have very likely been laughed out of the room a generation ago. Snodgrass and his team wanted a commitment from ESA of up to $175 million (150 million euros) to launch a mission with no idea of where it would go.

ESA officials called Snodgrass in 2019 to say the agency would fund his mission, named Comet Interceptor, for launch in the late 2020s. The goal of the mission is to perform the first detailed observations of a long-period comet. So far, spacecraft have only visited short-period comets that routinely dip into the inner part of the Solar System.

A long-period comet is an icy visitor from the farthest reaches of the Solar System that has spent little time getting blasted by the Sun’s heat and radiation, freezing its physical and chemical properties much as they were billions of years ago.

Long-period comets are typically discovered a year or two before coming near the Sun, still not enough time to develop a mission from scratch. With Comet Interceptor, ESA will launch a probe to loiter in space a million miles from Earth, wait for the right comet to come along, then fire its engines to pursue it.

Odds are good that the right comet will come from within the Solar System. “That is the point of the mission,” Snodgrass told Ars.

ESA’s Comet Interceptor will be the first mission to visit a comet coming directly from the outer reaches of the Sun’s realm, carrying material untouched since the dawn of the Solar System. Credit: European Space Agency

But if astronomers detect an interstellar object coming toward us on the right trajectory, there’s a chance Comet Interceptor could reach it.

“I think that the entire science team would agree, if we get really lucky and there’s an interstellar object that we could reach, then to hell with the normal plan, let’s go and do this,” Snodgrass said. “It’s an opportunity you couldn’t just leave sitting there.”

But, he added, it’s “very unlikely” that an interstellar object will be in the right place at the right time. “Although everyone’s always very excited about the possibility, and we’re excited about the possibility, we kind of try and keep the expectations to a realistic level.”

For example, if Comet Interceptor were in space today, there’s no way it could reach 3I/ATLAS. “It’s an unfortunate one,” Snodgrass said. “Its closest point to the Sun, it reaches that on the other side of the Sun from where the Earth is. Just bad timing.” If an interceptor were parked somewhere else in the Solar System, it might be able to get itself in position for an encounter with 3I/ATLAS. “There’s only so much fuel aboard,” Snodgrass said. “There’s only so fast we can go.”

It’s even harder to send a spacecraft to encounter an interstellar object than it is to visit one of the Solar System’s homegrown long-period comets. The calculation of whether Comet Interceptor could reach one of these galactic visitors boils down to where it’s heading and when astronomers discover it.

Snodgrass is part of a team using big telescopes to observe 3I/ATLAS from a distance. “As it’s getting closer to the Sun, it is getting brighter,” he said in an interview.

“You don’t have to claim that they’re aliens to make these exciting,” Snodgrass said. “They’re interesting because they are a bit of another solar system that you can actually feasibly get an up-close view of, even the sort of telescopic views we’re getting now.”

Colin Snodgrass, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, leads the Comet Interceptor science team. Credit: University of Edinburgh

Comets and asteroids are the linchpins for understanding the formation of the Solar System. These modest worlds are the leftover building blocks from the debris that coalesced into the planets. Today, direct observations have only allowed scientists to study the history of one planetary system. An interstellar comet would grow the sample size to two.

Still, Snodgrass said his team prefers to keep their energy focused on reaching a comet originating from the frontier of our own Solar System. “We’re not going to let a very lovely Solar System comet go by, waiting to see ‘what if there’s an interstellar thing?'” he said.

Snodgrass sees Comet Interceptor as a proof of concept for scientists to propose a future mission specially designed to travel to an interstellar object. “You need to figure out how do you build the souped-up version that could really get to an interstellar object? I think that’s five or 10 years away, but [it’s] entirely realistic.”

An American answer

Scientists in the United States are working on just such a proposal. A team from the Southwest Research Institute completed a concept study showing how a mission could fly by one of these interstellar visitors. What’s more, the US scientists say their proposed mission could have actually reached 3I/ATLAS had it already been in space.

The American concept is similar to Europe’s Comet Interceptor in that it will park a spacecraft somewhere in deep space and wait for the right target to come along. The study was led by Alan Stern, the chief scientist on NASA’s New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto a decade ago. “These new kinds of objects offer humankind the first feasible opportunity to closely explore bodies formed in other star systems,” he said.

An animation of the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS through the inner Solar System. Credit: NASA/JPL

It’s impossible with current technology to send a spacecraft to match orbits and rendezvous with a high-speed interstellar comet. “We don’t have to catch it,” Stern recently told Ars. “We just have to cross its orbit. So it does carry a fair amount of fuel in order to get out of Earth’s orbit and onto the comet’s path to cross that path.”

Stern said his team developed a cost estimate for such a mission, and while he didn’t disclose the exact number, he said it would fall under NASA’s cost cap for a Discovery-class mission. The Discovery program is a line of planetary science missions that NASA selects through periodic competitions within the science community. The cost cap for NASA’s next Discovery competition is expected to be $800 million, not including the launch vehicle.

A mission to encounter an interstellar comet requires no new technologies, Stern said. Hopes for such a mission are bolstered by the activation of the US-funded Vera Rubin Observatory, a state-of-the-art facility high in the mountains of Chile set to begin deep surveys of the entire southern sky later this year. Stern predicts Rubin will discover “one or two” interstellar objects per year. The new observatory should be able to detect the faint light from incoming interstellar bodies sooner, providing missions with more advance warning.

“If we put a spacecraft like this in space for a few years, while it’s waiting, there should be five or 10 to choose from,” he said.

Alan Stern speaks onstage during Day 1 of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 in San Francisco. Credit: Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch

Winning NASA funding for a mission like Stern’s concept will not be easy. It must compete with dozens of other proposals, and NASA’s next Discovery competition is probably at least two or three years away. The timing of the competition is more uncertain than usual due to swirling questions about NASA’s budget after the Trump administration announced it wants to cut the agency’s science funding in half.

Comet Interceptor, on the other hand, is already funded in Europe. ESA has become a pioneer in comet exploration. The Giotto probe flew by Halley’s Comet in 1986, becoming the first spacecraft to make close-up observations of a comet. ESA’s Rosetta mission became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet in 2014, and later that year, it deployed a German-built lander to return the first data from the surface of a comet. Both of those missions explored short-period comets.

“Each time that ESA has done a comet mission, it’s done something very ambitious and very new,” Snodgrass said. “The Giotto mission was the first time ESA really tried to do anything interplanetary… And then, Rosetta, putting this thing in orbit and landing on a comet was a crazy difficult thing to attempt to do.”

“They really do push the envelope a bit, which is good because ESA can be quite risk averse, I think it’s fair to say, with what they do with missions,” he said. “But the comet missions, they are things where they’ve really gone for that next step, and Comet Interceptor is the same. The whole idea of trying to design a space mission before you know where you’re going is a slightly crazy way of doing things. But it’s the only way to do this mission. And it’s great that we’re trying it.”

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