Jeff Bezos is one of the world’s richest and most famous tech CEOs, but he hasn’t actually been a CEO of anything since 2021. That’s now changing as he takes on the role of co-CEO of a new AI company, according to a New York Times report citing three people familiar with the company.
Grandiosely named Project Prometheus (and not to be confused with the NASA project of the same name), the company will focus on using AI to pursue breakthroughs in research, engineering, manufacturing, and other fields that are dubbed part of “the physical economy”—in contrast to the software applications that are likely the first thing most people in the general public think of when they hear “AI.”
Bezos’ co-CEO will be Vik Bajaj, a chemist and physicist who previously led life sciences work at Google X, an Alphabet-backed research group that worked on speculative projects that could lead to more product categories. (For example, it developed technologies that would later underpin Google’s Waymo service.) Bajaj also worked at Verily, another Alphabet-backed research group focused on life sciences, and Foresite Labs, an incubator for new AI companies.
The mission aims to aid our understanding of Mars’ climate history and what was behind the loss of its conditions that once supported liquid water, potential oceans, and possibly life on the surface.
Plaques and partner patches
In addition to the kiwi-adorned plates, Rocket Lab also installed two more plaques on the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft.
“There are also two name plates (one in blue and one in gold) on each spacecraft listing Rocket Lab team members who’ve contributed to the mission, making it possible to get to Mars,” said McLaurin.
Mounted on the solar panels, the plaques use shading to also display the Latin initials (NSHO) of the Rocket Lab motto and form the company’s logo. Despite their diminutive size, each plate appears to include more than 200 names, including founder, president, and CEO Peter Beck.
Additional plates in blue and gold display the names of the Rocket Lab team members behind the ESCAPADE spacecraft. Credit: UCB-SSL via collectSPACE.com
UC Berkeley adopted its colors in 1873. According to the school’s website, “blue for the California sky and ocean and for the Yale graduates who helped establish the university, gold for the ‘Golden State.’”
ESCAPADE also has its own set of colors, or rather, colorful patches.
The main mission logo depicts the twin spacecraft in orbit around Mars with the names of the primary partners listed along its border, including UCB-SSL (University of California, Berkeley-Space Science Laboratory); RL (Rocket Lab); ERAU (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which designed and built the langmuir probe, one of the mission’s science instruments); AdvSp (Advanced Space, which oversaw mission design and trajectory optimization); and NASA-GSFC (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center).
Rocket Lab also designed an insignia, which renders the two spacecraft in blue and gold, as well as shows their trajectory in the same colors and includes the company’s motto.
Lastly, Blue Origin’s New Glenn-2 (NG-2) patch features the launch vehicle and the two ESCAPADE satellites, using hues of orange to represent Mars.
“Never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try.”
Blue Origin’s 320-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Blue Origin
The rocket company founded a quarter-century ago by billionaire Jeff Bezos made history Thursday with the pinpoint landing of an 18-story-tall rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
The on-target touchdown came nine minutes after the New Glenn rocket, built and operated by Bezos’ company Blue Origin, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, at 3: 55 pm EST (20: 55 UTC). The launch was delayed from Sunday, first due to poor weather at the launch site in Florida, then by a solar storm that sent hazardous radiation toward Earth earlier this week.
“We achieved full mission success today, and I am so proud of the team,” said Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin. “It turns out Never Tell Me The Odds (Blue Origin’s nickname for the first stage) had perfect odds—never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try. This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers.”
The two-stage launcher set off for space carrying two NASA science probes on a two-year journey to Mars, marking the first time any operational satellites flew on Blue Origin’s new rocket, named for the late NASA astronaut John Glenn. The New Glenn hit its marks on the climb into space, firing seven BE-4 main engines for nearly three minutes on a smooth ascent through blue skies over Florida’s Space Coast.
Seven BE-4 engines power New Glenn downrange from Florida’s Space Coast. Credit: Blue Origin
The engines consumed super-cold liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen, producing more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust at full power. The BE-4s shut down, and the first stage booster released the rocket’s second stage, with dual hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines, to continue the mission into orbit.
The booster soared to an altitude of 79 miles (127 kilometers), then began a controlled plunge back into the atmosphere, targeting a landing on Blue Origin’s offshore recovery vessel named Jacklyn. Moments later, three of the booster’s engines reignited to slow its descent in the upper atmosphere. Then, moments before reaching the Atlantic, the rocket again lit three engines and extended its landing gear, sinking through low-level clouds before settling onto the football field-size deck of Blue Origin’s recovery platform 375 miles (600 kilometers) east of Cape Canaveral.
A pivotal moment
The moment of touchdown appeared electric at several Blue Origin facilities around the country, which had live views of cheering employees piped in to the company’s webcast of the flight. This was the first time any company besides SpaceX has propulsively landed an orbital-class rocket booster, coming nearly 10 years after SpaceX recovered its first Falcon 9 booster intact in December 2015.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn landing also came almost exactly a decade after the company landed its smaller suborbital New Shepard rocket for the first time in West Texas. Just like Thursday’s New Glenn landing, Blue Origin successfully recovered the New Shepard on its second-ever attempt.
Blue Origin’s heavy-lifter launched successfully for the first time in January. But technical problems prevented the booster from restarting its engines on descent, and the first stage crashed at sea. Engineers made “propellant management and engine bleed control improvements” to resolve the problems, and the fixes appeared to work Thursday.
The rocket recovery is a remarkable achievement for Blue Origin, which has long lagged dominant SpaceX in the commercial launch business. SpaceX has now logged 532 landings with its Falcon booster fleet. Now, with just a single recovery in the books, Blue Origin sits at second in the rankings for propulsive landings of orbit-class boosters. Bezos’ company has amassed 34 landings of the suborbital New Shepard model, which lacks the size and doesn’t reach the altitude and speed of the New Glenn booster.
Blue Origin landed a New Shepard returning from space for the first time in November 2015, a few weeks before SpaceX first recovered a Falcon 9 booster. Bezos threw shade on SpaceX with a post on Twitter, now called X, after the first Falcon 9 landing: “Welcome to the club!”
Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder and owner, wrote this message on Twitter following SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 landing on December 21, 2015. Credit: X/Jeff Bezos
Finally, after Thursday, Blue Origin officials can say they are part of the same reusable rocket club as SpaceX. Within a few days, Blue Origin’s recovery vessel is expected to return to Port Canaveral, Florida, where ground crews will offload the New Glenn booster and move it to a hangar for inspections and refurbishment.
“Today was a tremendous achievement for the New Glenn team, opening a new era for Blue Origin and the industry as we look to launch, land, repeat, again and again,” said Jordan Charles, the company’s vice president for the New Glenn program, in a statement. “We’ve made significant progress on manufacturing at rate and building ahead of need. Our primary focus remains focused on increasing our cadence and working through our manifest.”
Blue Origin plans to reuse the same booster next year for the first launch of the company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar cargo lander. This mission is currently penciled in to be next on Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch schedule. Eventually, the company plans to have a fleet of reusable boosters, like SpaceX has with the Falcon 9, that can each be flown up to 25 times.
New Glenn is a core element in Blue Origin’s architecture for NASA’s Artemis lunar program. The rocket will eventually launch human-rated lunar landers to the Moon to provide astronauts with rides to and from the surface of the Moon.
The US Space Force will also examine the results of Thursday’s launch to assess New Glenn’s readiness to begin launching military satellites. The military selected Blue Origin last year to join SpaceX and United Launch Alliance as a third launch provider for the Defense Department.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn booster, 23 feet (7 meters) in diameter, on the deck of the company’s landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean.
Slow train to Mars
The mission wasn’t over with the buoyant landing in the Atlantic. New Glenn’s second stage fired its engines twice to propel itself on a course toward deep space, setting up for deployment of NASA’s two ESCAPADE satellites a little more than a half-hour after liftoff.
The identical satellites were released from their mounts on top of the rocket to begin their nearly two-year journey to Mars, where they will enter orbit to survey how the solar wind interacts with the rarefied uppermost layers of the red planet’s atmosphere. Scientists believe radiation from the Sun gradually stripped away Mars’ atmosphere, driving runaway climate change that transitioned the planet from a warm, habitable world to the global inhospitable desert seen today.
“I’m both elated and relieved to see NASA’s ESCAPADE spacecraft healthy post-launch and looking forward to the next chapter of their journey to help us understand Mars’ dynamic space weather environment,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley.
Scientists want to understand the environment at the top of the Martian atmosphere to learn more about what drove this change. With two instrumented spacecraft, ESCAPADE will gather data from different locations around Mars, providing a series of multipoint snapshots of solar wind and atmospheric conditions. Another NASA spacecraft, named MAVEN, has collected similar data since arriving in orbit around Mars in 2014, but it is only a single observation post.
ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, was developed and launched on a budget of about $80 million, a bargain compared to all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. The spacecraft were built by Rocket Lab, and the project is managed on behalf of NASA by the University of California, Berkeley.
The two spacecraft for NASA’s ESCAPADE mission at Rocket Lab’s factory in Long Beach, California. Credit: Rocket Lab
NASA paid Blue Origin about $20 million for the launch of ESCAPADE, significantly less than it would have cost to launch it on any other dedicated rocket. The space agency accepted the risk of launching on the relatively unproven New Glenn rocket, which hasn’t yet been certified by NASA or the Space Force for the government’s marquee space missions.
The mission was supposed to launch last year, when Earth and Mars were in the right positions to enable a direct trip between the planets. But Blue Origin delayed the launch, forcing a yearlong wait until the company’s second New Glenn was ready to fly. Now, the ESCAPADE satellites, each about a half-ton in mass fully fueled, will loiter in a unique orbit more than a million miles from Earth until next November, when they will set off for the red planet. ESCAPADE will arrive at Mars in September 2027 and begin its science mission in 2028.
Rocket Lab ground controllers established communication with the ESCAPADE satellites late Thursday night.
“The ESCAPADE mission is part of our strategy to understand Mars’ past and present so we can send the first astronauts there safely,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Understanding Martian space weather is a top priority for future missions because it helps us protect systems, robots, and most importantly, humans, in extreme environments.”
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.
Blue Origin is counting down to launch of its second New Glenn rocket Sunday.
The New Glenn rocket rolls to Launch Complex-36 in preparation for liftoff this weekend. Credit: Blue Origin
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat.
That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay, and possible cancellation, after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year. ESCAPADE, short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers, consists of two identical spacecraft setting off for the red planet as soon as Sunday with a launch aboard Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket.
“ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator from the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”
This wasn’t the original plan. When it was first designed, ESCAPADE was supposed to take a direct course from Earth to Mars, a transit that typically takes six to nine months. But ESCAPADE will now depart the Earth when Mars is more than 220 million miles away, on the opposite side of the Solar System.
The payload fairing of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, containing NASA’s two Mars-bound science probes. Credit: Blue Origin
The most recent Mars launch window was last year, and the next one doesn’t come until the end of 2026. The planets are not currently in alignment, and the proverbial stars didn’t align to get the ESCAPADE satellites and their New Glenn rocket to the launch pad until this weekend.
This is fine
But there are several reasons this is perfectly OK to NASA. The New Glenn rocket is overkill for this mission. The two-stage launcher could send many tons of cargo to Mars, but NASA is only asking it to dispatch about a ton of payload, comprising a pair of identical science probes designed to study how the planet’s upper atmosphere interacts with the solar wind.
But NASA got a good deal from Blue Origin. The space agency is paying Jeff Bezos’ space company about $20 million for the launch, less than it would for a dedicated launch on any other rocket capable of sending the ESCAPADE mission to Mars. In exchange, NASA is accepting a greater than usual chance of a launch failure. This is, after all, just the second flight of the 321-foot-tall (98-meter) New Glenn rocket, which hasn’t yet been certified by NASA or the US Space Force.
The ESCAPADE mission, itself, was developed with a modest budget, at least by the standards of interplanetary exploration. The mission’s total cost amounts to less than $80 million, an order of magnitude lower than all of NASA’s recent Mars missions. NASA officials would not entrust the second flight of the New Glenn rocket to launch a billion-dollar spacecraft, but the risk calculation changes as costs go down.
NASA knew all of this in 2023 when it signed a launch contract with Blue Origin for the ESCAPADE mission. What officials didn’t know was that the New Glenn rocket wouldn’t be ready to fly when ESCAPADE needed to launch in late 2024. It turned out Blue Origin didn’t launch the first New Glenn test flight until January of this year. It was a success. It took another 10 months for engineers to get the second New Glenn vehicle to the launch pad.
The twin ESCAPADE spacecraft undergoing final preparations for launch. Each spacecraft is about a half-ton fully fueled. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Aiming high
That’s where the rocket sits this weekend at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. If all goes according to plan, New Glenn will take off Sunday afternoon during an 88-minute launch window opening at 2: 45 pm EST (19: 45 UTC). There is a 65 percent chance of favorable weather, according to Blue Origin.
Blue Origin’s launch team, led by launch director Megan Lewis, will oversee the countdown Sunday. The rocket will be filled with super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants beginning about four-and-a-half hours prior to liftoff. After some final technical and weather checks, the terminal countdown sequence will commence at T-minus 4 minutes, culminating in ignition of the rocket’s seven BE-4 main engines at T-minus 5.6 seconds.
The rocket’s flight computer will assess the health of each of the powerful engines, combining to generate more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust. If all looks good, hold-down restraints will release to allow the New Glenn rocket to begin its ascent from Florida’s Space Coast.
Heading east, the rocket will surpass the speed of sound in a little over a minute. After soaring through the stratosphere, New Glenn will shut down its seven booster engines and shed its first stage a little more than 3 minutes into the flight. Twin BE-3U engines, burning liquid hydrogen, will ignite to finish the job of sending the ESCAPADE satellites toward deep space. The rocket’s trajectory will send the satellites toward a gravitationally-stable location beyond the Moon, called the L2 Lagrange point, where it will swing into a loosely-bound loiter orbit to wait for the right time to head for Mars.
Meanwhile, the New Glenn booster, itself measuring nearly 20 stories tall, will begin maneuvers to head toward Blue Origin’s recovery ship floating a few hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. The final part of the descent will include a landing burn using three of the BE-4 engines, then downshifting to a single engine to control the booster’s touchdown on the landing platform, dubbed “Jacklyn” in honor of Bezos’ late mother.
The launch timeline for New Glenn’s second mission. Credit: Blue Origin
New Glenn’s inaugural launch at the start of this year was a success, but the booster’s descent did not go well. The rocket was unable to restart its engines, and it crashed into the sea.
“We’ve incorporated a number of changes to our propellant management system, some minor hardware changes as well, to increase our likelihood of landing that booster on this mission,” said Laura Maginnis, Blue Origin’s vice president of New Glenn mission management. “That was the primary schedule driver that kind of took us from from January to where we are today.”
Blue Origin officials are hopeful they can land the booster this time. The company’s optimism is enough for officials to have penciled in a reflight of this particular booster on the very next New Glenn launch, slated for the early months of next year. That launch is due to send Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon cargo lander to the Moon.
“Our No. 1 objective is to deliver ESCAPADE safely and successfully on its way to L2, and then eventually on to Mars,” Maginnis said in a press conference Saturday. “We also are planning and wanting to land our booster. If we don’t land the booster, that’s OK. We have several more vehicles in production. We’re excited to see how the mission plays out tomorrow.”
Tracing a kidney bean
ESCAPADE’s path through space, relative to the Earth, has the peculiar shape of a kidney bean. In the world of astrodynamics, this is called a staging or libration orbit. It’s a way to keep the spacecraft on a stable trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars late next year.
“ESCAPADE has identified that this is the way that we want to fly, so we launch from Earth onto this kidney bean-shaped orbit,” said Jeff Parker, a mission designer from the Colorado-based company Advanced Space. “So, we can launch on virtually any day. What happens is that kidney bean just grows and shrinks based on how much time you need to spend in that orbit. So, we traverse that kidney been and at the very end there’s a final little loop-the-loop that brings us down to Earth.”
That’s when the two ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, will pass a few hundred miles above our planet. At the right moment, on November 7 and 9 of next year, the satellites will fire their engines to set off for Mars.
An illustration of ESCAPADE’s trajectory to wait for the opportunity to go to Mars. Credit: UC-Berkeley
There are some tradeoffs with this unique staging orbit. It is riskier than the original plan of sending ESCAPADE straight to Mars. The satellites will be exposed to more radiation, and will consume more of their fuel just to get to the red planet, eating into reserves originally set aside for science observations.
The satellites were built by Rocket Lab, which designed them with extra propulsion capacity in order to accommodate launches on a variety of different rockets. In the end, NASA “judged that the risk for the mission was acceptable, but it certainly is higher risk,” said Richard French, Rocket Lab’s vice president of business development and strategy.
The upside of the tradeoff is it will demonstrate an “exciting and flexible way to get to Mars,” Lillis said. “In the future, if we’d like to send hundreds of spacecraft to Mars at once, it will be difficult to do that from just the launch pads we have on Earth within that month [of the interplanetary launch window]. We could potentially queue up spacecraft using the approach that ESCAPADE is pioneering.”
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.
Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, the company’s chief executive said Saturday in an interview with Ars.
“We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” said Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”
Limp spoke on Saturday, about 24 hours ahead of the company’s second launch of the large New Glenn rocket. Carrying the ESCAPADE spacecraft for NASA, the mission has a launch window that opens at 2: 45 pm ET (19: 45 UTC) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and runs for a little more than two hours.
NASA seeks a faster return
This year it has become increasingly apparent that, should NASA stick to its present plans for the Artemis III lunar landing mission, China is on course to beat the United States back to the Moon with humans. In recognition of this, about three weeks ago, NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy said the space agency was reopening the competition for a human lander.
SpaceX and Blue Origin both have existing contracts for human landers, but the government has asked each providers for an option to accelerate their timeline. NASA currently has a target landing date of 2027, but that is unrealistic using the present approach of SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s large Mk. 2 lander.
Ars exclusively reported in early October that Blue Origin had begun work on a faster architecture, involving multiple versions of its Mk. 1 cargo lander as well as a modified version of this vehicle tentatively called Mk 1.5. Limp said that after Duffy asked for revised proposals, Blue Origin responded almost immediately.
“We’ve sent our initial summary of that over, and we have a full report of that due here shortly,” he said. “I’m not going to go into the details because I think that’s probably for NASA to talk about, not us, but we have some ideas that we think could accelerate the path to the Moon. And I hope NASA takes a close look.”
The federal government shutdown, now in its 38th day, prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary emergency order Thursday prohibiting commercial rocket launches from occurring during “peak hours” of air traffic.
The FAA also directed commercial airlines to reduce domestic flights from 40 “high impact airports” across the country in a phased approach beginning Friday. The agency said the order from the FAA’s administrator, Bryan Bedford, is aimed at addressing “safety risks and delays presented by air traffic controller staffing constraints caused by the continued lapse in appropriations.”
The government considers air traffic controllers essential workers, so they remain on the job without pay until Congress passes a federal budget and President Donald Trump signs it into law. The shutdown’s effects, which affected federal workers most severely at first, are now rippling across the broader economy.
Sharing the airspace
Vehicles traveling to and from space share the skies with aircraft, requiring close coordination with air traffic controllers to clear airspace for rocket launches and reentries. The FAA said its order restricting commercial air traffic, launches, and reentries is intended to “ensure the safety of aircraft and the efficiency of the [National Airspace System].”
In a statement explaining the order, the FAA said the air traffic control system is “stressed” due to the shutdown.
“With continued delays and unpredictable staffing shortages, which are driving fatigue, risk is further increasing, and the FAA is concerned with the system’s ability to maintain the current volume of operations,” the regulator said. “Accordingly, the FAA has determined additional mitigation is necessary.”
Beginning Monday, the FAA said commercial space launches will only be permitted between 10 pm and 6 am local time, when the national airspace is most calm. The order restricts commercial reentries to the same overnight timeframe. The FAA licenses all commercial launches and reentries.
Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket gave an environmental monitoring satellite a perfect ride to space.
Rahul Goel, the CEO of Canadian launch startup NordSpace, poses with a suborbital demo rocket and members of his team in Toronto earlier this year. Credit: Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star via Getty Images
Welcome to Edition 8.18 of the Rocket Report! NASA is getting a heck of a deal from Blue Origin for launching the agency’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars. Blue Origin is charging NASA about $20 million for the launch on the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. A dedicated ride on any other rocket capable of the job would undoubtedly cost more.
But there are trade-offs. First, there’s the question of risk. The New Glenn rocket is only making its second flight, and it hasn’t been certified by NASA or the US Space Force. Second, the schedule for ESCAPADE’s launch has been at the whim of Blue Origin, which has delayed the mission several times due to issues developing New Glenn. NASA’s interplanetary missions typically have a fixed launch period, and the agency pays providers like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance a premium to ensure the launch happens when it needs to happen.
New Glenn is ready, the satellites are ready, and Blue Origin has set a launch date for Sunday, November 9. The mission will depart Earth outside of the usual interplanetary launch window, so orbital dynamics wizards came up with a unique trajectory that will get the satellites to Mars in 2027.
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.
Canadian government backs launcher development. The federal budget released by the Liberal Party-led government of Canada this week includes a raft of new defense initiatives, including 182.6 million Canadian dollars ($129.4 million) for sovereign space launch capability, SpaceQ reports. The new funding is meant to “establish a sovereign space launch capability” with funds available this fiscal year and spent over three years. How the money will be spent and on what has yet to be released. As anticipated, Canada will have a new Defense Investment Agency (DIA) to oversee defense procurement. Overall, the government outlined 81.8 billion Canadian dollars ($58 billion) over five years for the Canadian Armed Forces. The Department of National Defense will manage the government’s cash infusion for sovereign launch capability.
Kick-starting an industry … Canada joins a growing list of nations pursuing homegrown launchers as many governments see access to space as key to national security and an opportunity for economic growth. International governments don’t want to be beholden to a small number of foreign launch providers from established space powers. That’s why startups in Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Australia are making a play in the launch arena, often with government support. A handful of Canadian startups, such as Maritime Launch Services, Reaction Dynamics, and NordSpace, are working on commercial satellite launchers. The Canadian government’s announcement came days after MDA Space, the largest established space company in Canada, announced its own multimillion-dollar investment in Maritime Launch Services.
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Money alone won’t solve Europe’s space access woes. Increasing tensions with Russia have prompted defense spending boosts throughout Europe that will benefit fledgling smallsat launcher companies across the continent. But Europe is still years away from meeting its own space access needs, Space News reports. Space News spoke with industry analysts from two European consulting firms. They concluded that a lack of experience, not a deficit of money, is holding European launch startups back. None of the new crop of European rocket companies have completed a successful orbital flight.
Swimming in cash … The German company Isar Aerospace has raised approximately $600 million, the most funding of any of the European launch startups. Isar is also the only one of the bunch to make an orbital launch attempt. Its Spectrum rocket failed less than 30 seconds after liftoff last March, and a second launch is expected next year. Isar has attracted more investment than Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Astra collectively raised on the private market before each of them successfully launched a rocket into orbit. In addition to Isar, several other European companies have raised more than $100 million on the road to developing a small satellite launcher. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Successful ICBM test from Vandenberg. Air Force Global Strike Command tested an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in the predawn hours of Wednesday, Air and Space Forces Magazine reports. The test, the latest in a series of launches that have been carried out at regular intervals for decades, came as Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the development of two new nuclear weapons and President Donald Trump has suggested in recent days that the US might resume nuclear testing. The ICBM launched from an underground silo at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and traveled some 4,200 miles to a test range in the Pacific Ocean after receiving launch orders from an airborne nuclear command-and-control plane.
Rehearsing for the unthinkable … The test, known as Glory Trip 254 (GT 254), provided a “comprehensive assessment” of the Minuteman III’s readiness to launch at a moment’s notice, according to the Air Force. “The data collected during the test is invaluable in ensuring the continued reliability and accuracy of the ICBM weapon system,” said Lt. Col. Karrie Wray, commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron. For Minuteman III tests, the Air Force pulls its missiles from the fleet of some 400 operational ICBMs. This week’s test used one from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, and the missile was equipped with a single unarmed reentry vehicle that carried telemetry instrumentation instead of a warhead, service officials said. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
One crew launches, another may be stranded. Three astronauts launched to China’s Tiangong space station on October 31 and arrived at the outpost a few hours later, extending the station’s four-year streak of continuous crew operations. The Shenzhou 21 crew spacecraft lifted off on a Chinese Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert. Shenzhou 21 is supposed to replace a three-man crew that has been on the Tiangong station since April, but China’s Manned Space Agency announced Tuesday the outgoing crew’s return craft may have been damaged by space junk, Ars reports.
Few details … Chinese officials said the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft will remain at the station while engineers investigate the potential damage. As of Thursday, China has not set a new landing date or declared whether the spacecraft is safe to return to Earth at all. “The Shenzhou 20 manned spacecraft is suspected of being impacted by small space debris,” Chinese officials wrote on social media. “Impact analysis and risk assessment are underway. To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou 20 return mission, originally scheduled for November 5, will be postponed.” In the event Shenzhou 20 is unsafe to return, China could launch a rescue craft—Shenzhou 22—already on standby at the Jiuquan space center.
Falcon 9 rideshare boosts Vast ambitions. A pathfinder mission for Vast’s privately owned space station launched into orbit Sunday and promptly extended its solar panel, kicking off a shakedown cruise to prove the company’s designs can meet the demands of spaceflight, Ars reports. Vast’s Haven Demo mission lifted off just after midnight Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit. Haven Demo was one of 18 satellites sharing a ride on SpaceX’s Bandwagon 4 mission, launching alongside a South Korean spy satellite and a small testbed for Starcloud, a startup working with Nvidia to build an orbital data center.
Subscale testing … After release from the Falcon 9, the half-ton Haven Demo spacecraft stabilized itself and extended its power-generating solar array. The satellite captured 4K video of the solar array deployment, and Vast shared the beauty shot on social media. “Haven Demo’s mission success has turned us into a proven spacecraft company,” Vast’s CEO, Max Haot, posted on X. “The next step will be to become an actual commercial space station company next year. Something no one has achieved yet.” Vast plans to launch its first human-rated habitat, named Haven-1, into low-Earth orbit in 2026. Haven Demo lacks crew accommodations but carries several systems that are “architecturally similar” to Haven-1, according to Vast. For example, Haven-1 will have 12 solar arrays, each identical to the single array on Haven Demo. The pathfinder mission uses a subset of Haven-1’s propulsion system, but with identical thrusters, valves, and tanks.
Lights out at Vostochny. One of Russia’s most important projects over the last 15 years has been the construction of the Vostochny spaceport as the country seeks to fly its rockets from native soil and modernize its launch operations. Progress has been slow as corruption clouded Vostochny’s development. Now, the primary contractor building the spaceport, the Kazan Open Stock Company (PSO Kazan), has failed to pay its bills, Ars reports. The story, first reported by the Moscow Times, says that the energy company supplying Vostochny cut off electricity to areas of the spaceport still under construction after PSO Kazan racked up $627,000 in unpaid energy charges. The electricity company did so, it said, “to protect the interests of the region’s energy system.”
A dark reputation … Officials at the government-owned spaceport said PSO Kazan would repay its debt by the end of November, but the local energy company said it intends to file a lawsuit against KSO Kazan to declare the entity bankrupt. The two operational launch pads at Vostochny are apparently not affected by the power cuts. Vostochny has been a fiasco from the start. After construction began in 2011, the project was beset by hunger strikes, claims of unpaid workers, and the theft of $126 million. Additionally, a man driving a diamond-encrusted Mercedes was arrested after embezzling $75,000. Five years ago, there was another purge of top officials after another round of corruption.
Ariane 6 delivers for Europe again. European launch services provider Arianespace has successfully launched the Sentinel 1D Earth observation satellite aboard an Ariane 62 rocket for the European Commission, European Spaceflight reports. Launched in its two-booster configuration, the Ariane 6 rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in South America on Tuesday. Approximately 34 minutes after liftoff, the satellite was deployed from the rocket’s upper stage into a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 693 kilometers (430 miles). Sentinel 1D is the newest spacecraft to join Europe’s Copernicus program, the world’s most expansive network of environmental monitoring satellites. The new satellite will extend Europe’s record of global around-the-clock radar imaging, revealing information about environmental disasters, polar ice cover, and the use of water resources.
Doubling cadence … This was the fourth flight of Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, and its third operational launch. Arianespace plans one more Ariane 62 launch to close out the year with a pair of Galileo navigation satellites. The company aims to double its Ariane 6 launch cadence in 2026, with between six and eight missions planned, according to David Cavaillès, Arianespace’s CEO. The European launch provider will open its 2026 manifest with the first flight of the more powerful four-booster variant of the rocket. If the company does manage eight Ariane 6 flights in 2026, it will already be close to reaching the stated maximum launch cadence of between nine and 10 flights per year.
India sets its own record for payload mass. The Indian Space Research Organization on Sunday successfully launched the Indian Navy’s advanced communication satellite GSAT-7R, or CMS-03, on an LVM3 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, The Hindu reports. The indigenously designed and developed satellite, weighing approximately 4.4 metric tons (9,700 pounds), is the heaviest satellite ever launched by an Indian rocket and marks a major milestone in strengthening the Navy’s space-based communications and maritime domain awareness.
Going heavy … The launch Sunday was India’s fourth of 2025, a decline from the country’s high-water mark of eight orbital launches in a year in 2023. The failure in May of India’s most-flown rocket, the PSLV, has contributed to this year’s slower launch cadence. India’s larger rockets, the GSLV and LVM3, have been more active while officials grounded the PSLV for an investigation into the launch failure. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Blue Origin preps for second flight of New Glenn. The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer this week. The company confirmed it is targeting Sunday, November 9, for the launch of New Glenn from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This follows a successful test-firing of the rocket’s seven BE-4 main engines last week, Ars reports. Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust on the launch pad.
Fully integrated … With the launch date approaching, engineers worked this week to attach the rocket’s payload shroud containing two NASA satellites set to embark on a journey to Mars. Now that the rocket is fully integrated, ground crews will roll it back to Blue Origin’s Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) for final countdown preps. The launch window on Sunday opens at 2: 45 pm EST (19: 45 UTC). Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon.
Next three launches
Nov. 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-51 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 08: 30 UTC
Nov. 8: Long March 11H| Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 21: 00 UTC
Nov. 9: New Glenn | ESCAPADE | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 19: 45 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.
The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer Thursday night with a success test-firing of the launcher’s seven main engines on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
Standing on a seaside launch pad, the New Glenn rocket ignited its seven BE-4 main engines at 9: 59 pm EDT Thursday (01: 59 UTC Friday). The engines burned for 38 seconds while the rocket remained firmly on the ground, according to a social media post by Blue Origin.
The hold-down firing of the first stage engines was the final major test of the New Glenn rocket before launch day. Blue Origin previously test-fired the rocket’s second-stage engines. Officials have not announced a target launch date, but sources tell Ars the rocket could be ready for liftoff as soon as November 9.
“Love seeing New Glenn’s seven BE-4 engines come alive! Congratulations to Team Blue on today’s hotfire,” the company’s CEO, Dave Limp, posted on X.
Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust. Limp said engineers extended this test-firing and shut down some of the BE-4 engines to simulate the booster’s landing burn sequence, which Blue Origin hopes will culminate in a successful touchdown on a barge floating downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.
“This helps us understand fluid interactions between active and inactive engine feedlines during landing,” Limp wrote.
Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon. If Blue Origin fails to land this rocket, it’s unlikely a new first stage booster will be ready to launch until sometime later in 2026.
A few more things to do
With the test-firing complete, Blue Origin’s ground crew will lower the more than 320-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket and roll it back to a nearby hangar. There, technicians will inspect the vehicle and swap its payload fairing for another clamshell containing two NASA-owned spacecraft set to begin their journey to Mars.
A South Korean rocket startup will soon make its first attempt to reach low-Earth orbit.
The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission is lowered on top of the Space Launch System rocket at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
Welcome to Edition 8.16 of the Rocket Report! The 10th anniversary of SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing is coming up at the end of this year. We’re still waiting for a second company to bring back an orbital-class booster from space for a propulsive landing. Two companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and China’s LandSpace, could join SpaceX’s exclusive club as soon as next month. (Bezos might claim he’s already part of the club, but there’s a distinction to be made.) Each company is in the final stages of launch preparations—Blue Origin for its second New Glenn rocket, and LandSpace for the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket. Blue Origin and LandSpace will both attempt to land their first stage boosters downrange from their launch sites. They’re not exactly in a race with one another, but it will be fascinating to see how New Glenn and Zhuque-3 perform during the uphill and downhill phases of flight, and whether one or both of the new rockets stick the landing.
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.
The race for space-based interceptors. The Trump administration’s announcement of the Golden Dome missile defense shield has set off a race among US companies to develop and test space weapons, some of them on their own dime, Ars reports. One of these companies is a 3-year-old startup named Apex, which announced plans to test a space-based interceptor as soon as next year. Apex’s concept will utilize one of the company’s low-cost satellite platforms outfitted with an “Orbital Magazine” containing multiple interceptors, which will be supplied by an undisclosed third-party partner. The demonstration in low-Earth orbit could launch as soon as June 2026 and will test-fire two interceptors from Apex’s Project Shadow spacecraft. The prototype interceptors could pave the way for operational space-based interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles. (submitted by biokleen)
Usual suspects … Traditional defense contractors are also getting in the game. Northrop Grumman’s CEO, Kathy Warden, said earlier this year that her company is already testing space-based interceptor components on the ground. This week, Lockheed Martin announced it is on a path to test a space-based interceptor in orbit by 2028. Neither company has discussed as much detail of their plans as Apex revealed this week.
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Lockheed Martin’s latest “New Space” investment. As interest grows in rotating detonation engines for hypersonic flight, a startup specialist in the technology says it will receive backing from Lockheed Martin’s corporate venture capital arm, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The strategic investment by Lockheed Martin Ventures “reflects the potential of Venus’s dual-use technology” in an era of growing defense and space spending, Venus Aerospace said in a statement. Venus said its partnership with Lockheed Martin combines the former’s startup mindset with the latter’s resources and industry expertise. The companies did not announce the value of Lockheed’s investment, but Venus said it has raised $106 million since its founding in 2020. Lockheed Martin Ventures has made similar investments in other rocket startups, including Rocket Lab in 2015.
What’s this actually for? … Houston-based Venus Aerospace completed a high-thrust test flight of its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) in May from Spaceport America, New Mexico. Rotating detonation engine technology is interesting because it has the potential to significantly increase fuel efficiency in various applications, from Navy carriers to rocket engines, Ars reported earlier this year. The engine works by producing a shockwave with a flow of detonation traveling through a circular channel. The engine harnesses these supersonic detonation waves to generate thrust. “Venus has proven in flight the most efficient rocket engine technology in history,” said Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace. “With support from Lockheed Martin Ventures, we will advance our capabilities to deliver at scale and deploy the engine that will power the next 50 years of defense, space, and commercial high-speed aviation.”
South Korean startup receives permission to fly. Innospace announced on October 20 that it has received South Korea’s first private commercial launch permit from the Korea AeroSpace Administration,” the Chosun Daily reports. Accordingly, Innospace will launch its independently developed “HANBIT-Nano” launch vehicle from a Brazilian launch site as early as late this month. Innospace stated that the launch window for this mission has been set for October 28 through November 28. The launch site is the Alcântara Space Center, operated by the Brazilian Air Force.
Aiming for LEO … This will be the first flight of Innospace’s HANBIT-Nano launch vehicle, standing roughly 72 feet (22 meters) tall with a diameter of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters). The two-stage rocket is powered by hybrid propulsion, consuming a mixture of paraffin and liquid oxygen. For its debut flight, the rocket will target an orbit about 300 kilometers (186 miles) high with a batch of small satellites from customers in South Korea, Brazil, and India. According to Innospace, HANBIT-Nano can lift about 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload into orbit.
A new record for rocket reuse. SpaceX’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on October 19 set a new record for reusable rockets, Ars reports. It marked the 31st launch of the company’s most-flown Falcon 9 booster. The rocket landed on SpaceX’s recovery ship in the Atlantic Ocean to be returned to Florida for a 32nd flight. Several more rockets in SpaceX’s inventory are nearing their 30th launch. In all, SpaceX has more than 20 Falcon 9 boosters in its fleet on both the East and West Coasts. SpaceX engineers are now certifying the Falcon 9 boosters for up to 40 flights apiece.
10,000 and counting … SpaceX’s two launches last weekend weren’t just noteworthy for Falcon 9 lore. Hours after setting the new booster reuse record, SpaceX deployed a batch of 28 Starlink satellites from a different rocket after lifting off from California. This mission propelled SpaceX’s Starlink program past a notable milestone. With the satellites added to the constellation on Sunday, the company has delivered more than 10,000 mass-produced Starlink spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. The exact figure stands at 10,006 satellites, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who expertly tracks comings and goings between Earth and space. About 8,700 of these Starlink satellites are still in orbit, with SpaceX adding more every week.
China is on the cusp of something big. Launch startup LandSpace is in the final stages of preparations for the first flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket and a potentially landmark mission for China, Space News reports. LandSpace said it completed the first phase of the Zhuque-3 rocket’s inaugural launch campaign this week. The Zhuque-3 is the largest commercial rocket developed to date in China, nearly matching the size and performance of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with nine first stage engines and a single upper stage engine. One key difference is that the Zhuque-3 burns methane fuel, while Falcon 9’s engines consume kerosene. Most notably, LandSpace will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster at a location downrange from the launch site, similar to the way SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on drone ships at sea. Zhuque-3’s first stage will aim for a land-based site in an experiment that could pave the way for LandSpace to reuse rockets in the future.
Testing status … The recent testing at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China included a propellant loading demonstration and a static fire test of the rocket’s first stage engines. Earlier this week, LandSpace integrated the payload fairing on the rocket. The company said it will return the rocket to a nearby facility “for inspection and maintenance in preparation for its upcoming orbital launch and first stage recovery.” The launch is expected to happen as soon as next month.
Uprated Ariane 6 won’t launch until next year. Arianespace has confirmed that the first flight of the more powerful, four-booster variant of the Ariane 6 rocket will not be launched until 2026, European Spaceflight reports. The first Ariane 64 rocket had been expected to launch in late 2025, carrying the first batch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites. On October 16, Arianespace announced the fourth and final Ariane 6 flight of the year would carry a pair of Galileo satellites for Europe’s global satellite navigation system in December. This will follow an already-scheduled Ariane 6 launch scheduled for November 4. Both of the upcoming flights will employ the same Ariane 6 configuration used on all of the rocket’s flights to date. This version, known as Ariane 62, has two strap-on solid rocket boosters.
Kuiper soon … The Ariane 64 variant will expose the rocket to stronger forces coming from four solid rocket boosters, each producing about a million pounds (4,500 kilonewtons) of thrust. ArianeGroup, the rocket’s manufacturer, said a year ago that it completed qualification of the Ariane 6 upper stage to withstand the stronger launch loads. Arianespace didn’t offer any explanation of the Ariane 64’s delay from this year to next, but it did confirm the uprated rocket will be the company’s first flight of 2026. The mission will be the first of 18 Arianespace flights dedicated to launching Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellites, adding Ariane 6 to the mix of rockets deploying the Internet network in low-Earth orbit.
Duffy losing confidence in Starship. NASA acting Administrator Sean Duffy made two television appearances on Monday morning in which he shook up the space agency’s plans to return humans to the Moon, Ars reports. Speaking on Fox News, where the secretary of transportation frequently appears in his acting role as NASA chief, Duffy said SpaceX has fallen behind in developing the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. Duffy also indirectly acknowledged that NASA’s projected target of a 2027 crewed lunar landing is no longer achievable. Accordingly, he said he intended to expand the competition to develop a lander capable of carrying humans down to the Moon from lunar orbit and back.
The rest of the story … “They’re behind schedule, and so the President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy said of SpaceX. “He wants to get there in his term. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved, and maybe others. We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually lead us back to the Moon first.” The timing of Duffy’s public appearances on Monday seems tailored to influence a fierce, behind-the-scenes battle to hold onto the NASA leadership position. Jared Isaacman, who Trump nominated and then withdrew for the NASA posting, is again under consideration at the White House to become the agency’s next full-time administrator. (submitted by zapman987)
Rocket fully stacked for Artemis II. “The last major hardware component before Artemis II launches early next year has been installed,” NASA’s acting Administrator Sean Duffy posted on X Monday. Over the weekend, ground teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida hoisted the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission atop its Space Launch System rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. This followed the transfer of the Orion spacecraft to the VAB from a nearby processing facility last week. With Orion installed, the rocket is fully assembled to its complete height of 322 feet (98 meters) tall.
Four months away? … NASA is still officially targeting no earlier than February 5, 2026, for the launch of the Artemis II mission. This will be the first flight of astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972, and the first glimpse of human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit for several generations. Upcoming milestones in the Artemis II launch campaign include a countdown demonstration inside the VAB, where the mission’s four-person crew will take their seats in the Orion spacecraft to simulate what they’ll go through on launch day.
New Glenn staged for rollout. Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, posted a video this week of the company’s second New Glenn rocket undergoing launch preparations inside a hangar at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket’s first and second stages are now mated together and installed on the transporter erector that will carry them from the hangar to the launch pad. “We will spend the next days on final checkouts and connecting the umbilicals. Stay tuned for rollout and hotfire!” Limp wrote.
“Big step toward launch” … The connection of New Glenn’s stages and integration on the transporter erector marks a “big step toward launch,” Limp wrote. A launch sometime in November is still possible if engineers can get through a smooth test-firing of the rocket’s seven main engines on the launch pad. The rocket will send two NASA spacecraft on a journey to Mars.
China launches clandestine satellite. China launched a Long March 5 rocket Thursday with a classified military satellite heading toward geosynchronous orbit, Space News reports. The satellite is named TJS-20, and the circumstances of the launch—using China’s most powerful operational rocket—suggest TJS-20 could be the next in a line of signals intelligence-gathering missions. The previous satellite of this line, TJS-11, launched in February 2024, also on a Long March 5.
Doing a lot … This launch continued China’s increasing use of the Long March 5 and its sister variant, the Long March 5B. The Long March 5 is expendable, and although we don’t know how much it costs, it can’t be cheap. It is a complex rocket powered by 10 engines on its core stage and four boosters, some burning liquid hydrogen fuel and others burning kerosene. The second stage also has two cryogenically fueled engines. The Long March 5 has now flown 16 times in nine years and seven times within the last two years. The uptick in launches is largely due to China’s use of the Long March 5 to launch satellites for the Guowang megaconstellation.
Next three launches
Oct. 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-12 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14: 00 UTC
Oct. 26: H3 | HTV-X 1 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 00: 00 UTC
Oct. 26: Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center | 03: 50 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.
Then she kind of asked me, “Do you think I could be an astronaut?” I mean, technically, you don’t need your legs, and so on and so forth. When I realized that she meant New Shepard, I said, ‘Well, let me talk to people I know.’ So I called Audrey Powers (a Blue Origin engineer), and she said she loved the project. In a very subtle and slippery slope, I thought about this and said, “Actually, I think I can do this, too.”
The logic, for me, is that it doesn’t keep me from flying orbital. I’ve thought about this for a long time now because obviously I’m a risk person, so all kinds of things go through my head, right? And then there’s SpaceX and Blue, and all kinds of things go through my head there, too. So I talked to a lot of people, and there was not a single person who said, “No, you shouldn’t do that.” Yeah? That doesn’t mean that it’s right. But I asked people I’m not friends with, too, and they all said, “Well, why not?” So that’s how we ended up on this mission together.
Ars: What were your primary concerns about flying yourself? Was it safety? Was it the fact that you worked for SpaceX for 20 years and you were going to fly on Blue Origin?
Hans Koenigsmann: All of the above. I don’t know what they did for safety. I know what SpaceX did for safety. So I talked to a few people who worked there. And it all came down to the point that they would all fly on New Shepard. But for me, the ultimate discriminator is if you would let your children fly on it. And later, when we met them, I asked a lot of technical questions on the safety side, and I feel like they answered the majority of them thoughtfully and correctly. So on the safety side, I felt better after a while.
The long, winding road for Franklin Chang-Diaz’s plasma rocket engine takes another turn.
Blue Origin’s second New Glenn booster left its factory this week for a road trip to the company’s launch pad a few miles away. Credit: Blue Origin
Welcome to Edition 8.14 of the Rocket Report! We’re now more than a week into a federal government shutdown, but there’s been little effect on the space industry. Military space operations are continuing unabated, and NASA continues preparations at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for the launch of the Artemis II mission around the Moon early next year. The International Space Station is still flying with a crew of seven in low-Earth orbit, and NASA’s fleet of spacecraft exploring the cosmos remain active. What’s more, so much of what the nation does in space is now done by commercial companies largely (but not completely) immune from the pitfalls of politics. But the effect of the shutdown on troops and federal employees shouldn’t be overlooked. They will soon miss their first paychecks unless political leaders reach an agreement to end the stalemate.
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.
Danger from dead rockets. A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions, Ars reports. “The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”
Littering in LEO … The disturbing trends mainly revolve around China’s actions in low-Earth orbit. “The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we’ve had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars. China is responsible for leaving behind 21 of those 26 rockets. Overall, Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.
The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox.
New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, launched its sixth crewed New Shepard flight so far this year Wednesday as the company works to increase the vehicle’s flight rate, Space News reports. This was the 36th flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. The passengers included: Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Will Lewis, Aaron Newman, and Vitalii Ostrovsky. Blue Origin said it has now flown 86 humans (80 individuals) into space. The New Shepard booster returned to a pinpoint propulsive landing, and the capsule parachuted into the desert a few miles from the launch site near Van Horn, Texas.
Two-month turnaround … This flight continued Blue Origin’s trend of launching New Shepard about once per month. The company has two capsules and two boosters in its active inventory, and each vehicle has flown about once every two months this year. Blue Origin currently has command of the space tourism and suborbital research market as its main competitor in this sector, Virgin Galactic, remains grounded while it builds a next-generation rocket plane. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
NASA still interested in former astronaut’s rocket engine. NASA has awarded the Ad Astra Rocket Company a $4 million, two-year contract for the continued development of the company’s Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) concept, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Ad Astra, founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, claims the vehicle has the potential to reach Mars with human explorers within 45 days using a nuclear power source rather than solar power. The new contract will enable federal funding to support development of the engine’s radio frequency, superconducting magnet, and structural exoskeleton subsystems.
Slow going … Houston-based Ad Astra said in a press release that it sees the high-power plasma engine as “nearing flight readiness.” We’ve heard this before. The VASIMR engine has been in development for decades now, beset by a lack of stable funding and the technical hurdles inherent in designing and testing such demanding technology. For example, Ad Astra once planned a critical 100-hour, 100-kilowatt ground test of the VASIMR engine in 2018. The test still hasn’t happened. Engineers discovered a core component of the engine tended to overheat as power levels approached 100 kilowatts, forcing a redesign that set the program back by at least several years. Now, Ad Astra says it is ready to build and test a pair of 150-kilowatt engines, one of which is intended to fly in space at the end of the decade.
Gilmour eyes return to flight next year. Australian rocket and satellite startup Gilmour Space Technologies is looking to return to the launch pad next year after the first attempt at an orbital flight failed over the summer, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. “We are well capitalized. We are going to be launching again next year,” Adam Gilmour, the company’s CEO, said October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney.
What happened? … Gilmour didn’t provide many details about the cause of the launch failure in July, other than to say it appeared to be something the company didn’t test for ahead of the flight. The Eris rocket flew for 14 seconds, losing control and crashing a short distance from the launch pad in the Australian state of Queensland. If there’s any silver lining, Gilmour said the failure didn’t damage the launch pad, and the rocket’s use of a novel hybrid propulsion system limited the destructive power of the blast when it struck the ground.
Stoke Space’s impressive funding haul. Stoke Space announced a significant capital raise on Wednesday, a total of $510 million as part of Series D funding. The new financing doubles the total capital raised by Stoke Space, founded in 2020, to $990 million, Ars reports. The infusion of money will provide the company with “the runway to complete development” of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding.
A futuristic design … Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket’s innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle’s second stage. In fully reusable mode, Nova will have a payload capacity of 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and up to 7 tons in fully expendable mode. Stoke is building a launch pad for the Nova rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
SpaceX took an unusual break from launching. SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket from Florida in 12 days during the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch gap was highlighted by a run of persistent, daily storms in Central Florida and over the Atlantic Ocean, including hurricanes that prevented deployment of SpaceX’s drone ships to support booster landings. The break ended with the launch of 28 more Starlink broadband satellites. SpaceX launched three Starlink missions in the interim from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Weather still an issue … Weather conditions on Florida’s Space Coast are often volatile, particularly in the evenings during summer and early autumn. SpaceX’s next launch from Florida was supposed to take off Thursday evening, but officials pushed it back to no earlier than Saturday due to a poor weather forecast over the next two days. Weather still gets a vote in determining whether a rocket lifts off or doesn’t, despite SpaceX’s advancements in launch efficiency and the Space Force’s improved weather monitoring capabilities at Cape Canaveral.
ArianeGroup chief departs for train maker. Current ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion has been named the new head of French train maker Alstom. He will officially take up the role in April 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Sion assumed the role as ArianeGroup’s chief executive in 2023, replacing the former CEO who left the company after delays in the debut of its main product: the Ariane 6 rocket. Sion’s appointment was announced by Alstom, but ArianeGroup has not made any official statement on the matter.
Under pressure … The change in ArianeGroup’s leadership comes as the company ramps up production and increases the launch cadence of the Ariane 6 rocket, which has now flown three times, with a fourth launch due next month. ArianeGroup’s subsidiary, Arianespace, seeks to increase the Ariane 6’s launch cadence to 10 missions per year by 2029. ArianeGroup and its suppliers will need to drastically improve factory throughput to reach this goal.
New Glenn emerges from factory. Blue Origin rolled the first stage of its massive New Glenn rocket from its hangar on Wednesday morning in Florida, kicking off the final phase of the campaign to launch the heavy-lift vehicle for the second time, Ars reports. In sharing video of the rollout to Launch Complex-36 on Wednesday online, the space company did not provide a launch target for the mission, which seeks to put two small Mars-bound payloads into orbit. The pair of identical spacecraft to study the solar wind at Mars is known as ESCAPADE. However, sources told Ars that on the current timeline, Blue Origin is targeting a launch window of November 9 to November 11. This assumes pre-launch activities, including a static-fire test of the first stage, go well.
Recovery or bust? … Blue Origin has a lot riding on this booster, named “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which it will seek to recover and reuse. Despite the name of the booster, the company is quietly confident that it will successfully land the first stage on a drone ship named Jacklyn. Internally, engineers at Blue Origin believe there is about a 75 percent chance of success. The first booster malfunctioned before landing on the inaugural New Glenn test flight in January. Company officials are betting big on recovering the booster this time, with plans to reuse it early next year to launch Blue’s first lunar lander to the Moon.
SpaceX gets bulk of this year’s military launch orders. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying.
Vulcan getting more expensive … A closer examination of this year’s National Security Space Launch contracts reveals some interesting things. The Space Force is paying SpaceX $714 million for the five launches awarded Friday, for an average of roughly $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million for each launch. That’s about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX’s price per mission. This is in line with the prices the Space Force paid SpaceX and ULA for last year’s contracts. However, look back a little further and you’ll find ULA’s prices for military launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In late 2023, the Space Force awarded a $1.3 billion deal to ULA for a batch of 11 launches at an average cost per mission of $119 million. A few months earlier, Space Systems Command assigned six launches to ULA for $672 million, or $112 million per mission.
Starship Flight 11 nears launch. SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy booster for the next test flight of the company’s Starship mega-rocket out to the launch pad in Texas this week. The booster stage, with 33 methane-fueled engines, will power the Starship into the upper atmosphere during the first few minutes of flight. This booster is flight-proven, having previously launched and landed on a test flight in March.
Next steps … With the Super Heavy booster installed on the pad, the next step for SpaceX will be the rollout of the Starship upper stage. That is expected to happen in the coming days. Ground crews will raise Starship atop the Super Heavy booster to fully stack the rocket to its total height of more than 400 feet (120 meters). If everything goes well, SpaceX is targeting liftoff of the 11th full-scale test flight of Starship and Super Heavy as soon as Monday evening. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
Blue Origin takes on a new line of business. Blue Origin won a US Space Force competition to build a new payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. Under the terms of the $78.2 million contract, Blue Origin will build a new facility capable of handling payloads for up to 16 missions per year. The Space Force expects to use about half of that capacity, with the rest available to NASA or Blue Origin’s commercial customers. This contract award follows a $77.5 million agreement the Space Force signed with Astrotech earlier this year to expand the footprint of its payload processing facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
Important stuff … Ground infrastructure often doesn’t get the same level of attention as rockets, but the Space Force has identified bottlenecks in payload processing as potential constraints on ramping up launch cadences at the government’s spaceports in Florida and California. Currently, there are only a handful of payload processing facilities in the Cape Canaveral area, and most of them are only open to a single user, such as SpaceX, Amazon, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NASA. So, what exactly is payload processing? The Space Force said Blue Origin’s new facility will include space for “several pre-launch preparatory activities” that include charging batteries, fueling satellites, loading other gaseous and fluid commodities, and encapsulation. To accomplish those tasks, Blue Origin will create “a clean, secure, specialized high-bay facility capable of handling flight hardware, toxic fuels, and explosive materials.”
Next three launches
Oct. 11: Gravity 1 | Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 02: 15 UTC
Oct. 12: Falcon 9 | Project Kuiper KF-03 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 00: 41 UTC
Oct. 13: Starship/Super Heavy | Flight 11 | Starbase, Texas | 23: 15 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.
The only comparison available is SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 rocket. The company made its first attempt at a powered descent of the Falcon 9 into the ocean during its sixth launch in September 2013. On the vehicle’s ninth flight, it successfully made a controlled ocean landing. SpaceX made its first drone ship landing attempt in January 2015, a failure. Finally, on the vehicle’s 20th launch, SpaceX successfully put the Falcon 9 down on land, with the first successful drone ship landing following on the 23rd flight in April 2016.
SpaceX did not attempt to land every one of these 23 flights, but the company certainly experienced a number of failures as it worked to safely bring back an orbital rocket onto a small platform out at sea. Blue Origin’s engineers, some of whom worked at SpaceX at the time, have the benefit of those learnings. But it is still a very, very difficult thing to do on the second flight of a new rocket. The odds aren’t 3,720-to-1, but they’re probably not 75 percent, either.
Reuse a must for the bottom line
Nevertheless, for the New Glenn program to break even financially and eventually turn a profit, it must demonstrate reuse fairly quickly. According to multiple sources, the New Glenn first stage costs in excess of $100 million to manufacture. It is a rather exquisite piece of hardware, with many costs baked into the vehicle to make it rapidly reusable. But those benefits only come after a rocket is landed in good condition.
On its nominal plan, Blue Origin plans to refurbish the “Never Tell Me The Odds” booster for the New Glenn program’s third flight, a highly anticipated launch of the Mark 1 lunar lander. Such a refurbishment—again, on a nominal timeline—could be accomplished within 90 days. That seems unlikely, though. SpaceX did not reuse the first Falcon 9 booster it landed, and the first booster to re-fly required 356 days of analysis and refurbishment.
Nevertheless, we’re not supposed to talk about the odds with this mission. So instead, we’ll just note that the hustle and ambition from Blue Origin is a welcome addition to the space industry, which benefits from both.
