Shannon Garcia

Kagi Translate’s AI answers the question “What would horny Margaret Thatcher say?”

AI, Google Translate, kagi, large language models, LLMs, translation / Shannon Garcia / March 19, 2026

If you’ve been using the Internet for any length of time, you’ve probably used a tool like Google Translate to convert webpages or snippets of text to and from languages ranging from Uzbek to Esperanto. But what if you want to translate into more esoteric “languages” like “LinkedIn Speak,” “Gen Z slang,” or “horny Margaret Thatcher”?

This week, many people across the Internet have been bemused to find that the AI-powered Kagi Translate can perform these and countless other unlikely “translation” tasks. And while the collective discovery highlights the playful, creative side of large language models, it also exposes the risks of letting users play with generalized LLM tools.

What is a “language,” really?

While you might know Kagi best as the paid competitor to Google’s ever-worsening search product, the company launched its Kagi Translate tool back in 2024, saying at the time that it was a “simply better” competitor to tools like Google Translate and DeepL. At launch, the company said Kagi Translate “uses a combination of LLMs, selecting and optimizing the best output for each task,” a fact that “can occasionally lead to quirks that we’re actively working to resolve.”

The first versions of the tool featured simple dropdown menus to choose from 244 different languages for the source and target of the translation. In February 2025, though, at least one unheralded Hacker News poster noticed that you could play with the URL parameters to set the target language to “rude man with a Boston accent” without breaking anything.

An HN user noticed the more amusing uses of Kagi Translate over a year ago, to little fanfare. Credit: Hacker News

In recent weeks, Kagi’s own social media account has highlighted the service’s ability to imitate “Reddit Speak” or generate McKinsey consultant speak with a few clicks on Kagi Translate. Early Tuesday morning, though, these unorthodox use cases broke containment after a Hacker News user delighted in reporting that “Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language.” Further down in that popular HN thread, other users noticed that you can alter the output language just by typing into the search bar of Kagi Translate’s web interface, and the tool’s underlying AI would do its best to accommodate you.

Kagi Translate’s AI answers the question “What would horny Margaret Thatcher say?” Read More »

A private space company has a radical new plan to bag an asteroid

asteroid, Capture, Space, transastra / Shannon Garcia / March 19, 2026

It may sound fanciful, but a Los Angeles-based company says it has conceived of a plan to fly out to a smallish, near-Earth asteroid, throw a large bag around it, and bring the body back to a “safe” gathering point near our planet.

The company, TransAstra, said Wednesday that an unnamed customer has agreed to fund a study of its proposed “New Moon” mission to capture and relocate an asteroid approximately the size of a house, with a mass of about 100 metric tons.

“We envision it becoming a base for robotic research and development on materials processing and manufacturing,” said Joel Sercel, chief executive officer of TransAstra. “Long term, instead of building space hardware on the ground and launching propellant up from the Earth, we could harvest it from raw materials in space.”

Lots of targets

Sercel said there are as many as 250 potential target asteroids, with a diameter of up to about 20 meters, that could be reached with reusable, robotic spacecraft over the next decade. He envisions aggregating dozens, and then hundreds, of small asteroids at the “New Moon” processing facility, which could potentially be located at the Earth-Sun L2 point, about 1.5 million km from Earth.

Such asteroids could provide water for use as propellant and minerals for everything from solar panels to radiation shielding. Various asteroids could be targeted for their content, such as C-type asteroids as a source of water or M-types for metals.

All of this may seem a little bit out there, and to some extent it is. That’s the point of the feasibility study, which Sercel said will be completed by May, which will further refine a mission plan and its trajectory and the spacecraft needed to fly it. If fully funded, the mission could rendezvous with an asteroid by as early as 2028 or 2029. TransAstra is working with the University of Central Florida, Purdue, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech to complete its analysis.

A private space company has a radical new plan to bag an asteroid Read More »

How World ID wants to put a unique human identity on every AI agent

agents, AI, AI agents, Identity, OpenClaw, Security, worldcoin, WorldID / Shannon Garcia / March 18, 2026

Over the last few months, tools like OpenClaw have shown what tech-savvy AI users can do by setting a virtual cadre of automated agents on a task. But that individual convenience can be a DDOS-level pain for online service providers faced with a torrent of Sybil attack-style requests from thousands of such agents at once.

Identity startup World thinks its “proof of human” World ID technology can provide a potential solution to this problem. Today, the company launched a beta of Agent Kit, a new way for humans to prove they are directing their AI agents and for websites to limit access to AI agents working on behalf of an actual human.

If you recognize the name World, it’s probably as the organization behind WorldCoin, the Sam Altman-founded cryptocurrency outfit that launched in 2023 alongside an offer to give free WorldCoin to anyone who scanned their iris in a physical “orb”. While WorldCoin still exists (at a current value well below its early 2024 peaks), World has now pivoted to focus on World ID, which uses the same iris-scanning technology as the basis for a cryptographically secure, unique online identity token stored on your phone.

World now claims nearly 18 million unique humans have verified their identities on one of nearly 1,000 physical orbs around the world. Now, with Agent Kit, World wants to let those users tie their confirmed identity to any AI agent, letting it work on their behalf across the Internet in a way other parties can trust.

Who are you working for?

Rather than blocking automated traffic outright as a safety or data-protection measure, World suggests sites could instead require AI agents to present an associated World ID token to prove they represent an actual human who’s behind any request. In this way, the site could allow agents to access limited resources like restaurant reservations, ticket purchase opportunities, free trials, or even bandwidth without worrying about a single user flooding the process with thousands of anonymous bots. The same idea could apply to sensitive reputational systems like online forums and polls, where it’s important to prevent automated astroturfing or dogpiling.

How World ID wants to put a unique human identity on every AI agent Read More »

Paul Atreides faces the cost of his holy war in Dune: Part 3 teaser

culture, denis villeneuve, Dune: Part 3, Entertainment, film trailers, Frank Herbert, Trailers, Warner Bros. / Shannon Garcia / March 18, 2026

Warner Bros. just dropped a broody and haunting extended teaser for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3, the highly anticipated third film in the director’s acclaimed franchise—the last in his planned trilogy.

(Spoilers for first two films in the franchise below.)

In 2021’s Dune, we first met Frank Herbert’s iconic anti-hero, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). That film culminated in the brutal defeat of House Atreides by rival House Harkonnen, with Paul and his mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), fleeing to the desert and taking refuge with the Fremen. Among them is Chani (Zendaya), whom Paul has been seeing in visions all along.

In Dune: Part 2 (2024), Paul ingratiated himself with the Fremen, learning to ride a sandworm and winning Chani’s love. Meanwhile, a pregnant Lady Jessica had her own plans for Paul as a messiah figure, in order to fulfill a Bene Gesserit prophecy; we learned she was actually Baron Harkonnen’s daughter, married to Paul’s father to merge the bloodlines to bring the prophecy to fruition. Ultimately, Paul challenges the emperor, defeats his champion, and demands the Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) as his wife, to Chani’s chagrin. The other Great Houses reject Paul as ruler, so he essentially launches a holy war against them. And Chani rides off on a sandworm after refusing to bow down to Paul.

Dune: Part Three will take place roughly 12 years after the end of Part Two, according to Villeneuve, as Paul faces the consequences of his earlier actions. Per the official premise:

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Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to DLSS 5’s generative AI glow-ups

AI, dlss, frame generation, gaming, NVIDIA, rtx / Shannon Garcia / March 18, 2026

Many of the reactions have focused on how DLSS 5 turns in-game faces into overly detailed, uncanny valley versions of the original models. Reactions have compared the effect to air-brushed pornography, “yassified, looks-maxed freaks,” or those uncanny, unavoidable Evony ads. Others have noted how DLSS 5 seems to mangle the intended art direction by dampening shadows in favor of a homogenized look.

Some game developers have leapt on the “artistic intent” angle, too. Thomas Was Alone developer Mike Bithell added that the technology seems designed “for when you absolutely, positively, don’t want any art direction in your gaming experience.” And Gunfire Games Senior Concept Artist Jeff Talbot said that “in every shot the art direction was taken away for the senseless addition of ‘details.’ Each DLSS 5 shot looked worse and had less character than the original. This is just a garbage AI Filter.”

New Blood Interactive founder and CEO Dave Oshry added that DLSS 5’s “AI dogshit is actually depressing” and lamented that future generations “won’t even know this looks ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ because to them it’ll be normal.”

Damage control

By way of damage control, Nvidia took to the comments (which are filled with thousands of negative takes) on its YouTube reveal trailer to stress that DLSS 5 “is not a filter” and that “game developers have full, detailed artistic control over DLSS 5’s effects to ensure they maintain their game’s unique aesthetic.” That includes the ability to tweak intensity and color grading or turn the masking off entirely in “places where the effect shouldn’t be applied.”

DLSS 5 OFF // DLSS 5 ON

[image or embed]

— Tuba Zef (@tubazef.com) March 16, 2026 at 3: 59 PM

Bethesda, one of the many major publishers Nvidia named as an early DLSS 5 partner, piped in on social media to say that these videos are “a very early look, and our art teams will be further adjusting the lighting and final effect to look the way we think works best for each game. This will all be under our artists’ control, and totally optional for players.”

From a public image perspective, though, the damage may already be done. DLSS 5 has quickly become a meme format in its own right, with Internet commenters using “DLSS 5 On” as visual shorthand for “overly cleaned up” or “mangled beyond recognition.” We’re not sure how you come back from that kind of instant infamy, but Nvidia will have until the fall to find out.

Gamers react with overwhelming disgust to DLSS 5’s generative AI glow-ups Read More »

RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine changes to CDC vaccine guidance blocked by judge

ACIP, american academy of pediatrics, CDC, health, HHS, kennedy, robert f kennedy jr, vaccine / Shannon Garcia / March 17, 2026

“This is all to say that there is a method to how these decisions historically have been made—a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Judge Murphy wrote.

“Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” he wrote. “First, the Government bypassed ACIP to change the immunization schedules, which is both a technical, procedural failure itself and a strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee. Second, the Government removed all duly appointed members of ACIP and summarily replaced them without undertaking any of the rigorous screening that had been the hallmark of ACIP member selection for decades. Again, this procedural failure highlights the very reasons why procedures exist and raises a substantial likelihood that the newly appointed ACIP fails to comport with governing law.”

Rebuke of ACIP members

The judge also blasted the firing of past ACIP members, the apparent lack of vetting for new members, and the lack of qualifications of the members, naming names.

“First, of the fifteen members currently on ACIP, even under the most generous reading, only six appear to have any meaningful experience in vaccines—the very focus of ACIP,” he wrote (emphasis his).

“At least six ACIP members—Dr. Hillary Blackburn, Dr. Evelyn Griffin, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, Dr. James Pagano, Dr. Raymond Pollak—appear to lack any expertise or professional qualifications related to vaccines or immunization as required by ACIP’s Charter,” he wrote. “An additional three of the current ACIP members—Dr. Retsef Levi, Dr. Robert Malone, and Dr. Catherine Stein—though they have some experience arguably relevant to ACIP’s function, appear to lack the qualifications and experience to constitute expertise in vaccines and immunization.”

In all, Judge Murphy argued that Kennedy’s hand-selected advisors fail to meet the requirements of ACIP’s charter, which states members must be knowledgeable in relevant fields. They also fail to meet federal regulations requiring advisory boards to be “fairly balanced” in representing the views within those relevant fields.

RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine changes to CDC vaccine guidance blocked by judge Read More »

Trump and his FCC chair demand more positive news coverage of Iran war

brendan carr, donald trump iran war, FCC, fcc chair, Policy / Shannon Garcia / March 17, 2026

Carr makes evidence-free claim of “hoaxes and news distortions.” Trump is thrilled.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr arrives for an FCC meeting on February 18, 2026 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Kevin Dietsch

President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission chairman are demanding more positive media coverage of the Iran war. On Saturday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr issued yet another threat to revoke licenses from news broadcasters, claiming without evidence that they are running “hoaxes and news distortions” related to the war in Iran.

In an X post, Carr shared a complaint about an Iran war headline that Trump had made on Truth Social and added his own commentary. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr wrote. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

Carr making vague threats about enforcing rules against hoaxes and news distortion is nothing new. Given how difficult it is to actually revoke a broadcast license, and the fact that no TV station licenses are up for renewal until 2028, the threats so far have been attempts to intimidate news organizations without any concrete punishment.

What’s slightly odd about Carr’s latest threat is that it’s based on a Trump complaint about a newspaper headline, not broadcast news coverage. The Trump post that spurred Carr’s latest threat was about a Wall Street Journal article.

Carr has repeatedly claimed he’s only targeting licensed broadcasters because they have an obligation to operate in the public interest as users of the public airwaves. Carr said in his Saturday message, “The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves.” But the only example Carr provided was Trump’s Truth Social post that didn’t mention any broadcast reports.

Trump’s quibble

Trump’s complaint said, “Yet again, an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media about the five tanker planes that were supposedly struck down at an Airport in Saudi Arabia, and of no further use. In actuality, the Base was hit a few days ago, but the planes were not ‘struck’ or ‘destroyed.’ Four of the five had virtually no damage, and are already back in service. One had slightly more damage, but will be in the air shortly. None were destroyed, or close to that, as the Fake News said in headlines.”

The only specific news outlets Trump’s post mentioned were The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, but he was referring to a Wall Street Journal article. Even if Trump’s version of events is true, his complaint wouldn’t meet the legal standard for proving a hoax or news distortion, or even prove that the Journal got anything wrong. Trump claims the planes were not “struck” but said four out of five “had virtually no damage,” which seemingly indicates that all five were struck and suffered some damage.

Trump’s post seems to accuse the Journal of falsely reporting that the planes were destroyed and would not be used again. But the Journal article makes it clear the planes were merely damaged, not destroyed, and would be repaired. It said:

Five US Air Force refueling planes were struck and damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia, according to two US officials.

The tankers were hit during an Iranian missile strike on the Saudi base in recent days, the officials said. US Central Command declined to comment. The tankers were damaged but not fully destroyed and are being repaired, one of the officials said. No one was killed in the strikes.

The Journal article was published on Friday, and Trump issued his complaint on Truth Social on Saturday morning. The Journal article was updated on Saturday afternoon to include a quote from Trump’s Truth Social post. As far as we can tell, the article never claimed that any of the five tanker planes were destroyed. A Reuters article on Friday that quotes the WSJ report also uses the phrases “struck and damaged,” and “not fully destroyed,” undercutting Trump’s claim of false reporting.

The Journal article’s only reference to destroyed planes is related to a previous crash that killed six US military members. It said:

The news brings the total number of Air Force refueling planes damaged or destroyed to at least seven. It comes after two Air Force KC-135 refueling planes collided on Thursday, leading one of the aircraft to crash into the ground. All six crew members were killed, the Pentagon announced on Friday.

Trump “thrilled” by Carr’s latest threat

While it doesn’t appear that the Journal got anything wrong, it was the only example Carr provided in his complaint about fake news, hoaxes, and news distortions.

“It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news,” Carr wrote. “When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in [sic] the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen. Time for change!”

Carr has repeatedly made statements of this sort during Trump’s second term despite writing himself in 2019 that the government should not “censor speech it doesn’t like” and that the “FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’”

Trump wrote last night that he is “thrilled to see Brendan Carr… looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations. They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in The Apprentice, ‘FIRED.’”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is also demanding more positive media coverage of the Iran war. Criticizing CNN reporting at a press conference on Friday, Hegseth said, “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.” Hegseth was referring to Paramount Skydance’s planned purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that was helped along by the Trump administration.

Carr’s threat to broadcast licenses was roundly criticized by Democrats. “If Trump doesn’t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote, “Constitutional law 101: it’s illegal for the government to censor free speech it just doesn’t like about Trump’s Iran war. This threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.” Carr replied by quoting the Supreme Court’s Red Lion Broadcasting decision in 1969, which said, “No one has a First Amendment right to a license or to monopolize a radio frequency; to deny a station license because ‘the public interest’ requires it ‘is not a denial of free speech.’”

“This is worse than the comedian stuff”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote, “This is a clear directive to provide positive war coverage or else licenses may not be renewed. This is worse than the comedian stuff, and by a lot. The stakes here are much higher. He’s not talking about late night shows, he’s talking about how a war is covered.”

Schatz was referring to Carr’s previous threats to stations regarding late-night talk show hosts such as ABC host Jimmy Kimmel. Even some Republicans criticized Carr’s Kimmel threats last year.

FCC Democrat Anna Gomez said the agency’s threats are dangerous because they have a chilling effect on media coverage. But the threats themselves have no legal backing, she said.

“Once again, this FCC pretends it has the power to control news coverage,” Gomez said in a statement today. “In reality, the FCC has vanishingly little power over national news networks. It licenses local broadcast stations, not networks, and no licenses are up for renewal until 2028. Early renewal attempts are exceedingly rare, and the process is so demanding that any effort would almost certainly fail, especially given the well-documented First Amendment violations underlying these moves. These threats are grounded in neither reality nor law and would not survive judicial scrutiny, just as other recent attempts by this administration to push beyond constitutional limits have repeatedly failed in court.”

At least one Republican seems concerned about Carr’s latest threat. On Fox News yesterday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was asked about Carr threatening broadcast licenses over Iran war coverage, and whether he thinks it is the role of government to police that kind of coverage.

“I’m a big supporter of the First Amendment,” Johnson responded. “I do not like the heavy hand of government no matter who’s wielding it. I’d rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible. And really, the federal government’s role is to protect our freedoms, to protect our constitutional rights.”

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

Trump and his FCC chair demand more positive news coverage of Iran war Read More »

Apple’s AirPods Max 2 bring H2 chip, boosted ANC in April for $549

airpods, AirPods Max, Apple, audio, Tech / Shannon Garcia / March 17, 2026

Apple announced the AirPods Max 2 today, following up the original AirPods Max, which were announced in December 2020. The new model brings improved active noise cancellation (ANC) and other new features via an updated H2 chip.

The five AirPods Max 2 colorways. — The AirPods Max 2 are available in the same five colorways as their predecessor. Credit: Apple

Apple introduced the H2 with the AirPods Pro (2nd Generation), which came out in September 2022. The original AirPods Max released in 2021 with an H1, meaning the new over-ear headphones should be more in line with Apple’s AirPods series in terms of features.

Apple claims that the new chip, combined with new computational audio algorithms, makes ANC up to 1.5 times “more effective” on the AirPods Max 2 compared to the original AirPods Max.

Transparency mode, meanwhile, should sound “more natural” due to a new “digital signal processing algorithm optimized for H2,” Apple’s announcement said.

The H2 adds support for a slew of additional AirPods Max 2 features, including adaptive audio (which automatically adjusts levels in Transparency and ANC modes based on ambient noise) and Conversation Awareness (where the device automatically lowers the volume when someone starts talking to you).

A close up of an AirPods Max 2 can in the starlight (purple) colorway. — The AirPods Max 2 also feature a small spec bump from Bluetooth 5.0 to Bluetooth 5.3. Credit: Apple

The H2 also enables the AirPods Max 2 to support live translation (which uses Apple Intelligence for real-time language translation) and voice isolation (which taps “advanced computational audio powered by H2 to prioritize the voice during calls, while blocking out ambient noise,” according to Apple’s announcement today).

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100 years later, where is Robert Goddard’s first liquid-fueled rocket?

100 years, 100th, 1926, Anniversary, artifacts, Auburn, centennial, Clark University, fragments, liquid fuel rocket, March 16, massachusetts, National Air and Space Museum, Nell, remains, robert goddard, rocket, Roswell Museum and Arts Center, Smithsonian, Space, space artifacts, Space exploration, space history / Shannon Garcia / March 17, 2026

“He didn’t preserve it as a sacred object… “

Robert Goddard (at left) and Henry Sachs, Percy Roope, and Esther Goddard with parts from the first liquid-fueled rocket after its history-making flight in Auburn, Massachusetts, March 16, 1926. Credit: Robert Goddard/Clark University/collectSPACE.com

It flew for only two seconds, but its impact is still felt a century later.

Robert Goddard’s first liquid-fueled rocket, which lifted off from a snowy field on March 16, 1926, has been written about extensively. Earlier solid-fueled rockets existed, but liquid-fueled rockets promised the sustainability and control needed to send spacecraft and humans into Earth orbit and beyond.

“The rocket’s reach was short, but it marked the moment that humanity entered a new era,” said Kevin Schindler, author of “Robert Goddard’s Massachusetts,” speaking at the site of that first launch as part of a centennial commemoration held Saturday in Auburn (March 14). “It proved that liquid fuel could lift a craft skyward—the essential breakthrough that would one day carry humans to the moon.”

Photos from that day exist through the efforts of Goddard’s wife, as does a monument stand from where the rocket, nicknamed “Nell,” left the ground (today, located on a golf course). Over the decades, replicas of Nell have been built, even ones capable of flight. But a century later, a question about the rocket remains.

Where is it now?

First (and last?) to see

“Goddard didn’t seek the spotlight. He sought the truth. He was a scientist. Apart from his small team, very few people could say that they were truly there who felt the steady roar and saw the flash of fire against the New England snow. One of those people was my father,” said Thomas Hastings, addressing a small crowd who gathered in Auburn.

Hasting’s father, Gerald, who was 10 years old on that day in 1926, was sledding with some friends when he saw “four people in heavy coats got out of [their] vehicle and remove some rather large objects.” As he later learned, those four were Goddard, Goddard’s wife Esther, Goddard’s crew chief Henry Sachs, and Clark University assistant physics professor Percy Roope.

A black and white photo of a man holding a pole next to a early rocket on a snowy field. — Henry Sachs, Robert Goddard’s assistant, ignites the first liquid fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. Credit: Esther Goddard/Clark University

“Dad [later] commented that the scene felt very strange,” said Hastings. “He and his friends continued looking on with great interest as the nameless visitors took whatever it was they had removed from the vehicle and assembled the pieces.”

“You can imagine how his imagination soared suddenly. They saw fire and smoke and heard loud noise as some object shot up into the air,” Hastings said, recounting what his father told him. “Dad and his friends shook their heads at each other, completely baffled by what they had just witnessed, and they continued sledding like you would expect them to.”

Goddard wrote in his notebook that the rocket “rose 41 feet & went 184 feet, in 2.5 secs.” The next day, he added, “Even though the release was pulled, the rocket did not rise at first, but the flame came out, and there was a steady roar. After a number of seconds it rose, slowly until it cleared the frame, and then at express train speed, curving over to the left, and striking the ice and snow, still going at a rapid rate.”

“It looked almost magical as it rose, without any appreciably greater noise or flame, as if it said, ‘I’ve been here long enough; I think I’ll be going somewhere else, if you don’t mind,’” he wrote.

Nell’s “salvation”

Nell, which gained its name from the title character of the then-contemporary play “Salvation Nell,” found its salvation in pieces.

Hastings, as recounted by his son, recalled watching as the “strangers in dark coats ran through the snow, gathered up what it was they had brought and set on fire, and they put the pieces back into their vehicle.”

Esther took a photograph of her husband standing with the recovered parts. She also posed for a similar photo, together with Sachs and Roope. In his notebook, Goddard wrote that they brought the rocket’s remains back to his laboratory.

By all accounts, Goddard did not try to reassemble Nell, nor did he treat the pieces as historic artifacts.

“He didn’t preserve it as a sacred object,” wrote Michael Neufeld, who retired as a senior curator for the space history division of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in an email. “He didn’t have a lot of money at that point and reused everything.”

A nozzle and a flood

In 1950, five years after Goddard’s death, the Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics donated to the Smithsonian the scientist’s immediate successor to Nell. Goddard attempted to launch that rocket on May 4 and 5, 1926.

“It survives because its thrust was too weak to launch itself,” wrote Neufeld. “For some reason he preserved it.”

The National Air and Space Museum’s collection catalog describes the Goddard May 1926 rocket as “likely includ[ing] the nozzle” recovered from Nell.

a close-up photo of a small metal rocket nozzle — The nozzle on Robert Goddard’s May 1926 rocket, which did not fly and was donated to the National Air and Space Museum, “likely” was at least part of the first liquid fueled rocket launch on March 16 of that same year. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“I gather the nozzle assertion is based on his notes. I haven’t seen them myself,” said Neufeld. “More may be on the May 1926 rocket, which we can’t prove.”

Goddard’s notebook is held at the Robert H. Goddard Library at Clark University today. In his March 16, 1926, entry, Goddard recorded that “the lower half of the nozzle burned off.” Photos taken prior to Nell’s launch show a longer nozzle than what is installed on the May rocket, perhaps supporting its suggested reuse.

Frank Winter, a retired curator of rocketry at the National Air and Space Museum, recently wrote an article for “Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly,” in which he cited an inventory of the Robert H. Goddard Collection at the Roswell Museum and Arts Center in New Mexico, including “the protective conical cap that was mounted on top of the propellant tanks, nozzle fragments and the combustion chamber” from Nell.

Unfortunately, the Roswell Museum has been closed since October 2024, ever since it was devastated by a flood. Reached for this article, Caroline Brooks, the Roswell Museum’s executive director, confirmed they have four pieces claimed to be part of the March 1926 flight.

As referenced by both Winter and Brooks, W.S. Crane researched and published a catalog for the museum’s Goddard holdings in 1994. The chamber is attributed to coming from Clark University and the nozzle fragments are described as a gift from Esther Goddard. The source of the nose cone is unknown.

a black and white photo of damaged rocket parts, including a nose cone and nozzle pieces — Fragments attributed to flying as part of the world’s first liquid fuel rocket in the Robert Goddard collection at the Roswell Museum and Arts Center in New Mexico. Credit: W.S. Crane/Roswell Museum

The museum also has the rod, rollers, and wire that were used to ignite Nell. “Pulling the wire opened a hole in the bottom of the liquid oxygen tank, where the oxygen dripped onto a heated surface,” Crane wrote, adding that the assembly was also a gift from Mrs. Goddard.

“We are a few years out from a full recovery,” wrote Brooks in an email. “The Goddard collection will return in a contemporary and updated presentation (compared to the original exhibit, which dated back to 1959) when the museum reopens.”

Cente-Nell-ial

Today, the remains from the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket to fly might be less consequential than the legacy they helped create. Goddard’s design for Nell—especially mounting the exhaust nozzle above its propellant tank—was less a model for the engines that followed than a symbol of what is possible.

“Apart from its historic significance, this rocket became a minor source of embarrassment for Dr. Goddard, since the illogical position of the combustion chamber at the top is evidence that he had failed to consider some very basic physics in his design,” wrote Crane. “This is a great example of the role of common sense and intuition in pioneering engineering, and one of the very few times that Dr. Goddard’s failed him.”

Today, replicas, more than the remains, help the public understand Nell’s role in history. Since its opening in 1976, the National Air and Space Museum has displayed a full-scale, NASA-donated recreation of Goddard’s first rocket (which is now at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia).

In December 2003, for the national celebration of the centennial of flight, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center worked with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) to reconstruct “historically accurate, functional replicas” of Nell. The project was carried out to “clearly understand, recreate, and document the mechanisms and workings of the 1926 rocket” and created a “resource for researchers studying the evolution of liquid rocketry.”

a photo of a replica of an early rocket on display on a golf course — A full-scale replica of Robert Goddard’s first liquid fueled rocket on display at the site where the original launched on March 16, 1926. The static model was on exhibit as part of the centennial celebration in Auburn, Massachusetts, on Saturday, March 14, 2026. Credit: Auburn Fire Rescue Department

On Monday, a different full-size replica premieres on display at The Museum of Worcester, just 10 minutes from where the real Nell launched. On exhibit through August, the rocket is a model, but its support frame was used in a 1929 launch test, on loan from Clark University.

“Goddard’s legacy is not just technological. It’s aspirational,” said Schindler. “It tells us that greatness can emerge from quiet places, that bold ideas can take root in small towns, and that the next breakthrough may come from someone standing right here looking up at the sky with wonder.”

“As we honor the centennial, we’re invited to step into the story ourselves. The next century of exploration will be shaped by those who choose to dream boldly, learn deeply, and support the next generation of explorers,” he said.

Listing image: Auburn Fire Rescue Department

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a daily news publication and online community focused on where space exploration intersects with pop culture. He is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He is on the leadership board for For All Moonkind and is a member of the American Astronautical Society’s history committee.

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Magnetars drag spacetime to power superluminous supernovae

astrophysics, general relativity, magnetar, Physics, Science, supernova / Shannon Garcia / March 15, 2026

Frame-dragging may explain an odd pattern seen in the brightest supernovae.

Some of the most extreme explosions in the universe are Type I superluminous supernovae. “They are one of the brightest explosions in the Universe,” says Joseph Farah, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For years, astrophysicists tried to understand what exactly makes superluminous supernovae so absurdly powerful. Now it seems like we may finally have some answers.

Farah and his colleagues have found that these events are most likely powered by magnetars, rapidly spinning neutron stars that warp the very space and time around them.

The power within

Magnetars have been a leading candidate for the engine behind superluminous supernovae. The theory says these insanely magnetized stars are born from the collapsing core of the original progenitor star and emit energy via magnetic dipole radiation. “This core is roughly a one solar mass object that gets crushed down to the size of a city,” Farah explains. As its spin slows down, a magnetar bleeds its rotational energy into the expanding material of the dead star, lighting it up.

The problem was that this theory did not quite explain observations. In a standard magnetar model, the light curve of the supernova should rise rapidly and then fade away evenly as the neutron star loses its rotational energy. “This way the light curve, in the prediction of this model, just goes up and then down quite smoothly,” Farah says. But when astronomers observe superluminous supernovae, they almost never see this smooth fade. Instead, they see bumps, wiggles, and strange modulations. The light curve flickers over months.

For a while, scientists tried to patch the magnetar engine theory to fit observations. Maybe the expanding debris was slamming into irregular shells of material shed by the star before it died. Or perhaps the magnetar engine was spitting out random, violent flares. But these explanations required highly specific, fine-tuned parameters to match what we were seeing through our telescopes.

The solution to the strange flickering problem came when the Liverpool Gravitational Wave Optical Transient Observer collaboration detected an object designated SN 2024afav on December 12, 2024. Initially, the object looked like a standard superluminous supernova. “It was as bright and it had bumps in the light curve like many other objects of this kind,” Farah says. But as the telescopes kept watching, it started doing something unprecedented: It started to chirp.

The chirping star

In physics, a chirp refers to a signal with a frequency that steadily increases over time. In the case of SN 2024afav, its emissions were bumping up and down, but the gap between these bumps was shrinking. After a second and third bump both appeared with the gaps between them reduced by roughly 35 percent, Farah and his team realized they could calculate how much the gap between the bumps would decrease next.

The team adjusted their observation schedule, pointed their instruments at SN 2024afav, and discovered the fourth bump appeared exactly when they expected it would. The fifth bump enabled the scientists to narrow down the period reduction to about 29 percent.

The fact that Farah and his colleagues could accurately predict the bumps delivered a massive blow to our existing magnetar models. While a few irregular bumps could be explained away by the supernova ejecta crashing into clouds of gas, it doesn’t explain perfectly timed, cleanly sinusoidal modulations with a steadily decaying period. Random space rubble just doesn’t work that way.

“So, we came up with the new model to describe this behavior,” Farah explains. They proposed a new physical mechanism that relied on the Lense-Thirring effect, otherwise known as frame-dragging. Frame-dragging is a prediction of General Relativity, where a massive spinning object slightly drags the spacetime around with it as it rotates. “We didn’t try this mechanism before because it had never been seen around a magnetar before,” Farah says. But when his team did try it, it turned out to perfectly match what was going on.

The flickering in the superluminous supernovae, Farah hypothesized, was caused by the extreme gravity of a newborn magnetar dragging the very spacetime around it along as it was spinning.

Twisted space

To understand Farah’s Lense-Thirring solution, imagine a bowling ball spinning in a vat of molasses. As the ball rotates, friction drags the sticky fluid along, creating a swirling vortex. According to Einstein’s General Relativity, mass and energy can warp the fabric of spacetime, so if a sufficiently large mass is spinning rapidly, it drags the space-time along in a manner similar to the molasses. Around Earth, this effect is minuscule. But around a newborn magnetar, which is far more massive and spinning hundreds of times a second, spacetime is whipped into a violent, twisting frenzy.

When the progenitor star exploded to create SN 2024afav, it didn’t eject all of its material perfectly. Some of the stellar guts failed to escape and fell back toward the newborn magnetar, forming a small accretion disk around it. Crucially, this disk was misaligned, tilted relative to the rotational axis of the magnetar. Because the disk was tilted in this aggressively twisted spacetime, the Lense-Thirring effect forced the entire disk to wobble, or precess, around the magnetar’s spin axis like a top that was spinning ever more slowly.

As this misaligned disk wobbled, it acted like a giant cosmic lampshade: it periodically blocked, reflected, or redirected the intense radiation and jets spewing from the central magnetar. The high-energy photons emitted by the magnetar had to fight their way through the expanding supernova ejecta, getting reprocessed into optical light and diffusing outward over a span of about 15 days. Observed through our telescopes on Earth, this wobbling disk created a rhythmic fluctuation in the superluminous supernova’s brightness.

After Farah and his colleagues explained the bumps in the signal with the wobbling disk around the magnetar, they moved to explaining why the signal chirped.

The shrinking disk

The answer the team proposes lies in the environment of the disk itself. The size of this accretion disk isn’t static. It’s determined by an inward ram pressure from the infalling matter and the outward radiation pressure coming from the magnetar. Over time, as the exploding star runs out of fallback material, the accretion rate of the disk drops. With less matter pushing in, the disk loses equilibrium and begins to shrink, falling inward toward the magnetar. And the closer it gets to the spinning magnetar, the stronger the Lense-Thirring effect becomes.

As the accretion disk shrinks and falls deeper into the gravity well, the twisted spacetime whips it around faster and faster. “Imagine a pirouetting figure skater pulling her arms in to accelerate the spinning movement,” Farah suggests. In consequence, the precession speeds up, the wobbles get tighter, and the light curve chirps.

Finally, by measuring the chirps, Farah and his colleagues were able to work backward to measure the properties of the magnetar powering the SN 2024afav. They constrained its spin period to 4.2 milliseconds and precisely calculated its staggeringly powerful magnetic field. The team found that the magnetar’s properties that derived solely from the chirping matched the properties required to power the overall baseline brightness of the superluminous supernova. The engine that powered the main explosion was exactly the right size and speed to cause the wobbling we observed.

But the work on the revised “magnetar+LT” model is just beginning. “This object is so rare and so new,” Farah admits. “We were scraping the bottom of the barrel for references that were even remotely related to the idea we were pitching here.”

Superluminous siblings

Farah’s team went back and looked at archival data from other bumpy superluminous supernovae such as SN 2018kyt, SN 2019unb, and SN 2021mkr. They found that their “magnetar+LT” model explains the modulations in those events as well. A whole class of exploding stars that previously required multiple mutually exclusive physical explanations could be unified by a single, elegant model.

This model, though, still has many unanswered questions. “How the accretion disk forms, how it blocks or modulates the light from the magnetar, how that light then gets to the ejecta, and finally how it gets to the observer,” Farah listed. “Basically every step along the way we made the best assumptions we could.” For each of these steps, he admits, there were at least five different ways it could happen, and the team just went with their best guess of what was going on.

To really figure it all out, Farah says, we need to wait till more objects like SN 2024afav are discovered. And this, he hopes, should become possible with new observatories like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile coming online. “The Rubin Observatory is expected to discover dozens of these chirped supernovae,” Farah says. “We will be able to test our models against many different objects. There’s definitely room for development and growth. This is just the very beginning.”

Nature, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10151-0

Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

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Measles vaccinations rose 291% among New Mexico adults during outbreak

anti-vaccine, health, measles, MMR, New Mexico, outbreak, texas, vaccination / Shannon Garcia / March 15, 2026

In January 2025, a measles outbreak erupted on the western edge of Texas and soon spilled over to New Mexico and other states. The overall outbreak would become the largest the country has seen since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated from the US. In Texas, it was the largest outbreak recorded since 1992. And in New Mexico, it was the first measles outbreak the state had even seen since 1996.

But the trajectory of the two states’ measles cases diverged. Texas declared the outbreak within its borders over on August 18, with an end tally of 762 cases. In New Mexico, officials declared its outbreak, which began in February, over on September 26, with a total of just 99 cases.

One of the key differences, according to a new study, was that in New Mexico, the rapid spread of the highly infectious virus spurred a massive surge in measles vaccinations among children and adults. Overall, shots of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine increased 55 percent statewide from January to September compared to the same period in 2024.

The study, appearing in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, further broke down the increase in shots. Over the whole year, the number of MMR doses given to children (defined as less than age 18) increased 18 percent compared to 2024—from 27,988 in 2024 to 32,890 in 2025. Doses in adults (aged 18 and up) skyrocketed by a whopping 291 percent— from 5,748 in 2024 to 22,500 in 2025.

The increase in vaccination didn’t appear to be an unrelated fluke. Health officials noted that within two weeks of the outbreak being declared, the number of vaccine doses given in all regions of the state began to exceed the number given during the previous year. And in some regions, when a first measles case was identified, officials saw week-over-week increases in vaccinations as high as 78 and 83 percent.

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Rocket Report: Pentagon needs more missile interceptors; Artemis II clears review

artemis II, falcon 9, Firefly Aerospace, launch, NASA, rocket lab, rocket report, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Shannon Garcia / March 15, 2026

SpaceX has started commissioning a second launch pad at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas.

Firefly Aerospace’s seventh Alpha rocket rises above its launch pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Credit: Sean Parker/Firefly Aerospace

Welcome to Edition 8.33 of the Rocket Report! NASA officials seem optimistic about launching the Artemis II mission next month, so confident that they will forgo another fueling test on the Space Launch System rocket to check the integrity of fickle seals in a liquid hydrogen loading line. The rocket will return to the launch pad next week, with liftoff targeted for April 1 at 6: 24 pm EDT (22: 24 UTC). NASA has six launch dates available in early April after the agency added April 2 to the launch period. April 1 and 2 each have launch windows that open before sunset, an added bonus for those of us who prefer a day launch, for purely aesthetic reasons.

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.

Firefly’s Alpha rocket flies again. Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket successfully returned to flight Wednesday, March 11, launching a technology demonstration mission more than 10 months after the rocket’s previous launch failed, Space News reports. The launch followed several delays and scrubbed launch attempts. The two-stage Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and headed southwest over the Pacific Ocean, reaching orbit about eight minutes later. Firefly said the rocket’s upper stage later reignited its engine, demonstrating the restart capability required for some orbit insertion missions. This was the seventh flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket, capable of hauling more than a ton of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Block II preview... The recent setbacks for Firefly’s Alpha program included a launch failure last April and a fire that destroyed a booster stage on the test stand. The Texas-based company billed this week’s flight as a purely demonstration mission to validate several upgrades for the Alpha Block II rocket configuration, which will debut on the next launch. The Block II will include a 7-foot (2-meter) increase to Alpha’s length, consolidated batteries and avionics built in-house, improved thermal protection systems, and stronger carbon-composite structures built with automated machinery. This week’s flight carried the rocket’s new in-house avionics suite and enhanced thermal protection system, Firefly said. “Flight 7 served as a critical opportunity to validate Alpha’s performance ahead of our Block II upgrade, and this team knocked it out of the park,” said Adam Oakes, Firefly’s vice president of launch. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Rocket Lab launches undisclosed satellite. Rocket Lab launched a spacecraft March 5 for a confidential customer, most likely Earth observation company BlackSky, Space News reports. The mission began with the liftoff of an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab’s private spaceport in New Zealand. The rocket delivered a “single commercial satellite” to a roughly 292-mile-high (470-kilometer) orbit for a “confidential customer,” Rocket Lab said in a press release. This was the 83rd flight of an Electron rocket, including suborbital flights for the US military’s Defense Innovation Unit testing hypersonic missile tech. Electron is a workhorse in the dedicated small launch sector, with capacity for up to 710 pounds (320 kilograms) of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Solving the puzzle... This was the second time in less than four months that Rocket Lab has launched a satellite mission for an undisclosed customer. BlackSky, a US-based remote sensing company, confirmed it was the customer for a November Rocket Lab launch under similar circumstances. BlackSky announced this week that it activated its newest “Gen-3” optical Earth-imaging satellite “in less than one week following launch.” While the company did not confirm its launch with Rocket Lab, this statement suggests BlackSky was, indeed, the customer on the March 5 mission. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Pentagon orders more SM-3s. In early February, the Pentagon and RTX, formerly Raytheon, reached an agreement to ramp up missile production, with a framework to dramatically increase manufacturing of Tomahawk cruise missiles, air-to-air missiles, and SM-3 and SM-6 missile interceptors. The announcement did not include a dollar value. The Defense Department put some numbers on the deal in the military’s daily dump of contract announcements Thursday. The Missile Defense Agency is ordering dozens of new SM-3 Block IB missiles, which are used to intercept enemy ballistic missiles in space. Thursday’s announcement added 23 SM-3 missiles to the order, bringing the total number to 78, for a total cost of more than $1.36 billion.

Before the Iran war... The Pentagon is making deals with several defense contractors to deliver more weapons systems. Lockheed Martin plans to quadruple THAAD interceptor production to 400 units annually and boost Patriot PAC-3 output to 2,000 per year, Reuters reported. These agreements were in place before the US began striking Iran. The conflict has increased the military’s urgency to replenish weapons inventories, particularly interceptor stocks being used to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones attacking US and allied bases in the Middle East.

SpaceX delivers for EchoStar. A direct television satellite for Dish Network, a subsidiary of EchoStar, headed into geosynchronous Earth orbit on Monday night aboard a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Spaceflight Now reports. The satellite, EchoStar XXV, flew to a geosynchronous transfer orbit before maneuvering to its operational position at 110 degrees west longitude above the equator. This was the 30th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket so far in 2026, putting SpaceX on a similar pace to last year.

A rarity these days... This was the first launch of a large commercial geosynchronous communications satellite in nearly six months. These types of satellites operate more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator, where their orbits match the rate of Earth’s rotation. They were once the favored solution for commercial broadcasting and data relay. Today, the strong trend is toward large mega-constellations in low-Earth orbit, with networks like SpaceX’s Starlink beaming broadband Internet to global customers. Commercial geosynchronous satellites are now a niche, primarily for markets like direct-to-home TV and satellite radio. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China resumes space launches. Two Chinese rockets launched Thursday, March 12, from spaceports in the northwest and south of the country. These were the first Chinese orbital launches in more than a month, a break that coincided with the Chinese New Year holiday. It is unclear whether the holiday was the reason for the interruption of satellite launches. China did not have such a long lull in launch activity over the last couple of years. Two Chinese rockets failed during launches in January, but China’s rocket industry has a deep bench, so there’s no obvious link between those failures and the recent letup in launches.

Assembling a network… The first of Thursday’s launches from China involved a Long March 8A rocket carrying a batch of Internet satellites, followed by the launch of a Long March 2D rocket with a pair of classified military satellites. These missions continued China’s rapid build-up of satellite networks for data relay and imaging surveillance.

Artemis II clears critical review. NASA plans to haul its Artemis II Moon rocket back out to its seaside launch pad next week to ready the huge booster for blastoff as early as April 1 on a delayed-but-historic flight to send four astronauts on a nine-day trip around the moon, CBS News reports. At the conclusion of a two-day flight readiness review, “all the teams polled ‘go’ to launch and fly Artemis II around the Moon, pending completion of some of the work before we roll out to the launch pad,” said Lori Glaze, associate administrator of Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters, in a press conference Thursday. “Just a reminder to everybody, we talk about it every time we talk about this flight, it’s a test flight, and it is not without risk. But our team and our hardware are ready,” Glaze said.

Behind schedule… Based on the ever-changing positions of the Moon and Earth, along with a complex mix of mission objectives, NASA must launch Artemis II by April 6, or the flight will slip another month or so. For an April 1 launch, liftoff is expected at 6: 24 pm EDT, followed by splashdown in the Pacific Ocean nine days later. NASA workers had hoped to launch the Space Launch System rocket, the Orion crew capsule, and its four passengers—Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen—in early February. But the long-awaited flight was delayed by hydrogen fuel leaks and, more recently, by problems with the rocket’s upper-stage propellant pressurization system. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Goodbye to NASA’s Exploration Upper Stage. The death of NASA’s Exploration Upper Stage was confirmed last Friday, March 6, in a seemingly pedestrian notice posted on a government procurement website: “NASA/MSFC intends to issue a sole source contract to acquire next-generation upper stages for use in Space Launch System (SLS) Artemis IV and Artemis V from United Launch Alliance (ULA).” The announcement spells the end of the Exploration Upper Stage, a multibillion-dollar, Boeing-led development 10 years in the making that was still years away from being ready to fly, Ars reports.

We hardly knew ya… Contracted to Boeing more than a decade ago, the Exploration Upper Stage upgrade was intended to allow the SLS rocket to launch not just the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, but large payloads alongside it. That the development of capable rockets by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance to deliver large cargo to the Moon rendered it obsolete mattered, for a long time, not at all. If the Exploration Upper Stage was anything, it was a survivor—a testament to the power of pork and the value of political support from key Southern senators in Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida. Now, NASA is going with a more affordable commercial option to upgrade the SLS rocket.

SpaceX activates second Starbase launch pad. For the first time since October, SpaceX has a rocket on the launch pad at Starbase, Texas, NASASpaceflight reports. This time, it is the first of SpaceX’s new Block 3 Super Heavy boosters mounted on SpaceX’s newest launch pad, Pad 2. The launch pad has been under construction for the past 22 months and will help usher in the next chapter for the Starship program. This is the start of pad commissioning, a process that will culminate with the first launch of the upgraded third-generation Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket. SpaceX previously put the new booster and ship through a series of checkouts at a separate test stand at Starbase.

Slipping until April… At some point, SpaceX is expected to test-fire the new Super Heavy booster on Pad 2. But the booster only has a subset of its 33 Raptor engines, so a static fire test does not appear to be in the plan for the booster’s current stay at the launch pad. Meanwhile, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X on March 7 that the first Block 3 launch is about four weeks away, suggesting a launch sometime in early April. SpaceX had been targeting March for the test flight. This time one year ago, Musk wrote that SpaceX was “tracking to a Starship launch rate of once a week” within 12 months. That launch cadence has not been achieved.

Next three launches

March 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-31 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14: 33 UTC

March 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-48 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 10: 00 UTC

March 15: Long March 6A | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 13: 20 UTC

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

Rocket Report: Pentagon needs more missile interceptors; Artemis II clears review Read More »

Author name: Shannon Garcia