Space – Page 9

Firm developing a fully reusable rocket raises a quarter of a billion dollars

The company continues to make technical progress, Lapsa said.

A few weeks ago, Stoke successfully tested the Nova rocket’s main engine, Zenith, in a vertical position. Lapsa said the company will probably make one more iterative block change on the Zenith engine before it gets into a “nice, tight” flight configuration. Similarly, the second stage engine has gone through a design upgrade to get it ready for flight. After the engines are complete, the company will assemble a flight vehicle and put it through the final phases of testing.

Pads and permitting

At the same time, Stoke is working to complete construction at Launch Complex 14 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and finalize environmental permitting for launches from there.

“We’re pushing really hard to have the pad ready, and it will be activated well before the end of the year,” Lapsa said. “And the vehicle will be right there with it.”

Historically, it’s unlikely for a company to move from engine testing to a first orbital launch attempt in the same year, so a Nova debut in 2026 seems more likely. Nevertheless, the new funding from investors signals confidence that Stoke is making credible technical progress on its vehicle development.

The space capital market has changed significantly since Stoke was founded by Lapsa and Tom Feldman in 2020. At the time, there were dozens of US launch companies at work on small- and medium-lift vehicles. Today, arguably, there are just half a dozen credible US-based entities developing medium-lift rockets.

“It’s a very different conversation with investors than it was five years ago,” Lapsa said.

The winnowing of competitors is also a stark reminder of both the technical and financial challenges of operating a launch company.

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There was a straight shot from Earth to the Moon and Mars last night

astrophotography, Mars, moon, Science, Space / Paul Patrick / January 14, 2025

The most recent lunar occultation of Mars that was visible from the United States occurred on December 7, 2022. A handful of these events occur every few years around each Martian opposition, but they are usually only visible from a small portion of Earth, often over the ocean or in polar regions. The next lunar occultation of Mars visible across most of the United States will happen on the night of February 4–5, 2042. There are similar occultations of Mars in 2035, 2038, and 2039 visible in narrow swaths of South Florida and the Pacific Northwest.

This photo was taken with a handheld Canon 80D and a 600 mm lens. Settings were 1/2000 sec, f/8, ISO 400. The image was cropped and lightly edited in Adobe Lightroom.

The Moon also periodically covers Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Solar System’s more distant planets. A good resource on lunar occultations is In-The-Sky.org, which lists events where the Moon will block out a planet or a bright star. Be sure you choose your location on the upper right corner of the page and toggle year by year to plan out future viewing opportunities.

Viewing these kinds of events can be breathtaking and humbling. In 2012, I was lucky enough to observe the transit of Venus in front of the Sun, something that only happens twice every 121 years.

Seeing Mars, twice the size of the Moon, rising above the lunar horizon like a rusty BB pellet next to a dusty volleyball provided a perfect illustration of the scale and grandeur of the Solar System. Similarly, viewing Venus dwarfed by the Sun was a revealing moment. The worlds accompanying Earth around the Sun are varied in size, shape, color, and composition.

In one glance, an observer can see the barren, airless lunar surface and a cold, desert planet that once harbored rivers, lakes, and potentially life, all while standing on our own planet, an oasis in the cosmos. One thing that connects them all is humanity’s quest for exploration. Today, robots are operating on or around the Moon and Mars. Governments and private companies are preparing to return astronauts to the lunar surface within a few years, then moving on to dispatch human expeditions to the red planet.

Plans to land astronauts on the Moon are already in motion, but significant financial and technological hurdles remain for a crew mission to put humans on Mars. But for a short time Monday night, it looked like there was a direct path.

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New Glenn to make another launch attempt early Thursday

blue origin, new glenn, Space / Tim Belzer / January 13, 2025

However, weather at the launch site remained a concern. According to forecasters at the 45th Space Wing, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, there was a 70 percent chance unfavorable launch conditions. Concerns include cumulus clouds, thick clouds, and liftoff winds.

For one or both of these reasons, shortly after 8 pm ET on Monday the company waved off a launch attempt for later that night. This necessitated a 48-hour delay because a Falcon 9 rocket carrying two private lunar landers, one built by Firefly and the other ispace, is due to launch during a similar early morning window on Wednesday.

Therefore Blue Origin is now targeting a window from 1 am ET (06: 00 UTC) to 4 am ET on Thursday for the much-anticipated debut of the New Glenn rocket. Blue Origin again plans to provide a webcast carrying live coverage of New Glenn’s launch attempt on the company’s website.

Note: This story was updated after Blue Origin’s decision to forego a Tuesday morning launch attempt.

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New Glenn rocket is at the launch pad, waiting for calm seas to land

Space / Tim Belzer / January 11, 2025

COCOA BEACH, Fla.—As it so often does in the final days before the debut of a new rocket, it all comes down to weather. Accordingly, Blue Origin is only awaiting clear skies and fair seas for its massive New Glenn vehicle to lift off from Florida.

After the company completed integration of the rocket this week, and rolled the super heavy lift rocket to its launch site at Cape Canaveral, the focus turned toward the weather. Conditions at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base have been favorable during the early morning launch windows available to the rocket, but there have been complications offshore.

That’s because Blue Origin aims to recover the first stage of the New Glenn rocket, and sea states in the Atlantic Ocean have been unsuitable for an initial attempt to catch the first stage booster on a drone ship. The company has already waived one launch attempt set for 1 am ET (06: 00 UTC) on Friday, January 10.

Conditions have improved a bit since then, but on Saturday evening the company’s launch officials canceled a second attempt planned for 1 am ET on Sunday. The new launch time is now 1 am ET on Monday, January 13, when better sea states are expected. There is a three-hour launch window. The company will provide a webcast of proceedings at this link beginning one hour before liftoff.

Seeking a nominal flight

According to a mission timeline shared by Blue Origin on Saturday, it will take several hours to fuel the New Glenn rocket. Second stage hydrogen loading will begin 4.5 hours before liftoff, followed by the booster stage and second stage liquid oxygen at 4 hours, and methane for the booster stage at 3.5 hours to go. Fueling should be complete about an hour before liftoff.

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A glowing ring of metal fell to Earth, and no one has any idea what it is

ariane v, kenya, Space, space object / Kris Guyer / January 11, 2025

It has been more than a week since reports first emerged about a “glowing ring of metal” that fell from the sky and crashed near a remote village in Kenya.

According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds (500 kg) and had a diameter of more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) when measured after it landed on December 30. A couple of days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris, saying it was a ring that separated from a rocket. “Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans,” the space agency told The New York Times.

Since those initial reports were published in Western media, a small band of dedicated space trackers have been using open source data to try to identify precisely which space object fell into Kenya. So far, they have not been able to identify the rocket launch to which the large ring can be attributed.

Now, some space trackers believe the object may not have come from space at all.

Did it really come from space?

Space is increasingly crowded, but large chunks of metal from rockets are generally not flying around in Earth orbit undetected and untracked.

“It was suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is marginal,” wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell is highly regarded for his analysis of space objects. “The most likely space-related possibility is the reentry of the SYLDA adapter from the Ariane V184 flight, object 33155. Nevertheless, I am not fully convinced that the ring is space debris at all,” he wrote.

Another prominent space tracker, Marco Langbroek, believes it’s plausible that the ring came from space, so he investigated further into objects that may have returned around the time of the object’s discovery in Kenya. In a blog post written Wednesday he noted that apart from the metal ring, other fragments looking consistent with space debris—including material that looks like carbon wrap and isolation foil—were found several kilometers away from the ring.

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Rocket Report: China launches refueling demo; DoD’s big appetite for hypersonics

blue origin, china, hypersonic vehicles, launch, military space, NASA, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship / Tim Belzer / January 10, 2025

We’re just a few days away from getting a double-dose of heavy-lift rocket action.

Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic rocket plane will be used for military tests involving hypersonic missile technology. Credit: Stratolaunch

Welcome to Edition 7.26 of the Rocket Report! Let’s pause and reflect on how far the rocket business has come in the last 10 years. On this date in 2015, SpaceX made the first attempt to land a Falcon 9 booster on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, the rocket crash-landed. In less than a year and a half, though, SpaceX successfully landed reusable Falcon 9 boosters onshore and offshore, and now has done it nearly 400 times. That was remarkable enough, but we’re in a new era now. Within a few days, we could see SpaceX catch its second Super Heavy booster and Blue Origin land its first New Glenn rocket on an offshore platform. Extraordinary.

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.

Our annual ranking of the top 10 US launch companies. You can easily guess who made the top of the list: the company that launched Falcon rockets 134 times in 2024 and launched the most powerful and largest rocket ever built on four test flights, each accomplishing more than the last. The combined 138 launches is more than NASA flew the Space Shuttle over three decades. SpaceX will aim to launch even more often in 2025. These missions have far-reaching impacts, supporting Internet coverage for consumers worldwide, launching payloads for NASA and the US military, and testing technology that will take humans back to the Moon and, someday, Mars.

Are there really 10? … It might also be fairly easy to rattle off a few more launch companies that accomplished big things in 2024. There’s United Launch Alliance, which finally debuted its long-delayed Vulcan rocket and flew two Atlas V missions and the final Delta IV mission, and Rocket Lab, which launched 16 missions with its small Electron rocket this year. Blue Origin flew its suborbital New Shepard vehicle on three human missions and one cargo-only mission and nearly launched its first orbital-class New Glenn rocket in 2024. That leaves just Firefly Aerospace as the only other US company to reach orbit last year.

DoD announces lucrative hypersonics deal. Defense technology firm Kratos has inked a deal worth up to $1.45 billion with the Pentagon to help develop a low-cost testbed for hypersonic technologies, Breaking Defense reports. The award is part of the military’s Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) 2.0 program. The MACH-TB program, which began as a US Navy effort, includes multiple “Task Areas.” For its part, Kratos will be tasked with “systems engineering, integration, and testing, to include integrated subscale, full-scale, and air launch services to address the need to affordably increase hypersonic flight test cadence,” according to the company’s release.

Multiple players … The team led by Kratos, which specializes in developing airborne drones and military weapons systems, includes several players such as Leidos, Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and others. Kratos last year revealed that its Erinyes hypersonic test vehicle successfully flew for a Missile Defense Agency experiment. Rocket Lab has launched multiple suborbital hypersonic experiments for the military using a modified version of its Electron rocket, and Stratolaunch reportedly flew a high-speed test vehicle and recovered it last month, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology. The Pentagon is interested in developing hypersonic weapons that can evade conventional air and missile defenses. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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ESA will modify some of its geo-return policies. An upcoming European launch competition will be an early test of efforts by the European Space Agency to modify its approach to policies that link contracts to member state contributions, Space News reports. ESA has long used a policy known as geo-return, where member states are guaranteed contracts with companies based in their countries in proportion to the contribution those member states make to ESA programs.

The third rail of European space … Advocates of geo-return argue that it provides an incentive for countries to fund those programs. This incentivizes ESA to lure financial contributions from its member states, which will win guaranteed business and jobs from the agency’s programs. However, critics of geo-return, primarily European companies, claim that it creates inefficiencies that make them less competitive. One approach to revising geo-return is known as “fair contribution,” where ESA first holds competitions for projects, and member states then make contributions based on how companies in their countries fared in the competition. ESA will try the fair contribution approach for the upcoming launch competition to award contracts to European rocket startups. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

RFA is building a new rocket. German launch services provider Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) is currently focused on building a new first stage for the inaugural flight of its RFA One rocket, European Spaceflight reports. The stage that was initially earmarked for the flight was destroyed during a static fire test last year on a launch pad in Scotland. In a statement given to European Spaceflight, RFA confirmed that it expects to attempt an inaugural flight of RFA One in 2025.

Waiting on a booster … RFA says it is “fully focused on building a new first stage and qualifying it.” The rocket’s second stage and Redshift OTV third stage are already qualified for flight and are being stored until a new first stage is ready. The RFA One rocket will stand 98 feet (30 meters) tall and will be capable of delivering payloads of up to 1.3 metric tons (nearly 2,900 pounds) into polar orbits. RFA is one of several European startups developing commercial small satellite launchers and was widely considered the frontrunner before last year’s setback. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Pentagon provides a boost for defense startup. Defense technology contractor Anduril Industries has secured a $14.3 million Pentagon contract to expand solid-fueled rocket motor production, as the US Department of Defense moves to strengthen domestic manufacturing capabilities amid growing supply chain concerns, Space News reports. The contract, awarded under the Defense Production Act, will support facility modernization and manufacturing improvements at Anduril’s Mississippi plant, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Doing a solid … The Pentagon is keen to incentivize new entrants into the solid rocket manufacturing industry, which provides propulsion for missiles, interceptors, and other weapons systems. Two traditional defense contractors, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris, control almost all US solid rocket production. Companies like Anduril, Ursa Major, and X-Bow are developing solid rocket motor production capability. The Navy previously awarded Anduril a $19 million contract last year to develop solid rocket motors for the Standard Missile 6 program. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Relativity’s value seems to be plummeting. For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media. But the honeymoon appears to be over, Ars reports. A little more than a year ago, Relativity reached a valuation of $4.5 billion following its latest Series F fundraising round. This was despite only launching one rocket and then abandoning that program and pivoting to the development of a significantly larger reusable launch vehicle. The decision meant Relativity would not realize any significant revenue for several years, and Ars reported in September on some of the challenges the company has encountered developing the much larger Terran R rocket.

Gravity always wins … Relativity is a privately held company, so its financial statements aren’t public. However, we can glean some clues from the published quarterly report from Fidelity Investments, which owns Relativity shares. As of March 2024, Fidelity valued its 1.67 million shares at an estimated $31.8 million. However, in a report ending November 29 of last year, which was only recently published, Fidelity’s valuation of Relativity plummeted. Its stake in Relativity was then thought to be worth just $866,735—a per-share value of 52 cents. Shares in the other fundraising rounds are also valued at less than $1 each.

SpaceX has already launched four times this year. The space company is off to a fast start in 2025, with four missions in the first nine days of the year. Two of these missions launched Starlink internet satellites, and the other two deployed an Emirati-owned geostationary communications satellite and a batch of Starshield surveillance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. In its new year projections, SpaceX estimates it will launch more than 170 Falcon rockets, between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Spaceflight Now reports. This is in addition to SpaceX’s plans for up to 25 flights of the Starship rocket from Texas.

What’s in store this year?… Highlights of SpaceX’s launch manifest this year will likely include an attempt to catch and recover Starship after returning from orbit, a first in-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer demonstration with Starship, and perhaps the debut of a second launch pad at Starbase in South Texas. For the Falcon rocket fleet, notable missions this year will include launches of commercial robotic lunar landers for NASA’s CLPS program and several crew flights, including the first human spaceflight mission to fly in polar orbit. According to public schedules, a Falcon 9 rocket could launch a commercial mini-space station for Vast, a privately held startup, before the end of the year. That would be a significant accomplishment, but we won’t be surprised if this schedule moves to the right.

China is dipping its toes into satellite refueling. China kicked off its 2025 launch activities with the successful launch of the Shijian-25 satellite Monday, aiming to advance key technologies for on-orbit refueling and extending satellite lifespans, Space News reports. The satellite launched on a Long March 3B into a geostationary transfer orbit, suggesting the unspecified target spacecraft for the refueling demo test might be in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

Under a watchful eye … China has tested mission extension and satellite servicing capabilities in space before. In 2021, China launched a satellite named Shijian-21, which docked a defunct Beidou navigation satellite and towed it to a graveyard orbit above the geostationary belt. Reportedly, Shijian-21 satellite may have carried robotic arms to capture and manipulate other objects in space. These kinds of technologies are dual-use, meaning they have civilian and military applications. The US Space Force is also interested in satellite life extension and refueling tech, so US officials will closely monitor Shijian-25’s actions in orbit.

SpaceX set to debut upgraded Starship. An upsized version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week, Ars reports. The rocket could lift off as soon as Monday from SpaceX’s Starbase test facility in South Texas. This flight is the seventh full-scale demonstration launch for Starship. The rocket will test numerous upgrades, including a new flap design, larger propellant tanks, redesigned propellant feed lines, a new avionics system, and an improved antenna for communications and navigation.

The new largest rocket … Put together, all of these changes to the ship raise the rocket’s total height by nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters), so it now towers 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall. With this change, SpaceX will break its own record for the largest rocket ever launched. SpaceX plans to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in Texas and will target a controlled splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean.

Blue Origin targets weekend launch of New Glenn. Blue Origin is set to launch its New Glenn rocket in a long-delayed, uncrewed test mission that would help pave the way for the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos to compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX, The Washington Post reports. Blue Origin has confirmed it plans to launch the 320-foot-tall rocket during a three-hour launch window opening at 1 am EDT (06: 00 UTC) Sunday in the company’s first attempt to reach orbit.

Finally … This is a much-anticipated milestone for Blue Origin and for the company’s likely customers, which include the Pentagon and NASA. Data from this test flight will help the Space Force certify New Glenn to loft national security satellites, providing a new competitor for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in the heavy-lift segment of the market. Blue Origin isn’t quite shooting for the Moon on this inaugural launch, but the company will attempt to reach orbit and try to land the New Glenn’s first stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Jan. 10: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-12 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18: 11 UTC

Jan. 12: New Glenn | NG-1 Blue Ring Pathfinder | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 00 UTC

Jan. 13: Jielong 3 | Unknown Payload | Dongfang Spaceport, Yellow Sea | 03: 00 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 refueling demo; DoD’s big appetite for hypersonics Read More »

A taller, heavier, smarter version of SpaceX’s Starship is almost ready to fly

artemis, moon, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, starship / Mike M. / January 9, 2025

Starship will test its payload deployment mechanism on its seventh test flight.

SpaceX’s first second-generation Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, could launch as soon as January 13. Credit: SpaceX

An upsized version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week.

The two-mile transfer moved the bullet-shaped spaceship one step closer to launch Monday from SpaceX’s Starbase test site in South Texas. The launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 2200 UTC). This will be the seventh full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft and the first of 2025.

In the coming days, SpaceX technicians will lift the ship on top of the Super Heavy booster already emplaced on the launch mount. Then, teams will complete the final tests and preparations for the countdown on Monday.

“The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades, attempt Starship’s first payload deployment test, fly multiple reentry experiments geared towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy booster,” SpaceX officials wrote in a mission overview posted on the company’s website.

The mission Monday will repeat many of the maneuvers SpaceX demonstrated on the last two Starship test flights. The company will again attempt to return the Super Heavy booster to the launch site and attempt to catch it with two mechanical arms, or “chopsticks,” on the launch tower approximately seven minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX accomplished this feat on the fifth Starship test flight in October but aborted a catch attempt on a November flight because of damaged sensors on the tower chopsticks. The booster, which remained healthy, diverted to a controlled splashdown offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX’s next Starship prototype, Ship 33, emerges from its assembly building at Starbase, Texas, early Thursday morning. Credit: SpaceX/Elon Musk via X

For the next flight, SpaceX added protections to the sensors on the tower and will test radar instruments on the chopsticks to provide more accurate ranging measurements for returning vehicles. These modifications should improve the odds of a successful catch of the Super Heavy booster and of Starship on future missions.

In another first, one of the 33 Raptor engines that will fly on this Super Heavy booster—designated Booster 14 in SpaceX’s fleet—was recovered from the booster that launched and returned to Starbase in October. For SpaceX, this is a step toward eventually flying the entire rocket repeatedly. The Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft are designed for full reusability.

After separation of the booster stage, the Starship upper stage will ignite six engines to accelerate to nearly orbital velocity, attaining enough energy to fly halfway around the world before gravity pulls it back into the atmosphere. Like the past three test flights, SpaceX will guide Starship toward a controlled reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia around one hour after liftoff.

New ship, new goals

The most significant changes engineers will test next week are on the ship, or upper stage, of SpaceX’s enormous rocket. The most obvious difference on Starship Version 2, or Block 2, is with the vehicle’s forward flaps. Engineers redesigned the flaps, reducing their size and repositioning them closer to the tip of the ship’s nose to better protect them from the scorching heat of reentry. Cameras onboard Starship showed heat damage to the flaps during reentry on test flights last year.

SpaceX is also developing an upgraded Super Heavy booster that is slightly taller than the existing model. The next version of the booster will produce more thrust and will be slightly taller than the current Super Heavy, but for the upcoming test flight, SpaceX will still use the first-generation booster design.

Starship Block 2 has smaller flaps than previous ships. The flaps are located in a more leeward position to protect them from the heat of reentry. Credit: SpaceX

For next week’s flight, Super Heavy and Starship combined will hold more than 10.5 million pounds of fuel and oxidizer. The ship’s propellant tanks have 25 percent more volume than previous iterations of the vehicle, and the payload compartment, which contains 10 mock-ups of Starlink Internet satellites on this launch, is somewhat smaller. Put together, the changes add nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters) to the rocket’s height, bringing the full stack to approximately 404 feet (123.1 meters).

This means SpaceX will break its own record for launching the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. And the company will do it again with the even larger Starship Version 3, which SpaceX says will have nine upper stage engines, instead of six, and will deliver up to 440,000 pounds (200 metric tons) of cargo to low-Earth orbit.

Other changes debuting with Starship Version 2 next week include:

• Vacuum jacketing of propellant feedlines

• A new fuel feedline system for the ship’s Raptor vacuum engines

• An improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors

• Redesigned inertial navigation and star tracking sensors

• Integrated smart batteries and power units to distribute 2.7 megawatts of power across the ship

• An increase to more than 30 cameras onboard the vehicle.

Laying the foundation

The enhanced avionics system will support future missions to prove SpaceX’s ability to refuel Starships in orbit and return the ship to the launch site. For example, SpaceX will fly a more powerful flight computer and new antennas that integrate connectivity with the Starlink Internet constellation, GPS navigation satellites, and backup functions for traditional radio communication links. With Starlink, SpaceX said Starship can stream more than 120Mbps of real-time high-definition video and telemetry in every phase of flight.

These changes “all add additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions,” SpaceX said. “The ship’s heat shield will also use the latest generation tiles and includes a backup layer to protect from missing or damaged tiles.”

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, a little more than 17 minutes into the flight, Starship will deploy 10 dummy payloads similar in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites. The mock-ups will soar around the world on a suborbital trajectory, just like Starship, and reenter over the unpopulated Indian Ocean. Future Starship flights will launch real next-gen Starlink satellites to add capacity to the Starlink broadband network, but they’re too big and too heavy to launch on SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceX will again reignite one of the ship’s Raptor engines in the vacuum of space, repeating a successful test achieved on Flight 6 in November. The engine restart capability is important for several reasons. It gives the ship the ability to maneuver itself out of low-Earth orbit for reentry (not a concern for Starship’s suborbital tests), and will allow the vehicle to propel itself to higher orbits, the Moon, or Mars once SpaceX masters the technology for orbital refueling.

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

NASA has contracts with SpaceX to build a derivative of Starship to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the Moon for the agency’s Artemis program. The NASA program manager overseeing SpaceX’s lunar lander contract, Lisa Watson-Morgan, said she was pleased with the results of the in-space engine restart demo last year.

“The whole path to the Moon, as we are getting ready to land on the Moon, we’ll perform a series of maneuvers, and the Raptors will have an environment that is very, very cold,” Morgan told Ars in a recent interview. “To that, it’s going to be important that they’re able to relight for landing purposes. So that was a great first step towards that.

“In addition, after we land, clearly, the Raptors will be off, and it will get very cold, and they will have to relight in a cold environment (to launch the crews off the lunar surface),” she said. “So that’s why that step was critical for the Human Landing System and NASA’s return to the Moon.”

“The biggest technology challenge remaining”

SpaceX continues to experiment with Starship’s heat shield, which the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has described as “the biggest technology challenge remaining with Starship.” In order for SpaceX to achieve its lofty goal of launching Starships multiple times per day, the heat shield needs to be fully and immediately reusable.

While the last three ships have softly splashed down in the Indian Ocean, some of their heat-absorbing tiles stripped away from the vehicle during reentry, when it’s exposed to temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius).

Engineers removed tiles from some areas of the ship for next week’s test flight in order to “stress-test” vulnerable parts of the vehicle. They also smoothed and tapered the edge of the tile line, where the ceramic heat shield gives way to the ship’s stainless steel skin, to address “hot spots” observed during reentry on the most recent test flight.

“Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry,” SpaceX said.

SpaceX is also flying rudimentary catch fittings on Starship to test their thermal performance on reentry. The ship will fly a more demanding trajectory during descent to probe the structural limits of the redesigned flaps at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure, according to SpaceX.

All told, SpaceX’s inclusion of a satellite deployment demo and ship upgrades on next week’s test flight will lay the foundation for future missions, perhaps in the next few months, to take the next great leap in Starship development.

In comments following the last Starship test flight in November, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X that the company could try to return the ship to a catch back at the launch site—something that would require the vehicle to complete at least one full orbit of Earth—as soon as the next flight following Monday’s mission.

“We will do one more ocean landing of the ship,” Musk posted. “If that goes well, then SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower.”

A taller, heavier, smarter version of SpaceX’s Starship is almost ready to fly Read More »

Italy’s plan to buy Starlink data deals a serious blow to European space network

elon musk, italy, Space, spacex, starlink / Rejus Almole / January 8, 2025

Developed by the European Union and European Space Agency, with Italian participation, this constellation of 290 satellites is planned to come online by 2030 at a development cost of $10.5 billion. During the lengthy negotiations, Italy even managed to secure one of the three primary ground stations in the Abruzzo region of the country.

The response from some Italian and European officials to the potential agreement between Italy and SpaceX has been ferocious.

Antonio Misiani, former deputy finance minister for Italy and senator for the opposition Democratic Party, told Politico that a completed agreement would represent an “unacceptable sell-out of national sovereignty.”

An Atlantic Council senior fellow and former policy advisor to the Italian government, Beniamino Irdi, told the Financial Times, “It sends a political signal to the EU,” Irdi said. “Iris² is a symbol of Europe’s strategic autonomy, and a key EU member shifting to a different solution can be interpreted as a sign of divestment from that.”

There are multiple layers of frustration here beyond Iris². One concerns Musk, who, since the election of Trump, has turned his attention toward advancing far-right political causes in Europe, particularly in Germany and the United Kingdom. Meloni, a conservative leader of Italy, considers Musk a friend and ally. Andrea Stroppa, one of Musk’s advisers in Italy, explained in September that “Elon recognizes Giorgia Meloni’s leadership. And he sees in her the same thing he sees in Donald Trump, someone who can defend Western values in danger.”

Battling with Breton

Musk has also had a long-running feud with French businessman Thierry Breton, who was Commissioner for the Internal Market of the European Union for five years until last September. Breton spearheaded the Iris² initiative to provide secure communications from low-Earth orbit. He also championed the Digital Services Act, which aims to curb misinformation published online in Europe. The European Commission has been energetically investigating Musk’s social media site X under the law.

Italy’s plan to buy Starlink data deals a serious blow to European space network Read More »

NASA defers decision on Mars Sample Return to the Trump administration

jet propulsion laboratory, Mars, Mars Sample Return, NASA, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space / Tim Belzer / January 8, 2025

“We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back.”

This photo montage shows sample tubes shortly after they were deposited onto the surface by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover in late 2022 and early 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

For nearly four years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has journeyed across an unexplored patch of land on Mars—once home to an ancient river delta—and collected a slew of rock samples sealed inside cigar-sized titanium tubes.

These tubes might contain tantalizing clues about past life on Mars, but NASA’s ever-changing plans to bring them back to Earth are still unclear.

On Tuesday, NASA officials presented two options for retrieving and returning the samples gathered by the Perseverance rover. One alternative involves a conventional architecture reminiscent of past NASA Mars missions, relying on the “sky crane” landing system demonstrated on the agency’s two most recent Mars rovers. The other option would be to outsource the lander to the space industry.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson left a final decision on a new mission architecture to the next NASA administrator working under the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald Trump nominated entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman as the agency’s 15th administrator last month.

“This is going to be a function of the new administration in order to fund this,” said Nelson, a former Democratic senator from Florida who will step down from the top job at NASA on January 20.

The question now is: will they? And if the Trump administration moves forward with Mars Sample Return (MSR), what will it look like? Could it involve a human mission to Mars instead of a series of robotic spacecraft?

The Trump White House is expected to emphasize “results and speed” with NASA’s space programs, with the goal of accelerating a crew landing on the Moon and sending people to explore Mars.

NASA officials had an earlier plan to bring the Mars samples back to Earth, but the program slammed into a budgetary roadblock last year when an independent review team concluded the existing architecture would cost up to $11 billion—double the previous cost projection—and wouldn’t get the Mars specimens back to Earth until 2040.

This budget and schedule were non-starters for NASA. The agency tasked government labs, research institutions, and commercial companies to come up with better ideas to bring home the roughly 30 sealed sample tubes carried aboard the Perseverance rover. NASA deposited 10 sealed tubes on the surface of Mars a couple of years ago as insurance in case Perseverance dies before the arrival of a retrieval mission.

“We want to have the quickest, cheapest way to get these 30 samples back,” Nelson said.

How much for these rocks?

NASA officials said they believe a stripped-down concept proposed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which previously was in charge of the over-budget Mars Sample Return mission architecture, would cost between $6.6 billion and $7.7 billion, according to Nelson. JPL’s previous approach would have put a heavier lander onto the Martian surface, with small helicopter drones that could pick up sample tubes if there were problems with the Perseverance rover.

NASA previously deleted a “fetch rover” from the MSR architecture and instead will rely on Perseverance to hand off sample tubes to the retrieval lander.

An alternative approach would use a (presumably less expensive) commercial heavy lander, but this concept would still utilize several elements NASA would likely develop in a more traditional government-led manner: a nuclear power source, a robotic arm, a sample container, and a rocket to launch the samples off the surface of Mars and back into space. The cost range for this approach extends from $5.1 billion to $7.1 billion.

Artist’s illustration of SpaceX’s Starship approaching Mars. Credit: SpaceX

JPL will have a “key role” in both paths for MSR, said Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s science mission directorate. “To put it really bluntly, JPL is our Mars center in NASA science.”

If the Trump administration moves forward with either of the proposed MSR plans, this would be welcome news for JPL. The center, which is run by the California Institute of Technology under contract to NASA, laid off 955 employees and contractors last year, citing budget uncertainty, primarily due to the cloudy future of Mars Sample Return.

Without MSR, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory don’t have a flagship-class mission to build after the launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft last year. The lab recently struggled with rising costs and delays with the previous iteration of MSR and NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission, and it’s not unwise to anticipate more cost overruns on a project as complex as a round-trip flight to Mars.

Ars submitted multiple requests to interview Laurie Leshin, JPL’s director, in recent months to discuss the lab’s future, but her staff declined.

Both MSR mission concepts outlined Tuesday would require multiple launches and an Earth return orbiter provided by the European Space Agency. These options would bring the Mars samples back to Earth as soon as 2035, but perhaps as late as 2039, Nelson said. The return orbiter and sample retrieval lander could launch as soon as 2030 and 2031, respectively.

“The main difference is in the landing mechanism,” Fox said.

To keep those launch schedules, Congress must immediately approve $300 million for Mars Sample Return in this year’s budget, Nelson said.

NASA officials didn’t identify any examples of a commercial heavy lander that could reach Mars, but the most obvious vehicle is SpaceX’s Starship. NASA already has a contract with SpaceX to develop a Starship vehicle that can land on the Moon, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is aggressively pushing for a Mars mission with Starship as soon as possible.

NASA solicited eight studies from industry earlier this year. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Lockheed Martin—each with their own lander concepts—were among the companies that won NASA study contracts. SpaceX and Blue Origin are well-capitalized with Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as owners, while Lockheed Martin is the only company to have built a lander that successfully reached Mars.

This slide from a November presentation to the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group shows JPL’s proposed “sky crane” architecture for a Mars sample retrieval lander. The landing system would be modified to handle a load about 20 percent heavier than the sky crane used for the Curiosity and Perseverance rover landings. Credit: NASA/JPL

The science community has long identified a Mars Sample Return mission as the top priority for NASA’s planetary science program. In the National Academies’ most recent decadal survey released in 2022, a panel of researchers recommended NASA continue with the MSR program but stated the program’s cost should not undermine other planetary science missions.

Teeing up for cancellation?

That’s exactly what is happening. Budget pressures from the Mars Sample Return mission, coupled with funding cuts stemming from a bipartisan federal budget deal in 2023, have prompted NASA’s planetary science division to institute a moratorium on starting new missions.

“The decision about Mars Sample Return is not just one that affects Mars exploration,” said Curt Niebur, NASA’s lead scientist for planetary flight programs, in a question-and-answer session with solar system researchers Tuesday. “It’s going to affect planetary science and the planetary science division for the foreseeable future. So I think the entire science community should be very tuned in to this.”

Rocket Lab, which has been more open about its MSR architecture than other companies, has posted details of its sample return concept on its website. Fox declined to offer details on other commercial concepts for MSR, citing proprietary concerns.

“We can wait another year, or we can get started now,” Rocket Lab posted on X. “Our Mars Sample Return architecture will put Martian samples in the hands of scientists faster and more affordably. Less than $4 billion, with samples returned as early as 2031.”

Through its own internal development and acquisitions of other aerospace industry suppliers, Rocket Lab said it has provided components for all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. “We can deliver MSR mission success too,” the company said.

Rocket Lab’s concept for a Mars Sample Return mission. Credit: Rocket Lab

Although NASA’s deferral of a decision on MSR to the next administration might convey a lack of urgency, officials said the agency and potential commercial partners need time to assess what roles the industry might play in the MSR mission.

“They need to flesh out all of the possibilities of what’s required in the engineering for the commercial option,” Nelson said.

On the program’s current trajectory, Fox said NASA would be able to choose a new MSR architecture in mid-2026.

Waiting, rather than deciding on an MSR plan now, will also allow time for the next NASA administrator and the Trump White House to determine whether either option aligns with the administration’s goals for space exploration. In an interview with Ars last week, Nelson said he did not want to “put the new administration in a box” with any significant MSR decisions in the waning days of the Biden administration.

One source with experience in crafting and implementing US space policy told Ars that Nelson’s deferral on a decision will “tee up MSR for canceling.” Faced with a decision to spend billions of dollars on a robotic sample return or billions of dollars to go toward a human mission to Mars, the Trump administration will likely choose the latter, the source said.

If that happens, NASA science funding could be freed up for other pursuits in planetary science. The second priority identified in the most recent planetary decadal survey is an orbiter and atmospheric probe to explore Uranus and its icy moons. NASA has held off on the development of a Uranus mission to focus on the Mars Sample Return first.

Science and geopolitics

Whether it’s with robots or humans, there’s a strong case for bringing pristine Mars samples back to Earth. The titanium tubes carried by the Perseverance rover contain rock cores, loose soil, and air samples from the Martian atmosphere.

“Bringing them back will revolutionize our understanding of the planet Mars and indeed, our place in the solar system,” Fox said. “We explore Mars as part of our ongoing efforts to safely send humans to explore farther and farther into the solar system, while also … getting to the bottom of whether Mars once supported ancient life and shedding light on the early solar system.”

Researchers can perform more detailed examinations of Mars specimens in sophisticated laboratories on Earth than possible with the miniature instruments delivered to the red planet on a spacecraft. Analyzing samples in a terrestrial lab might reveal biosignatures, or the traces of ancient life, that elude detection with instruments on Mars.

“The samples that we have taken by Perseverance actually predate—they are older than any of the samples or rocks that we could take here on Earth,” Fox said. “So it allows us to kind of investigate what the early solar system was like before life began here on Earth, which is amazing.”

Fox said returning Mars samples before a human expedition would help NASA prioritize where astronauts should land on the red planet.

In a statement, the Planetary Society said it is “concerned that NASA is again delaying a decision on the program, committing only to additional concept studies.”

“It has been more than two years since NASA paused work on MSR,” the Planetary Society said. “It is time to commit to a path forward to ensure the return of the samples already being collected by the Perseverance rover.

“We urge the incoming Trump administration to expedite a decision on a path forward for this ambitious project, and for Congress to provide the funding necessary to ensure the return of these priceless samples from the Martian surface.”

China says it is developing its own mission to bring Mars rocks back to Earth. Named Tianwen-3, the mission could launch as soon as 2028 and return samples to Earth by 2031. While NASA’s plan would bring back carefully curated samples from an expansive environment that may have once harbored life, China’s mission will scoop up rocks and soil near its landing site.

“They’re just going to have a mission to grab and go—go to a landing site of their choosing, grab a sample and go,” Nelson said. “That does not give you a comprehensive look for the scientific community. So you cannot compare the two missions. Now, will people say that there’s a race? Of course, people will say that, but it’s two totally different missions.”

Still, Nelson said he wants NASA to be first. He said he has not had detailed conversations with Trump’s NASA transition team.

“I think it was a responsible thing to do, not to hand the new administration just one alternative if they want to have a Mars Sample Return,” Nelson said. “I can’t imagine that they don’t. I don’t think we want the only sample return coming back on a Chinese spacecraft.”

NASA defers decision on Mars Sample Return to the Trump administration Read More »

Nearly two years after its radical pivot, Fidelity slashes Relativity’s valuation

relativity space, Space / Paul Patrick / January 7, 2025

For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media.

Relativity promised to disrupt launch by taking a somewhat niche technology in the space industry at the time, 3D printing, and using it as the foundation for manufacturing rockets. The pitch worked. Relativity’s chief executive Tim Ellis liked to brag that his first investor call was to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who cut the company’s first check. Cuban invested half a million dollars.

That was just the beginning of the torrent of fundraising by Ellis, who, by November 2023, turned the privately held Relativity into a $4.5 billion company following its latest, Series F funding. This was an impressive start for the company founded by Ellis and Jordan Noone, both engineers, in 2016.

A big bet

The Series F round occurred as Relativity was amid a bold gamble that, in hindsight, may have been a poor bet. In March 2023, the company launched its Terran 1 rocket for the first—and only—time. After this flight, Ellis announced that the company was pivoting immediately to developing the much larger and more capable Terran R rocket.

“It’s a big, bold bet,” Ellis said in an interview. “But it’s actually a really obvious decision.”

With an advertised capacity of more than 1 metric ton to low-Earth orbit and a “backlog” of launch contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Ellis, Terran 1 had the potential to draw significant revenue. It could also have nabbed a share of launch contracts that have since been snared by competitors such as Rocket Lab, with its smaller Electron vehicle, and Firefly, with its comparably sized Alpha rocket.

Nearly two years after its radical pivot, Fidelity slashes Relativity’s valuation Read More »

Rocket Report: Avio named top European launch firm; New Glenn may launch soon

rocket report, Space / Tim Belzer / January 4, 2025

“We are making it simpler for new competitors to get consistent access to the spectrum they need.”

A Falcon 9 rocket lofts a Starlink mission on Dec. 30, the final SpaceX mission of 2024, completing the company’s 134th orbital launch. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.25 of the Rocket Report! Happy New Year! It’s a shorter edition of the newsletter this week because most companies (not named Blue Origin, this holiday season) took things easier over the last 10 days. But after the break we’re back in the saddle for the new year, and eager to see what awaits us in the world of launch.

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.

Avio lands atop list of European launch firms. You know it probably was not a great year for European rocket firms when the top-ranked company on the continent is Avio, which launched a grand total of two rockets in 2024. The Italian rocket firm earned this designation from European Spaceflight after successfully completing the final flight of the Vega rocket in September and returning the Vega C rocket to flight in December.

Three European launches in 2024 … The only other firm to launch a rocket on the list was ArianeGroup, which had a single launch last year. Granted, it was an important flight, the successful debut of the Ariane 6 rocket. Germany-based Isar Aerospace came in third place, followed by a company I had never heard of, Germany-based Bayern-Chemie. It builds solid-fuel upper stages for sounding rockets. It’s hard to disagree with too much on the list, although it certainly demonstrates that Europe could do with more companies launching rockets, and fewer only talking about it.

India launches space docking demonstration mission. The Indian Space Research Organization launched a space docking experiment on a PSLV rocket at the end of the year, NASASpaceflight.com reports. This SpaDeX mission—yes, the name is a little confusing—will demonstrate the capability to rendezvous, dock, and undock in orbit. This technology is important for the country’s human spaceflight plans as well as future missions to the Moon.

Target and chaser … The SpaDeX experiment will be conducted around 10 days following launch when the two satellites, the SDX01 “Chaser” and the SDX02 “Target,” will be released with a small relative velocity between them. The pair will drift apart for around a day until they are separated by a distance of around 10 to 15 km. Once this is achieved, Target will eliminate the velocity difference between itself and Chaser using its propulsion system.

Sign Me Up!

HyPrSpace conducts hot-fire test. French launch services startup HyPrSpace has completed the first test of its second hot fire test campaign for its subscale Terminator stage demonstrator, European Spaceflight reports. HyPrSpace is developing a two-stage launch vehicle called Orbital Baguette One (OB-1) that will be capable of delivering up to 250 kilograms to low Earth orbit.

Like a finely baked bread … In July, the company completed an initial hot fire test campaign of Terminator, an eight-tonne demonstrator of a hybrid rocket stage. Over the course of this first test campaign, HyPrSpace completed a total of four hot fire tests. HyPrSpace CEO Alexandre Mangeot said the company achieved an average engine efficiency of 94 percent during the latest test. Mangeot added that this represented the “propulsive performance we need for our orbital launcher.”

A new annual record for orbital launches. The world set another record for orbital launches in 2024 in a continuing surge of launch activity driven almost entirely by SpaceX, Space News reports. There were 259 orbital launch attempts in 2024, a 17 percent increase from the previous record of 221 orbital launch attempts in 2023. That figure does not include suborbital launches, such as four SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy test flights or two launches of the HASTE suborbital variant of Rocket Lab’s Electron.

SpaceX v. world … That increase in overall launches matches the increase by SpaceX alone, which performed 134 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches in 2024, up from 96 in 2023. The company performed more orbital launches than the rest of the world combined. China performed 68 launches in 2024, breaking a record of 67 launches set in 2023. Russia performed 17 launches, followed by Japan (7), India (5), Iran (4), Europe (3) and North Korea (1).

Russian family of rockets reaches 2,000th launch. The Russian space program reached a significant milestone over the holidays with the 2,000th launch of a rocket from the “R-7” family of boosters. The launch took place on Christmas Day when an R-7 rocket lifted off, carrying a remote-sensing satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Ars reports. This family of rockets has an incredible heritage dating back nearly six decades. The first R-7 vehicle was designed by the legendary Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev. It flew in 1957 and was the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile.

Good and bad news … Although it’s certainly worth commemorating the 2,000th launch of the R-7 family of rockets, the fleet’s longevity also offers a cautionary tale. In many respects, the Russian space program continues to coast on the legacy of Korolev and the Soviet space feats of the 1950s and 1960s. That Russia has not developed a more cost-competitive and efficient booster in nearly six decades reveals the truth about its space program: It lacks innovation at a time when the rest of the space industry is rapidly sprinting toward reusability.

Overview of Chinese launch plans for 2025. New Long March rockets and commercially developed launch vehicles are expected to have their first flights in 2025, boosting China’s overall launch capabilities, Space News reports. The launchers will compete for contracts to launch satellites for China’s megaconstellation projects—Thousand Sails and Guowang—space station cargo missions and commercial and other contracts, helping to boost the country’s overall access to space and launch rate in the coming years.

Many new faces on the launch pad … Among the highlights for the coming year is the Long March 8A rocket, a variant of the existing Long March 8, but with a larger, more powerful second stage, boosting payload capacity to a 700-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit from 5,000 kilograms to 7,000 kg. It is likely to be a workhorse for megaconstellation launches. The Long March 12A rocket could undergo vertical takeoff and landing tests. And the privately developed Zhuque-3 rocket could make its first orbital launch this year.

To deal with more launches, FCC adds spectrum. The Federal Communications Commission has formally allocated additional spectrum for launch applications, fulfilling a provision in a bill passed earlier this year, Space News reports. The FCC published December 31 a report and order that allocated spectrum between 2360 and 2395 megahertz for use in communications to and from commercial launch and reentry vehicles on a secondary basis. That band currently has a primary use for aircraft and missile testing communications.

Keep rockets talking to the ground … Both the FCC and launch companies have said the additional spectrum was needed to accommodate growth in launch activities. “By identifying more bandwidth for vital links to launch vehicles, we are making it simpler for new competitors to get consistent access to the spectrum they need,” Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the FCC, said in a December 19 statement calling for approval of the then-proposed report and order.

New Glenn completes static fire test. On Friday, December 27, Blue Origin successfully ignited the seven main engines on its massive New Glenn rocket for the first time, Ars reports. Blue Origin said it fired the vehicle’s engines for a duration of 24 seconds. They fired at full thrust for 13 of those seconds. Additionally, several hours before the test firing, the Federal Aviation Administration said it had issued a launch license for the rocket.

New Glenn wen? … These two milestones set up a long-anticipated launch of the New Glenn rocket in January. Although the company has yet to announce a date publicly, sources indicate that Blue Origin is working toward a launch time of no earlier than 1 am ET (06: 00 UTC) on Monday, January 6, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, though it could slip a few days. If all goes well with the debut flight of the vehicle, Blue Origin will also attempt to recover the first stage of the rocket on a drone ship down range in the Atlantic Ocean. (submitted by Jay5000001)

Next three launches

Jan. 4: Falcon 9 | Thuraya 4-NGS | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 27 UTC

Jan. 6: New Glenn | Blue Ring pathfinder | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 00 UTC

Jan. 6: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-11 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 16: 19 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.

Rocket Report: Avio named top European launch firm; New Glenn may launch soon Read More »

Elon Musk: “We’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”

musk, NASA, pence, Space, space policy, spacex, Trump, vance / Paul Patrick / January 3, 2025

To a large extent, NASA resisted this change during the remainder of the Trump administration, keeping its core group of major contractors, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, in place. It had help from key US Senators, including Richard Shelby, the now-retired Republican from Alabama. But this time, the push for change is likely to be more concerted, especially with key elements of NASA’s architecture, including the Space Launch System rocket, being bypassed by privately developed rockets such as SpaceX’s Starship vehicle and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

Not one, but both

In all likelihood, NASA will adopt a new “Artemis” plan that involves initiatives to both the Moon and Mars. When Musk said “we’re going straight to Mars,” he may have meant that this will be the thrust of SpaceX, with support from NASA. That does not preclude a separate initiative, possibly led by Blue Origin with help from NASA, to develop lunar return plans.

Isaacman, who is keeping a fairly low profile ahead of his nomination, has not weighed in on Musk’s comments. However, when his nomination was announced one month ago, he did make a germane comment on X.

“I was born after the Moon landings; my children were born after the final space shuttle launch,” he wrote. “With the support of President Trump, I can promise you this: We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place. We will inspire children, yours and mine, to look up and dream of what is possible. Americans will walk on the Moon and Mars and in doing so, we will make life better here on Earth.”

In short, NASA is likely to adopt a two-lane strategy of reaching for both the Moon and Mars. Whether the space agency is successful with either one will be a major question asked of the new administration.

Elon Musk: “We’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.” Read More »