isar aerospace

Rocket Report: Stoke is stoked; sovereignty is the buzzword in Europe

artemis II, european space agency, falcon 9, isar aerospace, launch, NASA, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, united launch alliance / Beth Washington / March 28, 2025

“The idea that we will be able to do it through America… I think is very, very doubtful.”

Stoke Space’s Andromeda upper stage engine is hot-fired on a test stand. Credit: Stoke Space

Welcome to Edition 7.37 of the Rocket Report! It’s been interesting to watch how quickly European officials have embraced ensuring they have a space launch capability independent of other countries. A few years ago, European government satellites regularly launched on Russian Soyuz rockets, and more recently on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets from the United States. Russia is now non grata in European government circles, and the Trump administration is widening the trans-Atlantic rift. European leaders have cited the Trump administration and its close association with Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, as prime reasons to support sovereign access to space, a capability currently offered only by Arianespace. If European nations can reform how they treat their commercial space companies, there’s enough ambition, know-how, and money in Europe to foster a competitive launch industry.

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.

Isar Aerospace aims for weekend launch. A German startup named Isar Aerospace will try to launch its first rocket Saturday, aiming to become the first in a wave of new European launch companies to reach orbit, Ars reports. The Spectrum rocket consists of two stages, stands about 92 feet (28 meters) tall, and can haul payloads up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. Based in Munich, Isar was founded by three university graduate students in 2018. Isar scrubbed a launch attempt Monday due to unfavorable winds at the launch site in Norway.

From the Arctic … Notably, this will be the first orbital launch attempt from a launch pad in Western Europe. The French-run Guiana Space Center in South America is the primary spaceport for European rockets. Virgin Orbit staged an airborne launch attempt from an airport in the United Kingdom in 2023, and the Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located in European Russia. The launch site for Isar is named Andøya Spaceport, located about 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) north of Oslo, inside the Arctic Circle. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A chance for competition in Europe. The European Space Agency is inviting proposals to inject competition into the European launch market, an important step toward fostering a dynamic multiplayer industry officials hope one day will mimic that of the United States, Ars reports. The near-term plan for the European Launcher Challenge is for ESA to select companies for service contracts to transport ESA and other European government payloads to orbit from 2026 through 2030. A second component of the challenge is for companies to perform at least one demonstration of an upgraded launch vehicle by 2028. The competition is open to any European company working in the launch business.

Challenging the status quo … This is a major change from how ESA has historically procured launch services. Arianespace has been the only European launch provider available to ESA and other European institutions for more than 40 years. But there are private companies across Europe at various stages of developing their own small launchers, and potentially larger rockets, in the years ahead. With the European Launcher Challenge, ESA will provide each of the winners up to 169 million euros ($182 million), a significant cash infusion that officials hope will shepherd Europe’s nascent private launch industry toward liftoff. Companies like Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, MaiaSpace, and PLD Space are among the contenders for ESA contracts.

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Rocket Lab launches eight satellites. Rocket Lab launched eight satellites Wednesday for a German company that is expanding its constellation to detect and track wildfires, Space News reports. An Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand and completed deploying its payload of eight CubeSats for OroraTech about 55 minutes later, placing them into Sun-synchronous orbits at an altitude of about 341 miles (550 kilometers). This was Rocket Lab’s fifth launch of the year, and the third in less than two weeks.

Fire goggles … OroraTech launched three satellites before this mission, fusing data from those satellites and government missions to detect and track wildfires. The new satellites are designed to fill a gap in coverage in the afternoon, a peak time for wildfire formation and spread. OroraTech plans to launch eight more satellites later this year. Wildfire monitoring from space is becoming a new application for satellite technology. Last month, OroraTech partnered with Spire for a contract to build a CubeSat constellation called WildFireSat for the Canadian Space Agency. Google is backing FireSat, another constellation of more than 50 satellites to be deployed in the coming years to detect and track wildfires. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Should Britain have a sovereign launch capability? A UK House of Lords special inquiry committee has heard from industry experts on the importance of fostering a sovereign launch capability, European Spaceflight reports. On Monday, witnesses from the UK space industry testified that the nation shouldn’t rely on others, particularly the United States, to put satellites into orbit. “The idea that we will be able to do it through America… certainly in today’s, you know, the last 50 days, I think is very, very doubtful. The UK needs access to space,” said Scott Hammond, deputy CEO of SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland.

Looking inward … A representative from one of the most promising UK launch startups agreed. “Most people who are looking to launch are beholden to the United States solutions or services that are there,” said Alan Thompson, head of government affairs at Skyrora. “Without having our own home-based or UK-based service provider, we risk not having that voice and not being able to undertake all these experiments or be able to manifest ourselves better in space.” The UK is the only nation to abandon an independent launch capability after putting a satellite into orbit. The British government canceled the Black Arrow rocket in the early 1970s, citing financial reasons. A handful of companies, including Skyrora, is working to restore the orbital launch business to the UK.

This rocket engine CEO faces some salacious allegations. The Independent published what it described as an exclusive report Monday describing a lawsuit filed against the CEO of RocketStar, a New York-based company that says its mission is “improving upon the engines that power us to the stars.” Christopher Craddock is accused of plundering investor funds to underwrite pricey jaunts to Europe, jewelry for his wife, child support payments, and, according to the company’s largest investor, “airline tickets for international call girls to join him for clandestine weekends in Miami,” The Independent reports. Craddock established RocketStar in 2014 after financial regulators barred him from working on Wall Street over a raft of alleged violations.

Go big or go home … The $6 million lawsuit filed by former CEO Michael Mojtahedi alleges RocketStar “is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme… [that] has been predicated on Craddock’s ability to con new people each time the company has run out of money.” On its website, RocketStar says its work focuses on aerospike rocket engines and a “FireStar Fusion Drive, the world’s first electric propulsion device enhanced with nuclear fusion.” These are tantalizing technologies that have proven elusive for other rocket companies. RocketStar’s attorney told The Independent: “The company denies the allegations and looks forward to vindicating itself in court.”

Another record for SpaceX. Last Thursday, SpaceX launched a batch of clandestine SpaceX-built surveillance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Spaceflight Now reports. This was the latest in a series of flights populating the NRO’s constellation of low-Earth orbit reconnaissance satellites. What was unique about this mission was its use of a Falcon 9 first stage booster that flew to space just nine days prior with a NASA astronomy satellite. The successful launch broke the record for the shortest span between flights of the same Falcon 9 booster, besting a 13.5-day turnaround in November 2024.

A mind-boggling number of launches … This flight also marked the 450th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since its debut in 2010, and the 139th within a 365-day period, despite suffering its first mission failure in nearly 10 years and a handful of other glitches. SpaceX’s launch pace is unprecedented in the history of the space industry. No one else is even close. In the last Rocket Report I authored, I wrote that SpaceX’s steamroller no longer seems to be rolling downhill. That may be the case as the growth in the Falcon 9 launch cadence has slowed, but it’s hard for me to see anyone else matching SpaceX’s launch rate until at least the 2030s.

Rocket Lab and Stoke Space find an on-ramp. Space Systems Command announced Thursday that it selected Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to join the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. The contracts have a maximum value of $5.6 billion, and the Space Force will dole out “task orders” for individual missions as they near launch. Rocket Lab and Stoke Space join SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin as eligible launch providers for lower-priority national security satellites, a segment of missions known as Phase 3 Lane 1 in the parlance of the Space Force. For these missions, the Space Force won’t require certification of the rockets, as the military does for higher-value missions in the so-called “Lane 2” segment. However, Rocket Lab and Stoke Space must complete at least one successful flight of their new Neutron and Nova rockets before they are cleared to launch national security payloads.

Stoked at Stoke … This is a big win for Rocket Lab and Stoke. For Rocket Lab, it bolsters the business case for the medium-class Neutron rocket it is developing for flights from Wallops Island, Virginia. Neutron will be partially reusable with a recoverable first stage. But Rocket Lab already has a proven track record with its smaller Electron launch vehicle. Stoke hasn’t launched anything, and it has lofty ambitions for a fully reusable two-stage rocket called Nova. This is a huge vote of confidence in Stoke. When the Space Force released its invitation for an on-ramp to the NSSL program last year, it said bidders must show a “credible plan for a first launch by December 2025.” Smart money is that neither company will launch its rockets by the end of this year, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Falcon 9 deploys spy satellite. Monday afternoon, a SpaceX Falcon 9 took flight from Florida’s Space Coast and delivered a national security payload designed, built, and operated by the National Reconnaissance Office into orbit, Florida Today reports. Like almost all NRO missions, details about the payload are classified. The mission codename was NROL-69, and the launch came three-and-a-half days after SpaceX launched another NRO mission from California. While we have some idea of what SpaceX launched from California last week, the payload for the NROL-69 mission is a mystery.

Space sleuthing … There’s an online community of dedicated skywatchers who regularly track satellites as they sail overhead around dawn and dusk. The US government doesn’t publish the exact orbital parameters for its classified spy satellites (they used to), but civilian trackers coordinate with one another, and through a series of observations, they can produce a pretty good estimate of a spacecraft’s orbit. Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archeologist and university lecturer on space situational awareness, is one of the best at this, using publicly available information about the flight path of a launch to estimate when the satellite will fly overhead. He and three other observers in Europe managed to locate the NROL-69 payload just two days after the launch, plotting the object in an orbit between 700 and 1,500 kilometers at an inclination of 64.1 degrees to the equator. Analysts speculated this mission might carry a pair of naval surveillance spacecraft, but this orbit doesn’t match up well with any known constellations of NRO satellites.

NASA continues with Artemis II preps. Late Saturday night, technicians at Kennedy Space Center in Florida moved the core stage for NASA’s second Space Launch System rocket into position between the vehicle’s two solid-fueled boosters, Ars reports. Working inside the iconic 52-story-tall Vehicle Assembly Building, ground teams used heavy-duty cranes to first lift the butterscotch orange core stage from its cradle, then rotate it to a vertical orientation and lift it into a high bay, where it was lowered into position on a mobile launch platform. The 212-foot-tall (65-meter) core stage is the largest single hardware element for the Artemis II mission, which will send a team of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon and back to Earth as soon as next year.

Looking like a go … With this milestone, the slow march toward launch continues. A few months ago, some well-informed people in the space community thought there was a real possibility the Trump administration could quickly cancel NASA’s Space Launch System, the high-priced heavy-lifter designed to send astronauts from the Earth to the Moon. The most immediate possibility involved terminating the SLS program before it flies with Artemis II. This possibility appears to have been overcome by circumstances. The rockets most often mentioned as stand-ins for the Space Launch System—SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn—aren’t likely to be cleared for crew missions for at least several years. The long-term future of the Space Launch System remains in doubt.

Space Force says Vulcan is good to go. The US Space Force on Wednesday announced that it has certified United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket to conduct national security missions, Ars reports. “Assured access to space is a core function of the Space Force and a critical element of national security,” said Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, in a news release. “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems.” The formal announcement closes a yearslong process that has seen multiple delays in the development of the Vulcan rocket, as well as two anomalies in recent years that were a further setback to certification.

Multiple options … This certification allows ULA’s Vulcan to launch the military’s most sensitive national security missions, a separate lot from those Rocket Lab and Stoke Space are now eligible for (as we report in a separate Rocket Report entry). It elevates Vulcan to launch these missions alongside SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Vulcan will not be the next rocket that the company launches, however. First up is one of the company’s remaining Atlas V boosters, carrying Project Kuiper broadband satellites for Amazon. This launch could occur in April, although ULA has not set a date. This will be followed by the first Vulcan national security launch, which the Space Force says could occur during the coming “summer.”

Next three launches

March 29: Spectrum | “Going Full Spectrum” | Andøya Spaceport, Norway | 11: 30 UTC

March 29: Long March 7A | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 16: 05 UTC

March 30: Alpha | LM-400 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13: 37 UTC

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

Rocket Report: Stoke is stoked; sovereignty is the buzzword in Europe Read More »

This launcher is about to displace the V-2 as Germany’s largest rocket

Commercial space, Europe, european space agency, germany, isar aerospace, launch, Norway, Science, Space / Mike M. / March 24, 2025

Isar Aerospace’s first Spectrum rocket will launch from Andøya Spaceport in Norway.

Seven years ago, three classmates at the Technical University of Munich believed their student engineering project might hold some promise in the private sector.

At the time, Daniel Metzler led a team of 40 students working on rocket engines and launching sounding rockets. Josef Fleischmann was on the team that won the first SpaceX Hyperloop competition. Together with another classmate, Markus Brandl, they crafted rocket parts in a campus workshop before taking the leap and establishing Isar Aerospace, named for the river running through the Bavarian capital.

Now, Isar’s big moment has arrived. The company’s orbital-class first rocket, named Spectrum, is set to lift off from a shoreline launch pad in Norway as soon as Monday.

The three-hour launch window opens at 12: 30 pm local time in Norway, or 7: 30 am EDT in the United States. “The launch date remains subject to weather, safety and range infrastructure,” Isar said in a statement.

Isar’s Spectrum rocket rolls out to its launch pad in Norway. Credit: Isar Aerospace

Isar said it received a launch license from the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority on March 14, following the final qualification test on the Spectrum rocket in February to validate its readiness for flight.

Notably, this will be the first orbital launch attempt from a launch pad in Western Europe. The French-run Guiana Space Center in South America is the primary spaceport for European rockets. Virgin Orbit staged an airborne launch attempt from an airport in the United Kingdom in 2023, and the Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located in European Russia.

No guarantees

Success is never assured on the inaugural launch of a new rocket. Isar is the first in a wave of European launch startups to arrive at this point. The company developed the Spectrum rocket with mostly private funding, although Isar received multimillion-euro investments from the European Space Agency, the German government, and the NATO Innovation Fund.

All told, Isar says it has raised more than 400 million euros, or $435 million at today’s currency exchange rate, more than any other European launch startup.

“We are approaching the most important moment of our journey so far, and I would like to thank all our team, partners, customers and investors who have been accompanying and trusting us,” said Daniel Metzler, Isar’s co-founder and CEO, in a statement.

Most privately developed rockets have failed to reach orbit on the first try. Several US launch companies that evolved in a similar mold as Isar—such as Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Astra—faltered on the way to orbit on their rockets’ first flights.

“With this mission, Isar Aerospace aims to collect as much data and experience as possible on its in-house-developed launch vehicle. It is the first integrated test of all systems,” said Alexandre Dalloneau, Isar’s vice president of mission and launch operations.

“The test results will feed into the iterations and development of future Spectrum vehicles, which are being built and tested in parallel,” Isar said in a statement.

Look familiar? Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket is powered by nine first-stage engines arranged in an “octaweb” configuration patterned on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: Isar Aerospace/Wingmen Media

Europe has struggled to regain its footing after SpaceX took over the dominant position in the global commercial launch market, a segment led for three decades by Europe’s Ariane rocket family before SpaceX proved the reliability of the lower-cost, partially reusable Falcon 9 launcher. The continent’s new Ariane 6 rocket, funded by ESA and built by a consortium owned by multinational firms Airbus and Safran, is more expensive than the Falcon 9 and years behind schedule. It finally debuted last year.

One ton to LEO

Isar’s Spectrum rocket is not as powerful as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Arianespace’s Ariane 6. But even SpaceX had to start somewhere. Its small Falcon 1 rocket failed three times before tasting success. Spectrum is somewhat larger and more capable than Falcon 1, with performance in line with Firefly’s Alpha rocket.

The fully assembled Spectrum rocket stands about 92 feet (28 meters) tall and measures more than 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter. The expendable launcher is designed to haul payloads up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. Spectrum is powered by nine Aquila engines on its first stage, and one engine on the second stage, burning a mixture of propane and liquid oxygen propellants.

There are no customer satellites aboard the first Spectrum test flight. The rocket will climb into a polar orbit from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, but Isar hasn’t published a launch timeline or the exact parameters of the target orbit.

While modest in size next to Europe’s Ariane launcher family, Isar’s Spectrum is the largest German rocket since the V-2, the World War II weapon of terror launched by Nazi Germany against targets in Great Britain, Belgium, and other places. In the 80 years since the war, German industry developed a handful of small sounding rockets and manufactured upper stages for Ariane rockets.

But German governments have long shunned spending on launchers at levels commensurate with the nation’s place as a top contributor to ESA. France took the lead in the continent’s postwar rocket industry, providing the lion’s share of funding for Ariane and taking responsibility for building engines and booster stages.

Now, 80 years to the week since the last V-2 launch of World War II, Germany again has a homegrown liquid-fueled rocket on the launch pad. This time, it’s for a much different purpose.

As a first step, Isar and other companies in Europe are vying to inject competition with Arianespace into the European launch market. This will begin with small government-funded satellites that otherwise would have likely launched on rideshare flights by SpaceX or Arianespace.

In 2022, the German space agency (known as DLR) announced the selection of research and demo payloads slated to fly on Spectrum’s second launch. The Norwegian Space Agency revealed a contract earlier this month for Isar to launch a pair of satellites for the country’s Arctic Ocean Surveillance program.

Within the next few days, ESA is expected to release an “invitation to tender” for European industry to submit proposals for the European Launcher Challenge. This summer, ESA will select winners from Europe’s crop of launch startups to demonstrate that their rockets can deliver the agency’s scientific satellites to orbit. This is the first time ESA has experimented with a fully commercial business model, with launch service contracts to private companies. Isar is a leading contender to win the launcher challenge, alongside other European companies like Rocket Factory Augsburg, HyImpulse, MaiaSpace, and others.

Previously, ESA has provided billions of euros to Europe’s big incumbent rocket companies for development of new generations of Ariane rockets. Now, ESA wants to follow the path of NASA, which has used fixed-price service contracts to foster commercial cargo and crew transportation to the International Space Station, and most recently, privately owned landers on the Moon.

“Whatever the outcome, Isar Aerospace’s upcoming Spectrum launch will be historic: the first commercial orbital launch from mainland Europe,” Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, posted on X. “The support and co-funding the European Space Agency has given Isar Aerospace and other launch service provider startups is paying off for increased autonomy in Europe. Wishing Isar Aerospace a great launch day with fair weather and most importantly, that the data they receive from the liftoff will speed next iterations of their rockets.”

Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA’s acting director of space transportation, called this moment a “paradigm shift” for Europe’s launcher strategy.

“In the last 40 years, we have had these ESA-developed launchers that we have been relying on,” Tolker-Nielsen told Ars in an interview. “So we started with Ariane 1 up to Ariane 6. Vega C came onboard. And it’s been working like that for the last 40 years. Now, we are moving into in the ’30s, and the next decades, to have privately developed launchers.”

Isar Aerospace’s first Spectrum rocket will lift off from the remote Andøya Spaceport in Norway, a gorgeous location that might be the world’s most picturesque launch site. Nestled on the western coast of an island inside the Arctic Circle, Andøya offers an open path over the Norwegian Sea for rockets to fly north, where they can place satellites into polar orbit.

The spaceport is operated by Andøya Space, a company 90 percent owned by the Norwegian government through the Ministry for Trade, Industry, and Fisheries. Until now, Andøya Spaceport has been used for launches of suborbital sounding rockets.

The geography of Norway permits northerly launches from Andøya Spaceport. Credit: Andøya Space

No better time than now

Isar’s first launch comes amid an abrupt turn in European strategic policy as the continent’s leaders struggle with how to respond to moves by President Donald Trump in his first two months in office. In recent weeks, the Trump administration put European leaders on their heels with sudden policy reversals and unpredictable statements on Ukraine, NATO, and the US government’s long-term backstopping of European security.

Friedrich Merz, set to become Germany’s next chancellor, said last month that Europe should strive to “achieve independence” from the United States. “It is clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this administration, are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

Last week, Merz shepherded a bill through German parliament to amend the country’s constitution, allowing for a significant increase in German defense spending. The incoming chancellor said the change is “nothing less than the first major step towards a new European defense community.”

The erosion of Europe’s trust in the Trump administration prompted rumors that the US government could trigger a “kill switch” to turn off combat capabilities of F-35 fighter jets sold to US allies. This would have previously seemed like a far-fetched conspiracy theory, but some European officials felt compelled to make statements denying the kill switch reports. Still, the recent turbulence in trans-Atlantic relations has some US allies rethinking their plans to buy more US-made fighter jets and weapons systems.

“Reliable and predictable orders should go to European manufacturers whenever possible,” Merz said.

Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice chancellor and economics minister, tours Isar Aerospace in Ottobrunn, Germany, in 2023. Credit: Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images

This uncertainty extends to space, where it is most apparent in the launch industry. SpaceX, founded and led by Trump ally Elon Musk, dominates the global commercial launch business. European governments have repeatedly turned to SpaceX to launch multiple defense and scientific satellites over the last several years, while Europe encountered delays with its homegrown Ariane 6 and Vega rockets.

Until 2022, Europe and Russia jointly operated Soyuz rockets from the Guiana Space Center in South America to deploy government and commercial payloads to orbit. The partnership ended with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Europe’s flagship Ariane 5 rocket retired in 2023, a year before its replacement—the Ariane 6—debuted on its first test flight from the Guiana Space Center. The first operational flight of the Ariane 6 delivered a French military spy satellite to orbit March 6. The smaller Vega C rocket successfully launched in December, two years after officials grounded the vehicle due to an in-flight failure.

ESA funded development of the Ariane 6 and Vega C in partnership with ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus and Safran, and the Italian defense contractor Avio.

For the moment, Europe’s launcher program is back on track to provide autonomous access to space, a capability European officials consider a strategic imperative. Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister for research and higher education, said after the Ariane 6 flight earlier this month that the launch was “proof” of European space sovereignty.

“The return of Donald Trump to the White House, with Elon Musk at his side, already has significant consequences on our research partnerships, on our commercial partnerships,” Baptiste said in his remarkably pointed prepared remarks. “If we want to maintain our independence, ensure our security, and preserve our sovereignty, we must equip ourselves with the means for strategic autonomy, and space is an essential part of this.”

The problem? Ariane 6 and Vega C are costly, lack a path to reusability, and aren’t geared to match SpaceX’s blistering launch cadence. If Europe wants autonomous access to space, European taxpayers will have to pay a premium. Isar’s Spectrum also isn’t reusable, but European officials hope competition from new startups will produce fresh launch options, and perhaps stimulate an inspired response from Europe’s entrenched launch companies.

“In today’s geopolitical climate, our first test flight is about much more than a rocket launch: Space is one of the most critical platforms for our security, resilience, and technological advancement,” Metzler said. “In the next days, Isar Aerospace will lay the foundations to regain much needed independent and competitive access to space from Europe.”

Tolker-Nielsen, in charge of ESA’s space transportation division, said this is the first of many steps for Europe to develop a thriving commercial launch sector.

“This launch is a milestone, which is very important,” he said. “It’s the first conclusion of all this work, so I will be looking carefully on that. I cross my fingers that it goes well.”

This launcher is about to displace the V-2 as Germany’s largest rocket Read More »

Rocket Report: ULA confirms cause of booster anomaly; Crew-10 launch on tap

ariane 6, china, falcon 9, Firefly Aerospace, isar aerospace, launch, long march 8, military space, NASA, Poland, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, united launch alliance, vulcan / Shannon Garcia / March 14, 2025

The head of Poland’s space agency was fired over a bungled response to SpaceX debris falling over Polish territory.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Dragon spacecraft on top is seen during sunset Tuesday at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.35 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX’s steamroller is still rolling, but for the first time in many years, it doesn’t seem like it’s rolling downhill. After a three-year run of perfect performance—with no launch failures or any other serious malfunctions—SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has suffered a handful of issues in recent months. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket is having problems, too. Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, addressed some (but not all) of these concerns in a post on X this week. Despite the issues with the Falcon 9, SpaceX has maintained a remarkable launch cadence. As of Thursday, SpaceX has launched 28 Falcon 9 flights since January 1, ahead of last year’s pace.

Alpha rocket preps for weekend launch. While Firefly Aerospace is making headlines for landing on the Moon, its Alpha rocket is set to launch again as soon as Saturday morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The two-stage, kerosene-fueled rocket will launch a self-funded technology demonstration satellite for Lockheed Martin. It’s the first of up to 25 launches Lockheed Martin has booked with Firefly over the next five years. This launch will be the sixth flight of an Alpha rocket, which has become a leader in the US commercial launch industry for dedicated missions with 1 ton-class satellites.

Firefly’s OG … The Alpha rocket was Firefly’s first product, and it has been a central piece of the company’s development since 2014. Like Firefly itself, the Alpha rocket program has gone through multiple iterations, including a wholesale redesign nearly a decade ago. Sure, Firefly can’t claim any revolutionary firsts with the Alpha rocket, as it can with its Blue Ghost lunar lander. But without Alpha, Firefly wouldn’t be where it is today. The Texas-based firm is one of only four US companies with an operational orbital-class rocket. One thing to watch for is how quickly Firefly can ramp up its Alpha launch cadence. The rocket only flew once last year.

Isar Aerospace celebrates another win. In last week’s Rocket Report, we mentioned that the German launch startup Isar Aerospace won a contract with a Japanese company to launch a 200-kilogram commercial satellite in 2026. But wait, there’s more! On Wednesday, the Norwegian Space Agency announced it awarded a contract to Isar Aerospace for the launch of a pair of satellites for the country’s Arctic Ocean Surveillance initiative, European Spaceflight reports. The satellites are scheduled to launch on Isar’s Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in Norway by 2028.

First launch pending … These recent contract wins are a promising sign for Isar Aerospace, which is also vying for contracts to launch small payloads for the European Space Agency. The Spectrum rocket could launch on its inaugural flight within a matter of weeks, and if successful, it could mark a transformative moment for the European space industry, which has long been limited to a single launch provider: the French company Arianespace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Sign Me Up!

Mother Nature holds up Oz launch. The first launch by Gilmour Space has been postponed again due to a tropical cyclone that brought severe weather to Australia’s Gold Coast region earlier this month, InnovationAus.com reports. Tropical Cyclone Alfred didn’t significantly impact Gilmour’s launch site, but the storm did cause the company to suspend work at its corporate headquarters in Southeast Queensland. With the storm now over, Gilmour is reassessing when it might be ready to launch its Eris rocket. Reportedly, the delay could be as long as two weeks or more.

A regulatory storm … Gilmour aims to become the first Australian company to launch a rocket into orbit. Last month, Gilmour announced the launch date for the Eris rocket was set for no earlier than March 15, but Tropical Cyclone Alfred threw this schedule out the window. Gilmour said it received a launch license from the Australian Space Agency in November and last month secured approvals to clear airspace around the launch site. But there’s still a hitch. The license is conditional on final documentation for the launch being filed and agreed with the space agency, and this process is stretching longer than anticipated. (submitted by ZygP)

What is going on at SpaceX? As we mention in the introduction to this week’s Rocket Report, it has been an uncharacteristically messy eight months for SpaceX. These speed bumps include issues with the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage on three missions, two lost Falcon 9 boosters, and consecutive failures of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket on its first two test flights of the year. So what’s behind SpaceX’s bumpy ride? Ars wrote about the pressures facing SpaceX employees as Elon Musk pushes his workforce ever-harder to accelerate toward what Musk might call a multi-planetary future.

Headwinds or tailwinds? … No country or private company ever launched as many times as SpaceX flew its fleet of Falcon 9 rockets in 2024. At the same time, the company has been attempting to move its talented engineering team off the Falcon 9 and Dragon programs and onto Starship to keep that ambitious program moving forward. This is all happening as Musk has taken on significant roles in the Trump administration, stirring controversy and raising questions about his motives and potential conflicts of interest. However, it may be not so much Musk’s absence from SpaceX that is causing these issues but more the company’s relentless culture. As my colleague Eric Berger suggested in his piece, it seems possible that, at least for now, SpaceX has reached the speed limit for commercial spaceflight.

A titan of Silicon Valley enters the rocket business. Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has taken a controlling interest in the Long Beach, California-based Relativity Space, Ars reports. Schmidt’s involvement with Relativity has been quietly discussed among space industry insiders for a few months. Multiple sources told Ars that he has largely been bankrolling the company since the end of October, when the company’s previous fundraising dried up. Now, Schmidt is Relativity’s CEO.

Unclear motives … It is not immediately clear why Schmidt is taking a hands-on approach at Relativity. However, it is one of the few US-based companies with a credible path toward developing a medium-lift rocket that could potentially challenge the dominance of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. If the Terran R booster becomes commercially successful, it could play a big role in launching megaconstellations. Schmidt’s ascension also means that Tim Ellis, the company’s co-founder, chief executive, and almost sole public persona for nearly a decade, is now out of a leadership position.

Falcon 9 deploys NASA’s newest space telescope. Satellites come in all shapes and sizes, but there aren’t any that look quite like SPHEREx, an infrared observatory NASA launched Tuesday night in search of answers to simmering questions about how the Universe, and ultimately life, came to be, Ars reports. The SPHEREx satellite rocketed into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, beginning a two-year mission surveying the sky in search of clues about the earliest periods of cosmic history, when the Universe rapidly expanded and the first galaxies formed. SPHEREx will also scan for pockets of water ice within our own galaxy, where clouds of gas and dust coalesce to form stars and planets.

Excess capacity … SPHEREx has lofty goals, but it’s modest in size, weighing just a little more than a half-ton at launch. This meant the Falcon 9 rocket had plenty of extra room for four other small satellites that will fly in formation to image the solar wind as it travels from the Sun into the Solar System. The four satellites are part of NASA’s PUNCH mission. SPHEREx and PUNCH are part of NASA’s Explorers program, a series of cost-capped science missions with a lineage going back to the dawn of the Space Age. SPHEREx and PUNCH have a combined cost of about $638 million. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China has launched another batch of Internet satellites. A new group of 18 satellites entered orbit Tuesday for the Thousand Sails constellation with the first launch from a new commercial launch pad, Space News reports. The satellites launched on top of a Long March 8 rocket from Hainan Commercial Launch Site near Wenchang on Hainan Island. The commercial launch site has two pads, the first of which entered service with a launch last year. This mission was the first to launch from the other pad at the commercial spaceport, which is gearing up for an uptick in Chinese launch activity to continue deploying satellites for the Thousand Sails network and other megaconstellations.

Sailing on … The Thousand Sails constellation, also known as Qianfan, or G60 Starlink, is a broadband satellite constellation spearheaded by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), also known as Spacesail, Space News reported. The project, which aims to deploy 14,000 satellites, seeks to compete in the global satellite Internet market. Spacesail has now launched 90 satellites into near-polar orbits, and the operator previously stated it aims to have 648 satellites in orbit by the end of 2025. If Spacesail continues launching 18 satellites per rocket, this goal would require 31 more launches this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

NASA, SpaceX call off astronaut launch. With the countdown within 45 minutes of launch, NASA called off an attempt to send the next crew to the International Space Station Wednesday evening to allow more time to troubleshoot a ground system hydraulics issue, CBS News reports. During the countdown Wednesday, SpaceX engineers were troubleshooting a problem with one of two clamp arms that hold the Falcon 9 rocket to its strongback support gantry. Hydraulics are used to retract the two clamps prior to launch.

Back on track … NASA confirmed Thursday SpaceX ground teams completed inspections of the hydraulics system used for the clamp arm supporting the Falcon 9 rocket and successfully flushed a suspected pocket of trapped air in the system, clearing the way for another launch attempt Friday evening. This mission, known as Crew-10, will ferry two NASA astronauts, a Japanese mission specialist, and a Russian cosmonaut to the space station. They will replace a four-person crew currently at the ISS, including Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been in orbit since last June after flying to space on Boeing’s Starliner capsule. Starliner returned to Earth without its crew due to a problem with overheating thrusters, leaving Wilmore and Williams behind to wait for a ride home with SpaceX.

SpaceX’s woes reach Poland’s space agency. The president of the Polish Space Agency, Grzegorz Wrochna, has been dismissed following a botched response to the uncontrolled reentry of a Falcon 9 second stage that scattered debris across multiple locations in Poland, European Spaceflight reports. The Falcon 9’s upper stage was supposed to steer itself toward a controlled reentry last month after deploying a set of Starlink satellites, but a propellant leak prevented it from doing so. Instead, the stage remained in orbit for nearly three weeks before falling back into the atmosphere February 19, scattering debris fragments at several locations in Poland.

A failure to communicate … In the aftermath of the Falcon 9’s uncontrolled reentry, the Polish Space Agency (POLSA) claimed it sent warnings of the threat of falling space debris to multiple departments of the Polish government. One Polish ministry disputed this claim, saying it was not adequately warned about the uncontrolled reentry. POLSA later confirmed it sent information regarding the reentry to a wrong email address. Making matters worse, the Polish Space Agency reported it was hacked on March 2. The Polish government apparently had enough and fired the head of the space agency March 11.

Vulcan booster anomaly blamed on “manufacturing defect.” The loss of a solid rocket motor nozzle on the second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur last October was caused by a manufacturing defect, Space News reports. In a roundtable with reporters Wednesday, ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said the problem has been corrected as the company awaits certification of the Vulcan rocket by the Space Force. The nozzle fell off the bottom of one of the Vulcan launcher’s twin solid rocket boosters about a half-minute into its second test flight last year. The rocket continued its climb into space, but ULA and Northrop Grumman, which supplies solid rocket motors for Vulcan, set up an investigation to find the cause of the nozzle malfunction.

All the trimmings … Bruno said the anomaly was traced to a “manufacturing defect” in one of the internal parts of the nozzle, an insulator. Specific details, he said, remained proprietary, according to Space News. “We have isolated the root cause and made appropriate corrective actions,” he said, which were confirmed in a static-fire test of a motor at a Northrop test site in Utah in February. “So we are back continuing to fabricate hardware and, at least initially, screening for what that root cause was.” Bruno said the investigation was aided by recovery of hardware that fell off the motor while in flight and landed near the launch pad in Florida, as well as “trimmings” of material left over from the manufacturing process. ULA also recovered both boosters from the ocean so engineers could compare the one that lost its nozzle to the one that performed normally. The defective hardware “just stood out night and day,” Bruno said. “It was pretty clear that that was an outlier, far out of family.” Meanwhile, ULA has trimmed its launch forecast for this year, from a projection of up to 20 launches down to a dozen. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

March 14: Falcon 9 | Crew-10 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 23: 03 UTC

March 15: Electron | QPS-SAR-9 | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 00: 00 UTC

March 15: Long March 2B | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 10 UTC

Rocket Report: ULA confirms cause of booster anomaly; Crew-10 launch on tap Read More »

German startup to attempt the first orbital launch from Western Europe

Commercial space, Europe, germany, isar aerospace, launch, Norway, Science, Space, spectrum rocket / Beth Washington / February 22, 2025

The nine-engine first stage for Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lights up on the launch pad on February 14. Credit: Isar Aerospace

Isar builds almost all of its rockets in-house, including Spectrum’s Aquila engines.

“The flight will be the first integrated test of tens of thousands of components,” said Josef Fleischmann, Isar’s co-founder and chief technical officer. “Regardless of how far we get, this first test flight will hopefully generate an enormous amount of data and experience which we can apply to future missions.”

Isar is the first European startup to reach this point in development. “Reaching this milestone is a huge success in itself,” Meltzer said in a statement. “And while Spectrum is ready for its first test flight, launch vehicles for flights two and three are already in production.”

Another Bavarian company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, destroyed its first booster during a test-firing on its launch pad in Scotland last year, ceding the frontrunner mantle to Isar. RFA received its launch license from the UK government last month and aims to deliver its second booster to the launch site for hot-fire testing and a launch attempt later this year.

There’s an appetite within the European launch industry for new companies to compete with Arianespace, the continent’s sole operational launch services provider backed by substantial government support. Delays in developing the Ariane 6 rocket and several failures of Europe’s smaller Vega launcher forced European satellite operators to look abroad, primarily to SpaceX, to launch their payloads.

The European Space Agency is organizing the European Launcher Challenge, a competition that will set aside some of the agency’s satellites for launch opportunities with a new crop of startups. Isar is one of the top contenders in the competition to win money from ESA. The agency expects to award funding to multiple European launch providers after releasing a final solicitation later this year.

The first flight of the Spectrum rocket will attempt to reach a polar orbit, flying north from Andøya Spaceport. Located at approximately 69 degrees north latitude, the spaceport is poised to become the world’s northernmost orbital launch site.

Because the inaugural launch of the Spectrum rocket is a test flight, it won’t carry any customer payloads, an Isar spokesperson told Ars.

German startup to attempt the first orbital launch from Western Europe Read More »

Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit

blue origin, china, crew dragon, falcon 9, human spaceflight, isar aerospace, LandSpace, launch, new glenn, Polaris dawn, rocket report, russia, Science, soyuz, Space, spacex / Shannon Garcia / September 14, 2024

Ascendant —

Launch startups in China and Europe are borrowing ideas and rhetoric from SpaceX.

Stephen Clark – Sep 13, 2024 11: 00 am UTC

Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. — Enlarge / Landspace’s reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024.

Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent advancements in reusable rockets are coming from China’s quasi-commercial launch industry. This industry is no longer nascent. After initially relying on solid-fueled rocket motors apparently derived from Chinese military missiles, China’s privately funded launch firms are testing larger launchers, with varying degrees of success, and now performing hop tests reminiscent of SpaceX’s Grasshopper and F9R Dev1 programs more than a decade ago.

Landspace hops closer to a reusable rocket. Chinese private space startup Landspace has completed a 10-kilometer (33,000-foot) vertical takeoff and vertical landing test on its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket testbed, including a mid-flight engine reignition at near supersonic conditions, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The 18.3-meter (60-foot) vehicle took off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, ascended to 10,002 meters, and then made a vertical descent and achieved an on-target propulsive landing 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from the launch pad. Notably, the rocket’s methane-fueled variable-thrust engine intentionally shutdown in flight, then reignited for descent, as engines would operate on future full-scale booster flybacks. The test booster used grid fins and cold gas thrusters to control itself when its main engine was dormant, according to Landspace.

“All indicators met the expected design” … Landspace hailed the test as a major milestone in the company’s road to flying its next rocket, the Zhuque-3, as soon as next year. With nine methane-fueled main engines, the Zhuque-3 will initially be able to deliver 21 metric tons (46,300 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit with its booster flying in expendable mode. In 2026, Landspace aims to begin recovering Zhuque-3 first-stage boosters for reuse. Landspace is one of several Chinese companies working seriously on reusable rocket designs. Another Chinese firm, Deep Blue Aerospace, says it plans a 100-kilometer (62-mile) suborbital test of a reusable booster soon, ahead of the first flight of its medium-class Nebula-1 rocket next year. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s space reporting is to sign up for his newsletter, we’ll collect his stories in your inbox.

Isar Aerospace sets low bar for success on first launch. Daniel Metzler, CEO of German launch startup Isar Aerospace, stated that the first flight of the Spectrum rocket would be a success if it didn’t destroy the launch site, European Spaceflight reports. During an interview at the Handelsblatt innovation conference, Metzler was asked what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum. “For me, the first flight will be a success if we don’t blow up the launch site,” explained Metzler. “That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.” This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX’s first flight of the Starship rocket last year.

In the catbird seat? … Isar Aerospace could be in a position to become the first in a new crop of European commercial launch companies to attempt its first orbital flight. Another German company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, recently gave up on a possible launch this year after the booster for its first launch caught fire and collapsed during a test at a launch site in Scotland. Isar plans to launch its two-stage Spectrum rocket, designed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of payload into low-Earth orbit, from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. Isar hasn’t publicized any schedule for the first flight of Spectrum, but there are indications the publicity-shy company is testing hardware at the Norwegian spaceport. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

FAA to introduce new orbital debris rules. The Federal Aviation Administration is moving ahead with efforts to develop rules for the disposal of upper stages as another Centaur upper stage breaks apart in orbit, Space News reports. The FAA released draft regulations on the matter for public comment one year ago, and the head of the agency’s commercial spaceflight division recently said the rules are a “high priority for our organization.” The rules would direct launch operators to dispose of upper stages in one of five ways, from controlled reentries to placement in graveyard or “disposal” orbits not commonly used by operational satellites. One change the FAA might make to the draft rules is to reduce the required timeline for an uncontrolled reentry of a disposed upper stage from no more than 25 years to a shorter timeline. “We got a lot of comments that said it should be a lot less,” said Kelvin Coleman, head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight office. “We’re taking that into consideration.”

Upper stages are a problem … Several recent breakups involving spent upper stages in orbit have highlighted the concern that dead rocket bodies could create unnecessary space junk. Last month, the upper stage from a Chinese Long March 6A disintegrated in low-Earth orbit, creating at least 300 pieces of space debris. More recently, a Centaur upper stage from a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket broke apart in a much higher orbit, resulting in more than 40 pieces of debris. This was the fourth time one of ULA’s Centaur upper stages has broken up since 2018. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Rocket Report: China leaps into rocket reuse; 19 people are currently in orbit Read More »