spacex

FCC chair blasts Amazon after it criticizes SpaceX megaconstellation

Amazon, FCC, megaconstellation, Policy, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / March 11, 2026

In addition to parrying with SpaceX over its proposed, vastly larger orbital data center constellation, Amazon is seeking some regulatory relief of its own. Most pressing for Amazon is a deadline to deploy half of its Amazon Leo constellation, intended to ultimately comprise 3,236 satellites, by July 30. The company will not meet this deadline, with only a little more than three months to go, and Amazon has requested an extension, asking for it to be moved to July 30, 2028.

Carr pulls up

On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr injected himself into the SpaceX-Amazon fracas over megaconstellations.

“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr said on X, the social media network owned by Musk.

There are arguments to be made in favor of both SpaceX and Amazon regarding their competing concerns. For example, SpaceX is likely to be able to greatly accelerate the rate at which it launches satellites with the forthcoming Starship rocket. So saying it will take centuries to put its data centers into space is not likely true.

However, it is valid to criticize SpaceX’s application for 1 million satellites, which is an extraordinary number of spacecraft that would completely change many things about low-Earth orbit. The SpaceX application did not contain critical information about the size, mass, and other details needed to evaluate the constellation for safety and other concerns.

It cannot be comfortable for Amazon and Bezos to see Carr weighing in so publicly and favorably on Musk’s side. Legally, Carr is allowed to have strongly held policy views. But he is not supposed to single out companies for preferential treatment.

FCC chair blasts Amazon after it criticizes SpaceX megaconstellation Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad

ICBM, launch, pld space, rocket report, roscosmos, sentinel, soyuz, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Tim Belzer / March 7, 2026

It looks like United Launch Alliance will build more upper stages for NASA’s SLS rocket.

A welder works on repairs to the Soyuz launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Roscosmos

Welcome to Edition 8.32 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week is NASA’s shake-up of the Artemis program. On paper, at least, the changes appear to be quite sensible. Canceling the big, new upper stage for the Space Launch System rocket and replacing it with a commercial upper stage, almost certainly United Launch Alliance’s Centaur stage, should result in cost savings. The changes also relieve some of the pressure for SpaceX and Blue Origin to rapidly demonstrate cryogenic refueling in low-Earth orbit. The Artemis III mission is now a low-Earth orbit mission, using SLS and the Orion spacecraft to dock with one or both of the Artemis program’s human-rated lunar landers just a few hundred miles above the Earth—no refueling required. Artemis IV will now be the first lunar landing attempt.

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.

Sentinel missile nears first flight. The US Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile is on track for its first test flight next year, military officials reaffirmed last week. The LGM-35A Sentinel will replace the Air Force’s Minuteman III fleet, in service since 1970, with the first of the new missiles due to become operational in the early 2030s. But it will take longer than that to build and activate the full complement of Sentinel missiles and the 450 hardened underground silos to house them, Ars reports.

Nowhere to put them... No one is ready to say when hundreds of new missile silos, dug from the windswept Great Plains, will be finished, how much they cost, or, for that matter, how many nuclear warheads each Sentinel missile could actually carry. The program’s cost has swelled from $78 billion to an official projection of $141 billion, but that figure is already out of date, as the Air Force announced last year that it would need to construct new silos for the Sentinel missile. The original plan was to adapt existing Minuteman III silos for the new weapons, but engineers determined that it would take too long and cost too much to modify the aging Minuteman facilities. Instead, the Air Force, in partnership with contractors and the US Army Corps of Engineers, will dig hundreds of new holes across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. The new silos will include 24 new forward launch centers, three centralized wing command centers, and more than 5,000 miles of fiber connections to wire it all together, military and industry officials said.

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Space One is now 0-for-3. Japan’s Space One said its Kairos small ‌rocket self-destructed 69 seconds after liftoff on Thursday, failing to achieve the country’s first entirely commercial satellite launch for the third attempt in a row, Reuters reports. Three months after a failure of Japan’s flagship H3 rocket, the unsuccessful flight of the smaller Kairos launcher dealt a fresh blow to Japan’s efforts to establish domestic launch options and reduce its reliance on American rockets amid rising space security needs to counter China. Kairos measures about 59 feet (18 meters) long with three solid-fueled boost stages and a liquid-fueled upper stage to inject small satellites into low-Earth orbit. The rocket is capable of placing a payload of about 330 pounds (150 kilograms) into a Sun-synchronous orbit.

Accidental detonation... The Kairos rocket terminated its flight Thursday at an altitude of approximately 18 miles (29 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean, just downrange from Space One’s spaceport on the southern coast of Honshu, the largest of Japan’s main islands. “No significant abnormalities were found in the flight or onboard equipment” before the self-destruction, Space One’s vice president, Nobuhiro Sekino, told a press conference, suggesting that the rocket’s autonomous flight termination system went wrong. This is a rare mode of failure in rocketry, but it has happened before. The first flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket was terminated erroneously in 2017, despite no issues with the launch vehicle itself. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

PLD Space raises $209 million. PLD Space has raised 180 million euros ($209 million) to ramp up production of the Spanish startup’s Miura 5 launch vehicle, marking the largest funding round for a European space business announced this year, Space News reports. PLD said the Series C equity funding round is led by Japan’s Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, with co-investment from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and the Spanish public funds management company Cofides. The startup has now raised more than 350 million euros ($400 million) to date. Miura 5 has not flown yet, but PLD says it is designed to place more than a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload mass into low-Earth orbit.

All about scaling... The fresh cash will support PLD’s “transition to commercial operations and the scaling of its industrial and launch capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Miura 5 was designed to address a clear and growing capacity gap in the market, and this investment support strengthens our ability to transition into commercial operations,” said Ezequiel Sánchez, PLD Space’s executive president. “It accelerates the build‑out of the industrial and launch infrastructure required to deliver reliable access to space for an expanding pipeline of global customers.” (submitted by Leika and EllPeaTea)

MaiaSpace delays first launch. Another European launch startup, the French company MaiaSpace, has announced the first flight of its two-stage Maia rocket will take place in 2027, slipping from a previously expected late 2026 launch, European Spaceflight reports. MaiaSpace is a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which builds Europe’s flagship Ariane 6 rocket. The Maia rocket will be partially reusable, with a recoverable first stage. Just two months ago, MaiaSpace said it was targeting an initial suborbital demonstration flight of the Maia rocket in late 2026.

Ensemble de lancement... On February 24, officials from MaiaSpace and the French space agency CNES gathered at the site of the former Soyuz launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, to sign a temporary occupancy agreement allowing MaiaSpace to begin dismantling Soyuz-specific infrastructure at the site. During the event, MaiaSpace officials revealed they expected to host the inaugural flight of Maia from the facility in 2027. When asked for comment by European Spaceflight, a representative explained that the company remained committed to launching its first rocket less than five years after the company’s creation in April 2022. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Korean company eyes launching from Canada. South Korean launch newcomer Innospace is exploring a planned spaceport in Nova Scotia, Canada, as a potential facility to expand operations to North America, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The company, which has yet to successfully fly its Hanbit-Nano rocket, said on March 4 that it has reached a nonbinding, preliminary “letter of intent” with Canada’s Maritime Launch Services. Innospace said the letter of intent “establishes a strategic framework” for Korean and Canadian officials to “assess the technical, regulatory, and commercial feasibility” of launching Hanbit rockets from Nova Scotia. The first flight of the Hanbit-Nano rocket failed shortly after liftoff last year from a spaceport in Brazil, and Innospace already has preliminary agreements for potential launch sites in Europe and Australia.

Looking abroad... Several launch startups are looking at establishing additional launch sites beyond their initial operating locations. Firefly Aerospace is looking at Sweden, and Rocket Lab has already inaugurated a second launch site for its Electron rocket in Virginia after basing its first flights in New Zealand. Innospace is unique, though, in that the South Korean rocket company’s first launch pad is already halfway around the world from its home base. Meanwhile, Canada is investing in its own sovereign orbital launch capability. “We look forward to working with Innospace to evaluate how our strategic position on the Eastern Atlantic rim of North America can support their launch program while advancing reliable, repeatable access to orbit and strengthening Canada’s commercial launch capability,” said Stephen Matier, president and CEO of Maritime Launch Services.

Russia completes launch pad repairs. Late last year, a Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts to orbit from the Russian-run Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But post-launch inspections revealed significant damage. A service structure underneath the rocket was unsecured during the launch of the three-man crew to the International Space Station. The structure fell into the launch pad’s flame trench, leaving the complex without the service cabin technicians use to work on the Soyuz rocket before liftoff. But Russia made quick repairs to the launch pad, the only site outfitted to launch Russian spacecraft to the ISS. Rockets will soon start flying from Pad 31 again, if all goes to plan, Space.com reports.

Restored to service... Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, announced Tuesday that the launch pad has been repaired. More than 150 employees from the agency’s Center for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure and representatives from four contractors have wrapped up work at the damaged launch pad. Roscosmos said 2,350 square meters of structures were prepared and painted, and more than 250 linear meters of welds were completed during the repair. Meanwhile, the head of the Roscosmos ground infrastructure division told a Russian TV channel in January that “multiple members” of the launch pad team were under criminal investigation after leaving the service structure unsecured during the November launch, according to Russian space reporter Anatoly Zak. The first launch from the restored pad is scheduled for March 22, when a Soyuz rocket will boost a Progress supply ship to the ISS. A Soyuz crew launch will follow this summer.

SpaceX price hike. SpaceX recently increased launch prices from $70 million to $74 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 ride, and $6,500 per kilogram to $7,000 per kilogram for a rideshare slot, Payload reports. The company has long signaled a steady pace of price bumps, so the move does not come as a surprise. Nonetheless, the increase (along with the lack of real alternatives) highlights a tough truth in the industry: Access to orbit has gotten significantly more expensive in recent years despite all the hoopla and hopium of falling launch prices.

Keeping up… The price of a dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 has risen about 20 percent since 2021, in line with US inflation. A rideshare slot, on the other hand, now costs about 40 percent more than it did in 2021, doubling the rate of inflation, according to Payload. Rideshare pricing is the far more important number to track here. Without a price-competitive alternative, the broader space startup community has relied almost exclusively on Falcon 9 Transporter and Bandwagon missions to get to space over the last five years. Ars has previously reported on how NASA pays more for launch services than it did 30 years ago, a trend partly driven by the agency’s requirement for dedicated launches for many of its robotic science missions.

NASA aims for standardized SLS rocket. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on February 27, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage, Ars reports. The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is growing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

CU later, EUS… “NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” The announced changes to the Artemis program include the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket, and future SLS missions, starting with Artemis IV, will use a “standardized” commercial upper stage. Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon. Instead, the Orion spacecraft will launch on SLS and dock with SpaceX’s Starship and/or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit.

NASA favors ULA upper stage. United Launch Alliance’s Centaur V upper stage, used on the company’s Vulcan rocket, will replace the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) on SLS missions beginning with Artemis IV, Bloomberg reports. ULA, a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, also built the interim upper stages flying on the Artemis I, II, and III missions. Those stages were based on designs used for ULA’s now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket. With that production line shut down, ULA will now provide Centaur Vs to NASA. This means Boeing, which was on contract to develop the EUS, will still have a role in supplying upper stages for the SLS rocket. Boeing is also the prime contractor for the rocket’s massive core stage.

Building on a legacy… The Centaur V upper stage is the latest version of a design that dates back to the 1960s. Centaurs began flying in 1962, and the Centaur V is the most powerful variant, with a wider diameter and two hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. The Centaur V still uses the ultra-thin, pressure-stabilized stainless steel structure used on all Centaur upper stages. The Centaur has a reliable track record, and the Centaur V’s predecessor, the Centaur III, was human-rated for launches of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule.

Artemis II helium issue fixed. NASA has fixed the problem that forced it to remove the rocket for the Artemis II mission from its launch pad last month, but it will be a couple of weeks before officials are ready to move the vehicle back into the starting blocks at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. Ground teams moved the SLS rocket back to the Vehicle Assembly Building last month to repair an issue with the upper stage’s helium system. Inspections revealed that a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from ground systems into the rocket, was obstructing the pathway, according to NASA. “The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved,” NASA said in an update posted Tuesday.

Targeting April 1… NASA is not expected to return the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to the launch pad until later this month. Inside the VAB, technicians will complete several other tasks to “refresh” the rocket for the next series of launch opportunities. NASA has not said whether the launch team will conduct another countdown rehearsal after it returns to Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy. The first of five launch opportunities in early April is on April 1, with a two-hour launch window opening at 6: 24 pm EDT (22: 24 UTC). There are additional launch dates available on April 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Next three launches

March 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-18 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 10: 58 UTC

March 10: Alpha | Stairway to Seven | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 50 UTC

March 10: Falcon 9 | EchoStar XXV | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 14 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: SpaceX launch prices are going up; Russia fixes broken launch pad Read More »

Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding

bridenstine, launch, NASA, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / March 2, 2026

A highly regarded administrator

A former Republican House member from Oklahoma, Bridenstine served a generally well-regarded term as NASA administrator from April 2018 to January 2021 during President Trump’s first term.

The high point of his tenure in office came in May 2020, thanks to SpaceX. That summer, with the Crew Dragon vehicle, SpaceX and NASA successfully flew two astronauts to the International Space Station, breaking America’s dependence on Russia for low-Earth orbit transportation. Bridenstine relished this with an oft-repeated mantra of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil.

However, after leaving NASA, Bridenstine has appeared to become hostile to the dominant company founded by Elon Musk. He joined the board of a competitor, Viasat. Later, Bridenstine became the executive of Government Operations for United Launch Alliance, while his firm also collected a hefty lobbying fee.

All of this is not particularly abnormal for the revolving door in Washington, DC, where senior officials go between government positions and industry. Nevertheless, some observers were surprised by the striking nature of Bridenstine’s attack on NASA for the decision to award a Human Landing System contract to SpaceX in April 2021, three months after he left office. A new administrator had not yet been confirmed at NASA at the time, so a senior NASA engineer, Steve Jurczyk, served as acting administrator for the space agency.

Attacking his own process

Bridenstine sharply criticized this lander decision during testimony before Cruz’s committee last September.

“There was a moment in time when we had no NASA administrator,” he said at 42 minutes into the hearing. “It was after I was gone, and before Senator Nelson became the NASA administrator. An architecture was selected. And I don’t know how this happens, but the biggest decision in the history of NASA, at least since I’ve been paying attention, the biggest decision happened in the absence of a NASA administrator. And that decision was, instead of buying a Moon lander, we’re gonna buy a big rocket.”

Former NASA chief turned ULA lobbyist seeks law to limit SpaceX funding Read More »

NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return

artemis, blue origin, Boeing, NASA, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / Rejus Almole / March 1, 2026

“Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success.”

Artist’s illustration of the Boeing-developed Exploration Upper Stage, with four hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on Friday morning, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage.

The upheaval comes as NASA has struggled to fuel the massive Space Launch System rocket for the upcoming Artemis II lunar mission, and Isaacman has sought to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs. There is ever-increasing concern that, absent a shake-up, China’s rising space program will land humans on the Moon before NASA can return there this decade with Artemis.

“NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.”

Shaking things up

The announced changes to the Artemis program include:

Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

At the core of Isaacman’s concerns is the low flight rate of the SLS rocket and Artemis missions. During past exploration missions, from Mercury through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program, NASA has launched humans on average about once every three months. It has been nearly 3.5 years since Artemis I launched.

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

A senior NASA official, speaking on background to Ars, noted that the space agency has experienced hydrogen and helium leaks during both the Artemis I and Artemis II pre-launch preparations, and these problems have led to monthslong delays in launch.

“If I recall, the timing between Apollo 7 and 8 was nine weeks,” the official said. “Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success. Certainly, making each one of them a work of art with some major configuration change is also not helpful in the process, and we’re clearly seeing the results of it, right?”

The goal, therefore, is to standardize the SLS rocket into a single configuration to make it as reliable as possible and to launch it as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launch crew to the Moon, perhaps through Artemis V as Congress has mandated, or perhaps even a little longer.

Is everyone on board?

The NASA official said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

The biggest opposition to these proposals would seemingly come from Boeing, which is the prime contractor for the Exploration Upper Stage, a contract worth billions of dollars to develop a more powerful rocket that was due to launch for the first time later this decade. However, in a NASA news release, Boeing appeared to offer at least some support for the revised plans.

“Boeing is a proud partner to the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” said Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security president and CEO, in the news release. “The SLS core stage remains the world’s most powerful rocket stage, and the only one that can carry American astronauts directly to the moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs.”

Solid reasons for changing Artemis III

NASA’s new approach to Artemis reflects a return to the philosophy of the Apollo program. During the late 1960s, the space agency flew a series of preparatory crewed missions before the Apollo 11 lunar landing. These included Apollo 7 (a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft), Apollo 8 (a lunar orbiting mission), Apollo 9 (a low-Earth orbit rendezvous with the lunar lander), and Apollo 10 (a test of the lunar lander descending to the Moon, without touching down).

With its previous Artemis template, NASA skipped the steps taken by Apollo 7, 9, and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this leap from Artemis II—a crewed lunar flyby of the Moon testing only the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft—to Artemis III and a full-on lunar landing was enormous and risky.

The new approach will, in NASA parlance, “buy down” some of the risk for a 21st-century lunar landing, including performance and handling of a lunar lander, rendezvous and docking, communications, spacesuit performance, and more.

It will also increase the challenges for NASA. In particular, the timeline to bring the Orion spacecraft to readiness for a mid-2027 launch will need to be accelerated, and efforts to integrate that vehicle with one or both lander providers will need serious attention.

For the Artemis IV lunar landing mission, NASA will also need to human-rate a new upper stage for the SLS rocket. The vehicle currently uses a modified Delta IV upper stage manufactured by United Launch Alliance. But that rocket production line is closed, and NASA only has two more of these stages. With the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, NASA will now procure a new stage commercially. NASA officials only said they will seek a “standardized” upper stage. As Ars has previously reported, the most likely replacement would be the Centaur V upper stage currently flying on Vulcan rockets.

What of the Lunar Gateway?

Friday’s announcement—which, for the space community, is the equivalent of a major earthquake—left some key details unaddressed. For example, NASA has been developing a larger launch tower to support the Block 1B version of the SLS rocket, with its more powerful upper stage. Development of this tower, finally underway, has been a clown show, with project costs ballooning from an initial estimate of $383 million to $1.8 billion, and delays stacked on delays. Will this tower be scrapped or repurposed?

Isaacman and other NASA officials were also mum on the Lunar Gateway, a proposed space station in a high orbit around the Moon. Key elements of this space station are under construction. However, cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage raises questions about its future. The main purpose of the Block 1B version of SLS was to launch heavier payloads, most notably elements of the Gateway along with Orion.

“The whole Gateway-Moon base conversation is not for today,” the senior NASA official said. “We, I can assure you, will talk about the Moon base in the weeks ahead. I would just not overly read into this, because we had manifested some Gateway modules on Falcon Heavy already. The implications of standardizing SLS and increasing launch rate are about the ability to return to the Moon. I don’t think we necessarily have to speculate too much on what the other downstream implications are.”

The Gateway program office is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the lunar station is viewed as a successor to the International Space Station in terms of flight operations.

Key politicians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, have been supportive of this new station. But during some recent congressional hearings, Cruz has indicated he is open to a lunar space station or an outpost on the lunar surface. He just wants to be sure NASA has an enduring presence on or near the Moon. One industry source said Isaacman could be laying the groundwork to replace the Gateway Program with a Moon Base program office in Houston. It is unclear how much of a political battle this would ultimately be.

Some of this has been well-predicted

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

In April 2024, Ars reported that some senior NASA officials were considering an Earth-orbit rendezvous between Orion and Starship as a means to buy down risk for a lunar landing. NASA ultimately punted on the idea before it was revived by Isaacman this month.

Additionally, in October 2024, Ars offered a guide to saving the “floundering” Artemis program by canceling the Block 1B upgrade for the SLS rocket, replacing its upper stage with a Centaur V, and canceling the Lunar Gateway. This would free up an estimated $2 billion annually to focus on accelerating a lunar landing, the publication estimated.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

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.

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NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return

artemis, blue origin, Boeing, NASA, Space, spacex, Staff, united launch alliance / Kris Guyer / February 27, 2026

“Launching SLS every three and a half years or so is not a recipe for success.”

Artist’s illustration of the Boeing-developed Exploration Upper Stage, with four hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced sweeping changes to the Artemis program on Friday morning, including an increased cadence of missions and cancellation of an expensive rocket stage.

Shaking things up

The announced changes to the Artemis program include:

Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

Is everyone on board?

The NASA official said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

Solid reasons for changing Artemis III

What of the Lunar Gateway?

The Gateway program office is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the lunar station is viewed as a successor to the International Space Station in terms of flight operations.

Some of this has been well-predicted

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return Read More »

Study shows how rocket launches pollute the atmosphere

industrial waste, Space, space pollution, spacex, syndication / Kris Guyer / February 22, 2026

Atmospheric scientist Laura Revell, with the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, presented research showing that rocket exhaust in the atmosphere can erase some of the hard-won gains in mitigating ozone depletion.

In a high-growth scenario for the space industry, there could be as many as 2,000 launches per year, which her modeling shows could result in about 3 percent ozone loss, equal to the atmospheric impacts of a bad wildfire season in Australia. She said most of the damage comes from chlorine-rich solid rocket fuels and black carbon in the plumes.

The black carbon could also warm parts of the stratosphere by about half-a-degree Celsius as it absorbs sunlight. That heats the surrounding air and can shift winds that steer storms and areas of precipitation.

“This is probably not a fuel type that we want to start using in massive quantities in the future,” she added.

Researchers at the conference estimated that in the past five years, the mass of human‑made material injected into the upper atmosphere by re‑entries has doubled to nearly a kiloton a year. For some metals like lithium, the amount is already much larger than that contributed by disintegrating meteors.

In the emerging field of space sustainability science, researchers say orbital space and near-space should be considered part of the global environment. A 2022 journal article co-authored by Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, argued that the upper reaches of the atmosphere are experiencing increased impacts from human activities.

The expanding commercial use of what appears to be a free resource is actually shifting its real costs onto others, the article noted.

At last year’s European Geosciences Union conference, Leonard Schulz, who studies space pollution at the Technical University Braunschweig in Germany, said, “If you put large amounts of catalytic metals in the atmosphere, I immediately think about geoengineering.”

There may not be time to wait for more scientific certainty, Schulz said: “In 10 years, it might be too late to do anything about it.”

Bob Berwyn is an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

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Why is Bezos trolling Musk on X with turtle pics? Because he has a new Moon plan.

artemis, blue moon, blue origin, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / February 13, 2026

“It’s time to go back to the Moon—this time to stay.”

Step by step, ferociously? Credit: Jeff Bezos/X

The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, does not often post on the social media site owned by his rival Elon Musk. But on Monday, Bezos did, sharing a black-and-white image of a turtle emerging from the shadows on X.

The photo, which included no text, may have stumped some observers. Yet for anyone familiar with Bezos’ privately owned space company, Blue Origin, the message was clear. The company’s coat of arms prominently features two turtles, a reference to one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” in which the slow and steady tortoise wins the race over a quicker but overconfident hare.

Bezos’ foray into social media turtle trolling came about 12 hours after Musk made major waves in the space community by announcing that SpaceX was pivoting toward the Moon, rather than Mars, as a near-term destination. It represented a huge shift in Musk’s thinking, as the SpaceX founder has long spoken of building a multi-planetary civilization on Mars.

Welcome to the Club

It must have provided Bezos with some self-satisfaction. He is also a believer in human settlement of space, but he has espoused the view that our spacefaring species should begin on the Moon and then build orbital space habitats. Back in 2019, when unveiling his vision, Bezos spoke about NASA’s goal of returning humans to the Moon through the Artemis Program. “I love this,” Bezos said. “It’s the right thing to do. We can help meet that timeline but only because we started three years ago. It’s time to go back to the Moon—this time to stay.”

So in posting an image of a turtle, Bezos was sending a couple of messages to Musk. First, it was something of a sequel to Bezos’ infamous “Welcome to the Club” tweet more than a decade ago. And secondly, Bezos was telling Musk that slow and steady wins the race. In other words, Bezos believes Blue Origin will beat SpaceX back to the Moon.

Why would Bezos, whose company has launched to orbit all of two times, think Blue Origin has a chance to compete with SpaceX (which has more than 600 orbital launches) to land humans on the Moon?

The answer can be found in a pair of documents obtained by Ars that outline an accelerated Artemis architecture that Blue Origin is now developing.

Some background on the Human Landing System

A little more than five years ago, NASA reached out to the US commercial space industry for help in building a lunar lander. This lander would dock with NASA’s Orion spacecraft to carry humans from an elliptical orbit around the Moon, known as a near-rectilinear halo orbit, down to the lunar surface and back up to Orion.

The story of what happened as part of this bidding process is long and convoluted (including lawsuits and remarkable graphics like this one from Blue Origin). However, what really matters is that, by 2023, both SpaceX and Blue Origin had contracts from NASA to develop lunar landers—SpaceX with Starship and Blue Origin with Blue Moon MK2—for crewed missions as part of the Artemis Program. Both mission architectures required propellant refueling, essentially the launch of “tankers” from Earth to transfer large amounts of fuel and oxidizer into low-Earth orbit to complete a lunar landing. SpaceX was considered to have a considerable lead on Blue Origin.

In 2025, again for complex reasons, it became clear that while these reusable landers were fantastic for a long-term lunar program, there were two problems. The first was that SpaceX blew up three Starships during testing last year, raising serious questions about whether the company would be ready to complete a lunar landing before 2030. And second, it was becoming clear that China may well have a simpler lander that could put taikonauts on the Moon before 2030.

Blue’s new plan

Last October, Ars revealed that Blue Origin was beginning to work on an “accelerated” architecture that could potentially land humans on the Moon before 2030 without requiring orbital refueling. Now, thanks to some new documents, we know what those landings could look like. The screenshots shared with Ars show two different missions, an uncrewed “demo” flight and a crewed Moon landing. Here’s what they entail:

Uncrewed demo mission: This requires three launches of the New Glenn rocket. The first two launches each put a “Transfer stage” into low-Earth orbit. The third launch puts a “Blue Moon MK2-IL” into orbit. (The “IL” stands for Initial Lander, and it appears to be a smaller version of the Blue Moon MK2 lander.) All three vehicles dock, and the first transfer stage boosts the stack to an elliptical orbit around Earth (after this, the stage burns up in Earth’s atmosphere). The second transfer stage then boosts the MK-2 lander from Earth orbit into a 15×100 km orbit above the Moon. From here, the MK-2 lander separates and goes down to the Moon, later ascending back to low-lunar orbit.

Crewed demo mission: This requires four launches of the New Glenn rocket. The first three launches each put a “Transfer stage” into low-Earth orbit. A fourth launch puts the MK2-IL lander into orbit and the vehicles dock. The first transfer stage pushes the stack into an elliptical Earth orbit. The second transfer stage pushes the stack to rendezvous with Orion in a near-rectilinear halo orbit. After the crew boards, the third and final transfer stage pushes the MK-2 lander into a low-lunar orbit before separating. The lander goes down to the Moon and then ascends to re-rendezvous with Orion.

A rendering of Blue Origin’s proposed Lunar Transporter. Credit: Blue Origin

The documents Ars has reviewed do not contain some crucial information. For example, what are the “transfer stages” they refer to? Are they the Lunar Transporter, a reusable space tug, under development? Or a modified upper stage of New Glenn or something else? It’s also unclear whether the Blue Moon MK2-IL is more like the simpler MK1 lander (which should fly soon) or if it will require major development work. Ars put these and other questions to Blue Origin, which declined to comment for this article.

So what to make of all this?

Sources indicated that Blue Origin is moving aggressively forward on its lunar program. This is one reason why the company recently iced its New Shepard spacecraft and has curtailed other activities to increase focus on major goals, including ramping up New Glenn cadence and accelerating lunar plans. This new architecture is one result of that.

There are major steps to go. The company must demonstrate the Blue Moon vehicle with the uncrewed MK1 mission, which likely will launch sometime late this spring or during the summer, with a lunar landing to follow. And although there is no orbital refueling as part of this new plan, it still requires complex docking and deep-space maneuvers, which Blue Origin has no experience with. Whether Bezos’ company could pull off all of these challenging tasks before 2030 is far from certain.

But one thing is clear. The 21st century space race back to the Moon now includes three participants: China’s state-run program, SpaceX, and Blue Origin. Game on.

Why is Bezos trolling Musk on X with turtle pics? Because he has a new Moon plan. Read More »

US decides SpaceX is like an airline, exempting it from Labor Relations Act

nlrb, Policy, spacex / Rejus Almole / February 11, 2026

SpaceX deemed a common carrier

US labels SpaceX a common carrier by air, will regulate firm under railway law.

Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch

The National Labor Relations Board abandoned a Biden-era complaint against SpaceX after a finding that the agency does not have jurisdiction over Elon Musk’s space company. The US labor board said SpaceX should instead be regulated under the Railway Labor Act, which governs labor relations at railroad and airline companies.

The Railway Labor Act is enforced by a separate agency, the National Mediation Board, and has different rules than the National Labor Relations Act enforced by the NLRB. For example, the Railway Labor Act has an extensive dispute-resolution process that makes it difficult for railroad and airline employees to strike. Employers regulated under the Railway Labor Act are exempt from the National Labor Relations Act.

In January 2024, an NLRB regional director alleged in a complaint that SpaceX illegally fired eight employees who, in an open letter, criticized CEO Musk as a “frequent source of embarrassment.” The complaint sought reinstatement of the employees, back pay, and letters of apology to the fired employees.

SpaceX responded by suing the NLRB, claiming the labor agency’s structure is unconstitutional. But a different issue SpaceX raised later—that it is a common carrier, like a rail company or airline—is what compelled the NLRB to drop its case. US regulators ultimately decided that SpaceX should be treated as a “common carrier by air” and “a carrier by air transporting mail” for the government.

SpaceX deemed a common carrier

In a February 6 letter to attorneys who represent the fired employees, NLRB Regional Director Danielle Pierce said the agency would defer to a National Mediation Board opinion that SpaceX is a common carrier:

In the course of the investigation and litigation of this case, a question was presented as to whether the Employer’s operations fall within the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Act (“RLA”) rather than the [National Labor Relations] Act. As a result, consistent with Board law, the matter was referred to the National Mediation Board (“NMB”) on May 21, 2025 for an opinion as to whether the Employer is covered by the RLA. On January 14, 2026, the NMB issued its decision finding that the Employer is subject to the RLA as a common carrier by air engaged in interstate or foreign commerce as well as a carrier by air transporting mail for or under contract with the United States Government. Accordingly, the National Labor Relations Board lacks jurisdiction over the Employer and, therefore, I am dismissing your charge.

The letter was provided to Ars today by Anne Shaver, an attorney for the fired SpaceX employees. “The Railway Labor Act does not apply to space travel,” Shaver told Ars. “It is alarming that the NMB would take the initiative to radically expand the RLA’s jurisdiction to space travel absent direction from Congress, and that the NLRB would simply defer. We find the decision to be contrary to law and public policy.”

We contacted the NLRB today and will update this article if it provides a response. The NLRB decision was previously reported by Bloomberg and The New York Times.

“Jennifer Abruzzo, NLRB general counsel under former President Joe Biden, had rejected SpaceX’s claim that allegations against the company should be handled by the NMB,” Bloomberg wrote. “After President Donald Trump fired her in January last year, SpaceX asked the labor board to reconsider the issue.”

NLRB looked for way to settle

In April 2025, SpaceX and the NLRB told a federal appeals court in a joint filing that the NLRB would ask the NMB to decide whether it had jurisdiction over SpaceX. The decision to seek the NMB’s opinion was made “in the interests of potentially settling the legal disputes currently pending between the NLRB and SpaceX on terms mutually agreeable to both parties,” the joint filing said.

Shaver provided a July 2025 filing that the employees’ attorneys made with the NMB. The filing said that despite SpaceX claiming to hold itself out to the public as a common carrier through its website and certain marketing materials, the firm doesn’t actually carry passengers without “a negotiated, bespoke contract.”

“SpaceX’s descriptions of its transport activities are highly misleading,” the filing said. “First, regarding human spaceflight, other than sending astronauts to the ISS on behalf of the US and foreign governments, it has only ever agreed to contract with two very wealthy, famous entrepreneurs. The Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions were both for Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4 and President Trump’s former pick to lead NASA prior to his public falling out with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Fram2 was for Chun Wang, a cryptocurrency investor who reportedly paid $55 million per seat. A total of two private customers for human spaceflight does not a common carrier make.”

The letter said that SpaceX redacted pricing information from marketing materials it submitted as exhibits. “If these were actually marketing materials provided to the public, there would be no need to redact pricing information,” the filing said. “SpaceX’s redactions underscore that it provides such materials at its discretion to select recipients, not to the public at large—far from the conduct of a true common carrier.”

The ex-employees’ attorneys further argued that SpaceX is not engaged in interstate or foreign commerce as defined by the Railway Labor Act. “SpaceX’s transport activities are not between one state or territory and another, nor between a state or territory and a foreign nation, nor between points in the same state but through another state. Rather, they originate in Florida, Texas, or California, and go to outer space,” the filing said.

Spaceflight company and… mail carrier?

The filing also disputed SpaceX’s argument that it is a “carrier by air transporting mail for or under contract with the United States Government.” Evidence presented by SpaceX shows only that it carried SpaceX employee letters to the crew of the International Space Station and “crew supplies provided for by the US government in its contracts with SpaceX to haul cargo to the ISS,” the filing said. “They do not show that the government has contracted with SpaceX as a ‘mail carrier.’”

SpaceX’s argument “is rife with speculation regarding its plans for the future,” the ex-employees’ attorneys told the NMB. “One can only surmise that the reason for its constant reference to its future intent to develop its role as a ‘common carrier’ is the lack of current standing in that capacity.” The filing said Congress would have to add space travel to the Railway Labor Act’s jurisdiction in order for SpaceX to be considered a common carrier.

When asked about plans for appeal, Shaver noted that they have a pending case in US District Court for the Central District of California: Holland-Thielen et al v. SpaceX and Elon Musk. “The status of that case is that we defeated SpaceX’s motion to compel arbitration at the district court level, and that is now on appeal to the 9th circuit,” she said.

SpaceX’s lawsuit against the NLRB is still ongoing at the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, but the case was put on hold while the sides waited for the NMB and NLRB to decide which agency has jurisdiction over SpaceX.

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

US decides SpaceX is like an airline, exempting it from Labor Relations Act Read More »

SpaceX’s next-gen Super Heavy booster aces four days of “cryoproof” testing

Commercial space, launch, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship / Mike M. / February 10, 2026

The upgraded Super Heavy booster slated to launch SpaceX’s next Starship flight has completed cryogenic proof testing, clearing a hurdle that resulted in the destruction of the company’s previous booster.

SpaceX announced the milestone in a social media post Tuesday: “Cryoproof operations complete for the first time with a Super Heavy V3 booster. This multi-day campaign tested the booster’s redesigned propellant systems and its structural strength.”

Ground teams at Starbase, Texas, rolled the 237-foot-tall (72.3-meter) stainless-steel booster out of its factory and transported it a few miles away to Massey’s Test Site last week. The test crew first performed a pressure test on the rocket at ambient temperatures, then loaded super-cold liquid nitrogen into the rocket four times over six days, putting the booster through repeated thermal and pressurization cycles. The nitrogen is a stand-in for the cryogenic methane and liquid oxygen that will fill the booster’s propellant tanks on launch day.

The proof test is notable because it moves engineers closer to launching the first test flight of an upgraded version of SpaceX’s mega-rocket named Starship V3 or Block 3. SpaceX launched the previous version, Starship V2, five times last year, but the first three test flights failed. The last two flights achieved SpaceX’s goals, and the company moved on to V3.

Better results this time

The Super Heavy booster originally assigned to the first Starship V3 test flight failed during a pressure test in November. The rocket’s liquid oxygen tank ruptured under pressure, and SpaceX scrapped the booster and moved on to the next in line—Booster 19. This Super Heavy vehicle appears have sailed through stress testing, and SpaceX returned the booster to the factory early Monday. There, technicians will mount 33 Raptor engines to the bottom of the rocket and install the booster’s grid fins.

These components are changed from Starship V2. The Raptor engines set to debut on Starship V3 produce more thrust and include changes to improve reliability, according to SpaceX. The Raptor 3s are lighter with plumbing and sensors integrated into the engine’s main structure, eliminating the requirement for self-contained heat shields between the engines at the base of the rocket.

SpaceX’s next-gen Super Heavy booster aces four days of “cryoproof” testing Read More »

Why would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden?

Mars, moon, musk, Space, spacex / Rejus Almole / February 9, 2026

As more than 120 million people tuned in to the Super Bowl for kickoff on Sunday evening, SpaceX founder Elon Musk turned instead to his social network. There, he tapped out an extended message in which he revealed that SpaceX is pivoting from the settlement of Mars to building a “self-growing” city on the Moon.

“For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years,” Musk wrote, in part.

Elon Musk tweet at 6: 24 pm ET on Sunday. Credit: X/Elon Musk

This is simultaneously a jolting and practical decision coming from Musk.

Why it’s a jolting decision

A quarter of a century ago, Musk founded SpaceX with a single-minded goal: settling Mars. One of his longest-tenured employees, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, described her very first interview with Musk in 2002 to me as borderline messianic.

“He was talking about Mars, his Mars Oasis project,” Shotwell said. “He wanted to do Mars Oasis, because he wanted people to see that life on Mars was doable, and we needed to go there.”

She was not alone in this description of her first interaction with Musk. The vision for SpaceX has not wavered. Even in the company’s newest, massive Starship rocket factory at the Starbase facility in South Texas—also known as the Gateway to Mars—there are reminders of the red planet everywhere. For example, the carpet inside Musk’s executive conference room is rust red, the same color as the surface of Mars.

In the last 25 years, Musk has gone from an obscure, modestly wealthy person to the richest human being ever, from a political moderate to chief supporter of Donald Trump; from a respected entrepreneur to, well, to a lot of things to a lot of people: world’s greatest industrialist/supervillain/savant/grifter-fraudster.

But one thing that has remained constant across the Muskverse is his commitment to “extending the light of human consciousness” and to the belief that the best place to begin humanity’s journey toward becoming a multi-planetary species was Mars.

Why would Elon Musk pivot from Mars to the Moon all of a sudden? Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX probes upper stage malfunction; Starship testing resumes

artemis II, blue origin, china, Firefly Aerospace, NASA, new shepard, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Paul Patrick / February 7, 2026

Amazon has booked 10 more launches with SpaceX, citing a “near-term shortage in launch capacity.”

The top of SpaceX’s next Super Heavy booster, designated Booster 19, as the rocket undergoes testing at Starbase, Texas. The Rio Grande River is visible in the background. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 8.28 of the Rocket Report! The big news in rocketry this week was that NASA still hasn’t solved the problem with hydrogen leaks on the Space Launch System. The problem caused months of delays before the first SLS launch in 2022, and the fuel leaks cropped up again Monday during a fueling test on NASA’s second SLS rocket. It is a continuing problem, and NASA’s sparse SLS launch rate makes every countdown an experiment, as my colleague Eric Berger wrote this week. NASA will conduct another fueling test in the coming weeks after troubleshooting the rocket’s leaky fueling line, but the launch of the Artemis II mission is off until March.

Blue Origin “pauses” New Shepard flights. Blue Origin has “paused” its New Shepard program for the next two years, a move that likely signals a permanent end to the suborbital space tourism initiative, Ars reports. The small rocket and capsule have been flying since April 2015 and have combined to make 38 launches, all but one of which were successful, and 36 landings. In its existence, the New Shepard program flew 98 people to space, however briefly, and launched more than 200 scientific and research payloads into the microgravity environment.

Moon first… So why is Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos more than a quarter of a century ago, ending the company’s longest-running program? “We will redirect our people and resources toward further acceleration of our human lunar capabilities inclusive of New Glenn,” wrote the company’s chief executive, Dave Limp, in an internal email on January 30. “We have an extraordinary opportunity to be a part of our nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.” The cancellation came, generally, as a surprise to Blue Origin employees. The company flew its most recent mission a week prior to the announcement, launching six people into space.

Sign Me Up!

Firefly nears return to flight. Firefly Aerospace is preparing to launch its next 1-ton-class Alpha rocket later this month from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The Texas-based company announced last month that it shipped the Alpha rocket to the California spaceport, and a follow-up post on social media on January 29 showed a video of the rocket rolling out to its launch pad for testing. “Alpha is vertical on the pad and getting ready for our static fire ahead of the Stairway to Seven mission!” Firefly wrote on X.

Getting back on track... This is an important mission for Firefly’s Alpha rocket program. On the most recent Alpha flight last April, the rocket’s first stage exploded in flight, moments after separation from the second stage. The blast wave damaged the upper stage engine, preventing it from reaching orbit with a small commercial tech demo satellite. Then, in September, the booster stage for the next Alpha launch was destroyed during a preflight test in Texas. Firefly says the upcoming mission is purely a test flight and won’t fly with any customer payloads. The company announced that an upgraded “Block II” version of the Alpha rocket will debut on the subsequent mission.

China to test next-gen crew capsule. China is gearing up for an important test of its new Mengzhou spacecraft, perhaps as soon as February 11, according to airspace warning notices issued around the Wenchang spaceport on Hainan Island. Images from public viewing sites around the launch site showed a test model of the Mengzhou spacecraft being lifted atop a booster stage this week. The flight next week is expected to include an in-flight test of the capsule’s launch abort system. Mengzhou is China’s next-generation crew spacecraft for human flights to the Moon. It will also replace China’s Shenzhou crew spacecraft used for flights to the Tiangong space station in low-Earth orbit.

Proceeding apace... The in-flight abort test follows a pad abort test of the Mengzhou spacecraft last year as China marches toward the program’s first orbital test flight. The booster stage for the in-flight abort test is a subscale version of China’s new Long March 10 rocket, the partially reusable human-rated launcher under development for the country’s lunar program. Therefore, next week’s milestone flight will serve as an important test of not only the Mengzhou spacecraft but also its rocket.

SpaceX confirms upper stage malfunction. SpaceX kicked off the month of February with a Monday morning Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. However, the rocket experienced an anomaly near the end of the mission, Spaceflight Now reports. The rocket deployed its payload of 25 Starlink satellites as planned, but SpaceX said the Falcon 9’s second stage “experienced an off-nominal condition” during preparation for an engine firing to steer back into the atmosphere for a guided, destructive reentry. The rocket remained in a low-altitude orbit and made an unguided reentry later in the week.

Launches temporarily on hold... “Teams are reviewing data to determine root cause and corrective actions before returning to flight,” SpaceX said in a statement. A Starlink launch from Florida originally planned for this week is now on hold. SpaceX returned the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairing, containing the Starlink payloads, from the launch pad back to the hangar at Kennedy Space Center to wait for the next launch opportunity. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 team in Florida is now focusing on preparations for launch of the Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station, targeted for no earlier than February 11. The schedule for Crew-12 will hinge on how quickly SpaceX can complete the investigation into Monday’s upper stage malfunction. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Amazon’s new booking with SpaceX. Amazon has purchased an additional 10 Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX as part of its efforts to accelerate deployment of its broadband satellite constellation, Space News reports. The deal, which neither Amazon nor SpaceX previously announced, was disclosed in an Amazon filing with the Federal Communications Commission on January 30, seeking an extension of a July deadline to deploy half of its Amazon Leo constellation. Amazon has launched only 180 satellites of its planned 3,232-satellite constellation, rendering the July deadline unattainable. Amazon asked the FCC to extend the July deadline by two years or waive it entirely, but did not request an extension to the 2029 deadline for full deployment of the constellation.

“Near-term shortage in launch capacity”… In the filing with the FCC, Amazon said it faces a “near-term shortage of launch capacity” and is securing additional launch options “wherever available.” That effort includes working with SpaceX, whose Starlink constellation directly competes with Amazon Leo. Amazon bypassed SpaceX entirely when it made its initial orders for more than 80 Amazon Leo launches with United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But Amazon later reserved three launches with SpaceX that flew last year and has now added 10 more SpaceX launches to its manifest. So far, Amazon has only launched satellites on ULA’s soon-to-retire Atlas V rocket and SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Amazon has not started flying on the new Vulcan, Ariane 6, or New Glenn rockets, which comprise the bulk of the constellation’s launch bookings. That could change next week with the first launch of Amazon Leo satellites on Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China launches satellite for Algeria. Algeria’s Alsat-3B mission, an Earth observation satellite developed in collaboration with China, launched aboard a Chinese Long March 2C rocket on January 30, Connecting Africa reports. Alsat-3B is the twin of Alsat-3A, which launched from China earlier in the month. Algeria’s government signed a contract with China in 2023 covering the development and launch of the two Alsat-3 satellites. Both satellites are designed to provide high‑resolution Earth observation imagery, enhancing Algeria’s geospatial intelligence capabilities.

Belt, road, and orbit… In a joint statement, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the Algerian remote-sensing satellite project is another successful example of China-Algeria aerospace cooperation and an important demonstration of the two nations’ comprehensive strategic partnership. China has inked similar space-related partnerships to produce and launch satellites for other African nations, including Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Sudan.

Soyuz-5 launch set for March. Just a few months ago, Russia aimed to launch the first flight of the new Soyuz-5 medium-lift rocket before the end of 2025. Now, the Soyuz-5’s debut test flight is targeted for the end of March, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Dmitry Baranov, the deputy head of Roscosmos, announced the new schedule at a scientific conference in Moscow. The mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan would mark the first flight of a new Russian rocket since 2014.

A reactionary rocket… Ars has reported on the Soyuz-5 project before. While the rocket will use a new overall design, the underlying technology is not all that new. The Soyuz-5, also named Irtysh, is intended to be a replacement for the Zenit rocket, a medium-lift launcher developed in the final years before the fall of the Soviet Union. The Zenit rocket’s main stages were manufactured in Ukraine, and tensions between Russia and Ukraine spelled the end of the Zenit program even before Russia invaded its neighbor in 2022. The Soyuz-5 uses a modified version of the RD-171 engine that has flown since the 1980s. This new RD-171 design uses all Russian components. The upper stage engine is based on the same design flown on Russia’s workhorse Soyuz-2 rocket.

Fueling test reveals leaks on SLS rocket. The launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first flight of astronauts to the Moon in more than 53 years, will have to wait another month after a fueling test on Monday uncovered hydrogen leaks in the connection between the rocket and its launch platform at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. The practice countdown was designed to identify problems and provide NASA an opportunity to fix them before launch. Most importantly, the test revealed NASA still has not fully resolved recurring hydrogen leaks that delayed the launch of the unpiloted Artemis I test flight by several months in 2022. Artemis I finally launched successfully after engineers revised their hydrogen loading procedures to overcome the leak.

Hardware poor… Now, the second Space Launch System (SLS) rocket is on the cusp of launching a crew for the first time. Even as it reaches maturity, the rocket is going nowhere fast. It has been more than three years since NASA discovered leaks on the first SLS rocket. The rocket alone costs more than $2 billion to build. The program is hardware poor, leaving NASA unable to build a test model that might have been used to troubleshoot and resolve the hydrogen leaks before the agency proceeded into the Artemis II launch campaign. “Every SLS rocket is a work of art, every launch campaign an adventure, every mission subject to excessive delays. It’s definitely not ideal,” Ars reported in a story examining this problem.

SpaceX, meet xAI. SpaceX has formally acquired another one of Elon Musk’s companies, xAi, Ars reports. The merging of what is arguably Musk’s most successful company, SpaceX, with the more speculative xAI venture is a risk. Founded in 2023, xAI’s main products are the generative AI chatbot Grok and the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. The company aims to compete with OpenAI and other artificial intelligence firms. However, Grok has been controversial, including the sexualization of women and children through AI-generated images, as has Musk’s management of Twitter.

Lots of assumptions… There can be no question that the merger of SpaceX—the world’s premier spaceflight company—and the artificial intelligence firm offers potential strategic advances. With this merger, Musk plans to use SpaceX’s deep expertise in rapid launch and satellite manufacturing and management to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million orbital data centers, providing the backbone of computing power needed to support xAI’s operations. All of this is predicated on several assumptions, including that AI is not a bubble, orbital data centers are cost-competitive compared to ground-based data centers, and that compute is the essential roadblock that will unlock widespread adoption of AI in society. Speculative, indeed, but only SpaceX has a rocket that might one day be able to realistically deploy a million satellites.

Starship testing resumes. The enormous rocket we’re talking about, of course, is SpaceX’s Starship. Ground teams at Starbase, Texas, have rolled the Super Heavy booster for SpaceX’s next Starship flight to a test stand for a series of checkouts ahead of the flight, currently slated for sometime in March. This will be the first launch of SpaceX’s upgraded “Block 3” Starship, with improvements aimed at making the rocket more reliable following several setbacks with Starship Block 2 last year.

Frosty night on the border… This is the second time a Block 3 booster has made the trip to the test stand at Starbase, located just north of the US-Mexico border. Booster 18 suffered a structural failure at the test site in November, forcing SpaceX to scrap it and complete the next rocket in line, Booster 19. On Wednesday night, SpaceX put Booster 19 through cryogenic proof testing, clearing a key milestone on the path to launch. The next flight will likely follow a similar profile as previous Starship missions, with a suborbital arc carrying the ship from its South Texas launch base to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. If successful, the test will pave the way for bigger tests to come, including an in-space refueling demo and the catch and recovery of a Starship vehicle returning from space.

Next three launches

Feb. 7: Long March 2F | Chinese spaceplane? | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 03: 55 UTC

Feb. 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-33 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 17: 05 UTC

Feb. 11: Falcon 9 | Crew-12 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 11: 01 UTC

Rocket Report: SpaceX probes upper stage malfunction; Starship testing resumes Read More »

SpaceX acquires xAI, plans to launch a massive satellite constellation to power it

AI, orbital data centers, Space, spacex, xAI / Paul Patrick / February 2, 2026

We’re going to need more X’s

“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission.”

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

SpaceX has formally acquired another one of Elon Musk’s companies, xAi, the space company announced on Monday afternoon.

“SpaceX has acquired xAI to form the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform,” the company said. “This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!”

The merging of what is arguably Musk’s most successful company, SpaceX, with the more speculative xAI venture is a risk. Founded in 2023, xAI’s main products are the generative AI chatbot, Grok, and the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. The company aims to compete with OpenAI and other artificial intelligence firms. However, Grok has been controversial, including the sexualization of women and children through AI-generated images, as has Musk’s management of Twitter.

Vertically integrating AI and space

There can be no question that the merger of SpaceX—the world’s premiere spaceflight company—and the artificial intelligence firm offer potential strategic advances. Musk strongly believes that artificial intelligence is central to humanity’s future and wants to be among those leading in its development. With this merger, he plans to use SpaceX’s deep expertise in rapid launch and satellite manufacturing and management to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million orbital data centers. This will provide the backbone of computing power needed to support xAI’s operations.

Musk’s plan for the merged companies is predicated on several assumptions, including that AI is not a bubble, but rather a technology that will be fully embraced in the future; that orbital data centers are cost-competitive compared to ground-based data centers; and that compute is the essential roadblock that must be solved for widespread adoption of AI by society.

If these assumptions are true, the merged SpaceX-xAI company holds a powerful position. It could potentially own a full stack of capabilities, from launch to orbital bandwidth to frontier AI models, and with Starlink Internet, it could provide AI on demand, anywhere in the world, to any mobile device.

SpaceX already has the world’s workhorse reusable rocket with the Falcon 9. It can presently deliver about 20 tons to low-Earth orbit for an internal cost of $15 million, compared to more than four or five times that on the open market. Moreover, SpaceX is working toward fully reusable super heavy lift rocket with its Starship vehicle.

The privately held company also operates more satellites, about 9,600, than any other country or company in the world by a factor of 10. It has extensive operations not just in deploying but also in operating this constellation over the last decade. This is not a simple capability.

“I would say there have been as many engineering advancements in orbital safety and collision prevention in the last 10 years as there have been advances in rocketry, and that may have gone unnoticed,” said Brian Weeden, director of civil and commercial policy at The Aerospace Corporation, in an interview.

“Happening really fast”

In an email to SpaceX employees on Monday, Musk said Starship will begin launching V3 Starlink satellites into orbit this year, as well as the next generation of direct-to-mobile satellites. The launches, he said, will be a “forcing function” to improve the performance of Starship, making it more rapidly reusable for data center deployment.

“The sheer number of satellites that will be needed for space-based data centers will push Starship to even greater heights,” Musk wrote. “With launches every hour carrying 200 tons per flight, Starship will deliver millions of tons to orbit and beyond per year, enabling an exciting future where humanity is out exploring amongst the stars.”

Musk told employees that launching 1 million tons per year of satellites, generating 100 kW of compute power per ton, would add 100 gigawatts of AI compute capacity annually, “with no ongoing operational or maintenance needs.” Ultimately, Musk believes there is a path to launching 1 TW/year from Earth.

“My estimate is that within 2 to 3 years, the lowest cost way to generate AI compute will be in space,” Musk wrote. “This cost-efficiency alone will enable innovative companies to forge ahead in training their AI models and processing data at unprecedented speeds and scales, accelerating breakthroughs in our understanding of physics and invention of technologies to benefit humanity.”

Musk is clearly bullish on the future of AI and on space’s potential to address the voracious power needs of AI data centers. Many people in the AI industry speculate that artificial intelligence is likely to go through serious and sustained growing pains, or doubt that space-based data centers can compete with operations built on the ground. But Musk, more than anyone, has the means to press forward the bull case for space-based AI, and he is going for it.

Monday’s merger follows an ultra-ambitious filing on Friday with the Federal Communications Commission in which SpaceX sought permission to launch 1 million satellites that will operate as “orbital data centers.” The company said it would deploy the satellites to orbits with an altitude between 500 and 2,000km, and 30-degree and Sun-synchronous inclinations.

SpaceX also recently announced its plans to deploy a space situational awareness system, called Stargaze, that will use star trackers to provide data on potential conjunctions between satellites in orbit. The goal is to help de-conflict satellite trajectories and avoid collisions in low-Earth orbit.

“This is all happening really fast,” said Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability for Secure World Foundation, in an interview.

Crowded orbits

Samson said that, at present, satellites have a fairly large “bubble” of space around them when it comes to collision detection. This is because of uncertainties in the precise location and movement of vehicles. If you improve space situational awareness, such as what SpaceX seeks to do with Stargaze, those bubbles could be shrunk to reduce the number of potential collision warnings. But that will come with risks.

“There’s a lot of room in space, of course,” Samson said. “But the question is, how much risk do you want to take?”

A technical expert at The Aerospace Corporation, Marlon Sorge, told Ars that many unanswered questions about SpaceX’s proposed megaconstellation for orbital data centers make it difficult to assess the risks of collision. This includes their size (they will require very large solar arrays to collect sunlight) and precisely where the satellites will be deployed. There is already a lot of debris at around 800 to 1,000 km above Earth from previous collisions, including from an infamous Chinese anti-satellite missile test in 2007, which created more than 3,000 pieces of golf-ball-sized or larger debris.

Above that altitude, there is less debris, Sorge said. But objects at that altitude take centuries to deorbit naturally, due to the very limited atmosphere.

“The big challenge at those altitudes is the stuff that’s up there stays up there,” Sorge said. “If you generate more debris, if you have problems, it won’t go away, so you’re stuck with it.”

SpaceX sought to address these concerns in its regulatory filing, noting that each satellite would have “redundant maneuverability capabilities” in order to deorbit into Earth’s atmosphere. The filing also appears to recognize emerging science that indicates that aluminum burning up from reentering satellites is harmful to ozone levels. To address this, SpaceX is considering moving aging satellites into “high altitude Earth orbits or heliocentric orbits.”

However, Sorge noted that the amount of energy, or delta-V, needed to move a satellite from low-Earth orbit into a heliocentric orbit is “non-trivial.”

Has SpaceX lost its way?

One of the many questions raised by the new merger is whether SpaceX has lost its way. Musk founded the company in 2002 with the singular purpose of settling Mars, an audacious if not impossible goal at the time. In the decades since, SpaceX has made credible progress toward Mars, and with Starship, humanity has for the first time a transportation system potentially capable of landing humans on the red planet.

But acquiring an AI company and putting so much effort into orbital data centers? Is this consistent with the Mars mission? Musk clearly thinks it is.

“While launching AI satellites from Earth is the immediate focus, Starship’s capabilities will also enable operations on other worlds,” he wrote. “Thanks to advancements like in-space propellant transfer, Starship will be capable of landing massive amounts of cargo on the Moon. Once there, it will be possible to establish a permanent presence for scientific and manufacturing pursuits. Factories on the Moon can take advantage of lunar resources to manufacture satellites and deploy them further into space.”

And from there, he said, Mars will be firmly on the horizon.

“The capabilities we unlock by making space-based data centers a reality will fund and enable self-growing bases on the Moon, an entire civilization on Mars and ultimately expansion to the Universe,” he wrote.

That’s the vision, at least.

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