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Blue Origin aims to land next New Glenn booster, then reuse it for Moon mission

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“We fully intend to recover the New Glenn first stage on this next launch.”

New Glenn lifts off on its debut flight on January 16, 2025. Credit: Blue Origin

There’s a good bit riding on the second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

Most directly, the fate of a NASA science mission to study Mars’ upper atmosphere hinges on a successful launch. The second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifter will send two NASA-funded satellites toward the red planet to study the processes that drove Mars’ evolution from a warmer, wetter world to the cold, dry planet of today.

A successful launch would also nudge Blue Origin closer to winning certification from the Space Force to begin launching national security satellites.

But there’s more on the line. If Blue Origin plans to launch its first robotic Moon lander early next year—as currently envisioned—the company needs to recover the New Glenn rocket’s first stage booster. Crews will again dispatch Blue Origin’s landing platform into the Atlantic Ocean, just as they did for the first New Glenn flight in January.

The debut launch of New Glenn successfully reached orbit, a difficult feat for the inaugural flight of any rocket. But the booster fell into the Atlantic Ocean after three of the rocket’s engines failed to reignite to slow down for landing. Engineers identified seven changes to resolve the problem, focusing on what Blue Origin calls “propellant management and engine bleed control improvements.”

Relying on reuse

Pat Remias, Blue Origin’s vice president of space systems development, said Thursday that the company is confident in nailing the landing on the second flight of New Glenn. That launch, with NASA’s next set of Mars probes, is likely to occur no earlier than November from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

“We fully intend to recover the New Glenn first stage on this next launch,” Remias said in a presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Fully intend to do it.”

Blue Origin, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, nicknamed the booster stage for the next flight “Never Tell Me The Odds.” It’s not quite fair to say the company’s leadership has gone all-in with their bet that the next launch will result in a successful booster landing. But the difference between a smooth touchdown and another crash landing will have a significant effect on Bezos’ Moon program.

That’s because the third New Glenn launch, penciled in for no earlier than January of next year, will reuse the same booster flown on the upcoming second flight. The payload on that launch will be Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon lander, aiming to become the largest spacecraft to reach the lunar surface. Ars has published a lengthy feature on the Blue Moon lander’s role in NASA’s effort to return astronauts to the Moon.

“We will use that first stage on the next New Glenn launch,” Remias said. “That is the intent. We’re pretty confident this time. We knew it was going to be a long shot [to land the booster] on the first launch.”

A long shot, indeed. It took SpaceX 20 launches of its Falcon 9 rocket over five years before pulling off the first landing of a booster. It was another 15 months before SpaceX launched a previously flown Falcon 9 booster for the first time.

With New Glenn, Blue’s engineers hope to drastically shorten the learning curve. Going into the second launch, the company’s managers anticipate refurbishing the first recovered New Glenn booster to launch again within 90 days. That would be a remarkable accomplishment.

Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, wrote earlier this year on social media that recovering the booster on the second New Glenn flight will “take a little bit of luck and a lot of excellent execution.”

On September 26, Blue Origin shared this photo of the second New Glenn booster on social media.

Blue Origin’s production of second stages for the New Glenn rocket has far outpaced manufacturing of booster stages. The second stage for the second flight was test-fired in April, and Blue completed a similar static-fire test for the third second stage in August. Meanwhile, according to a social media post written by Limp last week, the body of the second New Glenn booster is assembled, and installation of its seven BE-4 engines is “well underway” at the company’s rocket factory in Florida.

The lagging production of New Glenn boosters, known as GS1s (Glenn Stage 1s), is partly by design. Blue Origin’s strategy with New Glenn has been to build a small number of GS1s, each of which is more expensive and labor-intensive than SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This approach counts on routine recoveries and rapid refurbishment of boosters between missions.

However, this strategy comes with risks, as it puts the booster landings in the critical path for ramping up New Glenn’s launch rate. At one time, Blue aimed to launch eight New Glenn flights this year; it will probably end the year with two.

Laura Maginnis, Blue Origin’s vice president of New Glenn mission management, said last month that the company was building a fleet of “several boosters” and had eight upper stages in storage. That would bode well for a quick ramp-up in launch cadence next year.

However, Blue’s engineers haven’t had a chance to inspect or test a recovered New Glenn booster. Even if the next launch concludes with a successful landing, the rocket could come back to Earth with some surprises. SpaceX’s initial development of Falcon 9 and Starship was richer in hardware, with many boosters in production to decouple successful landings from forward progress.

Blue Moon

All of this means a lot is riding on an on-target landing of the New Glenn booster on the next flight. Separate from Blue Origin’s ambitions to fly many more New Glenn rockets next year, a good recovery would also mean an earlier demonstration of the company’s first lunar lander.

The lander set to launch on the third New Glenn mission is known as Blue Moon Mark 1, an unpiloted vehicle designed to robotically deliver up to 3 metric tons (about 6,600 pounds) of cargo to the lunar surface. The spacecraft will have a height of about 26 feet (8 meters), taller than the lunar lander used for NASA’s Apollo astronaut missions.

The first Blue Moon Mark 1 is funded from Blue Origin’s coffers. It is now fully assembled and will soon ship to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for vacuum chamber testing. Then, it will travel to Florida’s Space Coast for final launch preparations.

“We are building a series, not a singular lander, but multiple types and sizes and scales of landers to go to the Moon,” Remias said.

The second Mark 1 lander will carry NASA’s VIPER rover to prospect for water ice at the Moon’s south pole in late 2027. Around the same time, Blue will use a Mark 1 lander to deploy two small satellites to orbit the Moon, flying as low as a few miles above the surface to scout for resources like water, precious metals, rare Earth elements, and helium-3 that could be extracted and exploited by future explorers.

A larger lander, Blue Moon Mark 2, is in an earlier stage of development. It will be human-rated to land astronauts on the Moon for NASA’s Artemis program.

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander, seen in the center, is taller than NASA’s Apollo lunar lander, currently the largest spacecraft to have landed on the Moon. Blue Moon MK2 is even larger, but all three landers are dwarfed in size by SpaceX’s Starship. Credit: Blue Origin

NASA’s other crew-rated lander will be derived from SpaceX’s Starship rocket. But Starship and Blue Moon Mark 2 are years away from being ready to accommodate a human crew, and both require orbital cryogenic refueling—something never before attempted in space—to transit out to the Moon.

This has led to a bit of a dilemma at NASA. China is also working on a lunar program, eyeing a crew landing on the Moon by 2030. Many experts say that, as of today, China is on pace to land astronauts on the Moon before the United States.

Of course, 12 US astronauts walked on the Moon in the Apollo program. But no one has gone back since 1972, and NASA and China are each planning to return to the Moon to stay.

One way to speed up a US landing on the Moon might be to use a modified version of Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander, Ars reported Thursday.

If this is the path NASA takes, the stakes for the next New Glenn launch and landing will soar even higher.

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

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How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up

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Thanks to some recent reporting, we’ve found a potential solution to the Artemis blues.

A man in a suit speaks in front of a mural of the Moon landing.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that competition is good for the Artemis Moon program. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that competition is good for the Artemis Moon program. Credit: NASA

For the last month, NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, has been giving interviews and speeches around the world, offering a singular message: “We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.”

This is certainly what the president who appointed Duffy to the NASA post wants to hear. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that Duffy’s sentiment is false. Privately, many people within the space industry, and even at NASA, acknowledge that the US space agency appears to be holding a losing hand. Recently, some influential voices, such as former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, have spoken out.

“Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” Bridenstine said in early September.

As the debate about NASA potentially losing the “second” space race to China heats up in Washington, DC, everyone is pointing fingers. But no one is really offering answers for how to beat China’s ambitions to land taikonauts on the Moon as early as the year 2029. So I will. The purpose of this article is to articulate how NASA ended up falling behind China, and more importantly, how the Western world could realistically retake the lead.

But first, space policymakers must learn from their mistakes.

Begin at the beginning

Thousands of words could be written about the space policy created in the United States over the last two decades and all of the missteps. However, this article will only hit the highlights (lowlights). And the story begins in 2003, when two watershed events occurred.

The first of these was the loss of space shuttle Columbia in February, the second fatal shuttle accident, which signaled that the shuttle era was nearing its end, and it began a period of soul-searching at NASA and in Washington, DC, about what the space agency should do next.

“There’s a crucial year after the Columbia accident,” said eminent NASA historian John Logsdon. “President George W. Bush said we should go back to the Moon. And the result of the assessment after Columbia is NASA should get back to doing great things.” For NASA, this meant creating a new deep space exploration program for astronauts, be it the Moon, Mars, or both.

The other key milestone in 2003 came in October, when Yang Liwei flew into space and China became the third country capable of human spaceflight. After his 21-hour spaceflight, Chinese leaders began to more deeply appreciate the soft power that came with spaceflight and started to commit more resources to related programs. Long-term, the Asian nation sought to catch up to the United States in terms of spaceflight capabilities and eventually surpass the superpower.

It was not much of a competition then. China would not take its first tentative steps into deep space for another four years, with the Chang’e 1 lunar orbiter. NASA had already walked on the Moon and sent spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond.

So how did the United States squander such a massive lead?

Mistakes were made

SpaceX and its complex Starship lander are getting the lion’s share of the blame today for delays to NASA’s Artemis Program. But the company and its lunar lander version of Starship are just the final steps on a long, winding path that got the United States where it is today.

After Columbia, the Bush White House, with its NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, looked at a variety of options (see, for example, the Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005). But Griffin had a clear plan in his mind that he dubbed “Apollo on Steroids,” and he sought to develop a large rocket (Ares V), spacecraft (later to be named Orion), and a lunar lander to accomplish a lunar landing by 2020. Collectively, this became known as the Constellation Program.

It was a mess. Congress did not provide NASA the funding it needed, and the rocket and spacecraft programs quickly ran behind schedule. At one point, to pay for surging Constellation costs, NASA absurdly mulled canceling the just-completed International Space Station. By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, two things were clear: NASA was going nowhere fast, and the program’s only achievement was to enrich the legacy space contractors.

By early 2010, after spending a year assessing the state of play, the Obama administration sought to cancel Constellation. It ran into serious congressional pushback, powered by lobbying from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and other key legacy contractors.

The Space Launch System was created as part of a political compromise between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senators from Alabama and Texas.

Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Space Launch System was created as part of a political compromise between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senators from Alabama and Texas. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Obama White House wanted to cancel both the rocket and the spacecraft and hold a competition for the private sector to develop a heavy lift vehicle. Their thinking: Only with lower-cost access to space could the nation afford to have a sustainable deep space exploration plan. In retrospect, it was the smart idea, but Congress was not having it. In 2011, Congress saved Orion and ordered a slightly modified rocket—it would still be based on space shuttle architecture to protect key contractors—that became the Space Launch System.

Then the Obama administration, with its NASA leader Charles Bolden, cast about for something to do with this hardware. They started talking about a “Journey to Mars.” But it was all nonsense. There was never any there there. Essentially, NASA lost a decade, spending billions of dollars a year developing “exploration” systems for humans and talking about fanciful missions to the red planet.

There were critics of this approach, myself included. In 2014, I authored a seven-part series at the Houston Chronicle called Adrift, the title referring to the direction of NASA’s deep space ambitions. The fundamental problem is that NASA, at the direction of Congress, was spending all of its exploration funds developing Orion, the SLS rocket, and ground systems for some future mission. This made the big contractors happy, but their cost-plus contracts gobbled up so much funding that NASA had no money to spend on payloads or things to actually fly on this hardware.

This is why doubters called the SLS the “rocket to nowhere.” They were, sadly, correct.

The Moon, finally

Fairly early on in the first Trump administration, the new leader of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, managed to ditch the Journey to Mars and establish a lunar program. However, any efforts to consider alternatives to the SLS rocket were quickly rebuffed by the US Senate.

During his tenure, Bridenstine established the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. But Congress was slow to open its purse for elements of the program that would not clearly benefit a traditional contractor or NASA field center. Consequently, the space agency did not select a lunar lander until April 2021, after Bridenstine had left office. And NASA did not begin funding work on this until late 2021 due to a protest by Blue Origin. The space agency did not support a lunar spacesuit program for another year.

Much has been made about the selection of SpaceX as the sole provider of a lunar lander. Was it shady? Was the decision rushed before Bill Nelson was confirmed as NASA administrator? In truth, SpaceX was the only company that bid a value that NASA could afford with its paltry budget for a lunar lander (again, Congress prioritized SLS funding), and which had the capability the agency required.

To be clear, for a decade, NASA spent in excess of $3 billion a year on the development of the SLS rocket and its ground systems. That’s every year for a rocket that used main engines from the space shuttle, a similar version of its solid rocket boosters, and had a core stage the same diameter as the shuttle’s external tank. Thirty billion bucks for a rocket highly derivative of a vehicle NASA flew for three decades. SpaceX was awarded less than a single year of this funding, $2.9 billion, for the entire development of a Human Landing System version of Starship, plus two missions.

So yes, after 20 years, Orion appears to be ready to carry NASA astronauts out to the Moon. After 15 years, the shuttle-derived rocket appears to work. And after four years (and less than a tenth of the funding), Starship is not ready to land humans on the Moon.

When will Starship be ready?

Probably not any time soon.

For SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, the Artemis Program is a sidequest to the company’s real mission of sending humans to Mars. It simply is not a priority (and frankly, the limited funding from NASA does not compel prioritization). Due to its incredible ambition, the Starship program has also understandably hit some technical snags.

Unfortunately for NASA and the country, Starship still has a long way to go to land humans on the Moon. It must begin flying frequently (this could happen next year, finally). It must demonstrate the capability to transfer and store large amounts of cryogenic propellant in space. It must land on the Moon, a real challenge for such a tall vehicle, necessitating a flat surface that is difficult to find near the poles. And then it must demonstrate the ability to launch from the Moon, which would be unprecedented for cryogenic propellants.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the complexity of the mission. To fully fuel a Starship in low-Earth orbit to land on the Moon and take off would require multiple Starship “tanker” launches from Earth. No one can quite say how many because SpaceX is still working to increase the payload capacity of Starship, and no one has real-world data on transfer efficiency and propellant boiloff. But the number is probably at least a dozen missions. One senior source recently suggested to Ars that it may be as many as 20 to 40 launches.

The bottom line: It’s a lot. SpaceX is far and away the highest-performing space company in the Solar System. But putting all of the pieces together for a lunar landing will require time. Privately, SpaceX officials are telling NASA it can meet a 2028 timeline for Starship readiness for Artemis astronauts.

But that seems very optimistic. Very. It’s not something I would feel comfortable betting on, especially if China plans to land on the Moon “before” 2030, and the country continues to make credible progress toward this date.

What are the alternatives?

Duffy’s continued public insistence that he will not let China beat the United States back to the Moon rings hollow. The shrewd people in the industry I’ve spoken with say Duffy is an intelligent person and is starting to realize that betting the entire farm on SpaceX at this point would be a mistake. It would be nice to have a plan B.

But please, stop gaslighting us. Stop blustering about how we’re going to beat China while losing a quarter of NASA’s workforce and watching your key contractors struggle with growing pains. Let’s have an honest discussion about the challenges and how we’ll solve them.

What few people have done is offer solutions to Duffy’s conundrum. Fortunately, we’re here to help. As I have conducted interviews in recent weeks, I have always closed by asking this question: “You’re named NASA administrator tomorrow. You have one job: get NASA astronauts safely back to the Moon before China. What do you do?”

I’ve received a number of responses, which I’ll boil down into the following buckets. None of these strike me as particularly practical solutions, which underscores the desperation of NASA’s predicament. However, recent reporting has uncovered one solution that probably would work. I’ll address that last. First, the other ideas:

  • Stubby Starship: Multiple people have suggested this option. Tim Dodd has even spoken about it publicly. Two of the biggest issues with Starship are the need for many refuelings and its height, making it difficult to land on uneven terrain. NASA does not need Starship’s incredible capability to land 100–200 metric tons on the lunar surface. It needs fewer than 10 tons for initial human missions. So shorten Starship, reduce its capability, and get it down to a handful of refuelings. It’s not clear how feasible this would be beyond armchair engineering. But the larger problem is that Musk wants Starship to get taller, not shorter, so SpaceX would probably not be willing to do this.
  • Surge CLPS funding: Since 2019, NASA has been awarding relatively small amounts of funding to private companies to land a few hundred kilograms of cargo on the Moon. NASA could dramatically increase funding to this program, say up to $10 billion, and offer prizes for the first and second companies to land two humans on the Moon. This would open the competition to other companies beyond SpaceX and Blue Origin, such as Firefly, Intuitive Machines, and Astrobotic. The problem is that time is running short, and scaling up from 100 kilograms to 10 metric tons is an extraordinary challenge.
  • Build the Lunar Module: NASA already landed humans on the Moon in the 1960s with a Lunar Module built by Grumman. Why not just build something similar again? In fact, some traditional contractors have been telling NASA and Trump officials this is the best option, that such a solution, with enough funding and cost-plus guarantees, could be built in two or three years. The problem with this is that, sorry, the traditional space industry just isn’t up to the task. It took more than a decade to build a relatively simple rocket based on the space shuttle. The idea that a traditional contractor will complete a Lunar Module in five years or less is not supported by any evidence in the last 20 years. The flimsy Lunar Module would also likely not pass NASA’s present-day safety standards.
  • Distract China: I include this only for completeness. As for how to distract China, use your imagination. But I would submit that ULA snipers or starting a war in the South China Sea is not the best way to go about winning the space race.

OK, I read this far. What’s the answer?

The answer is Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander.

The company has finished assembly of the first Mark 1 lander and will soon ship it from Florida to Johnson Space Center in Houston for vacuum chamber testing. A pathfinder mission is scheduled to launch in early 2026. It will be the largest vehicle to ever land on the Moon. It is not rated for humans, however. It was designed as a cargo lander.

There have been some key recent developments, though. About two weeks ago, NASA announced that a second mission of Mark 1 will carry the VIPER rover to the Moon’s surface in 2027. This means that Blue Origin intends to start a production line of Mark 1 landers.

At the same time, Blue Origin already has a contract with NASA to develop the much larger Mark 2 lander, which is intended to carry humans to the lunar surface. Realistically, though, this will not be ready until sometime in the 2030s. Like SpaceX’s Starship, it will require multiple refueling launches. As part of this contract, Blue has worked extensively with NASA on a crew cabin for the Mark 2 lander.

A full-size mock-up of the Blue Origin Mk. 1 lunar lander.

Credit: Eric Berger

A full-size mock-up of the Blue Origin Mk. 1 lunar lander. Credit: Eric Berger

Here comes the important part. Ars can now report, based on government sources, that Blue Origin has begun preliminary work on a modified version of the Mark 1 lander—leveraging learnings from Mark 2 crew development—that could be part of an architecture to land humans on the Moon this decade. NASA has not formally requested Blue Origin to work on this technology, but according to a space agency official, the company recognizes the urgency of the need.

How would it work? Blue Origin is still architecting the mission, but it would involve “multiple” Mark 1 landers to carry crew down to the lunar surface and then ascend back up to lunar orbit to rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft. Enough work has been done, according to the official, that Blue Origin engineers are confident the approach could work. Critically, it would not require any refueling.

It is unclear whether this solution has reached Duffy, but he would be smart to listen. According to sources, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is intrigued by the idea. And why wouldn’t he be? For a quarter of a century, he has been hearing about how Musk has been kicking his ass in spaceflight. Bezos also loves the Apollo program and could now play an essential role in serving his country in an hour of need. He could beat SpaceX to the Moon and stamp his name in the history of spaceflight.

Jeff and Sean? Y’all need to talk.

Photo of Eric Berger

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

How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up Read More »

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Rocket Report: Keeping up with Kuiper; New Glenn’s second flight slips

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Amazon plans to conduct two launches of Kuiper broadband satellites just days apart.

An unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension (D5LE) missile launches from an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine off the coast of Florida. Credit: US Navy

Welcome to Edition 8.12 of the Rocket Report! We often hear from satellite operators—from the military to venture-backed startups—about their appetite for more launch capacity. With so many rocket launches happening around the world, some might want to dismiss these statements as a corporate plea for more competition, and therefore lower prices. SpaceX is on pace to launch more than 150 times this year. China could end the year with more than 70 orbital launches. These are staggering numbers compared to global launch rates just a few years ago. But I’m convinced there’s room for more alternatives for reliable (and reusable) rockets. All of the world’s planned mega-constellations will need immense launch capacity just to get off the ground, and if successful, they’ll go into regular replacement and replenishment cycles. Throw in the still-undefined Golden Dome missile shield and many nations’ desire for a sovereign launch capability, and it’s easy to see the demand curve going up.

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.

Sharp words from Astra’s Chris Kemp. Chris Kemp, the chief executive officer of Astra, apparently didn’t get the memo about playing nice with his competitors in the launch business. Kemp made some spicy remarks at the Berkeley Space Symposium 2025 earlier this month, billed as the largest undergraduate aerospace event at the university (see video of the talk). During the speech, Kemp periodically deviated from building up Astra to hurling insults at several of his competitors in the launch industry, Ars reports. To be fair to Kemp, some of his criticisms are not without a kernel of truth. But they are uncharacteristically rough all the same, especially given Astra’s uneven-at-best launch record and financial solvency to date.

Wait, what?! … Kemp is generally laudatory in his comments about SpaceX, but his most crass statement took aim at the quality of life of SpaceX employees at Starbase, Texas. He said life at Astra is “more fun than SpaceX because we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn.” For the record, no SpaceX employees have been beheaded. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day.” Kemp also accused Firefly Aerospace of sending Astra “garbage” rocket engines as part of the companies’ partnership on propulsion for Astra’s next-generation rocket.

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A step forward for Europe’s reusable rocket program. No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress, Ars reports. Last week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket’s first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

Hopping into the future … “This milestone marks the beginning of the ‘combined tests,’ during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad’s mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions,” ArianeGroup said. This particular rocket will likely undergo only short hops, initially about 100 meters. A follow-up vehicle, Themis T1E, is intended to fly medium-altitude tests at a later date. Some of the learnings from these prototypes will feed into a smaller, reusable rocket intended to lift 500 kilograms to low-Earth orbit. This is under development by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. Eventually, the European Space Agency would like to use technology developed as part of Themis to develop a new line of reusable rockets that will succeed the Ariane 6 rocket.

Navy conducts Trident missile drills. The US Navy carried out four scheduled missile tests of a nuclear-capable weapons system off the coast of Florida within the last week, Defense News reports. The service’s Strategic Systems Programs conducted flights of unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension missiles from a submerged Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine from September 17 to September 21 as part of an ongoing scheduled event meant to test the reliability of the system. “The missile tests were not conducted in response to any ongoing world events,” a Navy release said.

Secret with high visibility … The Navy periodically performs these Trident missile tests off the coasts of Florida and California, taking advantage of support infrastructure and range support from the two busiest US spaceports. The military doesn’t announce the exact timing of the tests, but warnings issued for pilots to stay out of the area give a general idea of when they might occur. One of the launch events Sunday was visible from Puerto Rico, illuminating the night sky in photos published on social media. The missiles fell in the Atlantic Ocean as intended, the Navy said. The Trident II D5 missiles were developed in the 1980s and are expected to remain in service on the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines into the 2040s. The Trident system is one leg of the US military’s nuclear triad, alongside land-based Minuteman ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable strategic bombers. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Firefly plans for Alpha’s return to flight. Firefly Aerospace expects to resume Alpha launches in the “coming weeks,” with two flights planned before the end of the year, Space News reports. These will be the first flights of Firefly’s one-ton-class Alpha rocket since a failure in April destroyed a Lockheed Martin tech demo satellite after liftoff from California. In a quarterly earnings call, Firefly shared a photo showing its next two Alpha rockets awaiting shipment from the company’s Texas factory.

Righting the ship … These next two launches really need to go well for Firefly. The Alpha rocket has, at best, a mixed record with only two fully successful flights in six attempts. Two other missions put their payloads into off-target orbits, and two Alpha launches failed to reach orbit at all. Firefly went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange last month, raising nearly $900 million in the initial public offering to help fund the company’s future programs, namely the medium-lift Eclipse rocket developed in partnership with Northrop Grumman. There’s a lot to like about Firefly. The company achieved the first fully successful landing of a commercial spacecraft on the Moon in March. NASA has selected Firefly for three more commercial landings on the Moon, and Firefly reported this week it has an agreement with an unnamed commercial customer for an additional dedicated mission. But the Alpha program hasn’t had the same level of success. We’ll see if Firefly can get the rocket on track soon. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Avio wins contract to launch “extra-European” mission. Italian rocket builder Avio has signed a launch services agreement with US-based launch aggregator SpaceLaunch for a Vega C launch carrying an Earth observation satellite for an “extra-European institutional customer” in 2027, European Spaceflight reports. Avio announced that it had secured the launch contract on September 18. According to the company, the contract was awarded through an open international competition, with Vega C chosen for its “versatility and cost-effectiveness.” While Avio did not reveal the identity of the “extra-European” customer, it said that it would do so later this year.

Plenty of peculiarities … There are several questions to unpack here, and Andrew Parsonson of European Spaceflight goes through them all. Presumably, extra-European means the customer is based outside of Europe. Avio’s statement suggests we’ll find out the answer to that question soon. Details about the US-based launch broker SpaceLaunch are harder to find. SpaceLaunch appears to have been founded in January 2025 by two former Firefly Aerospace employees with a combined 40 years of experience in the industry. On its website, the company claims to provide end-to-end satellite launch integration, mission management, and launch procurement services with a “portfolio of launch vehicle capacity around the globe.” SpaceLaunch boasts it has supported the launch of more than 150 satellites on 12 different launch vehicles. However, according to public records, it does not appear that the company itself has supported a single launch. Instead, the claim seems to credit SpaceLaunch with launches that were actually carried out during the two founders’ previous tenures at Spaceflight, Firefly Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, and the US Air Force. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9 launches three missions for NASA and NOAA. Scientists loaded three missions worth nearly $1.6 billion on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for launch Wednesday, toward an orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, to measure the supersonic stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun, Ars reports. One of the missions, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will beam back real-time observations of the solar wind to provide advance warning of geomagnetic storms that could affect power grids, radio communications, GPS navigation, air travel, and satellite operations. The other two missions come from NASA, with research objectives that include studying the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space and observing the rarely seen outermost layer of our own planet’s atmosphere.

Immense value …All three spacecraft will operate in orbit around the L1 Lagrange point, a gravitational balance point located more than 900,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Bundling these three missions onto the same rocket saved at least tens of millions of dollars in launch costs. Normally, they would have needed three different rockets. Rideshare missions to low-Earth orbit are becoming more common, but spacecraft departing for more distant destinations like the L1 Lagrange point are rare. Getting all three missions on the same launch required extensive planning, a stroke of luck, and fortuitous timing. “This is the ultimate cosmic carpool,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division. “These three missions heading out to the Sun-Earth L1 point riding along together provide immense value for the American taxpayer.”

US officials concerned about China mastering reusable launch. SpaceX’s dominance in reusable rocketry is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday. But several Chinese companies are getting close to fielding their own reusable rockets, Ars reports. “It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”

By the numbers … China has used 14 different types of rockets on its 56 orbital-class missions this year, and none have flown more than 11 times. Eight US rocket types have cumulatively flown 145 times, with 122 of those using SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. Without a reusable rocket, China must maintain more rocket companies to sustain a launch rate of just one-third to one-half that of the United States. This contrasts with the situation just four years ago, when China outpaced the United States in orbital rocket launches. The growth in US launches has been a direct result of SpaceX’s improvements to launch at a higher rate, an achievement primarily driven by the recovery and reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings.

Atlas V launches more Kuiper satellites. Roughly an hour past sunrise Thursday, an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance took flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Onboard the rocket, flying in its most powerful configuration, were the next 27 Project Kuiper broadband satellites from Amazon, Spaceflight Now reports. This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low-Earth orbit constellation. The Atlas V rocket released the 27 Kuiper satellites about 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. The satellites will use onboard propulsion to boost themselves to their assigned orbit at 392 miles (630 kilometers).

Another Kuiper launch on tap … With this deployment, Amazon now has 129 satellites in orbit. This is a small fraction of the network’s planned total of 3,232 satellites, but Amazon has enjoyed a steep ramp-up in the Kuiper launch cadence as the company’s satellite assembly line in Kirkland, Washington, continues churning out spacecraft. Another 24 Kuiper satellites are slated to launch September 30 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and Amazon has delivered enough satellites to Florida for an additional launch later this fall. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

German military will fly with Ariane 6. Airbus Defense and Space has awarded Arianespace a contract to launch a pair of SATCOMBw-3 communications satellites for the German Armed Forces, European Spaceflight reports. Airbus is the prime contractor for the nearly $2.5 billion (2.1 billion euro) SATCOMBw-3 program, which will take over from the two-satellite SATCOMBw-2 constellation currently providing secure communications for the German military. Arianespace announced Wednesday that it had been awarded the contract to launch the satellites aboard two Ariane 6 rockets. “By signing this new strategic contract for the German Armed Forces, Arianespace accomplishes its core mission of guaranteeing autonomous access to space for European sovereign satellites,” said Arianespace CEO David Cavaillolès.

Running home to Europe … The chief goal of the Ariane 6 program is to provide Europe with independent access to space, something many European governments see as a strategic requirement. Several European military, national security, and scientific satellites have launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets in the last few years as officials waited for the debut of the Ariane 6 rocket. With three successful Ariane 6 flights now in the books, European customers seem to now have the confidence to commit to flying their satellites on Ariane 6. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Artemis II launch targeted for February. NASA is pressing ahead with preparations for the first launch of humans beyond low-Earth orbit in more than five decades, and officials said Tuesday that the Artemis II mission could take flight early next year, Ars reports. Although work remains to be done, the space agency is now pushing toward a launch window that opens on February 5, 2026, officials said during a news conference on Tuesday at Johnson Space Center. The Artemis II mission represents a major step forward for NASA and seeks to send four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—around the Moon and back. The 10-day mission will be the first time astronauts have left low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Orion named Integrity … The first astronauts set to fly to the Moon in more than 50 years will do so in Integrity, Ars reports. NASA’s Artemis II crew revealed Integrity as the name of their Orion spacecraft during a news conference on Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We thought, as a crew, we need to name this spacecraft. We need to have a name for the Orion spacecraft that we’re going to ride this magical mission on,” said Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission.

FAA reveals new Starship trajectories. Sometime soon, perhaps next year, SpaceX will attempt to fly one of its enormous Starship rockets from low-Earth orbit back to its launch pad in South Texas. A successful return and catch at the launch tower would demonstrate a key capability underpinning Elon Musk’s hopes for a fully reusable rocket. In order for this to happen, SpaceX must overcome the tyranny of geography. A new document released by the Federal Aviation Administration shows the narrow corridors Starship will fly to space and back when SpaceX tries to recover them, Ars reports.

Flying over people … It was always evident that flying a Starship from low-Earth orbit back to Starbase would require the rocket to fly over Mexico and portions of South Texas. The rocket launches to the east over the Gulf of Mexico, so it must approach Starbase from the west when it comes in for a landing. The new maps show SpaceX will launch Starships to the southeast over the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea, and directly over Jamaica, or to the northeast over the Gulf and the Florida peninsula. On reentry, the ship will fly over Baja California and Mexico’s interior near the cities of Hermosillo and Chihuahua, each with a population of roughly a million people. The trajectory would bring Starship well north of the Monterrey metro area and its 5.3 million residents, then over the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas cities of McAllen and Brownsville.

New Glenn’s second flight at least a month away. The second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, carrying a NASA smallsat mission to Mars, is now expected in late October or early November, Space News reports. Tim Dunn, NASA’s senior launch director at Kennedy Space Center, provided an updated schedule for the second flight of New Glenn in comments after a NASA-sponsored launch on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday. Previously, the official schedule from NASA showed the launch date as no earlier than September 29.

No surprise … It was already apparent that this launch wouldn’t happen September 29. Blue Origin has test-fired the second stage for the upcoming flight of the New Glenn rocket but hasn’t rolled the first stage to the launch pad for its static fire. Seeing the rocket emerge from Blue’s factory in Florida will be an indication that the launch date is finally near. Blue Origin will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, a pair of small satellites to study how the solar wind interacts with the Martian upper atmosphere.

Blue Origin will launch a NASA rover to the Moon. NASA has awarded Blue Origin a task order worth up to $190 million to deliver its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s surface, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Blue Origin, one of 13 currently active Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) providers, submitted the only bid to carry VIPER to the Moon after NASA requested offers from industry last month. NASA canceled the VIPER mission last year, citing cost overruns with the rover and delays in its planned ride to the Moon aboard a lander provided by Astrobotic. But engineers had already completed assembly of the rover, and scientists protested NASA’s decision to terminate the mission.

Some caveats … Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to a location near the Moon’s south pole in late 2027 using a robotic Blue Moon MK1 lander, a massive craft larger than the Apollo lunar landing module. The company’s first Blue Moon MK1 lander is scheduled to fly to the Moon next year. NASA’s contract for the VIPER delivery calls for Blue Origin to design accommodations for the rover on the Blue Moon lander. The agency said it will decide whether to proceed with the actual launch on a New Glenn rocket and delivery of VIPER to the Moon based partially on the outcome of the first Blue Moon test flight next year.

Next three launches

Sept. 26: Long March 4C | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 19: 20 UTC

Sept. 27: Long March 6A | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 12: 39 UTC

Sept. 28: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-20 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 32 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Rocket Report: Keeping up with Kuiper; New Glenn’s second flight slips Read More »

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Astra’s Chris Kemp woke up one recent morning and chose violence

astra, blue origin, Chris kemp, firefly, rocket, Space, spacex / /

SpaceX

Kemp generally praises SpaceX for leading the way with iterative design and founder Elon Musk’s willingness to fail publicly in order to move fast. However, in seeking to appeal to interns, he suggested that Astra offered a better working environment than SpaceX’s Starbase factory in South Texas.

“It’s more fun than SpaceX, because we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn,” he said. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day. It’s appreciated if you do, but not required.”

For the record, no SpaceX interns have been beheaded. And honestly, Chris, that is just a really crass thing to say.

Rocket Lab

Kemp’s longest and oldest rival in the launch industry is Rocket Lab and its founder, Peter Beck. This was especially apparent in a recent documentary that covered the rise of both Astra and Rocket Lab, called Wild Wild West. Kemp did not take any direct shots at Beck during his Berkeley speech.

However, in the late 2010s both Astra and Rocket Lab were racing to develop a small-lift rocket capable of lifting dozens to a few hundred kilograms to orbit, Rocket 3 and Electron. In hindsight, Kemp said, these rockets were not large enough to serve the market for satellites. There just were not enough CubeSats to go around.

“That little rocket is too small,” Kemp said in Berkeley about Rocket 3. “And so is Electron.”

A size comparison between Rocket 3, right, and Rocket 4.

Credit: Astra

A size comparison between Rocket 3, right, and Rocket 4. Credit: Astra

Electron may be small, but it has launched more than 70 times. It could generate as much as $200 million in revenue for Rocket Lab this year. And it has provided an excellent test bed for Rocket Lab as it seeks to build the much larger Neutron vehicle, with a reusable first stage.

Overall, Kemp’s talk is insightful, offering thoughtful commentary on Astra’s history and vision for the future. The company is a startup again, now focusing on building a mobile, tactical rocket that could serve national defense interests. Instead of focusing on reuse, the company wants to build a lot of rockets cheaply. It has built a large factory in California to accomplish this.

Also, after nine years in the launch industry, Kemp seems to have finally learned an important lesson about rockets: reliability matters.

“Rocket 3 was the cowboy rocket,” he said, noting the company has worked hard to improve its practices and manufacturing to build vehicles that won’t fail anymore. “The big idea was, you can’t get to scale without reliability.”

Astra’s Chris Kemp woke up one recent morning and chose violence Read More »

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Smithsonian Air and Space opens halls for “milestone” and “future” artifacts

blue origin, Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, Futures in Space, inspiration4, National Air and Space Museum, reimagined galleries, renovation, Smithsonian, Space, Space exploration, space history, spacex / /

$900M renovation nearing completion

John Glenn’s Friendship 7 returns as SpaceX and Blue Origin artifacts debut.

a gumdrop-shape white space capsule is seen on display with other rocket hardware in a museum gallery with blue walls and flooring

“Futures in Space” recaptures the experience of the early visitors to the National Air and Space Museum, where the objects on display were contemporary to the day. A mockup of a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule and SpaceX Merlin rocket engine are among the items on display for the first time. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“Futures in Space” recaptures the experience of the early visitors to the National Air and Space Museum, where the objects on display were contemporary to the day. A mockup of a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule and SpaceX Merlin rocket engine are among the items on display for the first time. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts. The new exhibitions shine modern light on returning displays and restore the museum’s almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical.

Visitors can again enter through the “Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall,” which has been closed for the past three years and has on display some of the museum’s most iconic items, including John Glenn’s Friendship 7 Mercury capsule and an Apollo lunar module.

From there, visitors can tour through the adjacent “Futures in Space,” a new gallery focused on the different approaches and technology that spaceflight will take in the years to come. Here, the Smithsonian is displaying for the first time objects that were recently donated by commercial spaceflight companies, including items used in space tourism and in growing the low-Earth orbit economy.

a museum gallery with air and spacecraft displayed on the terrazzo floor and suspended from the ceiling

The artifacts are iconic, but the newly reopened Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the National Air and Space Museum is all new. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We are thrilled to open this next phase of exhibitions to the public,” said Chris Browne, the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the National Air and Space Museum, in a statement. “Reopening our main hall with so many iconic aerospace artifacts, as well as completely new exhibitions, will give visitors much more to see and enjoy.”

The other three galleries newly open to the public are devoted to aviation history, including the “Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight,” “World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation,” and the “Allan and Shelley Holt Innovations Gallery.”

What’s new is not yet old

Among the artifacts debuting in “Futures in Space” are a Merlin engine and grid fin that flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Sian Proctor’s pressure suit that she wore on the private Inspiration4 mission in 2021, and a mockup of a New Shepard crew module that Blue Origin has pledged to replace with its first flown capsule when it is retired from flying.

“When the museum first opened back in 1976 and people came here and saw things like the Apollo command module and Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, or really anything related to human spaceflight, at that point it was all still very recent,” said Matt Shindell, one of the curators behind “Futures in Space,” in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “So when you would come into the museum, it wasn’t so much a history of space but what’s happening now and what could happen next. We wanted to have a gallery that would recapture that feeling.”

Instead of being themed around a single program or period in history, the new gallery invites visitors to consider a series of questions, including: Who decides who goes to space? Why do we go? And what will we do when we get there?

a black and white astronaut's pressure suit and other space artifacts are displayed behind glass in a museum gallery with blue flooring and walls

Curatores designed “Futures in Space” around a list of questions, including “Why go to space?” On display is a pressure suit worn by Sian Proctor on the Inspiration4 mission and a 1978 NASA astronaut “TFNG” T-shirt. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We really wanted the gallery to be one that engaged visitors in these questions and that centered the experience around what they thought should be happening in the future and what that would mean for them,” said Shindell. “We also have visions of the future presented throughout the gallery, including from popular culture—television shows, movies and comic books—that have explored what the future might look like and what it would mean for the people living through it.”

That is why the gallery also includes R2-D2, or rather a reproduction of the “Star Wars” droid as built by Adam Savage of Tested. In George Lucas’ vision of the future (“a long, long time ago”), Astromech droids serve as spacecraft navigators, mechanics, and companion aides.

Beyond the artifacts and exhibits (which also include an immersive 3D-printed Mars habitat and Yuri Gagarin’s training pressure suit), there is a stage and seating area at the center of “Futures.”

“I think of it as a TED Talk-style stage,” said Shindell. “We’re hoping to bring in people from industry, stakeholders, people who have flown, people who are getting ready to fly, and people who have ideas about what should be happening to come and talk to visitors from that stage about the same questions that we’re asking in the gallery.”

Modernized “Milestones”

The artifacts presented in the “Boeing Milestones of Flight” are mostly the same as they were before the hall was closed in 2022. The hall underwent a renovation in 2014 ahead of the museum’s 40th anniversary, so its displays did not need another redesign.

Still, the gallery looks new due to the work done surrounding the objects.

“What is new for the ‘Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall’ is, at some level, most noticeably the floor and media elements,” said Margaret Weitekamp, curator and division chair at the National Air and Space Museum, in an interview.

“We have a wonderful 123-foot (37-meter) media band that goes across the front of the mezzanine, and we have 20 different slide shows that work as a digest of what you’ll find in the new galleries throughout the building,” said Weitekamp. “So as people come into the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, they’ll be greeted by that and get a taste of what they’re going to see inside.”

And then there is the new flooring. In the past, the hall had been lined in maroon or dark gray carpet. It is now a much lighter color terrazzo.

“It really brightens up the room,” Weitekamp told collectsPACE.

“Also, you’ll notice that as you are going up and down the hallways, there are medallions embedded in the floor that display quotes from significant aviation and spaceflight figures. So we’ve been able to put some quotes from Carl Sagan, Sally Ride, and Chuck Yeager into the floor,” she said.

the view looking down and into a museum gallery with aircraft suspended from the ceiling, spacecraft on display and a binary map embedded in the flooring

The pattern on the floor of the Boeing Milesones of Flight Hall is the pulsar-based map to Earth’s solar system that was mounted to the Pioneer and Voyager probes, now updated for 2026. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Visitors should also pay attention to what look like lines of dashes converging at the hall’s center. The design is an update to a NASA graphic.

“We have a revised version of the pulsar map from Pioneer 10 and 11 and the Voyager interstellar record,” said Weitekamp, referring to the representation of the location of Earth for any extraterrestrial species that might discover the probes in the future. “The map located Earth’s solar system with relationship to 14 pulsars.”

When the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft were launched, astronomers didn’t know that pulsars (or rotating neutron stars) slow down over time.

“So we worked with a colleague of ours to make it a map to our solar system as would be accurate for 2026, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the museum’s building and the 250th birthday of the nation,” Weitekamp said.

Thirteen open, eight to go

Monday’s opening followed an earlier debut of eight reimagined galleries in 2022. Also open is the renovated Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, which joins the planetarium, the museum store, and the Mars Café that were reopened earlier.

the exterior entrance to a building with a tall, spike-like silver sculpture standing front and center

The redesigned north entrance to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum opened to the public on Monday, July 28, 2025. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We are nearing the end of this multi-year renovation project,” said Browne. “We look forward to welcoming many more people into these modernized and inspiring new spaces,”

Eight more exhibitions are scheduled to open next year in time for the 50th anniversary of the National Air and Space Museum. Among those galleries are three that are focused on space: “At Home in Space,” “National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe,” and “RTX Living in the Space Age Hall.”

Admission to the National Air and Space Museum and the new galleries is free, but timed-entry passes, available from the Smithsonian’s website, are required.

Photo of Robert Pearlman

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.

Smithsonian Air and Space opens halls for “milestone” and “future” artifacts Read More »

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The second launch of New Glenn will aim for Mars

blue origin, new glenn, Space / /

Notably, the company plans to launch each new rocket as soon as it is ready to fly to gather data about the vehicle’s performance, attempt to catch and reuse first stages, and move closer to a rapid launch cadence. Therefore, if a customer payload is not ready, the company has also developed an inspirational mission called “Cube for the Future,” which appears to be part of the company’s initiative to inspire future generations to pursue careers in science. This may also fly as a rideshare on one of the launches listed above.

All eyes on the Moon

Among these missions, the payload likely to spark the most interest is the Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is part of the company’s plans to develop a large, reusable lander capable of landing humans on the Moon.

Blue Origin shared a snippet of video last week on social media showing the mid-section of the MK1 lander arriving at the company’s assembly facilities in Rocket Park, Florida. This will be the tallest vehicle ever to land on the Moon. It is 8 meters (26.4 feet) tall, which is 1 meter taller than the Lunar Module NASA used to land humans during the Apollo Program.

MK1 is a cargo version of a larger vehicle, MK2, that Blue Origin is developing for humans. The cargo version is rated to carry about 3 metric tons to the surface, about 10 times the capacity of currently available commercial landers available to NASA.

Barring a major setback, it now appears highly likely that Blue Origin will beat SpaceX in landing a vehicle on the lunar surface. Due to the struggles with development of the Starship vehicle—whether on the ground or in space, the last four Starship upper stages have been lost before achieving a nominal success—some industry officials believe Blue Origin now has a realistic chance to compete with SpaceX in the effort to land NASA astronauts on the Moon as part of the Artemis Program.

Both companies are developing large, ambitious vehicles—SpaceX with Starship, and Blue Origin with its MK2 lander—but Blue Origin’s vehicle is somewhat less technically challenging. Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is also far more committed to a lunar program than SpaceX founder Elon Musk, sources said, and if he sees an opportunity to finally best his rival in space, he may go for it.

The second launch of New Glenn will aim for Mars Read More »

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Rocket Report: New delay for Europe’s reusable rocket; SpaceX moves in at SLC-37

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Canada is the only G7 nation without a launch program. Quebec wants to do something about that.

This graphic illustrates the elliptical shape of a geosynchronous transfer orbit in green, and the circular shape of a geosynchronous orbit in blue. In a first, SpaceX recently de-orbited a Falcon 9 upper stage from GTO after deploying a communications satellite. Credit: European Space Agency

Welcome to Edition 7.48 of the Rocket Report! The shock of last week’s public spat between President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has worn off, and Musk expressed regret for some of his comments going after Trump on social media. Musk also backtracked from his threat to begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft, currently the only way for the US government to send people to the International Space Station. Nevertheless, there are many people who think Musk’s attachment to Trump could end up putting the US space program at risk, and I’m not convinced that danger has passed.

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.

Quebec invests in small launch company. The government of Quebec will invest CA$10 million ($7.3 million) into a Montreal-area company that is developing a system to launch small satellites into space, The Canadian Press reports. Quebec Premier François Legault announced the investment into Reaction Dynamics at the company’s facility in Longueuil, a Montreal suburb. The province’s economy minister, Christine Fréchette, said the investment will allow the company to begin launching microsatellites into orbit from Canada as early as 2027.

Joining its peers … Canada is the only G7 nation without a domestic satellite launch capability, whether it’s through an independent national or commercial program or through membership in the European Space Agency, which funds its own rockets. The Canadian Space Agency has long eschewed any significant spending on developing a Canadian satellite launcher, and a handful of commercial launch startups in Canada haven’t gotten very far. Reaction Dynamics was founded in 2017 by Bachar Elzein, formerly a researcher in multiphase and reactive flows at École Polytechnique de Montréal, where he specialized in propulsion and combustion dynamics. Reaction Dynamic plans to launch its first suborbital rocket later this year, before attempting an orbital flight with its Aurora rocket as soon as 2027. (submitted by Joey S-IVB)

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Another year, another delay for Themis. The European Space Agency’s Themis program has suffered another setback, with the inaugural flight of its reusable booster demonstrator now all but certain to slip to 2026, European Spaceflight reports. It has been nearly six years since the European Space Agency kicked off the Themis program to develop and mature key technologies for future reusable rocket stages. Themis is analogous to SpaceX’s Grasshopper reusable rocket prototype tested more than a decade ago, with progressively higher hop tests to demonstrate vertical takeoff and vertical landing techniques. When the program started, an initial hop test of the first Themis demonstrator was expected to take place in 2022.

Tethered to terra firma … ArianeGroup, which manufactures Europe’s Ariane rockets, is leading the Themis program under contract to ESA, which recently committed an additional 230 million euros ($266 million) to the effort. This money is slated to go toward the development of a single-engine variant of the Themis program, continued development of the rocket’s methane-fueled engine, and upgrades to a test stand at ArianeGroup’s propulsion facility in Vernon, France. Two months ago, an official update on the Themis program suggested the first Themis launch campaign would begin before the end of the year. Citing sources close to the program, European Spaceflight reports the first Themis integration tests at the Esrange Space Center in Sweden are now almost certain to slip from late 2025 to 2026.

French startup tests a novel rocket engine. While Europe’s large government-backed rocket initiatives face delays, the continent’s space industry startups are moving forward on their own. One of these companies, a French startup named Alpha Impulsion, recently completed a short test-firing of an autophage rocket engine, European Spaceflight reports. These aren’t your normal rocket engines that burn conventional kerosene, methane, or hydrogen fuel. An autophage engine literally consumes itself as it burns, using heat from the combustion process to melt its plastic fuselage and feed the molten plastic into the combustion chamber in a controlled manner. Alpha Impulsion called the May 27 ground firing a successful test of the “largest autophage rocket engine in the world.”

So, why hasn’t this been done before? … The concept of a self-consuming rocket engine sounds like an idea that’s so crazy it just might work. But the idea remained conceptual from when it was first patented in 1938 until an autophage engine was fired in a controlled manner for the first time in 2018. The autophage design offers several advantages, including its relative simplicity compared to the complex plumbing of liquid and hybrid rockets. But there are serious challenges associated with autophage engines, including how to feed molten fuel into the combustion chamber and how to scale it up to be large enough to fly on a viable rocket. (submitted by trimeta and EllPeaTea)

Rocket trouble delays launch of private crew mission. A propellant leak in a Falcon 9 booster delayed the launch of a fourth Axiom Space private astronaut mission to the International Space Station this week, Space News reports. SpaceX announced the delay Tuesday, saying it needed more time to fix a liquid oxygen leak found in the Falcon 9 booster during inspections following a static-fire test Sunday. “Once complete–and pending Range availability–we will share a new launch date,” the company stated. The Ax-4 mission will ferry four commercial astronauts, led by retired NASA commander Peggy Whitson, aboard a Dragon spacecraft to the ISS for an approximately 14-day stay. Whitson will be joined by crewmates from India, Poland, and Hungary.

Another problem, too … While SpaceX engineers worked on resolving the propellant leak on the ground, a leak of another kind in orbit forced officials to order a longer delay to the Ax-4 mission. In a statement Thursday, NASA said it is working with the Russian space agency to understand a “new pressure signature” in the space station’s Russian service module. For several years, ground teams have monitored a slow air leak in the aft part of the service module, and NASA officials have identified it as a safety risk. NASA’s statement on the matter was vague, only saying that cosmonauts on the station recently inspected the module’s interior surfaces and sealed additional “areas of interest.” The segment is now holding pressure, according to NASA. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX tries something new with Falcon 9. With nearly 500 launches under its belt, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket isn’t often up to new tricks. But the company tried something new following a launch on June 7 with a radio broadcasting satellite for SiriusXM. The Falcon 9’s upper stage placed the SXM-10 satellite into an elongated, high-altitude transfer orbit, as is typical for payloads destined to operate in geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. When a rocket releases a satellite in this type of high-energy orbit, the upper stage has usually burned almost all of its propellant, leaving little fuel to steer itself back into Earth’s atmosphere for a destructive reentry. This means these upper stages often remain in space for decades, becoming a piece of space junk that transits across the orbits of many other satellites.

Now, a solution … SpaceX usually deorbits rockets after they deploy payloads like Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, but deorbiting a rocket from a much higher geosynchronous transfer orbit is a different matter. “Last week, SpaceX successfully completed a controlled deorbit of the SiriusXM-10 upper stage after GTO payload deployment,” wrote Jon Edwards, SpaceX’s vice president of Falcon and Dragon programs. “While we routinely do controlled deorbits for LEO stages (e.g., Starlink), deorbiting from GTO is extremely difficult due to the high energy needed to alter the orbit, making this a rare and remarkable first for us. This was only made possible due to the hard work and brilliance of the Falcon GNC (guidance, navigation, and control) team and exemplifies SpaceX’s commitment to leading in both space exploration and public safety.”

New Glenn gets a tentative launch date. Five months have passed since Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket made its mostly successful debut in January. At one point, the company targeted “late spring” for the second launch of the rocket. However, on Monday, Blue Origin’s CEO, Dave Limp, acknowledged on social media that the rocket’s next flight will now no longer take place until at least August 15, Ars reports. Although he did not say so, this may well be the only other New Glenn launch this year. The mission, with an undesignated payload, will be named “Never Tell Me the Odds,” due to the attempt to land the booster. “One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster,” Limp wrote. “This will take a little bit of luck and a lot of excellent execution. We’re on track to produce eight GS2s [second stages] this year, and the one we’ll fly on this second mission was hot-fired in April.”

Falling short … Before 2025 began, Limp set expectations alongside Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos: New Glenn would launch eight times this year. That’s not going to happen. It’s common for launch companies to take a while ramping up the flight rate for a new rocket, but Bezos told Ars in January that his priority for Blue Origin this year was to hit a higher cadence with New Glenn. Elon Musk’s rift with President Donald Trump could open a pathway for Blue Origin to capture more government business if the New Glenn rocket is able to establish a reliable track record. Meanwhile, Limp told Blue Origin employees last month that Jarrett Jones, the manager running the New Glenn program, is taking a sabbatical. Although it appears Jones’ leave may have been planned, the timing is curious.

Making way for Starship at Cape Canaveral. The US Air Force is moving closer to authorizing SpaceX to move into one of the largest launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, with plans to use the facility for up to 76 launches of the company’s Starship rocket each year, Ars reports. A draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released by the Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, found SpaceX’s planned use of Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral would have no significant negative impacts on local environmental, historical, social, and cultural interests. The Air Force also found SpaceX’s plans at SLC-37 will have no significant impact on the company’s competitors in the launch industry.

Bringing the rumble … SLC-37 was the previous home to United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV rocket, which last flew from the site in April 2024, a couple of months after the military announced SpaceX was interested in using the launch pad. While it doesn’t have a lease for full use of the launch site, SpaceX has secured a “right of limited entry” from the Space Force to begin preparatory work. This included the explosive demolition of the launch pad’s Delta IV-era service towers and lightning masts Thursday, clearing the way for eventual construction of two Starship launch towers inside the perimeter of SLC-37. The new Starship launch towers at SLC-37 will join other properties in SpaceX’s Starship empire, including nearby Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, and SpaceX’s privately owned facility at Starbase, Texas.

Preps continue for Starship Flight 10. Meanwhile, at Starbase, SpaceX is moving forward with preparations for the next Starship test flight, which could happen as soon as next month following three consecutive flights that fell short of expectations. This next launch will be the 10th full-scale test flight of Starship. Last Friday, June 6, SpaceX test-fired the massive Super Heavy booster designated to launch on Flight 10. All 33 of its Raptor engines ignited on the launch pad in South Texas. This is a new Super Heavy booster. On Flight 9 last month, SpaceX flew a reused Super Heavy booster that launched and was recovered on a flight in January.

FAA signs off on SpaceX investigation … The Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday it has closed the investigation into Starship Flight 8 in March, which spun out of control minutes after liftoff, showering debris along a corridor of ocean near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. “The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation,” an agency spokesperson said. “The final mishap report cites the probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle as a hardware failure in one of the Raptor engines that resulted in inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition. SpaceX identified eight corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event.” SpaceX implemented the corrective actions prior to Flight 9 last month, when Starship progressed further into its mission before starting to tumble in space. It eventually reentered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. The FAA has mandated a fresh investigation into Flight 9, and that inquiry remains open.

Next three launches

June 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-26 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 15: 21 UTC

June 14: Long March 2D | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 07: 55 UTC

June 16: Atlas V | Project Kuiper KA-02| Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 17: 25 UTC

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

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Blue Origin boss: Government should forget launch and focus on “exotic” missions

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“There’s not yet a commercial reason only to go to the Moon with humans.”

In this long exposure photograph, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket pierces a cloud deck over Florida’s Space Coast on its inaugural flight January 16. Credit: Blue Origin

Eighteen months after leaving his job as a vice president at Amazon to take over as Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp has some thoughts on how commercial companies and government agencies like NASA should explore the Solar System together.

Limp had no background in the space industry before taking the helm of Jeff Bezos’ space company in December 2023. He started his career as a computer scientist at Apple, took a stint at a venture capital firm, and joined Amazon in 2010, where he managed development of consumer devices like Alexa, Kindle, and the Fire TV.

“I had no thoughts of ever running a space company,” Limp said Thursday at a space conference in Washington, DC. “I’ve done consumer electronics my whole life. Started at Apple and did a bunch of other things, and so when I decided to retire from Amazon, I was looking for something that I could give back a little bit, be a little bit more philanthropic in the sort of second half of my career. I didn’t want to stop working, just wanted to do something different. And about that same time, Jeff was looking for a CEO.”

While he’s still a relative newcomer to the space business, Limp’s views align with those of many policy wonks and industry leaders who have the ears of senior officials in the Trump administration, including Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to become the next NASA administrator. Limp’s long tenure at Amazon and his selection as Blue Origin’s new CEO demonstrate that he also has the trust of Bezos, who was dissatisfied with his company’s slow progress in spaceflight.

“I think Jeff convinced me, and he’s very persuasive, that Blue didn’t need another rocket scientist,” Limp said. “We have thousands of the world’s best rocket scientists. What we needed was a little bit more decisiveness, a little bit more ability to think about: How do we manufacture at scale? And those are things I’ve done in the past, and so I’ve never looked back.”

David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, speaks during the 2025 Humans to the Moon and Mars Summit at George Washington University in Washington, DC, on May 29, 2025. Credit: Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images

Leave it to us

In remarks Thursday at the Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit, Limp advocated for commercial companies, like his own, taking a larger role in developing the transportation and infrastructure to meet lofty national objectives established by government leaders.

In some ways, NASA has long been moving in this direction, beginning with initiatives ceding most launch services to private industry in the 1990s. More recently, NASA has turned to commercial companies for crew and cargo deliveries to the International Space Station and cargo and human-rated Moon landers.

However, NASA, with the backing of key congressional leaders, has held an iron grip on having its own heavy-lift launcher and crew capsule to ferry astronauts between Earth and destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. Now, these vehicles—the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft—may be canceled if Congress agrees with Trump’s proposed NASA budget.

Commercial rockets close to matching or exceeding the Space Launch System’s lift capability are available for purchase or likely will be soon. These include SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher. Both are already key elements of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land US astronauts on the Moon as a stepping stone toward human expeditions to Mars.

But NASA still plans to use its government-owned Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to transport astronauts out to the Moon, where they will rendezvous with a Starship or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander to fly to and from the lunar surface.

SLS and Orion are expensive vehicles, costing more than $4 billion per launch for the initial set of four Artemis missions, according to a report by NASA’s inspector general. While commercial companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman build elements of SLS and Orion, NASA acts as the prime integrator. The agency signed cost-plus contracts with the companies building SLS and Orion, meaning the government is on the hook for cost overruns. And there have been many.

Artist’s concept of Blue Ring, a propulsive spacecraft platform Blue Origin says it is developing to carry payloads to different orbits, and possibly all the way to Mars, at lower costs than feasible today. Credit: Blue Origin

NASA’s robotic science probes are also getting more expensive, even when accounting for inflation. Given the way NASA procures science probes, it would cost NASA more today to send an orbiter to Mars than it did for a similarly sized spacecraft a quarter-century ago.

This has to change in order for NASA and private companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX to make their ambitions a reality, Limp said Thursday.

“I think commercial folks can worry about the infrastructure,” he said. “We can do the launch. We can build the satellite buses that can get you to Mars much more frequently, that don’t cost billions of dollars. We can take a zero, and over time, maybe two zeros off of that. And if the governments around the world leave that to the commercial side, then there are a lot more resources that are freed up for the science side, for the national prestige side, and those types of things.”

The bottom line

Limp followed these comments with a dose of realism you don’t often hear from space industry executives. While there’s a growing list of commercially viable markets in space (things like Starlink and satellite servicing wouldn’t have been money-makers 20 years ago), the market for human spaceflight still requires some level of government commitment.

“I think the thing about bringing commercial aspects to exploration, to science, to the Moon, to Mars, is that we have to see a business prospect for it,” Limp said. “We have to turn it into a business, and that benefits American taxpayers because we will use that capital as efficiently as we can to get to the Moon, to get to Mars in a safe way, but in a way that’s the most efficient.

“We’re committed to that, no matter what the architecture looks like, but it does take the US government and international governments to have the motivation to do it,” he continued. “There’s not yet a commercial reason only to go to the Moon with humans. There are lots of commercial reasons to put robotics on the Moon and other types of things. So, we do need to have conviction that the Moon is important and Mars is important as well.”

Trump and Musk, an ally and advisor to the president, rekindled the question of Moon or Mars in a series of remarks during the early weeks of the new Trump administration. The Artemis Moon program began during the first Trump administration, with the goal of returning astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972. NASA would establish a sustained presence at the Moon, using our nearest planetary body as a proving ground for the next destination for humans in Solar System exploration: Mars.

Space industry rivals Jeff Bezos, second from left, and Elon Musk, second from right, inside the US Capitol for President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

SpaceX’s Starship, while capable of one day landing on the Moon, was designed for long-duration cruises to Mars. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon is tailored for lunar landings.

“As an American, I don’t want another Sputnik moment,” Limp said. “From my standpoint, getting boots on the Moon and setting the groundwork for permanence on the Moon is of national importance and urgency. Rest assured, Blue will do everything in its power to try to make that happen, but in a cost-effective way.”

NASA, please don’t leave us

Since retaking office in January, Trump has mentioned human missions to Mars multiple times, but not the Moon. Isaacman, who may be confirmed as NASA administrator by the Senate as soon as next week, told lawmakers in April that the agency should pursue human missions to the Moon and Mars simultaneously. The details of how that might work haven’t been released but could come out in the White House’s detailed budget proposal for fiscal-year 2026.

A blueprint of Trump’s spending proposal released May 2 includes a 25 percent cut to NASA’s overall budget, but the plan would provide additional money for human space exploration at the Moon and Mars. “The budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions,” the White House budget office wrote.

This part of the budget request is not controversial for industry leaders like Limp. On the other hand, the budget blueprint proposes slashing NASA’s space science budget by nearly $2.3 billion, Earth science by almost $1.2 billion, and space technology by $531 million.

While Limp didn’t directly address these budget proposals, these parts of NASA are largely focused on research projects that lack a commercial business case. Who else but a government space agency, or perhaps an especially generous type of philanthropic multi-billionaire, would pay to send a probe to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa? Or a robot to zip by Pluto? Or how about a mission like Landsat, which documents everything from water resources to farms and urban sprawl and makes its data freely available to anyone with an Internet connection?

Most experts agree there are better ways to do these things. Reusable rockets, mass-produced satellite platforms, and improved contracting practices can bring down the costs of these missions. Bezos’ long-term goal for Blue Origin, which is to move all polluting factories off the Earth and into space, will be easier to achieve with government support, not just funding, Limp said.

“Getting up there, building factories on the Moon is a great step, and the government can really help with research dollars around that,” he said. “But it still does need the labs. The science missions need the JPLs [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] of the world. To make the human experience right, we need the Johnson Space Centers of the world to be able to kind of use that gold mine of institutional knowledge.

“I would say, and it might be a little provocative, let’s have those smart brains look on the forward-thinking types of things, the really edge of science, planning the really exotic missions, figuring out how to get to planetary bodies we haven’t gotten to before, and staying there,” Limp said.

Mark it down

For the first decade after Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, the company operated under the radar and seemed to move at a glacial pace. It launched its first small rocket in 2006 to an altitude of less than 300 feet and reached space with the suborbital New Shepard booster in 2015. Blue Origin finally reached orbit in January of this year on the debut test flight of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. Meanwhile, Blue Origin inked a deal with United Launch Alliance to supply a version of its New Glenn main engine to power that company’s Vulcan rocket.

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK1 lander, seen in the center, is taller than NASA’s Apollo lunar lander, currently the largest spacecraft to have landed on the Moon. Blue Moon MK2 is even larger, but all three landers are dwarfed in size by SpaceX’s Starship, NASA’s other Artemis lunar lander. Credit: Blue Origin

The next big mission for Blue Origin will be the first flight of its Blue Moon lander. The first version of Blue Moon, called MK1, will launch on a New Glenn rocket later this year and attempt to become the largest spacecraft to ever land on the Moon. This demonstration, without anyone onboard, is fully funded by Blue Origin, Limp said.

A future human-rated version, called MK2, is under development with the assistance of NASA. It will be larger and will require refueling to reach the lunar surface. Blue Moon MK1 can make a landing on one tank.

These are tangible achievements that would be the envy of any space industry startup not named SpaceX. But Musk’s rocket company left Blue Origin in the dust as it broke launch industry records repeatedly and began delivering NASA astronauts to the International Space Station in 2020. My colleague, Eric Berger, wrote a story in January describing Blue Origin’s culture. For much of its existence, one former employee said, Blue Origin had “zero incentive” to operate like SpaceX.

To ensure he would be in lock-step with his boss, Limp felt he had to ask a question that was on the minds of many industry insiders. He got the answer he wanted.

“The only question I really asked Jeff when I was talking about taking this job was, ‘What do you want Blue to be? Is it a hobby, or is it a business?'” Limp said. “And he had the right answer, which is, it’s a business, because I don’t know how to run a hobby, and I don’t think it’s sustainable.”

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

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Rocket Report: The pitfalls of rideshare; China launches next Tiangong crew

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This week, engineers ground-tested upgrades for Blue Origin’s New Glenn and Europe’s Ariane 6.

A Long March 2F carrier rocket, carrying the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft and a crew of three astronauts, lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on April 24, 2025. Credit: Photo by Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 7.41 of the Rocket Report! NASA and its contractors at Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue building a new mobile launch tower for the Space Launch System Block 1B rocket, a taller, upgraded version of the SLS rocket being used for the agency’s initial Artemis lunar missions. Workers stacked another segment of the tower a couple of weeks ago, and the structure is inching closer to its full height of 355 feet (108 meters). But this is just the start. Once the tower is fully assembled, it must be outfitted with miles of cabling, tubing, and piping and then be tested before it can support an SLS launch campaign. Last year, NASA’s inspector general projected the tower won’t be ready for a launch until the spring of 2029, and its costs could reach $2.7 billion. The good news, if you can call it that, is that there probably won’t be an SLS Block 1B rocket that needs to use it in 2029, whether it’s due to delays or cancellation.

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.

Fresh details on Astra’s strategic pivot. Astra, the once high-flying rocket startup that crashed back to Earth with investors before going private last year, has unveiled new details about its $44 million contract with the Department of Defense, Space News reports. The DOD contract announced last year supports the development of Rocket 4, a two-stage, mobile launch vehicle with ambitions to deliver cargo across the globe in under an hour. While Astra’s ill-fated Rocket 3 focused on launching small satellites into low-Earth orbit, Astra wants to make Rocket 4 a military utility vehicle. Rocket 4 will still be able to loft conventional satellites, but Astra’s most lucrative contract for the new launch vehicle involves using the rocket for precise point-to-point delivery of up to 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of supplies from orbit via specialized reentry vehicles. The military has shown interest in developing a rocket-based rapid global cargo delivery system for several years, and it has a contract with SpaceX to study how the much larger Starship rocket could do a similar job.

Back from the brink… The Alameda, California-based company, which was delisted from Nasdaq in June 2024 after its shares collapsed, is now targeting the first test flight of Rocket 4 in 2026. Astra’s arrangement with the Defense Innovation Unit includes two milestones: one suborbital (point-to-point) and the other orbital, with the option to launch from a location outside the United States, as Astra is developing a mobile launcher. Chris Kemp, Astra’s co-founder and CEO, told Space News the orbital launch will likely originate from Australia. Astra’s first launches with the new-retired Rocket 3 vehicle were based in Alaska and Florida.

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The Army has a catchy name for its newest weapon. The Long Range Hypersonic Weapon has a new name: Dark Eagle. The US Army announced the popular name for the service’s quick strike missile this week. “Part of the name pays tribute to the eagle—a master hunter known for its speed, stealth and agility—due to the LRHW’s combination of velocity, accuracy, maneuverability, survivability and versatility,” the Army said in a press release. “In addition, the bald eagle—our national bird—represents independence, strength, and freedom.” The Dark Eagle is designed to strike targets with little or no warning via a hypersonic glide vehicle capable of maneuvering in the upper atmosphere after an initial launch with a conventional missile. The hypersonic weapon’s ability to overcome an adversary’s air and missile defenses is embodied in the word “dark” in Dark Eagle, the Army said.

Flying again soon… The Army tested the hypersonic weapon’s “all-up round” during a missile launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in December. The test was delayed more than a year due to unspecified issues. The Army appears to be preparing for another Dark Eagle test from Florida’s Space Coast as soon as Friday, according to airspace and maritime warning notices in the Atlantic Ocean. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Northrop’s niche with Minotaur. Ars mentioned in last week’s Rocket Report that Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur IV rocket launched April 16 with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. This was the first Minotaur IV launch in nearly five years and the first orbital Minotaur launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, in 14 years. The low-volume Minotaur IV uses solid rocket motors from the Air Force’s stockpile of retired Peacekeeper ballistic missiles, turning part of a weapon of mass destruction into, in this case, a tool to support the US government’s spy satellite agency. The Minotaur IV’s lift capability fits neatly between the capacity of smaller commercial rockets, like Firefly’s Alpha or Rocket Lab’s Electron, and larger rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The most recent Minotaur IV launch contract cost the Space Force roughly $30 million, more than a mission with Firefly but less than a dedicated ride on a Falcon 9.

Minotaur IV will keep flying… The Space Force has at least two more missions reserved to launch on the expendable Minotaur IV rocket. One of the missions will launch multiple small satellites for the US military’s Space Test Program, and the other will place a military weather satellite into orbit. Both missions will launch from California, with planning launch dates in 2026, a Space Systems Command spokesperson told Ars. “We do have multiple launches planned using Minotaur family launch vehicles between our OSP-4 (Orbital/Suborbital Program) and SRP-4 (Sounding Rocket Program) contracts,” the spokesperson said. “We will release more information on those missions as we get closer to launch.” The Commercial Space Act of 1998 prohibits the use of surplus ICBM motors for commercial launches and limits their use to only specific kinds of military launches. The restrictions were intended to encourage NASA and commercial satellite operators to use privately developed launch vehicles.

NASA’s launch prices have somehow gone up. In an era of reusable rockets and near-daily access to space, NASA is still paying more than it did 30 years ago to launch missions into orbit, according to a study soon to be published in the scientific journal Acta Astronautica. Adjusted for inflation, the prices NASA pays for launch services rose at an annual average rate of 2.82 percent from 1996 to 2024, the report says. “Furthermore, there is no evidence of shift in the launch service costs trend after the introduction of a new launch service provider [SpaceX] in 2016.” Ars analyzed NASA’s launch prices in a story published Thursday.

Why is this? … One might think SpaceX’s reuse of Falcon 9 rocket components would drive down launch prices, but no. Rocket reuse and economies of scale have significantly reduced SpaceX’s launch costs, but the company is charging NASA roughly the same as it did before booster reuse became commonplace. There are a few reasons this is happening. One is that SpaceX hasn’t faced any meaningful competition for NASA launch contracts in the last six years. That should change soon with the recent debuts of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher. NASA levies additional requirements on its commercial launch providers, and the agency must pay for them. These include schedule priority, engineering oversight, and sometimes special payload cleanliness requirements and the choice of a particular Falcon 9 booster from SpaceX’s inventory.

What’s holding up ULA’s next launch? After poor weather forced ULA to scrub a launch attempt on April 9, the company will have to wait nearly three weeks for another try to launch an Atlas V rocket with Amazon’s first full-up load of 27 Kuiper broadband satellites, Ars reports. The rocket and satellites are healthy, according to ULA. But the military-run Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, is unable to accommodate ULA until Monday, April 28. The Space Force is being unusually cagey about the reasons for the lengthy delay, which isn’t affecting SpaceX launches to the same degree.

Finally, a theory… The publishing of airspace and maritime warning notices for an apparent test launch of the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, or Dark Eagle, might explain the range’s unavailability. The test launch could happen as soon as Friday, and offshore keep-out zones cover wide swaths of the Atlantic Ocean. If this is the reason for the long Atlas V launch delay, we still have questions. If this launch is scheduled for Friday, why has it kept ULA from launching the last few weeks? Why was SpaceX permitted to launch multiple times in the same time period? And why didn’t the first test flight of the Dark Eagle missile in December result in similar lengthy launch delays on the Eastern Range?

Shenzhou 20 bound for Tiangong. A spaceship carrying three astronauts docked Thursday with China’s space station in the latest crew rotation, approximately six hours after their launch on a Long March 2F rocket from the Gobi Desert, the Associated Press reports. The Shenzhou 20 mission is commanded by Chen Dong, who is making his third flight. He is accompanied by fighter pilot Chen Zhongrui and engineer Wang Jie, both making their maiden voyages. They will replace three astronauts currently on the Chinese Tiangong space station. Like those before them, they will stay on board for roughly six months.

Finding a rhythm… China’s human spaceflight missions have launched like clockwork since the country’s first domestic astronaut launch in 2003. Now, with the Tiangong space station fully operational, China is launching fresh crews at six-month intervals. While in space, the astronauts will conduct experiments in medical science and new technologies and perform spacewalks to carry out maintenance and install new equipment. Their tasks will include adding space debris shielding to the exterior of the Tiangong station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX resupplies the ISS. SpaceX launched an uncrewed Cargo Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station early Monday on a resupply mission with increased importance after a transportation mishap derailed a flight by another US cargo ship, Spaceflight Now reports. The Dragon cargo vessel docked at the space station early Tuesday with 4,780 pounds (2,168 kilograms) of pressurized cargo and 1,653 pounds (750 kilograms) of unpressurized payloads in the vehicle’s trunk. NASA adjusted the Dragon spacecraft’s payload because an upcoming flight by Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply freighter was canceled after the Cygnus cargo module was damaged during transport to the launch site.

Something strange… The payloads aboard this Dragon cargo mission—the 32nd by SpaceX—include normal things like fresh food (exactly 1,262 tortillas), biomedical and pharmaceutical experiments, and the technical demonstration of a new atomic clock. However, there’s something onboard nobody at NASA or SpaceX wants to talk about. A payload package named STP-H10 inside Dragon’s trunk section will be installed on a mounting post outside of the space station to perform a mission for the US military’s Space Test Program. STP-H10 wasn’t mentioned in NASA’s press kit for this mission, and SpaceX didn’t show the usual views of Dragon’s trunk when the spacecraft deployed from its Falcon 9 rocket shortly after launch. These kinds of Space Test Program experiment platforms have launched to the ISS before without any secrecy. Stranger still is the fact that the STP-H10 experiments are unclassified. You can see the list here. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

There are some drawbacks to rideshare. SpaceX launched its third “Bandwagon” rideshare mission into a mid-inclination orbit Monday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Space News reports. The payloads included a South Korean military radar spy satellite, a small commercial weather satellite, and the most interesting payload: an experimental reentry vehicle from a German startup named Atmos Space Cargo. The startup’s Phoenix vehicle, fitted with an inflatable heat shield, separated from the Falcon 9’s upper stage about 90 minutes after liftoff. Roughly a half-hour later, it began reentry for a splashdown in the South Atlantic Ocean, about 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) off the coast of Brazil. Until last month, the Phoenix vehicle was supposed to reenter over the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar, near the island of Réunion. The late change to the mission’s trajectory meant Atmos could not recover the spacecraft after splashdown.

Changes in longitude… Five weeks before the launch, SpaceX informed Atmos of a change in trajectory because of “operational constraints” of the primary payload, a South Korean reconnaissance satellite. Smaller payloads on rideshare launches benefit from lower launch prices, but their owners have no control over the schedule or trajectory of the launch. The change for this mission resulted in a splashdown well off the coast of Brazil, ruling out any attempt to recover Phoenix after splashdown. It also meant a steeper reentry than previously planned, creating higher loads on the spacecraft. The company lined up new ground stations in South America to communicate with the spacecraft during key phases of flight leading up to reentry. In addition, it chartered a plane to attempt to collect data during reentry, but the splashdown location was beyond the range of the aircraft. Some data suggests that the heat shield inflated as planned, but Atmos’s CEO said the company needed more time to analyze the data it had, adding that it was “very difficult” to get data from Phoenix in the final phases of its flight, given its distance from ground stations.

Ariane 6 is gonna need a bigger booster. A qualification motor for an upgraded solid rocket booster for Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket successfully fired up for the first time on a test stand Thursday in Kourou, French Guiana, according to the European Space Agency. The new P160C solid rocket motor burned for more than two minutes, and ESA declared the test-firing a success. ESA’s member states approved the development of the P160C motor in 2022. The upgraded motor is about 3 feet (1 meter) longer than the P120C motor currently flying on the Ariane 6 rocket and carries about 31,000 pounds (14 metric tons) more solid propellant. The Ariane 6 rocket can fly with two or four of these strap-on boosters. Officials plan to introduce the P160C on Ariane 6 flights next year, giving the rocket’s heaviest version the ability to haul up to 4,400 pounds (2 metric tons) of additional cargo mass to orbit.

A necessary change… The heavier P160C solid rocket motor is required for Arianespace to fulfill its multi-mission launch contract with Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellite broadband network. Alongside similar contracts with ULA and Blue Origin, Amazon reserved 18 Kuiper launches on Ariane 6 rockets, and 16 of them must use the upgraded P160C booster to deliver additional Kuiper satellites to orbit. The P160C is a joint project between ArianeGroup and Avio, which will use the same motor design on Europe’s smaller Vega C rocket to improve its performance. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Progress toward the second flight of New Glenn. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said his team completed a full-duration 15-second hot-fire test Thursday of the upper stage for the company’s second New Glenn rocket. In a post on X, Limp wrote that the upper stage for the next New Glenn flight will have “enhanced performance.” The maximum power of its hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engine will increase from 173,000 pounds to 175,000 pounds of thrust. Two BE-3U engines fly on New Glenn’s second stage.

A good engine… The BE-3U engine is a derivative of the BE-3 engine flying on Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. Limp wrote that the upper stage on the first New Glenn launch in January “performed remarkably” and achieved an orbital injection with less than 1 percent deviation from its target. So when will New Glenn launch again? We’ve heard late spring, June, or October, depending on the source. I’ll note that Blue Origin test-fired the New Glenn upper stage for the rocket’s first flight about four months before it launched.

Next three launches

April 27: Alpha | “Message in a Booster” | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13: 37 UTC

April 27: Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China | 15: 55 UTC

April 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-9 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 20: 55 UTC

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

Rocket Report: The pitfalls of rideshare; China launches next Tiangong crew Read More »

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Reusable rockets are here, so why is NASA paying more to launch stuff to space?

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• 1998: Deep Space 1 — Delta II rocket — $86 million

• 1999: Mars Polar Lander — Delta II rocket — $88 million

• 2001: Mars Odyssey — Delta II rocket — $96 million

• 2003: Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers — two Delta II rockets — $87 million per launch

• 2004: Swift — Delta II rocket — $90 million

• 2005: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — Atlas V rocket — $147 million

• 2007: Phoenix Mars lander — Delta II rocket — $132 million

Launch prices for NASA missions soared after the late 2000s, following the creation of United Launch Alliance through a merger of the Atlas and Delta rocket programs developed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The merger eliminated competition for most of NASA’s launch contracts until SpaceX’s Falcon 9 became available for NASA science missions in the mid-2010s. Here’s a sample of missions as examples of the rising costs, with contract values adjusted for inflation from the time of their award to reflect 2025 dollars:

• 2009: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter — Atlas V rocket — $220 million

• 2012: Radiation Belt Storm Probes — Atlas V rocket — $226 million (averaged from a bulk buy)

• 2014: Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 — Delta II rocket — $191 million (averaged from a bulk buy)

• 2016: OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission — Atlas V rocket — $252 million

• 2017: TDRS-M data relay satellite — Atlas V rocket — $179 million

• 2017: JPSS-2 weather satellite — Atlas V rocket — $224 million

• 2018: InSight Mars lander — Atlas V rocket — $220 million

• 2018: ICESAT-2 — Delta II rocket — $134 million

Again, the missions listed above would likely launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets if NASA awarded these contracts today. So, how do SpaceX’s more recent Falcon 9 prices compare? Let’s take a look. These contract values are adjusted for inflation from the time of their award to reflect 2025 dollars:

• 2016: Jason 3 oceanography satellite — Falcon 9 rocket — $114 million

• 2018: Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite — Falcon 9 rocket — $118 million

• 2020: Sentinel-6A — Falcon 9 rocket — $126 million

• 2021: Double Asteroid Redirection Test — Falcon 9 rocket — $86 million

• 2021: Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer — Falcon 9 rocket — $62 million

• 2022: Surface Water and Ocean Topography — Falcon 9 rocket — $148 million

• 2024: PACE Earth sciences mission — Falcon 9 rocket — $99 million

• 2025: SPHEREx astronomy mission — Falcon 9 rocket — $99 million

And here are a few future launches NASA has booked to fly on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Some of these contracts were awarded in the last 12 months, and those have not been adjusted for inflation. The others reflect 2025 dollars:

• 2025: Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe — Falcon 9 rocket — $134 million

• 2025: Sentinel-6B — Falcon 9 rocket — $101 million

• 2027: NEO Surveyor — Falcon 9 rocket — $100 million

• 2027: JPSS-4 weather satellite — Falcon 9 rocket — $113 million

• 2027: Compton Spectrometer and Imager — Falcon 9 rocket — $69 million

There are a few other things worth noting when we chart NASA’s launch prices. One is that SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, used for NASA’s heaviest missions, costs more than a Falcon 9 rocket. For example, two identical weather satellites launched in 2022 and 2024 on ULA’s Atlas V and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for $207 million and $178 million, respectively, again adjusted for inflation.

Reusable rockets are here, so why is NASA paying more to launch stuff to space? Read More »

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Rocket Report: “No man’s land” in rocket wars; Isaacman lukewarm on SLS

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China’s approach to space junk is worrisome as it begins launching its own megaconstellations.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rolls to its launch pad in Florida in preparation for liftoff with 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 7.39 of the Rocket Report! Not getting your launch fix? Buckle up. We’re on the cusp of a boom in rocket launches as three new megaconstellations have either just begun or will soon begin deploying thousands of satellites to enable broadband connectivity from space. If the megaconstellations come to fruition, this will require more than a thousand launches in the next few years, on top of SpaceX’s blistering Starlink launch cadence. We discuss the topic of megaconstellations in this week’s Rocket Report.

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.

So, what is SpinLaunch doing now? Ars Technica has mentioned SpinLaunch, the company that literally wants to yeet satellites into space, in previous Rocket Report newsletters. This company enjoyed some success in raising money for its so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea of catapulting rockets and satellites into the sky, a concept SpinLaunch calls “kinetic launch.” But SpinLaunch is now making a hard pivot to small satellites, a move that, on its face, seems puzzling after going all-in on kinetic launch and even performing several impressive hardware tests, throwing a projectile to altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. Ars got the scoop, with the company’s CEO detailing why and how it plans to build a low-Earth orbit telecommunications constellation with 280 satellites.

Traditional versus kinetic … The planned constellation, named Meridian, is an opportunity for SpinLaunch to diversify away from being solely a launch company, according to David Wrenn, the company’s CEO. We’ve observed this in a number of companies that started out as rocket developers before branching out to satellite manufacturing or space services. Wrenn said SpinLaunch could loft all of the Meridian satellites on a single large conventional rocket, or perhaps two medium-lift rockets, and then maintain the constellation with its own kinetic launch system. A satellite communications network presents a better opportunity for profit, Wrenn said. “The launch market is relatively small compared to the economic potential of satellite communication,” he said. “Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center. Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry.”

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Peter Beck suggests Electron is here to stay. The conventional wisdom is that the small launch vehicle business isn’t a big moneymaker. There is really only one company, Rocket Lab, that has gained traction in selling dedicated rides to orbit for small satellites. Rocket Lab’s launcher, Electron, can place payloads of up to a few hundred pounds into orbit. As soon as Rocket Lab had some success, SpaceX began launching rideshare missions on its much larger Falcon 9 rocket, cobbling together dozens of satellites on a single vehicle to spread the cost of the mission among many customers. This offers customers a lower price point than buying a dedicated launch on Electron. But Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, says his company has found a successful market providing dedicated launches for small satellites, despite price pressure from SpaceX, Space News reports. “Dedicated small launch is a real market, and it should not be confused with rideshare,” he argued. “It’s totally different.”

No man’s land … Some small satellite companies that can afford the extra cost of a dedicated launch realize the value of controlling their schedule and orbit, traits that a dedicated launch offers over a rideshare, Beck said. It’s easy to blame SpaceX for undercutting the prices of Rocket Lab and other players in this segment of the launch business, but Beck said companies that have failed or withdrawn from the small launch market didn’t have a good business plan, a good product, or good engineering. He added that the capacity of the Electron vehicle is well-suited for dedicated launch, whereas slightly larger rockets in the one-ton-to-orbit class—a category that includes Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha and Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rockets—are an ill fit. The one-ton performance range is “no man’s land” in the market, Beck said. “It’s too small to be a useful rideshare mission, and it’s too big to be a useful dedicated rocket” for smallsats. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

ULA scrubs first full-on Kuiper launch. A band of offshore thunderstorms near Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday night forced United Launch Alliance to scrub a launch attempt of the first of dozens of missions on behalf of its largest commercial customer, Amazon, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission will use an Atlas V rocket to deploy 27 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper network. It’s the first launch of what will eventually be more than 3,200 operational Kuiper satellites beaming broadband connectivity from space, a market currently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink. As of Thursday, ULA hadn’t confirmed a new launch date, but airspace warning notices released by the FAA suggest the next attempt might occur Monday, April 14.

What’s a few more days? … This mission has been a long time coming. Amazon announced the Kuiper megaconstellation in 2019, and the company says it’s investing at least $10 billion in the project (the real number may be double that). Problems in manufacturing the Kuiper satellites, which Amazon is building in-house, delayed the program’s first full-on launch by a couple of years. Amazon launched a pair of prototype satellites in 2023, but the operational versions are different, and this mission fills the capacity of ULA’s Atlas V rocket. Amazon has booked more than 80 launches with ULA, Arianespace, Blue Origin, and SpaceX to populate the Kuiper network. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Space Force swaps ULA for SpaceX. For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance’s launch schedule, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, which oversees the military’s launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force’s fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world. The move allows the GPS satellite to launch as soon as the end of May, the Space Force said. The military executed a similar rocket swap for a GPS mission that launched on a Falcon 9 in December.

Making ULA whole … The Space Force formally certified ULA’s Vulcan rocket for national security missions last month, so Vulcan may finally be on the cusp of delivering for the military. But there are several military payloads in the queue to launch on Vulcan before GPS III SV-08, which was already completed and in storage at its Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. Meanwhile, SpaceX is regularly launching Falcon 9 rockets with ample capacity to add the GPS mission to the manifest. In exchange for losing the contract to launch this particular GPS satellite, the Space Force swapped a future GPS mission that was assigned to SpaceX to fly on ULA’s Vulcan instead.

Russia launches a former Navy SEAL to space. Jonny Kim, a former Navy SEAL, Harvard Medical School graduate, and now a NASA astronaut, blasted off with two cosmonaut crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket early Tuesday, CBS News reports. Three hours later, Kim and his Russian crewmates—Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky—chased down the International Space Station and moved in for a picture-perfect docking aboard their Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft. “It was the trip of a lifetime and an honor to be here,” Kim told flight controllers during a traditional post-docking video conference.

Rotating back to Earth … Ryzhikov, Zubritsky, and Kim joined a crew of seven living aboard the International Space Station, temporarily raising the lab’s crew complement to 10 people. The new station residents are replacing an outgoing Soyuz crew—Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Wagner, and Don Pettit—who launched to the ISS last September and who plan to return to Earth aboard their own spacecraft April 19 to wrap up a 219-day stay in space. This flight continues the practice of launching US astronauts on Russian Soyuz missions, part of a barter agreement between NASA and the Russian space agency that also reserves a seat on SpaceX Dragon missions for Russian cosmonauts.

China is littering in LEO. China’s construction of a pair of communications megaconstellations could cloud low Earth orbit with large spent rocket stages for decades or beyond, Space News reports. Launches for the government’s Guowang and Shanghai-backed but more commercially oriented Qianfan (Thousand Sails) constellation began in the second half of 2024, with each planned to consist of over 10,000 satellites, demanding more than a thousand launches in the coming years. Placing this number of satellites is enough to cause concern about space debris because China hasn’t disclosed its plans for removing the spacecraft from orbit at the end of their missions. It turns out there’s another big worry: upper stages.

An orbital time bomb … While Western launch providers typically deorbit their upper stages after dropping off megaconstellation satellites in space, China does not. This means China is leaving rockets in orbits high enough to persist in space for more than a century, according to Jim Shell, a space domain awareness and orbital debris expert at Novarum Tech. Space News reported on Shell’s commentary in a social media post, where he wrote that orbital debris mass in low-Earth orbit “will be dominated by PRC [People’s Republic of China] upper stages in short order unless something changes (sigh).” So far, China has launched five dedicated missions to deliver 90 Qianfan satellites into orbit. Four of these missions used China’s Long March 6A rocket, with an upper stage that has a history of breaking up in orbit, exacerbating the space debris problem. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX wins another lunar lander launch deal. Intuitive Machines has selected a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch a lunar delivery mission scheduled for 2027, the Houston Chronicle reports. The upcoming IM-4 mission will carry six NASA payloads, including a European Space Agency-led drill suite designed to search for water at the lunar south pole. It will also include the launch of two lunar data relay satellites that support NASA’s so-called Near Space Network Services program. This will be the fourth lunar lander mission for Houston-based Intuitive Machines under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Falcon 9 has the inside track … SpaceX almost certainly offered Intuitive Machines the best deal for this launch. The flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket is reliable and inexpensive compared to competitors and has already launched two Intuitive Machines missions, with a third one set to fly late this year. However, there’s another factor that made SpaceX a shoe-in for this contract. SpaceX has outfitted one of its launch pads in Florida with a unique cryogenic loading system to pump liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the Intuitive Machines lunar lander as it sits on top of its rocket just before liftoff. The lander from Intuitive Machines uses these super-cold propellants to feed its main engine, and SpaceX’s infrastructure for loading it makes the Falcon 9 rocket the clear choice for launching it.

Time may finally be running out for SLS. Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, said Wednesday in a Senate confirmation hearing that he wants the space agency to pursue human missions to the Moon and Mars at the same time, an effort that will undoubtedly require major changes to how NASA spends its money. My colleague Eric Berger was in Washington for the hearing and reported on it for Ars. Senators repeatedly sought Isaacman’s opinion on the Space Launch System, the NASA heavy-lifter designed to send astronauts to the Moon. The next SLS mission, Artemis II, is slated to launch a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon next year. NASA’s official plans call for the Artemis III mission to launch on an SLS rocket later this decade and attempt a landing at the Moon’s south pole.

Limited runway … Isaacman sounded as if he were on board with flying the Artemis II mission as envisioned—no surprise, then, that the four Artemis II astronauts were in the audience—and said he wanted to get a crew of Artemis III to the lunar surface as quickly as possible. But he questioned why it has taken NASA so long, and at such great expense, to get its deep space human exploration plans moving. In one notable exchange, Isaacman said NASA’s current architecture for the Artemis lunar plans, based on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, is probably not the ideal “long-term” solution to NASA’s deep space transportation plans. The smart reading of this is that Isaacman may be willing to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions as conceived, given that much of the hardware is already built. But everything that comes after this, including SLS rocket upgrades and the Lunar Gateway, could be on the chopping block.

Welcome to the club, Blue Origin. Finally, the Space Force has signaled it’s ready to trust Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, for launching the military’s most precious satellites, Ars reports. Blue Origin received a contract April 4 to launch seven national security missions for the Space Force between 2027 and 2032, an opening that could pave the way for more launch deals in the future. These missions will launch on Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, which had a successful debut test flight in January. The Space Force hasn’t certified New Glenn for national security launches, but military officials expect to do so sometime next year. Blue Origin joins SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in the Space Force’s mix of most-trusted launch providers.

A different class … The contract Blue Origin received last week covers launch services for the Space Force’s most critical space missions, requiring rocket certification and a heavy dose of military oversight to ensure reliability. Blue Origin was already eligible to launch a separate batch of missions the Space Force set aside to fly on newer rockets. The military is more tolerant of risk on these lower-priority missions, which include launches of “cookie cutter” satellites for the Pentagon’s large fleet of missile-tracking satellites and a range of experimental payloads.

Why is SpaceX winning so many Space Force contracts? In less than a week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk’s space company the Pentagon’s leading launch provider, replacing United Launch Alliance in top position. Then, the Space Force assigned the vast majority of this year’s most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX. As we mention earlier in the Rocket Report, the military also swapped a ULA rocket for a SpaceX launch vehicle for an upcoming GPS mission. So, is SpaceX’s main competitor worried Elon Musk is tipping the playing field for lucrative government contracts by cozying up to President Trump?

It’s all good, man … Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, doesn’t seem too worried in his public statements, Ars reports. In a roundtable with reporters this week at the annual Space Symposium conference in Colorado, Bruno was asked about Musk’s ties with Trump. “We have not been impacted by our competitor’s position advising the president, certainly not yet,” Bruno said. “I expect that the government will follow all the rules and be fair and follow all the laws, and so we’re behaving that way.” The reason Bruno can say Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration so far hasn’t affected ULA is simple. SpaceX is cheaper and has a ready-made line of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets available to launch the Pentagon’s satellites. ULA’s Vulcan rocket is now certified to launch military payloads, but it reached this important milestone years behind schedule.

Two Texas lawmakers are still fighting the last war. NASA has a lot to figure out in the next couple of years. Moon or Mars? Should, or when should, the Space Launch System be canceled? Can the agency absorb a potential 50 percent cut to its science budget? If Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz get their way, NASA can add moving a space shuttle to its list. The Lone Star State’s two Republican senators introduced the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” on Thursday, CollectSpace reports. If passed by Congress and signed into law, the bill would direct NASA to take the space shuttle Discovery from the national collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and transport it to Space Center Houston, a museum and visitor attraction next to Johnson Space Center, home to mission control and NASA’s astronaut training base. Discovery has been on display at the Smithsonian since 2012. NASA awarded museums in California, Florida, and New York the other three surviving shuttle orbiters.

Dollars and nonsense … Moving a space shuttle from Virginia to Texas would be a logistical nightmare, cost an untold amount of money, and would create a distraction for NASA when its focus should be on future space exploration. In a statement, Cruz said Houston deserves one of NASA’s space shuttles because of the city’s “unique relationship” to the program. Cornyn alleged in a statement that the Obama administration blocked Houston from receiving a space shuttle for political reasons. NASA’s inspector general found no evidence of this. On the contrary, transferring a space shuttle to Texas now would be an unequivocal example of political influence. The Boeing 747s that NASA used to move space shuttles across the country are no longer flightworthy, and NASA scrapped the handling equipment needed to prepare a shuttle for transport. Moving the shuttle by land or sea would come with its own challenges. “I can easily see this costing a billion dollars,” Dennis Jenkins, a former shuttle engineer who directed NASA’s shuttle transition and retirement program more than a decade ago, told CollectSpace in an interview. On a personal note, the presentation of Discovery at the Smithsonian is remarkable to see in person, with aerospace icons like the Concorde and the SR-71 spy plane under the same roof. Space Center Houston can’t match that.

Next three launches

April 12: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-17 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 01: 15 UTC

April 12: Falcon 9 | NROL-192 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 12: 17 UTC

April 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-73 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 59 UTC

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

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With new contracts, SpaceX will become the US military’s top launch provider

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The military’s stable of certified rockets will include Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, and New Glenn.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off on June 25, 2024, with a GOES weather satellite for NOAA. Credit: SpaceX

The US Space Force announced Friday it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin for $13.7 billion in contracts to deliver the Pentagon’s most critical military to orbit into the early 2030s.

These missions will launch the government’s heaviest national security satellites, like the National Reconnaissance Office’s large bus-sized spy platforms, and deploy them into bespoke orbits. These types of launches often demand heavy-lift rockets with long-duration upper stages that can cruise through space for six or more hours.

The contracts awarded Friday are part of the next phase of the military’s space launch program once dominated by United Launch Alliance, the 50-50 joint venture between legacy defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

After racking up a series of successful launches with its Falcon 9 rocket more than a decade ago, SpaceX sued the Air Force for the right to compete with ULA for the military’s most lucrative launch contracts. The Air Force relented in 2015 and allowed SpaceX to bid. Since then, SpaceX has won more than 40 percent of missions the Pentagon has ordered through the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, creating a relatively stable duopoly for the military’s launch needs.

The Space Force took over the responsibility for launch procurement from the Air Force after its creation in 2019. The next year, the Space Force signed another set of contracts with ULA and SpaceX for missions the military would order from 2020 through 2024. ULA’s new Vulcan rocket initially won 60 percent of these missions—known as NSSL Phase 2—but the Space Force reallocated a handful of launches to SpaceX after ULA encountered delays with Vulcan.

ULA’s Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets will launch the remaining 42 Phase 2 missions over the next several years, then move on to Phase 3, which the Space Force announced Friday.

Spreading the wealth

This next round of Space Force launch contracts will flip the script, with SpaceX taking the lion’s share of the missions. The breakdown of the military’s new firm fixed-price launch agreements goes like this:

  • SpaceX will get 28 missions worth approximately $5.9 billion
  • ULA will get 19 missions worth approximately $5.4 billion
  • Blue Origin will get seven missions worth approximately

That equates to a 60-40 split between SpaceX and ULA for the bulk of the missions. Going into the competition, military officials set aside seven additional missions to launch with a third provider, allowing a new player to gain a foothold in the market. The Space Force reserves the right to reapportion missions between the three providers if one of them runs into trouble.

The Pentagon confirmed an unnamed fourth company also submitted a proposal, but wasn’t selected for Phase 3.

Rounded to the nearest million, the contract with SpaceX averages out to $212 million per launch. For ULA, it’s $282 million, and Blue Origin’s price is $341 million per launch. But take these numbers with caution. The contracts include a lot of bells and whistles, pricing them higher than what a commercial customer might pay.

According to the Pentagon, the contracts provide “launch services, mission unique services, mission acceleration, quick reaction/anomaly resolution, special studies, launch service support, fleet surveillance, and early integration studies/mission analysis.”

Essentially, the Space Force is paying a premium to all three launch providers for schedule priority, tailored solutions, and access to data from every flight of each company’s rocket, among other things.

New Glenn lifts off on its debut flight. Credit: Blue Origin

“Winning 60% percent of the missions may sound generous, but the reality is that all SpaceX competitors combined cannot currently deliver the other 40%!,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, posted on X. “I hope they succeed, but they aren’t there yet.”

This is true if you look at each company’s flight rate. SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets 140 times over the last 365 days. These are the flight-proven rockets SpaceX will use for its share of Space Force missions.

ULA has logged four missions in the same period, but just one with the Vulcan rocket it will use for future Space Force launches. And Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, launched the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket on its first test flight in January.

“We are proud that we have launched 100 national security space missions and honored to continue serving the nation with our new Vulcan rocket,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, in a statement.

ULA used the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets for most of the missions it has launched for the Pentagon. The Delta IV rocket family is now retired, and ULA will end production of the Atlas V rocket later this year. Now, ULA’s Vulcan rocket will take over as the company’s sole launch vehicle to serve the Pentagon. ULA aims to eventually ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence to fly up to 25 times per year.

After two successful test flights, the Space Force formally certified the Vulcan rocket last week, clearing the way for ULA to start using it for military missions in the coming months. While SpaceX has a clear advantage in number of launches, schedule assurance, and pricing—and reliability comparable to ULA—Bruno has recently touted the Vulcan rocket’s ability to maneuver over long periods in space as a differentiator.

“This award constitutes the most complex missions required for national security space,” Bruno said in a ULA press release. “Vulcan continues to use the world’s highest energy upper stage: the Centaur V. Centaur V’s unmatched flexibility and extreme endurance enables the most complex orbital insertions continuing to advance our nation’s capabilities in space.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn must fly at least one more successful mission before the Space Force will certify it for Lane 2 missions. The selection of Blue Origin on Friday suggests military officials believe New Glenn is on track for certification by late 2026.

“Honored to serve additional national security missions in the coming years and contribute to our nation’s assured access to space,” Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, wrote on X. “This is a great endorsement of New Glenn’s capabilities, and we are committed to meeting the heavy lift needs of our US DoD and intelligence agency customers.”

Navigating NSSL

There’s something you must understand about the way the military buys launch services. For this round of competition, the Space Force divided the NSSL program into two lanes.

Friday’s announcement covers Lane 2 for traditional military satellites that operate thousands of miles above the Earth. This bucket includes things like GPS navigation satellites, NRO surveillance and eavesdropping platforms, and strategic communications satellites built to survive a nuclear war. The Space Force has a low tolerance for failure with these missions. Therefore, the military requires rockets be certified before they can launch big-ticket satellites, each of which often cost hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

The Space Force required all Lane 2 bidders to show their rockets could reach nine “reference orbits” with payloads of a specified mass. Some of the orbits are difficult to reach, requiring technology that only SpaceX and ULA have demonstrated in the United States. Blue Origin plans to do so on a future flight.

This image shows what the Space Force’s fleet of missile warning and missile tracking satellites might look like in 2030, with a mix of platforms in geosynchronous orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit. The higher orbits will require launches by “Lane 2” providers. Credit: Space Systems Command

The military projects to order 54 launches in Lane 2 from this year through 2029, with announcements each October of exactly which missions will go to each launch provider. This year, it will be just SpaceX and ULA. The Space Force said Blue Origin won’t be eligible for firm orders until next year. The missions would launch between 2027 and 2032.

“America leads the world in space launch, and through these NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 contracts, we will ensure continued access to this vital domain,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. “These awards bolster our ability to launch critical defense satellites while strengthening our industrial base and enhancing operational readiness.”

Lane 1 is primarily for missions to low-Earth orbit. These payloads include tech demos, experimental missions, and the military’s mega-constellation of missile tracking and data relay satellites managed by the Space Development Agency. For Lane 1 missions, the Space Force won’t levy the burdensome certification and oversight requirements it has long employed for national security launches. The Pentagon is willing to accept more risk with Lane 1, encompassing at least 30 missions through the end of the 2020s, in an effort to broaden the military’s portfolio of launch providers and boost competition.

Last June, Space Systems Command chose SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin for eligibility to compete for Lane 1 missions. SpaceX won all nine of the first batch of Lane 1 missions put up for bids. The military recently added Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket and Stoke Space’s Nova rocket to the Lane 1 mix. Neither of those rockets have flown, and they will need at least one successful launch before approval to fly military payloads.

The Space Force has separate contract mechanisms for the military’s smallest satellites, which typically launch on SpaceX rideshare missions or dedicated launches with companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace.

Military leaders like having all these options, and would like even more. If one launch provider or launch site is unavailable due to a technical problem—or, as some military officials now worry, an enemy attack—commanders want multiple backups in their toolkit. Market forces dictate that more competition should also lower prices.

“A robust and resilient space launch architecture is the foundation of both our economic prosperity and our national security,” said US Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. “National Security Space Launch isn’t just a program; it’s a strategic necessity that delivers the critical space capabilities our warfighters depend on to fight and win.”

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

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