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With Gateway likely gone, where will lunar landers rendezvous with Orion?

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Drink up, astrodynamicists!

“We will challenge every requirement, clear every obstacle, delete every blocker.”

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

Last week, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman unveiled a major shakeup in the Artemis Program, intended to put the nation on a better path back to the Moon. The changes focused largely on increasing the launch cadence of NASA’s large SLS rocket and putting a greater emphasis on lunar surface activities. Days later, the US Senate indicated that it broadly supported these plans.

This is all well and good, but it neglects a critical element of the Artemis program: a lander capable of taking astronauts down to the lunar surface from an orbit around the Moon and back up to rendezvous with Orion. NASA has contracted with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop these landers, Starship and Blue Moon MK2, respectively.

As part of his announcement, Isaacman said a revamped Artemis III mission will now be used to test one or both of these landers near Earth before they are called upon to land humans on the Moon later this decade.

NASA will launch Artemis III next year, he said, to be followed by one or possibly even two lunar landings in 2028. A single landing before the end of 2028 seems like a stretch, even for glass-half-full optimists in the space community. And for there to be a chance of happening, SpaceX or Blue Origin, or both, need to get hustling quickly.

Can they?

“Challenge every requirement”

Isaacman is mindful of these challenges, and one of his first moves as administrator was meeting with engineers from SpaceX and Blue Origin to hear their ideas for accelerating NASA’s Artemis timeline.

After this meeting on January 13, Isaacman said NASA would do what it could to facilitate the faster development of a Human Landing System: “We will challenge every requirement, clear every obstacle, delete every blocker and empower the team to deliver… and we will do it with time to spare.”

What does this actually mean? It suggests that Isaacman has directed his teams to make working with NASA less cumbersome for SpaceX and Blue Origin.

For example, to reach the Moon during the initial Artemis missions, a lander must dock with the Orion spacecraft. That may sound routine, as spacecraft have been rendezvousing and docking in space for six decades.

However, Orion is saddled with thousands of requirements, and virtually every decision point regarding docking must be signed off on by the lander company—SpaceX or Blue Origin—as well as NASA, Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin, and the European service module contractor Airbus. Additionally, Orion has a lot of sensitive elements to work around, such as the plumes of its thrusters, and engineers have spent a lot of time working on issues such as ensuring consistent cabin pressures between vehicles. In short, it gets complicated fast.

A carbonated orbit emerges

One way NASA is helping the lander companies is by no longer requiring them to dock with Orion in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, an elliptical orbit that comes as close as 3,000 km to the surface of the Moon and as far as 70,000 km. This is where NASA planned to construct the Lunar Gateway space station, which is now likely to be canceled. It’s a boon for lunar landers since it required more energy to first stop there before dropping down to the surface.

Why not simply have Orion meet the landers in a low-lunar orbit, similar to the Apollo Program? This would allow the landers to consume less propellant on the way down and back up from the Moon. The reason is that, due to a number of poor decisions over the last 15 years, the Orion spacecraft’s service module does not have the performance needed to reach low-lunar orbit and then return safely to Earth. Hence the use of a near-rectilinear halo orbit.

A comparison between the NRHO and EPO/CoLA orbits.

Credit: American Astronautical Society conference paper

A comparison between the NRHO and EPO/CoLA orbits. Credit: American Astronautical Society conference paper

However, a research paper published in July 2022 by NASA engineers at Johnson Space Center analyzes several other circular and elliptical orbits that Orion could reach with its present propulsive capabilities. Out of this analysis came another useful orbit with a name that just rolls off the tongue: Elliptical Polar Orbit with Coplanar Line of Apsides, or EPO/CoLA.

There are many details about the EPO/CoLA orbit in the research paper, but critically, its closest point to the Moon lies just 100 km above the Moon’s surface (the apolune distance is 6,500 km). For many landing sites, the paper notes, a Human Landing System vehicle can perform a single burn to reach a much lower orbit.

As part of his change in plans, Isaacman said the Space Launch System rocket’s upper stage would be “standardized” for Artemis IV and beyond. That means the first lunar landing mission will use a new upper stage, likely the Centaur V built by United Launch Alliance. This will have more propulsive capabilities than the current rocket, so it is possible that for Artemis IV, Orion could reach an even more favorable orbit (i.e., closer to the Moon, requiring less energy to reach the surface) than EPO/CoLA.

Can Starship be accelerated?

At the end of the day, it’s helpful to find new orbits and relax requirements where appropriate. But it will still be up to the lander contractors to deliver the goods, and for NASA, the sooner the better.

Last November, Ars looked at several ways Starship might be brought online faster as a lunar lander. Perhaps the biggest problem with using Starship as a lander is the need to fly multiple uncrewed tanker missions to refuel Starship in low-Earth orbit before it transits to the Moon and awaits a crew aboard Orion. This necessitates an estimated one- or two-dozen launches.

The best solution we could come up with was flying an optimized, expendable Starship tanker stage that would maximize propellant delivery per flight. When asked about this, though, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shot down the idea. Once Starship begins flying at rate, Musk believes, a dozen or more tanker missions per lunar flight will not pose a major impediment.

So it should come as no surprise that SpaceX has not proposed significant changes to its Human Landing System hardware. In response to NASA’s desire to accelerate the Artemis timeline, the company has indicated that it will prioritize the Human Landing System more as part of the Starship program. The company also suggested that eliminating the requirement to dock in near-rectilinear halo orbit could open up new mission plans, including potentially docking with Orion in orbit around Earth rather than the Moon.

What about Blue Origin?

Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, has been more responsive. Last October, Ars reported that the company had started working on a faster architecture that would not require orbital refueling. A month later, Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said the company “would move heaven and Earth” to help NASA reach the Moon sooner.

Based on recent documents reviewed by Ars, the company is continuing to refine its plan for a human lunar landing. Without a requirement to rendezvous in a near-rectilinear halo orbit, a lunar landing could potentially be accomplished with as few as three launches of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. This would require the more powerful 9×4 variant of the New Glenn rocket now in development. The EPO/CoLA orbit described above enables such a mission profile.

One mission plan seen by Ars shows the launch of a simplified MK2 lander on one rocket, and two more launches of transfer stages, which subsequently dock in low-Earth orbit. The first transfer stage pushes this stack out of low-Earth orbit before separating. The second transfer stage pushes the lander into EPO/CoLA, where it docks with Orion and two astronauts move on board MK2. This second transfer stage then moves the lander to a 15 x 100 km lunar orbit before separating. MK2 then flies down to the Moon.

After a short stay on the Moon, the interim MK2 lander would ascend back to the EPO/CoLA, where it meets up with Orion.

There are plenty of questions about the readiness of the Blue Origin hardware, of course. And there are a lot of moving pieces now with the Moon landing moving to Artemis IV and the probable use of new orbits for a rendezvous with Orion near the Moon. So all of this remains very notional.

Neither NASA nor Blue Origin has spoken publicly about their accelerated landing plans. Hopefully, that will change soon, because it’s entirely possible that NASA’s best chance to reach the Moon before China will come down to the ability of a company that proudly sports a turtle as a mascot to move a little more quickly.

Note: This story was updated at 11: 30 am ET Friday with additional information.

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.

With Gateway likely gone, where will lunar landers rendezvous with Orion? Read More »

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

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

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

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

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next three launches

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

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

March 10: Falcon 9 | EchoStar XXV | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 14 UTC

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

Better results this time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next three launches

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

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

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

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

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US House takes first step toward creating “commercial” deep space program

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A US House committee with oversight of NASA unanimously passed a “reauthorization” act for the space agency on Wednesday. The legislation must still be approved by the full House before being sent to the Senate, which may take up consideration later this month.

Congress passes such reauthorization bills every couple of years, providing the space agency with a general sense of the direction legislators want to see NASA go. They are distinct from appropriations bills, which provide actual funding for specific programs, but nonetheless play an important role in establishing space policy.

There weren’t any huge surprises in the legislation, but there were some interesting amendments. Most notably among these was the Amendment No. 01, offered by the chair of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), as well as its ranking member, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and three other legislators.

NASA can consider Artemis alternatives

The amendment concerns acquisition powers bestowed upon NASA by Congress, stating in part: “The Administrator may, subject to appropriations, procure from United States commercial providers operational services to carry cargo and crew safely, reliably, and affordably to and from deep space destinations, including the Moon and Mars.”

That language is fairly general in nature, but the intent seems clear. NASA’s initial missions to the Moon, through Artemis V, have a clearly defined architecture: They must use the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and a lander built by either SpaceX or Blue Origin to complete lunar landings.

But after that? With this amendment, Congress appears to be opening the aperture to commercial companies. That is to say, if SpaceX wanted to bid an end-to-end Starship lunar mission, it could; or if Blue Origin wanted to launch Orion on New Glenn, that is also an option. The language is generalized enough, not specifying “launch” but rather “transportation,” that in-space companies such as Impulse Space could also get creative. Essentially, Congress is telling the US industry that if it is ready to step up, NASA should allow it to bid on lunar cargo and crew missions.

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You can now reserve a hotel room on the Moon for $250,000

gru space, lunar hotel, Moon hotel, Space, starship / /

A company called GRU Space publicly announced its intent to construct a series of increasingly sophisticated habitats on the Moon, culminating in a hotel inspired by the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco.

On Monday, the company invited those interested in a berth to plunk down a deposit between $250,000 and $1 million, qualifying them for a spot on one of its early lunar surface missions in as little as six years from now.

It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late December when I spoke to founder Skyler Chan, a single full-time employee aside from himself. And Chan, in fact, only recently graduated from the University of California, Berkeley.

All of this could therefore be dismissed as a lark. But I must say that I am a sucker for these kinds of stories. Chan is perfectly earnest about all of this. And despite all of the talk about lunar resources, my belief is that the surest long-term commercial activity on the Moon will be lunar tourism—it would be an amazing destination.

So when I interviewed Chan, I did so with an open mind.

Who are the customers?

Like many younger people, Chan grew up wanting to become an astronaut. But along the way, in high school and later college, he came to believe that he could lead a more impactful life by enabling everyone to go to space, not just himself.

“I realized I was born in this time where we can actually become interplanetary, and that is probably the singular most impactful thing one person could do with their time,” Chan said. “So I charged towards building the systems necessary and technology to enable that future. That’s actually what led me to go to Berkeley to study electrical engineering and computer science.”

You can now reserve a hotel room on the Moon for $250,000 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

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

rocket-report:-russia-pledges-quick-fix-for-soyuz-launch-pad;-ariane-6-aims-high

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

ariane 6, Arianespace, atlas v, china, falcon 9, launch, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance / /

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

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

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Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China

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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.

The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future.

However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket—which has now been flying for a decade and a half—to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions.

Everyone wants a Starship these days

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.

Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there’s more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn’t even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was “fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”

Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China 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 »

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Congress warned that NASA’s current plan for Artemis “cannot work”

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As for what to do about it, Griffin said legislators should end the present plan.

“The Artemis III mission and those beyond should be canceled and we should start over, proceeding with all deliberate speed,” Griffin said. He included a link to his plan, which is not dissimilar from the “Apollo on Steroids” architecture he championed two decades ago, but was later found to be unaffordable within NASA’s existing budget.

“There need to be consequences”

Other panel members offered more general advice.

Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said NASA should continue to serve as an engine for US success in space and science. He cited the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which has stimulated a growing lunar industry. He also said NASA spending on basic research and development is a critical feedstock for US innovation, and a key advantage over the People’s Republic of China.

“When you’re looking at the NASA authorization legislation, look at it in a way where you are the genesis of that innovation ecosystem, that flywheel that really powers US national security and economic security, in a way that the PRC just can’t match,” Swope said. “Without science, we would never have had something like the Manhattan Project.”

Another witness, Dean Cheng of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, said NASA—and by extension Congress—must do a better job of holding itself and its contractors accountable.

Many of NASA’s major exploration programs, including the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System rocket, and their ground systems, have run years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget in the last 15 years. NASA has funded these programs with cost-plus contracts, so it has had limited ability to enforce deadlines with contractors. Moreover, Congress has more or less meekly gone along with the delays and continued funding the programs.

Cheng said that whatever priorities policymakers decide for NASA,  failing to achieve objectives should come with consequences.

“One, it needs to be bipartisan, to make very clear throughout our system that this is something that everyone is pushing for,” Cheng said of establishing priorities for NASA. “And two, that there are consequences, budgetary, legal, and otherwise, to the agency, to supplying companies. If they fail to deliver on time and on budget, that it will not be a ‘Well, okay, let’s try again next year.’ There need to be consequences.”

Congress warned that NASA’s current plan for Artemis “cannot work” Read More »

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Rivals object to SpaceX’s Starship plans in Florida—who’s interfering with whom?

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“We’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency.”

Artist’s illustration of Starships stacked on two launch pads at the Space Force’s Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: SpaceX

The commander of the military unit responsible for running the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida expects SpaceX to begin launching Starship rockets there next year.

Launch companies with facilities near SpaceX’s Starship pads are not pleased. SpaceX’s two chief rivals, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, complained last year that SpaceX’s proposal of launching as many as 120 Starships per year from Florida’s Space Coast could force them to routinely clear personnel from their launch pads for safety reasons.

This isn’t the first time Blue Origin and ULA have tried to throw up roadblocks in front of SpaceX. The companies sought to prevent NASA from leasing a disused launch pad to SpaceX in 2013, but they lost the fight.

Col. Brian Chatman, commander of a Space Force unit called Space Launch Delta 45, confirmed to reporters on Friday that Starship launches will sometimes restrict SpaceX’s neighbors from accessing their launch pads—at least in the beginning. Space Launch Delta 45, formerly known as the 45th Space Wing, operates the Eastern Range, which oversees launch safety from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA’s nearby Kennedy Space Center.

Chatman’s unit is responsible for ensuring all personnel remain outside of danger areas during testing and launch operations. The range’s responsibility extends to public safety outside the gates of the spaceport.

“There is no better time to be here on the Space Coast than where we are at today,” Chatman said. “We are breaking records on the launch manifest. We are getting capability on orbit that is essential to national security, and we’re doing that at a time of strategic challenge.”

SpaceX is well along in constructing a Starship launch site on NASA property at Kennedy Space Center within the confines of Launch Complex-39A, where SpaceX also launches its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket. The company wants to build another Starship launch site on Space Force property a few miles to the south.

“Early to mid-next year is when we anticipate Starship coming out here to be able to launch,” Chatman said. “We’ll have the range ready to support at that time.”

Enter the Goliath

Starship and its Super Heavy booster combine to form the largest rocket ever built. Its newest version stands more than 400 feet (120 meters) tall with more than 11 million pounds (5,000 metric tons) of combustible methane and liquid oxygen propellants. That will be replaced by a taller rocket, perhaps as soon as 2027, with about 20 percent more propellant onboard.

While there’s also risk with Starships and Super Heavy boosters returning to Cape Canaveral from space, safety officials worry about what would happen if a Starship and Super Heavy booster detonated with their propellant tanks full. The concern is the same for all rockets, which is why officials evacuate predetermined keep-out zones around launch pads that are fueled up for flight.

But the keep-out zones around SpaceX’s Starship launch pads will extend farther than those around the other launch sites at Cape Canaveral. First, Starship is simply much bigger and uses more propellant than any other rocket. Secondly, Starship’s engines consume methane fuel in combination with liquid oxygen, a blend commonly known as LOX/methane or methalox.

And finally, Starship lacks the track record of older rockets like the Falcon 9, adding a degree of conservatism to the Space Force’s risk calculations. Other launch pads will inevitably fall within the footprint of Starship’s range safety keep-out zones, also known as blast danger areas, or BDAs.

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

The danger area will be larger for an actual launch, but workers will still need to clear areas closer to Starship launch pads during static fire tests, when the rocket fires its engines while remaining on the ground. This is what prompted ULA and Blue Origin to lodge their protests.

“They understand neighboring operations,” Chatman said in a media roundtable on Friday. “They understand that we will allow the maximum efficiency possible to facilitate their operations, but there will be times that we’re not going to let them go to their launch complex because it’s neighboring a hazardous activity.”

The good news for these other companies is that Eastern Range’s keep-out zones will almost certainly get smaller by the time SpaceX gets anywhere close to 120 Starship launches per year. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is currently launching at a similar cadence. The blast danger areas for those launches are small and short-lived because the Space Force’s confidence in the Falcon 9’s safety is “extremely high,” Chatman said.

“From a blast damage assessment perspective, specific to the Falcon 9, we know what that keep-out area is,” Chatman said. “It’s the new combination of new fuels—LOX/methane—which is kind of a game-changer as we look at some of the heavy vehicles that are coming to launch. We just don’t have the analysis on to be able to say, ‘Hey, from a testing perspective, how small can we reduce the BDA and be safe?’”

Methane has become a popular fuel choice, supplanting refined kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid fuels commonly used on previous generations of rockets. Methane leaves behind less soot than kerosene, easing engine reusability, while it’s simpler to handle than liquid hydrogen.

Aside from Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn and ULA’s Vulcan rockets use liquified natural gas, a fuel very similar to methane. Both rockets are smaller than Starship, but Blue Origin last week unveiled the design of a souped-up New Glenn rocket that will nearly match Starship’s scale.

A few years ago, NASA, the Space Force, and the Federal Aviation Administration decided to look into the explosive potential of methalox rockets. There had been countless tests of explosions of gaseous methane, but data on detonations of liquid methane and liquid oxygen was scarce at the time—just a couple of tests at less than 10 metric tons, according to NASA. So, the government’s default position was to assume an explosion would be equivalent to the energy released by the same amount of TNT. This assumption drives the large keep-out zones the Space Force has drawn around SpaceX’s future Starship launch pads, one of which is seen in the map below.

This map from a Space Force environmental impact statement shows potential restricted access zones around SpaceX’s proposed Starship launch site at Space Launch Complex-37. The restricted zones cover launch pads operated by United Launch Alliance, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space. Credit: SpaceX

Spending millions to blow stuff up

Chatman said the Space Force is prepared to update its blast danger areas once its government partners, SpaceX, and Blue Origin complete testing and analyze their results. Over dozens of tests, engineers are examining how methane and liquid oxygen react to different kinds of accidents, such as impact velocity, pressure, mass ratio, or how much propellant is in the mix.

“That is ongoing currently,” Chatman said. “[We are] working in close partnership with SpaceX and Blue Origin on the LOX/methane combination and the explicit equivalency to identify how much we can … reduce that blast radius. Those discussions are happening, have been happening the last couple years, and are looking to culminate here in ’26.

“Until we get that data from the testing that is ongoing and the analysis that needs to occur, we’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency, and have a maximized keep-out zone, simply from a public safety perspective,” Chatman said.

The data so far show promising results. “We do expect that BDA to shrink,” he said. “We expect that to shrink based on some of the initial testing that has been done and the initial data reviews that have been done.”

That’s imperative, not just for Starship’s neighbors at the Cape Canaveral spaceport, but for SpaceX itself. The company forecasts a future in which it will launch Starships more often than the Falcon 9, requiring near-continuous operations at multiple launch pads.

Chatman mentioned one future scenario in which SpaceX might want to launch Starships in close proximity to one another from neighboring pads.

“At that point in the future, I do anticipate the blast damage assessments to shrink down based on the testing that will have been accomplished and dataset will have been reviewed, [and] that we’ll be in a comfortable set to be able to facilitate all launch operations. But until we have that data, until I’m comfortable with what that data shows, with regards to reducing the BDA, keep-out zone, we’re going to continue with the 100 percent TNT equivalency just from a public safety perspective.”

SpaceX has performed explosive LOX/methane tests, including the one seen here, at its development facility in McGregor, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

The Commercial Space Federation, a lobbying group, submitted written testimony to Congress in 2023 arguing the government should be using “existing industry data” to inform its understanding of the explosive potential methane and liquid oxygen. That data, the federation said, suggests the government should set its TNT blast equivalency to no greater than 25 percent, a change that would greatly reduce the size of keep-out zones around launch pads. The organization’s members include prominent methane users SpaceX, Blue Origin, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, all of which have launch sites at Cape Canaveral.

The government’s methalox testing plans were expected to cost at least $80 million, according to the Commercial Space Federation.

The concern among engineers is that liquid oxygen and methane are highly miscible, meaning they mix together easily, raising the risk of a “condensed phase detonation” with “significantly higher overpressures” than rockets with liquid hydrogen or kerosene fuels. Small-scale mixtures of liquid oxygen and liquified natural gas have “shown a broad detonable range with yields greater than that of TNT,” NASA wrote in 2023.

SpaceX released some basic results of its own methalox detonation tests in September, before the government draws its own conclusions on the matter. The company said it conducted “extensive testing” to refine blast danger areas to “be commensurate with the physics of new launch systems.”

Like the Commercial Space Federation, SpaceX said government officials are relying on “highly conservative approaches to establishing blast danger areas, simply because they lack the data to make refined, accurate clear zones. In the absence of data, clear areas of LOX/methane rockets have defaulted to very large zones that could be disruptive to operations.”

More like an airport

SpaceX said it has conducted sub-scale methalox detonation tests “in close collaboration with NASA,” while also gathering data from full-scale Starship tests in Starbase, Texas, including information from test flights and from recent ground test failures. SpaceX controls much of the land around its South Texas facility, so there’s little interruption to third parties when Starships launch from there.

“With this data, SpaceX has been able to establish a scientifically robust, physics-based yield calculation that will help ‘fill the gap’ in scientific knowledge regarding LOX/methane rockets,” SpaceX said.

The company did not disclose the yield calculation, but it shared maps showing its proposed clear areas around the future Starship launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center. They are significantly smarter than the clear areas originally envisioned by the Space Force and NASA, but SpaceX says it uses “actual test data on explosive yield and include a conservative factor of safety.”

The proposed clear distances will have no effect on any other operational launch site or on traffic on the primary north-south road crossing the spaceport, the company said. “SpaceX looks forward to having an open, honest, and reasonable discussion based on science and data regarding spaceport operations with industry colleagues.”

SpaceX will have that opportunity next month. The Space Force and NASA are convening a “reverse industry day” in mid-December during which launch companies will bring their ideas for the future of the Cape Canaveral spaceport to the government. The spaceport has hosted 101 space launches so far this year, an annual record dominated by SpaceX’s rapid-fire Falcon 9 launch cadence.

Chatman anticipates about the same number—perhaps 100 to 115 launches—from Florida’s Space Coast next year, and some forecasts show 300 to 350 launches per year by 2035. The numbers could go down before they rise again. “As we bring on larger lift capabilities like Starship and follow-on large launch capabilities out here to the Eastern Range, that will reduce the total number of launches, because we can get more mass to orbit with heavier lift vehicles,” Chatman said.

Blue Origin’s first recovered New Glenn booster returned to the company’s launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, last week after a successful launch and landing. Credit: Blue Origin

Launch companies have some work to do to make those numbers become real. Space Force officials have identified their own potential bottlenecks, including a shortage of facilities for preparing satellites for launch and the flow of commodities like propellants and high-pressure gases into the spaceport.

Concerns as mundane as traffic jams are now enough of a factor to consider using automated scanners at vehicle inspection points and potentially adding a dedicated lane for slow-moving transporters carrying rocket boosters from one place to another across the launch base, according to Chatman. This is becoming more important as SpaceX, and now Blue Origin, routinely shuttle their reusable rockets from place to place.

Space Force officials largely attribute the steep climb in launch rates at Cape Canaveral to the launch industry’s embrace of automated self-destruct mechanisms. These pyrotechnic devices have largely replaced manual flight termination systems, which require ground support from a larger team of range safety engineers, including radar operators and flight control officers with the authority to send a destruct command to the rocket if it flies off course. Now, that is all done autonomously on most US launch vehicles.

The Space Force mandated that launch companies using military spaceports switch to autonomous safety systems by October 1 2025, but military officials issued waivers for human-in-the-loop destruct devices to continue flying on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, NASA’s Space Launch System, and the US Navy’s ballistic missile fleet. That means those launches will be more labor-intensive for the Space Force, but the Atlas V is nearing retirement, and the SLS and the Navy only occasionally appear on the Cape Canaveral launch schedule.

Listing image: SpaceX

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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.

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