spacex

russian-drones-use-starlink,-but-ukraine-has-plan-to-block-their-internet-access

Russian drones use Starlink, but Ukraine has plan to block their Internet access

Policy, spacex, starlink, Ukraine / /

Ukraine and SpaceX say they recently collaborated to stop strikes by Russian drones using Starlink and will soon block all unregistered use of Starlink terminals in an attempt to stop Russia’s military from using the satellite broadband network over Ukraine territory.

Ukrainians will soon be required to register their Starlink terminals to get on a whitelist. After that, “only verified and registered terminals will be allowed to operate in the country. All others will be disconnected,” the Ukraine Ministry of Defense said in a press release today.

Ukraine Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov “emphasized that the only technical solution to counter this threat is to introduce a ‘whitelist’ and authorize all terminals,” according to the ministry. “This is a necessary step by the Government to save Ukrainian lives and protect critical energy infrastructure,” Fedorov said.

Fedorov has posted on SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s X social network a few times in the past few days about Russia’s use of Starlink and Ukraine’s attempt to counter it. On January 29, Fedorov said his agency contacted SpaceX hours after “reports that Russian drones equipped with Starlink connectivity were operating over Ukrainian cities.” Ukraine “proposed concrete ways to resolve the issue,” he said.

Fedorov said that SpaceX started working on a solution immediately after the outreach. Musk wrote yesterday, “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done.”

Fedorov said yesterday that because of “the first steps taken in recent days, no Ukrainians have been killed by Russian drones using Starlink.” Fedorov said the ministry “will share instructions for Ukrainian users to register their Starlink terminals for verification” in the coming days, and that registration “will be simple, fast, and user-friendly.”

Ukraine’s whitelist plan will require residents to make “one visit to the nearest Administrative Services Center,” a process that Fedorov said will be “free, fast, and without excessive bureaucracy.” Businesses will be able to verify their Starlink terminals online, while the military and service members have separate systems for registration. Service members with personal Starlink terminals will “only need to add the terminal to the ‘whitelist’ to prevent disconnection.”

Russian drones use Starlink, but Ukraine has plan to block their Internet access Read More »

nasa-faces-a-crucial-choice-on-a-mars-spacecraft—and-it-must-decide-soon

NASA faces a crucial choice on a Mars spacecraft—and it must decide soon

blue origin, Mars, mars telecommunications orbiter, NASA, rocket lab, Space, spacex / /

However, some leaders within NASA see the language in the Cruz legislation as spelling out a telecommunications orbiter only and believe it would be difficult, if not impossible, to run a procurement competition between now and September 30th for anything beyond a straightforward communications orbiter.

In a statement provided to Ars by a NASA spokesperson, the agency said that is what it intends to do.

“NASA will procure a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter that will provide robust, continuous communications for Mars missions,” a spokesperson said. “NASA looks forward to collaborating with our commercial partners to advance deep space communications and navigation capabilities, strengthening US leadership in Mars infrastructure and the commercial space sector.”

Big decisions loom

Even so, sources said Isaacman has yet to decide whether the orbiter should include scientific instruments. NASA could also tap into other funding in its fiscal year 2026 budget, which included $110 million for unspecified “Mars Future Missions,” as well as a large wedge of funding that could potentially be used to support a Mars commercial payload delivery program.

The range of options before NASA, therefore, includes asking industry for a single telecom orbiter from one company, asking for a telecom orbiter with the capability to add a couple of instruments, or creating competition by asking for multiple orbiters and capabilities by tapping into the $700 million in the Cruz bill but then augmenting this with other Mars funding.

One indication that this process has been muddied within NASA came a week ago, when the space agency briefly posted a “Justification for Other Than Full and Open Competition, Extension” notice on a government website. It stated that the agency “will only conduct a competition among vendors that satisfy the statutory qualifications.” The notice also listed the companies eligible to bid based on the Cruz language: Blue Origin, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Quantum Space, and Whittinghill Aerospace.

NASA faces a crucial choice on a Mars spacecraft—and it must decide soon Read More »

spacex-sends-list-of-demands-to-us-states-giving-broadband-grants-to-starlink

SpaceX sends list of demands to US states giving broadband grants to Starlink

BEAD program, Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, Policy, spacex, starlink / /

SpaceX won’t make specific promises on Starlink network capacity or subscribers.

A Starlink user terminal during winter. Credit: Getty Images | AntaresNS

SpaceX has made a new set of demands on state governments that would ensure Starlink receives federal grant money even when residents don’t purchase Starlink broadband service.

SpaceX said it will provide “all necessary equipment” to receive broadband “at no cost to subscribers requesting service,” which will apparently eliminate the up-front hardware fee for Starlink equipment. But SpaceX isn’t promising lower-than-usual monthly prices to consumers in those subsidized areas. SpaceX pledged to make broadband available for $80 or less a month, plus taxes and fees, to people with low incomes in the subsidized areas. For comparison, the normal Starlink residential prices advertised on its website range from $50 to $120 a month.

SpaceX’s demands would also guarantee that it gets paid by the government even if it doesn’t reserve “large portions” of Starlink network capacity for homes in the areas that are supposed to receive government-subsidized Internet service. Moreover, SpaceX would not be responsible for ensuring that Starlink equipment is installed correctly at each customer location.

SpaceX sent a letter to state broadband offices proposing a rider with terms that it hopes will be applied to all grants it receives throughout the country. The letter was obtained and published by Broadband.io and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Arguing that SpaceX should receive grant money regardless of whether residents purchase Starlink service, the letter to states said that grant payments should not depend on “the independent purchasing decisions of users.” SpaceX also said it will not hold “large portions of capacity fallow” to ensure that people in subsidized areas receive good service, but will instead continue its preexisting practice of “dynamically allocat[ing] capacity where needed.”

SpaceX capitalizes on Trump overhaul

SpaceX’s proposed contract rider would apply to grants distributed under the US government’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. BEAD was created by Congress in a 2021 law that authorized spending over $42 billion to make broadband networks available in areas without modern service.

While the Biden administration designed the program to prioritize fiber deployments, the Trump administration threw out the previous plans. Under Trump, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) deemed the Biden-era plan too costly and changed the rules to make it easier for satellite services to obtain grant funding. The overhaul cut projected spending to about $21 billion, and it’s still unclear what will happen to the other $21 billion.

Starlink sought billions in grants after the new rules were put in place, but states didn’t want to provide that much. So far, SpaceX is slated to receive $733.5 million to offer broadband at 472,600 locations. Amazon’s Leo satellite service (formerly Kuiper) is set to receive $311 million for 415,000 locations.

While not every state plan is final, it looks like satellite networks will get about 5 percent of the grant money and serve over 22 percent of the locations funded by grants. Satellite companies are getting smaller payments on a per-location basis because, unlike fiber providers, they don’t have to install infrastructure at each customer’s location.

The concessions sought by SpaceX “would limit Starlink’s performance obligations, payment schedules, non-compliance penalties, reporting expectations, and labor and insurance standards,” wrote Drew Garner, director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute. Garner argued that SpaceX’s demands illustrate problems in how the Trump NTIA rewrote program rules to increase reliance on low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers.

“BEAD was designed primarily to deploy terrestrial networks, which are physically located in communities, built with traditional construction methods, and are relatively easy to monitor and inspect,” Garner wrote. “But, on June 6, 2025, NTIA restructured BEAD in ways that greatly increased participation by LEO providers, exacerbating the challenge of applying BEAD’s terrestrial-focused rules to LEO’s extraterrestrial networks.”

SpaceX: Labor rules shouldn’t apply to us

Among other things, SpaceX is trying to “minimize states’ ability to penalize LEO grantees for defaulting or failing to comply with contract requirements,” and avoid having “to report on the use of BEAD funds or other financial information related to the grant,” Garner wrote.

SpaceX’s letter said that “all requirements related to labor issues (e.g., prevailing wage and similar obligations), contractors, and procurement are inapplicable to SpaceX” because “there are no identifiable employees, contractors, or contracts being funded” to support Starlink broadband service in each state. Similarly, “there are no identifiable pieces of SpaceX infrastructure equipment (other than satellite capacity delivered from Space) being funded via BEAD,” the company said.

It’s unclear whether SpaceX will turn down grants if it doesn’t get what it wants. We asked the company for information on its plans if states refuse its terms and will update this article if we get a response. SpaceX’s proposed terms could also be applied to Amazon if states accept them.

SpaceX’s letter said that despite the Trump administration’s changes to BEAD, “a number of issues remain that, if unaddressed, could render LEO participation in the program untenable.” SpaceX said it wants to work with states “to more fully tailor aspects of the project agreement to the reality of LEO deployment and operations now that the initial project selection and approval phase is accomplished.”

Space said it wants to avoid extensive negotiations over its proposed terms. But the acknowledgement that some negotiation may be necessary seems to recognize that states don’t have to comply with the demands:

Toward this goal, we have developed a set of terms that we intend to function as a rider to all subgrant agreements across the country. This rider is intentionally limited in scope to addressing items of critical importance, to minimize the need for negotiation, and provide clarity to both parties moving forward. Our intention is for the LEO rider to enable the state to keep its core subgrant agreement relatively uniform amongst grantees, retain state-law-specific requirements, co-locate all relevant LEO-specific material for ease of administration, and standardize agreements across states.

Low-income plan: $80 plus taxes and fees

SpaceX’s proposed contract rider said the firm will offer broadband plans for “a monthly cost of $80 or less before applicable taxes and fees” to households that meet the low-income eligibility guidelines used by the FCC’s Lifeline program. People who don’t qualify for low-income plans would presumably pay regular Starlink rates.

The BEAD law requires ISPs receiving federal funds to offer at least one “low-cost broadband service option for eligible subscribers.” While the Biden administration sought low-income plans that cost as little as $30 a month, the Trump administration decided that states may not tell ISPs what prices to charge in their low-cost options. A Trump administration threat to shut states out of BEAD if they required low prices doomed a California proposal to mandate $15 monthly plans for people with low incomes.

SpaceX told state governments that it should receive 50 percent of grant funds when it certifies that it is capable of providing BEAD-quality service (100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speeds) within 10 business days to any potential customer that requests it in a grant area. The rest of the money would be distributed quarterly over the 10-year period of the grant.

Explaining why SpaceX shouldn’t be penalized if potential customers decide Starlink prices are too high, the firm wrote:

Tying payments to the independent purchasing decisions of users solely for awardees using LEO technologies, and not for any other technology, is, by definition, not technology neutral. SpaceX is already appropriately incentivized to gather customers by the opportunity to capture the monthly recurring revenue from each subscriber. SpaceX was in most instances awarded the most remote and difficult areas to serve among all other providers. SpaceX is up to the task of ensuring success in these challenging areas, however, it cannot undertake this mission without certainty of consistent payments to compensate such work.

Based on SpaceX’s letter, it sounds like the work the company must do to ensure quality of service at BEAD-funded locations is the same work it has already done to make Starlink available across the US. Instead of dedicated capacity for government-subsidized deployments, SpaceX said it will simply factor the needs of BEAD users into its planning:

With respect to capacity reservations, we have found some confusion regarding how such a reservation is made. Given the dynamic nature of the Starlink network, the reservation will not be such that SpaceX holds large portions of capacity fallow. This would be wasteful, inefficient, and does not reflect a LEO providers [sic] ability to dynamically allocate capacity where needed. Instead, SpaceX will include the capacity needs of BEAD users into its network planning efforts. These activities are multifaceted and include real time capacity allocation at the network level, launch activities, and sales efforts. As a result, there is no single “document” evidencing the reservation of capacity.

SpaceX wants limits on performance testing

SpaceX said it will be obvious if it does not provide sufficient service, and thus the states should not seek additional performance testing beyond what’s included in the NTIA guidelines. “If sufficient capacity was not reserved, performance testing will reveal insufficient quality of service, and this deficiency will be transparent to the state. Developing a separate, indirect measurement of the reservation itself is infeasible and unnecessary,” SpaceX said.

The proposed rider said that any network testing must “exclude subscribers who have installed CPE [consumer premise equipment] such that its view of the sky is obstructed and subscribers with damaged or malfunctioning CPE, as determined by GRANTEE.”

The “as determined by GRANTEE” phrase means it’s up to SpaceX to decide which subscribers should be excluded from testing. As the Benton Society says, the rider stipulates that “performance tests can only be considered if the LEO provider determines that the subscriber’s equipment is properly installed, and, notably, the LEO provider is not obligated to ensure proper installation.”

SpaceX’s proposed rider defines a “standard installation” as the mailing of equipment to a subscriber. That’s the standard process for unsubsidized areas throughout the country, and SpaceX doesn’t want to do any extra work to help set up equipment for customers in subsidized areas. However, customers may be able to purchase professional installation for an extra fee.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the GRANTEE will not be responsible for completing a permanent installation” at each location, SpaceX’s proposed rider says. A satellite provider “may choose to offer the subscriber professional services for permanent installation of CPE at an additional fee, but such professional services shall not be considered part of the standard installation,” it says.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

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

SpaceX sends list of demands to US states giving broadband grants to Starlink Read More »

nasa’s-first-medical-evacuation-from-space-ends-with-on-target-splashdown

NASA’s first medical evacuation from space ends with on-target splashdown

commercial crew, crew dragon, crew-11, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / /

“Because the astronaut is absolutely stable, this is not an emergent evacuation,” said James “JD” Polk, NASA’s chief medical officer, in a press conference last week. “We’re not immediately disembarking and getting the astronaut down.”

Amit Kshatriya, the agency’s associate administrator, called the situation a “controlled medical evacuation” in a briefing with reporters.

But without a confirmed diagnosis of the astronaut’s medical issue, there was some “lingering risk” for the astronaut’s health if they remained in orbit, Polk said. That’s why NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and his deputies agreed to call an early end to the Crew-11 mission.

A first for NASA

The Crew-11 mission launched on August 1 and was supposed to stay on the space station until around February 20, a few days after the scheduled arrival of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission with a team of replacement astronauts. But the early departure means the space station will operate with a crew of three until the launch of Crew-12 next month.

NASA astronaut Chris Williams will be the sole astronaut responsible for maintaining the US segment of the station. Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev launched with Williams in November on a Russian Soyuz vehicle. The Crew Dragon was the lifeboat for all four Crew-11 astronauts, so standard procedure called for the entire crew to return with the astronaut suffering the undisclosed medical issue.

The space station regularly operated with just three crew members for the first decade of its existence. The complex has been permanently staffed since 2000, sometimes with as few as two astronauts or cosmonauts. The standard crew size was raised to six in 2009, then to seven in 2020.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean under four main parachutes.

Credit: NASA

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft descends toward the Pacific Ocean under four main parachutes. Credit: NASA

Williams will have his hands full until reinforcements arrive. The scaled-down crew will not be able to undertake any spacewalks, and some of the lab’s science programs may have to be deferred to ensure the crew can keep up with maintenance tasks.

This is the first time NASA has called an early end to a space mission for medical reasons, but the Soviet Union faced similar circumstances several times during the Cold War. Russian officials cut short an expedition to the Salyut 7 space station in 1985 after the mission’s commander fell ill in orbit. A similar situation occurred in 1976 with the Soyuz 21 mission to the Salyut 5 space station.

NASA’s first medical evacuation from space ends with on-target splashdown Read More »

spacex-gets-fcc-permission-to-launch-another-7,500-starlink-satellites

SpaceX gets FCC permission to launch another 7,500 Starlink satellites

Policy, spacex, starlink / /

T-Mobile is using Starlink in the US, and the satellite operator has partnerships with carriers overseas. With today’s FCC authorization, Starlink will be able to provide both fixed and mobile service from all 15,000 second-generation satellites.

SpaceX wants to launch another 15,000 satellites

SpaceX also recently struck a $17 billion deal to buy spectrum licenses from EchoStar, which will give it 50 Mhz of mobile spectrum and reduce its reliance on cellular carriers. SpaceX has been leasing 10 MHz of spectrum from T-Mobile to provide supplemental service in the US.

Starlink is separately planning to launch yet another 15,000 satellites that are designed for mobile service. SpaceX asked the FCC to approve this plan in September 2025, saying the “new system will offer a new generation of MSS connectivity, supporting voice, texting, and high-speed data.”

Starlink requests for FCC authorization often face opposition from other satellite firms, and the application for 15,000 more satellites is no exception. Viasat filed a petition to deny the application on Monday this week.

“This proposed expansion of SpaceX’s operating authority would give it an even greater ability and incentive to foreclose other operators from accessing and using limited orbital and spectrum resources on a competitive basis,” Viasat told the FCC. “At the same time, the proposed operations would generate insurmountable interference risks for other spectrum users and the customers they serve, preclude other operators from accessing and using scarce spectral and orbital resources on an equitable basis, undermine and foreclose competition and innovation, and otherwise harm the public.”

Globalstar also filed a petition to deny, and several other satellite operators raised objections. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has generally been a supporter of SpaceX and Elon Musk, however. Carr alleged that the Biden administration targeted Musk’s companies for “regulatory harassment,” and in his current role as chairman Carr pressured EchoStar into selling the spectrum licenses that SpaceX is now buying.

In today’s press release announcing the latest authorization, Carr said that “the FCC has given SpaceX the green light to deliver unprecedented satellite broadband capabilities, strengthen competition, and help ensure that no community is left behind.”

SpaceX gets FCC permission to launch another 7,500 Starlink satellites Read More »

nasa-orders-“controlled-medical-evacuation”-from-the-international-space-station

NASA orders “controlled medical evacuation” from the International Space Station

commercial crew, crew dragon, crew-11, dragon, human spaceflight, international space station, jared isaacman, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / /

“The crew is highly trained, and they came to the aid of their colleague right away.”

The International Space Station orbits 260 miles (420 kilometers) above the Earth. Credit: NASA

NASA officials said Thursday they have decided to bring home four of the seven crew members on the International Space Station after one of them experienced a “medical situation” earlier this week.

The space agency has said little about the incident, and officials have not identified which crew member suffered the medical issue. James “JD” Polk, NASA’s chief health and medical officer, told reporters Thursday the crew member is “absolutely stable” but that the agency is “erring on the side of caution” with the decision to return the astronaut to Earth.

The ailing astronaut is part of the Crew-11 mission, which launched to the station August 1 and was slated to come back to Earth around February 20. Instead, the Crew-11 astronauts will depart the International Space Station (ISS) in the coming days and head for reentry and a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

“After discussions with our chief health and medical officer, Dr. JD Polk, and leadership across the agency, I’ve come to the decision that it’s in the best interests of our astronauts to return Crew-11 ahead of their planned departure,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said Thursday.

The Crew-11 mission is led by commander Zena Cardman, 38, who is wrapping up her first mission to space. Second in command is pilot Mike Fincke, a 58-year-old astronaut on his fourth spaceflight. Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, 55, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, 39, round out the crew.

Isaacman said NASA will release more information about the schedule for Crew-11’s undocking and reentry within the next 48 hours. The crew will come home aboard the same SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft they launched in more than five months ago. The entire crew must return to Earth together because they rely on the same Dragon spacecraft as a lifeboat.

“For over 60 years, NASA has set the standard for safety and security in crewed spaceflight,” Isaacman said. “In these endeavors, including the 25 years of continuous human presence onboard the International Space Station, the health and well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority.”

From left to right: Crew-11 mission specialist Oleg Platonov, pilot Mike Fincke, commander Zena Cardman, and mission specialist Kimiya Yui. This photo was taken during training at SpaceX’s facility in Hawthorne, California.

Credit: SpaceX

From left to right: Crew-11 mission specialist Oleg Platonov, pilot Mike Fincke, commander Zena Cardman, and mission specialist Kimiya Yui. This photo was taken during training at SpaceX’s facility in Hawthorne, California. Credit: SpaceX

Lingering risk

Polk, a physician who has served as NASA’s chief medical officer since 2016, said the agency is not ready to release details about the medical issue, citing privacy concerns. “I’m not going to speak about any particular astronaut or any particular specific diagnosis,” Polk said. “I’d ask that we still respect the privacy of the astronaut.”

Two of the Crew-11 astronauts, Cardman and Fincke, were preparing to head outside the space station on a spacewalk early Thursday. Spacewalk preps at the space station include a period of time breathing high concentrations of oxygen to purge nitrogen from the astronauts’ bloodstreams, a mitigation to avoid decompression sickness when crew members are sealed inside their spacesuits’ pure oxygen atmosphere.

Polk said whatever happened Wednesday “had nothing to do” with preparing for the spacewalk. “This was totally unrelated to any operations onboard,” he said. “It’s mostly having a medical issue in the difficult areas of microgravity with the suite of hardware that we have at our avail to complete a diagnosis.”

Yui radioed mission controllers in Houston on Wednesday afternoon requesting a private medical conference with a flight surgeon, then asked ground teams to turn on camera views inside the station ahead of the session. Medical sessions are carried out on private radio channels and are not heard on the regular communication loops between the space station and mission control. Those open loops are streamed around the clock online, but NASA removed the audio feed from YouTube soon after the crew asked for the medical conference.

NASA publicly revealed a medical concern with one of the astronauts later Wednesday afternoon, then announced late Wednesday night that officials were considering bringing the crew home early.

“I won’t go into specific details about the medical incident itself,” Polk said. “But the crew is highly trained, and they came to the aid of their colleague right away, and that’s part of why we do that training.”

The space station is stocked with medical gear and medications to help astronauts respond to emergencies. Crew members are trained to perform ultrasounds, defibrillate patients, and start IVs, among other things. The medical treatment available on the ISS is akin to what an EMT might provide in transit to a hospital, former astronaut Tom Marshburn, himself a medical doctor, said in 2021.

“We have a very robust suite of medical hardware onboard the International Space Station, but we don’t have the complete amount of hardware that I would have in the emergency department, for example, to complete the workup of a patient,” Polk said.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, associate administrator Amit Kshatriya, and chief medical officer James “JD” Polk brief reporters on the status of the Crew-11 mission Thursday.

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, associate administrator Amit Kshatriya, and chief medical officer James “JD” Polk brief reporters on the status of the Crew-11 mission Thursday. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Space station managers will take a few days to determine when the Dragon spacecraft will leave the station. SpaceX will dispatch a recovery ship from Southern California to sail for the splashdown zone in the Pacific, and officials will assess weather and sea conditions before selecting the best opportunity to depart the station. Like every crew return, the vessel will be staffed with medical personnel to examine the astronauts after exiting from the Dragon capsule.

“Because the astronaut is absolutely stable, this is not an emergent evacuation,” Polk said. “We’re not immediately disembarking and getting the astronaut down.”

But without a confirmed diagnosis of the astronaut’s medical issue, there’s some “lingering risk” for the astronaut’s health if they remained in orbit, Polk said. That’s why Isaacman and his deputies agreed to call an early end to the Crew-11 mission.

This was the most significant decision of Isaacman’s young tenure as NASA administrator. He was sworn in as NASA chief last month after clearing a confirmation vote in the Senate. Before taking the helm at NASA, Isaacman charted a career as an entrepreneur and private astronaut, flying to space twice on commercial missions with SpaceX.

An inevitability

After Crew-11’s departure, the space station will operate with a smaller crew of three until the arrival of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission with a fresh team of astronauts next month. Isaacman said NASA and SpaceX are looking at options to move up the launch of Crew-12 from its current target date of February 15.

Until then, the station’s crew will consist of NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two Russian cosmonauts, who launched to the space station in November on a Russian Soyuz vehicle. Williams and his crewmates—Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev—have their own lifeboat in the Soyuz spacecraft, so they will still have a ride home in the event of a future emergency.

The space station regularly operated with just three crew members for the first decade of its existence. The complex has been permanently staffed since 2000, sometimes with as few as two astronauts or cosmonauts. The standard crew size was raised to six in 2009, then to seven in 2020.

NASA astronaut Zena Cardman works with a spacesuit helmet inside the International Space Station’s airlock.

Credit: NASA

NASA astronaut Zena Cardman works with a spacesuit helmet inside the International Space Station’s airlock. Credit: NASA

Williams will be solely responsible for overseeing the lab’s US segment until Crew-12 arrives. He will be busy keeping up with maintenance tasks, so managers will likely defer some of the station’s scientific investigations until the complex is back to a full crew.

The early departure of Crew-11, leaving Williams as the only US astronaut aboard, also means NASA will be unable to perform spacewalks. This will mean a “slightly elevated risk” in NASA’s ability to respond to a major hardware failure that might require a spacewalk to fix, said Amit Kshatriya, the agency’s associate administrator.

NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, inked an agreement in 2022 to fly multinational crews on Dragon and Soyuz missions to ensure an American and a Russian are always at the space station. The so-called “seat swap” deal is proving worthwhile with this week’s events.

NASA has never before cut short a human spaceflight mission for medical reasons. “It’s the first time we’ve done a controlled medical evacuation from the vehicle, so that is unusual,” Kshatriya said.

The Soviet Union called an early end for an expedition to the Salyut 7 space station in 1985 after the mission’s commander fell ill in orbit.

In a sense, it is surprising that it took this long. Polk said predictive models suggested the ISS would have a medical evacuation about once every three years. It ended up taking 25 years. In that time, NASA has improved astronauts’ abilities to treat aches and pains, minor injuries, and routine illnesses.

Crews in orbit can now self-treat ailments that might have prompted a crew to return to Earth in the past. One astronaut was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis, or a blood clot, in 2018 without requiring an early departure from the space station. Another astronaut suffered a pinched nerve in 2021 and remained in orbit for another seven months.

One of the more compelling reasons for the space station’s existence is its ability to act as a testbed for learning how to live and work off the planet. The station has served as a laboratory for studying how spaceflight affects the human body, and as a platform to test life support systems necessary for long-duration voyages to deep space.

“We are doing all this to continue to learn,” Isaacman said. “We will absolutely learn from this situation as well, to see if that informs our future on-orbit operations, whether that be on the space station or our future lunar base that we’re pursuing right now, and eventually for deep space missions to Mars.”

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.

NASA orders “controlled medical evacuation” from the International Space Station Read More »

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Rocket Report: A new super-heavy launch site in California; 2025 year in review

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SpaceX opened its 2026 launch campaign with a mission for the Italian government.

A Chinese Long March 7 rocket carrying a cargo ship for China’s Tiangong space station soars into orbit from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on July 15, 2025. Credit: Liu Guoxing/VCG via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.24 of the Rocket Report! We’re back from a restorative holiday, and there’s a great deal Eric and I look forward to covering in 2026. You can get a taste of what we’re expecting this year in this feature. Other storylines are also worth watching this year that didn’t make the Top 20. Will SpaceX’s Starship begin launching Starlink satellites? Will United Launch Alliance finally get its Vulcan rocket flying at a higher cadence? Will Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket be certified by the US Space Force? I’m looking forward to learning the answers to these questions, and more. As for what has already happened in 2026, it has been a slow start on the world’s launch pads, with only a pair of SpaceX missions completed in the first week of the year. Only? Two launches in one week by any company would have been remarkable just a few years ago.

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.

New launch records set in 2025. The number of orbital launch attempts worldwide last year surpassed the record 2024 flight rate by 25 percent, with SpaceX and China accounting for the bulk of the launch activity, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Including near-orbital flight tests of SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy launch system, the number of orbital launch attempts worldwide reached 329 last year, an annual analysis of global launch and satellite activity by Jonathan’s Space Report shows. Of those 329 attempts, 321 reached orbit or marginal orbits. In addition to five Starship-Super Heavy launches, SpaceX launched 165 Falcon 9 rockets in 2025, surpassing its 2024 record of 134 Falcon 9 and two Falcon Heavy flights. No Falcon Heavy rockets flew in 2025. US providers, including Rocket Lab Electron orbital flights from its New Zealand spaceport, added another 30 orbital launches to the 2025 tally, solidifying the US as the world leader in space launch.

International launches… China, which attempted 92 orbital launches in 2025, is second, followed by Russia, with 17 launches last year, and Europe with eight. Rounding out the 2025 orbital launch manifest were five orbital launch attempts from India, four from Japan, two from South Korea, and one each from Israel, Iran, and Australia, the analysis shows. The global launch tally has been on an upward trend since 2019, but the numbers may plateau this year. SpaceX expects to launch about the same number of Falcon 9 rockets this year as it did last year as the company prepares to ramp up the pace of Starship flights.

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South Korean startup suffers launch failure. The first commercial rocket launched at Brazil’s Alcantara Space Center crashed soon after liftoff on December 22, dealing a blow to Brazilian aerospace ambitions and the South Korean satellite launch company Innospace, Reuters reports. The rocket began its vertical trajectory as planned after liftoff but fell to the ground after something went wrong 30 seconds into its flight, according to Innospace, the South Korean startup that developed the launch vehicle. The craft crashed within a pre-designated safety zone and did not harm anyone, officials said.

An unsurprising result... This was the first flight of Innospace’s nano-launcher, named Hanbit-Nano. The rocket was loaded with eight small payloads, including five deployable satellites, heading for low-Earth orbit. But rocket debuts don’t have a good track record, and Innospace’s rocket made it a bit farther than some new launch vehicles do. The rocket is designed to place up to 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload mass into Sun-synchronous orbit. It has a unique design, with hybrid engines consuming a mix of paraffin as the fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. Innospace said it intends to launch a second test flight in 2026. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Take two for Germany’s Isar Aerospace. Isar Aerospace is gearing up for a second launch attempt of its light-class Spectrum rocket after completing 30-second integrated static test firings for both stages late last year, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The endeavor would be the first orbital launch for Spectrum and an effort at a clean mission after a March 30 flight ended in failure because a vent valve inadvertently opened soon after liftoff, causing a loss of control. “Rapid iteration is how you win in this domain. Being back on the pad less than nine months after our first test flight is proof that we can operate at the speed the world now demands,” said Daniel Metzler, co-founder and CEO of Isar Aerospace.

No earlier than… Airspace and maritime warning notices around the Spectrum rocket’s launch site in northern Norway suggest Isar Aerospace is targeting launch no earlier than January 17. Based near Munich, Isar Aerospace is Europe’s leading launch startup. Not only has Isar beat its competitors to the launch pad, the company has raised far more money than other European rocket firms. After its most recent fundraising round in June, Isar has raised more than 550 million euros ($640 million) from venture capital investors and government-backed funds. Now, Isar just needs to reach orbit.

A step forward for Canada’s launch ambitions. The Atlantic Spaceport Complex—a new launch facility being developed by the aerospace company NordSpace on the southern coast of Newfoundland—has won an important regulatory approval, NASASpaceflight.com reports. The provincial government of Newfoundland and Labrador “released” the spaceport from the environmental assessment process. “At this stage, the spaceport no longer requires further environmental assessment,” NordSpace said in a statement. “This release represents the single most significant regulatory milestone for NordSpace’s spaceport development to date, clearing the path for rapid execution of Canada’s first purpose-built, sovereign orbital launch complex designed and operated by an end-to-end launch services provider.”

Now, about that rocket... NordSpace began construction of the Atlantic Spaceport Complex last year and planned to launch its first suborbital rocket from the spaceport last August. But bad weather and technical problems kept NordSpace’s Taiga rocket grounded, and then the company had to wait for the Canadian government to reissue a launch license. NordSpace said it most recently delayed the suborbital launch until March in order to “continue our focus on advancing our orbital-scale technologies.” NordSpace is one of the companies likely to participate in a challenge sponsored by the Canadian government, which is committing 105 million Canadian dollars ($75 million) to develop a sovereign orbital launch capability. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

H3 rocket falters on the way to orbit. A faulty payload fairing may have doomed Japan’s latest H3 rocket mission, with the Japanese space agency now investigating if the shield separated abnormally and crippled the vehicle in flight after lifting off on December 21, the Asahi Shimbun reports. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency officials told a science ministry panel on December 23 they suspect an abnormal separation of the rocket’s payload fairing—a protective nose cone shield—caused a critical drop in pressure in the second-stage engine’s hydrogen tank. The second-stage engine lost thrust as it climbed into space, then failed to restart for a critical burn to boost Japan’s Michibiki 5 navigation satellite into a high-altitude orbit.

Growing pains… The H3 rocket is Japan’s flagship launch vehicle, having replaced the country’s H-IIA rocket after its retirement last year. The December launch was the seventh flight of an H3 rocket, and its second failure. While engineers home in on the rocket’s suspect payload fairing, several H3 launches planned for this year now face delays. Japanese officials already announced that the next H3 flight will be delayed from February. Japan’s space agency plans to launch a robotic mission to Mars on an H3 rocket in October. While there’s still time for officials to investigate and fix the issues that caused last month’s launch failure, the incident adds a question mark to the schedule for the Mars launch. (submitted by tsunam and EllPeaTea)

SpaceX opens 2026 with launch for Italy. SpaceX rang in the new year with a Falcon 9 rocket launch on January 2 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Spaceflight Now reports. The payload was Italy’s Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation Flight Model 3 (CSG-FM3) satellite, a radar surveillance satellite for dual civilian and military use. The Cosmo-SkyMed mission was the first Falcon 9 rocket flight in 16 days, the longest stretch without a SpaceX orbital launch in four years.

Poached from Europe… The CSG-FM3 satellite is the third of four second-generation Cosmo-SkyMed radar satellites ordered by the Italian government. The second and third satellites have now launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets instead of their initial ride: Europe’s Vega C launcher. Italy switched the satellites to SpaceX after delays in making the Vega C rocket operational and Europe’s loss of access to Russian Soyuz rockets in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine. The rocket swap became a regular occurrence for European satellites in the last few years as Europe’s indigenous launch program encountered repeated delays.

Rocket deploys heaviest satellite ever launched from India. An Indian LVM3 rocket launched AST SpaceMobile’s next-generation direct-to-device BlueBird satellite December 23, kicking off the rollout of dozens of spacecraft built around the largest commercial communications antenna ever deployed in low-Earth orbit, Space News reports. At 13,450 pounds (6.1 metric tons), the BlueBird 6 satellite was the heaviest spacecraft ever launched on an Indian rocket. The LVM3 rocket released BlueBird 6 into an orbit approximately 323 miles (520 kilometers) above the Earth.

The pressure is on… BlueBird 6 is the first of AST SpaceMobile’s Block 2 satellites designed to beam Internet signals directly to smartphones. The Texas-based company is competing with SpaceX’s Starlink network in the same direct-to-cell market. Starlink has an early lead in the direct-to-device business, but AST SpaceMobile says it plans to launch between 45 and 60 satellites by the end of this year. AST’s BlueBird satellites are significantly larger than SpaceX’s Starlink platforms, with antennas unfurling in space to cover an area of 2,400 square feet (223 square meters). The competition between SpaceX and AST SpaceMobile has led to a race for spectrum access and partnerships with cell service providers.

Ars’ annual power rankings of US rocket companies. There’s been some movement near the top of our annual power rankings. It was not difficult to select the first-place company on this list. As it has every year in our rankings, SpaceX holds the top spot. Blue Origin was the biggest mover on the list, leaping from No. 4 on the list to No. 2. It was a breakthrough year for Jeff Bezos’ space company, finally shaking the notion that it was a company full of promise that could not quite deliver. Blue Origin delivered big time in 2025. On the very first launch of the massive New Glenn rocket in January, Blue Origin successfully sent a test payload into orbit. Although a landing attempt failed after New Glenn’s engines failed to re-light, it was a remarkable success. Then, in November, New Glenn sent a pair of small spacecraft on their way to Mars. This successful launch was followed by a breathtaking and inspiring landing of the rocket’s first stage on a barge.

Where’s ULA?… Rocket Lab came in at No. 3. The company had an excellent year, garnering its highest total of Electron launches and having complete mission success. Rocket Lab has now gone more than three dozen launches without a failure. Rocket Lab also continued to make progress on its medium-lift Neutron vehicle, although its debut was ultimately delayed to mid-2026, at least. United Launch Alliance slipped from No. 2 to No. 4 after launching its new Vulcan rocket just once last year, well short of the company’s goal of flying up to 10 Vulcan missions.

Rocketdyne changes hands again. If you are a student of space history or tracked the space industry before billionaires and venture capital changed it forever, you probably know the name Rocketdyne. A half-century ago, Rocketdyne manufactured almost all of the large liquid-fueled rocket engines in the United States. The Saturn V rocket that boosted astronauts toward the Moon relied on powerful engines developed by Rocketdyne, as did the Space Shuttle, the Atlas, Thor, and Delta rockets, and the US military’s earliest ballistic missiles. But Rocketdyne has lost its luster in the 21st century as it struggled to stay relevant in the emerging commercial launch industry. Now, the engine-builder is undergoing its fourth ownership change in 20 years. AE Industrial Partners, a private equity firm, announced it will purchase a controlling stake in Rocketdyne from L3Harris after less than three years of ownership, Ars reports.

Splitting up… Rocketdyne’s RS-25 engine, used on NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, is not part of the deal with AE Industrial. It will remain under the exclusive ownership of L3Harris. Rocketdyne’s work on solid-fueled propulsion, ballistic missile interceptors, tactical missiles, and other military munitions will also remain under L3Harris control. The split of the company’s space and defense segments will allow L3Harris to concentrate on Pentagon programs, the company said. So, what is AE Industrial getting in its deal with L3Harris? Aside from the Rocketdyne name, the private equity firm will have a majority stake in the production of the liquid-fueled RL10 upper-stage engine used on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. AE Industrial’s Rocketdyne will also continue the legacy company’s work in nuclear propulsion, electric propulsion, and smaller in-space maneuvering thrusters used on satellites.

Tory Bruno has a new employer. Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin said on December 26 that it has hired Tory Bruno, the longtime CEO of United Launch Alliance, as president of its newly formed national security-focused unit, Reuters reports. Bruno will head the National Security Group and report to Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, the company said in a social media post, underscoring its push to expand in US defense and intelligence launch markets. The hire brings one of the US launch industry’s most experienced executives to Blue Origin as the company works to challenge the dominance of SpaceX and win a larger share of lucrative US military and intelligence launch contracts.

11 years at ULA… The move comes days after Bruno stepped down as CEO of ULA, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture that has long dominated US national security space launches alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In 11 years at ULA, Bruno oversaw the development of the Vulcan rocket, the company’s next-generation launch vehicle designed to replace its Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and secure future Pentagon contracts. (submitted by r0twhylr)

A California spaceport has room to grow. A new orbital launch site is up for grabs at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Spaceflight Now reports. The Department of the Air Force published a request for information from launch providers to determine the level of interest in what would become the southernmost launch complex on the Western Range. The location, which will be designated as Space Launch Complex-14 or SLC-14, is being set aside for orbital rockets in a heavy or super-heavy vertical launch class. One of the requirements listed in the RFI includes what the government calls the “highest technical maturity.” It states that for the bid from a launch provider to be taken seriously, it needs to prove that it can begin operations within approximately five years of receiving a lease for the property.

Who’s in contention?… Multiple US launch providers have rockets in the heavy to super-heavy classification either currently launching or in development. Given all the requirements and the state of play on the orbital launch front, one of the contenders would likely be SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy rocket. The company is slated to launch the latest iteration of the rocket, dubbed Version 3, sometime in early 2026. Blue Origin is another likely contender for the prospective launch site. Blue Origin currently has an undeveloped space at Vandenberg’s SLC-9 for its New Glenn rocket. But the company unveiled plans in November for a new super-heavy lift version called New Glenn 9×4. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Jan. 9: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-96 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18: 05 UTC

Jan. 11: Falcon 9 | Twilight Mission | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13: 19 UTC

Jan. 11: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-97 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18: 08 UTC

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

Rocket Report: A new super-heavy launch site in California; 2025 year in review Read More »

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SpaceX begins “significant reconfiguration” of Starlink satellite constellation

Internet, Space, space debris, spacex, starlink / /

The year 2025 ended with more than 14,000 active satellites from all nations zooming around the Earth. One-third of them will soon move to lower altitudes.

The maneuvers will be undertaken by SpaceX, the owner of the largest satellite fleet in orbit. About 4,400 of the company’s Starlink Internet satellites will move from an altitude of 341 miles (550 kilometers) to 298 miles (480 kilometers) over the course of 2026, according to Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering.

“Starlink is beginning a significant reconfiguration of its satellite constellation focused on increasing space safety,” Nicolls wrote Thursday in a post on X.

The maneuvers undertaken with the Starlink satellites’ plasma engines will be gradual, but they will eventually bring a large fraction of orbital traffic closer together. The effect, perhaps counterintuitively, will be a reduced risk of collisions between satellites whizzing through near-Earth space at nearly 5 miles per second. Nicolls said the decision will “increase space safety in several ways.”

Why now?

There are fewer debris objects at the lower altitude, and although the Starlink satellites will be packed more tightly, they follow choreographed paths distributed in dozens of orbital lanes. “The number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision,” Nicolls wrote.

The 4,400 satellites moving closer to Earth make up nearly half of SpaceX’s Starlink fleet. At the end of 2025, SpaceX had nearly 9,400 working satellites in orbit, including more than 8,000 Starlinks in operational service and hundreds more undergoing tests and activation.

There’s another natural reason for reconfiguring the Starlink constellation. The Sun is starting to quiet down after reaching the peak of the 11-year solar cycle in 2024. The decline in solar activity has the knock-on effect of reducing air density in the uppermost layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, a meaningful factor in planning satellite operations in low-Earth orbit.

With the approaching solar minimum, Starlink satellites will encounter less aerodynamic drag at their current altitude. In the rare event of a spacecraft failure, SpaceX relies on atmospheric resistance to drag Starlink satellites out of orbit toward a fiery demise on reentry. Moving the Starlink satellites lower will allow them to naturally reenter the atmosphere and burn up within a few months. At solar minimum, it might take more than four years for drag to pull the satellites out of their current 550-kilometer orbit, according to Nicolls. At the lower altitude, it will take just a few months.

SpaceX begins “significant reconfiguration” of Starlink satellite constellation Read More »

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Rocket Report: Russia pledges quick fix for Soyuz launch pad; Ariane 6 aims high

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South Korean rocket startup Innospace is poised to debut a new nano-launcher.

The fifth Ariane 6 rocket climbs away from Kourou, French Guiana, with two European Galileo navigation satellites. Credit: ESA-CNES-Arianespace

Welcome to Edition 8.23 of the Rocket Report! Several new rockets made their first flights this year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn was the most notable debut, with a successful inaugural launch in January followed by an impressive second flight in November, culminating in the booster’s first landing on an offshore platform. Second on the list is China’s Zhuque-3, a partially reusable methane-fueled rocket developed by the quasi-commercial launch company LandSpace. The medium-lift Zhuque-3 successfully reached orbit on its first flight earlier this month, and its booster narrowly missed landing downrange. We could add China’s Long March 12A to the list if it flies before the end of the year. This will be the final Rocket Report of 2025, but we’ll be back in January with all the news that’s fit to lift.

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.

Rocket Lab delivers for Space Force and NASA. Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design, Ars reports. The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical dispenser on top of the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket when it lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. A little more than an hour later, the rocket’s upper stage released the satellites one at a time at an altitude of about 340 miles (550 kilometers). The launch was the starting gun for a proof-of-concept mission to test the viability of a new kind of satellite called DiskSats, designed by the Aerospace Corporation.

Stack ’em high… “DiskSat is a lightweight, compact, flat disc-shaped satellite designed for optimizing future rideshare launches,” the Aerospace Corporation said in a statement. The DiskSats are 39 inches (1 meter) wide, about twice the diameter of a New York-style pizza, and measure just 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick. Made of composite carbon fiber, each satellite carries solar cells, control avionics, reaction wheels, and an electric thruster to change and maintain altitude. The flat design allows DiskSats to be stacked one on top of the other for launch. The format also has significantly more surface area than other small satellites with comparable mass, making room for more solar cells for high-power missions or large-aperture payloads like radar imaging instruments or high-bandwidth antennas. NASA and the US Space Force cofunded the development and launch of the DiskSat demo mission.

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SpaceX warns of dangerous Chinese launch. China’s recent deployment of nine satellites occurred dangerously close to a Starlink satellite, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering said. Michael Nicolls wrote in a December 12 social media post that there was a 200-meter close approach between a satellite launched December 10 on a Chinese Kinetica-1 rocket and SpaceX’s Starlink-6079 spacecraft at 560 kilometers (348 miles) altitude, Aviation Week and Space Technology reports. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to change,” Nicolls wrote.

Blaming the customer... The company in charge of the Kinetica-1 rocket, CAS Space, responded to Nicolls’ post on X saying it would “work on identifying the exact details and provide assistance.” In a follow-up post on December 13, CAS Space said the close call, if confirmed, occurred nearly 48 hours after the satellite separated from the Kinetica-1 rocket, by which time the launch mission had long concluded. “CAS Space will coordinate with satellite operators to proceed.”

A South Korean startup is ready to fly. Innospace, a South Korean space startup, will launch its independently developed commercial rocket, Hanbit-Nano, as soon as Friday, the Maeil Business Newspaper reports. The rocket will lift off from the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil. The small launcher will attempt to deliver eight small payloads, including five deployable satellites, into low-Earth orbit. The launch was delayed two days to allow time for technicians to replace components of the first stage oxidizer supply cooling system.

Hybrid propulsion… This will be the first launch of Innospace’s Hanbit-Nano rocket. The launcher has two stages and stands 71 feet (21.7 meters) tall with a diameter of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters). Hanbit-Nano is a true micro-launcher, capable of placing up to 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload mass into Sun-synchronous orbit. It has a unique design, with hybrid engines consuming a mix of paraffin as the fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer.

Ten years since a milestone in rocketry. On December 21, 2015, SpaceX launched the Orbcomm-2 mission on an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket. That night, just days before Christmas, the company successfully landed the first stage for the first time. Ars has reprinted a slightly condensed chapter from the book Reentry, authored by Senior Space Editor Eric Berger and published in 2024. The chapter begins in June 2015 with the failure of a Falcon 9 rocket during launch of a resupply mission to the International Space Station and ends with a vivid behind-the-scenes recounting of the historic first landing of a Falcon 9 booster to close out the year.

First-person account… I have my own memory of SpaceX’s first rocket landing. I was there, covering the mission for another publication, as the Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. In an abundance of caution, Air Force officials in charge of the Cape Canaveral spaceport closed large swaths of the base for the Falcon 9’s return to land. The decision shunted VIPs and media representatives to viewing locations outside the spaceport’s fence, so I joined SpaceX’s official press room at the top of a seven-floor tower near the Port Canaveral cruise terminals. The view was tremendous. We all knew to expect a sonic boom as the rocket came back to Florida, but its arrival was a jolt. The next morning, I joined SpaceX and a handful of reporters and photographers on a chartered boat to get a closer look at the Falcon 9 standing proudly after returning from space.

Roscosmos targets quick fix to Soyuz launch pad. Russian space agency Roscosmos says it expects a damaged launch pad critical to International Space Station operations to be fixed by the end of February, Aviation Week and Space Technology reports. “Launch readiness: end of February 2026,” Roscosmos said in a statement Tuesday. Russia had been scrambling to assess the extent of repairs needed to Pad 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after the November 27 flight of a Soyuz-2.1a rocket damaged key elements of the infrastructure. The pad is the only one capable of supporting Russian launches to the ISS.

Best-case scenario… A quick repair to the launch pad would be the best-case scenario for Roscosmos. A service structure underneath the rocket was unsecured during the launch of a three-man crew to the ISS last month. The structure fell into the launch pad’s flame trench, leaving the complex without the service cabin technicians use to work on the Soyuz rocket before liftoff. Roscosmos said a “complete service cabin replacement kit” has arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and more than 130 staff are working in two shifts to implement the repairs. A fix by the end of February would allow Russia to resume cargo flights to the ISS in March.

Atlas V closes out an up-and-down year for ULA. United Launch Alliance aced its final launch of 2025, a predawn flight of an Atlas V rocket Tuesday carrying 27 satellites for Amazon’s recently rebranded Leo broadband Internet service, Spaceflight Now reports. The rocket flew northeast from Cape Canaveral to place the Amazon Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit. This was ULA’s fourth launch for Amazon’s satellite broadband venture, previously known as Project Kuiper. ULA closes out 2025 with six launches, one more than the company achieved last year. But ULA’s new Vulcan rocket launched just once this year, disappointingly short of the company’s goal to fly Vulcan up to 10 times.

Taking stock of Amazon Leo… This year marked the start of the deployment of Amazon’s operational satellites. There are now 180 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit after Tuesday’s launch, well short of the FCC’s requirement for Amazon to deploy half of its planned 3,232 satellites by July 31, 2026. Amazon won’t meet the deadline, and it’s likely the retail giant will ask government regulators for a waiver or extension to the deadline. Amazon’s factory is hitting its stride producing and delivering Amazon Leo satellites. The real question is launch capacity. Amazon has contracts to launch satellites on ULA’s Atlas V and Vulcan rockets, Europe’s Ariane 6, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Early next year, a batch of 32 Amazon Leo satellites will launch on the first flight of Europe’s uprated Ariane 64 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A good year for Ariane 6. Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket launched four times this year after a debut test flight in 2024. The four successful missions deployed payloads for the French military, Europe’s weather satellite agency, the European Union’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network, and finally, on Wednesday, the European Galileo navigation satellite fleet, Space News reports. This is a strong showing for a new rocket flying from a new launch pad and a faster ramp-up of launch cadence than any medium- or heavy-lift rocket in recent memory. All five Ariane 6 launches to date have used the Ariane 62 configuration with two strap-on solid rocket boosters. The more powerful Ariane 64 rocket, with four strap-on motors, will make its first flight early next year.

Aiming high… This was the first launch using the Ariane 6 rocket’s ability to fly long-duration missions lasting several hours. The rocket’s cryogenic upper stage, with a restartable Vinci engine, took nearly four hours to inject two Galileo navigation satellites into an orbit more than 14,000 miles (nearly 23,000 kilometers) above the Earth. The flight profile put more stress on the Ariane 6 upper stage than any of the rocket’s previous missions, but the rocket released its payloads into an on-target orbit. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

ESA wants to do more with Ariane 6’s kick stage. The European Space Agency plans to adapt a contract awarded to ArianeGroup in 2021 for an Ariane 6 kick stage to cover its evolution into an orbital transfer vehicle, European Spaceflight reports. The original contract was for the development of the Ariane 6’s Astris kick stage, an optional addition for Ariane 6 missions to deploy payloads into multiple orbits or directly inject satellites into geostationary orbit. Last month, ESA’s member states committed approximately 100 million euros ($117 million) to refocus the Astris kick stage into a more capable Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV).

Strong support from Germany… ESA’s director of space transportation, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, said the performance of the Ariane 6 OTV will be “well beyond” that of the originally conceived Astris kick stage. The funding commitment obtained during last month’s ESA ministerial council meeting includes strong support from Germany, Tolker-Nielsen said. Under the new timeline, a protoflight mode of the OTV is expected to be ready for ground qualification by the end of 2028, with an inaugural flight following in 2029. (submitted EllPeaTea)

Another Starship clone in China. Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Now, Chinese companies are starting to introduce designs that appear quite similar to SpaceX’s newer, larger Starship rocket, Ars reports. The newest entry comes from a company called “Beijing Leading Rocket Technology.” This outfit took things a step further by naming its vehicle “Starship-1,” adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as being a “fully reusable AI rocket.”

Starship prime… China has a long history of copying SpaceX. The country’s first class of reusable rockets, which began flying earlier this month, show strong similarities to the Falcon 9 rocket. Now, it’s Starship. The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024, the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country’s state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship. At least two more companies have announced plans for Starship-like rockets using SpaceX’s chopstick-style method for booster recovery. Many of these launch startups will not grow past the PowerPoint phase, of course.

Next three launches

Dec. 19: Hanbit-Nano | Spaceward | Alcântara Launch Center, Brazil | 18: 45 UTC

Dec. 20: Long March 5 | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 12: 30 UTC

Dec. 20: New Shepard | NS-37 crew mission | Launch Site One, Texas | 14: 00 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.

Rocket Report: Russia pledges quick fix for Soyuz launch pad; Ariane 6 aims high Read More »

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After years of resisting it, SpaceX now plans to go public. Why?

data centers, IPO, Space, spacex / /

“Much of the AI race comes down to amassing and deploying assets.”

Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during a press conference at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas on February 10, 2022. Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, multiple outlets have reported, and Ars can confirm. This represents a major change in thinking from the world’s leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk.

The Wall Street Journal and The Information first reported about a possible IPO last Friday, and Bloomberg followed that up on Tuesday evening with a report suggesting the company would target a $1.5 trillion valuation. This would allow SpaceX to raise in excess of $30 billion.

This is an enormous amount of funding. The largest IPO in history occurred in 2019, when the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil company began public trading as Aramco and raised $29 billion. In terms of revenue, Aramco is a top-five company in the world.

Now SpaceX is poised to potentially match or exceed this value. That SpaceX would be attractive to public investors is not a surprise—it’s the world’s dominant space company in launch, space-based communications, and much more. For investors seeking unlimited growth, space is the final frontier.

Buy why would Musk take SpaceX public now, at a time when the company’s revenues are surging thanks to the growth of the Starlink Internet constellation? The decision is surprising because Musk has, for so long, resisted going public with SpaceX. He has not enjoyed the public scrutiny of Tesla, and feared that shareholder desires for financial return were not consistent with his ultimate goal of settling Mars.

Data centers

Ars spoke with multiple people familiar with Musk and his thinking to understand why he would want to take SpaceX public.

A significant shift in recent years has been the rise of artificial intelligence, which Musk has been involved in since 2015, when he co-founded OpenAI. He later had a falling out with his cofounders and started his own company, xAI, in 2023. At Tesla, he has been pushing smart-driving technology forward and more recently focused on robotics. Musk sees a convergence of these technologies in the near future, which he believes will profoundly change civilization.

Raising large amounts of money in the next 18 months would allow Musk to have significant capital to deploy at SpaceX as he influences and partakes in this convergence of technology.

How can SpaceX play in this space? In the near term, the company plans to develop a modified version of the Starlink satellite to serve as a foundation for building data centers in space. Musk said as much on the social media network he owns, X, in late October: “SpaceX will be doing this.”

But using a next-generation Starlink satellite manufactured on Earth is just the beginning of his vision. “The level beyond that is constructing satellite factories on the Moon and using a mass driver (electromagnetic railgun) to accelerate AI satellites to lunar escape velocity without the need for rockets,” Musk said this weekend on X. “That scales to >100TW/year of AI and enables non-trivial progress towards becoming a Kardashev II civilization.”

Based on some projected analyses, SpaceX is expected to have in the neighborhood of $22 to $24 billion in revenue next year. That is a lot of money—it’s on par with NASA’s annual budget, for example, and SpaceX can deploy its capital far, far more efficiently than the government can. So the company will be able to accomplish a lot. But with a large infusion of cash, SpaceX will be able to go much faster. And it will take a lot of cash to design and build the satellites and launch the rockets to deploy data centers in space.

Abhi Tripathi, a long-time SpaceX employee who is now director of mission operations at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, believes that once Musk realized Starlink satellites could be architected into a distributed network of data centers, the writing was on the wall.

“That is the moment an IPO suddenly came into play after being unlikely for so long,” Tripathi told Ars. “If you have followed Elon’s tactics, you know that once he commits to something, he leans fully into it. Much of the AI race comes down to amassing and deploying assets that work quicker than your competition. A large war chest resulting from an IPO will greatly help his cause and disadvantage all others.”

Foremost among Musk’s goals right now is to “win” the battle for artificial intelligence. He is already attacking the problem at xAI and Tesla, and he now seeks to throw SpaceX into the fray as well. Taking SpaceX public and using it to marshal an incredible amount of resources shows he is playing to win.

What about Mars?

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of one day settling Mars. He has never wavered from that goal, and indeed, the company has made considerable progress in more than two decades. SpaceX now launches more than 90 percent of the world’s mass to orbit, has nearly 90 percent of the satellites in orbit, and backstops a large portion of the US government’s civil and military activities in space. Moreover, with Starship, SpaceX is building the first vehicle that could realistically send humans and a lot of the stuff humans need to survive to Mars one day.

But if Musk’s rationale for keeping SpaceX private was to protect the Mars dream, is he abandoning this long-standing aim?

Not necessarily. It’s likely that Musk sees artificial intelligence as a key part of the Mars vision. Whether one believes the Optimus robot will become a viable product or not, Musk does. And he’s spoken about sending the robots to Mars to make the way smoother for the first human settlers.

Musk also believes that a larger and more financially robust SpaceX is necessary to undertake the settling of Mars. He understands that NASA will not pay for this, as the civil space agency is in the business of exploration and not settlement. For several years now, he has expressed that it will require about 1 million tons of supplies to be shipped to Mars to make a self-sustaining settlement. This is roughly 1,000 ships, and including refueling, at least 10,000 Starship launches. At $100 million per launch, that’s $1 trillion in launch costs alone.

Musk has frequently expressed a concern that there may be a limited window for settling Mars. Perhaps financial markets collapse. Perhaps there’s a worse pandemic. Perhaps a large asteroid hits the planet. Taking SpaceX public now is a bet that he can marshal the resources now, during his lifetime, to make Mars City One a reality. He is 54 years old.

The plan is not without risks, of course. If AI is something of a bubble, ten years from now, SpaceX may be sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of satellites in space for which there is limited use. Maybe shareholders would rather SpaceX make them multimillionaires than make humans multiplanetary.

But Musk has never shied away from risks. So doubling down on his most successful asset in this moment is precisely what one would expect him to do.

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.

After years of resisting it, SpaceX now plans to go public. Why? Read More »

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After key Russian launch site is damaged, NASA accelerates Dragon supply missions

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With a key Russian launch pad out of service, NASA is accelerating the launch of two Cargo Dragon spaceships in order to ensure that astronauts on board the International Space Station have all the supplies they need next year.

According to the space agency’s internal schedule, the next Dragon supply mission, CRS-34, is moving forward one month from June 2026 to May. And the next Dragon supply mission after this, CRS-35, has been advanced three months from November to August.

A source indicated that the changing schedules are a “direct result” of a launch pad incident on Thanksgiving Day at the Russian spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The issue occurred when a Soyuz rocket launched Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The rocket had no difficulties, but a large mobile platform below the rocket was not properly secured prior to the launch and crashed into the flame trench below, taking the pad offline.

Repairs require at least four months

Russia has other launch pads, both within its borders and neighboring countries, including Kazakhstan, that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. However, Site 31 at Baikonur is the country’s only pad presently configured to handle launches of the Soyuz rocket and two spacecraft critical to the space station, the cargo-only Progress vehicle and the Soyuz crew capsule.

Since the accident Russia’s main space corporation, Roscosmos, has been assessing plans to repair the Site 31 launch site and begun to schedule the delivery of spare parts. Roscosmos officials have told NASA it will take at least four months to repair the site and recover the capability to launch from there.

After key Russian launch site is damaged, NASA accelerates Dragon supply missions Read More »

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Rocket Report: Blunder at Baikonur; do launchers really need rocket engines?

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The Department of the Air Force approves a new home in Florida for SpaceX’s Starship.

South Korea’s Nuri 1 rocket is lifted vertical on its launch pad in this multi-exposure photo. Credit: Korea Aerospace Research Institute

Welcome to Edition 8.21 of the Rocket Report! We’re back after the Thanksgiving holiday with more launch news. Most of the big stories over the last couple of weeks came from abroad. Russian rockets and launch pads didn’t fare so well. China’s launch industry celebrated several key missions. SpaceX was busy, too, with seven launches over the last two weeks, six of them carrying more Starlink Internet satellites into orbit. We expect between 15 and 20 more orbital launch attempts worldwide before the end of the year.

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.

Another Sarmat failure. A Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired from an underground silo on the country’s southern steppe on November 28 on a scheduled test to deliver a dummy warhead to a remote impact zone nearly 4,000 miles away. The missile didn’t even make it 4,000 feet, Ars reports. Russia’s military has been silent on the accident, but the missile’s crash was seen and heard for miles around the Dombarovsky air base in Orenburg Oblast near the Russian-Kazakh border. A video posted by the Russian blog site MilitaryRussia.ru on Telegram and widely shared on other social media platforms showed the missile veering off course immediately after launch before cartwheeling upside down, losing power, and then crashing a short distance from the launch site.

An unenviable track record … Analysts say the circumstances of the launch suggest it was likely a test of Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat missile, a weapon designed to reach targets more than 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) away, making it the world’s longest-range missile. The Sarmat missile is Russia’s next-generation heavy-duty ICBM, capable of carrying a payload of up to 10 large nuclear warheads, a combination of warheads and countermeasures, or hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Simply put, the Sarmat is a doomsday weapon designed for use in an all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States. The missile’s first full-scale test flight in 2022 apparently went well, but the program has suffered a string of consecutive failures since then, most notably a catastrophic explosion last year that destroyed the Sarmat missile’s underground silo in northern Russia.

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ESA fills its coffers for launcher challenge. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) European Launcher Challenge received a significant financial commitment from its member states during the agency’s Ministerial Council meeting last week, European Spaceflight reports. The challenge is designed to support emerging European rocket companies while giving ESA and other European satellite operators more options to compete with the continent’s sole operational launch provider, Arianespace. Through the program, ESA will purchase launch services and co-fund capacity upgrades with the winners. ESA member states committed 902 million euros, or $1.05 billion, to the program at the recent Ministerial Council meeting.

Preselecting the competitors … In July, ESA selected two German companies—Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg—along with Spain’s PLD Space, France’s MaiaSpace, and the UK’s Orbex to proceed with the initiative’s next phase. ESA then negotiated with the governments of each company’s home country to raise money to support the effort. Germany, with two companies on the shortlist, is unsurprisingly a large contributor to the program, committing more than 40 percent of the total budget. France contributed nearly 20 percent, Spain funded nearly 19 percent, and the UK committed nearly 16 percent. Norway paid for 3 percent of the launcher challenge’s budget. Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic contributed smaller amounts.

Europe at the service of South Korea. South Korea’s latest Earth observation satellite was delivered into a Sun-synchronous orbit Monday afternoon following a launch onboard a Vega C rocket by Arianespace, Spaceflight Now reports. The Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite-7 (Kompsat-7) mission launched from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. About 44 minutes after liftoff, the Kompsat-7 satellite was deployed into SSO at an altitude of 358 miles (576 kilometers). “By launching the Kompsat-7 satellite, set to significantly enhance South Korea’s Earth observation capabilities, Arianespace is proud to support an ambitious national space program,” said David Cavaillolès, CEO of Arianespace, in a statement.

Something of a rarity … The launch of Kompsat-7 is something of a rarity for Arianespace, which has dominated the international commercial launch market. It’s the first time in more than two years that a satellite for a customer outside Europe has been launched by Arianespace. The backlog for the light-class Vega C rocket is almost exclusively filled with payloads for the European Space Agency, the European Commission, or national governments in Europe. Arianespace’s larger Ariane 6 rocket has 18 launches reserved for the US-based Amazon Leo broadband network. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

South Korea’s homemade rocket flies again. South Korea’s homegrown space rocket Nuri took off from Naro Space Center on November 27 with the CAS500-3 technology demonstration and Earth observation satellite, along with 12 smaller CubeSat rideshare payloads, Yonhap News Agency reports. The 200-ton Nuri rocket debuted in 2021, when it failed to reach orbit on a test flight. Since then, the rocket has successfully reached orbit three times. This mission marked the first time for Hanwha Aerospace to oversee the entire assembly process as part of the government’s long-term plan to hand over space technologies to the private sector. The fifth and sixth launches of the Nuri rocket are planned in 2026 and 2027.

Powered by jet fuel … The Nuri rocket has three stages, each with engines burning Jet A-1 fuel and liquid oxygen. The fuel choice is unusual for rockets, with highly refined RP-1 kerosene or methane being more popular among hydrocarbon fuels. The engines are manufactured by Hanwha Aerospace. The fully assembled rocket stands about 155 feet (47.2 meters) tall and can deliver up to 3,300 pounds (1.5 metric tons) of payload into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit.

Hyundai eyes rocket engine. Meanwhile, South Korea’s space sector is looking to the future. Another company best known for making cars has started a venture in the rocket business. Hyundai Rotem, a member of Hyundai Motor Group, announced a joint program with Korean Air’s Aerospace Division (KAL-ASD) to develop a 35-ton-class reusable methane rocket engine for future launch vehicles. The effort is funded with KRW49 billion ($33 million) from the Korea Research Institute for Defense Technology Planning and Advancement (KRIT).

By the end of the decade … The government-backed program aims to develop the engine by the end of 2030. Hyundai Rotem will lead the engine’s planning and design, while Korean Air, the nation’s largest air carrier, will lead development of the engine’s turbopump. “Hyundai Rotem began developing methane engines in 1994 and has steadily advanced its methane engine technology, achieving Korea’s first successful combustion test in 2006,” Hyundai Rotem said in a statement. “Furthermore, this project is expected to secure the technological foundation for the commercialization of methane engines for reusable space launch vehicles and lay the groundwork for targeting the global space launch vehicle market.”

But who needs rocket engines? Moonshot Space, based in Israel, announced Monday that it has secured $12 million in funding to continue the development of a launch system—powered not by chemical propulsion, but electromagnetism, Payload reports. Moonshot plans to sell other aerospace and defense companies the tech as a hypersonic test platform, while at the same time building to eventually offer orbital launch services. Instead of conventional rocket engines, the system would use a series of electromagnetic coils to power a hardened capsule to hypersonic velocities. The architecture has a downside: extremely high accelerations that could damage or destroy normal satellites. Instead, Moonshot wants to use the technology to send raw materials to orbit, lowering the input costs of the budding in-space servicing, refueling, and manufacturing industries, according to Payload.

Out of the shadows … Moonshot Space emerged from stealth mode with this week’s fundraising announcement. The company’s near-term focus is on building a scaled-down electromagnetic accelerator capable of reaching Mach 6. A larger system would be required to reach orbital velocity. The company’s CEO is the former director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Science, while its chief engineer was the former chief systems engineer for David’s Sling, a critical part of Israel’s missile defense system. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A blunder at Baikonur. A Soyuz rocket launched on November 27 carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, for an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The trio of astronauts arrived at the orbiting laboratory without incident. However, on the ground, there was a serious problem during the launch with the ground systems that support processing of the vehicle before liftoff at Site 31, located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Ars reports. Roscosmos downplayed the incident, saying only, in passive voice, that “damage to several launch pad components was identified” following the launch.

Repairs needed … However, video imagery of the launch site after liftoff showed substantial damage, with a large service platform appearing to have fallen into the flame trench below the launch table. According to one source, this is a platform located beneath the rocket, where workers can access the vehicle before liftoff. It has a mass of about 20 metric tons and was apparently not secured prior to launch, and the thrust of the vehicle ejected it into the flame trench. “There is significant damage to the pad,” said this source. The damage could throw a wrench into Russia’s ability to launch crews and cargo to the International Space Station. This Soyuz launch pad at Baikonur is the only one outfitted to support such missions.

China’s LandSpace almost landed a rocket. China’s first attempt to land an orbital-class rocket may have ended in a fiery crash, but the company responsible for the mission had a lot to celebrate with the first flight of its new methane-fueled launcher, Ars reports. LandSpace, a decade-old company based in Beijing, launched its new Zhuque-3 rocket for the first time Tuesday (US time) at the Jiuquan launch site in northwestern China. The upper stage of the medium-lift rocket successfully reached orbit. This alone is a remarkable achievement for a new rocket. But LandSpace had other goals for this launch. The Zhuque-3, or ZQ-3, booster stage is architected for recovery and reuse, the first rocket in China with such a design. The booster survived reentry and was seconds away from a pinpoint landing when something went wrong during its landing burn, resulting in a high-speed crash at the landing zone in the Gobi Desert.

Let the games begin … LandSpace got closer to landing an orbital-class booster than any other company on their first try. While LandSpace prepares for a second launch, several more Chinese companies are close to debuting their own reusable rockets. The next of these new rockets, the Long March 12A, is awaiting its first liftoff later this month from another launch pad at the Jiuquan spaceport. The Long March 12A comes from one of China’s established rocket developers, the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), part of the country’s state-owned aerospace enterprise.

China launches a lifeboat. An unpiloted Chinese spacecraft launched on November 24 (US time) and linked with the country’s Tiangong space station a few hours later, providing a lifeboat for three astronauts stuck in orbit without a safe ride home, Ars reports. A Long March 2F rocket lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, carrying cargo instead of a crew. The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth about three-and-a-half hours later. Shenzhou 22 will provide a ride home next year for three Chinese astronauts. Engineers deemed their primary lifeboat unsafe after finding a cracked window, likely from an impact with a tiny piece of space junk.

In record time … Chinese engineers worked fast to move up the launch of the Shenzhou 22, originally set to fly next year. The launch occurred just 16 days after officials decided they needed to send another spacecraft to the Tiangong station. Shenzhou 22 and its rocket were already in standby at the launch site, but teams had to fuel the spacecraft and complete assembly of the rocket, then roll the vehicle to the launch pad for final countdown preps. The rapid turnaround offers a “successful example for efficient emergency response in the international space industry,” the China Manned Space Agency said. “It vividly embodies the spirit of manned spaceflight: exceptionally hardworking, exceptionally capable, exceptionally resilient, and exceptionally dedicated.”

Another big name flirts with the launch industry. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has explored putting together funds to either acquire or partner with a rocket company, a move that would position him to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the Wall Street Journal reports. Altman reached out to at least one rocket maker, Stoke Space, in the summer, and the discussions picked up in the fall, according to people familiar with the talks. Among the proposals was for OpenAI to make a multibillion-dollar series of equity investments in the company and end up with a controlling stake. The talks are no longer active, people close to OpenAI told the Journal.

Here’s the reason … Altman has been interested in building data centers in space for some time, the Journal reports, suggesting that the insatiable demand for computing resources to power artificial-intelligence systems eventually could require so much power that the environmental consequences would make space a better option. Orbital data centers would allow companies to harness the power of the Sun to operate them. Alphabet’s Google is pursuing a similar concept in partnership with satellite operator Planet Labs. Jeff Bezos and Musk himself have also expressed interest in the idea. Outside of SpaceX and Blue Origin, Stoke Space seems to be a natural partner for such a project because it is one of the few companies developing a fully reusable rocket.

SpaceX gets green light for new Florida launch pad. SpaceX has the OK to build out what will be the primary launch hub on the Space Coast for its Starship and Super Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch vehicle in history, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The Department of the Air Force announced Monday it had approved SpaceX to move forward with the construction of a pair of launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37). A “record of decision” on the Environmental Impact Statement required under the National Environmental Policy Act for the proposed Canaveral site was posted to the Air Force’s website, marking the conclusion of what has been a nearly two-year approval process.

Get those Starships ready … SpaceX plans to build two launch towers at SLC-37 to augment the single tower under construction at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, just a few miles to the north. The three pads combined could support up to 120 launches per year. The Air Force’s final approval was expected after it released a draft Environmental Impact Statement earlier this year, suggesting the Starship pads at SLC-37 would have no significant negative impacts on local environmental, historical, social, and cultural interests. The Air Force also found SpaceX’s plans at SLC-37, formerly leased by United Launch Alliance, will have no significant impact on the company’s competitors in the launch industry. SpaceX also has two launch towers at its Starbase facility in South Texas.

Next three launches

Dec. 5: Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 09: 00 UTC

Dec. 6: Hyperbola 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 00 UTC

Dec. 6: Long March 8A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 07: 50 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.

Rocket Report: Blunder at Baikonur; do launchers really need rocket engines? Read More »