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There are some things the Crew-8 astronauts aren’t ready to talk about

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“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it. I said we’re not going to talk about it.”

NASA astronaut Michael Barratt works with a spacesuit inside the Quest airlock of the International Space Station on May 31. Credit: NASA

The astronauts who came home from the International Space Station last month experienced some drama on the high frontier, and some of it accompanied them back to Earth.

In orbit, the astronauts aborted two spacewalks, both under unusual circumstances. Then, on October 25, one of the astronauts was hospitalized due to what NASA called an unspecified “medical issue” after splashdown aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule that concluded the 235-day mission. After an overnight stay in a hospital in Florida, NASA said the astronaut was released “in good health” and returned to their home base in Houston to resume normal post-flight activities.

The space agency did not identify the astronaut or any details about their condition, citing medical privacy concerns. The three NASA astronauts on the Dragon spacecraft included commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialist Jeanette Epps. Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin accompanied the three NASA crew members. Russia’s space agency confirmed he was not hospitalized after returning to Earth.

Dominick, Barratt, and Epps answered media questions in a post-flight press conference Friday, but they did not offer more information on the medical issue or say who experienced it. NASA initially sent all four crew members to the hospital in Pensacola, Florida, for evaluation, but Grebenkin and two of the NASA astronauts were quickly released and cleared to return to Houston. One astronaut remained behind until the next day.

“Spaceflight is still something we don’t fully understand,” said Barratt, a medical doctor and flight surgeon. “We’re finding things that we don’t expect sometimes. This was one of those times, and we’re still piecing things together on this, and so to maintain medical privacy and to let our processes go forward in an orderly manner, this is all we’re going to say about that event at this time.”

NASA typically makes astronaut health data available to outside researchers, who regularly publish papers while withholding identifying information about crew members. NASA officials often tout gaining knowledge about the human body’s response to spaceflight as one of the main purposes of the International Space Station. The agency is subject to federal laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, restricting the release of private medical information.

“I did not say I was uncomfortable talking about it,” Barratt said. “I said we’re not going to talk about it. I’m a medical doctor. Space medicine is my passion … and how we adapt, how we experience human spaceflight is something that we all take very seriously.”

Maybe some day

Barratt said NASA will release more information about the astronaut’s post-flight medical issue “in the fullness of time.” This was Barratt’s third trip to space and the first spaceflight for Dominick and Epps.

One of the most famous incidents involving hospitalized astronauts was in 1975, before the passage of the HIPAA medical privacy law, when NASA astronauts Thomas Stafford, Deke Slayton, and Vance Brand stayed at a military hospital in Hawaii nearly two weeks after inhaling toxic propellant fumes that accidentally entered their spacecraft’s internal cabin as it descended under parachutes. They were returning to Earth at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, in which they docked their Apollo command module to a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in orbit.

NASA’s view—and perhaps the public’s, too—of medical privacy has changed in the nearly 50 years since. On that occasion, NASA disclosed that the astronauts suffered from lung irritation, and officials said Brand briefly passed out from the fumes after splashdown, remaining unconscious until his crewmates fitted an oxygen mask tightly over his face. NASA and the military also made doctors available to answer media questions about their condition.

The medical concern after splashdown last month was not the only part of the Crew-8 mission that remains shrouded in mystery. Dominick and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson were supposed to go outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk June 13, but NASA called off the excursion, citing a “spacesuit discomfort issue.” NASA replaced Dominick with Barratt and rescheduled the spacewalk for June 24 to retrieve a faulty electronics box and collect microbial samples from the exterior of the space station. But that excursion ended after just 31 minutes, when Dyson reported a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit of her spacesuit.

While Barratt discussed the water leak in some detail Friday, Dominick declined to answer a question from Ars regarding the suit discomfort issue. “We’re still reviewing and trying to figure all the details,” he said.

Aging suits

Regarding the water leak, Barratt said he and Dyson noticed her suit had a “spewing umbilical, which was quite dramatic, actually.” The decision to abandon the spacewalk was a “no-brainer,” he said.

“It was not a trivial leak, and we’ve got footage,” Barratt said. “Anybody who was watching NASA TV at the time could see there was basically a snowstorm, a blizzard, spewing from the airlock because we already had the hatch open. So we were seeing flakes of ice in the airlock, and Tracy was seeing a lot of them on her helmet, on her gloves, and whatnot. Dramatic is the right word, to be real honest.”

Dyson, who came back to Earth in September on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, reconnected the leaking umbilical with her gloves and helmet covered with ice, with restricted vision. “Tracy’s actions were nowhere short of heroic,” Barratt said.

Once the leak stabilized, the astronauts closed the hatch and began repressurizing the airlock.

“Getting the airlock closed was kind of me grabbing her legs and using her as an end effector to lever that thing closed, and she just made it happen,” Barratt said. “So, yeah,  there was this drama. Everything worked out fine. Again, normal processes and procedures saved our bacon.”

Barratt said the leak wasn’t caused by any procedural error as the astronauts prepared their suits for the spacewalk.

“It was definitely a hardware issue,” he said. “There was a little poppet valve on the interface that didn’t quite seat, so really, the question became why didn’t that seat? We solved that problem by changing out the whole umbilical.”

By then, NASA’s attention on the space station had turned to other tasks, such as experiments, the arrival of a new cargo ship, and testing of Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule docked at the complex, before it ultimately departed and left its crew behind. The spacewalk wasn’t urgent, so it had to wait. NASA now plans to attempt the spacewalk again as soon as January with a different set of astronauts.

Barratt thinks the spacesuits on the space station are good to go for the next spacewalk. However, the suits are decades old, and their original designs date back more than 40 years, when NASA developed the units for use on the space shuttle. Efforts to develop a replacement suit for use in low-Earth orbit have stalled. In June, Collins Aerospace dropped out of a NASA contract to build new spacesuits for servicing the International Space Station and future orbiting research outposts.

“None of our spacesuits are spring chickens, so we will expect to see some hardware issues with repeated use and not really upgrading,” Barratt said.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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Rocket Report: Australia says yes to the launch; Russia delivers for Iran

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The world’s first wooden satellite arrived at the International Space Station this week.

A Falcon 9 booster fires its engines on SpaceX’s “tripod” test stand in McGregor, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.19 of the Rocket Report! Okay, we get it. We received more submissions from our readers on Australia’s approval of a launch permit for Gilmour Space than we’ve received on any other news story in recent memory. Thank you for your submissions as global rocket activity continues apace. We’ll cover Gilmour in more detail as they get closer to launch. There will be no Rocket Report next week as Eric and I join the rest of the Ars team for our 2024 Technicon in New York.

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.

Gilmour Space has a permit to fly. Gilmour Space Technologies has been granted a permit to launch its 82-foot-tall (25-meter) orbital rocket from a spaceport in Queensland, Australia. The space company, founded in 2012, had initially planned to lift off in March but was unable to do so without approval from the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. The government approved Gilmour’s launch permit Monday, although the company is still weeks away from flying its three-stage Eris rocket.

A first for Australia … Australia hosted a handful of satellite launches with US and British rockets from 1967 through 1971, but Gilmour’s Eris rocket would become the first all-Australian launch vehicle to reach orbit. The Eris rocket is capable of delivering about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) of payload mass into a Sun-synchronous orbit. Eris will be powered by hybrid rocket engines burning a solid fuel mixed with a liquid oxidizer, making it unique among orbital-class rockets. Gilmour completed a wet dress rehearsal, or practice countdown, with the Eris rocket on the launch pad in Queensland in September. The launch permit becomes active after 30 days, or the first week of December. “We do think we’ve got a good chance of launching at the end of the 30-day period, and we’re going to give it a red hot go,” said Adam Gilmour, the company’s co-founder and CEO. (submitted by Marzipan, mryall, ZygP, Ken the Bin, Spencer Willis, MarkW98, and EllPeaTea)

North Korea tests new missile. North Korea apparently completed a successful test of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile on October 31, lofting it nearly 4,800 miles (7,700 kilometers) into space before the projectile fell back to Earth, Ars reports. This solid-fueled, multi-stage missile, named the Hwasong-19, is a new tool in North Korea’s increasingly sophisticated arsenal of weapons. It has enough range—perhaps as much as 9,320 miles (15,000 kilometers), according to Japan’s government—to strike targets anywhere in the United States. It also happens to be one of the largest ICBMs in the world, rivaling the missiles fielded by the world’s more established nuclear powers.

Quid pro quo? … The Hwasong-19 missile test comes as North Korea deploys some 10,000 troops inside Russia to support the country’s war against Ukraine. The budding partnership between Russia and North Korea has evolved for several years. Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on multiple occasions, most recently in Pyongyang in June. This has fueled speculation about what Russia is offering North Korea in exchange for the troops deployed on Russian soil. US and South Korean officials have some thoughts. They said North Korea is likely to ask for technology transfers in diverse areas related to tactical nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and reconnaissance satellites.

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Virgin Galactic is on the hunt for cash. Virgin Galactic is proposing to raise $300 million in additional capital to accelerate production of suborbital spaceplanes and a mothership aircraft the company says can fuel its long-term growth, Space News reports. The company, founded by billionaire Richard Branson, suspended operations of its VSS Unity suborbital spaceplane earlier this year. VSS Unity hit a monthly flight cadence carrying small groups of space tourists and researchers to the edge of space, but it just wasn’t profitable. Now, Virgin Galactic is developing larger Delta-class spaceplanes it says will be easier and cheaper to turn around between flights.

All-in with Delta … Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s CEO, announced the company’s appetite for fundraising in a quarterly earnings call with investment analysts Wednesday. He said manufacturing of components for Virgin Galactic’s first two Delta-class ships, which the company says it can fund with existing cash, is proceeding on schedule at a factory in Arizona. Virgin Galactic previously said it would use revenue from paying passengers on its first two Delta-class ships to pay for development of future vehicles. Instead, Virgin Galactic now says it wants to raise money to speed up work on the third and fourth Delta-class vehicles, along with a second airplane mothership to carry the spaceplanes aloft before they release and fire into space. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

ESA breaks its silence on Themis. The European Space Agency has provided a rare update on the progress of its Themis reusable booster demonstrator project, European Spaceflight reports. ESA is developing the Themis test vehicle for atmospheric flights to fine-tune technologies for a future European reusable rocket capable of vertical takeoffs and vertical landings. Themis started out as a project led by CNES, the French space agency, in 2018. ESA member states signed up to help fund the project in 2019, and the agency awarded ArianeGroup a contract to move forward with Themis in 2020. At the time, the first low-altitude hop test was expected to take place in 2022.

Some slow progress … Now, the first low-altitude hop is scheduled for 2025 from Esrange Space Centre in Sweden, a three-year delay. This week, ESA said engineers have completed testing of the Themis vehicle’s main systems, and assembly of the demonstrator is underway in France. A single methane-fueled Prometheus engine, also developed by ArianeGroup, has been installed on the rocket. Teams are currently adding avionics, computers, electrical systems, and cable harnesses. Themis’ stainless steel propellant tanks have been manufactured, tested, and cleaned and are now ready to be installed on the Themis demonstrator. Then, the rocket will travel by road from France to the test site in Sweden for its initial low-altitude hops. After those flights are complete, officials plan to add two more Prometheus engines to the rocket and ship it to French Guiana for high-altitude test flights. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

SpaceX will give the ISS a boost. A Cargo Dragon spacecraft docked to the International Space Station on Tuesday morning, less than a day after lifting off from Florida. As space missions go, this one is fairly routine, ferrying about 6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of cargo and science experiments to the space station. One thing that’s different about this mission is that it delivered to the station a tiny 2 lb (900 g) satellite named LignoSat, the first spacecraft made of wood, for later release outside the research complex. There is one more characteristic of this flight that may prove significant for NASA and the future of the space station, Ars reports. As early as Friday, NASA and SpaceX have scheduled a “reboost and attitude control demonstration,” during which the Dragon spacecraft will use some of the thrusters at the base of the capsule. This is the first time the Dragon spacecraft will be used to move the space station.

Dragon’s breath … Dragon will fire a subset of its 16 Draco thrusters, each with about 90 pounds of thrust, for approximately 12.5 minutes to make a slight adjustment to the orbital trajectory of the roughly 450-ton space station. SpaceX and NASA engineers will analyze the results from the demonstration to determine if Dragon could be used for future space station reboost opportunities. The data will also inform the design of the US Deorbit Vehicle, which SpaceX is developing to perform the maneuvers required to bring the space station back to Earth for a controlled, destructive reentry in the early 2030s. For NASA, demonstrating Dragon’s ability to move the space station will be another step toward breaking free of reliance on Russia, which is currently responsible for providing propulsion to maneuver the orbiting outpost. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship also previously demonstrated a reboost capability. (submitted by Ken the Bin and N35t0r)

Russia launches Soyuz in service of Iran. Russia launched a Soyuz rocket Monday carrying two satellites designed to monitor the space weather around Earth and 53 small satellites, including two Iranian ones, Reuters reports. The primary payloads aboard the Soyuz-2.1b rocket were two Ionosfera-M satellites to probe the ionosphere, an outer layer of the atmosphere near the edge of space. Solar activity can alter conditions in the ionosphere, impacting communications and navigation. The two Iranian satellites on this mission were named Kowsar and Hodhod. They will collect high-resolution reconnaissance imagery and support communications for Iran.

A distant third … This was only the 13th orbital launch by Russia this year, trailing far behind the United States and China. We know of two more Soyuz flights planned for later this month, but no more, barring a surprise military launch (which is possible). The projected launch rate puts Russia on pace for its quietest year of launch activity since 1961, the year Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space. A major reason for this decline in launches is the decisions of Western governments and companies to move their payloads off of Russian rockets after the invasion of Ukraine. For example, OneWeb stopped launching on Soyuz in 2022, and the European Space Agency suspended its partnership with Russia to launch Soyuz rockets from French Guiana. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

H3 deploys Japanese national security satellite. Japan launched a defense satellite Monday aimed at speedier military operations and communication on an H3 rocket and successfully placed it into orbit, the Associated Press reports. The Kirameki 3 satellite will use high-speed X-band communication to support Japan’s defense ministry with information and data sharing, and command and control services. The satellite will serve Japanese land, air, and naval forces from its perch in geostationary orbit alongside two other Kirameki communications satellites.

Gaining trust … The H3 is Japan’s new flagship rocket, developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and funded by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The launch of Kirameki 3 marked the third consecutive successful launch of the H3 rocket, following a debut flight in March 2023 that failed to reach orbit. This was the first time Japan’s defense ministry put one of its satellites on the H3 rocket. The first two Kirameki satellites launched on a European Ariane 5 and a Japanese H-IIA rocket, which the H3 will replace. (submitted by Ken the Bin, tsunam, and EllPeaTea)

Rocket Lab enters the race for military contracts. Rocket Lab is aiming to chip away at SpaceX’s dominance in military space launch, confirming its bid to compete for Pentagon contracts with its new medium-lift rocket, Neutron, Space News reports. Last month, the Space Force released a request for proposals from launch companies seeking to join the military’s roster of launch providers in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. The Space Force will accept bids for launch providers to “on-ramp” to the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 contract, which doles out task orders to launch companies for individual missions. In order to win a task order, a launch provider must be on the Phase 3 Lane 1 contract. Currently, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin are the only rocket companies eligible. SpaceX won all of the first round of Lane 1 task orders last month.

Joining the club … The Space Force is accepting additional risk for Lane 1 missions, which largely comprise repeat launches deploying a constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites for the Space Development Agency. A separate class of heavy-lift missions, known as Lane 2, will require rockets to undergo a thorough certification by the Space Force to ensure their reliability. In order for a launch company to join the Lane 1 roster, the Space Force requires bidders to be ready for a first launch by December 2025. Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, said he thinks the Neutron rocket will be ready for its first launch by then. Other new medium-lift rockets, such as Firefly Aerospace’s MLV and Relativity’s Terran-R, almost certainly won’t be ready to launch by the end of next year, leaving Rocket Lab as the only company that will potentially join incumbents SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next Starship flight is just around the corner. Less than a month has passed since the historic fifth flight of SpaceX’s Starship, during which the company caught the booster with mechanical arms back at the launch pad in Texas. Now, another test flight could come as soon as November 18, Ars reports. The improbable but successful recovery of the Starship first stage with “chopsticks” last month, and the on-target splashdown of the Starship upper stage halfway around the world, allowed SpaceX to avoid an anomaly investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Thus, the company was able to press ahead on a sixth test flight if it flew a similar profile. And that’s what SpaceX plans to do, albeit with some notable additions to the flight plan.

Around the edges … Perhaps the most significant change to the profile for Flight 6 will be an attempt to reignite a Raptor engine on Starship while it is in space. SpaceX tried to do this on a test flight in March but aborted the burn because the ship’s rolling motion exceeded limits. A successful demonstration of a Raptor engine relight could pave the way for SpaceX to launch Starship into a higher stable orbit around Earth on future test flights. This is required for SpaceX to begin using Starship to launch Starlink Internet satellites and perform in-orbit refueling experiments with two ships docked together. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China’s version of Starship. China has updated the design of its next-generation heavy-lift rocket, the Long March 9, and it looks almost exactly like a clone of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, Ars reports. The Long March 9 started out as a conventional-looking expendable rocket, then morphed into a launcher with a reusable first stage. Now, the rocket will have a reusable booster and upper stage. The booster will have 30 methane-fueled engines, similar to the number of engines on SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster. The upper stage looks remarkably like Starship, with flaps in similar locations. China intends to fly this vehicle for the first time in 2033, nearly a decade from now.

A vehicle for the Moon … The reusable Long March 9 is intended to unlock robust lunar operations for China, similar to the way Starship, and to some extent Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, promises to support sustained astronaut stays on the Moon’s surface. China says it plans to land its astronauts on the Moon by 2030, initially using a more conventional architecture with an expendable rocket named the Long March 10, and a lander reminiscent of NASA’s Apollo lunar lander. These will allow Chinese astronauts to remain on the Moon for a matter of days. With Long March 9, China could deliver massive loads of cargo and life support resources to sustain astronauts for much longer stays.

Ta-ta to the tripod. The large three-legged vertical test stand at SpaceX’s engine test site in McGregor, Texas, is being decommissioned, NASA Spaceflight reports. Cranes have started removing propellant tanks from the test stand, nicknamed the tripod, towering above the Central Texas prairie. McGregor is home to SpaceX’s propulsion test team and has 16 test cells to support firings of Merlin, Raptor, and Draco engines multiple times per day for the Falcon 9 rocket, Starship, and Dragon spacecraft.

Some history … The tripod might have been one of SpaceX’s most important assets in the company’s early years. It was built by Beal Aerospace for liquid-fueled rocket engine tests in the late 1990s. Beal Aerospace folded, and SpaceX took over the site in 2003. After some modifications, SpaceX installed the first qualification version of its Falcon 9 rocket on the tripod for a series of nine-engine test-firings leading up to the rocket’s inaugural flight in 2010. SpaceX test-fired numerous new Falcon 9 boosters on the tripod before shipping them to launch sites in Florida or California. Most recently, the tripod was used for testing of Raptor engines destined to fly on Starship and the Super Heavy booster.

Next three launches

Nov. 9:  Long March 2C | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 03: 40 UTC

Nov. 9: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 06: 14 UTC

Nov. 10:  Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-69 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 21: 28 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites

Commercial space, military space, National Reconnaissance Office, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex, spy satellite, starlink, starshield / /

“A satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time.”

This frame from a SpaceX video shows a stack of Starlink Internet satellites attached to the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, moments after jettison of the launcher’s payload fairing. Credit: SpaceX

The director of the National Reconnaissance Office has a message for US adversaries around the world.

“You can’t hide, because we’re constantly looking,” said Chris Scolese, a longtime NASA engineer who took the helm of the US government’s spy satellite agency in 2019.

The NRO is taking advantage of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite assembly line to build a network of at least 100 satellites, and perhaps many more, to monitor adversaries around the world. So far, more than 80 of these SpaceX-made spacecraft, each a little less than a ton in mass, have launched on four Falcon 9 rockets. There are more to come.

A large number of these mass-produced satellites, or what the NRO calls a “proliferated architecture,” will provide regularly updated imagery of foreign military installations and other sites of interest to US intelligence agencies. Scolese said the new swarm of satellites will “get us reasonably high-resolution imagery of the Earth, at a high rate of speed.”

This is a significant change in approach for the NRO, which has historically operated a smaller number of more expensive satellites, some as big as a school bus.

“We expect to quadruple the number of satellites we have to have on-orbit in the next decade,” said Col. Eric Zarybnisky, director of the NRO’s office of space launch, during an October 29 presentation at the Wernher von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

The NRO is not the only national security agency eyeing a constellation of satellites in low-Earth orbit. The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency plans to kick off a rapid-fire launch cadence next year to begin placing hundreds of small satellites in orbit to detect and track missiles threatening US or allied forces. The Space Force is also interested in buying its own set of SpaceX satellites for broadband connectivity.

The Pentagon started moving in this direction about a decade ago, when leaders raised concerns that the legacy fleets of military and spy satellites were at risk of attack. Now, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a handful of other companies, many of them startups, specialize in manufacturing and launching small satellites at relatively low cost.

“Why didn’t we do this earlier? Well, launch costs were high, right?” said Troy Meink, the NRO’s principal deputy director, in an October 17 discussion hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “The cost of entry was pretty high, which has come way down. Then, digital electronics has allowed us to build capability in a much smaller package, and a combination of those two is really what’s enabled it.”

A constant vigil

NRO officials still expect to require some large satellites with sharp-eyed optics—think of a Hubble Space Telescope pointed at Earth—to resolve the finest details of things like missile installations, naval fleets, or insurgent encampments. The drawback of this approach is that, at best, a few big optical or radar imaging satellites only fly over places of interest several times per day.

With the proliferated architecture, the NRO will capture views of most places on Earth a lot more often. Two of the most important metrics with a remote-sensing satellite system are imaging resolution and revisit time, or how often a satellite is over a specific location on Earth.

“We need to have persistence or fast revisit,” Scolese said on October 3 in a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit Washington think tank. “You can proliferate your architecture, put more satellites up there, so that a satellite is always coming over an area within a given reasonable amount of time that’s needed by the users. That’s what we’re doing with the proliferated architecture.

“That’s enabled by a really rich commercial industry that’s building hundreds or thousands of satellites,” Scolese said. “That allowed us to take those satellites, adapt them to our use at low cost, and apply whatever sensor is needed to go off and acquire the information that’s needed at whatever revisit time is required.”

The NRO’s logo for its proliferated satellite constellation, with the slogan “Strength in Numbers.”

Credit: National Reconnaissance Office

The NRO’s logo for its proliferated satellite constellation, with the slogan “Strength in Numbers.” Credit: National Reconnaissance Office

The NRO has identified other benefits, too. It’s a lot more difficult for a country like Russia or China to take out an entire constellation of satellites than to destroy or disable a single spy platform in orbit. Military officials have often referred to these expensive one-off satellites as “big juicy targets” for potential adversaries.

“It gives us a degree of resilience that we didn’t have before,” Scolese said.

The proliferated constellation also allows the NRO to be more nimble in responding to threats or new technologies. If a new type of sensor becomes available, or an adversary does something new that intelligence analysts want to look at, the NRO and its contractor can quickly swap out payloads on satellites going through the production line.

“That’s a huge change for an organization like the NRO,” Zarybnisky said. “It’s a catalyst. Another catalyst for innovation in the NRO is these smaller, lower price-point systems. Rapid turn time means you can introduce that next technology into the next generation and not wait for many years or even decades to introduce new technologies.”

Three-letter agencies

The NRO provides imaging, signals, and electronic intelligence data from its satellites to the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. Scolese said the NRO wants to get actionable information into the hands of users across the federal government as quickly as possible, but the volume of data coming down from hundreds of satellites presents a challenge.

“Once you go to a proliferated architecture and you’re going from a few satellites to tens of satellites to now hundreds of satellites, you have to change a lot of things, and we’re in the process of doing that,” Scolese said.

With so many satellites, it “means that it’s no longer possible for an individual sitting at a control center to say, ‘I know what this satellite is doing,'” Scolese said. “So we have to have the machines to go off and help us there. We need artificial intelligence, machine learning, automated processes to help us do that.”

“We will deliver data in seconds, not minutes, and not hours,” Zarybnisky said.

The existence of this constellation was made public in March, when Reuters reported the NRO was working with SpaceX to develop and deploy a network of satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX’s Starshield business unit is building the satellites under a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021, according to Reuters. This is remarkably inexpensive by the standards of the NRO, which has spent more money just constructing a satellite processing facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida (thanks to Eric Berger’s reporting in Reentry for this juicy tidbit).

Chris Scolese appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2019 during a confirmation hearing to become director of the National Reconnaissance Office.

Chris Scolese appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2019 during a confirmation hearing to become director of the National Reconnaissance Office. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Reuters reported Northrop Grumman is supplying sensors to mount on at least some of the SpaceX-built satellites, but their design and capabilities remain classified. The NRO, which usually keeps its work secret, officially acknowledged the program in April, a month before the first batch of satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

SpaceX revealed the existence of the Starshield division in 2022, the year after signing the NRO contract, as a vehicle for applying the company’s experience manufacturing Starlink Internet satellites to support US national security missions. SpaceX has built and launched more than 7,200 Starlink satellites since 2019, with more than 6,000 currently operational, 10 times larger than any other existing satellite constellation.

The current generation of Starlink satellites launch in batches of 20 to 23 spacecraft on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. They’re flat-packed one on top of the other inside the Falcon 9’s payload shroud, then released all at once in orbit. The NRO’s new satellites likely use the same basic design, launching in groups of roughly 21 satellites on each mission.

According to Scolese, the NRO owns these SpaceX-built satellites, rather than SpaceX owning them and supplying data to the government through a service contract arrangement. By the end of the year, the NRO’s director anticipates having at least 100 of these satellites in orbit, with additional launches expected through 2028.

“We are going from the demo phase to the operational phase, where we’re really going to be able to start testing all of this stuff out in a more operational way,” Scolese said.

The NRO is buttressing its network of government-owned satellites with data buys from commercial remote-sensing companies, such as Maxar, Planet, and BlackSky. One advantage of commercial imagery is the NRO can share it widely with allies and the public because it isn’t subject to top-secret classification restrictions.

Scolese said it’s important to maintain a diversity of sources and observation methods to overcome efforts from other nations to hide what they’re doing. This means using more satellites, as the NRO is doing with SpaceX and other commercial partners. It also means using electro-optical, radar, thermal infrared, and electronic detection sensors to fully characterize what intelligence analysts are seeing.

The NRO is also studying more exotic methods like quantum remote sensing, using the principles of quantum physics at the atomic level.

“There’s camouflage,” Scolese said. “There are lots of techniques that can be used, which means we have to go off and look at very different phenomenologies, and we’ve developed and are developing capabilities that will allow us to defeat those types of activities. Quantum sensing is one of them. You can’t really hide from fundamental physics.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

NRO chief: “You can’t hide” from our new swarm of SpaceX-built spy satellites Read More »

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Astronaut hospitalized after returning from 235-day space mission

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NASA said Friday one its astronauts is in a hospital in Florida for medical observation after a “normal” predawn splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico inside a SpaceX capsule.

The mission’s other three crew members were cleared to return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston after their own medical evaluations, NASA said.

The hospitalized astronaut “is in stable condition and under observation as a precautionary measure,” a NASA spokesperson said in a statement. The agency did not identify the astronaut or provide any more details about their condition, citing medical privacy protections.

Strapped into their seats onside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, the four-person crew splashed down just south of Pensacola, Florida, at 3: 29 am EDT (07: 29 UTC) Friday, wrapping up a 235-day mission in low-Earth orbit.

NASA extended their stay at the International Space Station earlier this year to accommodate schedule changes caused by the troubled test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, then to wait for better weather conditions in SpaceX’s recovery zones near Florida.

Commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, mission specialist Jeanette Epps, and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin were inside SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft for reentry and splashdown. NASA said one of its astronauts “experienced a medical issue” after the splashdown, and all four crew members were flown to Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola for medical evaluation.

Three of the crew members were later released and departed Pensacola on a NASA business jet to fly back to Houston, according to NASA. The unidentified astronaut remains at Ascension.

“We’re grateful to Ascension Sacred Heart for its support during this time, and we are proud of our team for its quick action to ensure the safety of our crew members,” the NASA spokesperson said. “NASA will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, left, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, second from left, Matthew Dominick, second from right, and Jeanette Epps, right are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after splashdown Friday morning.

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, left, NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, second from left, Matthew Dominick, second from right, and Jeanette Epps, right are seen inside the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft shortly after splashdown Friday morning. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

This mission, named Crew-8, was SpaceX’s eighth operational crew rotation flight to the space station under a multibillion-dollar commercial crew contract with NASA. This was the first flight to space for Dominick, Epps, and Grebenkin, and the third space mission for Barratt.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, released a photo of Grebenkin standing in Pensacola a few hours after splashdown. “After the space mission and splashdown, cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin feels great!” Roscosmos posted on its Telegram channel.

Adapting to Earth

This is not the first time an astronaut has been hospitalized after returning to Earth, but it is uncommon. South Korean astronaut Yi So-yeon was hospitalized for back pain after experiencing higher-than-expected g-forces during reentry in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2008.

Three NASA astronauts were hospitalized in Hawaii after splashing down at the end of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission in 1975. The astronauts suffered lung irritation after breathing in toxic vapors from the Apollo spacecraft’s thrusters in the final moments before splashdown.

Astronaut hospitalized after returning from 235-day space mission Read More »

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Why is Elon Musk talking to Vladimir Putin, and what does it mean for SpaceX?

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NASA chief says ties between SpaceX CEO and Putin should be investigated.

Elon Musk wears a black “Make America Great Again” ball cap while attending a campaign rally with Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, in October. Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

In a blockbuster story published Friday morning, The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk has been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about two years, with the discussions covering a range of issues from geopolitics to business to personal matters.

There are no on-the-record sources confirming the regular conversations between Musk and Putin, and Musk did not comment to the news organization. A Putin spokesperson said the Russian leader and Musk have had just one telephone call. However, the report is plausibly true, and the Journal cites “several current and former US, European, and Russian officials.” This is also not the first time there have been reports of contact between Musk and Putin.

The new story about Musk’s direct links to an avowed enemy of the United States immediately raised concerns among some prominent US officials who work with the billionaire entrepreneur, including NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“I don’t know if that story is true,” Nelson said in a conversation with Semafor on Friday morning. “If it’s true there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense.” Nelson added that the report should be investigated.

To Russia, with love

Musk’s motivations for speaking directly with Putin are not immediately clear. His largest companies, SpaceX and Tesla, do not do business directly with the Russian government. In fact, the rise of SpaceX as a dominant player has substantially harmed Russia’s space business in multiple ways: it helped force US rival United Launch Alliance to stop buying Russian rocket engines, it reduced demand for Russian commercial launch services, and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle allowed NASA to stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year for Russian transportation to the International Space Station.

Unlike Tesla’s complicated interactions with China, which give that country some leverage over Musk’s finances, Russia has no such levers. The most plausible answer for why Musk is conversing with Putin is that he sees himself as a global power broker and wants to do bold things like solve the Ukraine crisis. Musk has ideas and views for how the world should be, and developing relationships with world leaders will help advance those ideas. Musk is also opportunistic and must believe that he can manage Putin in a way that is advantageous to his personal and business aims.

One concern for US policymakers is that this could represent a break in a long-running symbiotic relationship between Musk and America. For a couple of decades the United States’ and Musk’s ambitions—to build electric cars, reusable rockets, and solve the world’s big problems with technology—have moved forward more or less harmoniously. Musk thrived amid America’s ethos of freedom and capitalism. The nation benefited from world-leading technology and economic development.

Nowhere has this relationship borne more fruit than at SpaceX, which has almost singlehandedly assured US preeminence in space for at least the next decade and probably beyond. Musk builds the best rockets, operates the only proven US human spacecraft, and flies more than half of the active satellites in Earth orbit. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe turned to SpaceX to get its most valuable satellites into space, and Starlink provided essential communications in Ukraine. NASA’s lunar program only succeeds if SpaceX’s Starship vehicle succeeds.

But in the last two years, the same time frame in which Musk has reportedly been in contact with Putin, the once symbiotic relationship between Musk and the United States has begun to fray. This has also coincided with Musk’s purchase of Twitter and increasing alignment with conservative politics.

Musk goes MAGA

Many Americans are celebrating Musk’s bromance with Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. They appreciate his embrace of Republican politics and the more than $100 million he has invested in Trump winning the presidency. In characteristic Musk fashion, he has gone all-in on a cause he deems essential to the future of his interests and those of humanity, even temporarily living in Pennsylvania.

But for many other Americans, the response to Musk’s activities has been revulsion. He has used social network X (formerly Twitter) to push an increasingly partisan viewpoint and peddled a stream of ideas and theories that can accurately be described as misinformation. These people are increasingly uncomfortable with Musk’s power over the US space program and the country’s electric vehicle industry, and ability to influence geopolitical affairs through the Starlink constellation for which there is no viable competitor at present. The idea that Musk is regularly conversing with Putin, an avowed foe of the United States and Western democracies, is deeply uncomfortable.

After nursing a libertarian streak for decades, Musk has become ultra-political. He is loved. He is hated. Because he is so personally embodied by the brands of his biggest companies—much of Tesla’s stock value is predicated on Musk’s perceived ability to steer into the future, and for all intents and purposes, Musk is SpaceX—there are bound to be consequences not just for the man, but for his brands.

Musk’s increasingly partisan positions have already affected Tesla, potentially reducing sales to Democratic-leaning voters. But until recently, SpaceX has largely flown above the fray. However, that could change. During Musk’s recent showdown with Brazil, for example, the Starlink Internet service was caught in the crosshairs.

Implications for SpaceX

At a minimum, in the wake of Friday’s report, Musk will likely face increased calls for the revocation of his national security clearance. As the launch provider for sensitive Department of Defense missions, Musk has access to privileged information about the capabilities of spy satellites and other national security assets. He also has critical contracts with the US military for Starlink communication services under the Starshield business unit.

In addition, Musk’s political activities are playing out as the US Space Force is beginning to award contracts as part of the latest round of national security launch missions, known as NSSL Phase 3. It is possible the US military could lean more into the Vulcan rocket and United Launch Alliance.

Some of the more ardent critics of Musk’s behavior have called for the US government to force Musk to divest his interest in SpaceX. Musk founded SpaceX more than 22 years ago and remains the dominant shareholder, with total autonomy to make decisions. This would be a nuclear option and, in reality, probably would do more harm than good to SpaceX, which for years has thrived on Musk’s audacious goals and relentless pressure to achieve remarkable feats. It seems unlikely to occur at this time.

What seems clear is that the publication of Friday’s article reflects the concerns of some people within the US intelligence community about Musk’s behavior, his ability to conduct Cowboy diplomacy, and the power his money and technologies give him as an individual.

What happens next will, undoubtedly, depend to some extent on the results of the US presidential election next month. A Trump victory would likely give Musk carte blanche to continue pursuing his interests, with the clear message to US agencies to enable his businesses rather than to restrict them for regulatory reasons. Musk would likely enjoy increased power to pursue his aims until the end of the Trump presidency or until falling out with Trump. Such a scenario certainly cannot be ruled out among two people who are accustomed to calling the shots and not being told no.

Should Kamala Harris win the presidency, a lot would hinge on how Musk responds to the election. He could say some mea culpas and probably move on, but if he goes the election-denier route, he and his businesses probably would face heightened scrutiny. US regulatory agencies could act with more zeal, and Musk’s activities could be more closely investigated for violation of US laws. And NASA and the US Space Force could do more to ensure that other US companies can emerge to challenge SpaceX’s dominance.

Photo of Eric Berger

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

Why is Elon Musk talking to Vladimir Putin, and what does it mean for SpaceX? Read More »

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After seeing hundreds of launches, SpaceX’s rocket catch was a new thrill

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For a few moments, my viewing angle made it look like the rocket was coming right at me.

Coming in for the catch. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas—I’ve taken some time to process what happened on the mudflats of South Texas a little more than a week ago and relived the scene in my mind countless times.

With each replay, it’s still as astonishing as it was when I saw it on October 13, standing on an elevated platform less than 4 miles away. It was surreal watching SpaceX’s enormous 20-story-tall Super Heavy rocket booster plummeting through the sky before being caught back at its launch pad by giant mechanical arms.

This is the way, according to SpaceX, to enable a future where it’s possible to rapidly reuse rockets, not too different from the way airlines turn around their planes between flights. This is required for SpaceX to accomplish the company’s mission, set out by Elon Musk two decades ago, of building a settlement on Mars.

Of course, SpaceX’s cameras got much better views of the catch than mine. This is one of my favorite video clips.

The final phase of Super Heavy’s landing burn used the three center Raptor engines to precisely steer into catch position pic.twitter.com/BxQbOmT4yk

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 14, 2024

In the near-term future, regularly launching and landing Super Heavy boosters, and eventually the Starship upper stage that goes into orbit, will make it possible for SpaceX to achieve the rapid-fire launch cadence the company needs to fulfill its contracts with NASA. The space agency is paying SpaceX roughly $4 billion to develop a human-rated version of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon under the umbrella of the Artemis program.

To make that happen, SpaceX must launch numerous Starship tankers over the course of a few weeks to a few months to refuel the Moon-bound Starship lander in low-Earth orbit. Rapid reuse is fundamental to the lunar lander architecture NASA chose for the first two Artemis landing missions.

SpaceX, which is funding most of Starship’s development costs, says upgraded versions will be capable of hauling 200 metric tons of payload to low-Earth orbit while flying often at a relatively low cost. This would unlock innumerable other potential applications for the US military and commercial industry.

Here’s a sampling of the photos I captured of SpaceX’s launch and catch, followed by the story of how I got them.

The fifth full-scale test flight of SpaceX’s new-generation Starship rocket lifted off from South Texas at sunrise Sunday morning. Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Some context

I probably spent too much time watching last week’s flight through my camera’s viewfinder, but I suspect I’ll see it many more times. After all, SpaceX wants to make this a routine occurrence, more common than the landings of the smaller Falcon 9 booster now happening several times per week.

Nine years ago, I watched from 7 miles away as SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 for the first time. This was the closest anyone not directly involved in the mission could watch as the Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, a few minutes after lifting off with a batch of commercial communications satellites.

Citing safety concerns, NASA and the US Air Force closed large swaths of the spaceport for the flight. Journalists and VIPs were kept far away, and the locations on the base where employees or special guests typically watch a launch were off-limits. The landing happened at night and played out like a launch in reverse, with the Falcon 9 booster settling to a smooth touchdown on a concrete landing pad a few miles from the launch site.

The Falcon 9 landing on December 21, 2015, came after several missed landings on SpaceX’s floating offshore drone ship. With the Super Heavy booster, SpaceX nailed the catch on the first try.

The catch method means the rocket doesn’t need to carry landing legs, as the Falcon 9 does. This reduces the rocket’s weight and complexity, and theoretically reduces the amount of time and money needed to prepare the rocket to fly again.

I witnessed the first catch of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster last week from just outside the restricted zone around the company’s sprawling Starbase launch site in South Texas. Deputies from the local sheriff’s office patrolled the area to ensure no one strayed inside the keep-out area and set up roadblocks to turn away anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there.

The launch was early in the morning, so I arrived late the night before at a viewing site run by Rocket Ranch, a campground that caters to SpaceX fans seeking a front-row seat to the goings-on at Starbase. Some SpaceX employees, several other reporters, and media photographers were there, too.

There are other places to view a Starship launch. Condominium and hotel towers on South Padre Island roughly 6 miles from the launch pad, a little farther than my post, offer commanding aerial views of Starbase, which is situated on Boca Chica Beach a few miles north of the US-Mexico border. The closest publicly accessible place to watch a Starship launch is on the south shore of the mouth of the Rio Grande River, but if you’re coming from the United States, getting there requires crossing the border and driving off-road.

People gather at the Rocket Ranch viewing site near Boca Chica Beach, Texas, before the third Starship test flight in March.

People gather at the Rocket Ranch viewing site near Boca Chica Beach, Texas, before the third Starship test flight in March. Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

I chose a location with an ambiance somewhere in between the hustle and bustle of South Padre Island and the isolated beach just across the border in Mexico. The vibe on the eve of the launch had the mix of a rave and a pilgrimage of SpaceX true believers.

A laser light show projected the outline of a Starship against a tree as uptempo EDM tracks blared from speakers. Meanwhile, dark skies above revealed cosmic wonders invisible to most city dwellers, and behind us, the Rio Grande inexorably flowed toward the sea. Those of us who were there to work got a few hours of sleep, but I’m not sure I can say the same for everyone.

At first light, a few scattered yucca plants sticking up from the chaparral were the only things between us and SpaceX’s sky-scraping Starship rocket on the horizon. We got word the launch time would slip 25 minutes. SpaceX chose the perfect time to fly, with a crystal-clear sky hued by the rising Sun.

First, you see it

I was at Starbase for all four previous Starship test flights and have covered more than 300 rocket launches in person. I’ve been privileged to witness a lot of history, but after hundreds of launches, some of the novelty has worn off. Don’t get me wrong—I still feel a lump in my throat every time I see a rocket leave the planet. Prelaunch jitters are a real thing. But I no longer view every launch as a newsworthy event.

October 13 was different.

Those prelaunch anxieties were present as SpaceX counted off the final seconds to liftoff. First, you see it. A blast of orange flashed from the bottom of the gleaming, frosty rocket filled with super-cold propellants. Then, the 11 million-pound vehicle began a glacial climb from the launch pad. About 20 seconds later, the rumble from the rocket’s 33 methane-fueled engines reached our location.

Our viewing platform shook from the vibrations for over a minute as Starship and the Super Heavy booster soared into the stratosphere. Two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, the rocket was just a point of bluish-white light as it accelerated east over the Gulf of Mexico.

Another burst of orange encircled the rocket during the so-called hot-staging maneuver, when the Starship upper stage lit its engines at the moment the Super Heavy booster detached to begin the return to Starbase. Flying at the edge of space more than 300,000 feet over the Gulf, the booster flipped around and fired its engines to cancel out its downrange velocity and propel itself back toward the coastline.

The engines shut down, and the booster plunged deeper into the atmosphere. Eventually, the booster transformed from a dot in the sky back into the shape of a rocket as it approached Starbase at supersonic speed. The rocket’s velocity became more evident as it got closer. For a few moments, my viewing angle made it look like the rocket—bigger than the fuselage of a 747 jumbo jet—was coming right at me.

The descending booster zoomed through the contrail cloud it left behind during launch, then reappeared into clear air. With the naked eye, I could see a glow inside the rocket’s engine bay as it dived toward the launch pad, presumably from heat generated as the vehicle slammed into ever-denser air on the way back to Earth. This phenomenon made the rocket resemble a lit cigar.

Finally, the rocket hit the brakes by igniting 13 of its 33 engines, then downshifted to three engines for the final maneuver to slide in between the launch tower’s two catch arms. Like balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger, the Raptor engines vectored their thrust to steady the booster, which, for a moment, appeared to be floating next to the tower.

The Super Heavy booster, more than 20 stories tall, rights itself over the launch pad in Texas, moments before two mechanical arms grabbed it in mid-air.

Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

The Super Heavy booster, more than 20 stories tall, rights itself over the launch pad in Texas, moments before two mechanical arms grabbed it in mid-air. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

A double-clap sonic boom jolted spectators from their slack-jawed awe. Only then could we hear the roar from the start of the Super Heavy booster’s landing burn. This sound reached us just as the rocket settled into the grasp of the launch tower, with its so-called catch fittings coming into contact with the metallic beams of the catch arms.

The engines switched off, and there it was. Many of the spectators lucky enough to be there jumped up and down with joy, hugged their friends, or let out an ecstatic yell. I snapped a few final photos and returned to his laptop, grinning, speechless, and started wondering how I could put this all into words.

Once the smoke cleared, at first glance, the rocket looked as good as new. There was no soot on the outside of the booster, as it is on the Falcon 9 rocket after returning from space. This is because the Super Heavy booster and Starship use cleaner-burning methane fuel instead of kerosene.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, later said the outer ring of engine nozzles on the bottom of the rocket showed signs of heating damage. This, he said, would be “easily addressed.”

What’s not so easy to address is how SpaceX can top this. A landing on the Moon or Mars? Sure, but realistically, those milestones are years off. There’s something that’ll happen before then.

Sometime soon, SpaceX will try to catch a Starship back at the launch pad at the end of an orbital flight. This will be an extraordinarily difficult feat, far exceeding the challenge of catching the Super Heavy booster.

Super Heavy only reaches a fraction of the altitude and speed of the Starship upper stage, and while the booster’s size and the catch method add degrees of difficulty, the rocket follows much the same up-and-down flight profile pioneered by the Falcon 9. Starship, on the other hand, will reenter the atmosphere from orbital velocity, streak through the sky surrounded by super-heated plasma, then shift itself into a horizontal orientation for a final descent SpaceX likes to call the “belly flop.”

In the last few seconds, Starship will reignite three of its engines, flip itself vertical, and come down for a precision landing. SpaceX demonstrated the ship could do this on the test flight last week, when the vehicle made a controlled on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean after traveling halfway around the world from Texas.

If everything goes according to plan, SpaceX could be ready to try to catch a Starship for real next year. Stay tuned.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

After seeing hundreds of launches, SpaceX’s rocket catch was a new thrill Read More »

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SpaceX prevails over ULA, wins military launch contracts worth $733 million

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These missions require medium-lift rockets, or smaller rockets capable of a high-rate launch cadence to match the capability of a larger launch vehicle. In June, the Space Force selected SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, to compete for Lane 1 launch task orders.

Military officials will add more companies to the pool of available Lane 1 launch providers as they mature their rockets. These companies may include Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, Relativity Space, Stoke Space, and others.

While Blue Origin is on the Space Force’s list of available launch providers, the company’s New Glenn rocket was not eligible for the contracts announced Friday. That’s because military officials require a rocket to complete at least one successful orbital launch to become qualified for a Lane 1 task order. New Glenn’s first test flight is scheduled some time later this year.

This rule left SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and ULA’s Vulcan rockets as the only launch vehicles eligible for the task orders, setting up a head-to-head competition between the rival rocket companies. SpaceX prevailed, winning all nine Lane 1 missions up for competition this year.

Lane 2 of the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program covers more challenging military missions, typically larger, more expensive payloads destined for higher orbits. The Space Force is expected to soon select launch providers for Lane 2 missions. These launches will require the Space Force to certify the rockets, whereas the military is comfortable accepting a little more risk for the Lane 1 missions.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are currently certified for national security launches, and the Space Force is in the process of certifying ULA’s Vulcan launcher after two successful test flights. The Space Force and Blue Origin also have a certification plan for the New Glenn rocket, but it must first complete multiple successful test flights.

Updated October 19 with additional information about the launch task orders.

SpaceX prevails over ULA, wins military launch contracts worth $733 million Read More »

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Starship is about to launch on its fifth flight, and this time there’s a catch

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“We landed with half a centimeter accuracy in the ocean, so we think we have a reasonable chance to come back to the tower,” Gerstenmaier said.

Launch playbook

The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, will light six Raptor engines to accelerate to nearly orbital velocity, giving the rocket enough oomph to coast halfway around the world before falling back into the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

This is a similar trajectory to the one Starship flew in June, when it survived a fiery reentry for a controlled splashdown. It was the first time SpaceX completed an end-to-end Starship test flight. Onboard cameras showed fragments of the heat shield falling off Starship when it reentered the atmosphere, but the vehicle maintained control and reignited its Raptor engines, flipped from a horizontal to a vertical orientation, and settled into the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia.

After analyzing the results from the June mission, SpaceX engineers decided to rework the heat shield for the next Starship vehicle. The company said its technicians spent more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with new-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer, and additional protections between the ship’s flap structures.

From start to finish, Sunday’s test flight should last approximately 1 hour and 5 minutes.

This diagram illustrates the path the Super Heavy booster will take to return to the launch pad in Texas, while the Starship upper stage continues the climb to space.

Credit: SpaceX

This diagram illustrates the path the Super Heavy booster will take to return to the launch pad in Texas, while the Starship upper stage continues the climb to space. Credit: SpaceX

Here’s an overview of the key events during Sunday’s flight:

• T+00: 00: 02: Liftoff

• T+00: 01: 02: Maximum aerodynamic pressure

• T+00: 02: 33: Super Heavy MECO (most engines cut off)

• T+00: 02: 41: Stage separation and ignition of Starship engines

• T+00: 02: 48: Super Heavy boost-back burn start

• T+00: 03: 41: Super Heavy boost-back burn shutdown

• T+00: 03: 43: Hot staging ring jettison

• T+00: 06: 08: Super Heavy is subsonic

• T+00: 06: 33: Super Heavy landing burn start

• T+00: 06: 56: Super Heavy landing burn shutdown and catch attempt

• T+00: 08: 27: Starship engine cutoff

• T+00: 48: 03: Starship reentry

• T+01: 02: 34: Starship is transonic

• T+01: 03: 43: Starship is subsonic

• T+01: 05: 15: Starship landing flip

• T+01: 05: 20: Starship landing burn

• T+01: 05: 34: Starship splashdown in Indian Ocean

SpaceX officials hope to see Starship’s heat shield stay intact as it dips into the atmosphere, when temperatures will reach 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius), hot enough to melt aluminum, the metal used to build many launch vehicles. SpaceX chose stainless steel for Starship because it strong at cryogenic temperatures—the rocket consumes super-cold fuel and oxidizer—and has a higher melting point than aluminum.

Starship is about to launch on its fifth flight, and this time there’s a catch Read More »

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SpaceX’s next Starship launch—and first catch—could happen this weekend

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The FAA is still reviewing plans for the fifth Starship test flight, but could approve it soon.

SpaceX’s fully-stacked Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage at the company’s launch site in South Texas. Credit: SpaceX

We may not have to wait as long as we thought for the next test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.

The world’s most powerful launcher could fly again as soon as Sunday, SpaceX says, assuming the Federal Aviation Administration grants approval. The last public statement released from the FAA suggested the agency didn’t expect to determine whether to approve a commercial launch license for SpaceX’s next Starship test flight before late November.

There’s some optimism at SpaceX that the FAA might issue a launch license much sooner, perhaps in time for Starship to fly this weekend. The launch window Sunday opens at 7 am CDT (8 am EDT; 12: 00 UTC), about a half-hour before sunrise at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas.

“The fifth flight test of Starship will aim to take another step towards full and rapid reusability,” SpaceX wrote in an update posted on its website. “The primary objectives will be attempting the first ever return to launch site and catch of the Super Heavy booster and another Starship reentry and landing burn, aiming for an on-target splashdown of Starship in the Indian Ocean.”

Stacked together, the Super Heavy booster, or first stage, and the Starship upper stage stand nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall. The Super Heavy booster—itself bigger than the fuselage of a 747 jumbo jet—will vertically return to the Starbase launch pad guided by cold gas thrusters, aerodynamic grid fins, and propulsive maneuvers with its methane-fueled Raptor engines.

Once the booster’s Raptor engines slow it to a hover, mechanical arms on the launch pad tower will close in around the rocket and capture it in midair. If you’re into rockets, or just want to spice up your morning, you don’t want to miss this. We’ll have a more detailed story before the launch previewing the timeline of events.

Safety measures

The FAA has been reviewing SpaceX’s plans to bring the Super Heavy booster back to the Starbase launch pad for months.

Most recently, the agency’s review of SpaceX’s proposed flight plan has focused on the effects of the rocket’s sonic boom as it comes back to Earth. The FAA and other agencies are also studying how a disposable section of the booster, called a hot-staging ring, might impact the environment when it falls into the sea just offshore from Starbase, located on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville.

During SpaceX’s most recent Starship test flight in June, the Super Heavy booster completed a control descent to a predetermined location in the Gulf of Mexico, giving engineers enough confidence to try a return to the launch site on the next mission.

SpaceX protested the length of time the FAA said it needed to review the flight plan, after the federal regulator previously told SpaceX it expected to make a license determination in September.

“Unfortunately, instead of focusing resources on critical safety analysis and collaborating on rational safeguards to protect both the public and the environment, the licensing process has been repeatedly derailed by issues ranging from the frivolous to the patently absurd,” SpaceX wrote in a statement last month.

“I think the two-month delay is necessary to comply with the launch requirements, and I think that’s an important part of safety culture,” said Michael Whitaker, the FAA administrator, in a congressional hearing September 24.

The FAA is responsible for ensuring commercial space launches do not endanger the public and comport with the US government’s national security and foreign policy interests. Earlier this year, SpaceX was also fined by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency for alleged violations of environmental regulations related to the launch pad’s water system, which cools a steel flame deflector under the 33 main engines of Starship’s Super Heavy booster.

Ars contacted an FAA spokesperson Tuesday about the status of the agency’s review of the Starship launch license request, but did not receive a response.

Artist’s illustration of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster coming in for a catch by the launch pad’s mechanical arms.

Credit: SpaceX

Artist’s illustration of SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster coming in for a catch by the launch pad’s mechanical arms. Credit: SpaceX

Teams at Starbase completed two partial propellant loading tests on the fully stacked Starship rocket in recent days. Early Tuesday, SpaceX tested the water deluge system at the launch pad two times, presumably to check the system’s ability to activate minutes apart to protect the pad during launch and recovery of the Super Heavy booster.

Later Tuesday, SpaceX removed the Starship upper stage from the Super Heavy booster. This is required for technicians to perform one of the final tasks to prepare for launch—installing the rocket’s flight termination system, which would destroy the rocket if it veers off course.

“We accept no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only be attempted if conditions are right,” SpaceX said.

SpaceX outlined additional human-in-the-loop safety criteria for the upcoming Starship flight. SpaceX launches are typically fully automated from liftoff through the end of the mission.

“Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria must be met prior to a return and catch attempt of the Super Heavy booster, which will require healthy systems on the booster and tower and a manual command from the mission’s flight director,” SpaceX wrote. “If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Recovering the Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad is critical for SpaceX’s ambition to rapidly reuse the rocket. Eventually, SpaceX will also recover and reuse the Starship portion of the rocket, but for now, the company is sticking to water landings for the ship.

Extensive upgrades

SpaceX teams in Texas have beefed up the launch tower and catch arms in the last few months, working around the clock to add structural stiffeners and test the arms’ load-carrying capability.

“Extensive upgrades ahead of this flight test have been made to hardware and software across Super Heavy, Starship, and the launch and catch tower infrastructure at Starbase,” SpaceX said. “SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success.”

It will take about seven minutes for the Super Heavy booster to climb to the edge of space, separate from the Starship upper stage, and return to Starbase for recovery. While the booster comes back to the ground, Starship will fire its six engines to accelerate to near orbital velocity, fast enough to complete a half-lap around Earth before gravity pulls it toward an atmospheric reentry over the Indian Ocean.

This is a similar trajectory to the one Starship flew in June, when it survived a fiery reentry for a controlled splashdown. It was the first time SpaceX completed an end-to-end Starship test flight.

After analyzing the results from the June mission, SpaceX engineers decided to rework the heat shield for the next Starship vehicle. The company said its technicians spent more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with new-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer, and additional protections between the ship’s flap structures.

Onboard cameras showed fragments of the heat shield falling off Starship when it reentered the atmosphere in June.

“This massive effort, along with updates to the ship’s operations and software for reentry and landing burn, will look to improve upon the previous flight and bring Starship to a soft splashdown at the target area in the Indian Ocean,” SpaceX said.

Starship won’t attempt to reignite its Raptor engines in space on the upcoming test flight. This is one of the next things SpaceX needs to demonstrate for Starship to soar into a stable orbit around Earth and guide itself to a controlled reentry to ensure it doesn’t become stranded in space or fall over a populated area. SpaceX wanted to relight a Raptor engine in space on Starship’s third test flight in March, but aborted the maneuver.

The business end of Starship’s Super Heavy booster during a launch in March.

Credit: SpaceX

The business end of Starship’s Super Heavy booster during a launch in March. Credit: SpaceX

Once Starship is able to sustain a flight in low-Earth orbit, SpaceX can begin experiments with in-space refueling, which is required to support future Starship flights to the Moon, Mars, and other deep space destinations. Starship is a foundational element of SpaceX’s vision to create a settlement on the red planet.

NASA has a contract with SpaceX to develop a human-rated Starship to land astronauts on the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. NASA’s official schedule calls for the first Artemis crew landing in September 2026. Realistically, the landing will probably happen later in the decade because the Starship lander and new lunar spacesuits likely won’t be ready in two years.

Starships will likely fly many dozens of times, if not more, before NASA approves it to land astronauts on the Moon. These flights will test the rocket’s ability to repeatedly and reliably fly to space and back, transfer cryogenic propellants in orbit, and safely land on the lunar surface without a crew.

As we’ve seen with SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, rapidly reusing elements of a launch vehicle can enable rapid-fire launch cadences. Validating the architecture for recovering the Super Heavy booster directly on the launch pad, as SpaceX intends to do quite soon, is a key step on this path.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

SpaceX’s next Starship launch—and first catch—could happen this weekend Read More »

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SpaceX launches Europe’s Hera asteroid mission ahead of Hurricane Milton

asteroid, Commercial space, Dart, european space agency, falcon 9, Federal Aviation Administration, hera, launch, planetary defense, Science, Space, spacex / /

The launch of another important mission, NASA’s Europa Clipper, is on hold due to Hurricane Milton.

The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft flies away from the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage a little more than an hour after liftoff Monday. Credit: SpaceX

Two years ago, a NASA spacecraft smashed into a small asteroid millions of miles from Earth to test a technique that could one day prove useful to deflect an object off a collision course with Earth. The European Space Agency launched a follow-up mission Monday to go back to the crash site and see the damage done.

The nearly $400 million (363 million euro) Hera mission, named for the Greek goddess of marriage, will investigate the aftermath of a cosmic collision between NASA’s DART spacecraft and the skyscraper-size asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission was the first planetary defense experiment, and it worked, successfully nudging Dimorphos off its regular orbit around a larger companion asteroid named Didymos.

But NASA had to sacrifice the DART spacecraft in the deflection experiment. Its destruction meant there were no detailed images of the condition of the target asteroid after the impact. A small Italian CubeSat deployed by DART as it approached Dimorphos captured fuzzy long-range views of the collision, but Hera will perform a comprehensive survey when it arrives in late 2026.

“We are going to have a surprise to see what Dimorphos looks like, which is, first, scientifically exciting, but also important because if we want to validate the technique and validate the model that can reproduce the impact, we need to know the final outcome,” said Patrick Michel, principal investigator on the Hera mission from Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice, France. “And we don’t have it. With Hera, it’s like a detective going back to the crime scene and telling us what really happened.”

Last ride before the storm

The Hera spacecraft, weighing in at 2,442 pounds (1,108 kilograms), lifted off on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 10: 52 am EDT (14: 52 UTC) Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Officials weren’t sure the weather conditions at Cape Canaveral would permit a launch Monday, with widespread rain showers and a blanket of cloud cover hanging over Florida’s Space Coast. But the conditions were just good enough to be acceptable for a rocket launch, and the Falcon 9 lit its nine kerosene-fueled engines to climb away from pad 40 after a smooth countdown.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with ESA’s Hera mission.

Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with ESA’s Hera mission. Credit: SpaceX

This was probably the final opportunity to launch Hera before the spaceport shutters in advance of Hurricane Milton, a dangerous Category 5 storm taking aim at the west coast of Florida. If the mission didn’t launch Monday, SpaceX was prepared to move the Falcon 9 rocket and the Hera spacecraft back inside a hangar for safekeeping until the storm passes.

Meanwhile, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center a few miles away, SpaceX is securing a Falcon Heavy rocket with the Europa Clipper spacecraft to ride out Hurricane Milton inside a hangar at Launch Complex 39A. Europa Clipper is a $5.2 billion flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s most enigmatic icy moon, and it was supposed to launch Thursday, the same day Hurricane Milton will potentially move over Central Florida.

NASA announced Sunday that it is postponing Europa Clipper’s launch until after the storm.

“The safety of launch team personnel is our highest priority, and all precautions will be taken to protect the Europa Clipper spacecraft,” said Tim Dunn, senior launch director at NASA’s Launch Services Program. “Once we have the ‘all-clear’ followed by facility assessment and any recovery actions, we will determine the next launch opportunity for this NASA flagship mission.”

Europa Clipper must launch by November 6 in order to reach Jupiter and its moon Europa in 2030. ESA’s Hera mission had a similarly tight window to get off the ground in October and arrive at asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos in December 2026.

Returning to flight

The Falcon 9 did its job Monday, accelerating the Hera spacecraft to a blistering speed of 26,745 mph (43,042 km/hr) with successive burns by its first stage booster and upper stage engine. This was the highest-speed payload injection ever achieved by SpaceX.

SpaceX did not attempt to recover the Falcon 9’s reusable booster on Monday’s flight because Hera needed all of the rocket’s oomph to gain enough speed to escape the pull of Earth’s gravity.

“Good launch, good orbit, and good payload deploy,” wrote Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, on X.

This was the first Falcon 9 launch in nine days—an unusually long gap between SpaceX missions—after the rocket’s upper stage misfired during a maneuver to steer itself out of orbit following an otherwise successful launch September 28 with a two-man crew heading for the International Space Station.

The upper stage engine apparently “over-burned,” and the rocket debris fell into the atmosphere short of its expected reentry corridor in the Pacific Ocean, sources said. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the Falcon 9 rocket while SpaceX investigates the malfunction, but the FAA granted approval for SpaceX to launch the Hera mission because its trajectory would carry the rocket away from Earth, rather than back into the atmosphere for reentry.

“The FAA has determined that the absence of a second stage reentry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a reoccurrence of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission,” the FAA said in a statement.

Members of the Hera team from ESA and its German prime contractor, OHB, pose with the spacecraft inside SpaceX’s payload processing facility in Florida.

Credit: SpaceX

Members of the Hera team from ESA and its German prime contractor, OHB, pose with the spacecraft inside SpaceX’s payload processing facility in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

This was the third time the FAA has grounded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket fleet in less than three months, following another upper stage failure in July that caused the destruction of 20 Starlink Internet satellites and the crash-landing of a Falcon 9 booster on an offshore drone ship in August. Federal regulators are responsible for ensuring commercial rocket launches don’t endanger the public.

These were the first major anomalies on any Falcon 9 launch since 2021.

It’s not clear when the FAA will clear SpaceX to resume launching other Falcon 9 missions. However, the launch of the Europa Clipper mission on a Falcon Heavy rocket, which uses essentially the same upper stage as a Falcon 9, is not licensed by the FAA because it is managed by NASA, another government agency. NASA will have final authority on whether to give the green light for the launch of Europa Clipper.

Surveying the damage

ESA’s Hera spacecraft is on course for a flyby of Mars next March to take advantage of the red planet’s gravity to slingshot itself on a trajectory to intercept its twin target asteroids. Near Mars, Hera will zoom relatively close to the planet’s asteroid-like moon, Deimos, to obtain rare closeups.

Then, Hera will approach Didymos and Dimorphos a little more than two years from now, maneuvering around the binary asteroid system at a range of distances, eventually moving as close as about a half-mile (1 kilometer) away.

Italy’s LICIACube spacecraft snapped this image of asteroids Didymos (lower left) and Dimorphos (upper right) a few minutes after the impact of DART on September 26, 2022.

Credit: ASI/NASA

Italy’s LICIACube spacecraft snapped this image of asteroids Didymos (lower left) and Dimorphos (upper right) a few minutes after the impact of DART on September 26, 2022. Credit: ASI/NASA

Dimorphos orbits Didymos once every 11 hours and 23 minutes, roughly 32 minutes shorter than the orbital period before DART’s impact in 2022. This change in orbit proved the effectiveness of a kinetic impactor in deflecting an asteroid that threatens Earth.

Dimorphos, the smaller of the two asteroids, has a diameter of around 500 feet (150 meters), while Didymos measures approximately a half-mile (780 meters) wide. Neither asteroid poses a risk to Earth, so NASA chose them as the objective for DART.

The Hubble Space Telescope spotted a debris field trailing the binary asteroid system after DART’s impact. Astronomers identified at least 37 boulders drifting away from the asteroids, material ejected when the DART spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos at a velocity of 14,000 mph (22,500 kmh).

Scientists will use Hera, with its suite of cameras and instruments, to study how the strike by DART changed the asteroid Dimorphos. Did the impact leave a crater, or did it reshape the entire asteroid? There are “tentative hints” that the asteroid’s shape changed after the collision, according to Michael Kueppers, Hera’s project scientist at ESA.

“If this is the case, it would also mean that the cohesion of Dimorphos is extremely low; that indeed, even an object the size of Dimorphos would be held together by its weight, by its gravity, and not by cohesion,” Kueppers said. “So it really would be a rubble pile.”

Hera will also measure the mass of Dimorphos, something DART was unable to do. “That is important to measure the efficiency of the impact… which was the momentum that was transferred from the impacting satellite to the asteroid,” Kueppers said.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, nearly three months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART mission. Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision.

Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, nearly three months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART mission. Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA)

The central goal of Hera is to fill the gaps in knowledge about Didymos and Dimorphos. Precise measurements of DART’s momentum, coupled with a better understanding of the interior structure of the asteroids, will allow future mission planners to know how best to deflect a hazardous object threatening Earth.

“The third part is to generally investigate the two asteroids to know their physical properties, their interior properties, their strength, essentially to be able to extrapolate or to scale the outcome of DART to another impact should we really need it one day,” Kueppers said.

Hera will release two briefcase-size CubeSats, named Juventas and Milani, to work in concert with ESA’s mothership. Juventas carries a compact radar to probe the internal structure of the smaller asteroid and will eventually attempt a landing on Dimorphos. Milani will study the mineral composition of individual boulders around DART’s impact site.

“This is the first time that we send a spacecraft to a small body, which is actually a multi-satellite system, with one main spacecraft and two CubeSats doing closer proximity operations,” Michel said. “This has never been done.”

Artist’s illustration of the Hera spacecraft with its two deployable CubeSats, Juventas and Milani, in the vicinity of the Didymos binary asteroid system. The CubeSats will communicate with ground teams via radio links with the Hera mothership.

Credit: ESA-Science Office

Artist’s illustration of the Hera spacecraft with its two deployable CubeSats, Juventas and Milani, in the vicinity of the Didymos binary asteroid system. The CubeSats will communicate with ground teams via radio links with the Hera mothership. Credit: ESA-Science Office

One source of uncertainty, and perhaps worry, about the environment around Didymos and Dimorphos is the status of the debris field observed by Hubble a few months after DART’s impact. But this is not likely to be a problem, according to Kueppers.

“I’m not really worried about potential boulders at Didymos,” he said, recalling the relative ease with which ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft navigated around an active comet from 2014 through 2016.

Ignacio Tanco, ESA’s flight director for Hera, doesn’t share Kuepper’s optimism.

“We didn’t hit the comet with a hammer,” said Tanco, who is responsible for keeping the Hera spacecraft safe. “The debris question for me is actually a source of… I wouldn’t say concern, but certainly precaution. It’s something that we’ll need to approach carefully once we get there.”

“That’s the difference between an engineer and a scientist,” Kuepper joked.

Scientists originally wanted Hera to be in the vicinity of the Didymos binary asteroid system before DART’s arrival, allowing it to directly observe the impact and its fallout. But ESA’s member states did not approve funding for the Hera mission in time, and the space agency only signed the contract to build the Hera spacecraft in 2020.

ESA first studied a mission like DART and Hera more than 20 years ago, when scientists proposed a mission called Don Quijote to get an asteroid deflection. But other missions took priority in Europe’s space program. Now, Hera is on course to write the final chapter of the story of humanity’s first planetary defense test.

“This is our contribution of ESA to humanity to help us in the future protect our planet,” said Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

SpaceX launches Europe’s Hera asteroid mission ahead of Hurricane Milton Read More »

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SpaceX launches mission to bring Starliner astronauts back to Earth

commercial crew, Commercial space, crew dragon, dragon, falcon 9, human spaceflight, international space station, launch, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Science, Space, spacex, starliner / /

Ch-ch-changes —

SpaceX is bringing back propulsive landings with its Dragon capsule, but only in emergencies.

– Updated

SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft climbs away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Saturday atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

Enlarge / SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft climbs away from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Saturday atop a Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA/Keegan Barber

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov lifted off Saturday from Florida’s Space Coast aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, heading for a five-month expedition on the International Space Station.

The two-man crew launched on top of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket at 1: 17 pm EDT (17: 17 UTC), taking an advantage of a break in stormy weather to begin a five-month expedition in space. Nine kerosene-fueled Merlin engines powered the first stage of the flight on a trajectory northeast from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, then the booster detached and returned to landing at Cape Canaveral as the Falcon 9’s upper stage accelerated SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft into orbit.

“It was a sweet ride,” Hague said after arriving in space. With a seemingly flawless launch, Hague and Gorbunov are on track to arrive at the space station around 5: 30 pm EDT (2130 UTC) Sunday.

Empty seats

This is SpaceX’s 15th crew mission since 2020, and SpaceX’s 10th astronaut launch for NASA, but Saturday’s launch was unusual in a couple of ways.

“All of our missions have unique challenges and this one, I think, will be memorable for a lot of us,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.

First, only two people rode into orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, rather than the usual complement of four astronauts. This mission, known as Crew-9, originally included Hague, Gorbunov, commander Zena Cardman, and NASA astronaut Stephanie Wilson.

But the troubled test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft threw a wrench into NASA’s plans. The Starliner mission launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Boeing’s spacecraft reached the space station, but thruster failures and helium leaks plagued the mission, and NASA officials decided last month it was too risky to being the crew back to Earth on Starliner.

NASA selected SpaceX and Boeing for multibillion-dollar commercial crew contracts in 2014, with each company responsible for developing human-rated spaceships to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX flew astronauts for the first time in 2020, and Boeing reached the same milestone with the test flight that launched in June.

Ultimately, the Starliner spacecraft safely returned to Earth on September 6 with a successful landing in New Mexico. But it left Wilmore and Williams behind on the space station with the lab’s long-term crew of seven astronauts and cosmonauts. The space station crew rigged two temporary seats with foam inside a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft currently docked at the outpost, where the Starliner astronauts would ride home if they needed to evacuate the complex in an emergency.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov in their SpaceX pressure suits.

Enlarge / NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov in their SpaceX pressure suits.

NASA/Kim Shiflett

This is a temporary measure to allow the Dragon spacecraft to return to Earth with six people instead of the usual four. NASA officials decided to remove two of the astronauts from the next SpaceX crew mission to free up normal seats for Wilmore and Williams to ride home in February, when Crew-9 was already slated to end its mission.

The decision to fly the Starliner spacecraft back to Earth without its crew had several second order effects on space station operations. Managers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston had to decide who to bump from the Crew-9 mission, and who to keep on the crew.

Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov ended up keeping their seats on the Crew-9 flight. Hague originally trained as the pilot on Crew-9, and NASA decided he would take Zena Cardman’s place as commander. Hague, a 49-year-old Space Force colonel, is a veteran of one long-duration mission on the International Space Station, and also experienced a rare in-flight launch abort in 2018 due to a failure of a Russian Soyuz rocket.

NASA announced the original astronaut assignments for the Crew-9 mission in January. Cardman, a 36-year-old geobiologist, would have been the first rookie astronaut without test pilot experience to command a NASA spaceflight. Three-time space shuttle flier Stephanie Wilson, 58, was the other astronaut removed from the Crew-9 mission.

The decision on who to fly on Crew-9 was a “really close call,” said Bowersox, who oversees NASA’s spaceflight operations directorate. “They were thinking very hard about flying Zena, but in this situation, it made sense to have somebody who had at least one flight under their belt.”

Gorbunov, a 34-year-old Russian aerospace engineer making his first flight to space, moved over to take pilot’s seat in the Crew Dragon spacecraft, although he remains officially designated a mission specialist. His remaining presence on the crew was preordained because of an international agreement between NASA and Russia’s space agency that provides seats for Russian cosmonauts on US crew missions and US astronauts on Russian Soyuz flights to the space station.

Bowersox said NASA will reassign Cardman and Wilson to future flights.

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits before their launch.

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits before their launch.

Operational flexibility

This was also the first launch of astronauts from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral, SpaceX’s busiest launch pad. SpaceX has outfitted the launch pad with the equipment necessary to support launches of human spaceflight missions on the Crew Dragon spacecraft, including a more than 200-foot-tall tower and a crew access arm to allow astronauts to board spaceships on top of Falcon 9 rockets.

SLC-40 was previously based on a “clean pad” architecture, without any structures to service or access Falcon 9 rockets while they were vertical on the pad. SpaceX also installed slide chutes to give astronauts and ground crews an emergency escape route away from the launch pad in an emergency.

SpaceX constructed the crew tower last year and had it ready for the launch of a Dragon cargo mission to the space station in March. Saturday’s launch demonstrated the pad’s ability to support SpaceX astronaut missions, which have previously all departed from Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a few miles north of SLC-40.

Bringing human spaceflight launch capability online at SLC-40 gives SpaceX and NASA additional flexibility in their scheduling. For example, LC-39A remains the only launch pad configured to support flights of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX is now preparing LC-39A for a Falcon Heavy launch October 10 with NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which only has a window of a few weeks to depart Earth this year and reach its destination at Jupiter in 2030.

With SLC-40 now certified for astronaut launches, SpaceX and NASA teams are able to support the Crew-9 and Europa Clipper missions without worrying about scheduling conflicts. The Florida spaceport now has three launch pads certified for crew flights—two for SpaceX’s Dragon and one for Boeing’s Starliner—and NASA will add a fourth human-rated launch pad with the Artemis II mission to the Moon late next year.

“That’s pretty exciting,” said Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy administrator. “I think it’s a reflection of where we are in our space program at NASA, but also the capabilities that the United States has developed.”

Earlier this week, Hague and Gorbunov participated in a launch day dress rehearsal, when they had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with SLC-40. The launch pad has the same capabilities as LC-39A, but with a slightly different layout. SpaceX also test-fired the Falcon 9 rocket Tuesday evening, before lowering the rocket horizontal and moving it back into a hangar for safekeeping as the outer bands of Hurricane Helene moved through Central Florida.

Inside the hangar, SpaceX technicians discovered sooty exhaust from the Falcon 9’s engines accumulated on the outside of the Dragon spacecraft during the test-firing. Ground teams wiped the soot off of the craft’s solar arrays and heat shield, then repainted portions of the capsule’s radiators around the edge of Dragon’s trunk section before rolling the vehicle back to the launch pad Friday.

“It’s important that the radiators radiate heat in the proper way to space, so we had to put some some new paint on to get that back to the right emissivity and the right reflectivity and absorptivity of the solar radiation that hit those panels so it will reject the heat properly,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability.

Gerstenmaier also outlined a new backup ability for the Crew Dragon spacecraft to safely splash down even if all of its parachutes fail to deploy on final descent back to Earth. This involves using the capsule’s eight powerful SuperDraco thrusters, normally only used in the unlikely instance of a launch abort, to fire for a few seconds and slow Dragon’s speed for a safe splashdown.

A hover test using SuperDraco thrusters on a prototype Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2015.

Enlarge / A hover test using SuperDraco thrusters on a prototype Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2015.

SpaceX

“The way it works is, in the case where all the parachutes totally fail, this essentially fires the thrusters at the very end,” Gerstenmaier said. “That essentially gives the crew a chance to land safely, and essentially escape the vehicle. So it’s not used in any partial conditions. We can land with one chute out. We can land with other failures in the chute system. But this is only in the case where all four parachutes just do not operate.”

When SpaceX first designed the Crew Dragon spacecraft more than a decade ago, the company wanted to use the SuperDraco thrusters to enable the capsule to perform propulsive helicopter-like landings. Eventually, SpaceX and NASA agreed to change to a more conventional parachute-assisted splashdown.

The SuperDracos remained on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to push the capsule away from its Falcon 9 rocket during a catastrophic launch failure. The eight high-thrust engines burn hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants that combust when making contact with one another.

The backup option has been activated for some previous commercial Crew Dragon missions, but not for a NASA flight, according to Gerstenmaier. The capability “provides a tolerable landing for the crew,” he added. “So it’s a true deep, deep contingency. I think our philosophy is, rather than have a system that you don’t use, even though it’s not maybe fully certified, it gives the crew a chance to escape a really, really bad situation.”

Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said the emergency propulsive landing capability will be enabled for the return of the Crew-8 mission, which has been at the space station since March. With the arrival of Hague and Gorbunov on Crew-9—and the extension of Wilmore and Williams’ mission—the Crew-8 mission is slated to depart the space station and splash down in early October.

This story was updated after confirmation of a successful launch.

SpaceX launches mission to bring Starliner astronauts back to Earth Read More »

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The war of words between SpaceX and the FAA keeps escalating

Commercial space, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starship, texas / /
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, has called for the resignation of the FAA administrator.

Enlarge / Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has called for the resignation of the FAA administrator.

The clash between SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration escalated this week, with Elon Musk calling for the head of the federal regulator to resign after he defended the FAA’s oversight and fines levied against the commercial launch company.

The FAA has said it doesn’t expect to determine whether to approve a launch license for SpaceX’s next Starship test flight until late November, two months later than the agency previously communicated to Musk’s launch company. Federal regulators are reviewing changes to the rocket’s trajectory necessary for SpaceX to bring Starship’s giant reusable Super Heavy booster back to the launch pad in South Texas. This will be the fifth full-scale test flight of Starship but the first time SpaceX attempts such a maneuver on the program.

This week, SpaceX assembled the full Starship rocket on its launch pad at the company’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. “Starship stacked for Flight 5 and ready for launch, pending regulatory approval,” SpaceX posted on X.

Apart from the Starship regulatory reviews, the FAA last week announced it is proposing more than $633,000 in fines on SpaceX due to alleged violations of the company’s launch license associated with two flights of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. It is rare for the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division to fine launch companies.

Michael Whitaker, the FAA’s administrator, discussed the agency’s ongoing environmental and safety reviews of SpaceX’s Starship rocket in a hearing before a congressional subcommittee in Washington Tuesday. During the hearing, which primarily focused on the FAA’s oversight of Boeing’s commercial airplane business, one lawmaker asked Whitaker the FAA’s relationship with SpaceX.

Public interest

“I think safety is in the public interest and that’s our primary focus,” said Michael Whitaker, the FAA administrator, in response to questions from Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Republican. “It’s the only tool we have to get compliance on safety matters,” he said, referring to the FAA’s fines.

The stainless-steel Super Heavy booster is larger than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. SpaceX says the flight path to return the first stage of the rocket to land will mean a “slightly larger area could experience a sonic boom,” and a stainless-steel ring that jettisons from the top of the booster, called the hot-staging ring, will fall in a different location in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore from the rocket’s launch and landing site.

The FAA, which is primarily charged with ensuring rocket launches don’t endanger the public, is consulting with other agencies on these matters, along with issues involving SpaceX’s discharge of water into the environment around the Starship launch pad in Texas. The pad uses water to cool a steel flame deflector that sits under the 33 main engines of Starship’s Super Heavy booster.

SpaceX says fines levied against it this year by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) related to the launch pad’s water system were “entirely tied to disagreements over paperwork” and not any dumping of pollutants into the environment around the Starship launch site.

SpaceX installed the water-cooled flame deflector under the Starship launch mount after the engine exhaust rocket’s first test flight excavated a large hole in the ground. Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, summed up her view of the issue in a hearing with Texas legislators in Austin on Tuesday.

“To protect that from happening again, we built this kind of upside-down shower head to basically cool the flame as the rocket was lifting off,” she said. “That was licensed and permitted by TCEQ. The EPA came in afterwards and didn’t like the license or the permit that we had for that, and wanted to turn it into a federal permit, which we are working on now.”

“We work very closely with organizations such as TCEQ,” Shotwell said. “You may have read a little bit of nonsense in the papers recently about that, but we’re working quite well with them.”

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