Commercial space

Another setback for Firefly Aerospace’s beleaguered rocket program

alpha rocket, Commercial space, Firefly Aerospace, launch, Space, texas / Shannon Garcia / September 30, 2025

Alpha’s track record

The booster destroyed Monday was slated to fly on the seventh launch of Firefly’s Alpha rocket, an expendable, two-stage launch vehicle capable of placing a payload of a little over 2,200 pounds, or a metric ton, into low-Earth orbit.

This upcoming launch was supposed to be the Alpha rocket’s return to flight after an in-flight failure in April, when the upper stage’s engine shut down before the rocket could reach orbit and deploy its satellite payload.

But engineers traced the cause of the failure to the first stage, which ruptured milliseconds after stage separation, sending out a blast wave that damaged the upper stage engine. Investigators concluded the most likely cause of the rupture was thermal damage from a phenomenon known as plume-induced flow separation. This occurs when a rocket plume expands at higher altitudes, creating conditions that, in some cases, can draw the hot exhaust plume farther up the vehicle.

The Alpha rocket flew a higher angle of attack on the April launch than it did on prior missions, exposing one side of the rocket to more heating from the recirculated engine exhaust plume. At stage separation, the thermal damage led to the booster’s structural failure. Firefly said it would add a thicker thermal protection barrier to the booster for future missions and reduce the angle of attack during key phases of flight.

Firefly announced last month that it received clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume Alpha launches.

The rocket already had a mixed record heading into this year. Firefly has only achieved two fully successful missions in six launches of the Alpha rocket. Two missions put their payloads into off-target orbits, and two Alpha launches—the rocket’s debut in 2021 and the flight in April—failed to reach orbit at all.

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Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest ones

cape canaveral, Commercial space, Federal Aviation Administration, Kennedy Space Center, launch, methane, NASA, Space, space force, spacex, starship / Mike M. / September 20, 2025

Starship’s next chapter will involve launching over Florida and returning over Mexico.

SpaceX’s Starship vehicle is encased in plasma as it reenters the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on its most recent test flight in August. Credit: SpaceX

Some time 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. Unlike launches over the open ocean from Cape Canaveral, Florida, rockets departing from South Texas must follow a narrow corridor to steer clear of downrange land masses.

All 10 of the rocket’s test flights so far have launched from Texas toward splashdowns in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. On these trajectories, the rocket never completes a full orbit around the Earth, but instead flies an arcing path through space before gravity pulls it back into the atmosphere.

If Starship’s next two test flights go well, SpaceX will likely attempt to send the soon-to-debut third-generation version of the rocket all the way to low-Earth orbit. The Starship V3 vehicle will measure 171 feet (52.1 meters) tall, a few feet more than Starship’s current configuration. The entire rocket, including its Super Heavy booster, will have a height of 408 feet (124.4 meters).

Starship, made of stainless steel, is designed for full reusability. SpaceX has already recovered and reflown Super Heavy boosters, but won’t be ready to recover the rocket’s Starship upper stage until next year, at the soonest.

That’s one of the next major milestones in Starship’s development after achieving orbital flight. SpaceX will attempt to bring the ship home to be caught back at the launch site by the launch tower at Starbase, Texas, located on the southernmost section of the Texas Gulf Coast near the US-Mexico border.

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.

New maps published by the Federal Aviation Administration show where the first Starships returning to Texas may fly when they streak through the atmosphere.

Paths to and from orbit

The FAA released a document Friday describing SpaceX’s request to update its government license for additional Starship launch and reentry trajectories. The document is a draft version of a “tiered environmental assessment” examining the potential for significant environmental impacts from the new launch and reentry flight paths.

The federal regulator said it is evaluating potential impacts in aviation emissions and air quality, noise and noise-compatible land use, hazardous materials, and socioeconomics. The FAA concluded the new flight paths proposed by SpaceX would have “no significant impacts” in any of these categories.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket shortly before splashing into the Indian Ocean in August. Credit: SpaceX

The environmental review is just one of several factors the FAA considers when deciding whether to approve a new commercial launch or reentry license. According to the FAA, the other factors are public safety issues (such as overflight of populated areas and payload contents), national security or foreign policy concerns, and insurance requirements.

The FAA didn’t make a statement on any public safety and foreign policy concerns with SpaceX’s new trajectories, but both issues may come into play as the company seeks approval to fly Starship over Mexican towns and cities uprange from Starbase.

The regulator’s licensing rules state that a commercial launch and reentry should each pose no greater than a 1 in 10,000 chance of harming or killing a member of the public not involved in the mission. The risk to any individual should not exceed 1 in 1 million.

So, what’s the danger? If something on Starship fails, it could disintegrate in the atmosphere. Surviving debris would rain down to the ground, as it did over the Turks and Caicos Islands after two Starship launch failures earlier this year. Two other Starship flights ran into problems once in space, tumbling out of control and breaking apart during reentry over the Indian Ocean.

The most recent Starship flight last month was more successful, with the ship reaching its target in the Indian Ocean for a pinpoint splashdown. The splashdown had an error of just 3 meters (10 feet), giving SpaceX confidence in returning future Starships to land.

This map shows Starship’s proposed reentry corridor. Credit: Federal Aviation Administration

One way of minimizing the risk to the public is to avoid flying over large metropolitan areas, and that’s exactly what SpaceX and the FAA are proposing to do, at least for the initial attempts to bring Starship home from orbit. A map of a “notional” Starship reentry flight path shows the vehicle beginning its reentry over the Pacific Ocean, then passing over Baja California and soaring above 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. During the final segment of Starship’s return trajectory, the vehicle will begin a vertical descent over Starbase before a final landing burn to slow it down for the launch pad’s arms to catch it in midair.

In addition to Monterrey, the proposed flight path dodges overflights of major US cities like San Diego, Phoenix, and El Paso, Texas.

Let’s back up

Setting up for this reentry trajectory requires SpaceX to launch Starship into an orbit with exactly the right inclination, or angle to the equator. There are safety constraints for SpaceX and the FAA to consider here, too.

All of the Starship test flights to date have launched toward the east, threading between South Florida and Cuba, south of the Bahamas, and north of Puerto Rico before heading over the North Atlantic Ocean. For Starship to target just the right orbit to set up for reentry, the rocket must fly in a slightly different direction over the Gulf.

Another map released by the FAA shows two possible paths Starship could take. One of the options goes to the southeast between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, then directly over Jamaica as the rocket accelerated into orbit over the Caribbean Sea. The other would see Starship departing South Texas on a northeasterly path and crossing over North Florida before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.

While both trajectories fly over land, they avoid the largest cities situated near the flight path. For example, the southerly route misses Cancun, Mexico, and the northerly path flies between Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida. “Orbital launches would primarily be to low inclinations with flight trajectories north or south of Cuba that minimize land overflight,” the FAA wrote in its draft environmental assessment.

The FAA analyzed two launch trajectory options for future orbital Starship test flights. Credit: Federal Aviation Administration

The proposed launch and reentry trajectories would result in temporary airspace closures, the FAA said. This could force delays or rerouting of anywhere from seven to 400 commercial flights for each launch, according to the FAA’s assessment.

Launch airspace closures are already the norm for Starship test flights. The FAA concluded that the reentry path over Mexico would require the closure of a swath of airspace covering more than 4,200 miles. This would affect up to 200 more commercial airplane flights during each Starship mission. Eventually, the FAA aims to shrink the airspace closures as SpaceX demonstrates improved reliability with Starship test flights.

Eventually, SpaceX will move some flights of Starship to Florida’s Space Coast, where rockets can safely launch in many directions over the Atlantic. By then, SpaceX aims to be launching Starships at a regular cadence—first, multiple flights per month, then per week, and then per day.

This will enable all of the things SpaceX wants to do with Starship. Chief among these goals is to fly Starships to Mars. Before then, SpaceX must master orbital refueling. NASA also has a contract with SpaceX to build Starships to land astronauts on the Moon’s south pole.

But all of that assumes SpaceX can routinely launch and recover Starships. That’s what engineers hope to soon prove they can do.

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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A record supply load won’t reach the International Space Station as scheduled

Commercial space, Cygnus, human spaceflight, international space station, ng-23, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space / Beth Washington / September 17, 2025

The damage occurred during the shipment of the spacecraft’s pressurized cargo module from its manufacturer in Italy. While Northrop Grumman hopes to repair the module and launch it on a future flight, officials decided it would be quicker to move forward with the next spacecraft in line for launch this month.

This is the first flight of a larger model of the Cygnus spacecraft known as the Cygnus XL, measuring 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer, with the ability to carry 33 percent more cargo than the previous Cygnus spacecraft design. With this upgrade, this mission is carrying the heaviest load of supplies ever delivered to the ISS by a commercial cargo vehicle.

The main engine on the Cygnus spacecraft burns a mixture of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants. This mixture is hypergolic, meaning the propellants ignite upon contact with one another, a design heralded for its reliability. The spacecraft has a separate set of less powerful reaction control system thrusters normally used for small maneuvers, and for pointing the ship in the right direction as it makes its way to the ISS.

If the main engine is declared unusable, one possible option for getting around the main engine problem might be using these smaller thrusters to more gradually adjust the Cygnus spacecraft’s orbit to line up for the final approach with the ISS. However, it wasn’t immediately clear if this was a viable option.

Unlike SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon spacecraft, the Cygnus is not designed to return to Earth intact. Astronauts fill it with trash before departure from the ISS, and then the spacecraft heads for a destructive reentry over the remote Pacific Ocean. Therefore, a problem preventing the spacecraft from reaching the ISS would result in the loss of all of the cargo onboard.

The supplies on this mission, designated NG-23, include fresh food, hardware for numerous biological and tech demo experiments, and spare parts for things like the space station’s urine processor and toilet to replenish the space station’s dwindling stocks of those items.

A record supply load won’t reach the International Space Station as scheduled Read More »

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker

commercial resupply services, Commercial space, falcon 9, international space station, launch, NASA, Northrop Grumman, Science, Space, spacex, thales alenia space / Kelly Newman / September 16, 2025

What happens when you use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus supply ship? A record-setting resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The first flight of Northrop’s upgraded Cygnus spacecraft, called Cygnus XL, is on its way to the international research lab after launching Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This mission, known as NG-23, is set to arrive at the ISS early Wednesday with 10,827 pounds (4,911 kilograms) of cargo to sustain the lab and its seven-person crew.

By a sizable margin, this is the heaviest cargo load transported to the ISS by a commercial resupply mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will use the space station’s Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the cargo ship on Wednesday, then place it on an attachment port for crew members to open hatches and start unpacking the goodies inside.

A bigger keg

The Cygnus XL spacecraft looks a lot like Northrop’s previous missions to the station. It has a service module manufactured at the company’s factory in Northern Virginia. This segment of the spacecraft provides power, propulsion, and other necessities to keep Cygnus operating in orbit.

The most prominent features of the Cygnus cargo freighter are its circular, fan-like solar arrays and an aluminum cylinder called the pressurized cargo module that bears some resemblance to a keg of beer. This is the element that distinguishes the Cygnus XL from earlier versions of the Cygnus supply ship.

The cargo module is 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer on the Cygnus XL. The full spacecraft is roughly the size of two Apollo command modules, according to Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. Put another way, the volume of the cargo section is equivalent to two-and-a-half minivans.

“The most notable thing on this mission is we are debuting the Cygnus XL configuration of the spacecraft,” Tintner said. “It’s got 33 percent more capacity than the prior Cygnus spacecraft had. Obviously, more may sound like better, but it’s really critical because we can deliver significantly more science, as well as we’re able to deliver a lot more cargo per launch, really trying to drive down the cost per kilogram to NASA.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ascends to orbit Sunday after launching from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, carrying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station. Credit: Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Cargo modules for Northrop’s Cygnus spacecraft are built by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, employing a similar design to the one Thales used for several of the space station’s permanent modules. Officials moved forward with the first Cygnus XL mission after the preceding cargo module was damaged during shipment from Italy to the United States earlier this year.

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker Read More »

Lull in Falcon Heavy missions opens window for SpaceX to build new landing pads

Commercial space, falcon 9, falcon heavy, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, NASA, reusability, Science, Space, spacex / Mike M. / September 4, 2025

SpaceX’s goal for this year is 170 Falcon 9 launches, and the company is on pace to come close to this target. Most Falcon 9 launches carry SpaceX’s own Starlink broadband satellites into orbit. The FAA’s environmental approval opens the door for more flights from SpaceX’s busiest launch pad.

But launch pad availability is not the only hurdle limiting how many Falcon 9 flights can take off in a year. There’s also the rate of production for Falcon 9 upper stages, which are new on each flight, and the time it takes for each vessel in SpaceX’s fleet of drone ships (one in California, two in Florida) to return to port with a recovered booster and redeploy back to sea again for the next mission. SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on offshore drone ships after most of its launches and only brings the rocket back to an onshore landing on missions carrying lighter payloads to orbit.

When a Falcon 9 booster does return to landing on land, it targets one of SpaceX’s recovery zones at military-run spaceports in Florida and California. SpaceX’s landing zone at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is close to the Falcon 9 launch pad there.

The Space Force wants SpaceX, and potentially other future reusable rocket companies, to replicate the side-by-side launch and landing pads at Cape Canaveral.

To do that, the FAA also gave the green light Wednesday for SpaceX to construct and operate a new rocket landing zone at SLC-40 and conduct up to 34 first-stage booster landings there each year. The landing zone will consist of a 280-foot diameter concrete pad surrounded by a 60-foot-wide gravel apron. The landing zone’s broadest diameter, including the apron, will measure 400 feet.

The location of SpaceX’s new rocket landing pad is shown with the red circle, approximately 1,000 feet northeast of the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch pad at Space Launch Complex-40. Credit: Google Maps/Ars Technica

SpaceX is in an earlier phase of planning for a Falcon landing pad at historic Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, just a few miles north of SLC-40. SpaceX uses LC-39A as a launch pad for most Falcon 9 crew launches, all Falcon Heavy missions, and, in the future, flights of the company’s gigantic next-generation rocket, Starship. SpaceX foresees Starship as a replacement for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, but the company’s continuing investment in Falcon-related infrastructure shows the workhorse rocket will stick around for a while.

Lull in Falcon Heavy missions opens window for SpaceX to build new landing pads Read More »

Under pressure after setbacks, SpaceX’s huge rocket finally goes the distance

Commercial space, elon musk, launch, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, starship flight 10, super heavy / Mike M. / August 27, 2025

The ship made it all the way through reentry, turned to a horizontal position to descend through scattered clouds, then relit three of its engines to flip back to a vertical orientation for the final braking maneuver before splashdown.

Things to improve on

There are several takeaways from Tuesday’s flight that will require some improvements to Starship, but these are more akin to what officials might expect from a rocket test program and not the catastrophic failures of the ship that occurred earlier this year.

One of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 engines prematurely shut down during ascent. This has happened before, and while it didn’t affect the booster’s overall performance, engineers will investigate the failure to try to improve the reliability of SpaceX’s Raptor engines, each of which can generate more than a half-million pounds of thrust.

Later in the flight, cameras pointed at one of the ship’s rear flaps showed structural damage to the back of the wing. It wasn’t clear what caused the damage, but super-heated plasma burned through part of the flap as the ship fell deeper into the atmosphere. Still, the flap remained largely intact and was able to help control the vehicle through reentry and splashdown.

“We’re kind of being mean to this Starship a little bit,” Huot said on SpaceX’s live webcast. “We’re really trying to put it through the paces and kind of poke on what some of its weak points are.”

Small chunks of debris were also visible peeling off the ship during reentry. The origin of the glowing debris wasn’t immediately clear, but it may have been parts of the ship’s heat shield tiles. On this flight, SpaceX tested several different tile designs, including ceramic and metallic materials, and one tile design that uses “active cooling” to help dissipate heat during reentry.

A bright flash inside the ship’s engine bay during reentry also appeared to damage the vehicle’s aft skirt, the stainless steel structure that encircles the rocket’s six main engines.

“That’s not what we want to see,” Huot said. “We just saw some of the aft skirt just take a hit. So we’ve got some visible damage on the aft skirt. We’re continuing to reenter, though. We are intentionally stressing the ship as we go through this, so it is not guaranteed to be a smooth ride down to the Indian Ocean.

“We’ve removed a bunch of tiles in kind of critical places across the vehicle, so seeing stuff like that is still valuable to us,” he said. “We are trying to kind of push this vehicle to the limits to learn what its limits are as we design our next version of Starship.”

Shana Diez, a Starship engineer at SpaceX, perhaps summed up Tuesday’s results best on X: “It’s not been an easy year but we finally got the reentry data that’s so critical to Starship. It feels good to be back!”

Under pressure after setbacks, SpaceX’s huge rocket finally goes the distance Read More »

SpaceX’s latest Dragon mission will breathe more fire at the space station

Commercial space, dragon, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / Beth Washington / August 25, 2025

“Our capsule’s engines are not pointed in the right direction for optimum boost,” said Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management. “So, this trunk module has engines pointed in the right direction to maximize efficiency of propellant usage.”

When NASA says it’s the right time, SpaceX controllers will command the Draco thrusters to ignite and gently accelerate the massive 450-ton complex. All told, the reboost kit can add about 20 mph, or 9 meters per second, to the space station’s already-dizzying speed, according to Walker.

Spetch said that’s roughly equivalent to the total reboost impulse provided by one-and-a-half Russian Progress cargo vehicles. That’s about one-third to one-fourth of the total orbit maintenance the ISS needs in a year.

“The boost kit will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude, starting in September, with a series of burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025,” Spetch said.

After a few months docked at the ISS, the Dragon cargo capsule will depart and head for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. SpaceX will recover the pressurized capsule to fly again, while the trunk containing the reboost kit will jettison and burn up in the atmosphere.

SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft approaches the International Space Station for docking at 7: 05 am EDT (11: 05 UTC) on Monday. Credit: NASA TV/Ars Technica

While this mission is SpaceX’s 33rd cargo flight to the ISS under the auspices of NASA’s multibillion-dollar Commercial Resupply Services contract, it’s also SpaceX’s 50th overall Dragon mission to the outpost. This tally includes 17 flights of the human-rated Crew Dragon.

“With CRS-33, we’ll mark our 50th voyage to ISS,” Walker said. “Just incredible. Together, these missions have (carried) well over 300,000 pounds of cargo and supplies to the orbiting lab and well over 1,000 science and research projects that are not only helping us to understand how to live and work effectively in space… but also directly contributing to critical research that serves our lives here on Earth.”

Future Dragon trunks will be able to accommodate a reboost kit or unpressurized science payloads, depending on NASA’s needs at the space station.

The design of the Dragon reboost kit is a smaller-scale version of what SpaceX will build for a much larger Dragon trunk under a $843 million contract signed with NASA last year for the US Deorbit Vehicle. This souped-up Dragon will dock with the ISS and steer it back into the atmosphere after the lab’s decommissioning in the early 2030s. The deorbit vehicle will have 46 Draco thrusters—16 to control the craft’s orientation and 30 in the trunk to provide the impulse needed to drop the station out of orbit.

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Time is running out for SpaceX to make a splash with second-gen Starship

artemis, Commercial space, elon musk, launch, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, super heavy, texas / Kelly Newman / August 25, 2025

SpaceX is gearing up for another Starship launch after three straight disappointing test flights.

SpaceX’s 10th Starship rocket awaits liftoff. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

STARBASE, Texas—A beehive of aerospace technicians, construction workers, and spaceflight fans descended on South Texas this weekend in advance of the next test flight of SpaceX’s gigantic Starship rocket, the largest vehicle of its kind ever built.

Towering 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall, the rocket was supposed to lift off during a one-hour launch window beginning at 6: 30 pm CDT (7: 30 pm EDT; 23: 30 UTC) Sunday. But SpaceX called off the launch attempt about an hour before liftoff to investigate a ground system issue at Starbase, located a few miles north of the US-Mexico border.

SpaceX didn’t immediately confirm when it might try again to launch Starship, but it could happen as soon as Monday evening at the same time.

It will take about 66 minutes for the rocket to travel from the launch pad in Texas to a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. You can watch the test flight live on SpaceX’s official website. We’ve also embedded a livestream from Spaceflight Now and LabPadre below.

This will be the 10th full-scale test flight of Starship and its Super Heavy booster stage. It’s the fourth flight of an upgraded version of Starship conceived as a stepping stone to a more reliable, heavier-duty version of the rocket designed to carry up to 150 metric tons, or some 330,000 pounds, of cargo to pretty much anywhere in the inner part of our Solar System.

But this iteration of Starship, known as Block 2 or Version 2, has been anything but reliable. After reeling off a series of increasingly successful flights last year with the first-generation Starship and Super Heavy booster, SpaceX has encountered repeated setbacks since debuting Starship Version 2 in January.

Now, there are just two Starship Version 2s left to fly, including the vehicle poised for launch this week. Then, SpaceX will move on to Version 3, the design intended to go all the way to low-Earth orbit, where it can be refueled for longer expeditions into deep space.

A closer look at the top of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, tail number Ship 37, showing some of the different configurations of heat shield tiles SpaceX wants to test on this flight. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Starship’s promised cargo capacity is unparalleled in the history of rocketry. The privately developed rocket’s enormous size, coupled with SpaceX’s plan to make it fully reusable, could enable cargo and human missions to the Moon and Mars. SpaceX’s most conspicuous contract for Starship is with NASA, which plans to use a version of the ship as a human-rated Moon lander for the agency’s Artemis program. With this contract, Starship is central to the US government’s plans to try to beat China back to the Moon.

Closer to home, SpaceX intends to use Starship to haul massive loads of more powerful Starlink Internet satellites into low-Earth orbit. The US military is interested in using Starship for a range of national security missions, some of which could scarcely be imagined just a few years ago. SpaceX wants its factory to churn out a Starship rocket every day, approximately the same rate Boeing builds its workhorse 737 passenger jets.

Starship, of course, is immeasurably more complex than an airliner, and it sees temperature extremes, aerodynamic loads, and vibrations that would destroy a commercial airplane.

For any of this to become reality, SpaceX needs to begin ticking off a lengthy to-do list of technical milestones. The interim objectives include things like catching and reusing Starships and in-orbit ship-to-ship refueling, with a final goal of long-duration spaceflight to reach the Moon and stay there for weeks, months, or years. For a time late last year, it appeared as if SpaceX might be on track to reach at least the first two of these milestones by now.

The 404-foot-tall (123-meter) Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster stand on SpaceX’s launch pad. In the foreground, there are empty loading docks where tanker trucks deliver propellants and other gases to the launch site. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Instead, SpaceX’s schedule for catching and reusing Starships, and refueling ships in orbit, has slipped well into next year. A Moon landing is probably at least several years away. And a touchdown on Mars? Maybe in the 2030s. Before Starship can sniff those milestones, engineers must get the rocket to survive from liftoff through splashdown. This would confirm that recent changes made to the ship’s heat shield work as expected.

Three test flights attempting to do just this ended prematurely in January, March, and May. These failures prevented SpaceX from gathering data on several different tile designs, including insulators made of ceramic and metallic materials, and a tile with “active cooling” to fortify the craft as it reenters the atmosphere.

The heat shield is supposed to protect the rocket’s stainless steel skin from temperatures reaching 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius). During last year’s test flights, it worked well enough for Starship to guide itself to an on-target controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, halfway around the world from SpaceX’s launch site in Starbase, Texas.

But the ship lost some of its tiles during each flight last year, causing damage to the ship’s underlying structure. While this wasn’t bad enough to prevent the vehicle from reaching the ocean intact, it would cause difficulties in refurbishing the rocket for another flight. Eventually, SpaceX wants to catch Starships returning from space with giant robotic arms back at the launch pad. The vision, according to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, is to recover the ship, quickly mount it on another booster, refuel it, and launch it again.

If SpaceX can accomplish this, the ship must return from space with its heat shield in pristine condition. The evidence from last year’s test flights showed engineers had a long way to go for that to happen.

Visitors survey the landscape at Starbase, Texas, where industry and nature collide. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

The Starship setbacks this year have been caused by problems in the ship’s propulsion and fuel systems. Another Starship exploded on a test stand in June at SpaceX’s sprawling rocket development facility in South Texas. SpaceX engineers identified different causes for each of the failures. You can read about them in our previous story.

Apart from testing the heat shield, the goals for this week’s Starship flight include testing an engine-out capability on the Super Heavy booster. Engineers will intentionally disable one of the booster’s Raptor engines used to slow down for landing, and instead use another Raptor engine from the rocket’s middle ring. At liftoff, 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines will power the Super Heavy booster off the pad.

SpaceX won’t try to catch the booster back at the launch pad this time, as it did on three occasions late last year and earlier this year. The booster catches have been one of the bright spots for the Starship program as progress on the rocket’s upper stage floundered. SpaceX reused a previously flown Super Heavy booster for the first time on the most recent Starship launch in May.

The booster landing experiment on this week’s flight will happen a few minutes after launch over the Gulf of Mexico east of the Texas coastline. Meanwhile, six Raptor engines will fire until approximately T+plus 9 minutes to accelerate the ship, or upper stage, into space.

The ship is programmed to release eight Starlink satellite simulators from its payload bay in a test of the craft’s payload deployment mechanism. That will be followed by a brief restart of one of the ship’s Raptor engines to adjust its trajectory for reentry, set to begin around 47 minutes into the mission.

If Starship makes it that far, that will be when engineers finally get a taste of the heat shield data they were hungry for at the start of the year.

This story was updated at 8: 30 pm EDT after SpaceX scrubbed Sunday’s launch attempt.

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SpaceX reveals why the last two Starships failed as another launch draws near

Commercial space, Federal Aviation Administration, launch, Science, Space, spacex, starship / Beth Washington / August 16, 2025

“SpaceX can now proceed with Starship Flight 10 launch operations under its current license.”

SpaceX completed a six-engine static fire of the next Starship upper stage on August 1. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX is continuing with final preparations for the 10th full-scale test flight of the company’s enormous Starship rocket after receiving launch approval Friday from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Engineers completed a final test of Starship’s propulsion system with a so-called “spin prime” test Wednesday at the launch site in South Texas. Ground crews then rolled the ship back to a nearby hangar for engine inspections, touchups to its heat shield, and a handful of other chores to ready it for liftoff.

SpaceX has announced the launch is scheduled for no earlier than next Sunday, August 24, at 6: 30 pm local time in Texas (23: 30 UTC).

Like all previous Starship launches, the huge 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket will take off from SpaceX’s test site in Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border. The rocket consists of a powerful booster stage named Super Heavy, with 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines. Six Raptors power the upper stage, known simply as Starship.

With this flight, SpaceX officials hope to put several technical problems with the Starship program behind them. SpaceX is riding a streak of four disappointing Starship test flights from January through May, and and the explosion and destruction of another Starship vehicle during a ground test in June.

These setbacks followed a highly successful year for the world’s largest rocket in 2024, when SpaceX flew Starship four times and achieved new objectives on each flight. These accomplishments included the first catch of a Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad, proving the company’s novel concept for recovering and reusing the rocket’s first stage.

Starship’s record so far in 2025 is another story. The rocket’s inability to make it through an entire suborbital test flight has pushed back future program milestones, such as the challenging tasks of recovering and reusing the rocket’s upper stage, and demonstrating the ability to refuel another rocket in orbit. Those would both be firsts in the history of spaceflight.

These future tests, and more, are now expected to occur no sooner than next year. This time last year, SpaceX officials hoped to achieve them in 2025. All of these demonstrations are vital for Elon Musk to meet his promise of sending numerous Starships to build a settlement on Mars. Meanwhile, NASA is eager for SpaceX to reel off these tests as quickly as possible because the agency has selected Starship as the human-rated lunar lander for the Artemis Moon program. Once operational, Starship will also be key to building out SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink broadband network.

A good outcome on the next Starship test flight would give SpaceX footing to finally take a step toward these future demos after months of dithering over design dilemmas.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, presented an update on Starship to company employees in May. This chart shows the planned evolution from Starship Version 2 (left) to Version 3 (middle), and an even larger rocket (right) in the more distant future.

The FAA said Friday it formally closed the investigation into Starship’s most recent in-flight failure in May, when the rocket started leaking propellant after reaching space, rendering it unable to complete the test flight.

“The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation,” the federal regulator said in a statement. “The final mishap report cites the probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle as a failure of a fuel component. SpaceX identified corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event.”

Diagnosing failures

SpaceX identified the most probable cause for the May failure as a faulty main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser located on the forward dome of Starship’s primary methane tank. The diffuser failed a few minutes after launch, when sensors detected a pressure drop in the main methane tank and a pressure increase in the ship’s nose cone just above the tank.

The rocket compensated for the drop in main tank pressure and completed its engine burn, but venting from the nose cone and a worsening fuel leak overwhelmed Starship’s attitude control system. Finally, detecting a major problem, Starship triggered automatic onboard commands to vent all remaining propellant into space and “passivate” itself before an unguided reentry over the Indian Ocean, prematurely ending the test flight.

Engineers recreated the diffuser failure on the ground during the investigation, and then redesigned the part to better direct pressurized gas into the main fuel tank. This will also “substantially decrease” strain on the diffuser structure, SpaceX said.

The FAA, charged with ensuring commercial rocket launches don’t endanger public safety, signed off on the investigation and gave the green light for SpaceX to fly Starship again when it is ready.

“SpaceX can now proceed with Starship Flight 10 launch operations under its current license,” the FAA said.

“The upcoming flight will continue to expand the operating envelope on the Super Heavy booster, with multiple landing burn tests planned,” SpaceX said in an update posted to its website Friday. “It will also target similar objectives as previous missions, including Starship’s first payload deployment and multiple reentry experiments geared towards returning the upper stage to the launch site for catch.”

File photo of Starship’s six Raptor engines firing on a test stand in South Texas. Credit: SpaceX

In the aftermath of the test flight in May, SpaceX hoped to fly Starship again by late June or early July. But another accident June 18, this time on the ground, delayed the program another couple of months. The Starship vehicle SpaceX assigned to the next flight, designated Ship 36, exploded on a test stand in Texas as teams filled it with cryogenic propellants for an engine test-firing.

The accident destroyed the ship and damaged the test site, prompting SpaceX to retrofit the sole active Starship launch pad to support testing of the next ship in line—Ship 37. Those tests included a brief firing of all six of the ship’s Raptor engines August 1.

After Ship 37’s final spin prime test Wednesday, workers transported the rocket back to a hangar for evaluation, and crews immediately got to work transitioning the launch pad back to its normal configuration to host a full Super Heavy/Starship stack.

SpaceX said the explosion on the test stand in June was likely caused by damage to a high-pressure nitrogen storage tank inside Starship’s payload bay section. This tank, called a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, or COPV, violently ruptured and led to the ship’s fiery demise. SpaceX said COPVs on upcoming flights will operate at lower pressures, and managers ordered additional inspections on COPVs to look for damage, more proof testing, more stringent acceptance criteria, and a hardware change to address the problem.

Try, try, try, try again

This year began with the first launch of an upgraded version of Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, in January. But the vehicle suffered propulsion failures and lost control before the upper stage completed its engine burn to propel the rocket on a trajectory carrying it halfway around the world to splash down in the Indian Ocean. Instead, the rocket broke apart and rained debris over the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands more than 1,500 miles downrange from Starbase.

That was followed in March by another Starship launch that had a similar result, again scattering debris near the Bahamas. In May, the ninth Starship test flight made it farther downrange and completed its engine burn before spinning out of control in space, preventing it from making a guided reentry to gather data on its heat shield.

Mastering the design of Starship’s heat shield is critical the future of the program. As it has on all of this year’s test flights, SpaceX has installed on the next Starship several different ceramic and metallic tile designs to test alternative materials to protect the vehicle during its scorching plunge back into Earth’s atmosphere. Starship successfully made it through reentry for a controlled splashdown in the sea several times last year, but sensors detected hot spots on the rocket’s stainless steel skin after some of the tiles fell off during launch and descent.

Making the Starship upper stage reusable like the Super Heavy booster will require better performance from the heat shield. The demands of flying the ship home from orbit and attempting a catch at the launch pad far outweigh the challenge of recovering a booster. Coming back from space, the ship encounters much higher temperatures than the booster sees at lower velocities.

Therefore, SpaceX’s most important goal for the 10th Starship flight will be gathering information about how well the ship’s different heat shield materials hold up during reentry. Engineers want to have this data as soon as possible to inform design decisions about the next iteration of Starship—Version 3 or Block 3—that will actually fly into orbit. So far, all Starship launches have intentionally targeted a speed just shy of orbital velocity, bringing the vehicle back through the atmosphere halfway around the world.

Other objectives on the docket for Starship Flight 10 include the deployment of spacecraft simulators mimicking the size of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink Internet satellites. Like the heat shield data, this has been part of the flight plan for the last three Starship launches, but the rocket never made it far enough to attempt any payload deployment tests.

Thirty-three Raptor engines power the Super Heavy booster downrange from SpaceX’s launch site near Brownsville, Texas, in January. Credit: SpaceX

Engineers also plan to put the Super Heavy booster through the wringer on the next launch. Instead of coming back to Starbase for a catch at the launch pad—something SpaceX has now done three times—the massive booster stage will target a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico east of the Texas coast. This will give SpaceX room to try new things with the booster, such as controlling the rocket’s final descent with a different mix of engines to see if it could overcome a problem with one of its three primary landing engines.

SpaceX tried to experiment with new ways of landing of the Super Heavy booster on the last test flight, too. The Super Heavy exploded before reaching the ocean, likely due to a structural failure of the rocket’s fuel transfer tube, an internal pipe where methane flows from the fuel tank at the top of the rocket to the engines at the bottom of the booster. SpaceX said the booster flew a higher angle of attack during its descent in May to test the limits of the rocket’s performance. It seems engineers found the limit, and the booster won’t fly at such a high angle of attack next time.

SpaceX has just two Starship Version 2 vehicles in its inventory before moving on to the taller Version 3 configuration, which will also debut improved Raptor engines.

“Every lesson learned, through both flight and ground testing, continues to feed directly into designs for the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” SpaceX said. “Two flights remain with the current generation, each with test objectives designed to expand the envelope on vehicle capabilities as we iterate towards fully and rapidly reusable, reliable rockets.”

SpaceX reveals why the last two Starships failed as another launch draws near Read More »

Trump orders cull of regulations governing commercial rocket launches

Commercial space, Donald Trump, executive order, FAA, launch, Science, Space, space policy, spacex, White House / DJ Henderson / August 14, 2025

The head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division will become a political appointee.

Birds take flight at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this 2010 photo. Credit: NASA

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing government agencies to “eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for commercial launch and reentry licenses.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), part of the Department of Transportation (DOT), grants licenses for commercial launch and reentry operations. The FAA is charged with ensuring launch and reentries comply with environmental laws, comport with US national interests, and don’t endanger the public.

The drive toward deregulation will be welcome news for companies like SpaceX, led by onetime Trump ally Elon Musk; SpaceX conducts nearly all of the commercial launches and reentries licensed by the FAA.

Deregulation time

Trump ordered Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who also serves as the acting administrator of NASA, to “use all available authorities to eliminate or expedite… environmental reviews for… launch and reentry licenses and permits.” In the order signed by Trump, White House officials wrote that Duffy should consult with the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and follow “applicable law” in the regulatory cull.

The executive order also includes a clause directing Duffy to reevaluate, amend, or rescind a slate of launch-safety regulations written during the first Trump administration. The FAA published the new regulations, known as Part 450, in 2020, and they went into effect in 2021, but space companies have complained they are too cumbersome and have slowed down the license approval process.

And there’s more. Trump ordered NASA, the military, and DOT to eliminate duplicative reviews for spaceport development. This is particularly pertinent at federally owned launch ranges like those at Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Space Force Base, California; and Wallops Island, Virginia.

The Trump administration also plans to make the head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation a political appointee. This office oversees commercial launch and reentry licensing and was previously led by a career civil servant. Duffy will also hire an advisor on deregulation in the commercial spaceflight industry to join DOT, and the Office of Space Commerce will be elevated to a more prominent position within the Commerce Department.

“It is the policy of the United States to enhance American greatness in space by enabling a competitive launch marketplace and substantially increasing commercial space launch cadence and novel space activities by 2030,” Trump’s executive order reads. “To accomplish this, the federal government will streamline commercial license and permit approvals for United States-based operators.”

News of the executive order was reported last month by ProPublica, which wrote that the Trump administration was circulating draft language among federal agencies to slash rules to protect the environment and the public from the dangers of rocket launches. The executive order signed by Trump and released by the White House on Wednesday confirms ProPublica’s reporting.

Jared Margolis, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, criticized the Trump administration’s move.

“This reckless order puts people and wildlife at risk from private companies launching giant rockets that often explode and wreak devastation on surrounding areas,” Margolis said in a statement. “Bending the knee to powerful corporations by allowing federal agencies to ignore bedrock environmental laws is incredibly dangerous and puts all of us in harm’s way. This is clearly not in the public interest.”

Duffy, the first person to lead NASA and another federal department at the same time, argued the order is important to sustain economic growth in the space industry.

“By slashing red tape tying up spaceport construction, streamlining launch licenses so they can occur at scale, and creating high-level space positions in government, we can unleash the next wave of innovation,” Duffy said in a statement. “At NASA, this means continuing to work with commercial space companies and improving our spaceports’ ability to launch.”

Nipping NEPA

The executive order is emblematic of the Trump administration’s broader push to curtail environmental reviews for large infrastructure projects.

The White House has already directed federal agencies to repeal regulations enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a 1969 law that requires the feds prepare environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to evaluate the effects of government actions—such as licensing approvals—on the environment.

Regarding commercial spaceflight, the White House ordered the Transportation Department to create a list of activities officials there believe are not subject to NEPA and establish exclusions under NEPA for launch and reentry licenses.

Onlookers watch from nearby sand dunes as SpaceX prepares a Starship rocket for launch from Starbase, Texas. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

The changes to the environmental review process might be the most controversial part of Trump’s new executive order. Another section of the order—the attempt to reform or rescind the so-called Part 450 launch and reentry regulations—appears to have bipartisan support in Congress.

The FAA started implementing its new Part 450 commercial launch and reentry regulations less than five years ago after writing the rules in response to another Trump executive order signed in 2018. Part 450 was intended to streamline the launch approval process by allowing companies to submit applications for a series of launches or reentries, rather than requiring a new license for each mission.

But industry officials quickly criticized the new regulations, which they said didn’t account for rapid iteration of rockets and spacecraft like SpaceX’s enormous Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle. The FAA approved a SpaceX request in May to increase the number of approved Starship launches from five to 25 per year from the company’s base in Starship, Texas, near the US-Mexico border.

Last year, the FAA’s leadership under the Biden administration established a committee to examine the shortcomings of Part 450. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee submitted a joint request in February for the Government Accountability Office to conduct an independent review of the FAA’s Part 450 regulations.

“Reforming and streamlining commercial launch regulations and licensing is an area the Biden administration knew needed reform,” wrote Laura Forczyk, founder and executive director of the space consulting firm Astralytical, in a post on X. “However, little was done. Will more be done with this executive order? I hope so. This was needed years ago.”

Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, applauded the Trump administration’s regulatory policy.

“This executive order will strengthen and grow the US commercial space industry by cutting red tape while maintaining a commitment to public safety, benefitting the American people and the US government that are increasingly reliant on space for our national and economic security,” Cavossa said in a statement.

Specific language in the new Trump executive order calls for the FAA to evaluate which regulations should be waived for hybrid launch or reentry vehicles that hold FAA airworthiness certificates, and which requirements should be remitted for rockets with a flight termination system, an explosive charge designed to destroy a launch vehicle if it veers off its pre-approved course after liftoff. These are similar to the topics the Biden-era FAA was looking at last year.

The new Trump administration policy also seeks to limit the authority of state officials in enforcing their own environmental rules related to the construction or operation of spaceports.

This is especially relevant after the California Coastal Commission rejected a proposal by SpaceX to double its launch cadence at Vandenberg Space Force Base, a spaceport located roughly 140 miles (225 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles. The Space Force, which owns Vandenberg and is one of SpaceX’s primary customers, backs SpaceX’s push for more launches.

Finally, the order gives the Department of Commerce responsibility for authorizing “novel space activities” such as in-space assembly and manufacturing, asteroid and planetary mining, and missions to remove space debris from orbit.

This story was updated at 12: 30 am EDT on August 14 with statements from the Center for Biological Diversity and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

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

artemis, blue origin, Commercial space, dave limp, Jeff Bezos, launch, Mars, moon, Science, Space / DJ Henderson / May 30, 2025

“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.”

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

SpaceX may have solved one problem only to find more on latest Starship flight

Commercial space, elon musk, launch, NASA, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, starship flight 9, texas / Shannon Garcia / May 28, 2025

SpaceX’s ninth Starship survived launch, but engineers now have more problems to overcome.

An onboard camera shows the six Raptor engines on SpaceX’s Starship upper stage, roughly three minutes after launching from South Texas on Tuesday. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX made some progress on another test flight of the world’s most powerful rocket Tuesday, finally overcoming technical problems that plagued the program’s two previous launches.

But minutes into the mission, SpaceX’s Starship lost control as it cruised through space, then tumbled back into the atmosphere somewhere over the Indian Ocean nearly an hour after taking off from Starbase, Texas, the company’s privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border.

SpaceX’s next-generation rocket is designed to eventually ferry cargo and private and government crews between the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The rocket is complex and gargantuan, wider and longer than a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, and after nearly two years of steady progress since its first test flight in 2023, this has been a year of setbacks for Starship.

During the rocket’s two previous test flights—each using an upgraded “Block 2” Starship design—problems in the ship’s propulsion system led to leaks during launch, eventually triggering an early shutdown of the rocket’s main engines. On both flights, the vehicle spun out of control and broke apart, spreading debris over an area near the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The good news is that that didn’t happen Tuesday. The ship’s main engines fired for their full duration, putting the vehicle on its expected trajectory toward a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. For a short time, it appeared the ship was on track for a successful flight.

“Starship made it to the scheduled ship engine cutoff, so big improvement over last flight! Also, no significant loss of heat shield tiles during ascent,” wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, on X.

The bad news is that Tuesday’s test flight revealed more problems, preventing SpaceX from achieving the most important goals Musk outlined going into the launch.

“Leaks caused loss of main tank pressure during the coast and reentry phase,” Musk posted on X. “Lot of good data to review.”

With the loss of tank pressure, the rocket started slowly spinning as it coasted through the blackness of space more than 100 miles above the Earth. This loss of control spelled another premature end to a Starship test flight. Most notable among the flight’s unmet objectives was SpaceX’s desire to study the performance of the ship’s heat shield, which includes improved heat-absorbing tiles to better withstand the scorching temperatures of reentry back into the atmosphere.

“The most important thing is data on how to improve the tile design, so it’s basically data during the high heating, reentry phase in order to improve the tiles for the next iteration,” Musk told Ars Technica before Tuesday’s flight. “So we’ve got like a dozen or more tile experiments. We’re trying different coatings on tiles. We’re trying different fabrication techniques, different attachment techniques. We’re varying the gap filler for the tiles.”

Engineers are hungry for data on the changes to the heat shield, which can’t be fully tested on the ground. SpaceX officials hope the new tiles will be more robust than the ones flown on the first-generation, or Block 1, version of Starship, allowing future ships to land and quickly launch again, without the need for time-consuming inspections, refurbishment, and in some cases, tile replacements. This is a core tenet of SpaceX’s plans for Starship, which include delivering astronauts to the surface of the Moon, proliferating low-Earth orbit with refueling tankers, and eventually helping establish a settlement on Mars, all of which are predicated on rapid reusability of Starship and its Super Heavy booster.

Last year, SpaceX successfully landed three Starships in the Indian Ocean after they survived hellish reentries, but they came down with damaged heat shields. After an early end to Tuesday’s test flight, SpaceX’s heat shield engineers will have to wait a while longer to satiate their appetites. And the longer they have to wait, the longer the wait for other important Starship developmental tests, such as a full orbital flight, in-space refueling, and recovery and reuse of the ship itself, replicating what SpaceX has now accomplished with the Super Heavy booster.

Failing forward or falling short?

The ninth flight of Starship began with a booming departure from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site at 6: 35 pm CDT (7: 35 pm EDT; 23: 35 UTC) Tuesday.

After a brief hold to resolve last-minute technical glitches, SpaceX resumed the countdown clock to tick away the final seconds before liftoff. A gush of water poured over the deck of the launch pad just before 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines ignited on the rocket’s massive Super Heavy first stage booster. Once all 33 engines lit, the enormous stainless steel rocket—towering more than 400 feet (123 meters)—began to climb away from Starbase.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket, flying with a reused first-stage booster for the first time, climbs away from Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

Heading east, the Super Heavy booster produced more than twice the power of NASA’s Saturn V rocket, an icon of the Apollo Moon program, as it soared over the Gulf of Mexico. After two-and-a-half minutes, the Raptor engines switched off and the Super Heavy booster separated from Starship’s upper stage.

Six Raptor engines fired on the ship to continue pushing it into space. As the booster started maneuvering for an attempt to target an intact splashdown in the sea, the ship burned its engines more than six minutes, reaching a top speed of 16,462 mph (26,493 kilometers per hour), right in line with preflight predictions.

A member of SpaceX’s launch team declared “nominal orbit insertion” a little more than nine minutes into the flight, indicating the rocket reached its planned trajectory, just shy of the velocity required to enter a stable orbit around the Earth.

The flight profile was supposed to take Starship halfway around the world, with the mission culminating in a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. But a few minutes after engine shutdown, the ship started to diverge from SpaceX’s flight plan.

First, SpaceX aborted an attempt to release eight simulated Starlink Internet satellites in the first test of the Starship’s payload deployer. The cargo bay door would not fully open, and engineers called off the demonstration, according to Dan Huot, a member of SpaceX’s communications team who hosted the company’s live launch broadcast Tuesday.

That, alone, would not have been a big deal. However, a few minutes later, Huot made a more troubling announcement.

“We are in a little bit of a spin,” he said. “We did spring a leak in some of the fuel tank systems inside of Starship, which a lot of those are used for attitude control. So, at this point, we’ve essentially lost our attitude control with Starship.”

This eliminated any chance for a controlled reentry and an opportunity to thoroughly scrutinize the performance of Starship’s heat shield. The spin also prevented a brief restart of one of the ship’s Raptor engines in space.

“Not looking great for a lot of our on-orbit objectives for today,” Huot said.

SpaceX continued streaming live video from Starship as it soared over the Atlantic Ocean and Africa. Then, a blanket of super-heated plasma enveloped the vehicle as it plunged into the atmosphere. Still in a slow tumble, the ship started shedding scorched chunks of its skin before the screen went black. SpaceX lost contact with the vehicle around 46 minutes into the flight. The ship likely broke apart over the Indian Ocean, dropping debris into a remote swath of sea within its expected flight corridor.

Victories where you find them

Although the flight did not end as well as SpaceX officials hoped, the company made some tangible progress Tuesday. Most importantly, it broke the streak of back-to-back launch failures on Starship’s two most recent test flights in January and March.

SpaceX’s investigation earlier this year into a January 16 launch failure concluded vibrations likely triggered fuel leaks and fires in the ship’s engine compartment, causing an early shutdown of the rocket’s engines. Engineers said the vibrations were likely in resonance with the vehicle’s natural frequency, intensifying the shaking beyond the levels SpaceX predicted.

Engineers made fixes and launched the next Starship test flight March 6, but it again encountered trouble midway through the ship’s main engine burn. SpaceX said earlier this month that the inquiry into the March 6 failure found its most probable root cause was a hardware failure in one of the upper stage’s center engines, resulting in “inadvertent propellant mixing and ignition.”

In its official statement, the company was silent on the nature of the hardware failure but said engines for future test flights will receive additional preload on key joints, a new nitrogen purge system, and improvements to the propellant drain system. A new generation of Raptor engines, known as Raptor 3, should begin flying around the end of this year with additional improvements to address the failure mechanism, SpaceX said.

Another bright spot in Tuesday’s test flight was that it marked the first time SpaceX reused a Super Heavy booster from a prior launch. The booster used Tuesday previously launched on Starship’s seventh test flight in January before it was caught back at the launch pad and refurbished for another space shot.

Booster 14 comes in for the catch after flying to the edge of space on January 16. SpaceX flew this booster again Tuesday but did not attempt a catch. Credit: SpaceX

After releasing the Starship upper stage to continue its journey into space, the Super Heavy booster flipped around to fly tail-first and reignited 13 of its engines to begin boosting itself back toward the South Texas coast. On this test flight, SpaceX aimed the booster for a hard splashdown in the ocean just offshore from Starbase, rather than a mid-air catch back at the launch pad, which SpaceX accomplished on three of its four most recent test flights.

SpaceX made the change for a few reasons. First, engineers programmed the booster to fly at a higher angle of attack during its descent, increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle compared to past flights. This change should reduce propellant usage on the booster’s landing burn, which occurs just before the rocket is caught by the launch pad’s mechanical arms, or “chopsticks,” on a recovery flight.

During the landing burn itself, engineers wanted to demonstrate the booster’s ability to respond to an engine failure on descent by using just two of the rocket’s 33 engines for the end of the burn, rather than the usual three. Instead, the rocket appeared to explode around the beginning of the landing burn before it could complete the final landing maneuver.

Before the explosion at the end of its flight, the booster appeared to fly as designed. Data displayed on SpaceX’s live broadcast of the launch showed all 33 of the rocket’s engines fired normally during its initial ascent from Texas, a reassuring sign for the reliability of the Super Heavy booster.

SpaceX kicked off the year with the ambition to launch as many as 25 Starship test flights in 2025, a goal that now seems to be unattainable. However, an X post by Musk on Tuesday night suggested a faster cadence of launches in the coming months. He said the next three Starships could launch at intervals of about once every three to four weeks. After that, SpaceX is expected to transition to a third-generation, or Block 3, Starship design with more changes.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long it might take SpaceX to correct whatever problems caused Tuesday’s test flight woes. The Starship vehicle for the next flight is already built and completed cryogenic prooftesting April 27. For the last few ships, SpaceX has completed this cryogenic testing milestone around one-and-a-half to three months prior to launch.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration said the agency is “actively working” with SpaceX in the aftermath of Tuesday’s test flight but did not say if the FAA will require SpaceX to conduct a formal mishap investigation.

Shana Diez, director of Starship engineering at SpaceX, chimed in with her own post on X. Based on preliminary data from Tuesday’s flight, she is optimistic the next test flight will fly soon. She said engineers still need to examine data to confirm none of the problems from Starship’s previous flight recurred on this launch but added that “all evidence points to a new failure mode” on Tuesday’s test flight.

SpaceX will also study what caused the Super Heavy booster to explode on descent before moving forward with another booster catch attempt at Starbase, she said.

“Feeling both relieved and a bit disappointed,” Diez wrote. “Could have gone better today but also could have gone much worse.”

SpaceX may have solved one problem only to find more on latest Starship flight Read More »