rocket report

Rocket Report: Blue Origin’s stunning success; vive le Baguette One!

rocket report, Space / 9u50fv / November 14, 2025

“If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket takes flight on Thursday afternoon. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 8.19 of the Rocket Report! Thursday was a monumental day in launch history with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket not just taking off successfully, but with the first stage masterfully returning to the surface of the ocean, hovering near the Jacklyn drone ship, and then making a landing in the center of the barge. It was fantastic to watch and cements our new reality of reusable rockets. The future of space access is very bright indeed.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.

Private Chinese rocket fails. Galactic Energy’s solid-fuel Ceres-1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Sunday, carrying three satellites toward low-Earth orbit. The rocket’s first three stages performed well, according to media reports, but its fourth and final stage shut down too early, leading to the loss of all three payloads, Space.com reports.

Sincerely sorry … Those payloads were two satellites for China’s Jilin-1 commercial Earth-observation constellation, as well as a craft developed by Zhongbei University. “We offer our sincerest apologies to the mission’s customer and to everyone who supports Galactic Energy,” the Beijing-based company said in a statement. The Ceres-1 can lift 400 kg of payload to low-Earth orbit and debuted in November 2020. It flew successfully nine times in a row before suffering a failure in September 2023. The Ceres-1 bounced back from that problem, notching 11 consecutive successes before Sunday night’s setback.

Avio makes deals with major US contractors. Italian aerospace propulsion firm Avio announced agreements with US defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed Martin this week, granting each preferred access to solid rocket motors from its planned US manufacturing plant, Space News reports. The new facility is expected to be operational by early 2028, although Avio has not yet disclosed its location.

Surging global demand for missiles … Solid rocket motors are critical components that power many of the missiles and tactical weapons systems that both contractors produce, and both firms face rapidly increasing demand driven by ongoing conflicts globally. Avio said it plans to invest approximately $460 million to increase its manufacturing capacity, with most of that capital earmarked for the new US manufacturing facility.

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Spectrum rocket starts to take shape. German launch services provider Isar Aerospace said this week that the stages for the second flight of its Spectrum rocket have arrived at its launch facility in Norway, European Spaceflight reports. While brief, the update stated that the company is “gearing up for pre-flight testing.” The update did not include an expected launch date.

A fairly rapid turnaround … The arrival of new flight hardware follows the inaugural flight of the Spectrum rocket on March 30. Less than 30 seconds after liftoff, the rocket’s flight termination system was triggered, and the vehicle splashed down in the Norwegian Sea just meters from the launch pad, exploding on impact. Following an investigation, the company identified an unintended opening of the vent valve, together with a loss of attitude control at the start of the rocket’s roll maneuver, as the cause of the failure.

Nova Scotia launch may take place this month. The first rocket launch to reach the edge of space from Canada since 1998 could happen as soon as November 18 from Spaceport Nova Scotia, spaceQ reports. The launch will be conducted by T-Minus Engineering, which is seeking to test its suborbital Barracuda hypersonic test platform. The Barracuda rocket, according to the company, “is a single-stage, solid-fuel suborbital vehicle that stands approximately 4 meters tall. Barracuda can carry payloads of up to 40 kilograms to altitudes reaching 120 kilometers.”

Seeking to go higher from Nova Scotia … The only other launch to date from Spaceport Nova Scotia was a university launch by York University in July 2023, which reached an altitude of 13.4 km. The last rocket to launch from Canada and reach space was a Magellan Aerospace Black Brant IXB suborbital research rocket with scientific payloads from the University of Calgary. The ACTIVE mission, financed by the Canadian Space Agency, was launched from the Churchill Rocket Research Range, Manitoba, on April 28, 1998. It reached an apogee of 315.6 km.

Here comes the Baguette One. German space logistics company ATMOS Space Cargo has signed a memorandum of understanding with French launch services provider HyPrSpace to carry out a demonstration mission aboard its Baguette One rocket, European Spaceflight reports. Is this the best name for a rocket ever? Probably.

Raking in the dough … Founded in 2019, HyPrSpace is developing a suborbital demonstration rocket called Baguette One, slated for launch in 2026. The rocket will serve as a technology demonstrator to validate the company’s hybrid rocket engine for its OB1 (Orbital Baguette One) rocket. The mission will be launched from a DGA Essais de Missiles (DGA Missile Testing) site in the south of France.

Neutron debut slips into 2026. During an earnings call on Monday, Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck announced that the company’s medium-lift launch vehicle, Neutron, would not launch this year, Ars reports. Although Rocket Lab had been holding onto the possibility of launching Neutron this year publicly, it has been clear for months that a slip into 2026 was inevitable. The new timeline has the company bringing Neutron to Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the first quarter of next year. The first launch is scheduled to occur “thereafter,” according to the company’s plans.

Following the Rocket Lab plan … Beck said Rocket Lab would not be rushed by an arbitrary deadline. “We’ve seen what happens when others rush to the pad with an unproven product, and we just refused to do that,” he said, referring to other commercial launch companies that have not had success with their first launches. “Our aim is to make it to orbit on the first try. You won’t see us using some qualifier about us just clearing the pad, and claiming success and whatnot, and that means that we don’t want to learn something during Neutron’s first flight that could be learned on the ground during the testing phase.”

Relativity and SES expand launch agreement. The California-based launch company and Luxembourg satellite company announced Wednesday an “extended multi-year, multi-launch services agreement” using Relativity’s Terran R rocket. The companies said they are partnering for multiple launches aboard Terran R, a medium-to-heavy-lift reusable launch vehicle, that will bring the selected SES satellites to their final orbital position.

No contracts just yet … The expanded agreement includes previously unannounced SES launches. With this new agreement, Relativity’s Terran R aims to provide SES with high performance, reliability, and affordable access to space. Terran R’s first launch is planned for late 2026 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is important to note that launch agreements are not necessarily launch contracts. However, it is a good sign for Relativity that customers are showing some confidence in the large new rocket still in development.

Indian demo mission scheduled for January 2026. The Indian space agency, ISRO, now plans to launch an uncrewed demonstration mission named Gaganyaan-1 in January 2026, News 9 reports. The mission, carrying a half-humanoid robot, will test the performance of a crewed spacecraft and service module in low-Earth orbit. It is a critical stepping stone toward the country’s first human spaceflight in 2027.

Making progress … “We are currently working on our Gaganyaan program, to take our citizens to space and bring them back safely, and lot of activities are going on,” V Narayanan, chairman of ISRO, said. “In fact, I want to tell, 8,000 tests are completed till today, almost 97 percent of tests are successful, except small setbacks, which we have fully understood. We are going to have three uncrewed missions, followed by the first crewed mission targeted in 2027.”

Blue Origin ready to help accelerate Artemis. Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, Ars reports. “We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, told Ars. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”

Modifying existing hardware … This year, it has become increasingly apparent that, should NASA stick to its present plans for the Artemis III lunar landing mission, China is on course to beat the United States back to the Moon with humans. In recognition of this, about three weeks ago, NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy said the space agency was reopening the competition for a human lander. Blue Origin has begun work on a faster architecture, involving multiple versions of its Mk. 1 cargo lander as well as a modified version of this vehicle, tentatively called Mk 1.5.

How to launch to Mars when the window is closed. The field of astrodynamics isn’t a magical discipline, but sometimes it seems like trajectory analysts can pull a solution out of a hat. That’s what it took to save NASA’s ESCAPADE mission from a lengthy delay and possible cancellation after its rocket wasn’t ready to send it toward Mars during its appointed launch window last year, Ars reports. The Mars-bound mission had been due to launch on a New Glenn rocket before the close of the last Mars window, in the fall of 2024. But the rocket was not ready.

So what happens now that the rocket is ready? … “ESCAPADE is pursuing a very unusual trajectory in getting to Mars,” said Rob Lillis, from the University of California, Berkeley and the mission’s principal investigator. “We’re launching outside the typical Hohmann transfer windows, which occur every 25 or 26 months. We are using a very flexible mission design approach where we go into a loiter orbit around Earth in order to sort of wait until Earth and Mars are lined up correctly in November of next year to go to Mars.”

Next three launches

November 14: Atlas V | Viasat-3 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 04 UTC

November 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-85 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 01 UTC

November 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-89 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 03: 01 UTC

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.

Rocket Report: Blue Origin’s stunning success; vive le Baguette One! Read More »

Rocket Report: Canada invests in sovereign launch; India flexes rocket muscles

ariane 6, Arianespace, blue origin, Canada, Commercial space, launch, NASA, relativity space, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship / Shannon Garcia / November 7, 2025

Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket gave an environmental monitoring satellite a perfect ride to space.

Rahul Goel, the CEO of Canadian launch startup NordSpace, poses with a suborbital demo rocket and members of his team in Toronto earlier this year. Credit: Andrew Francis Wallace/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.18 of the Rocket Report! NASA is getting a heck of a deal from Blue Origin for launching the agency’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars. Blue Origin is charging NASA about $20 million for the launch on the company’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket. A dedicated ride on any other rocket capable of the job would undoubtedly cost more.

But there are trade-offs. First, there’s the question of risk. The New Glenn rocket is only making its second flight, and it hasn’t been certified by NASA or the US Space Force. Second, the schedule for ESCAPADE’s launch has been at the whim of Blue Origin, which has delayed the mission several times due to issues developing New Glenn. NASA’s interplanetary missions typically have a fixed launch period, and the agency pays providers like SpaceX and United Launch Alliance a premium to ensure the launch happens when it needs to happen.

New Glenn is ready, the satellites are ready, and Blue Origin has set a launch date for Sunday, November 9. The mission will depart Earth outside of the usual interplanetary launch window, so orbital dynamics wizards came up with a unique trajectory that will get the satellites to Mars in 2027.

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

Canadian government backs launcher development. The federal budget released by the Liberal Party-led government of Canada this week includes a raft of new defense initiatives, including 182.6 million Canadian dollars ($129.4 million) for sovereign space launch capability, SpaceQ reports. The new funding is meant to “establish a sovereign space launch capability” with funds available this fiscal year and spent over three years. How the money will be spent and on what has yet to be released. As anticipated, Canada will have a new Defense Investment Agency (DIA) to oversee defense procurement. Overall, the government outlined 81.8 billion Canadian dollars ($58 billion) over five years for the Canadian Armed Forces. The Department of National Defense will manage the government’s cash infusion for sovereign launch capability.

Kick-starting an industry … Canada joins a growing list of nations pursuing homegrown launchers as many governments see access to space as key to national security and an opportunity for economic growth. International governments don’t want to be beholden to a small number of foreign launch providers from established space powers. That’s why startups in Germany, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Australia are making a play in the launch arena, often with government support. A handful of Canadian startups, such as Maritime Launch Services, Reaction Dynamics, and NordSpace, are working on commercial satellite launchers. The Canadian government’s announcement came days after MDA Space, the largest established space company in Canada, announced its own multimillion-dollar investment in Maritime Launch Services.

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Money alone won’t solve Europe’s space access woes. Increasing tensions with Russia have prompted defense spending boosts throughout Europe that will benefit fledgling smallsat launcher companies across the continent. But Europe is still years away from meeting its own space access needs, Space News reports. Space News spoke with industry analysts from two European consulting firms. They concluded that a lack of experience, not a deficit of money, is holding European launch startups back. None of the new crop of European rocket companies have completed a successful orbital flight.

Swimming in cash … The German company Isar Aerospace has raised approximately $600 million, the most funding of any of the European launch startups. Isar is also the only one of the bunch to make an orbital launch attempt. Its Spectrum rocket failed less than 30 seconds after liftoff last March, and a second launch is expected next year. Isar has attracted more investment than Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, and Astra collectively raised on the private market before each of them successfully launched a rocket into orbit. In addition to Isar, several other European companies have raised more than $100 million on the road to developing a small satellite launcher. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Successful ICBM test from Vandenberg. Air Force Global Strike Command tested an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in the predawn hours of Wednesday, Air and Space Forces Magazine reports. The test, the latest in a series of launches that have been carried out at regular intervals for decades, came as Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the development of two new nuclear weapons and President Donald Trump has suggested in recent days that the US might resume nuclear testing. The ICBM launched from an underground silo at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and traveled some 4,200 miles to a test range in the Pacific Ocean after receiving launch orders from an airborne nuclear command-and-control plane.

Rehearsing for the unthinkable … The test, known as Glory Trip 254 (GT 254), provided a “comprehensive assessment” of the Minuteman III’s readiness to launch at a moment’s notice, according to the Air Force. “The data collected during the test is invaluable in ensuring the continued reliability and accuracy of the ICBM weapon system,” said Lt. Col. Karrie Wray, commander of the 576th Flight Test Squadron. For Minuteman III tests, the Air Force pulls its missiles from the fleet of some 400 operational ICBMs. This week’s test used one from F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, and the missile was equipped with a single unarmed reentry vehicle that carried telemetry instrumentation instead of a warhead, service officials said. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

One crew launches, another may be stranded. Three astronauts launched to China’s Tiangong space station on October 31 and arrived at the outpost a few hours later, extending the station’s four-year streak of continuous crew operations. The Shenzhou 21 crew spacecraft lifted off on a Chinese Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert. Shenzhou 21 is supposed to replace a three-man crew that has been on the Tiangong station since April, but China’s Manned Space Agency announced Tuesday the outgoing crew’s return craft may have been damaged by space junk, Ars reports.

Few details … Chinese officials said the Shenzhou 20 spacecraft will remain at the station while engineers investigate the potential damage. As of Thursday, China has not set a new landing date or declared whether the spacecraft is safe to return to Earth at all. “The Shenzhou 20 manned spacecraft is suspected of being impacted by small space debris,” Chinese officials wrote on social media. “Impact analysis and risk assessment are underway. To ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and the complete success of the mission, it has been decided that the Shenzhou 20 return mission, originally scheduled for November 5, will be postponed.” In the event Shenzhou 20 is unsafe to return, China could launch a rescue craft—Shenzhou 22—already on standby at the Jiuquan space center.

Falcon 9 rideshare boosts Vast ambitions. A pathfinder mission for Vast’s privately owned space station launched into orbit Sunday and promptly extended its solar panel, kicking off a shakedown cruise to prove the company’s designs can meet the demands of spaceflight, Ars reports. Vast’s Haven Demo mission lifted off just after midnight Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit. Haven Demo was one of 18 satellites sharing a ride on SpaceX’s Bandwagon 4 mission, launching alongside a South Korean spy satellite and a small testbed for Starcloud, a startup working with Nvidia to build an orbital data center.

Subscale testing … After release from the Falcon 9, the half-ton Haven Demo spacecraft stabilized itself and extended its power-generating solar array. The satellite captured 4K video of the solar array deployment, and Vast shared the beauty shot on social media. “Haven Demo’s mission success has turned us into a proven spacecraft company,” Vast’s CEO, Max Haot, posted on X. “The next step will be to become an actual commercial space station company next year. Something no one has achieved yet.” Vast plans to launch its first human-rated habitat, named Haven-1, into low-Earth orbit in 2026. Haven Demo lacks crew accommodations but carries several systems that are “architecturally similar” to Haven-1, according to Vast. For example, Haven-1 will have 12 solar arrays, each identical to the single array on Haven Demo. The pathfinder mission uses a subset of Haven-1’s propulsion system, but with identical thrusters, valves, and tanks.

Lights out at Vostochny. One of Russia’s most important projects over the last 15 years has been the construction of the Vostochny spaceport as the country seeks to fly its rockets from native soil and modernize its launch operations. Progress has been slow as corruption clouded Vostochny’s development. Now, the primary contractor building the spaceport, the Kazan Open Stock Company (PSO Kazan), has failed to pay its bills, Ars reports. The story, first reported by the Moscow Times, says that the energy company supplying Vostochny cut off electricity to areas of the spaceport still under construction after PSO Kazan racked up $627,000 in unpaid energy charges. The electricity company did so, it said, “to protect the interests of the region’s energy system.”

A dark reputation … Officials at the government-owned spaceport said PSO Kazan would repay its debt by the end of November, but the local energy company said it intends to file a lawsuit against KSO Kazan to declare the entity bankrupt. The two operational launch pads at Vostochny are apparently not affected by the power cuts. Vostochny has been a fiasco from the start. After construction began in 2011, the project was beset by hunger strikes, claims of unpaid workers, and the theft of $126 million. Additionally, a man driving a diamond-encrusted Mercedes was arrested after embezzling $75,000. Five years ago, there was another purge of top officials after another round of corruption.

Ariane 6 delivers for Europe again. European launch services provider Arianespace has successfully launched the Sentinel 1D Earth observation satellite aboard an Ariane 62 rocket for the European Commission, European Spaceflight reports. Launched in its two-booster configuration, the Ariane 6 rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in South America on Tuesday. Approximately 34 minutes after liftoff, the satellite was deployed from the rocket’s upper stage into a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 693 kilometers (430 miles). Sentinel 1D is the newest spacecraft to join Europe’s Copernicus program, the world’s most expansive network of environmental monitoring satellites. The new satellite will extend Europe’s record of global around-the-clock radar imaging, revealing information about environmental disasters, polar ice cover, and the use of water resources.

Doubling cadence … This was the fourth flight of Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket, and its third operational launch. Arianespace plans one more Ariane 62 launch to close out the year with a pair of Galileo navigation satellites. The company aims to double its Ariane 6 launch cadence in 2026, with between six and eight missions planned, according to David Cavaillès, Arianespace’s CEO. The European launch provider will open its 2026 manifest with the first flight of the more powerful four-booster variant of the rocket. If the company does manage eight Ariane 6 flights in 2026, it will already be close to reaching the stated maximum launch cadence of between nine and 10 flights per year.

India sets its own record for payload mass. The Indian Space Research Organization on Sunday successfully launched the Indian Navy’s advanced communication satellite GSAT-7R, or CMS-03, on an LVM3 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center, The Hindu reports. The indigenously designed and developed satellite, weighing approximately 4.4 metric tons (9,700 pounds), is the heaviest satellite ever launched by an Indian rocket and marks a major milestone in strengthening the Navy’s space-based communications and maritime domain awareness.

Going heavy … The launch Sunday was India’s fourth of 2025, a decline from the country’s high-water mark of eight orbital launches in a year in 2023. The failure in May of India’s most-flown rocket, the PSLV, has contributed to this year’s slower launch cadence. India’s larger rockets, the GSLV and LVM3, have been more active while officials grounded the PSLV for an investigation into the launch failure. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin preps for second flight of New Glenn. The road to the second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifting New Glenn rocket got a lot clearer this week. The company confirmed it is targeting Sunday, November 9, for the launch of New Glenn from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This follows a successful test-firing of the rocket’s seven BE-4 main engines last week, Ars reports. Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, said the engines operated at full power for 22 seconds, generating nearly 3.9 million pounds of thrust on the launch pad.

Fully integrated … With the launch date approaching, engineers worked this week to attach the rocket’s payload shroud containing two NASA satellites set to embark on a journey to Mars. Now that the rocket is fully integrated, ground crews will roll it back to Blue Origin’s Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) for final countdown preps. The launch window on Sunday opens at 2: 45 pm EST (19: 45 UTC). Blue Origin is counting on recovering the New Glenn first stage on the next flight after missing the landing on the rocket’s inaugural mission in January. Officials plan to reuse this booster on the third New Glenn launch early next year, slated to propel Blue Origin’s first unpiloted Blue Moon lander toward the Moon.

Next three launches

Nov. 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-51 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 08: 30 UTC

Nov. 8: Long March 11H| Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 21: 00 UTC

Nov. 9: New Glenn | ESCAPADE | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 19: 45 UTC

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

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Rocket Report: SpaceX surpasses shuttle launch total; Skyroot has big ambitions

rocket report, Space / 9u50fv / October 31, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“I do think we’re rapidly approaching the point where it will be a significant impact.”

Expedition 1’s Soyuz-U launch vehicle is transported to its launch pad in October 2000. Credit: NASA

Welcome to Edition 8.17 of the Rocket Report! Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the first crewed launch to the International Space Station on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur. Since this time, humans have lived in space continuously, even through spacecraft accidents and wars on Earth. This is a remarkable milestone that all of humanity can celebrate.

Skyroot nearing first launch with big ambitions. Three years after India opened up its space sector to private companies, Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace is targeting its first full-scale commercial satellite launch mission in January 2026, Mint reports. After this debut flight, Skyroot is targeting a launch every three months next year, and one every month from 2027. Each satellite launch mission is expected to generate the company nearly $5 million, according to Skyroot chief executive Pawan Chandana.

A promising start … Skyroot became India’s first space startup to demonstrate a rocket launch when it sent up a smaller version of its satellite vehicle from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh in November 2022. There are several other Indian launch startups, but Skyroot appears to be the most promising. Even so, a launch cadence of every three months next year seems highly ambitious. A single, successful launch in 2026 would be a great step forward.

Canadian spaceport gets infusion of cash. Maritime Launch Services will receive a senior credit facility for up to 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.1 million) from Canada’s government-owned export credit agency for defense, telecommunications, and weather-monitoring needs, Payload reports. Spaceport Nova Scotia, which is the Atlantic launching facility for MLS, will use the money to build out infrastructure and a launch pad for orbital missions. Half of the money will be advanced immediately, with more available as construction costs arise.

Going up from up there … Canada used to have a Manitoba spaceport when the United States was in a “space race” for military supremacy in the 1950s and 1960s. After hosting decades of Black Brant sounding rocket flights, officials closed the spaceport in 1985. Canada now mainly uses foreign launchers, in part because the government deemed building sovereign capability too costly. But Canadian companies (inspired by SpaceX) are moving to build their own facilities and rockets. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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ArcaSpace is dead, replaced by … a fashion company. Somehow I missed this news when it came out a year ago, but I’m including it now for completeness. For a quarter of a century, a Romania-based rocket organization, ArcaSpace, had been promising to revolutionize spaceflight. But that meme dream ended in late 2024 when the group rebranded itself as ArcaFashion. “The ArcaFashion products are designed and manufactured on the shoulders of innovation and cutting-edge technological achievements, using the vast aerospace capabilities of ArcaSpace,” the group said. Their early products look, well, you decide.

But wait, there’s more … Before it went away, ArcaSpace released a video of its “accomplishments” to date, meant to be a sizzle reel of sorts. This popped into my feed this week because the madlads at Arca apparently aren’t done in aerospace. They put out a new video showing some bonkers-looking vehicle they’re calling “ArcaBoard2,” which purports to be a vertical takeoff personal electric vehicle. Maybe don’t be one of the early customers for this.

HTV-launch launches, docks with space station. Japan’s H3 rocket launched a new spacecraft, the HTV-X, last weekend from a launch pad on Tanegashima Island. This cargo ship pulled alongside the International Space Station on Wednesday, maneuvering close enough for the lab’s robotic arm to reach out and grab it, Ars reports. The HTV-X spacecraft is an upgraded cargo freighter replacing Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, which successfully resupplied the space station nine times between 2009 and 2020.

An improved design … At the conclusion of the first HTV program, Japan’s space agency preferred to focus its resources on designing a new cargo ship with more capability at a lower cost. That’s what HTV-X is supposed to be, and Wednesday’s high-flying rendezvous marked the new ship’s first delivery to the ISS. At 26 feet (8 meters) long, the HTV-X is somewhat shorter than the vehicle it replaces. But an improved design gives the HTV-X more capacity, with the ability to accommodate more than 9,000 pounds (4.1 metric tons) inside its pressurized cargo module, about 25 percent more than the HTV. (submitted by tsunam)

India seeks dramatic increase in launch cadence. The chairman of the Indian space agency, V. Narayanan, has told The Times of India that the country seeks to dramatically scale up its annual launch cadence to 50 missions a year. He said the goal is to grow the country’s ecosystem of government-sponsored and private launches, and that the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has set a goal of 50 launches a year by the end of this decade.

A big step up … “We are working on it,” Narayanan said of his government’s request. He said the country currently has just two active launch sites, which is a constraint on activity, but that new facilities will soon come online. By the end of 2027, he said that 30 launches a year will be possible. Given that India has recently averaged about five launches annually, this would represent a significant step up in overall activity.

SpaceX breaks Vandenberg turnaround record, twice. SpaceX continued its rapid pace of launches Monday with the flight of a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Starlink 11-21 flight broke the record for the fastest pad turnaround for SpaceX’s West Coast launch pad, flying two days, 10 hours, 22 minutes, and 59 seconds since the Starlink 11-12 mission on Saturday, Spaceflight Now reports.

Going fast, and then faster … And oh, by the way, the previous record beaten by Monday’s flight was two days, 18 hours, 52 minutes, and 20 seconds, which was set during the past week. This milestone comes after the company set another turnaround record over at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station earlier this month. SpaceX clearly is continuing to seek to optimize Falcon 9 operations and is having some success.

Ariane 6 upper stage engine production moves to Germany. ArianeGroup will transfer responsibility for the assembly of Ariane 6 Vinci upper-stage engines from Vernon, France, to Lampoldshausen, Germany, European Spaceflight reports. The agreement will also see the transfer of responsibility for the development of the Ariane 6 oxygen turbopump from Avio’s headquarters in Colleferro to Vernon.

A whole seven launches per year … Each Vinci engine for Ariane 6 will now be assembled, integrated, and tested at Lampoldshausen. To support this process, a new production facility will be built. The engines will then be transferred to Bremen for integration with the rocket’s upper stage. According to ArianeGroup, the transfer will “optimize the competitiveness of Ariane 6,” helping to secure the “financial viability of Ariane 6 with a rate of 7 launches per year.”

SpaceX surpasses 2024 launch total. On Saturday morning, SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink satellites that marked the company’s 135th Falcon 9 launch of the year, Spaceflight Now reports. This broke the company’s record number of orbital launches achieved in all of 2024. The mission came nearly a week after SpaceX launched its 10,000th Starlink satellite to date.

A big number in another way … The number 135 is symbolic in another way. That’s equal to the number of NASA’s space shuttles over the 30-year lifetime of the program. That is to say, SpaceX will launch more Falcon 9 rockets this year than shuttles launched by NASA in three decades. The contours of spaceflight have certainly changed.

Amid shutdown, NASA trying to keep Artemis II on schedule. It has been nearly one month since many parts of the federal government shut down after lawmakers missed a budget deadline at the end of September, but so far, NASA’s most critical operations have been unaffected by the political impasse in Washington, DC. That may change soon, Ars reports. Federal civil servants and NASA contractors are not getting paid during the shutdown, even if agency leaders have deemed their tasks essential and directed them to continue working.

A significant impact soon … Many employees at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida remain at work, where their job is to keep the Artemis II mission on schedule for launch as soon as next February. Even while work continues, the government shutdown is creating inefficiencies that, if left unchecked, will inevitably impact the Artemis II schedule. And some officials are starting to sound the alarm. Kirk Shireman, vice president and program manager for Orion at Lockheed Martin, said this week, “I do think we’re rapidly approaching the point where it will be a significant impact.”

Variant of China’s Moon rocket to take flight. China aims to conduct the first launch of its Long March 10 rocket and a lunar-capable crew spacecraft next year, Space News reports. “The Long March 10 carrier rocket, the Mengzhou crew spacecraft, the Lanyue lunar lander, the Wangyu lunar suit, and the Exploration crew lunar rover have completed the main work of the prototype stage,” Zhang Jingbo, spokesperson for China’s human spaceflight program, said Thursday at a pre-launch press conference for the Shenzhou-21 mission at Jiuquan spaceport.

China appears on track for pre-2030 landing … Though not explicitly stated, Mengzhou will likely fly on a two-stage, single-stick variant of the Long March 10, which is used for low Earth orbit (LEO) missions. The full, three-stage, 92.5-meter-tall Long March 10 for lunar flights will use three 5-meter-diameter first stages bundled together, each powered by seven YF-100K variable thrust kerosene-liquid oxygen engines. Zhang did not state if the first flight would be crewed or uncrewed, nor if the mission would head to the Tiangong space station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

October 31: Long March 2 | Shenzhou 21 crewed flight | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China| 15: 44 UTC

October 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-23 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 20: 06 UTC

Nov. 2: Falcon 9 | Bandwagon-4 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 05: 09 UTC

Rocket Report: SpaceX surpasses shuttle launch total; Skyroot has big ambitions Read More »

Rocket Report: China tests Falcon 9 lookalike; NASA’s Moon rocket fully stacked

artemis II, blue origin, china, falcon 9, LandSpace, launch, NASA, new glenn, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex / 9u50fv / October 24, 2025

A South Korean rocket startup will soon make its first attempt to reach low-Earth orbit.

The Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission is lowered on top of the Space Launch System rocket at Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Welcome to Edition 8.16 of the Rocket Report! The 10th anniversary of SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 rocket landing is coming up at the end of this year. We’re still waiting for a second company to bring back an orbital-class booster from space for a propulsive landing. Two companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and China’s LandSpace, could join SpaceX’s exclusive club as soon as next month. (Bezos might claim he’s already part of the club, but there’s a distinction to be made.) Each company is in the final stages of launch preparations—Blue Origin for its second New Glenn rocket, and LandSpace for the debut flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket. Blue Origin and LandSpace will both attempt to land their first stage boosters downrange from their launch sites. They’re not exactly in a race with one another, but it will be fascinating to see how New Glenn and Zhuque-3 perform during the uphill and downhill phases of flight, and whether one or both of the new rockets stick the landing.

The race for space-based interceptors. The Trump administration’s announcement of the Golden Dome missile defense shield has set off a race among US companies to develop and test space weapons, some of them on their own dime, Ars reports. One of these companies is a 3-year-old startup named Apex, which announced plans to test a space-based interceptor as soon as next year. Apex’s concept will utilize one of the company’s low-cost satellite platforms outfitted with an “Orbital Magazine” containing multiple interceptors, which will be supplied by an undisclosed third-party partner. The demonstration in low-Earth orbit could launch as soon as June 2026 and will test-fire two interceptors from Apex’s Project Shadow spacecraft. The prototype interceptors could pave the way for operational space-based interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles. (submitted by biokleen)

Usual suspects … Traditional defense contractors are also getting in the game. Northrop Grumman’s CEO, Kathy Warden, said earlier this year that her company is already testing space-based interceptor components on the ground. This week, Lockheed Martin announced it is on a path to test a space-based interceptor in orbit by 2028. Neither company has discussed as much detail of their plans as Apex revealed this week.

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Lockheed Martin’s latest “New Space” investment. As interest grows in rotating detonation engines for hypersonic flight, a startup specialist in the technology says it will receive backing from Lockheed Martin’s corporate venture capital arm, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The strategic investment by Lockheed Martin Ventures “reflects the potential of Venus’s dual-use technology” in an era of growing defense and space spending, Venus Aerospace said in a statement. Venus said its partnership with Lockheed Martin combines the former’s startup mindset with the latter’s resources and industry expertise. The companies did not announce the value of Lockheed’s investment, but Venus said it has raised $106 million since its founding in 2020. Lockheed Martin Ventures has made similar investments in other rocket startups, including Rocket Lab in 2015.

What’s this actually for? … Houston-based Venus Aerospace completed a high-thrust test flight of its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) in May from Spaceport America, New Mexico. Rotating detonation engine technology is interesting because it has the potential to significantly increase fuel efficiency in various applications, from Navy carriers to rocket engines, Ars reported earlier this year. The engine works by producing a shockwave with a flow of detonation traveling through a circular channel. The engine harnesses these supersonic detonation waves to generate thrust. “Venus has proven in flight the most efficient rocket engine technology in history,” said Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace. “With support from Lockheed Martin Ventures, we will advance our capabilities to deliver at scale and deploy the engine that will power the next 50 years of defense, space, and commercial high-speed aviation.”

South Korean startup receives permission to fly. Innospace announced on October 20 that it has received South Korea’s first private commercial launch permit from the Korea AeroSpace Administration,” the Chosun Daily reports. Accordingly, Innospace will launch its independently developed “HANBIT-Nano” launch vehicle from a Brazilian launch site as early as late this month. Innospace stated that the launch window for this mission has been set for October 28 through November 28. The launch site is the Alcântara Space Center, operated by the Brazilian Air Force.

Aiming for LEO … This will be the first flight of Innospace’s HANBIT-Nano launch vehicle, standing roughly 72 feet (22 meters) tall with a diameter of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters). The two-stage rocket is powered by hybrid propulsion, consuming a mixture of paraffin and liquid oxygen. For its debut flight, the rocket will target an orbit about 300 kilometers (186 miles) high with a batch of small satellites from customers in South Korea, Brazil, and India. According to Innospace, HANBIT-Nano can lift about 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload into orbit.

A new record for rocket reuse. SpaceX’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on October 19 set a new record for reusable rockets, Ars reports. It marked the 31st launch of the company’s most-flown Falcon 9 booster. The rocket landed on SpaceX’s recovery ship in the Atlantic Ocean to be returned to Florida for a 32nd flight. Several more rockets in SpaceX’s inventory are nearing their 30th launch. In all, SpaceX has more than 20 Falcon 9 boosters in its fleet on both the East and West Coasts. SpaceX engineers are now certifying the Falcon 9 boosters for up to 40 flights apiece.

10,000 and counting … SpaceX’s two launches last weekend weren’t just noteworthy for Falcon 9 lore. Hours after setting the new booster reuse record, SpaceX deployed a batch of 28 Starlink satellites from a different rocket after lifting off from California. This mission propelled SpaceX’s Starlink program past a notable milestone. With the satellites added to the constellation on Sunday, the company has delivered more than 10,000 mass-produced Starlink spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. The exact figure stands at 10,006 satellites, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who expertly tracks comings and goings between Earth and space. About 8,700 of these Starlink satellites are still in orbit, with SpaceX adding more every week.

China is on the cusp of something big. Launch startup LandSpace is in the final stages of preparations for the first flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket and a potentially landmark mission for China, Space News reports. LandSpace said it completed the first phase of the Zhuque-3 rocket’s inaugural launch campaign this week. The Zhuque-3 is the largest commercial rocket developed to date in China, nearly matching the size and performance of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with nine first stage engines and a single upper stage engine. One key difference is that the Zhuque-3 burns methane fuel, while Falcon 9’s engines consume kerosene. Most notably, LandSpace will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster at a location downrange from the launch site, similar to the way SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on drone ships at sea. Zhuque-3’s first stage will aim for a land-based site in an experiment that could pave the way for LandSpace to reuse rockets in the future.

Testing status … The recent testing at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China included a propellant loading demonstration and a static fire test of the rocket’s first stage engines. Earlier this week, LandSpace integrated the payload fairing on the rocket. The company said it will return the rocket to a nearby facility “for inspection and maintenance in preparation for its upcoming orbital launch and first stage recovery.” The launch is expected to happen as soon as next month.

Uprated Ariane 6 won’t launch until next year. Arianespace has confirmed that the first flight of the more powerful, four-booster variant of the Ariane 6 rocket will not be launched until 2026, European Spaceflight reports. The first Ariane 64 rocket had been expected to launch in late 2025, carrying the first batch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites. On October 16, Arianespace announced the fourth and final Ariane 6 flight of the year would carry a pair of Galileo satellites for Europe’s global satellite navigation system in December. This will follow an already-scheduled Ariane 6 launch scheduled for November 4. Both of the upcoming flights will employ the same Ariane 6 configuration used on all of the rocket’s flights to date. This version, known as Ariane 62, has two strap-on solid rocket boosters.

Kuiper soon … The Ariane 64 variant will expose the rocket to stronger forces coming from four solid rocket boosters, each producing about a million pounds (4,500 kilonewtons) of thrust. ArianeGroup, the rocket’s manufacturer, said a year ago that it completed qualification of the Ariane 6 upper stage to withstand the stronger launch loads. Arianespace didn’t offer any explanation of the Ariane 64’s delay from this year to next, but it did confirm the uprated rocket will be the company’s first flight of 2026. The mission will be the first of 18 Arianespace flights dedicated to launching Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellites, adding Ariane 6 to the mix of rockets deploying the Internet network in low-Earth orbit.

Duffy losing confidence in Starship. NASA acting Administrator Sean Duffy made two television appearances on Monday morning in which he shook up the space agency’s plans to return humans to the Moon, Ars reports. Speaking on Fox News, where the secretary of transportation frequently appears in his acting role as NASA chief, Duffy said SpaceX has fallen behind in developing the Starship vehicle as a lunar lander. Duffy also indirectly acknowledged that NASA’s projected target of a 2027 crewed lunar landing is no longer achievable. Accordingly, he said he intended to expand the competition to develop a lander capable of carrying humans down to the Moon from lunar orbit and back.

The rest of the story … “They’re behind schedule, and so the President wants to make sure we beat the Chinese,” Duffy said of SpaceX. “He wants to get there in his term. So I’m in the process of opening that contract up. I think we’ll see companies like Blue [Origin] get involved, and maybe others. We’re going to have a space race in regard to American companies competing to see who can actually lead us back to the Moon first.” The timing of Duffy’s public appearances on Monday seems tailored to influence a fierce, behind-the-scenes battle to hold onto the NASA leadership position. Jared Isaacman, who Trump nominated and then withdrew for the NASA posting, is again under consideration at the White House to become the agency’s next full-time administrator. (submitted by zapman987)

Rocket fully stacked for Artemis II. “The last major hardware component before Artemis II launches early next year has been installed,” NASA’s acting Administrator Sean Duffy posted on X Monday. Over the weekend, ground teams at Kennedy Space Center in Florida hoisted the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II mission atop its Space Launch System rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. This followed the transfer of the Orion spacecraft to the VAB from a nearby processing facility last week. With Orion installed, the rocket is fully assembled to its complete height of 322 feet (98 meters) tall.

Four months away? … NASA is still officially targeting no earlier than February 5, 2026, for the launch of the Artemis II mission. This will be the first flight of astronauts to the vicinity of the Moon since 1972, and the first glimpse of human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit for several generations. Upcoming milestones in the Artemis II launch campaign include a countdown demonstration inside the VAB, where the mission’s four-person crew will take their seats in the Orion spacecraft to simulate what they’ll go through on launch day.

New Glenn staged for rollout. Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, posted a video this week of the company’s second New Glenn rocket undergoing launch preparations inside a hangar at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket’s first and second stages are now mated together and installed on the transporter erector that will carry them from the hangar to the launch pad. “We will spend the next days on final checkouts and connecting the umbilicals. Stay tuned for rollout and hotfire!” Limp wrote.

“Big step toward launch” … The connection of New Glenn’s stages and integration on the transporter erector marks a “big step toward launch,” Limp wrote. A launch sometime in November is still possible if engineers can get through a smooth test-firing of the rocket’s seven main engines on the launch pad. The rocket will send two NASA spacecraft on a journey to Mars.

China launches clandestine satellite. China launched a Long March 5 rocket Thursday with a classified military satellite heading toward geosynchronous orbit, Space News reports. The satellite is named TJS-20, and the circumstances of the launch—using China’s most powerful operational rocket—suggest TJS-20 could be the next in a line of signals intelligence-gathering missions. The previous satellite of this line, TJS-11, launched in February 2024, also on a Long March 5.

Doing a lot … This launch continued China’s increasing use of the Long March 5 and its sister variant, the Long March 5B. The Long March 5 is expendable, and although we don’t know how much it costs, it can’t be cheap. It is a complex rocket powered by 10 engines on its core stage and four boosters, some burning liquid hydrogen fuel and others burning kerosene. The second stage also has two cryogenically fueled engines. The Long March 5 has now flown 16 times in nine years and seven times within the last two years. The uptick in launches is largely due to China’s use of the Long March 5 to launch satellites for the Guowang megaconstellation.

Next three launches

Oct. 25: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-12 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14: 00 UTC

Oct. 26: H3 | HTV-X 1 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 00: 00 UTC

Oct. 26: Long March 3B/E | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center | 03: 50 UTC

Rocket Report: China tests Falcon 9 lookalike; NASA’s Moon rocket fully stacked Read More »

Rocket Report: China launches with no advance warning; Europe’s drone ship

rocket report, Space / DJ Henderson / October 17, 2025

Starlink, Kuiper, and the US military all saw additions to their mega-constellations this week.

SpaceX’s Starship descends toward the Indian Ocean at the conclusion of Flight 11. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 8.15 of the Rocket Report! This year has been, at best, one of mixed results for SpaceX’s Starship program. There have been important steps forward, including the successful reuse of the rocket’s massive Super Heavy booster. Clearly, SpaceX is getting really good at launching and recovering the 33-engine booster stage. But Starship itself, part spacecraft and part upper stage, hasn’t fared as well—at least it hadn’t until the last couple of months. After four Starships were destroyed in flight and on the ground in the first half of 2025, the last two missions ended with pinpoint splashdowns in the Indian Ocean. The most recent mission this week was arguably the most successful yet for Starship, which returned to Earth with little damage, suggesting SpaceX’s improvements to the heat shield are working.

SpaceX vet will fly with Blue Origin. Hans Koenigsmann is one of SpaceX’s earliest, longest-tenured, and most-revered employees. He worked at Elon Musk’s space company for nearly two decades, rising to the role of vice president for mission assurance and safety before leaving SpaceX in 2021. He led the investigations into every Falcon rocket failure, mentored young engineers, and became a public face for SpaceX through numerous presentations and press conferences. And now he has announced he is going to space on a future suborbital flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, Ars reports.

Due diligence … Koenigsmann will fly to space alongside his friend Michaela “Michi” Benthaus as early as next month. She’s notable in her own right—a mountain biking accident in 2018 left her with a spinal cord injury, but she did not let this derail her from her dream. She will become the first wheelchair user to fly in space. Koenigsmann said one of his main concerns with the flight was safety, but meeting with Blue Origin engineers gave him confidence to climb aboard New Shepard. “When we met them, I asked a lot of technical questions on the safety side, and I feel like they answered the majority of them thoughtfully and correctly.” So, what’s it like for a long-time SpaceXer to work with a former competitor, Blue Origin? Read Eric Berger’s interview with Koenigsmann to learn more.

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Europe’s drone ship. The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a contract for the design of a reusable rocket stage recovery vessel to the Italian aerospace and defense systems company Ingegneria Dei Sistemi (IDS), European Spaceflight reports. The project is part of a broader contract awarded to the Italian rocket builder Avio for the development of a reusable rocket upper stage, which Ars reported on last month. The contract covers preliminary design work for the launch system and the ground system, and could be applied to a reusable evolution of Avio’s Vega family of rockets.

Looks familiar … On Wednesday, IDS announced that it had been awarded the contract to design the project’s recovery vessel, which falls under the systems ground segment. The company has subcontracted Italian naval systems consultancy Cetena and Norwegian shipbuilder Vard to assist with the project. An artist’s illustration of the vessel gives it a familiar look. It appears similar to the recovery ships that SpaceX used to attempt recovery of the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload fairings, with giant nets to catch the hardware falling from space under parachute. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

JAXA looks abroad. The Japanese space agency JAXA has selected Rocket Lab to launch a set of technology demonstration satellites on Electron rockets after continued delays with a Japanese launch vehicle, Space News reports. The agreement covers two launches from New Zealand, the first in December with JAXA’s 242-pound (110-kilogram) Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite-4 (RAISE-4) technology demonstration satellite, and the second in early 2026 with a batch of eight smaller satellites for educational, ocean monitoring, and other demonstrations.

No more waiting … These satellites were supposed to launch on Japan’s solid-fueled Epsilon S rocket, but JAXA looked to another launch provider after lengthy delays with the Epsilon program. Epsilon S is an upgraded version of Japan’s Epsilon rocket, which has flown six times. The first flight of Epsilon S was originally expected in 2023, but back-to-back ground test failures of the vehicle’s second stage solid rocket motor have effectively grounded the rocket. Japanese officials are considering ditching the upgraded second stage design and going back to the original Epsilon configuration, but a launch is still at least a year away.

An update on a German launch startup. German rocket builder HyImpulse announced Thursday that it had secured $53 million (45 million euros) in new funding to continue developing its SL-1 rocket, European Spaceflight reports. HyImpulse said it will use the new capital to “drive forward the development and commercialization of the SL1 orbital rocket and expand its production capacities.” HyImpulse is one of a handful of serious European launch startups, having raised more than $86 million (74 million euros) since its foundation in 2018.

Still years away … The SL1 rocket will consist of three stages with hybrid propulsion, capable of delivering up to more than 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms) of payload to low-Earth orbit. The first flight of HyImpulse’s orbital rocket is scheduled for 2027. SL1 builds on the company’s SR75 suborbital rocket, which made its first test flight from Australia in 2024.

iRocket touts rapid build. Innovative Rocket Technologies Inc. (iRocket) reports a successful flight test of the company’s 2.75-inch (70-millimeter) diameter IRX-100 version of the Hydra 70 rocket system from a launch tube under its own power to exercise a range of motor and missile properties, Aviation Week & Space Technology Reports. The IRX-100 is iRocket’s version of the Hydra 70 short-range unguided missile primarily used on military helicopters. Asad Malik, iRocket’s CEO, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that the company designed and launched the rocket in just 30 days. “Speed, precision, and innovation are what define our team,” Malik wrote.

Pathfinder … The IRX-100 rocket launched from a desert location in California and reached an altitude of more than 12,000 feet, according to iRocket. We’ve reported on iRocket in several recent editions of the Rocket Report. In July, the company announced it was going public in a deal with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company founded by former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. But the SPAC and iRocket itself appear to have little money. Company officials hope the IRX-100 might offer a short-term source of revenue through military sales. iRocket’s longer-term goals include the development of a reusable orbital-class rocket, named Shockwave.

SpaceX launches for Kuiper. After more than a week of launch delays, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with two dozen of Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband Internet satellites onboard Monday night, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, dubbed Kuiper Falcon 03 or KF-03, faced several days of launch delays due to poor weather both at the Cape as well as offshore. This was the third and final Kuiper launch currently booked on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, and the sixth launch of operational Kuiper satellites overall. Amazon now has 153 of its planned 3,232 Kuiper satellites in orbit.

SDA, too … Two days later, SpaceX launched a different Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, to add 21 satellites to the Space Development Agency’s burgeoning low-Earth orbit constellation, Spaceflight Now reports. These satellites were built by Lockheed Martin, and they will join a batch of 21 similar spacecraft manufactured by York Space Systems launched last month. The satellites form the foundation for the Pentagon’s proliferated missile tracking and data relay network.

China launches another mysterious satellite. China conducted an orbital launch Monday with no apparent advance indication, successfully sending the Shiyan-31 remote sensing test satellite into orbit, Space News reports. The mission lifted off aboard a Long March 2D rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The Long March 2D can deliver up to 3.5 metric tons (7,700 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit. Shiyan-31 is believed to have an optical surveillance mission, and US tracking data indicated it was flying in an orbit about 300 miles (500 kilometers) above the Earth.

Surprise! … What was unusual about this launch was the fact that China did not publicize it in advance. Like most spacefaring nations, China typically issues airspace and maritime warning notices for airplanes and ships to steer clear of downrange zones where rocket debris may fall. No such warnings were released for this launch.

Starship flirts with perfection. SpaceX closed a troubled but instructive chapter in its Starship rocket program Monday with a near-perfect test flight that carried the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world from South Texas to the Indian Ocean, Ars reports. This was the 11th full-scale test flight of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, and it was arguably the most successful Starship test flight to date. It comes after a rough start to the year with a series of Starship failures and explosions that set the program back by at least six months.

Close to pristine … This time, Starship came back through the atmosphere with little sign of visible damage. The previous test flight in August also nailed its splashdown in the Indian Ocean, but it came down with a banged-up heat shield. This was the final flight of the second generation of Starship, called Starship V2. SpaceX plans to debut the larger, more powerful Starship V3 configuration in early 2026. If all goes well, SpaceX could be in position to attempt to recover Starship on land next year.

Orion’s other options. The Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket have been attached at the hip for the better part of two decades. The big rocket lifts, the smaller spacecraft flies, and Congress keeps the money rolling in. But now there are signs that the twain may, in the not-too-distant future, split, Ars reports. This is because Lockheed Martin has begun to pivot toward a future in which the Orion spacecraft—thanks to increasing reusability, a focus on cost, and openness to flying on different rockets—fits into commercial space applications. In interviews, company officials said that if NASA wanted to buy Orion missions as a “service,” rather than owning and operating the spacecraft, they were ready to work with the space agency.

Staying power … This represents a significant change. Since the US Congress called for the creation of the Space Launch System rocket a decade and a half ago, Orion and this rocket have been discussed in tandem, forming the backbone of an expendable architecture that would launch humans to the Moon and return them to Earth inside Orion. But time is running out for the uber-expensive SLS rocket, with differing proposals from the Trump administration and Congress to terminate the program after either two or perhaps four more flights. This appears to be one reason Lockheed is exploring alternative launch vehicles for Orion. If the spacecraft is going to be competitive on price, it needs a rocket that does not cost more than $2 billion per launch. Any near-term plan to send astronauts to the Moon will still require Orion.

Doubling up at Vandenberg. The Department of the Air Force has approved SpaceX’s plans to launch up to 100 missions per year from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Ars reports. This would continue the tectonic turnaround at the spaceport on California’s Central Coast. Five years ago, Vandenberg hosted just a single orbital launch. This year’s number stands at 51 orbital flights, or 53 launches if you count a pair of Minuteman missile tests, the most in a single calendar year at Vandenberg since the early 1970s. Military officials have now authorized SpaceX to double its annual launch rate at Vandenberg from 50 to 100, with up to 95 missions using the Falcon 9 rocket and up to five launches of the larger Falcon Heavy.

No big rush … There’s more to the changes at Vandenberg than launching additional rockets. The authorization gives SpaceX the green light to redevelop Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. SpaceX plans to demolish unneeded structures at SLC-6 (pronounced “Slick 6”) and construct two new landing pads for Falcon boosters on a bluff overlooking the Pacific just south of the pad. SLC-6 would become the West Coast home for Falcon Heavy, but SpaceX currently has no confirmed contracts to fly the heavy-lifter from Vandenberg.

Next three launches

Oct. 18: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-19 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 46 UTC

Oct. 19: Kinetica 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 03: 30 UTC

Oct. 19: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-17 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 14: 52 UTC

Rocket Report: China launches with no advance warning; Europe’s drone ship Read More »

Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck

blue origin, falcon 9, Gilmour space, NASA, new glenn, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, stoke space, united launch alliance / 9u50fv / October 10, 2025

The long, winding road for Franklin Chang-Diaz’s plasma rocket engine takes another turn.

Blue Origin’s second New Glenn booster left its factory this week for a road trip to the company’s launch pad a few miles away. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 8.14 of the Rocket Report! We’re now more than a week into a federal government shutdown, but there’s been little effect on the space industry. Military space operations are continuing unabated, and NASA continues preparations at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for the launch of the Artemis II mission around the Moon early next year. The International Space Station is still flying with a crew of seven in low-Earth orbit, and NASA’s fleet of spacecraft exploring the cosmos remain active. What’s more, so much of what the nation does in space is now done by commercial companies largely (but not completely) immune from the pitfalls of politics. But the effect of the shutdown on troops and federal employees shouldn’t be overlooked. They will soon miss their first paychecks unless political leaders reach an agreement to end the stalemate.

Danger from dead rockets. A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions, Ars reports. “The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

Littering in LEO … The disturbing trends mainly revolve around China’s actions in low-Earth orbit. “The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we’ve had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars. China is responsible for leaving behind 21 of those 26 rockets. Overall, Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

Sign Me Up!

New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, launched its sixth crewed New Shepard flight so far this year Wednesday as the company works to increase the vehicle’s flight rate, Space News reports. This was the 36th flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. The passengers included: Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Will Lewis, Aaron Newman, and Vitalii Ostrovsky. Blue Origin said it has now flown 86 humans (80 individuals) into space. The New Shepard booster returned to a pinpoint propulsive landing, and the capsule parachuted into the desert a few miles from the launch site near Van Horn, Texas.

Two-month turnaround … This flight continued Blue Origin’s trend of launching New Shepard about once per month. The company has two capsules and two boosters in its active inventory, and each vehicle has flown about once every two months this year. Blue Origin currently has command of the space tourism and suborbital research market as its main competitor in this sector, Virgin Galactic, remains grounded while it builds a next-generation rocket plane. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

NASA still interested in former astronaut’s rocket engine. NASA has awarded the Ad Astra Rocket Company a $4 million, two-year contract for the continued development of the company’s Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) concept, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Ad Astra, founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, claims the vehicle has the potential to reach Mars with human explorers within 45 days using a nuclear power source rather than solar power. The new contract will enable federal funding to support development of the engine’s radio frequency, superconducting magnet, and structural exoskeleton subsystems.

Slow going … Houston-based Ad Astra said in a press release that it sees the high-power plasma engine as “nearing flight readiness.” We’ve heard this before. The VASIMR engine has been in development for decades now, beset by a lack of stable funding and the technical hurdles inherent in designing and testing such demanding technology. For example, Ad Astra once planned a critical 100-hour, 100-kilowatt ground test of the VASIMR engine in 2018. The test still hasn’t happened. Engineers discovered a core component of the engine tended to overheat as power levels approached 100 kilowatts, forcing a redesign that set the program back by at least several years. Now, Ad Astra says it is ready to build and test a pair of 150-kilowatt engines, one of which is intended to fly in space at the end of the decade.

Gilmour eyes return to flight next year. Australian rocket and satellite startup Gilmour Space Technologies is looking to return to the launch pad next year after the first attempt at an orbital flight failed over the summer, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. “We are well capitalized. We are going to be launching again next year,” Adam Gilmour, the company’s CEO, said October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney.

What happened? … Gilmour didn’t provide many details about the cause of the launch failure in July, other than to say it appeared to be something the company didn’t test for ahead of the flight. The Eris rocket flew for 14 seconds, losing control and crashing a short distance from the launch pad in the Australian state of Queensland. If there’s any silver lining, Gilmour said the failure didn’t damage the launch pad, and the rocket’s use of a novel hybrid propulsion system limited the destructive power of the blast when it struck the ground.

Stoke Space’s impressive funding haul. Stoke Space announced a significant capital raise on Wednesday, a total of $510 million as part of Series D funding. The new financing doubles the total capital raised by Stoke Space, founded in 2020, to $990 million, Ars reports. The infusion of money will provide the company with “the runway to complete development” of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding.

A futuristic design … Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket’s innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle’s second stage. In fully reusable mode, Nova will have a payload capacity of 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and up to 7 tons in fully expendable mode. Stoke is building a launch pad for the Nova rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

SpaceX took an unusual break from launching. SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket from Florida in 12 days during the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch gap was highlighted by a run of persistent, daily storms in Central Florida and over the Atlantic Ocean, including hurricanes that prevented deployment of SpaceX’s drone ships to support booster landings. The break ended with the launch of 28 more Starlink broadband satellites. SpaceX launched three Starlink missions in the interim from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Weather still an issue … Weather conditions on Florida’s Space Coast are often volatile, particularly in the evenings during summer and early autumn. SpaceX’s next launch from Florida was supposed to take off Thursday evening, but officials pushed it back to no earlier than Saturday due to a poor weather forecast over the next two days. Weather still gets a vote in determining whether a rocket lifts off or doesn’t, despite SpaceX’s advancements in launch efficiency and the Space Force’s improved weather monitoring capabilities at Cape Canaveral.

ArianeGroup chief departs for train maker. Current ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion has been named the new head of French train maker Alstom. He will officially take up the role in April 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Sion assumed the role as ArianeGroup’s chief executive in 2023, replacing the former CEO who left the company after delays in the debut of its main product: the Ariane 6 rocket. Sion’s appointment was announced by Alstom, but ArianeGroup has not made any official statement on the matter.

Under pressure … The change in ArianeGroup’s leadership comes as the company ramps up production and increases the launch cadence of the Ariane 6 rocket, which has now flown three times, with a fourth launch due next month. ArianeGroup’s subsidiary, Arianespace, seeks to increase the Ariane 6’s launch cadence to 10 missions per year by 2029. ArianeGroup and its suppliers will need to drastically improve factory throughput to reach this goal.

New Glenn emerges from factory. Blue Origin rolled the first stage of its massive New Glenn rocket from its hangar on Wednesday morning in Florida, kicking off the final phase of the campaign to launch the heavy-lift vehicle for the second time, Ars reports. In sharing video of the rollout to Launch Complex-36 on Wednesday online, the space company did not provide a launch target for the mission, which seeks to put two small Mars-bound payloads into orbit. The pair of identical spacecraft to study the solar wind at Mars is known as ESCAPADE. However, sources told Ars that on the current timeline, Blue Origin is targeting a launch window of November 9 to November 11. This assumes pre-launch activities, including a static-fire test of the first stage, go well.

Recovery or bust? … Blue Origin has a lot riding on this booster, named “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which it will seek to recover and reuse. Despite the name of the booster, the company is quietly confident that it will successfully land the first stage on a drone ship named Jacklyn. Internally, engineers at Blue Origin believe there is about a 75 percent chance of success. The first booster malfunctioned before landing on the inaugural New Glenn test flight in January. Company officials are betting big on recovering the booster this time, with plans to reuse it early next year to launch Blue’s first lunar lander to the Moon.

SpaceX gets bulk of this year’s military launch orders. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying.

Vulcan getting more expensive … A closer examination of this year’s National Security Space Launch contracts reveals some interesting things. The Space Force is paying SpaceX $714 million for the five launches awarded Friday, for an average of roughly $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million for each launch. That’s about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX’s price per mission. This is in line with the prices the Space Force paid SpaceX and ULA for last year’s contracts. However, look back a little further and you’ll find ULA’s prices for military launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In late 2023, the Space Force awarded a $1.3 billion deal to ULA for a batch of 11 launches at an average cost per mission of $119 million. A few months earlier, Space Systems Command assigned six launches to ULA for $672 million, or $112 million per mission.

Starship Flight 11 nears launch. SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy booster for the next test flight of the company’s Starship mega-rocket out to the launch pad in Texas this week. The booster stage, with 33 methane-fueled engines, will power the Starship into the upper atmosphere during the first few minutes of flight. This booster is flight-proven, having previously launched and landed on a test flight in March.

Next steps … With the Super Heavy booster installed on the pad, the next step for SpaceX will be the rollout of the Starship upper stage. That is expected to happen in the coming days. Ground crews will raise Starship atop the Super Heavy booster to fully stack the rocket to its total height of more than 400 feet (120 meters). If everything goes well, SpaceX is targeting liftoff of the 11th full-scale test flight of Starship and Super Heavy as soon as Monday evening. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin takes on a new line of business. Blue Origin won a US Space Force competition to build a new payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. Under the terms of the $78.2 million contract, Blue Origin will build a new facility capable of handling payloads for up to 16 missions per year. The Space Force expects to use about half of that capacity, with the rest available to NASA or Blue Origin’s commercial customers. This contract award follows a $77.5 million agreement the Space Force signed with Astrotech earlier this year to expand the footprint of its payload processing facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Important stuff … Ground infrastructure often doesn’t get the same level of attention as rockets, but the Space Force has identified bottlenecks in payload processing as potential constraints on ramping up launch cadences at the government’s spaceports in Florida and California. Currently, there are only a handful of payload processing facilities in the Cape Canaveral area, and most of them are only open to a single user, such as SpaceX, Amazon, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NASA. So, what exactly is payload processing? The Space Force said Blue Origin’s new facility will include space for “several pre-launch preparatory activities” that include charging batteries, fueling satellites, loading other gaseous and fluid commodities, and encapsulation. To accomplish those tasks, Blue Origin will create “a clean, secure, specialized high-bay facility capable of handling flight hardware, toxic fuels, and explosive materials.”

Next three launches

Oct. 11: Gravity 1 | Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 02: 15 UTC

Oct. 12: Falcon 9 | Project Kuiper KF-03 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 00: 41 UTC

Oct. 13: Starship/Super Heavy | Flight 11 | Starbase, Texas | 23: 15 UTC

Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck Read More »

Rocket Report: Alpha explodes on test stand; Europe wants a mini Starship

firefly, rocket report, Space / Shannon Garcia / October 3, 2025

“We are trying to find a partner that is willing to invest.”

An Electron rocket launches a Synspective satellite in 2022. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 8.13 of the Rocket Report! It’s difficult for me to believe, but we have now entered the fourth quarter of the year. Accordingly, there are three months left in 2025, with a lot of launch action still to come. The remainder of the year will be headlined by Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket making its second flight (and landing attempt), and SpaceX’s Starship making its final test flight of the year. There is also the slim possibility that Rocket Lab’s Neutron vehicle will make its debut this year, but it will almost certainly slip into 2026.

An Alpha rocket blows up on the pad. The booster stage for Firefly Aerospace’s next Alpha rocket was destroyed Monday in a fiery accident on the company’s vertical test stand in Central Texas, Ars reports. Firefly released a statement confirming the rocket “experienced an event that resulted in a loss of the stage.” The company confirmed all personnel were safe and said ground teams followed “proper safety protocols.” Imagery posted on social media platforms showed a fireball engulfing the test stand and a column of black smoke rising into the sky over Firefly’s facility roughly 40 miles north of Austin.

Supposed to be a return-to-flight mission … Engineers were testing the rocket before shipment to Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, to prepare for launch later this year with a small commercial satellite for Lockheed Martin. The booster destroyed Monday was slated to fly on the seventh launch of Firefly’s Alpha rocket, an expendable, two-stage launch vehicle capable of placing a payload of a little over 2,200 pounds, or a metric ton, into low-Earth orbit. This upcoming launch was supposed to be the Alpha rocket’s return to flight after an in-flight failure in April, when the upper stage’s engine shut down before the rocket could reach orbit and deploy its satellite payload.

Europe wants a mini Starship. The European Space Agency signed a contract Monday with Avio, the Italian company behind the small Vega rocket, to begin designing a reusable upper stage capable of flying into orbit, returning to Earth, and launching again. The deal is worth 40 million euros ($47 million), Ars reports. In a statement, Avio said it will “define the requirements, system design, and enabling technologies needed to develop a demonstrator capable of safely returning to Earth and being reused in future missions.”

Don’t expect progress too quickly … At the end of the two-year contract, Avio will deliver a preliminary design for the reusable upper stage and the ground infrastructure needed to make it a reality. The preliminary design review is a milestone in the early phases of an aerospace project, typically occurring many years before completion. For example, Europe’s flagship Ariane 6 rocket passed its preliminary design review in 2016, eight years before its first launch. Avio and ESA did not release any specifications on the size or performance of the launcher.

Sign Me Up!

Rocket Lab scores 10 more Electron launches. Synspective, a Japanese company developing a constellation of radar imaging satellites, has signed a deal with Rocket Lab for an additional 10 Electron launches, Space News reports. The companies announced the agreement on Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress, confirming that each launch would carry a single StriX radar imaging satellite.

A repeat customer … Synspective signed a separate contract in June 2024 for 10 Electron launches, scheduled for 2025 through 2027. That was the largest single contract for Electron to date. Rocket Lab notes that Synspective is its largest Electron customer, with six launches completed to date and a backlog of 21 launches through the end of the decade. Synspective aims to place 30 synthetic aperture radar imaging satellites in orbit by 2030. This contract ensures that Electron will continue flying for quite a while.

German investment could benefit small launchers. During his address at Germany’s third annual Space Congress, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that Germany would invest 35 billion euros ($41 billion) in space-related defense projects by 2030, European Spaceflight reports. “The conflicts of the future will no longer be limited to the Earth’s surface or the deep sea,” he said. “They will also be fought openly in orbit. That’s why we are building structures within the Bundeswehr to enable us to effectively defend and deter [threats] in space in the medium and long term.”

Launch an investment area … The investment will cover five main priorities: hardening against data disruptions and attacks, improved space situational awareness, redundancy through several networked satellite constellations, secure, diverse, and on-demand launch capabilities, and a dedicated military satellite operations center. Although Germany’s heavy-lift needs will continue to be met by Ariane 6, a program to which the country contributes heavily, domestic small-launch providers such as Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar Aerospace, and HyImpulse are likely to see a boost in support.

Blue Origin seeks to expand New Shepard program. Blue Origin is developing three new suborbital New Shepard launch systems and is mulling expanding flight services beyond West Texas, Aviation Week reports. The current two-ship fleet will be retired by the end of 2027, with the first of three new spacecraft expected to debut next year, Senior Vice President Phil Joyce said during the Global Spaceport Alliance forum.

Looking for an overseas partner … Joyce said the new vehicles feature upgraded systems throughout, particularly in the propulsion system. The new ships are designed for quicker turnaround, which will enable Blue Origin to offer weekly flights. The company’s West Texas spaceport can accommodate three New Shepard vehicles, though Blue Origin is interested in possibly offering the suborbital flight service from another location, including outside the US, Joyce said. “We are trying to find a partner that is willing to invest,” he added. (submitted by Chuckgineer)

Next Nuri launch set for November. The Korea AeroSpace Administration completed a review of preparations for the next launch of the Nuri rocket and announced that the vehicle was ready for a window that would open on November 28. The main payload will be a satellite to observe Earth’s aurora and magnetic field, along with a smaller secondary payload.

Coming back after a while … The liquid-fueled Nuri rocket is the first booster to be entirely developed within Korea, and has a lift capacity of 3.3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. The rocket failed on its debut launch in October 2021, but flew successfully in 2022 and 2023. If the rocket launches in November, it will be Nuri’s first mission in two and a half years. (submitted by CP)

Galactic Energy scores big fundraising round. Beijing-based Galactic Energy has raised what appears to be China’s largest disclosed round for a launch startup as it nears orbital test flights of new rockets, Space News reports. The company announced Series D financing of 2.4 billion yuan ($336 million) in a statement on Sunday. The funding will be used for the Pallas series of reusable liquid propellant launchers and the Ceres-2 solid rocket, both of which appear close to test launches. The investment will also go toward related production, testing, and launch facilities.

Big funding, big ambitions … Founded in February 2018, Galactic Energy has established a strong record of reliability with its light-lift Ceres-1 solid rocket, and previously raised $154 million in C-round funding in late 2023 for its Pallas-1 plans. Pallas-1, a kerosene-liquid oxygen rocket, is to be able to carry 7 metric tons of payload to a 200-km low-Earth orbit. New plans for Pallas-2 envision a capability of 20,000 to 58,000 kg, depending on a single-stick or tri-core configuration, with an aggressive target of a debut launch in 2026.

Blue Origin seeks to reuse next New Glenn booster. There’s a good bit riding on the second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, Ars reports. Most directly, the fate of a NASA science mission to study Mars’ upper atmosphere hinges on a successful launch. The second flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lifter will send two NASA-funded satellites toward the red planet to study the processes that drove Mars’ evolution from a warmer, wetter world to the cold, dry planet of today. But there’s more on the line. If Blue Origin plans to launch its first robotic Moon lander early next year—as currently envisioned—the company needs to recover the New Glenn rocket’s first stage booster.

Managing prop … Crews will again dispatch Blue Origin’s landing platform into the Atlantic Ocean, just as they did for the first New Glenn flight in January. The debut launch of New Glenn successfully reached orbit, a difficult feat for the inaugural flight of any rocket. But the booster fell into the Atlantic Ocean after three of the rocket’s engines failed to reignite to slow down for landing. Engineers identified seven changes to resolve the problem, focusing on what Blue Origin calls “propellant management and engine bleed control improvements.” Company officials expressed confidence this week the booster will be recovered.

SpaceX nearing next Starship test flight. With the next Starship launch, scheduled for no earlier than October 13, SpaceX officials hope to show they can repeat the successes of the 10th test flight of the vehicle in late August, Ars reports. On its surface, the flight plan for SpaceX’s next Starship flight looks a lot like the last one. The rocket’s Super Heavy booster will again splash down in the Gulf of Mexico just offshore from SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas. And Starship, the rocket’s upper stage, will fly on a suborbital arc before reentering the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean for a water landing northwest of Australia.

Preparing for a future ship catch … There are, however, some changes to SpaceX’s flight plan for the next Starship. Most of these changes will occur during the ship’s reentry, when the vehicle’s heat shield is exposed to temperatures of up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius). These include new tests of ceramic thermal protection tiles to “intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle.” Another new test objective for the upcoming Starship flight will be a “dynamic banking maneuver” during the final phase of the trajectory “to mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase,” SpaceX said. This will help engineers test Starship’s subsonic guidance algorithms.

Senators seek to halt space shuttle move. A former NASA astronaut turned US senator has joined with other lawmakers to insist that his two rides to space remain on display in the Smithsonian, Ars reports. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) has joined fellow Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both of Virginia, and Dick Durbin of Illinois in an effort to halt the move of space shuttle Discovery to Houston, as enacted into law earlier this year. In a letter sent to the leadership of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, Kelly and his three colleagues cautioned that any effort to transfer the winged orbiter would “waste taxpayer dollars, risk permanent damage to the shuttle, and mean fewer visitors would be able to visit it.”

Seeking to block Cruz control … In the letter, the senators asked that Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) block funding for Discovery‘s relocation in both the fiscal year 2026 Interior-Environment appropriations bill and FY26 Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. The letter is the latest response to a campaign begun by Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans from Texas, to remove Discovery from its 13-year home at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and put it on display at Space Center Houston, the visitor center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Next three launches

October 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-39 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 13: 00 UTC

October 6: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-59 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla.| 04: 32 UTC

October 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-17 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 01: 00 UTC

Rocket Report: Alpha explodes on test stand; Europe wants a mini Starship Read More »

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 / Kelly Newman / September 26, 2025

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.

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.

Sign Me Up!

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

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

Rocket Report: European rocket reuse test delayed; NASA tweaks SLS for Artemis II

artemis II, rocket report, sls, Space, starship / Kelly Newman / September 19, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“There’s a lot of interest because of the fear that there’s just not a lot of capacity.”

Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lifts off from Andøya Spaceport, Norway, on March 30, 2025. Credit: Isar Aerospace/Brady Kenniston/NASASpaceflight.com

Welcome to Edition 8.11 of the Rocket Report! We have reached the time of year when it is possible the US government will shut down its operations at the end of this month, depending on congressional action. A shutdown would have significant implications for many NASA missions, but most notably a couple of dozen in the science directorate that the White House would like to shut down. At Ars, we will be watching this issue closely in the coming days. As for Artemis II, it seems to be far enough along that a launch next February seems possible as long as any government closure does not drag on for weeks and weeks.

Rocket Lab to sell common shares. The space company said Tuesday that it intends to raise up to $750 million by selling common shares, MSN reports. This new at-the-market program replaces a prior agreement that allowed Rocket Lab to sell up to $500 million of stock. Under that earlier arrangement, the company had sold roughly $396.6 million in shares before ending the program.

Seeking to scale up … The program’s structure enables Rocket Lab to sell shares periodically through the appointed agents, who may act as either principals or intermediaries. The larger offering indicates that Rocket Lab is aiming to bolster its cash reserves to support ongoing development of its launch services, including the medium-lift Neutron rocket and spacecraft manufacturing operations. The company’s stock dropped by about 10 percent after the announcement.

Astra targets mid-2026 for Rocket 4 debut. Astra is targeting next summer for the first flight of its Rocket 4 vehicle as the company prepares to reenter the launch market, Space News reports. At the World Space Business Week conference in Paris, Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said the company was on track for a first launch of Rocket 4 in summer 2026 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. He highlighted progress Astra is making, such as tests of a new engine the company developed for the vehicle’s first stage that produces 42,000 pounds of thrust. Two of those engines will power the first stage, while the upper stage will use a single Hadley engine produced by Ursa Major.

Pricing a launch competitively … The vehicle will initially be capable of placing about 750 kilograms into low-Earth orbit for a price of $5 million. “That’ll be very competitive,” Kemp said in an interview after the presentation, similar to what SpaceX charges for payloads of that size through its rideshare program. The company is targeting customers seeking alternatives to SpaceX in a constrained launch market. “There’s a lot of interest because of the fear that there’s just not a lot of capacity,” he said, particularly for satellites too large to launch on Rocket Lab’s Electron. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Avio seeks to raise 400 million euros. Italian rocket builder Avio’s board of directors has approved a 400 million euro ($471 million) capital increase to fund an expansion of its manufacturing capacity to meet rising demand in the global space and defense markets, European Spaceflight reports. The company expects to complete the capital increase by the end of the year; however, it is still subject to a shareholder vote, scheduled for October 23.

Small rockets, big plans … The capital raise is part of a new 10-year business plan targeting an average annual growth rate of about 10 percent in turnover and more than 15 percent in core profit. This growth is projected to be driven by a higher Vega C launch cadence, the introduction of the Vega E rocket, continued participation in the Ariane 6 program by providing solid rocket boosters, and the construction of a new defense production facility in the United States, which is expected to be completed by 2028.

Isar working toward second Spectrum launch. In a briefing this week, Isar Aerospace executives discussed the outcome of the investigation into the March 30 launch of the Spectrum rocket from the Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, Space News reports. The vehicle activated its flight termination system about half a minute after liftoff, shutting down its engines and plummeting into the waters just offshore of the pad. The primary issue with the rocket was a loss of attitude control.

Bend it like Spectrum … Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar, said that the company had not properly characterized bending modes of the vehicle at liftoff. Despite the failure to get to orbit, Dalloneau considers the first Spectrum launch a successful test flight. The company is working toward a second flight of Spectrum, which will take place “as soon as possible,” Dalloneau said. He did not give a specific target launch date, but officials indicated they were hoping to launch near the end of this year or early next year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Callisto rocket test delayed again. A new document from the French space agency CNES has revealed that the inaugural flight of the Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator has slipped from 2026 to 2027, European Spaceflight reports. This reusable launch testbed is a decade old. Conceived in 2015, the Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations (Callisto) project is a collaboration between CNES and the German and Japanese space agencies aimed at maturing reusable rocket technology for future European and Japanese launch systems.

Still waiting … The Callisto demonstrator will stand 14 meters tall, with a width of 1.1 meters and a takeoff mass of 3,500 kilograms. This latest revision to the program’s timeline comes less than a year after JAXA confirmed in October 2024 that the program’s flight-test campaign had been pushed to 2026. The campaign will be carried out from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana and will include an integration phase followed by eight test flights and two demonstration flights, all to be completed over a period of eight months. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9 launches larger Cygnus spacecraft. The first flight of Northrop’s upgraded Cygnus spacecraft, called Cygnus XL, launched Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, en route to the International Space Station, Ars reports. Without a rocket of its own, Northrop Grumman inked a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches to carry the resupply missions until engineers could develop a new, all-domestic version of the Antares rocket. Sunday’s launch was the last of these three Falcon 9 flights. Northrop is partnering with Firefly Aerospace on a new rocket, the Antares 330, using a new US-made booster stage and engines.

A few teething issues … This new rocket won’t be ready to fly until late 2026, at the earliest, somewhat later than Northrop officials originally hoped. The company confirmed it has purchased a fourth Falcon 9 launch from SpaceX for the next Cygnus cargo mission in the first half of next year, in a bid to bridge the gap until the debut of the Antares 330 rocket. Due to problems with the propulsion system on the larger Cygnus vehicle, its arrival at the space station was delayed. But the vehicle successfully reached the station on Thursday, carrying a record 11,000 pounds of cargo.

Launch companies still struggling with cadence. Launch companies are reiterating plans to sharply increase flight rates to meet growing government and commercial demand, even as some fall short of earlier projections, Space News reports. Executives speaking at a September 15 panel at the World Space Business Week conference highlighted efforts to scale up flights of new vehicles that have entered service in the last two years. “The key for us is cadence,” said Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn mission management at Blue Origin. However, the publication notes, at this time last year, Blue Origin was projecting eight to 10 New Glenn launches this year. There has been one.

It’s difficult to go from 1 to 100 … Blue Origin is not alone in falling short of forecasts. United Launch Alliance projected 20 launches in 2025 between the Atlas 5 and Vulcan Centaur, but in August, CEO Tory Bruno said the company now expects nine. As recently as June, Arianespace projected five Ariane 6 launches this year, including the debut of the more powerful Ariane 64, with four solid-rocket boosters, but has completed only two Ariane 62 flights, including one in August.

NASA makes some modifications to SLS for Artemis II. This week, the space agency declared the SLS rocket is now “ready” to fly crew for the Artemis II mission early next year. However, NASA and its contractors did make some modest changes after the first flight of the booster in late 2022. For example, the Artemis II rocket includes an improved navigation system compared to Artemis I. Its communications capability has also been improved by repositioning antennas on the rocket to ensure continuous communications with the ground.

Not good, but bad vibrations … Additionally, SLS will jettison the spent boosters four seconds earlier during the Artemis II ascent than occurred during Artemis I. Dropping the boosters several seconds closer to the end of their burn will give engineers flight data to correlate with projections that shedding the boosters several seconds sooner will yield approximately 1,600 pounds of payload to Earth orbit for future SLS flights. During the Artemis I test flight, the SLS rocket experienced higher-than-expected vibrations near the solid rocket booster attachment points that were caused by unsteady airflow. To steady the airflow, a pair of 6-foot-long strakes flank each booster’s forward connection points on the SLS intertank.

Federal judge sides with SpaceX, FAA. The initial launch of Starship in April 2023 spread debris across a wide area, sending pulverized concrete as far as six miles away as the vehicle tore up the launch pad. After this, environmental groups and other organizations sued the FAA when the federal organization reviewed the environmental impact of this launch and cleared SpaceX to launch again several months later. A federal judge in Washington, DC, ruled this week that the FAA did not violate environmental laws as part of this review, the San Antonio Express-News reports.

Decision grounded within reason … In his opinion issued Monday, Judge Carl Nichols determined the process was not capricious, writing, “Most of the (programmatic environmental assessment’s) conclusions were well-reasoned and supported by the record, and while parts of its analysis left something to be desired, even those parts fell ‘within a broad zone of reasonableness.'” The environmental organizations said they were considering the next steps for the case and a potential appeal. (submitted by RP)

Next three launches

September 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-12 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 15: 44 UTC

September 21: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-27 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 09: 20 UTC

September 21: Falcon 9 | NROL-48 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 17: 23 UTC

Rocket Report: European rocket reuse test delayed; NASA tweaks SLS for Artemis II Read More »

Rocket Report: Russia’s rocket engine predicament; 300th launch to the ISS

astrobotic, falcon 9, india, international space station, NASA, North Korea, PSLV, rocket report, russia, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / 9u50fv / September 12, 2025

North Korea test-fired a powerful new solid rocket motor for its next-generation ICBM.

A Soyuz-2.1a rocket is propelled by kerosene-fueled RD-107A and RD-108A engines after lifting off Thursday with a resupply ship bound for the International Space Station. Credit: Roscosmos

Welcome to Edition 8.10 of the Rocket Report! Dear readers, if everything goes according to plan, four astronauts are less than six months away from traveling around the far side of the Moon and breaking free of low-Earth orbit for the first time in more than 53 years. Yes, there are good reasons to question NASA’s long-term plans for the Artemis lunar program—the woeful cost of the Space Launch System rocket, the complexity of new commercial landers, and a bleak budget outlook. But many of us who were born after the Apollo Moon landings have been waiting for this moment our whole lives. It is almost upon us.

North Korea fires solid rocket motor. North Korea said Tuesday it had conducted the final ground test of a solid-fuel rocket engine for a long-range ballistic missile in its latest advancement toward having an arsenal that could viably threaten the continental United States, the Associated Press reports. The test Monday observed by leader Kim Jong Un was the ninth of the solid rocket motor built with carbon fiber and capable of producing 1,971 kilonewtons (443,000 pounds) of thrust, more powerful than past models, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Mobility and flexibility … Solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, have advantages over liquid-fueled missiles, which have historically comprised the bulk of North Korea’s inventory. Solid rocket motors can be stored for longer periods of time and are easier to conceal, transport, and launch on demand. The new solid rocket motor will be used on a missile called the Hwasong-20, according to North Korean state media. The AP reports some analysts say North Korea may conduct another ICBM test around the end of the year, showcasing its military strength ahead of a major ruling party congress expected in early 2026.

Sign Me Up!

Astrobotic eyes Andøya. US-based lunar logistics company Astrobotic and Norwegian spaceport operator Andøya Space have signed a term sheet outlining the framework for a Launch Site Agreement, European Spaceflight reports. The agreement, once finalized, will facilitate flights of Astrobotic’s Xodiac lander testbed from the Andøya Space facilities. The Xodiac vertical takeoff, vertical landing rocket was initially developed by Masten Space Systems to simulate landing on the Moon and Mars. When Masten filed for bankruptcy in 2022, Astrobotic acquired its intellectual property and assets, including the Xodiac vehicle.

Across the pond … So far, the small Xodiac rocket has flown on low-altitude atmospheric hops from Mojave, California, reaching altitudes of up to 500 meters, or 1,640 feet. The agreement between Astrobotic and Andøya paves the way for “several” Xodiac flight campaigns from Andøya Space facilities on the Norwegian coast. “Xodiac’s presence at Andøya represents a meaningful step toward delivering reliable, rapid, and cost-effective testing and demonstration capabilities to the European space market,” said Astrobotic CEO John Thornton.

Ursa Major breaks ground in Colorado. Ursa Major on Wednesday said it has broken ground on a new 400-acre site where it will test and qualify large-scale solid rocket motors for current and future missiles, including the Navy’s Standard Missile fleet, Defense Daily reports. The new site in Weld County, Colorado, north of Denver, will be ready for testing to begin in the fourth quarter of 2025. Ursa Major will be able to conduct full-scale static firings, and drop and temperature storage testing for current and future missile systems.

Seeking SRM options … Ursa Major said the new facility will support national and missile defense programs. The company’s portfolio includes solid rocket motors (SRMs) ranging from 2 inches to 22 inches in diameter for missiles like the Stinger, Javelin, and air-defense interceptors. Ursa Major aims to join industry incumbents Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, and newcomer Anduril as a major supplier of SRMs to the government. “This facility represents a major step forward in our ability to deliver qualified SRMs that are scalable, flexible, and ready to meet the evolving threat environment,” said Dan Jablonsky, CEO of Ursa Major, in a statement. “It’s a clear demonstration of our commitment and ability to rapidly advance and expand the American-made solid rocket motor industrial base that the country needs, ensuring warfighters will have the quality and quantity of SRMs needed to meet mission demands.”

Falcon 9 launches first satellites in a military megaconstellation. The first 21 satellites in a constellation that could become a cornerstone for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile-defense shield successfully launched from California Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Ars reports. The Falcon 9 took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and headed south over the Pacific Ocean, reaching an orbit over the poles before releasing the 21 military-owned satellites to begin several weeks of activations and checkouts.

First of many … These 21 satellites will boost themselves to a final orbit at an altitude of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). The Pentagon plans to launch 133 more satellites over the next nine months to complete the build-out of the Space Development Agency’s first-generation, or Tranche 1, constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites. Military officials have worked for six years to reach this moment. The Space Development Agency (SDA) was established during the first Trump administration, which made plans for an initial set of demonstration satellites that launched a couple of years ago. In 2022, the Pentagon awarded contracts for the first 154 operational spacecraft, including the ones launched Wednesday. “Back in 2019, when the SDA was stood up, it was to do two things. One was to make sure that we can do beyond line of sight targeting, and the other was to pace the threat, the emerging threat, in the missile-warning and missile-tracking domain. That’s what the focus has been,” said Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, the SDA’s acting director.

Another Falcon 9 was delayed three times. SpaceX scrubbed launching a communications satellite from an Indonesian company for a third consecutive day Wednesday, Spaceflight Now reports. Possible technical issues got in the way of a launch attempt Wednesday evening after back-to-back days of weather delays at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The Falcon 9 finally launched Thursday evening with the Boeing-built Nusantara Lima communications satellite, targeting a geosynchronous transfer orbit. It’s the latest satellite from the Indonesian company Pasifik Satelit Nusantara.

A declining market … This was just the fifth geosynchronous communications satellite to launch on a commercial rocket this year, all by SpaceX. There were 21 such satellites that launched on commercial vehicles in 2015, including SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Europe’s Ariane 5, Russia’s Proton, ULA’s Atlas V, and Japan’s H-IIA. Much of the world’s launch capacity today is used to deploy smaller communications satellites into low-Earth orbit, primarily for broadband connectivity rather than for the video broadcast market once dominated by higher-altitude geosynchronous satellites.

Putin urges Russia to build more rocket engines. Russian President Vladimir Putin urged aerospace industry leaders on September 5 to press on with efforts to develop booster rocket engines for space launch vehicles and build on Russia’s longstanding reputation as a leader in space technology, Reuters reports. Putin, who spent the preceding days in China and the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok, flew to the southern Russian city of Samara, where he met industry specialists and toured the Kuznetsov design bureau engine manufacturing plant.

A shell of its former self … “It is important to consistently renew production capacity in terms of engines for booster rockets,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying during the visit. “And in doing so, we must not only meet our own current and future needs but also move actively on world markets and be successful competitors.” The Kuznetsov plant in Samara builds medium-class RD-107 and RD-108 engines for Russia’s Soyuz-2 rockets, which launch Russian military satellites and crew and cargo to the International Space Station. Their designs can be traced to the dawn of the Space Age nearly 70 years ago. Meanwhile, the outlook for heavier-duty Russian rocket engines is murky, at best. Russia’s most-flown large rocket engine in the post-Cold War era, the RD-180, produced by a company called Energomash, is out of production after the end of sales to the United States.

India nabs a noteworthy launch contract. Astroscale, a satellite servicing and space debris mitigation company based in Japan, has selected India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) to deliver a small satellite named ISSA-J1 to orbit in 2027. This is an interesting mission. The ISSA-J1 spacecraft will fly up to two large pieces of satellite debris in orbit to image and inspect them. ISSA-J1, developed in partnership with the Japanese government, is one in a series of Astroscale missions testing different ways of approaching, monitoring, capturing, and refueling other objects in space. The launch agreement was signed between Astroscale and NewSpace India Limited, the commercial arm of India’s space agency.

Rideshare not an option … “We selected NSIL after thorough evaluations of more than 10 launch service providers over the past year, considering technical capabilities, track record, cost, and other elements,” said Eddie Kato, president and managing director of Astroscale Japan. India’s PSLV is right-sized for a mission like this. ISSA-J1 is a rarity in that it must launch on a dedicated rocket because it has to reach a specific orbit to line up with the pieces of space debris it will approach and inspect. Rideshare launches, such as those that routinely fly on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, are cheaper but go to standard orbits popular for many different types of satellite missions. A dedicated launch on a Falcon 9 would presumably have been more expensive than a flight on India’s smaller PSLV. Rocket Lab’s Electron, another rocket popular for dedicated launches of small satellites, lacks the performance required for Astroscale’s mission.

Russian cargo en route to ISS. Another cargo ship is flying to humanity’s orbital outpost with the successful launch of Russia’s Progress MS-32 supply freighter Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, NASASpaceflight.com reports. The supply ship launched aboard a Soyuz-2.1a rocket and arrived in orbit about nine minutes later, kicking off a two-day pursuit of the International Space Station. This was the 300th launch of an assembly, crew, or cargo mission to the ISS since 1998, including a handful of missions that didn’t reach the complex due to rocket or spacecraft failures.

Important stuff … The Progress MS-32 cargo craft will dock with the aft port of the space station’s Russian Zvezda service module Saturday. The payloads flying on the Progress mission include food, experiments, clothing, water, air, and propellant to be pumped into the space station’s onboard tanks. The spacecraft will also reboost the lab’s orbit.

Metallic tiles? Not so great. It has been two weeks since SpaceX’s last Starship test flight, and engineers have diagnosed issues with its heat shield, identified improvements, and developed a preliminary plan for the next time the ship heads into space, Ars reports. Bill Gerstenmaier, a SpaceX executive in charge of build and flight reliability, presented the findings Monday at the American Astronautical Society’s Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland. The test flight went “extremely well,” Gerstenmaier said, but he noted some important lessons learned with the ship’s heat shield.

Crunch wrap reigns supreme … “We were essentially doing a test to see if we could get by with non-ceramic tiles, so we put three metal tiles on the side of the ship to see if they would provide adequate heat control, because they would be simpler to manufacture and more durable than the ceramic tiles. It turns out they’re not,” Gerstenmaier said. “The metal tiles… didn’t work so well.” One bright spot with the heat shield was the performance of a new experimental material around and under the tiles. “We call it crunch wrap,” Gerstenmaier said. “It’s like a wrapping paper that goes around each tile.” On the next Starship flight, SpaceX will likely cover more parts of the heat shield with this crunch wrap material. Gerstenmaier said the inaugural flight of Starship Version 3, with upgraded engines and more fuel, is now set to occur next year.

An SLS compromise might be afoot in DC. The Trump administration is seeking to cancel NASA’s Space Launch System rocket after two more flights, but key lawmakers in Congress, including Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, aren’t ready to go along. So is this an impasse? Possibly not, as sources say the White House and Congress may not be all that far apart on how to handle this. The solution involves canceling part of the SLS rocket now, but not all of it, Ars reports.

Goodbye EUS? … The compromise might be to cancel a large new upper stage for the SLS rocket called the Exploration Upper Stage. This would save NASA billions of dollars, and the agency could instead procure commercial upper stages, such as those built by United Launch Alliance or Blue Origin, to fly on SLS rockets after NASA’s Artemis III mission. It would also eliminate the need for NASA to finish building an expensive new launch tower at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The upper stage flying on the first three SLS missions is no longer in production. Sources indicated to Ars that Blue Origin has already begun work on a modified version of its New Glenn upper stage that could fit within the shroud of the SLS rocket.

Next three launches

Sept. 13: Soyuz-2.1b | Glonass-K1 No. 18L | Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia | 02: 30 UTC

Sept. 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 15: 41 UTC

Sept. 14: Falcon 9 | Cygnus NG-23 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 22: 11 UTC

Rocket Report: Russia’s rocket engine predicament; 300th launch to the ISS Read More »

Rocket Report: Neutron’s pad opens for business; SpaceX gets Falcon 9 green light

rocket report, sls, Space, starship, ted cruz / DJ Henderson / September 5, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day.”

Image of a Starlink launch on Falcon 9 this week. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 8.09 of the Rocket Report! The biggest news of the week happened inside the Beltway rather than on a launch pad somewhere. In Washington, DC, Congress has pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to stop flying the Space Launch System rocket after Artemis III. Congress made it clear that it wants to keep the booster in business for a long time. The big question now is whether the Trump White House will blink.

Israel launches SAR satellite. The Israel Ministry of Defense, Israel Defense Forces, and Israel Aerospace Industries successfully launched the Ofek 19 satellite on Tuesday from the Palmachim Airbase. The launch was carried out by the country’s solid-propellant Shavit 2 rocket. Ofek 19 is a synthetic aperture radar observation satellite with enhanced capabilities, 7 Israel National News reports.

A unique launch posture … This was the seventh launch of the Shavit-2 vehicle, which made its debut in June 2007. The most recent launch prior to this week occurred in March 2023. Because of its geographic location and difficult relations with surrounding countries, Israel launches its rockets to the west, over the Mediterranean Sea. (submitted by MarkW98)

Canadian launch firm invests in launch site. Earlier this summer, Reaction Dynamics, an Ontario-based launch company, closed on a Series A funding round worth $10 million. This will support the next phase of development of the Canadian company’s hybrid propulsion system, of which an initial suborbital demonstration flight is planned for this winter. Now the company has taken some of this funding and invested in a launch site in Nova Scotia, SpaceQ reports.

Getting in on the ground floor … In a transaction worth $1.2 million, Reaction Dynamics is investing in Maritime Launch Services, which is developing the Spaceport Nova Scotia facility. Reaction Dynamics intends to launch its Aurora-8 rocket from the Canadian launch site. Bachar Elzein, the CEO of Reaction Dynamics, said the move made sense for two reasons. The first is that it secures “a spot to launch our very first orbital rocket,” with Elzein adding, “we believe in their vision,” and thus wanted to invest. That second factor had to do with all the work, the heavy lifting, MLS has done to date, to build a spaceport from the ground up. (submitted by JoeyS)

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MaiaSpace completes tank tests. French rocket builder and ArianeGroup subsidiary MaiaSpace announced the completion of a monthslong test campaign that subjected several subscale prototypes of its propellant tanks to high-pressure burst tests, European Spaceflight reports. Over the course of six months, the company conducted 15 “burst” tests of subscale propellant tanks. Burst tests push tanks to failure to assess their structural limits and ensure they can safely withstand pressures well beyond normal operating conditions.

Working toward space … The data collected will be used to validate mechanical models that will inform the final design of the full-scale propellant tanks. The tests come as MaiaSpace continues to work toward the debut flight of its Maia rocket, which could take place in 2027 from French Guiana. At present, the company intends the rocket to have a lift capacity of 1.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

Orienspace secures B+ round funding. Chinese commercial rocket company Orienspace has raised tens of millions of dollars in Series B+ financing as it moves towards a key test flight, Space News reports. Orienspace secured funding of between $27 million and $124 million, according to the Chinese-language Taibo Network. The capital will be used mainly for the follow-up development and mass production of the Gravity-2 medium-lift liquid launch vehicle.

Not a small rocket … The company will soon begin comprehensive ground verification tests for the Gravity-2 and is scheduled to carry out its first flight test by the end of this year. In July, Orienspace successfully conducted a hot fire test of a Gravity-2 kerosene-liquid oxygen first-stage engine, including gimbal and valve system evaluations. Gravity-2 is expected to lift on the order of 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit.

Rocket Lab unveils Neutron launch complex. As Rocket Lab prepares to roll out its new Neutron, the firm recently unveiled the launch complex from which the vehicle will fly, DefenseNews reports. Located within the Virginia Space Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, the facility, dubbed Launch Complex 3, will support testing, launch, and return missions for the reusable rocket. Rocket Lab sees Neutron as a contender to help ease the bottleneck in demand from both commercial and military customers for a ride to space. Today, that demand is largely being met by a single provider in the medium-lift market, SpaceX.

A launch this year? … It sounds unlikely. During the event, Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said that although he believes the company’s plan to launch this year is within reach, the schedule is aggressive with no margin for error. Speaking with reporters at the launch site, Beck said the company has some key testing in the coming months to qualify key stages of the rocket, which will give it a better idea of whether it can meet that 2025 timeline. “Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day,” he said. This one is unlikely to break Berger’s Law, however.

SpaceX obtains approval to ramp up Falcon 9 cadence. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a record of decision on Wednesday approving SpaceX’s plan to more than double the number of Falcon 9 launches from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40), the busiest of the company’s four operational launch pads. The FAA concluded that the proposed launch rate “would not significantly impact the quality of the human environment,” Ars reports.

Reaching ludicrous speed … The environmental review paves the way for SpaceX to launch up to 120 Falcon 9 rockets per year from SLC-40, an increase from 50 launches covered in a previous FAA review in 2020. Since then, the FAA has issued SpaceX temporary approval to go beyond 50 launches from SLC-40. For example, SpaceX launched 62 of its overall 132 Falcon 9 flights last year from SLC-40. SpaceX’s goal for this year is 170 Falcon 9 launches, and the company is on pace to come close to this target.

NASA sets date for science mission. NASA said Thursday that a trio of spacecraft to study the Sun will launch no earlier than September 23, on a Falcon 9 rocket. The missions include NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1) spacecraft. After launching from Kennedy Space Center, the spacecraft will travel together to their destination at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange point (L1), around 1 million miles from Earth toward the Sun.

Fun in the Sun … The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind and space weather, from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our Solar System. Research and observations from the missions will help us better understand the Sun’s influence on Earth’s habitability, map our home in space, and protect satellites and voyaging astronauts and airline crews from space weather impacts.

Starship’s heat shield shows promise. One of the key issues ahead of last week’s test of SpaceX’s Starship vehicle was the performance of the upper stage heat shield, Ars reports. When the vehicle landed in the Indian Ocean, it had a decidedly orange tint. So what gives? SpaceX founder Elon Musk provided some clarity after the flight, saying, “Worth noting that the heat shield tiles almost entirely stayed attached, so the latest upgrades are looking good! The red color is from some metallic test tiles that oxidized and the white is from insulation of areas where we deliberately removed tiles.”

A step toward the goal … The successful test and additional information from Musk suggest that SpaceX is making progress on developing a heat shield for Starship. This really is the key technology to make an upper stage rapidly reusable—NASA’s space shuttle orbiters were reusable but required a standing army to refurbish the vehicle between flights. To unlock Starship’s potential, SpaceX wants to be able to refly Starships within 24 hours.

Ted Cruz emerges as key SLS defender. All of the original US senators who created and sustained NASA’s Space Launch System rocket over the last 15 years—Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Richard Shelby—have either retired or failed to win reelection. However, Ars reports that a new champion has emerged to continue the fight: Texas Republican Ted Cruz. As part of its fiscal year 2026 budget, the White House sought to end funding for the Space Launch System rocket after the Artemis III mission, and also cancel the Lunar Gateway, an orbital space station that provides a destination for the rocket.

Money for future missions … However, Cruz subsequently crafted a NASA provision tacked onto President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” The Cruz addendum provided $6.7 billion in funding for two additional SLS missions, Artemis IV and Artemis V, and to continue Gateway construction. In several hearings this year, Cruz has made it clear that his priorities for human spaceflight are to beat China back to the Moon and maintain a presence there. However, it is now increasingly clear that he views this as only being possible through continued use of NASA’s SLS rocket.

SpaceX seeks to solve Starship prop demands. If SpaceX is going to fly Starships as often as it wants to, it’s going to take more than rockets and launch pads. Tanker trucks have traditionally delivered rocket propellant to launch pads at America’s busiest spaceports in Florida and California. SpaceX has used the same method of bringing propellant for the first several years of operations at Starbase. But a reusable Starship’s scale dwarfs that of other rockets. It stands more than 400 feet tall, with a capacity for more than a million gallons of super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants.

That’s a lot of gas … SpaceX also uses large quantities of liquid nitrogen to chill and purge the propellant loading system for Starship. It takes more than 200 tanker trucks traveling from distant refineries to deliver all of the methane, liquid oxygen, and liquid nitrogen for a Starship launch. SpaceX officials recognize this is not an efficient means of conveying these commodities to the launch pad. It takes time, emits pollution, and clogs roadways. SpaceX’s solution to some of these problems is to build its own plants to generate cryogenic fluids. In a new report, Ars explains how the company plans to do this.

Next three launches

September 5: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-57 | Kennedy Space Center Florida | 11: 29 UTC

September 5: Ceres 1 | Unknown payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 11: 35 UTC

September 6: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-9 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 15: 45 UTC

Rocket Report: Neutron’s pad opens for business; SpaceX gets Falcon 9 green light Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX achieved daily launch this week; ULA recovers booster

alpha rocket, falcon 9, Firefly Aerospace, launch, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, Starbase, starship, united launch alliance, vulcan, wallops island / Beth Washington / August 29, 2025

Firefly Aerospace reveals why its Alpha booster exploded after launch in April.

Starship and its Super Heavy booster ascend through a clear sky over Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday evening. A visible vapor cone enveloped the rocket as it passed through maximum aerodynamic pressure and the speed of sound. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Welcome to Edition 8.08 of the Rocket Report! What a week it’s been for SpaceX. The company completed its first successful Starship test flight in nearly a year, and while it wasn’t perfect, it sets up SpaceX for far more ambitious tests ahead. SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, launched six times since our last edition of the Rocket Report. Many of these missions were noteworthy in their own right, including the launch of the US military’s X-37B spaceplane, an upgraded Dragon capsule to boost the International Space Station to a higher orbit, and the record 30th launch and landing of a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster. All told, that’s seven SpaceX launches in seven days.

Firefly announces cause of Alpha launch failure. Firefly Aerospace closed the investigation into the failure of one of its Alpha rockets during an April mission for Lockheed Martin and received clearance from the FAA to resume launches, Payload reports. The loss of the launch vehicle was a dark cloud hanging over the company’s otherwise successful IPO this month. The sixth flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket launched in April from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and failed when its first stage booster broke apart milliseconds after stage separation. This created a shockwave that destroyed the engine nozzle extension on the second stage, damaging the engine before the second stage ran out of propellant seconds before it attained orbital velocity. Both stages ultimately fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Too much stress … Investigators concluded that “plume induced flow separation” caused the failure. The phenomenon occurs when a rocket’s exhaust disrupts airflow around the vehicle in flight. In this case, Firefly said the rocket was flying at a higher angle of attack than prior missions, which resulted in the flow separation and created intense heat that broke the first stage apart just after it jettisoned from the second stage. Firefly will increase heat shielding on the first stage of the rocket and fly at reduced angles of attack on future missions. Alpha has now launched six times since 2021, with only two complete successes. Firefly said it was working on setting a date for the seventh Alpha launch. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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ESA books a ticket on European launchers. The European Space Agency has awarded launch service contracts to Avio and Isar Aerospace under its Flight Ticket Initiative, European Spaceflight reports. Announced in October 2023, the Flight Ticket Initiative is a program run jointly by ESA and the European Union that offers subsidized flight opportunities for European companies and organizations seeking to demonstrate new satellite technologies in orbit. The initiative is part of ESA’s strategy to foster the continent’s commercial space industry, offering institutional funding to support satellite and launch companies. Avio won contracts to launch three small European space missions as secondary payloads on Vega C rockets flying into low-Earth orbit. Isar Aerospace will launch two small satellite missions to orbit for European companies.

No other options … Avio and Isar Aerospace were the obvious contenders for the Flight Ticket Initiative from a pool of five European companies eligible for launch awards. The other companies, PLD Space, Orbex, and Rocket Factory Augsburg, haven’t launched their orbital-class rockets yet. Avio, based in Italy, builds the now-operational Vega C rocket, and Germany’s Isar Aerospace launched its first Spectrum rocket earlier this year, but it failed to reach orbit. Avio’s selection replaces Arianespace, which was originally part of the Flight Ticket Initiative. Arianespace was previously responsible for marketing and sales for the Vega rocket, but ESA transferred its Flight Ticket Initiative eligibility to Avio following its split from Arianespace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Canadian rocket company ready for launch. NordSpace is preparing to launch its 6-meter tall Taiga rocket from Newfoundland, CBC reports. It will be a suborbital launch, meaning it won’t orbit Earth, but NordSpace says the launch will be the first of a Canadian commercial rocket from a Canadian commercial spaceport. The rocket is powered by a 3D-printed liquid-fueled engine and is a stepping stone to an orbital-class rocket NordSpace is developing called Tundra, scheduled to debut in 2027. The smaller Taiga rocket will launch partially fueled and fire its engine for approximately 60 seconds, according to NordSpace.

Newfoundland to space … The launch site, called the Atlantic Spaceport Complex, is located on the Atlantic coast near the town of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. It will have two launch pads, one for suborbital flights like Taiga, and another for orbital missions by the Tundra rocket and other launch vehicles from US and European companies. The Taiga launch is scheduled no earlier than Friday morning at 5: 00 am EDT (09: 00 UTC). NordSpace says it is a “fully privately funded and managed initiative crucial for Canada to build a space launch capability that supports our security, economy, and sovereignty.” (submitted by Matthew P)

SpaceX’s reuse idea isn’t so dumb after all. A Falcon 9 rocket launched early Thursday from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites. These types of missions launch multiple times per week, but this flight was special. The first stage of the Falcon 9, designated Booster 1067, launched and landed on drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its 30th flight to space and back, Ars reports. This is a new record for a reusable orbital-class booster stage and comes less than 24 hours after a preceding SpaceX launch from Florida that marked the 400th Falcon 9 landing on a drone ship since the first offshore recovery in 2016.

30 going for 40 … SpaceX is now aiming for at least 40 launches per Falcon 9 first stage, four times as many flights as the company’s original target for Falcon 9 booster reuse. Many people in the industry were skeptical about SpaceX’s approach to reuse. In the mid-2010s, both the European and Japanese space agencies were looking to develop their next generation of rockets. In both cases, Europe with the Ariane 6 and Japan with the H3, the space agencies opted for traditional, expendable rockets instead of pushing toward reuse. In the United States, the main competitor to SpaceX has historically been United Launch Alliance. Their reaction to SpaceX’s plan to reuse first stages a decade ago was dismissive. ULA dubbed its plan to reuse just the engine section of its Vulcan rocket “Smart Reuse” a few years ago. But ULA hasn’t even attempted to recover the engines from the Vulcan core stage yet, and reuse is still at least several years away.

Russia nears debut of Soyuz-5 rocket. In recent comments to the Russian state-run media service TASS, the chief of Roscosmos said the country’s newest rocket, the Soyuz-5, should take flight for the first time before the end of this year, Ars reports. “Yes, we are planning for December,” said Dmitry Bakanov, the director of Roscosmos, Russia’s main space corporation. “Everything is in place.” According to the report, translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell, the debut launch of Soyuz-5 will mark the first of several demonstration flights, with full operational service not expected to begin until 2028. It will launch from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

Breaking free of Ukraine … From an innovation standpoint, the Soyuz-5 vehicle does not stand out. It has been a decade in the making and is fully expendable, unlike a lot of newer medium-lift rockets coming online in the next several years. However, for Russia, this is an important advancement because it seeks to break some of the country’s dependency on Ukraine for launch technology. The new rocket is also named Irtysh, a river that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan. The rocket has been in development since 2016 and largely repurposes older technology. But for Russia, a key advantage is that it takes rocket elements formerly made in Ukraine and now manufactures them in Russia.

SpaceX launches mission to reboost the ISS. SpaceX completed its 33rd cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) early Monday, when a Dragon supply ship glided to an automated docking with more than 5,000 pounds of scientific experiments and provisions for the lab’s seven-person crew, Ars reports. The resupply flight is part of the normal rotation of cargo and crew missions that keep the space station operating, but this one carries something new. What’s different with this mission is a new rocket pack mounted inside the Dragon spacecraft’s rear trunk section. In the coming weeks, SpaceX and NASA will use this first-of-its-kind propulsion system to begin boosting the altitude of the space station’s orbit.

A rocket on a rocket … SpaceX engineers installed two small Draco rocket engines in the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft. The thrusters have their own dedicated propellant tanks and will operate independently of 16 other Draco thrusters used to maneuver Dragon on its journey to the ISS. When NASA says it’s the right time, SpaceX controllers will command the Draco thrusters to ignite and gently accelerate the massive 450-ton space station. All told, the reboost kit can add about 20 mph, or 9 meters per second, to the space station’s already-dizzying speed. Maintaining the space station’s orbit has previously been the responsibility of Russia.

X-37B rides with SpaceX again. The US military’s reusable winged spaceship rocketed back into orbit from Florida on August 21 atop a SpaceX rocket, kicking off a mission that will, among other things, demonstrate how future spacecraft can navigate without relying on GPS signals, Ars reports. The core of the navigation experiment is what the Space Force calls the “world’s highest performing quantum inertial sensor ever used in space.” The spaceplane also hosts a laser inter-satellite communications demo. This is the eighth flight of the X-37B spaceplane, and the third to launch with SpaceX.

Back to LEO … This mission launched on a Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit (LEO) a few hundred miles above the Earth. This marks a return to LEO after the previous X-37B mission flew on a Falcon Heavy rocket into a much higher orbit. Many of the spaceplane’s payloads have been classified, but officials typically identify a handful of unclassified experiments flying on each X-37B mission. Past X-37B missions have also deployed small satellites into orbit before returning to Earth for a runway landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Rocket Lab cuts the ribbon on Neutron launch pad. Launch Complex 3, the Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and home to Rocket Lab’s newest reusable rocket, Neutron, is now complete and celebrated its official opening Thursday, WAVY-TV reports. Officials said Launch Complex 3 is ready to bring the largest orbital launch capacity in the spaceport’s history with Neutron, Rocket Lab’s reusable launch vehicle, a medium-lift vehicle capable of launching 33,000 pounds (15 metric tons) to space for commercial constellations, national security, and interplanetary missions.

Not budging … “We’re trying as hard as we can to get this on the pad by the end of the year and get it away,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO. Beck is holding to his hope the Neutron rocket will be ready to fly in the next four months, but time is running out to make this a reality. The Neutron rocket will be Rocket Lab’s second orbital-class launch vehicle after the Electron, which can place payloads of several hundred pounds in orbit. Electron has a launch pad in Virginia, too, but most Electron rockets take off from New Zealand.

Starship completes a largely successful test flight. SpaceX launched the 10th test flight of the company’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening, sending the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world to an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean, Ars reports. The largely successful mission for the world’s largest rocket was an important milestone for SpaceX’s Starship program after months of repeated setbacks, including three disappointing test flights and a powerful explosion on the ground that destroyed the ship that engineers were originally readying for this launch.

Lessons to learn … For the first time, SpaceX engineers received data on the performance of the ship’s upgraded heat shield and control flaps during reentry back into the atmosphere. The three failed Starship test flights to start the year ended before the ship reached reentry. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has described developing a durable, reliable heat shield as the most pressing challenge for making Starship a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. But there were lessons to learn from Tuesday’s flight. A large section of the ship transitioned from its original silver color to a rusty hue of orange and brown by the time it reached the Indian Ocean. Officials didn’t immediately address this or say whether it was anticipated.

ULA recovering boosters, too. United Launch Alliance decided to pull four strap-on solid rocket boosters from the Atlantic Ocean after their use on the company’s most recent launch. Photos captured by Florida photographer Jerry Pike showed a solid rocket motor casing on a ship just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, wrote on X that the booster was one of four flown on the USSF-106 mission earlier this month, which marked the third flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and the first with a US national security payload.

A GEM from the sea … The boosters, built by Northrop Grumman, are officially called Graphite Epoxy Motors, or GEMs. They jettison from the Vulcan rocket less than two minutes after liftoff and fall into the ocean. They’re not designed for reuse, but ULA decided to recover this set of four from the Atlantic for inspections. The company also raised from the sea two motors from the previous Vulcan launch last year after one of them suffered a nozzle failure during launch. Bruno wrote on X that “performance and ballistics were spot on” with all four boosters from the more recent USSF-106 mission, but that engineers decided to go ahead and recover them to close out a “nice data set” from inspections of now six recovered motors—two from last year and four this year.

Next three launches

Aug. 30: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-7 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 09 UTC

Aug. 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-14 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 11: 15 UTC

Sept. 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-8 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02: 33 UTC

Rocket Report: SpaceX achieved daily launch this week; ULA recovers booster Read More »