Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Solar cycle,
Not a sunspot was stirring, not even a burst;
The stockings were all hung by the corona with care,
In hopes that the Parker Solar Probe would soon be there.
Almost no one ever writes about the Parker Solar Probe anymore.
Sure, the spacecraft got some attention when it launched. It is, after all, the fastest moving object that humans have ever built. At its maximum speed, goosed by the gravitational pull of the Sun, the probe reaches a velocity of 430,000 miles per hour, or more than one-sixth of 1 percent the speed of light. That kind of speed would get you from New York City to Tokyo in less than a minute.
And the Parker Solar Probe also has the distinction of being the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person. At the time of its launch, in August 2018, physicist Eugene Parker was 91 years old.
But in the six years since the probe has been zipping through outer space and flying by the Sun? Not so much. Let’s face it, the astrophysical properties of the Sun and its complicated structure are not something that most people think about on a daily basis.
However, the smallish probe—it masses less than a metric ton, and its scientific payload is only about 110 pounds (50 kg)—is about to make its star turn. Quite literally. On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun. It will come within just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the solar surface, flying into the solar atmosphere for the first time.
Yeah, it’s going to get pretty hot. Scientists estimate that the probe’s heat shield will endure temperatures in excess of 2,500° Fahrenheit (1,371° C) on Christmas Eve, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the North Pole.
Going straight to the source
I spoke with the chief of science at NASA, Nicky Fox, to understand why the probe is being tortured so. Before moving to NASA headquarters, Fox was the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, and she explained that scientists really want to understand the origins of the solar wind.
Musk ultimately received the security clearance, but since 2021, he has failed to self-report details of his life, including travel activities, persons with whom he has met, and drug use, according to the Times. The government is also concerned that SpaceX did not ensure Musk’s compliance with the reporting rules.
Government agencies “want to ensure the people who have clearances don’t violate rules and regulations,” Andrew Bakaj, a former CIA official and lawyer who works on security clearances, told the Times. “If you don’t self-report, the question becomes: ‘Why didn’t you? And what are you trying to hide?'”
According to the report, Musk’s handling of classified information has raised questions in diplomatic meetings between the United States and some of its allies, including Israel.
Musk’s national security profile has risen following his deep-pocketed and full-throated support of Donald Trump, who won the US presidential campaign in November and will be sworn into office next month. After this inauguration, Trump will have the power to grant security clearance to whomever he wishes.
Mastalir said China is “copying the US playbook” with the way it integrates satellites into more conventional military operations on land, in the air, and at sea. “Their specific goals are to be able to track and target US high-value assets at the time and place of their choosing,” Mastalir said.
China’s strategy, known as Anti-Access/Area Denial, or A2AD, is centered on preventing US forces from accessing international waters extending hundreds or thousands of miles from mainland China. Some of the islands occupied by China within the last 15 years are closer to the Philippines, another treaty ally, than to China itself.
The A2AD strategy first “extended to the first island chain (bounded by the Philippines), and now the second island chain (extending to the US territory of Guam), and eventually all the way to the West Coast of California,” Mastalir said.
US officials say China has based anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-ballistic weapons in the region, and many of these systems rely on satellite tracking and targeting. Mastalir said his priority at Indo-Pacific Command, headquartered in Hawaii, is to defend US and allied satellites, or “blue assets,” and challenge “red assets” to break the Chinese military’s “long-range kill chains and protect the joint force from space-enabled attack.”
What this means is the Space Force wants to have the ability to disable or destroy the satellites China would use to provide communication, command, tracking, navigation, or surveillance support during an attack against the US or its allies.
Buildings and structures are seen on October 25, 2022, on an artificial island built by China on Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea. China has progressively asserted its claim of ownership over disputed islands in the region. Credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Mastalir said he believes China’s space-based capabilities are “sufficient” to achieve the country’s military ambitions, whatever they are. “The sophistication of their sensors is certainly continuing to increase—the interconnectedness, the interoperability. They’re a pacing challenge for a reason,” he said.
“We’re seeing all signs point to being able to target US aircraft carriers… high-value assets in the air like tankers, AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System),” Mastalir said. “This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening, and that’s what their space architecture is.”
That’s not acceptable to Pentagon officials, so Space Force personnel are now training for orbital warfare. Just don’t expect to know the specifics of any of these weapons systems any time soon.
“The details of that? No, you’re not going to get that from any war-fighting organization—’let me tell you precisely how I intend to attack an adversary so that they can respond and counter that’—those aren’t discussions we’re going to have,” Saltzman said. “We’re still going to protect some of those (details), but broadly, from an operational concept, we are going to be ready to contest space.”
A new administration
The Space Force will likely receive new policy directives after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. The Trump transition team hasn’t identified any changes coming for the Space Force, but a list of policy proposals known as Project 2025 may offer some clues.
Published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 calls for the Pentagon to pivot the Space Force from a mostly defensive posture toward offensive weapons systems. Christopher Miller, who served as acting secretary of defense in the first Trump administration, authored the military section of Project 2025.
Miller wrote that the Space Force should “reestablish offensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of forces, efficiently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously complicate enemy calculations of a successful first strike against US space assets.”
Saltzman met with Trump last month while attending a launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in Texas, but he said the encounter was incidental. Saltzman was already there for discussions with SpaceX officials, and Trump’s travel plans only became known the day before the launch.
The conversation with Trump at the Starship launch didn’t touch on any policy details, according to Saltzman. He added that the Space Force hasn’t yet had any formal discussions with the Trump transition team.
Regardless of the direction Trump takes with the Space Force, Saltzman said the service is already thinking about what to do to maintain what the Pentagon now calls “space superiority”—a twist on the term air superiority, which might have seemed equally as fanciful at the dawn of military aviation more than a century ago.
“That’s the reason we’re the Space Force,” Saltzman said. “So administration to administration, that’s still going to be true. Now, it’s just about resourcing and the discussions about what we want to do and when we want to do it, and we’re ready to have those discussions.”
“I am convinced that a collaboration between Avio and MaiaSpace could be established.”
SpaceX conducted a static fire test of its flight seven Super Heavy booster this week. Credit: SpaceX
Welcome to Edition 7.23 of the Rocket Report! We’re closing in on the end of the year, with a little less than three weeks remaining in 2024. Can you believe it? I hardly can. The biggest question left in launch is whether Blue Origin will make its deadline for launching New Glenn by the end of this year. It’s been a long-time goal of founder Jeff Bezos, but the clock is ticking. We wish them luck!
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.
Virgin Galactic studies Italian spaceport. The US-based suborbital space tourism company said Thursday it has signed an “agreement of cooperation” with Italy’s civil aviation authority to study the feasibility of Virgin Galactic conducting spaceflight operations from Grottaglie Spaceport in the Puglia region of Southern Italy. Phase one of the study, anticipated to be completed in 2025, will examine Grottaglie’s airspace compatibility with Virgin Galactic’s requirements and unique flight profile.
Follows earlier flight … The announcement comes 18 months after members of the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy conducted research aboard Virgin Galactic’s June 2023 ‘Galactic 01’ mission from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The flight marked the company’s first commercial spaceflight. It’s all well and good to be making such strategic announcements, but this is all dependent upon the company delivering on its new generation of Delta-class spaceships.
For some reason, Avio and MaiaSpace may partner. MaiaSpace CEO Johann Leroy has suggested that a partnership with Italian rocket-builder Avio could benefit both companies and bolster Europe’s independent access to space, European Spaceflight reports. “The goal of MaiaSpace is to design, produce, and operate the mini-launcher, as well as to market the related launch services, and to stay focused and responsive to market developments,” said Leroy. “However, I am convinced that a collaboration between Avio and MaiaSpace could be established. It would be an advantage for both companies and for Europe.”
But it’s not clear why … Founded in early 2022 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, MaiaSpace is developing a 50-meter tall, two-stage, partially reusable rocket designed to deliver small satellites to orbit. Avio builds solid rocket motors and is best known for its Vega rockets. It’s not clear why a reusable launch company would want to partner with a company that builds solids, which are not reusable. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
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.
Australian space center shuts down. A spaceport in the Northern Territory of Australia will cease operations immediately, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports. The company running the spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia, said it was now in conversations with the Queensland government to relocate its operations to Cape York. The space center’s claim to fame was the 2022 launch of three NASA sounding rockets from the facility.
Disagreements over territory … The company, Equatorial Launch Australia, had been planning a major expansion of the Arnhem Space Centre at its East Arnhem Land location. However that process apparently got bogged down, and the spaceport company blamed the delays on the Northern Land Council. This council pushed back and described those claims as a “falsehood.” The wait for a renewal of orbital launches from Down Under continues. (submitted by Marzipan)
Ukrainian launch company finds refuge in Maine. Promin Aerospace, a small launch company from Dnipro, Ukraine, opened its doors in Maine this month with a goal of hiring US engineers to complete development of its first rocket in time for a test launch in mid-2026, Payload reports. Promin’s goal of launching Ukraine’s first rocket from the coast of the Black Sea was put on hold after Russia invaded the country in February 2022.
Lobsters and launches … For the past two and a half years, Promin has been developing its unique rocket technology amid power outages, Internet connectivity problems, and sporadic attacks on Dnipro from Russian forces. The search started in Europe but quickly moved across the pond to take advantage of the speed and resources that US industry provides. “[Europe moves] very slow, so a lot of things that we expected would be done by our partners in 2022, they’re only going to be done in 2025,” said Misha Rudominski, Promin’s co-founder and CEO. The Maine Space Corporation was more welcoming. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Long March-8A rocket set for debut. After successfully completing a wet dress rehearsal and other pre-launch tests, the first Long March-8A rocket is set for its debut launch in January 2025, China’s state-run news service, Xinhua, reports. The news service adds that the rocket is “designed to serve as China’s future primary launch vehicle for medium- and low-Earth orbit missions.” The rocket is capable of lofting up to 7 metric tons to a 700-km Sun-synchronous orbit.
Satellite workhorse … The newer rocket offers increased performance over the Long March 8 rocket and a larger 5.2-meter payload fairing. As such, it is being counted on to help deploy one or more of China’s planned satellite Internet megaconstellations. “The Long March-8A is an upgraded version of the Long March-8 rocket, specifically developed to meet the launch requirements of large-scale constellation networks in medium- and low-Earth orbits,” said Song Zhengyu, chief designer of the Long March-8 rocket. (submitted by gizmo23)
Chinese national arrested after flying drone near SpaceX pad. Federal police arrested Yinpiao Zhou on Monday after he was allegedly caught flying a drone over the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, The Telegraph reports. In a criminal complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Zhou flew a drone over the base and took photographs on November 30, the same day a Falcon 9 rocket launched a payload on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office. He has been accused of violating national defense air space and of failing to register an aircraft as required under US law.
Is that a drone in your pocket? … The complaint against Zhou, filed in California, says he admitted to installing software on his drone to evade limits on the height the device could fly at, and over a virtual fence around the Vandenberg base. The drone was allegedly in the air for 59 minutes and took photographs of SpaceX rocket pads and other sensitive areas. The flight was picked up by the base’s security team, who traced Zhou to nearby Ocean Park, where he was standing with another man. After initially hiding the drone in his coat, Zhou admitted he had flown it over the base.
Blue Origin says New Glenn is ready. Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff, Ars reports. The company published an image of the “Blue Ring” pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket’s payload fairing. This week’s announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes.
Still targeting 2024 for liftoff … First of all, the relatively small payload contrasted with the size of the payload fairing highlights the greater volume the rocket offers over most conventional boosters. Additionally, the company appears to be publicly signaling the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulatory agencies that it believes New Glenn is ready to fly, pending approval to conduct a hot-fire test at Launch Complex-36, and then for a liftoff from Florida. This is a not-so-subtle message to regulators to please hurry up and complete the paperwork necessary for launch activities. A company official said the plan remains to launch New Glenn before the end of 2024.
SpaceX static-fires booster for next Starship flight. Only three weeks after Flight 6, SpaceX has static-fired Booster 14 and rolled Ship 33 to Masseys to complete its own engine testing, NASASpaceflight.com reports. Once both vehicles are tested, SpaceX will begin the final drive to Flight 7, potentially launching in January. Booster 14 is more or less identical to Booster 13 on the outside except for the ship engine chill pipe extensions on previous boosters. These are no longer needed, as Block 2 of the ship has its engine chill pipes running through the aft flap fairing with a flare outward at the bottom. This simplifies the connection between the ship and the booster and reduces mass.
Block 2 upgrades … Ship 33 has many changes compared to past ships, as it is the first Block 2 ship. First and foremost for Block 2 are the extended propellant tanks. SpaceX added a ring on the ship, making it 21 rings tall, and moved around the common and forward domes to be able to load 300 more tons of propellant into the ship. This addition will allow SpaceX to increase its payload to orbit with Block 2. The sacrifice was a smaller payload bay section, which went from five rings to three rings. However, SpaceX retained most of its usable payload space, as the nose cone on Block 2 was completely redesigned. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
ULA expects to be certified for national security launch soon. United Launch Alliance expects to gain Space Force certification for national security payloads within a few months, company chief executive Tory Bruno told Breaking Defense. He added that no further testing of the Vulcan Centaur will be needed to meet certification, saying the company has met all the requirements from the Pentagon. Two successful launches are requisite to achieve certification for carrying payloads under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program.
Seeking a higher cadence … A January launch was deemed a success, but there was an anomaly during the second flight in October with one of Vulcan’s solid rocket boosters that currently is under investigation. Overall, he said, the company has 20 launches manifested for 2025, with 16 Vulcan rockets stored away for use and no worries that production won’t be able to keep up with demand. Looking forward, Bruno said he hopes to have 20-30 Vulcan launches a year, about “half” of which would be for national security. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Super heavy lift is ‘essential’ to Europe. This week the European Space Agency has published a third iteration of a proposed pathfinder study for the development of a European reusable super heavy-lift rocket capable of delivering 60 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, European Spaceflight reports. Twice before, in November and early December, the space agency published and then deleted a call for a study. While the first and second iterations made no mention of Ariane 6, currently Europe’s only heavy-lift rocket, the third iteration highlights the limitations of the ArianeGroup-built rocket.
A final decision may come next year … The text states that the development of a “European very-heavy launch system” is essential for Europe’s future ambitions in space and represents a necessary step to ensure the continent remains competitive in the global launch market. Once the study is complete, ESA hopes to have a detailed end-to-end development roadmap with a well-defined business case that could be used to move forward with the project quickly. A decision on whether to adopt the program will likely be made at the ESA ministerial meeting in late 2025. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Next three launches
Dec. 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 19: 28 UTC
Dec. 14: Electron | Stonehenge | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 00: 45 UT
Dec. 14: Falcon 9 | GPS-3 10 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 04 UTC
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
Eleven months after the Ingenuity helicopter made its final flight on Mars, engineers and scientists at NASA and a private company that helped build the flying vehicle said they have identified what probably caused it to crash on the surface of Mars.
In short, the helicopter’s on-board navigation sensors were unable to discern enough features in the relatively smooth surface of Mars to determine its position, so when it touched down, it did so moving horizontally. This caused the vehicle to tumble, snapping off all four of the helicopter’s blades.
Delving into the root cause
It is not easy to conduct a forensic analysis like this on Mars, which is typically about 100 million miles from Earth. Ingenuity carried no black box on board, so investigators have had to piece together their findings from limited data and imagery.
“While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with,” saidIngenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release.
A team from NASA and a company that specializes in unmanned aerial vehicles, AeroVironment, started by looking at the terrain where Ingenuity was operating over during its 72nd flight, on January 18 of this year. The helicopter’s navigation system tracked visual features on the surface using a downward-looking camera. During its initial flights, Ingenuity was able to discern pebbles and other features to determine its position. But nearly three years later, Ingenuity was flying in a region of Jezero Crater filled with steep, relatively featureless sand ripples.
Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff. The company published an image of the “Blue Ring” pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket’s payload fairing.
“There is a growing demand to quickly move and position equipment and infrastructure in multiple orbits,” the company’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said on LinkedIn. “Blue Ring has advanced propulsion and communication capabilities for government and commercial customers to handle these maneuvers precisely and efficiently.”
This week’s announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products, but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes.
All Blue wants for Christmas is…
First of all, the relatively small payload contrasted with the size of the payload fairing highlights the greater volume the rocket offers over most conventional boosters. New Glenn’s payload fairing is 7 meters (23 feet) in diameter as opposed to the more conventional 5 meters (16.4 feet). It looks roomy inside.
Additionally, the company appears to be publicly signaling the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulatory agencies that it believes New Glenn is ready to fly, pending approval to conduct a hot fire test at Launch Complex-36, and then for a liftoff from Florida. This is a not-so-subtle message to regulators to please hurry up and complete the paperwork necessary for launch activities. It is not clear what is holding up the hot-fire and launch approval in this case, but it is often environmental issues or certification of a flight termination system.
Blue Origin’s release on Tuesday was carefully worded. The headline said New Glenn was “on track” for a launch this year and stated that the Blue Ring payload is “ready” for a launch this year. As yet there is no notional or public launch date. The hot-fire test has been delayed multiple times since the company put the rocket on its launch pad on Nov. 23. It had been targeting November for the test, and more recently, this past weekend.
After years of delays for the rocket, originally due to debut in 2020, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos hired a new chief executive to run the company a little more than a year ago. Limp, an executive from Amazon, was given the mandate to change Blue Origin’s slower-moving culture to be more nimble and urgent and was told to launch New Glenn by the end of 2024.
Look a the rocket which has now launched 400 times. Credit: SpaceX
Welcome to Edition 7.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news is the Trump administration’s announcement that commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman would be put forward as the nominee to serve as the next NASA Administrator. Isaacman has flown to space twice, and demonstrated that he takes spaceflight seriously. More background on Isaacman, and possible changes, can be found here.
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.
Orbex pauses launch site work in Sutherland, Scotland. Small-launch vehicle developer Orbex will halt work on its own launch site in northern Scotland and instead use a rival facility in the Shetland Islands, Space News reports. Orbex announced December 4 that it would “pause” construction of Sutherland Spaceport in Scotland and instead use the SaxaVord Spaceport on the island of Unst in the Shetlands for its Prime launch vehicle. Orbex had been linked to Spaceport Sutherland since the UK Space Agency announced in 2018 it selected the site for a vertical launch complex.
Pivoting to medium lift? … The move, Orbex said, will free up resources to allow the company to focus on launch vehicle development, including both Prime and a new medium-class vehicle called Proxima. “This decision will help us to reach first launch in 2025 and provides SaxaVord with another customer to further strengthen its commercial proposition. It’s a win-win for UK and Scottish space,” Phil Chambers, chief executive of Orbex, said. If you’re reading the tea leaves here, one might guess that the smaller Prime rocket will never launch, and the medium-lift design is a hail mary. We’ll see. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
SpinLaunch raises a little cash. Space startup SpinLaunch is fundraising again, though TechCrunch reports that it was exploring raising a significantly more ambitious sum earlier this year. The company has closed an $11.5 million round out of a planned $25 million, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. SpinLaunch confirmed funding to TechCrunch but did not comment on the amount raised. It last raised $71 million in a Series B funding round in 2022. SpinLaunch, as the name implies, plans to build a kinetic launch system as a low-cost, high-cadence alternative to rockets.
Putting the spin into SpinLaunch … A person familiar with the company’s plans told TechCrunch that the startup had talked to investors around nine months ago, hoping they would pile into a $350 million round at a $2 billion valuation. In response to a question about this fundraising target, SpinLaunch CEO David Wrenn said the figures were “highly inaccurate and misleading” and that he was “pleased with our recently closed financing.” Someone is spinning something, clearly. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
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.
Vega C successfully returns to flight. After originally targeting November 29 for the return-to-flight mission of the Vega C rocket, Arianespace successfully launched the vehicle on Thursday, December 5, Space News reports. The three solid-fuel lower stages of the Vega C performed as expected, followed by three burns by the liquid-propellant AVUM+ upper stage. That upper stage deployed its payload, the Sentinel-1C satellite, about one hour and 45 minutes after liftoff. The launch was the first for the Vega C since a December 2022 launch failure on the rocket’s second flight that destroyed two Pléiades Neo imaging satellites.
Eyes in the sky … The payload, Sentinel-1C, is a radar imaging satellite built by Thales Alenia Space for the Copernicus program of Earth observation missions run by ESA and the European Commission. It replaces the Sentinel-1B spacecraft that malfunctioned in orbit nearly three years ago. It joins the existing, but aging, Sentinel-1A satellite and includes new capabilities to monitor maritime traffic with an Automatic Identification System receiver.
PLD Space secures loan for Miura 5 rocket. The Spanish launch company said this week that it had secured an 11 million euro loan ($11.6 million) from COFIDES, a state-owned development fund, to support the development of the launch site for its Miura 5 rocket in Kourou, French Guiana. The company said the funding bolsters its mission to ensure autonomous and competitive European access to space while strengthening Europe’s space infrastructure.
A public-private partnership … “This initiative exemplifies the critical role of public-private collaboration in supporting strategic and innovative projects, which rely on institutional backing as an anchor investor during the early stages of technological development,” added Spanish Secretary of State for Trade Amparo López Senovilla. The Miura 5 rocket will have an estimated payload capacity of 1 metric ton to low-Earth orbit and may make its debut in 2026. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
SpaceX value may soar higher. SpaceX is in talks to sell insider shares in a transaction valuing the rocket and satellite maker at about $350 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports. That would be a significant premium to a previously mulled valuation of $255 billion as reported by Bloomberg News and other media outlets just last month. SpaceX was last valued at about $210 billion in a tender offer earlier this year.
A big post-election bump … The current conversations are ongoing, and the details could change depending on interest from insider sellers and buyers, sources told the publication. The potential transaction would cement SpaceX’s status as the most valuable private startup in the world and rival the market capitalizations of some of the largest public companies. SpaceX has established itself as the industry’s preeminent rocket launch provider, lofting satellites, cargo, and people to space for NASA, the Pentagon, and commercial partners, and is building out a large network of Starlink satellites providing Internet service. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
China debuts a new medium-lift rocket. China’s new Long March 12 rocket made a successful inaugural flight Saturday, placing two experimental satellites into orbit and testing uprated, higher-thrust engines that will allow a larger Chinese launcher in development to send astronauts to the Moon. The Long March 12 is the newest member of China’s Long March rocket family, which has been flying since China launched its first satellite into orbit in 1970, Ars reports.
Rocket likely to be used for megaconstellation deployment … Like all of China’s other existing rockets, the Long March 12 configuration that flew Saturday is fully disposable. At the Zhuhai Airshow earlier this month, China’s largest rocket company displayed another version of the Long March 12 with a reusable first stage but with scant design details. The Long March 12 is powered by four kerosene-fueled YF-100K engines on its first stage, generating more than 1.1 million pounds, or 5,000 kilonewtons, of thrust at full throttle. These engines are upgraded, higher-thrust versions of the YF-100 engines used on several other types of Long March rockets. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)
Falcon 9 rocket reaches some remarkable milestones. About 10 days ago, SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the 400th successful mission by the Falcon 9 rocket. Additionally, it was the Falcon program’s 375th booster recovery, according to SpaceX. Finally, with this mission, the company shattered its record for turnaround time from the landing of a booster to its launch to 13 days and 12 hours, down from 21 days, Ars reports.
A rapidly reusable shuttle … All told, in November, SpaceX launched 16 Falcon 9 rockets. The previous record for monthly launches by the Falcon 9 rocket was 14. SpaceX is on pace to launch 135 or more Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions this year. That is a meaningful number, because over the course of the three decades it flew into orbit, NASA’s space shuttle flew 135 missions. The space shuttle was a significantly more complex vehicle, and unlike the Falcon 9 rocket, humans flew aboard it during every mission. However, there is some historical significance in the fact that the Falcon rocket may fly as many missions in a single year as the space shuttle did during its lifetime.
Long March 3B hits a milestone. China launched a new communication engineering test satellite early Tuesday with its workhorse Long March 3B rocket. This added to a series of satellites potentially for undisclosed military purposes, Space News reports. The launch was, notably, the 100th of the workhorse Long March 3B.
First time to the century marker … The rocket has performed 96 successful launches with two failures and two partial failures. The first launch, in February 1996 carrying Intelsat 708, infamously saw the rocket veer off course shortly after clearing the tower and impacting a nearby village. Developed by the state-run China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the three-stage and four-liquid-booster rocket is the only Chinese launcher to reach 100 launches. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
NASA delays Artemis launches again. In a news conference Thursday, NASA officials discussed changes to the timeline for future Artemis missions due to problems with Orion’s heat shield. The agency announced it is now targeting April 2026 for Artemis II (from September 2025) and mid-2027 for Artemis III (from September 2026). NASA said it now understands the technical cause of the heat shield issues observed during the Artemis I flight in late 2022 and will fly the heat shield as-is on Artemis II, with some changes to the reentry profile.
This may not be the final plan … The timing of this news conference was interesting, as there will be a changing of administrations at NASA in the coming weeks. The Trump administration has put forward commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, and as Ars reported Thursday, there are likely some significant shakeups coming in the Artemis program. One possibility is that the Space Launch System rocket could be scrapped, with commercial rockets used to fly the Artemis missions.
Next three launches
Dec. 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05: 10 UTC
Dec. 12: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 19: 33 UTC
Dec. 12: Falcon 9 | O3b mPOWER 7 & 8 | Kennedy Space Center, Fla. | 20: 58 UTC
Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.
This will all happen nearly 40,000 miles above the Earth, so you won’t need your eclipse glasses.
An infrared view of a test of the Proba-3 mission’s laser ranging system, which will allow two spacecraft to fly in formation with millimeter-scale precision. Credit: ESA – M. Pédoussaut / J. Versluys
Two spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency launched on top of an Indian rocket Thursday, kicking off a mission to test novel formation flying technologies and observe a rarely seen slice of the Sun’s ethereal corona.
ESA’s Proba-3 mission is purely experimental. The satellites are loaded with sophisticated sensors and ranging instruments to allow the two spacecraft to orbit the Earth in lockstep with one another. Proba-3 will attempt to achieve millimeter-scale precision, several orders of magnitude better than the requirements for a spacecraft closing in for docking at the International Space Station.
“In a nutshell, it’s an experiment in space to demonstrate a new concept, a new technology that is technically challenging,” said Damien Galano, Proba-3’s project manager.
The two Proba-3 satellites launched from India at 5: 34 am EST (10: 34 UTC) Thursday, riding a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The PSLV released Proba-3 into a stretched-out orbit with a low point of approximately 356 miles (573 kilometers), a high point of 37,632 miles (60,563 kilometers), and an inclination of 59 degrees to the equator.
India’s PSLV accelerates through the speed of sound shortly after liftoff with the Proba-3 mission Thursday. Credit: ISRO
After initial checkouts, the two Proba-3 satellites, each smaller than a compact car, will separate from one another to begin their tech demo experiments early next year. The larger of the two satellites, known as the Coronagraph spacecraft, carries a suite of science instruments to image the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere. The smaller spacecraft, named Occulter, hosts navigation sensors and low-impulse thrusters to help it maneuver into position less than 500 feet (150 meters) from its Coronagraph companion.
From the point of view of the Coronagraph spacecraft, this is just the right distance for a 4.6-foot (1.4-meter) disk mounted to Proba-3’s Occulter spacecraft to obscure the surface of the Sun. The occultation will block the Sun’s blinding glare and cast a shadow just 3 inches (8 centimeters) onto the Coronagraph satellite, revealing the wispy, super-heated gases that make up the solar corona.
Why do this?
The corona is normally hidden by the brightness of the Sun and is best observed from Earth during total solar eclipses, but these events only last a few minutes. Scientists devised a way to create artificial eclipses using devices known as coronagraphs, which have flown in space on several previous solar research missions. However, these coronagraphs were placed inside a single instrument on a single spacecraft, limiting their effectiveness due to complications from diffraction or vignetting, where sunlight encroaches around the edge of the occulting disk or misses the imaging detector entirely.
Ideally, scientists would like to place the occulting disk much farther from the camera taking images of the Sun. This would more closely mimic what the human eye sees during a solar eclipse. With Proba-3, ESA will attempt to do just that.
“There was simply no other way of reaching the optical performance Proba-3 requires than by having its occulting disk fly on a separate, carefully controlled spacecraft,” said Joe Zender, ESA’s Proba-3 mission scientist. “Any closer and unwanted stray light would spill over the edges of the disk, limiting our close-up views of the Sun’s surrounding corona.”
But deploying one enormous 150-meter-long spacecraft would be cost-prohibitive. With contributions from 14 member states and Canada, ESA developed the dual-spacecraft Proba-3 mission on a budget of approximately 200 million euros ($210 million) over 10 years. Spain and Belgium, which are not among ESA’s highest-spending member states, funded nearly three-quarters of Proba-3’s cost.
The Proba-3 satellites will use several sensors to keep station roughly 150 meters away from one another, including inter-satellite radio links, satellite navigation receivers, and cameras on the Occulter spacecraft to help determine its relative position by monitoring LEDs on the Coronagraph satellite.
For the most precise navigation, the Occulter satellite will shine a laser toward a reflector on the Coronagraph spacecraft. The laser light bounced back to the Occulter spacecraft will allow it to autonomously and continuously track the range to its companion and send signals to fire cold gas thrusters and make fine adjustments.
The laser will give Proba-3 the ability to control the distance between the two satellites with an error of less than a millimeter—around the thickness of an average fingernail—and hold position for up to six hours, 50 times longer than the maximum duration of a total solar eclipse. Proba-3 will create the eclipses while it is flying farthest from Earth in its nearly 20-hour orbit.
Scientists hope to achieve at least 1,000 hours of artificial totality during Proba-3’s two-year prime mission.
Proba-3’s Occulter spacecraft (top) and Coronagraph spacecraft (bottom) will hold position 150 meters away from one another. Credit: ESA-P. Carril
The corona extends millions of miles from the Sun’s convective surface, with temperatures as hot as 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit. Still, the corona is easily outshined by the glare from the Sun itself. Scientists say it’s important to study this region to understand how the Sun generates the solar wind and drives geomagnetic storms that can affect the Earth.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, well-insulated from the scorching heat, became the first spacecraft to fly through the corona in 2021. It is collecting data on the actual conditions within the Sun’s atmosphere, while a network of other spacecraft monitor solar activity from afar to get the big picture.
Proba-3 is tasked with imaging a normally invisible part of the corona as close as 43,500 miles (70,000 kilometers) above the Sun’s surface. Extreme ultraviolet instruments are capable of observing the part of the corona closest to the Sun, while existing coronagraphs on other satellites are good at seeing the outermost portion of the corona.
“That leaves a significant observing gap, from about 3 solar radii down to 1.1 solar radii, that Proba-3 will be able to fill,” said Andrei Zhukov of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, principal investigator for Proba-3’s coronagraph instrument. “This will make it possible, for example, to follow the evolution of the colossal solar explosions called Coronal Mass Ejections as they rise from the solar surface and the outward acceleration of the solar wind.”
Proba-3’s coronagraph instrument will take images as often as once every two seconds, helping scientists search for small-scale fast-moving plasma waves that might be responsible for driving up the corona’s hellish temperatures. The mission will also hunt for the glow of plasma jets scientists believe have a role in accelerating the solar wind, a cloud of particles streaming away from the Sun at speeds of up to 1.2 million mph (2 million km/hr).
These are two of the core science objectives for the Proba-3 mission. But the project has a deeper purpose of proving two satellites can continually fly in tight formation. This level of precision could meet the exacting demands of future space missions, such as Mars Sample Return and the clearing of space junk from low-Earth orbit, according to ESA.
“Proba-3’s coronal observations will take place as part of a larger in-orbit demonstration of precise formation flying,” said Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general. “The best way to prove this new European technology works as intended is to produce novel science data that nobody has ever seen before.
“It is not practical today to fly a single 150-meter-long spacecraft in orbit, but if Proba-3 can indeed achieve an equivalent performance using two small spacecraft, the mission will open up new ways of working in space for the future,” Aschbacher said in a statement. “Imagine multiple small platforms working together as one to form far-seeing virtual telescopes or arrays.”
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.
“If this isn’t raising red flags out there, I don’t know what will.”
NASA’s Orion spacecraft, consisting of a US-built crew module and European service module, is lifted during prelaunch processing at Kennedy Space Center in 2021. Credit: NASA/Amanda Stevenson
Within hours of NASA announcing its decision to fly the Artemis II mission aboard an Orion spacecraft with an unmodified heat shield, critics assailed the space agency, saying it had made the wrong decision.
“Expediency won over safety and good materials science and engineering. Sad day for NASA,” Ed Pope, an expert in advanced materials and heat shields, wrote on LinkedIn.
There is a lot riding on NASA’s decision, as the Artemis II mission involves four astronauts and the space agency’s first crewed mission into deep space in more than 50 years.
A former NASA astronaut, Charles Camarda, also expressed his frustrations on LinkedIn, saying the space agency and its leadership team should be “ashamed.” In an interview on Friday, Camarda, an aerospace engineer who spent two decades working on thermal protection for the space shuttle and hypersonic vehicles, said NASA is relying on flawed probabilistic risk assessments and Monte Carlo simulations to determine the safety of Orion’s existing heat shield.
“I worked at NASA for 45 years,” Camarda said. “I love NASA. I do not love the way NASA has become. I do not like that we have lost our research culture.”
NASA makes a decision
Pope, Camarada, and others—an official expected to help set space policy for the Trump administration told Ars on background, “It’s difficult to trust any of their findings”—note that NASA has spent two years assessing the char damage incurred by the Orion spacecraft during its first lunar flight in late 2022, with almost no transparency. Initially, agency officials downplayed the severity of the issue, and the full scope of the problem was not revealed until a report this May by NASA’s inspector general, which included photos of a heavily pock-marked heat shield.
This year, from April to August, NASA convened an independent review team (IRT) to assess its internal findings about the root cause of the charring on the Orion heat shield and determine whether its plan to proceed without modifications to the heat shield was the correct one. However, though this review team wrapped up its work in August and began briefing NASA officials in September, the space agency kept mostly silent about the problem until a news conference on Thursday.
The inspector general’s report on May 1 included new images of Orion’s heat shield.
Credit: NASA Inspector General
The inspector general’s report on May 1 included new images of Orion’s heat shield. Credit: NASA Inspector General
“Based on the data, we have decided—NASA unanimously and our decision-makers—to move forward with the current Artemis II Orion capsule and heat shield, with a modified entry trajectory,” Bill Nelson, NASA’s administrator, said Thursday. The heat shield investigation and other issues with the Orion spacecraft will now delay the Artemis II launch until April 2026, a slip of seven months from the previous launch date in September 2025.
Notably the chair of the IRT, a former NASA flight director named Paul Hill, was not present at Thursday’s news conference. Nor did the space agency release the IRT’s report on its recommendations to NASA.
In an interview, Camarda said he knew two people on the IRT who dissented from its conclusions that NASA’s plan to fly the Orion heat shield, without modifications to address the charring problem, was acceptable. He also criticized the agency for not publicly releasing the independent report. “NASA did not post the results of the IRT,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they post the results of what the IRT said? If this isn’t raising red flags out there, I don’t know what will.”
The view from the IRT
Ars took these concerns to NASA on Friday, and the agency responded by offering an interview with Paul Hill, the review team’s chair. He strongly denied there were any dissenting views.
“Every one of our conclusions, every one of our recommendations, was unanimously agreed to by our team,” Hill said. “We went through a lot of effort, arguing sentence by sentence, to make sure the entire team agreed. To get there we definitely had some robust and energetic discussions.”
Hill did acknowledge that, at the outset of the review team’s discussions, two people were opposed to NASA’s plan to fly the heat shield as is. “There was, early on, definitely a difference of opinion with a couple of people who felt strongly that Orion’s heat shield was not good enough to fly as built,” he said.
However, Hill said the IRT was won over by the depth of NASA’s testing and the openness of agency engineers who worked with them. He singled out Luis Saucedo, a NASA engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center who led the agency’s internal char loss investigation.
“The work that was done by NASA, it was nothing short of eye-watering, it was incredible,” Hill said.
At the base of Orion, which has a titanium shell, there are 186 blocks of a material called Avcoat individually attached to provide a protective layer that allows the spacecraft to survive the heating of atmospheric reentry. Returning from the Moon, Orion encounters temperatures of up to 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius). A char layer that builds up on the outer skin of the Avcoat material is supposed to ablate, or erode, in a predictable manner during reentry. Instead, during Artemis I, fragments fell off the heat shield and left cavities in the Avcoat material.
Work by Saucedo and others, including substantial testing in ground facilities, wind tunnels, and high-temperature arc jet chambers, allowed engineers to find the root cause of gases getting trapped in the heat shield and leading to cracking. Hill said his team was convinced that NASA successfully recreated the conditions observed during reentry and were able to replicate during testing the Avcoat cracking that occurred during Artemis I.
When he worked at the agency, Hill played a leading role during the investigation into the cause of the loss of space shuttle Columbia, in 2003. He said he could understand if NASA officials “circled the wagons” in response to the IRT’s work, but he said the agency could not have been more forthcoming. Every time the review team wanted more data or information, it was made available. Eventually, this made the entire IRT comfortable with NASA’s findings.
Publicly, NASA could have been more transparent
The stickiest point during the review team’s discussions involved the permeability of the heat shield. Counter-intuitively, the heat shield was not permeable enough during Artemis I. This led to gas buildup, higher pressures, and the cracking ultimately observed. The IRT was concerned because, as designed, the heat shield for Artemis II is actually more impermeable than the Artemis I vehicle.
Why is this? It has to do with the ultrasound testing that verifies the strength of the bond between the Avcoat blocks and the titanium skin of Orion. With a more permeable heat shield, it was difficult to complete this testing with the Artemis I vehicle. So the shield for Artemis II was made more impermeable to accommodate ultrasound testing. “That was a technical mistake, and when they made that decision they did not understand the ramifications,” Hill said.
However, Hill said NASA’s data convinced the IRT that modifying the entry profile for Artemis II, to minimize the duration of passage through the atmosphere, would offset the impermeability of the heat shield.
Hill said he did not have the authority to release the IRT report, but he did agree that the space agency has not been forthcoming with public information about their analyses before this week.
“This is a complex story to tell, and if you want everybody to come along with you, you’ve got to keep them informed,” he said of NASA. “I think they unintentionally did themselves a disservice by holding their cards too close.”
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.
Expect significant changes for America’s space agency.
Jared Isaacman at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX
Jared Isaacman at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday his intent to nominate entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the next administrator of NASA.
For those unfamiliar with Isaacman, who at just 16 years old founded a payment processing company in his parents’ basement that ultimately became a major player in online payments, it may seem an odd choice. However, those inside the space community welcomed the news, with figures across the political spectrum hailing Isaacman’s nomination variously as “terrific,” “ideal,” and “inspiring.”
This statement from Isaac Arthur, president of the National Space Society, is characteristic of the response: “Jared is a remarkable individual and a perfect pick for NASA Administrator. He brings a wealth of experience in entrepreneurial enterprise as well as unique knowledge in working with both NASA and SpaceX, a perfect combination as we enter a new era of increased cooperation between NASA and commercial spaceflight.”
So who is Jared Isaacman? Why is his nomination being welcomed in most quarters of the spaceflight community? And how might he shake up NASA? Read on.
Meet Jared
Isaacman is now 41 years old, about half the age of current NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. He has founded a couple of companies, including the publicly traded Shift4 (look at the number 4 on a keyboard to understand the meaning of the name), as well as Draken International, a company that trained pilots of the US Air Force.
Throughout his career, Isaacman has shown a passion for flying and adventure. About five years ago, he decided he wanted to fly into space and bought the first commercial mission on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. But this was no joy ride. Some of his friends assumed Isaacman would invite them along. Instead, he brought a cancer survivor, a science educator, and a raffle winner. As part of the flight, this Inspiration4 mission raised hundreds of millions of dollars for research into childhood cancer.
After this mission, Isaacman set about a more ambitious project he named Polaris. The nominal plan was to fly two additional missions on Dragon and then become the first person to fly on SpaceX’s Starship. He flew the first of these missions, Polaris Dawn, in September. He brought along a pilot, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, and two SpaceX engineers, Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis. They were the first SpaceX employees to ever fly into orbit.
The mission was characteristic of Isaacman’s goal to expand the horizon of what is possible for humans in space. Polaris Dawn flew to an altitude of 1,408.1 km on the first day, the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown and the farthest humans have traveled from our planet since Apollo. On the third day of the flight, the four crew members donned spacesuits designed and developed by SpaceX within the last two years. After venting the cabin’s atmosphere into space, first Isaacman and then Gillis spent several minutes extending their bodies out of the Dragon spacecraft.
This was the first private spacewalk in history and underscored Isaacman’s commitment to accelerating the transition of spaceflight as rare and government-driven to more publicly accessible.
Why does the space community welcome him?
In the last five years, Isaacman has impressed most of those within the spaceflight community he has interacted with. He has taken his responsibilities seriously, training hard for his Dragon missions and using NASA facilities such as a pressure chamber at NASA’s Johnson Space Center when appropriate.
Through these interactions—based upon my interviews with many people—Isaacman has demonstrated that he is not a billionaire seeking a joyride but someone who wants to change spaceflight for the better. In his spaceflights, he has also demonstrated himself to be a thoughtful and careful leader.
Two examples illustrate this. The ride to space aboard a Crew Dragon vehicle is dynamic, with the passengers pulling in excess of 3 Gs during the initial ascent, the abrupt cutoff of the main Falcon 9 rocket’s engines, stage separation, and then the grinding thrust of the upper stage engines just behind the capsule. In interviews, each of the Polaris Dawn crew members remarked about how Isaacman calmly called out these milestones in advance, with a few words about what to expect. It had a calming, reassuring effect and demonstrated that his crew’s health and safety were foremost among his concerns.
Another way in which Isaacman shows care for his crew and families is through an annual event called “Fighter Jet Training.” Cognizant of the time crew members spend away from their families training, he invites them and SpaceX employees who have supported his flights to an airstrip in Montana. Over the course of two days, family members get to ride in jets, go on a zero-gravity flight, and participate in other fun activities to get a taste of what flying on the edge is like. Isaacman underwrites all of this as a way of thanking all who are helping him.
The bottom line is that Isaacman, through his actions and words, appears to be a caring person who wants the US spaceflight enterprise to advance to greater heights.
Why would Isaacman want the job?
So why would a billionaire who has been to space twice (and plans to go at least two more times) want to run a federal agency? I have not asked Isaacman this question directly, but in interviews over the years, he has made it clear that he is passionate about spaceflight and views his role as a facilitator desiring to move things forward.
Most likely, he has accepted the job because he wants to modernize NASA and put the space agency in the best position to succeed in the future. NASA is no longer the youthful agency that took the United States to the Moon during the Apollo program. That was more than half a century ago, and while NASA is still capable of great things, it is living with one foot in the past and beholden to large, traditional contractors.
The space agency has a budget of about $25 billion, and no one could credibly argue that all of those dollars are spent efficiently. Several major programs at NASA were created by Congress with the intent of ensuring maximum dollars flowed to certain states and districts. It seems likely that Isaacman and the Trump administration will take a whack at some of these sacred cows.
High on the list is the Space Launch System rocket, which Congress created more than a dozen years ago. The rocket, and its ground systems, have been a testament to the waste inherent in large government programs funded by cost-plus contracts. NASA’s current administrator, Nelson, had a hand in creating this SLS rocket. Even he has decried the effect of this type of contracting as a “plague” on the space agency.
Currently, NASA plans to use the SLS rocket as the means of launching four astronauts inside the Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit. There, they will rendezvous with SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, go down to the Moon for a few days, and then come back to Orion. The spacecraft will then return to Earth.
So long, SLS?
Multiple sources have told Ars that the SLS rocket—which has long had staunch backing from Congress—is now on the chopping block. No final decisions have been made, but a tentative deal is in place with lawmakers to end the rocket in exchange for moving US Space Command to Huntsville, Alabama.
So how would NASA astronauts get to the Moon without the SLS rocket? Nothing is final, and the trade space is open. One possible scenario being discussed for future Artemis missions is to launch the Orion spacecraft on a New Glenn rocket into low-Earth orbit. There, it could dock with a Centaur upper stage that would launch on a Vulcan rocket. This Centaur stage would then boost Orion toward lunar orbit.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is seen on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in April 2022.
Credit: Trevor Mahlmann
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is seen on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in April 2022. Credit: Trevor Mahlmann
Such a scenario is elegant because it uses rockets that would cost a fraction of the SLS and also includes all key contractors currently involved in the Artemis program, with the exception of Boeing, which would lose out financially. (Northrop Grumman will still make solids for Vulcan, and Aerojet Rocketdyne will make the RL-10 upper stage engines for that rocket.)
As part of the Artemis program, NASA is competing with China to not only launch astronauts to the south pole of the Moon but also to develop a sustainable base of operations there. While there is considerable interest in Mars, sources told Ars that the focus of the space agency is likely to remain on a program that goes to the Moon first and then develops plans for Mars.
This competition is not one between Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin. Rather, they are both seen as players on the US team. The Trump administration seems to view entrepreneurial spirit as the key advantage the United States has over China in its competition with China. This op-ed in Space News offers a good overview of this sentiment.
So whither NASA? Under the Trump administration, NASA’s role is likely to focus on stimulating the efforts by commercial space entrepreneurs. Isaacman’s marching orders for NASA will almost certainly be two words: results and speed. NASA, they believe, should transition to become more like its roots in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which undertook, promoted, and institutionalized aeronautical research—but now for space.
It is not easy to turn a big bureaucracy, and there will undoubtedly be friction and pain points. But the opportunity here is enticing: NASA should not be competing with things that private industry is already doing better, such as launching big rockets. Rather, it should find difficult research and development projects at the edge of the possible. This will certainly be Isaacman’s most challenging mission yet.
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.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he has selected Jared Isaacman, a billionaire businessman and space enthusiast who twice flew to orbit with SpaceX, to become the next NASA administrator.
“I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology, and exploration.”
In a post on X, Isaacman said he was “honored” to receive Trump’s nomination.
“Having been fortunate to see our amazing planet from space, I am passionate about America leading the most incredible adventure in human history,” Isaacman wrote. “On my last mission to space, my crew and I traveled farther from Earth than anyone in over half a century. I can confidently say this second space age has only just begun.”
Top officials who served at NASA under President Trump and President Obama endorsed Isaacman as the next NASA boss.
“Jared Isaacman will be an outstanding NASA Administrator and leader of the NASA family,” said Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator during Trump’s first term in the White House. “Jared’s vision for pushing boundaries, paired with his proven track record of success in private industry, positions him as an ideal candidate to lead NASA into a bold new era of exploration and discovery. I urge the Senate to swiftly confirm him.”
Lori Garver, NASA’s deputy administrator during the Obama administration, wrote on X that Isaacman’s nomination was “terrific news,” adding that “he has the opportunity to build on NASA’s amazing accomplishments to pave our way to an even brighter future.”
Isaacman, 41, is the founder and CEO of Shift4, a mobile payment processing platform, and co-founded Draken International, which owns a fleet of retired fighter jets to pose as adversaries for military air combat training. If the Senate confirms his nomination, Isaacman would become the 15th NASA administrator, and the fourth who has flown in space.
Depending on how you count them, China now has roughly 18 types of active space launchers.
China’s new Long March 12 rocket made a successful inaugural flight Saturday, placing two experimental satellites into orbit and testing uprated, higher-thrust engines that will allow a larger Chinese launcher in development to send astronauts to the Moon.
The 203-foot-tall (62-meter) Long March 12 rocket lifted off at 9: 25 am EST (14: 25 UTC) Saturday from the Wenchang commercial launch site on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost province. This was also the first rocket launch from a new commercial spaceport at Wenchang, consisting of two launch sites a short distance from a pair of existing launch pads used by heavier rockets primarily geared for government missions.
The two-stage rocket delivered two technology demonstration satellites into a near-circular 50-degree-inclination orbit with an average altitude of nearly 650 miles (about 1,040 kilometers), according to US military tracking data.
The Long March 12 is the newest member of China’s Long March rocket family, which has been flying since China launched its first satellite into orbit in 1970. The Long March rockets have significantly evolved since then and now include a range of launch vehicles of different sizes and designs.
Versions of the Long March 2, 3, and 4 rockets have been flying since the 1970s and 1980s, burning the same toxic mix of hypergolic propellants as China’s early ICBMs. More recently, China debuted the Long March 5, 6, 7, and 8 rockets consuming the cleaner combination of kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants. These new rockets provide China with a spectrum of small, medium, and heavy-lift launch capabilities.
So many rockets
So, why bother with yet another Long March rocket? One reason is that Chinese officials seek a less expensive rocket to deploy thousands of small satellites for the country’s Internet mega-constellations to rival SpaceX’s Starlink network. Another motivation is to demonstrate the performance of upgraded rocket engines, new technologies, and fresh designs, some of which appear to copy SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Like all of China’s other existing rockets, the Long March 12 configuration that flew Saturday is fully disposable. At the Zhuhai Airshow earlier this month, China’s largest rocket company displayed another version of the Long March 12 with a reusable first stage but with scant design details.
The Long March 12 is powered by four kerosene-fueled YF-100K engines on its first stage, generating more than 1.1 million pounds, or 5,000 kilonewtons of thrust at full throttle. These engines are upgraded, higher-thrust versions of the YF-100 engines used on several other types of Long March rockets.
Models of the Long March rockets on display at the China National Space Administration (CNSA) booth during the China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, China, on November 12, 2024. In this image, models of a future reusable version of the Long March 12 (left) and the super-heavy Long March 9 (right) are visible. Credit: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Notably, China will use the YF-100K variant on the heavy-lift Long March 10 rocket in development to launch Chinese astronauts to the Moon. The heaviest version of the Long March 10 will use 21 of these YF-100K engines on its core stage and strap-on boosters. Now, Chinese engineers have tested the upgraded YF-100K in flight, with favorable results from Saturday’s launch.
China is also developing a new crew-rated spacecraft and lunar lander that will launch on Long March 10 rockets, eyeing a human landing on the lunar surface by 2030. The Long March 10 will have a reusable first stage like the Falcon 9, and China is now working on a super-heavy fully reusable rocket that appears to be a clone of SpaceX’s Starship. This Long March 9 rocket, which probably won’t fly until the 2030s, will enable larger-scale sustained lunar exploration by China.
And now, the details
The Long March 12 was developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, also known as SAST, one of the two main state-owned organizations in charge of designing and manufacturing Long March rockets. Together with the Beijing-based China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, SAST is part of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest government-run enterprise overseeing the Chinese space program.
According to SAST, the Long March 12 is capable of delivering a payload of at least 12 metric tons (26,455 pounds) into low-Earth orbit and about half that to a somewhat higher Sun-synchronous orbit. Two kerosene-fueled YF-115 engines power the Long March 12’s upper stage.
The Long March 12 is also China’s first 3.8-meter (12.5-foot) diameter rocket, which is an optimal match between the width of the booster and lift capability, allowing it to be transported by railway to launch sites across China, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
China’s older Long March rocket variants are slimmer and generally require engineers to strap together multiple first-stage boosters in a cluster arrangement to achieve performance similar to the Long March 12. The core of the heavy-lift Long March 5 is around 5 meters in diameter and must be transported by sea.
China’s first Long March 12 rocket on its launch pad before liftoff. Credit: Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images
In a post-launch press release, SAST identified several other “technology breakthroughs” flying on the Long March 12 rocket. These include a health management system that can diagnose anomalies in flight and adjust the rocket’s trajectory in real time to compensate for any minor problems. The Long March 12 is also China’s first rocket to use cryogenic helium to pressurize its liquid oxygen tanks, and its tanks are made of an aluminum-lithium alloy to save weight.
The Long March 12 is also the first rocket of its size in the Long March family to be assembled on its side instead of stacked vertically on its launch mount. After integrating the rocket in a nearby hangar, technicians transferred the first Long March 12 to its launch pad horizontally, then raised it vertical with an erector system. This is the same way SpaceX integrates and transports Falcon 9 rockets to the launch pad. SpaceX copied this horizontal integration approach from older Soviet-era rockets, and it offers several advantages, allowing teams to assemble rockets faster without the need for large overhead cranes in tall, cavernous vertical assembly buildings.
A bug or a feature?
We’ve already mentioned the proliferation of different types of Long March rockets, with nine classes of Long March launchers currently in operation. And each of these comes in multiple sub-variants.
This is a starkly different approach from SpaceX, which flies standardized rockets like the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which almost always fly in the same configuration, regardless of the payload or destination for each mission. The only exception is when SpaceX launches Dragon crew or cargo capsules on the Falcon 9.
Depending on how you count them, China now has roughly 18 different types of active space launchers. This number doesn’t include the Long March 9 or Long March 10, but it counts all the other Long March configurations, plus numerous small- and medium-class rockets fielded by China’s quasi-commercial space industry.
These startups operate with the blessing of China’s government and, in many cases, got their start by utilizing surplus military equipment and investment from Chinese local or provincial governments. However, the Chinese Communist Party has allowed them to raise capital from private sources, and they operate on a commercial basis, almost exclusively to serve domestic Chinese markets.
In some cases, these launch startups compete for commercial contracts directly with the government-backed Long March rocket family. The Long March 12 could be in the mix for launching large batches of spacecraft for China’s planned satellite Internet networks.
Some of these launch companies are working on reusable rockets similar in appearance to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. All of these rockets, government and commercial, are part of an ecosystem of Chinese launchers tasked with hauling military and commercial satellites into orbit.
The Long March 12 launch Saturday was China’s 58th orbital launch attempt of 2024, and no single subvariant of a Chinese rocket has flown more than seven times this year. This is in sharp contrast to the United States, which has logged 142 orbital launch attempts so far this year, 119 of them by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rockets.
There are around a dozen US orbital-class launch vehicle types you might call operational. But a few of these, such as Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL and Minotaur, and NASA’s Space Launch System, haven’t flown for several years.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is now the dominant leader in the US launch industry. Most of the Falcon 9 launches are filled to capacity with SpaceX’s own Starlink Internet satellites, but many missions fly with their payload fairings only partially full. Still, the Falcon 9 is more affordable on a per-kilogram basis than any other US rocket.
In China, on the other hand, none of the commercial launch startups have emerged as a clear leader. When that happens, if China allows the market to function in a truly commercial manner, some of these Chinese rocket companies will likely fold.
However, China’s government has a strategic interest in maintaining a portfolio of rockets and launch sites, same as the US government. For example, Chinese officials said the new launch site at Wenchang, where the Long March 12 took off from over the weekend, can accommodate 10 or more different types of rockets.
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.
