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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But first, space policymakers must learn from their mistakes.

Begin at the beginning

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mistakes were made

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

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

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

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

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

Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

The Moon, finally

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

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

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

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

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

When will Starship be ready?

Probably not any time soon.

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

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

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

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

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

What are the alternatives?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answer is Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander.

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

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

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

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

Credit: Eric Berger

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

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

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

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

Jeff and Sean? Y’all need to talk.

Photo of Eric Berger

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

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

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In their own words: The Artemis II crew on the frenetic first hours of their flight

artemis II, astronauts, Features, moon, NASA, orion, sls, Space / /

No one will be able to sleep when the launch window opens, however.

Wiseman: About seven seconds prior to liftoff, the four main engines light, and they come up to full power. And then the solids light, and that’s when you’re going. What’s crazy to me is that it’s six and a half seconds into flight before the solids clear the top of the tower. Five million pounds of machinery going straight uphill. Six and a half seconds to clear the tower. As a human, I can’t wait to feel that force.

A little more than two minutes into flight, the powerful side-mounted boosters will separate. They will have done the vast majority of lifting to that point, with the rocket already reaching a velocity of 3,100 mph (5,000 kph) and an altitude of 30 miles (48 km), well on its way to space. As payload specialists, Koch and Hansen will largely be along for the ride. Wiseman, the commander, and Glover, the pilot, will be tracking the launch, although the rocket’s flight will be fully automated unless something goes wrong.

Wiseman: Victor and I, we have a lot of work. We have a lot of systems to monitor. Hopefully, everything goes great, and if it doesn’t, we’re very well-trained on what to do next.

After 8 minutes and 3 seconds, the rocket’s core stage will shut down, and the upper stage and Orion spacecraft will separate about 10 seconds later. They will be in space, with about 40 minutes to prepare for their next major maneuver.

In orbit

Koch: The wildest thing in this mission is that literally, right after main-engine cutoff, the first thing Jeremy and I do is get up and start working. I don’t know of a single other mission, certainly not in my memory, where that has been the case in terms of physical movement in the vehicle, setting things up.

Koch, Wiseman, and Glover have all flown to space before, either on a SpaceX Dragon or Russian Soyuz vehicle, and spent several months on the International Space Station. So they know how their bodies will react to weightlessness. Nearly half of all astronauts experience “space adaptation syndrome” during their first flight to orbit, and there is really no way to predict who it will afflict beforehand. This is a real concern for Hansen, a first-time flier, who is expected to hop out of his seat and start working.

Canadian Astronaut Jeremy Hansen is a first-time flier on Artemis II.

Credit: NASA

Canadian Astronaut Jeremy Hansen is a first-time flier on Artemis II. Credit: NASA

Hansen: I’m definitely worried about that, just from a space motion sickness point of view. So I’ll just be really intentional. I won’t move my head around a lot. Obviously, I’m gonna have to get up and move. And I’ll just be very intentional in those first few hours while I’m moving around. And the other thing that I’ll do—it’s very different from Space Station—is I just have everything memorized, so I don’t have to read the procedure on those first few things. So I’m not constantly going down to the [tablet] and reading, and then up. And I’ll just try to minimize what I do.

Koch and Hansen will set up and test essential life support systems on the spacecraft because if the bathroom does not work, they’re not going to the Moon.

Hansen: We kind of split the vehicle by side. So Christina is on the side of the toilet. She’s taking care of all that stuff. I’m on the side of the water dispenser, which is something they want to know: Can we dispense water? It’s not a very complicated system. We just got to get up, get the stuff out of storage, hook it up. I’ll have some camera equipment that I’ll pull out of there. I’ve got the masks we use if we have a fire and we’re trying to purge the smoke. I’ve got to get those set up and make sure they’re good to go. So it’s just little jobs, little odds and ends.

Unlike a conventional rocket mission, Artemis II vehicle’s upper stage, known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, will not fire right away. Rather, after separating from the core stage, Orion will be in an elliptical orbit that will take it out to an apogee of 1,200 nautical miles, nearly five times higher than the International Space Station. There, the crew will be further from Earth than anyone since the Apollo program.

In their own words: The Artemis II crew on the frenetic first hours of their flight Read More »

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

ariane 6, artemis II, astra, blue origin, Firefly Aerospace, moon, NASA, new glenn, rocket report, Security, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship, VIPER / /

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

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

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

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next three launches

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

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

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

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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

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Sierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare

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However, in its news release, NASA said it is no longer obligated to a specific number of resupply missions.

Chasing those defense dollars

In its own statement on the announcement, Sierra Space said the new approach will provide it with more “flexibility” as the company seeks to attract national defense contracts.

“Dream Chaser represents the future of versatile space transportation and mission flexibility,” said Fatih Ozmen, executive chair at Sierra Space, in the statement. “This transition provides unique capabilities to meet the needs of diverse mission profiles, including emerging and existential threats and national security priorities that align with our acceleration into the Defense Tech market.”

Although the NASA news release does not detail the space agency’s concerns about allowing Dream Chaser to approach the station, sources have told Ars the space agency has yet to certify the spacecraft’s propulsion system. The spacecraft is powered by more than two dozen small rocket engines, each capable of operating at three discrete levels of thrust for fine control or more significant orbit adjustments. Certification is a necessary precursor for allowing a vehicle to approach the orbiting laboratory.

Sierra said it is now targeting a “late 2026” debut for Dream Chaser, but that date is far enough in the future that it is likely subject to Berger’s Law, and probably means no earlier than 2027. This all but precludes a cargo mission to the International Space Station, which is scheduled to be deorbited in 2030, and presently has two more-than-capable supply vehicles with SpaceX’s Dragon and Northrop’s new, larger Cygnus.

It is possible that Dream Chaser could serve a future market of commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit, but to do so, Sierra will have to get the vehicle flying reliably, frequently, and at a relatively low cost to compete with Dragon and Cygnus. Those are big hurdles for a spacecraft that is now many years behind schedule and no longer has any guaranteed government missions.

Sierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare Read More »

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The crew of Artemis II will fly on Integrity during mission to the Moon

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Three men and one woman, all in orange pressure suits, stand in front of a silver-coated space capsule in an overhead view

The Artemis II crew (from the right): Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen pose in front of their Orion spacecraft, which they have named Integrity. Credit: NASA/Rad Sinyak

Whole and undivided

Ultimately, Integrity was inspired by something one of their instructors said while on a team-building trip to Iceland.

“He coined this for us, and we held on to it,” said Hansen, who, unlike his NASA crewmates, is a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. “It was this idea that you’re not a person who has integrity, you’re a person who strives to be in integrity. Sometimes you’re out of integrity, and sometimes you’re in your integrity. That was profound for all of us.”

For Glover, it boiled down to the definition.

“The Latin root means ‘whole.’ It’s a very simple concept, and it’s about being whole. This crew comes together as pieces—the four of us and our backups—but the six of us make up a whole team. The vehicle, the pieces come together and make up a whole spacecraft,” he said.

“What people anecdotally say is that integrity is what you do when no one’s watching. That, and truth, honor, and integrity matter,” said Glover. “There are so many layers to that name and what it means and what it inspires.”

Integrating Integrity

Integrity is one of the tenets of the Astronaut Code of Professional Responsibility. It is also one of the Canadian Space Agency’s core values.

“We all strive to be in integrity all of the time, but integrity isn’t an absolute that you either have or don’t have,” said Koch. “So this helps us give grace and build trust with each other.”

“I hope that people hearing [the name] over the 10 days of the mission appreciate all of the different things that it means, from a whole ship, a whole crew, to a wholeness and wellness that I think humanity just needs. We need to hear more of that togetherness and wholeness,” said Glover.

Three men and a woman, all in blue flight suits, pose for a photograph backdropped by images of the moon and Mars

NASA’s Artemis II crew (from the left) Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Wednesday, September 24, 2025. Credit: collectSPACE.com

Now that it has been announced, next up is for Integrity to be used as the crew’s possible call sign.

“We waited to make sure the whole enterprise was ready for us to announce it before we even used it,” said Glover. “I think we’ll start using it in sims: ‘Houston, Integrity. Integrity, Houston.’ That’s the plan.

“But if someone doesn’t like that, then we won’t, and we can say Orion,” he said.

The crew of Artemis II will fly on Integrity during mission to the Moon Read More »

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NASA targeting early February for Artemis II mission to the Moon

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NASA is pressing ahead with preparations for the first launch of humans beyond low-Earth orbit in more than five decades, and officials said Tuesday that the Artemis II mission could take flight early next year.

Although work remains to be done, the space agency is now pushing toward a launch window that opens on February 5, 2026, officials said during a news conference on Tuesday at Johnson Space Center.

The Artemis II mission represents a major step forward for NASA and seeks to send four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—around the Moon and back. The 10-day mission will be the first time astronauts have left low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Hardware nearing readiness

The mission’s Space Launch System rocket has been stacked and declared ready for flight. The Orion spacecraft is in the final stages of preparation and will be attached to the top of the rocket later this year.

Early next year, the combined stack will roll out to the vehicle’s launch site at Kennedy Space Center, said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director. At the pad, the rocket and spacecraft will be connected to ground systems, and after about two weeks, it will undergo a “wet dress rehearsal.”

During this fueling test, the first and second stages of the rocket will be fully loaded with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, and the countdown will be taken down to T-29 seconds. After this test, the rocket will be de-tanked and turned around for launch.

Due to the orbits of Earth and the Moon and various constraints on the mission, there are launch windows each month that last four to eight days. In February, that window opens on the fifth, and it would be an evening launch, Blackwell-Thompson said.

After launching, the Orion spacecraft will separate from the upper stage of the SLS rocket a little more than three hours after liftoff. It will spend about 24 hours in orbit around Earth, during which time the four astronauts on board will perform various checkouts to ensure the vehicle’s life support systems, thrusters, and other equipment are performing nominally.

NASA targeting early February for Artemis II mission to the Moon Read More »

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

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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.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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

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In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms

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The situation with the fiscal year 2026 budget for the United States is, to put it politely, kind of a mess.

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely.

Science saved, sort of

In the event of a shutdown, there has been much uncertainty about what would happen to NASA’s budget and the agency’s science missions. Earlier this summer, for example, the White House directed science mission leaders to prepare “closeout plans” for about two dozen spacecraft.

These science missions were targeted for cancellation under the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2026, and the development of these closeout plans indicated that, in the absence of a final budget from Congress, the White House could seek to end these (and other) programs beginning October 1.

However, two sources confirmed to Ars on Friday afternoon that interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy has now directed the agency to work toward the budget level established in the House Appropriations Committee’s budget bill for the coming fiscal year. This does not support full funding for NASA’s science portfolio, but it is far more beneficial than the cuts sought by the White House.

In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms Read More »

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Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker

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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 »

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NASA closing its original repository for Columbia artifacts to tours

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NASA is changing the way that its employees come in contact with, and remember, one of its worst tragedies.

In the wake of the 2003 loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its STS-107 crew, NASA created a program to use the orbiter’s debris for research and education at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Agency employees were invited to see what remained of the space shuttle as a powerful reminder as to why they had to be diligent in their work. Access to the Columbia Research and Preservation Office, though, was limited as a result of its location and related logistics.

To address that and open up the experience to more of the workforce at Kennedy, the agency has quietly begun work to establish a new facility.

“The room, titled Columbia Learning Center (CLC), is a whole new concept,” a NASA spokesperson wrote in an email. “There are no access requirements; anyone at NASA Kennedy can go in any day of the week and stay as long as they like. The CLC will be available whenever employees need the inspiration and message for generations to come.”

Debris depository

On February 1, 2003, Columbia was making its way back from a 16-day science mission in Earth orbit when the damage that it suffered during its launch resulted in the orbiter breaking apart over East Texas. Instead of landing at Kennedy as planned, Columbia fell to the ground in more than 85,000 pieces.

The tragedy claimed the lives of commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Anderson, and Laurel Clark, and payload specialist Ilan Ramon of Israel.

NASA closing its original repository for Columbia artifacts to tours Read More »

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Scientists: It’s do or die time for America’s primacy exploring the Solar System

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“When you turn off those spacecraft’s radio receivers, there’s no way to turn them back on.”

A life-size replica of the New Horizons spacecraft on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Federal funding is about to run out for 19 active space missions studying Earth’s climate, exploring the Solar System, and probing mysteries of the Universe.

This year’s budget expires at the end of this month, and Congress must act before October 1 to avert a government shutdown. If Congress passes a budget before then, it will most likely be in the form of a continuing resolution, an extension of this year’s funding levels into the first few weeks or months of fiscal year 2026.

The White House’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 calls for a 25 percent cut to NASA’s overall budget, and a nearly 50 percent reduction in funding for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. These cuts would cut off money for at least 41 missions, including 19 already in space and many more far along in development.

Normally, a president’s budget request isn’t the final say on matters. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have written their own budget bills in the last several months. There are differences between each appropriations bill, but they broadly reject most of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts.

Still, this hasn’t quelled the anxieties of anyone with a professional or layman’s interest in space science. The 19 active robotic missions chosen for cancellation are operating beyond their original design lifetime. However, in many cases, they are in pursuit of scientific data that no other mission has a chance of collecting for decades or longer.

A “tragic capitulation”

Some of the mission names are recognizable to anyone with a passing interest in NASA’s work. They include the agency’s two Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions monitoring data signatures related to climate change, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which survived a budget scare last year, and two of NASA’s three active satellites orbiting Mars.

And there’s New Horizons, a spacecraft that made front-page headlines in 2015 when it beamed home the first up-close pictures of Pluto. Another mission on the chopping block is Juno, the world’s only spacecraft currently at Jupiter.

Both spacecraft have more to offer, according to the scientists leading the missions.

“New Horizons is perfectly healthy,” said Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute (SWRI). “Everything on the spacecraft is working. All the spacecraft subsystems are performing perfectly, as close to perfectly as one could ever hope. And all the instruments are, too. The spacecraft has the fuel and power to run into the late 2040s or maybe 2050.”

New Horizons is a decade and more than 2.5 billion miles (4.1 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto. The probe flew by a frozen object named Arrokoth on New Year’s Day 2019, returning images of the most distant world ever explored by a spacecraft. Since then, the mission has continued its speedy departure from the Solar System and could become the third spacecraft to return data from interstellar space.

Alan Stern, leader of NASA’s New Horizons mission, speaks during the Tencent WE Summit at Beijing Exhibition Theater on November 6, 2016, in China. Credit: Visual China Group via Getty Images

New Horizons cost taxpayers $780 million from the start of development through the end of its primary mission after exploring Pluto. The project received $9.7 million from NASA to cover operations costs in 2024, the most recent year with full budget data.

It’s unlikely New Horizons will be able to make another close flyby of an object like it did with Pluto and Arrokoth. But the science results keep rolling in. Just last year, scientists announced the news that New Horizons found the Kuiper Belt—a vast outer zone of hundreds of thousands of small, icy worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune—might extend much farther out than previously thought.

“We’re waiting for government, in the form of Congress, the administration, to come up with a funding bill for FY26, which will tell us if our mission is on the chopping block or not,” Stern said. “The administration’s proposal is to cancel essentially every extended mission … So, we’re not being singled out, but we would get caught in that.”

Stern, who served as head of NASA’s science division in 2007 and 2008, said the surest way to prevent the White House’s cuts is for Congress to pass a budget with specific instructions for the Trump administration.

“The administration ultimately will make some decision based on what Congress does,” Stern said. “If Congress passes a continuing resolution, then that opens a whole lot of other possibilities where the administration could do something without express direction from Congress. We’re just going to have to see where we end up at the end of September and then in the fall.”

Stern said shutting down so many of NASA’s science missions would be a “tragic capitulation of US leadership” and “fiscally irresponsible.”

“We’re pretty undeniably the frontrunner, and have been for decades, in space sciences,” Stern said. “There’s much more money in overruns than there is in what it costs to run these missions—I mean, dramatically. And yet, by cutting overruns, you don’t affect our leadership position. Turning off spacecraft would put us in third or fourth place, depending on who you talk to, behind the Chinese and the Europeans at least, and maybe behind others.”

Stern resigned his job as NASA’s science chief in 2008 after taking a similar stance arguing against cuts to healthy projects and research grants to cover overruns in other programs, according to a report in Science Magazine.

An unforeseen contribution from Juno

Juno, meanwhile, has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, collecting information on the giant planet’s internal structure, magnetic field, and atmosphere.

“Everything is functional,” said Scott Bolton, the lead scientist on Juno, also from SWRI. “There’s been some degradation, things that we saw many years ago, but those haven’t changed. Actually, some of them improved, to be honest.”

The only caveat with Juno is some radiation damage to its camera, called JunoCam. Juno orbits Jupiter once every 33 days, and the trajectory brings the spacecraft through intense radiation belts trapped by the planet’s powerful magnetic field. Juno’s primary mission ended in 2021, and it’s now operating in an extended mission approved through the end of this month. The additional time exposed to harsh radiation is, not surprisingly, corrupting JunoCam’s images.

NASA’s Juno mission observed the glow from a bolt of lightning in this view from December 30, 2020, of a vortex near Jupiter’s north pole. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed the image from raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY

In an interview with Ars, Bolton suggested the radiation issue creates another opportunity for NASA to learn from the Juno mission. Ground teams are attempting to repair the JunoCam imager through annealing, a self-healing process that involves heating the instrument’s electronics and then allowing them to cool. Engineers sparingly tried annealing hardware space, so Juno’s experience could be instructive for future missions.

“Even satellites at Earth experience this [radiation damage], but there’s very little done or known about it,” Bolton said. “In fact, what we’re learning with Juno has benefits for Earth satellites, both commercial and national security.”

Juno’s passages through Jupiter’s harsh radiation belts provide a real-world laboratory to experiment with annealing in space. “We can’t really produce the natural radiation environment at Earth or Jupiter in a lab,” Bolton said.

Lessons learned from Juno could soon be applied to NASA’s next probe traveling to Jupiter. Europa Clipper launched last year and is on course to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030, when it will begin regular low-altitude flybys of the planet’s icy moon Europa. Before Clipper’s launch, engineers discovered a flaw that could make the spacecraft’s transistors more susceptible to radiation damage. NASA managers decided to proceed with the mission because they determined the damage could be repaired at Jupiter with annealing.

“So, we have rationale to hopefully continue Juno because of science, national security, and it sort of fits in the goals of exploration as well, because you have high radiation even in these translunar orbits [heading to the Moon],” Bolton said. “Learning about how to deal with that and how to build spacecraft better to survive that, and how to repair them, is really an interesting twist that we came by on accident, but nevertheless, turns out to be really important.”

It cost $28.4 million to operate Juno in 2024, compared to NASA’s $1.13 billion investment to build, launch, and fly the spacecraft to Jupiter.

On May 19, 2010, technicians oversee the installation of the large radiation vault onto NASA’s Juno spacecraft propulsion module. This protects the spacecraft’s vital flight and science computers from the harsh radiation at Jupiter. Credit: Lockheed Martin

“We’re hoping everything’s going to keep going,” Bolton said. “We put in a proposal for three years. The science is potentially very good. … But it’s sort of unknown. We just are waiting to hear and waiting for direction from NASA, and we’re watching all of the budget scenarios, just like everybody else, in the news.”

NASA headquarters earlier this year asked Stern and Bolton, along with teams leading other science missions coming under the ax, for an outline of what it would take and what it would cost to “close out” their projects. “We sent something that was that was a sketch of what it might look like,” Bolton said.

A “closeout” would be irreversible for at least some of the 19 missions at risk of termination.

“Termination doesn’t just mean shutting down the contract and sending everybody away, but it’s also turning the spacecraft off,” Stern said. “And when you turn off those spacecraft’s radio receivers, there’s no way to turn them back on because they’re off. They can never get a command in.

“So, if we change our mind, we’ve had another election, or had some congressional action, anything like that, it’s really terminating the spacecraft, and there’s no going back.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Scientists: It’s do or die time for America’s primacy exploring the Solar System Read More »

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NASA found intriguing rocks on Mars, so where does that leave Mars Sample Return?

Mars Sample Return, NASA, Sean Duffy, Space / /

NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, was fired up on Wednesday when he joined a teleconference to talk about new scientific findings that concerned the potential for life to have once existed on Mars.

“This is exciting news,” said Duffy about an arrow-shaped rock on Mars found by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock contained chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. The findings were intriguing, but not conclusive. Further study of the rocks in an advanced lab on Earth might prove more definitive.

Duffy was ready, he said, to discuss the scientific results along with NASA experts on the call with reporters. However, the very first question—and for any space reporter, the obvious one—concerned NASA’s on-again, off-again plan to return rocks from the surface of Mars for study on Earth. This mission, called Mars Sample Return, has been on hold for nearly two years after an independent analysis found that NASA’s bloated plan would cost at least $8 billion to $11 billion. President Trump has sought to cancel it outright.

Duffy faces the space press

“What’s the latest on NASA’s plans to retrieve the samples from Perseverance?” asked Marcia Dunn, a reporter with the Associated Press, about small vials of rocks collected by the NASA rover on Mars.

“So listen, we’re looking at how we get this sample back, or other samples back,” Duffy replied. “What we’re going to do is look at our budget, so we look at our timing, and you know, how do we spend money better? And you know, what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that’s a current analysis that’s happening right now.”

A couple of questions later, Ken Chang, a science reporter with The New York Times, asked Duffy why President Trump’s budget request called for the cancellation of Mars Sample Return and whether that was still the president’s intent.

“I want to be really clear,” Duffy replied. “This is a 30-year process that NASA has undertaken. President Trump didn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s forget about Mars.’ No, we’re continuing our exploration. And by the way, we’ve been very clear under this president that we don’t want to just bring samples back from Mars. We want to send our boots to the Moon and to Mars, and that is the work that we’re doing. Amit (Kshatriya, the new associate administrator of NASA) even said maybe we’ll send our equipment to test this sample to Mars itself. All options are on the table.”

NASA found intriguing rocks on Mars, so where does that leave Mars Sample Return? Read More »