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Rocket Report: Starship will soon fly again; Gilmour has a launch date

falcon 9, Gilmour space, h-iia, Japan, launch, NASA, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship / Kelly Newman / February 28, 2025

One Falcon 9 launched an Intuitive Machines lunar lander, an asteroid prospector, and a NASA science probe.

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, stands inside a test version of the “Hungry Hippo,” a nickname used to describe the clamshell-like nose cone of the Neutron rocket’s first stage booster. The fairing will open in flight to release Neutron’s second and payloads to continue into orbit, then close as the booster comes back to Earth for recovery. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 7.33 of the Rocket Report! Phew, what a week for Rocket Lab! The company released a bevy of announcements in conjunction with its quarterly earnings report Thursday. Rocket Lab is spending a lot of money to develop the medium-lift rocket Neutron rocket, and as we’ll discuss below, a rocket landing platform and a new satellite design. For now, the company is sticking by its public statements that the Neutron rocket will launch this year—the official line is it will debut in the second half of 2025—but this schedule assumes near-perfect execution on the program. “We’ve always been clear that we run aggressive schedules,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO. The official schedule doesn’t quite allow me to invoke a strict interpretation of Berger’s Law, which states that if a rocket’s debut is predicted to happen in the fourth quarter of a year, and that quarter is six or more months away, the launch will be delayed. However, the spirit of the law seems valid here. This time last year, Rocket Lab targeted a first launch by the end of 2024, an aggressive target that has come and gone.

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.

Australian startup sets a launch date. The first attempt to send an Australian-made rocket into orbit is set to take place no sooner than March 15, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. Gilmour Space Technologies’ launch window announcement marks a major development for the company, which has been working towards a test launch for a decade. Gilmour previously hoped to launch its test rocket, Eris, in May 2024, but had to wait for the Australian government to issue a launch license and airspace approvals for the flight to go forward. Those are now in hand, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before liftoff.

Setting expectations … Gilmour’s Eris rocket is made of three stages powered by hybrid engines consuming a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. Eris is designed to haul payloads of up to 672 pounds (305 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit, and will launch from Bowen Orbital Spaceport in Queensland on Australia’s northeastern coast. Gilmour said it would be “very lucky” if the rocket reached orbit on first attempt. “Success means different things for different people, but ignition and liftoff will be huge,” said James Gilmour, the company’s co-founder. (submitted by ZygP)

Blue Origin is keeping a secret. Blue Origin conducted the tenth crewed flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle Tuesday, carrying six people, one of whom remained at least semi-anonymous, Space News reports. The five passengers Blue Origin identified come from business and entertainment backgrounds, but in a break from past missions, the company did not disclose the identity of the sixth person, with hosts of the company webcast saying that individual “requested we not share his name today.” Photos released by the company before the launch, and footage from the webcast, showed that person to be a man wearing a flight suit with an “R. Wilson” nametag, and the NS-30 mission patch also included “Wilson” with the names of the other members of the crew. Not disclosing the name of someone who has been to space has little precedent.

Big names on NS-31 … Some of the passengers Blue Origin will fly on the next New Shepard crew mission lack the anonymity of R. Wilson. The next flight, designated NS-31, will carry an all-female crew, including music star Katy Perry, CBS host Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez, a former journalist who is engaged to Blue Origin’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin identified the other three passengers as Aisha Bowe, Amanda Ngyuen, and Kerianne Flynn. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Virgin Galactic is still blowing through cash. Virgin Galactic reported a net loss of $347 million in 2024, compared to a $502 million net loss in 2023, with the improvement primarily driven by lower operating expenses, the company said this week in a quarterly earnings release. These lower operating expenses are tied to Virgin Galactic’s decision to suspend operations of its VSS Unity suborbital rocket plane last year to focus investment into a new series of suborbital spacecraft known as Delta-class ships. Virgin Galactic said cash and cash equivalents fell 18 percent from the same period a year ago to $178.6 million. Investors have been eager for details on when it would resume—and then ramp up—flights to increase sales and cash in on a backlog of around 700 ticket holders, Bloomberg reports.

March toward manufacturing … Virgin Galactic said it plans to start assembling its first Delta-class ship in March, with a first flight targeted for the summer of 2026, two years after it stopped flying VSS Unity. The Delta ships will be easier to recycle between flights, and will carry six paying passengers, rather than the four VSS Unity carried on each flight. Company officials believe a higher flight rate with more passengers will bring in significantly more revenue, which was reported at just $430,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Japanese customers seem to love Rocket Lab. While Rocket Lab is developing the larger Neutron rocket, the company’s operational Electron launch vehicle continues to dominate the market for dedicated launches of small satellites. Rocket Lab announced Thursday it signed a new multi-launch deal with iQPS, a Japan-based Earth imaging company. The new deal follows an earlier multi-launch contract signed with iQPS in 2024 and brings the total number of booked dedicated Electron launches for iQPS to eight.

Radar is all the rage … These eight Electron launches in 2025 and 2026 will help iQPS build out its planned constellation of 36 radar remote sensing satellites capable of imaging the Earth day and night, and through any weather. The new deal is one of the largest Electron launch agreements to date, second only to Rocket Lab’s ten launch deal with another Japanese radar constellation operator, Synspective, signed last year. (submitted by zapman987)

Falcon 9 launch targets Moon and asteroid. With two commercial Moon landers already on their way, Houston-based Intuitive Machines launched its second robotic lander atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, CBS News reports. Given the on-time launch and assuming no major problems, the Athena lander is expected to descend to touchdown on a flat mesa-like structure known as Mons Mouton on March 6, setting down just 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole—closer than any other spacecraft has attempted. Intuitive Machines became the first company to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon last year, but the Athena lander will pursue more complex goals. It will test a NASA-provided drill designed to search for subsurface ice, deploy a small “micro-rover,” and dispatch a rocket-powered drone to explore a permanently shadowed crater.

Hitching a ride … The Athena lander didn’t take up all the capacity of the Falcon 9 rocket. Three other spacecraft also rocketed into space Wednesday night. These rideshare payloads were AstroForge’s commercially developed Odin asteroid prospector to search for potentially valuable mineral deposits, NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite to characterize lunar ice from a perch in lunar orbit, and a compact space tug from Epic Aerospace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

This rocket got a visitor for the first time since 2009. Astroscale’s ADRAS-J mission became the first spacecraft (at least in the unclassified world) to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit, Ars reports. This particular object, a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket, has been in orbit since 2009. It’s one of about 2,000 spent rocket bodies circling the Earth and one of more than 45,000 objects in orbit tracked by US Space Command. Astroscale, based in Tokyo, built and launched the ADRAS-J mission in partnership with the Japanese space agency as a demonstration to show how a commercial satellite could rendezvous with an object in orbit that was never designed to receive visitors.

Next steps … ADRAS-J worked like a champ, closing in to a distance of less than 50 feet (15 meters) from the H-IIA rocket as it orbited several hundred miles above the Earth. The rocket is a “non-cooperative” object representative of other large pieces of space junk, which Astroscale wants to remove from orbit with a series of trash collecting satellites like ADRAS-J. But this demo only validated part of the technology required for space debris removal. Japan’s space agency and Astroscale are partnering on another mission, ADRAS-J2, for launch in 2027 to go up and latch on to the same H-IIA rocket and steer it out of orbit toward a controlled reentry over the ocean.

An update on Falcon 9’s upper stage. SpaceX said that a Falcon 9 upper stage that reentered over Europe earlier this month suffered a propellant leak that prevented it from doing a controlled reentry, Space News reports. The upper stage was placed in orbit on a February 1 launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. After deploying its payload of 22 Starlink satellites, the upper stage was expected to perform a burn to enable a controlled reentry over the ocean, a standard procedure on most Falcon 9 launches to low-Earth orbit. The stage, though, did not appear to perform the burn and remained in orbit. Its orbit decayed from atmospheric drag and the stage reentered over Europe on February 19. Debris from the Falcon 9 second stage, including composite overwrapped pressure vessels, fell in Poland, landing near the city of Poznań.

Higher than expected body rates … In an update posted to its website this week, SpaceX blamed the upper stage anomaly on a liquid oxygen leak. “During the coast phase of this Starlink mission, a small liquid oxygen leak developed, which ultimately drove higher than expected vehicle body rates,” SpaceX said. SpaceX aborted the deorbit burn and instead passivated the upper stage, a process where the rocket discharges energy from its batteries and vents leftover propellant from its tanks to minimize the risk of a break-up in orbit. This was the third incident involving a Falcon 9 upper stage in a little more than six months. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Rocket Lab’s reveals “Return On Investment.” Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket is designed for partial reusability, and the company unveiled Thursday an important piece of infrastructure to make this a reality. Neutron’s first stage booster will land on a modified barge named “Return On Investment” measuring around 400 feet (122 meters) wide, somewhat bigger than SpaceX’s drone ships used for Falcon 9 landings at sea. In order to prep the barge for rocket duty, the company is adding autonomous ground support equipment to capture and secure the landed Neutron, blast shielding to protect equipment during Neutron landings, and station-keeping thrusters for precise positioning. It should be ready to enter service in 2026. Rocket Lab also has the option to return the Neutron first stage back to the launch site when mission parameters allow the rocket to reserve enough propellant to make the return journey.

More news from Rocket Lab … Continuing the firehose of news from Rocket Lab this week, the company announced a new satellite design called “Flatellite” that looks remarkably similar to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. The satellite is flat in shape, hence its name, and stackable to fit as many spacecraft as possible into the envelope of a rocket’s payload fairing. Rocket Lab said the new satellite “can be produced in high volumes and (is) tailored for large constellations, targeting high value applications and national security missions.” (submitted by zapman987)

The writing is on the wall for SLS. The lights may be starting to go out for NASA’s Space Launch System program. On Wednesday, one of the Republican space policy leaders most consistently opposed to commercial heavy lift rockets over the last decade—as an alternative to NASA’s large SLS rocket—has changed his mind, Ars reports. “We need an off-ramp for reliance on the SLS,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, in written testimony before a congressional hearing about US space policy.

Not keeping Pace … A physicist and influential policy expert, Pace has decades of experience researching and writing space policy. He has served in multiple Republican administrations, most recently as executive secretary of the National Space Council from 2017 to 2020. He strongly advocated for the SLS rocket after Congress directed NASA to develop it in 2011. As part of his policy recommendations, Pace said NASA should seek to use commercial providers of heavy lift launch so that NASA can send “multiple” crew and cargo missions to the Moon each year. He notes that the SLS rocket is not reusable and is incapable of a high flight rate. Commercial options from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance are now available, Pace wrote.

The verdict is in for Starship Flight 7. SpaceX believes the spectacular break-up of Starship’s upper stage during its most recent test flight was caused by a harmonic response that stressed onboard hardware, leading to a fire and loss of the vehicle, Aviation Week reports. Higher-than-expected vibrations stressed hardware in the ship’s propulsion system, triggering propellant leaks and sustained fires until the test flight ended prematurely. The rocket broke apart and deposited debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Atlantic Ocean, and forced dozens of commercial and private aircraft to delay their flights or steer into safer airspace.

Whole lotta shaking … SpaceX’s description of the problem as a harmonic response suggests vibrations during Starship’s climb into space were in resonance with the vehicle’s natural frequency. This would have intensified the vibrations beyond the levels engineers expected from ground testing. SpaceX completed an extended duration static fire of the next Starship upper stage to test hardware modifications at multiple engine thrust levels. According to SpaceX, findings from the static fire informed changes to the fuel feed lines to Starship’s Raptor engines, adjustments to propellant temperatures, and a new operating thrust for the next test flight, which could launch from South Texas as soon as Monday.

Next three launches

March 1: Kuaizhou 1A | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 10: 00 UTC

March 2: Ceres 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 08: 10 UTC

March 2: Soyuz-2.1b | Glonass-K2 No. 14L | Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russia | 22: 22 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: A blue mood at Blue; Stoke Space fires a shot over the bow

rocket report, Space / Mike M. / February 16, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“Rapid turnaround isn’t merely a goal, it’s baked into the design.”

A bottoms-up view of Stoke Space’s Andromeda upper stage. Credit: Stoke Space

Welcome to Edition 7.31 of the Rocket Report! The unfortunate news this week concerns layoffs. Blue Origin announced a 10 percent cut in its workforce as the company aims to get closer to breaking even. More broadly in the space industry, there is unease about what the Trump administration’s cuts to NASA and other federal agencies might mean.

We don’t have all the answers, but it does seem that NASA is likely to be subject to less deep cuts than some other parts of the government. We should find out sometime in March when the Trump White House submits its initial budget request. Congress, of course, will have the final say.

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.

PLD Space continues to grow. The Spain-based launch company said this week that it now has more than 300 employees as it works toward an orbital launch attempt. “In this race for space supremacy, the amount of capital raised and the talent gathered have become key indicators of a company’s potential for success,” the company said. “While capital acts as the fuel for these ambitious initiatives, the talent behind it is the catalyst that drives them.”

Working to reach orbit … The average age of employees at PLD Space is 34, and the company is hiring 15 people a month as it works to develop the Miura 5 rocket. It’s unclear which of the commercial launch startups in Europe will succeed, but PLD Space has a decent chance to be among them. With luck, the Miura 5 launch vehicle will make its debut sometime in 2026.

Will NASA launch on a Transporter mission? NASA announced this week that it has selected SpaceX to launch a small exoplanet science mission as a rideshare payload as soon as September, Space News reports. The task order to launch the Pandora mission was made through the Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare launch services contract, intended for small missions with higher acceptance of risk.

Could fly on a Falcon 9 … Pandora is an ESPA Grande-class spacecraft, a category that includes spacecraft weighing up to 320 kilograms, and is designed to operate in a Sun-synchronous orbit. That suggests Pandora could launch on SpaceX’s Transporter series of dedicated rideshare missions that send payloads to such orbits, but neither NASA nor SpaceX disclosed specifics. The NASA announcement also did not disclose the value of the task order to SpaceX.

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Stoke Space dishes on Andromeda upper stage. The Washington-based launch company has revealed the name of its Nova rocket’s upper stage, Andromeda, and provided some new details about the design. Andromeda will incorporate hot staging, Stoke says, and will use fewer but larger thrusters—24 instead of 30. The upper stage is now mounted on Stoke’s test stand in Moses Lake, Washington, the company said.

Hot staging, hot talk … The new design is focused on rapid reusability, with easier access and serviceability to components of the engines and heat shield. “These changes further reduce complexity and allow the entire engine to be serviced—or even replaced—within hours or minutes. Rapid turnaround isn’t merely a goal, it’s baked into the design,” the company said. The upper stage will also incorporate “hot staging” to improve the capacity to orbit. You’ve got to appreciate the subtle dig at SpaceX’s Starship program, too: the design allows for hot staging “without the need for a heavy one-time-use interstage shield to protect Stage 1.” Shots fired!

European space commissioner worried about launch. During a keynote address at the Perspectives Spatiales 2025 event in Paris, European Commissioner for Defence Industry and Space Andrius Kubilius outlined the challenging position the continent’s space sector finds itself in, European Spaceflight reports. “Commercial sales are down. Exports are down. Profits are down. And this comes at a time when we need space more than ever. For our security. For our survival.”

Actions, not words, needed … Rhetorical language and bold declarations are inspiring, but when it comes to securing Europe’s place in the global space race, adopted policy and appropriated funding are where aspirations are tested, the European publication stated. Without concrete investments, streamlined regulations, and clear strategic priorities, Europe’s ambition to once again lead the global launch market is likely to amount to little.

Election set to create Starbase, the city. A Texas county on Wednesday approved holding an election sought by SpaceX that would let residents living around the company’s launch and production facilities in South Texas decide whether to formally create a new city called Starbase, ABC News reports. The election was set for May 3, and votes can only be cast by residents living near the launch site, which is currently part of an unincorporated area of Cameron County located along the US-Mexico border. Approval is expected.

A busy beehive … In December, more than 70 area residents signed a petition requesting an election to make Starbase its own municipality. Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño said the county reviewed the petition and found it met the state’s requirements for the incorporation process to move forward. Kathy Lueders, Starbase’s general manager, has previously said that the incorporation would streamline certain processes to build amenities in the area. More than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the site. (submitted by teb)

China taps into commercial space for station missions. China will launch a pair of low-cost space station resupply spacecraft this year on new commercial launch vehicles, Space News reports. The Haolong cargo space shuttle from the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute will launch on Landspace’s Zhuque-3. The reusable stainless steel, methane-liquid oxygen Zhuque-3 rocket is due to have its first flight in the third quarter of this year. The reusable Haolong vehicle will be 10 meters in length, around 7,000 kilograms in mass, and capable of landing on a runway.

Following a commercial trail laid by NASA … Meanwhile, the Qingzhou cargo spacecraft from the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will launch on the first flight of the CAS Space Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2) rocket no earlier than September. The development is analogous to NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services program, diversifying China’s options for supplying the Tiangong space station. If even one of these missions takes place successfully within the next year, it would represent a major step forward for China’s quasi-commercial space program. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

H3 rocket launches its fifth mission. Japan’s flagship H3 rocket successfully launched the Michibiki 6 navigation satellite early Sunday, enhancing the country’s regional GPS capabilities, Space News reports. The launch was Japan’s first of 2025 and suggests that the relatively new H3 rocket is starting to hit its stride.

Getting up to speed … The expendable launcher’s inaugural launch in March 2023, after numerous delays, suffered a second-stage engine failure, leading controllers to issue a destruct command to destroy the stage and its ALOS-3 payload. Since then, it has had a successful run of launches, most recently the Kirameki 3 communications satellite for defense purposes in November last year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin lays off 10 percent of its employees. A little less than a month after the successful debut of its New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin’s workforce will be trimmed by 10 percent, Ars reports. The cuts were announced during an all-hands meeting on Thursday morning led by the rocket company’s chief executive, Dave Limp. During the gathering, Limp cited business strategy as the rationale for making the cuts to a workforce of more than 10,000 people.

Growing too fast … “We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed,” Limp wrote in an email to the entire workforce after the meeting. Even before Thursday’s announcement, Blue Origin sought to control costs. According to sources, the company has had a hiring freeze for the last six months. And in January, it let the majority of its contractors go. Layoffs suck—here’s hoping that those let go this week find a soft landing.

Speaking of Blue, they’re targeting spring for next launch. Blue Origin expects to attempt its second New Glenn launch in late spring after correcting problems that prevented the booster from landing on the first launch last month, Space News reports. Speaking at the 27th Annual Commercial Space Conference on Wednesday, Dave Limp suggested a propulsion issue caused the loss of the New Glenn booster during its landing attempt on the Jan. 16 NG-1 launch.

Understanding the issues … “We had most of the right conditions in the engine but we weren’t able to get everything right to the engine from the tanks,” Limp said. “We think we understand what the issues are.” A second booster is in production. “I don’t think it’s going to delay our path to flight,” Limp said of the investigation. “I think we can still fly late spring.” June seems overly optimistic. One source with knowledge of the second booster’s production said October might be a more reasonable timeframe for the second launch.

Boeing warns of potential SLS workforce cuts. The primary contractor for the Space Launch System rocket, Boeing, is preparing for the possibility that NASA cancels the long-running program, Ars reports. Last Friday, with less than an hour’s notice, David Dutcher, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, scheduled an all-hands meeting for the approximately 800 employees working on the program. The apparently scripted meeting lasted just six minutes, and Dutcher didn’t take questions. Afterward, Ars learned that NASA was not informed the meeting would take place.

Waiting on the president’s budget request … During his remarks, Dutcher said Boeing’s contracts for the rocket could end in March and that the company was preparing for layoffs in case the contracts with the space agency were not renewed. The aerospace company, which is the primary contractor for the rocket’s large core stage, issued the notifications as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (or WARN) Act. The timing of Friday’s hastily called meeting aligns with the anticipated release of President Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026, which should signal the administration’s direction on the SLS rocket.

Space Force is still waiting on Vulcan. Last October, United Launch Alliance started stacking its third Vulcan rocket on a mobile launch platform in Florida in preparation for a mission for the US Space Force by the end of the year. However, that didn’t happen, Ars reports. Now, ULA is still awaiting the Space Force’s formal certification of its new rocket, further pushing out delivery schedules for numerous military satellites booked to fly to orbit on the Vulcan launcher.

Falling short of ambitious goals … In fact, ULA has started to take the rocket apart. This involves removing the rocket’s Centaur upper stage, interstage adapter, and booster stage from its launch mount. Instead, ULA will now focus on launching a batch of Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon on an Atlas V rocket in the next couple of months before pivoting back to Vulcan. ULA hoped to launch as many as 20 missions in 2025, with roughly an even split between its new Vulcan rocket and the Atlas V heading for retirement. Clearly, this now won’t happen.

Next three launches

Feb. 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-8 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 14 UTC

Feb. 17: Falcon 9 | NROL-57 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13: 18 UTC

Feb. 18: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-12 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 23: 00 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.

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Rocket Report: Another hiccup with SpaceX upper stage; Japan’s H3 starts strong

ArianeGroup, Arianespace, blue origin, Commercial space, falcon 9, h3 rocket, Japan, launch, military space, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship, vast / Beth Washington / February 9, 2025

Vast’s schedule for deploying a mini-space station in low-Earth orbit was always ambitious.

A stack of 21 Starlink Internet satellites arrives in orbit Tuesday following launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.30 of the Rocket Report! The US government relies on SpaceX for a lot of missions. These include launching national security satellites, putting astronauts on the Moon, and global broadband communications. But there are hurdles—technical and, increasingly, political—on the road ahead. To put it generously, Elon Musk, without whom much of what SpaceX does wouldn’t be possible, is one of the most divisive figures in American life today.

Now, a Democratic lawmaker in Congress has introduced a bill that would end federal contracts for special government employees (like Musk), citing conflict-of-interest concerns. The bill will go nowhere with Republicans in control of Congress, but it is enough to make me pause and think. When the Trump era passes and a new administration takes the White House, how will they view Musk? Will there be an appetite to reduce the government’s reliance on SpaceX? To answer this question, you must first ask if the government will even have a choice. What if, as is the case in many areas today, there’s no viable replacement for the services offered by SpaceX?

Blue Origin flight focuses on lunar research. For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship through a couple of minutes’ worth of Moon-level gravity, GeekWire reports. The uncrewed mission, known as NS-29, sent 30 research payloads on a 10-minute trip from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas. For this trip, the crew capsule was spun up to 11 revolutions per minute, as opposed to the typical half-revolution per minute. The resulting centrifugal force was equivalent to one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, which is what would be felt on the Moon.

Gee, that’s cool … The experiments aboard Blue Origin’s space capsule examined how to process lunar soil to extract resources and how to manufacture solar cells on the Moon for Blue Origin’s Blue Alchemist project. Another investigated how moondust gets electrically charged and levitated when exposed to ultraviolet light. These types of experiments in partial gravity can be done on parabolic airplane flights, but those only provide a few seconds of the right conditions to simulate the Moon’s gravity. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Orbex announces two-launch deal with D-Orbit. UK-based rocket builder Orbex announced Monday that it has signed a two-launch deal with Italian in-orbit logistics provider D-Orbit, European Spaceflight reports. The deal includes capacity aboard two launches on Orbex’s Prime rocket over the next three years. D-Orbit aggregates small payloads on rideshare missions (primarily on SpaceX rockets so far) and has an orbital transfer vehicle for ferrying satellites to different altitudes after separation from a launch vehicle. Orbex’s Prime rocket is sized for the small satellite industry, and the company aims to debut it later this year.

Thanks to fresh funding? … Orbex has provided only sparse updates on its progress toward launching the Prime rocket. What we do know is that Orbex suspended plans to develop a spaceport in Scotland to focus its resources on the Prime rocket itself. Despite little evidence of any significant accomplishments, Orbex last month secured a $25 million investment from the UK government. The timing of the launch agreement with D-Orbit begs the question of whether the UK government’s backing helped seal the deal. As Andrew Parsonson of European Spaceflight writes: “Is this a clear indication of how important strong institutional backing is for the growth of privately developed launch systems in Europe?” (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Sign Me Up!

Falcon 9’s upper stage misfires again. The second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket remained in orbit following a launch Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The rocket successfully deployed a new batch of Starlink Internet satellites but was supposed to reignite its engine for a braking maneuver to head for a destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. While airspace warning notices from the FAA showed a reentry zone over the eastern Pacific Ocean, publicly available US military tracking continued to show the upper stage in orbit this week. Sources also told Ars that SpaceX delayed two Falcon 9 launches this week by a day to allow time for engineers to evaluate the problem.

3 in 6 months … This is the third time since last July that the Falcon 9’s upper stage has encountered a problem in flight. On one occasion, the upper stage failed to reach its targeted orbit, leading to the destruction of 20 Starlink satellites. Then, an upper stage misfired during a deorbit burn after an otherwise successful launch in September, causing debris to fall outside of the pre-approved danger area. After both events, the FAA briefly grounded the Falcon 9 rocket while SpaceX conducted an investigation. This time, an FAA spokesperson said the agency won’t require an investigation. “All flight events occurred within the scope of SpaceX’s licensed activities,” the spokesperson told Ars.

Vast tests hardware for commercial space station. Vast Space has started testing a qualification model of its first commercial space station but has pushed back the launch of that station into 2026, Space News reports. In an announcement Thursday, Vast said it completed a proof test of the primary structure of a test version of its Haven-1 space station habitat at a facility in Mojave, California. During the testing, Vast pumped up the pressure inside the structure to 1.8 times its normal level and conducted a leak test. “On the first try we passed that critical test,” Max Haot, chief executive of Vast, told Space News.

Not this year … It’s encouraging to see Vast making tangible progress in developing its commercial space station. The privately held company is one of several seeking to develop a commercial outpost in low-Earth orbit to replace the International Space Station after its scheduled retirement in 2030. NASA is providing funding to two industrial teams led by Blue Origin and Voyager Space, which are working on different space station concepts. But so far, Vast’s work has been funded primarily through private capital. The launch of the Haven-1 outpost, which Vast previously said could happen this year, is now scheduled no earlier than May 2026. The spacecraft will launch in one piece on a Falcon 9 rocket, and the first astronaut crew to visit Haven-1 could launch a month later. Haven-1 is a pathfinder for a larger commercial station called Haven-2, which Vast intends to propose to NASA. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

H3 deploys Japanese navigation satellite. Japan successfully launched a flagship H3 rocket Sunday and put into orbit a Quasi-Zenith Satellite (QZS), aiming to improve the accuracy of global positioning data for various applications, Kyodo News reports. After separation from the H3 rocket, the Michibiki 6 satellite will climb into geostationary orbit, where it will supplement navigation signals from GPS satellites to provide more accurate positioning data to users in Japan and surrounding regions, particularly in mountainous terrain and amid high-rise buildings in large cities. The new satellite joins a network of four QZS spacecraft launched by Japan beginning in 2010. Two more Quasi-Zenith Satellites are under construction, and Japan’s government is expected to begin development of an additional four regional navigation satellites this year.

A good start … After a failed inaugural flight in 2023, Japan’s new H3 rocket has reeled off four consecutive successful launches in less than a year. This may not sound like a lot, but the H3 has achieved its first four successful flights faster than any other rocket since 2000. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket completed its first four successful flights in a little more than two years, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V logged its fourth flight in a similar timeframe. More than 14 months elapsed between the first and fourth successful flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket. The H3 is an expendable rocket with no roadmap to reusability, so its service life and commercial potential are likely limited. But the rocket is shaping up to provide reliable access to space for Japan’s space agency and military, while some of its peers in Europe and the United States struggle to ramp up to a steady launch cadence. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Europe really doesn’t like relying on Elon Musk. Europe’s space industry has struggled to keep up with SpaceX for a decade. The writing was on the wall when SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 booster for the first time. Now, European officials are wary of becoming too reliant on SpaceX, and there’s broad agreement on the continent that Europe should have the capability to launch its own satellites. In this way, access to space is a strategic imperative for Europe. The problem is, Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket is just not competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and there’s no concrete plan to counter SpaceX’s dominance.

So here’s another terrible idea … Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace contractor with a 50 percent stake in the Ariane 6 program, has enlisted Goldman Sachs for advice on how to forge a new European space and satellite company to better compete with SpaceX. France-based Thales and the Italian company Leonardo are part of the talks, with Bank of America also advising on the initiative. The idea that some bankers from Goldman and Bank of America will go into the guts of some of Europe’s largest institutional space companies and emerge with a lean, competitive entity seems far-fetched, to put it mildly, Ars reports.

The FAA still has some bite. We’re now three weeks removed from the most recent test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which ended with the failure of the vehicle’s upper stage in the final moments of its launch sequence. The accident rained debris over the Atlantic Ocean and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Unsurprisingly, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and ordered an investigation into the accident on the day after the launch. This decision came three days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who counts Musk as one of his top allies. So far, the FAA hasn’t budged on its requirement for an investigation, an agency spokesperson told Ars.

Debris field … In the hours and days after the failed Starship launch, residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos shared images of debris scattered across the islands and washing up onshore. The good news is there were no injuries or reports of significant damage from the wreckage, but the FAA confirmed one report of minor damage to a vehicle located in South Caicos. It’s rare for debris from US rockets to fall over land during a launch. This would typically only happen if a launch failed at certain parts of the flight. Before now, there has been no public record of any claims of third-party property damage in the era of commercial spaceflight.

DOD eager to reap the benefits of Starship. A Defense Department unit is examining how SpaceX’s Starship vehicle could be used to support a broader architecture of in-space refueling, Space News reports. A senior adviser at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) said SpaceX approached the agency about how Starship’s refueling architecture could be used by the wider space industry. The plan for Starship is to transfer cryogenic propellants between tankers, depots, and ships heading to the Moon, Mars, or other deep-space destinations.

Few details available … US military officials have expressed interest in orbital refueling to support in-space mobility, where ground controllers have the freedom to maneuver national security satellites between different orbits without worrying about running out of propellant. For several years, Space Force commanders and Pentagon officials have touted the importance of in-space mobility, or dynamic space operations, in a new era of orbital warfare. However, there are reports that the Space Force has considered zeroing out a budget line item for space mobility in its upcoming fiscal year 2026 budget request.

A small step toward a fully reusable European rocket. The French space agency CNES has issued a call for proposals to develop a reusable upper stage for a heavy-lift rocket, European Spaceflight reports. This project is named DEMESURE (DEMonstration Étage SUpérieur REutilisable / Reusable Upper Stage Demonstration), and it marks one of Europe’s first steps in developing a fully reusable rocket. That’s all good, but there’s a sense of tentativeness in this announcement. The current call for proposals will only cover the earliest phases of development, such as a requirements evaluation, cost estimation review, and a feasibility meeting. A future call will deal with the design and fabrication of a “reduced scale” upper stage, followed by a demonstration phase with a test flight, recovery, and reuse of the vehicle. CNES’s vision is to field a fully reusable rocket as a successor to the single-use Ariane 6.

Toes in the water … If you’re looking for reasons to be skeptical about Project DEMESURE, look no further than the Themis program, which aims to demonstrate the recovery and reuse of a booster stage akin to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Themis originated in a partnership between CNES and European industry in 2019, then ESA took over the project in 2020. Five years later, the Themis demonstrator still hasn’t flown. After some initial low-altitude hops, Themis is supposed to launch on a high-altitude test flight and maneuver through the entire flight profile of a reusable booster, from liftoff to a vertical propulsive landing. As we’ve seen with SpaceX, recovering an orbital-class upper stage is a lot harder than landing the booster. An optimistic view of this announcement is that anything worth doing requires taking a first step, and that’s what CNES has done here. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Feb. 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-9 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18: 52 UTC

Feb. 8: Electron | IoT 4 You and Me | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 20: 43 UTC

Feb. 10: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-10 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 00: 03 UTC

Rocket Report: Another hiccup with SpaceX upper stage; Japan’s H3 starts strong Read More »

Rocket Report: SpaceX tosses away a Falcon 9; a Somalian spaceport?

rocket report, Space / Mike M. / February 2, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“It was the perfect partnership and the biggest softball of all the opportunities.”

Falcon 9 launches the SpainSat NG I mission to orbit from Florida on Wednesday. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.29 of the Rocket Report! It may be difficult to believe, but we are already one full month into the new year. It will be hard to top this month in launch, however, given the historic debut of New Glenn, and fiery end of the seventh Starship flight test. And in truth, February does look a bit sleepier in terms of launch.

UK government injects $25 million into Orbex. As some European launch companies have struggled to raise funding, the United Kingdom government stepped up to make a significant investment in the Scotland-based launch firm Orbex, The Financial Times reports. As part of the company’s latest fundraising round, valued at $50 million (GBP 40 million), the UK government will become a shareholder in Orbex. The company is working to develop both a small- and medium-lift rocket. Phil Chambers, Orbex’s chief executive, said the UK support would be “a strong signal to other private investors, and to the European Space Agency and the EU, that we’re serious about being a part of the future of European launch.”

What’s the plan, fellas? … If we’re being frank, which is how we roll in the Rocket Report, some of Orbex’s recent activity does not inspire confidence. The company, for example, suspended plans to develop a spaceport at Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands to focus resources on developing the Prime microlauncher. And then it said it would develop the larger Proxima rocket as well. That seems pretty ambitious for what is, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively modest round of fundraising. Given that we have not seen a whole lot of hardware from Orbex, some skepticism is warranted. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Turkey may develop a spaceport in Somalia. Turkey has begun advancing plans to construct a rocket launch facility in Somalia, Space in Africa reports. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said the project began in December. Mohamud emphasized the project’s potential benefits, highlighting its capacity to generate significant employment opportunities and revenue for the East Africa nation. “I believe that the importance of Somalia hosting a launchpad for Turkish satellites goes beyond the billions of dollars and opportunities the project will generate,” Mohamud said.

Nothing has been finalized yet … Located along the equator, Somalia fronts the Indian Ocean, offering an ideal launch location. The potential Somali launch site is part of Turkey’s broader aspirations to assert itself in the global space race, traditionally dominated by major powers. In 2021, Turkey unveiled a 10-year space road map that includes plans for missions to the moon, establishing a spaceport, and developing advanced satellite systems. Somalia, a key Turkish security partner since 2011, already hosts Turkey’s largest overseas training base.

Sign Me Up!

Firefly expands Alpha launch plans to Wallops and Sweden. Firefly Aerospace expects to start launching its Alpha rocket from launch sites in Virginia and Sweden as soon as 2026 to help the company avoid growing congestion at launch sites in Florida and California, Space News reports. So far, Alpha has only launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Firefly is planning five Alpha launches in 2025, all from Vandenberg. The company has performed five Alpha launches to date, going back to the failed inaugural launch in 2021.

Sweden, you say? … So what is up with those plans to launch from Sweden? Adam Oakes, vice president of launch vehicles at Firefly, said the Esrange Space Centre in Sweden was an ideal partner. “Esrange has basically done everything for the science community in space except an orbital rocket,” he said, citing the more than 600 sounding rocket launches there as well as experience with ground stations. “It was the perfect partnership and the biggest softball of all the opportunities out there.” It still feels a bit odd, as Vandenberg already offers polar launch corridors, as well as Alpha-size commercial European launch vehicles coming along soon. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

MaiaSpace targets 2026 for debut launch. A subsidiary of ArianeGroup that is developing a two-stage partially reusable rocket, MaiaSpace is one of the more interesting European launch startups. The company’s chief executive, Yohann Leroy, recently spoke with Europe in Space to discuss the company’s plans. The company will likely start off with a suborbital test flight of a launcher capable of boosting 500 kg to low-Earth orbit in reusable mode and 1,500 kg in expendable mode during the middle of next year.

Following an iterative design method … “Our approach is to test our rocket in flight as early as possible, following our test-and-learn iterative approach,” Leroy said. “We are convinced we will go faster this way, rather than spending time in the lab making sure the first flight reaches 100 percent of our performance targets. In short, we are ready to trade lift-off performance for time-saving, knowing that we will quickly recover our performance afterward. What’s important is to stick to our objective of starting commercial operations in the second half of 2026, and we’re on track to reach this goal.” (submitted by RB)

Arianespace inking deals for its new rocket. Arianespace currently has a backlog of 30 Ariane 6 launches, 18 of which are for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation. However, it has recently begun to add Europe-based launch contracts for the rocket. During signing events at the 17th European Space Conference in late January, Arianespace secured contracts for three Ariane 6 flights, European Spaceflight reports.

Getting into operations … The missions are the European Space Agency’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission, the Sentinel-1D Earth observation satellite that will replace Sentinel-1A, and a pair of second-generation Galileo satellites. After completing a largely successful debut flight last year, the first operational flight of Ariane is scheduled for February 26, carrying the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite for the French Armed Forces. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX expends a Falcon 9 rocket. On Wednesday, SpaceX launched the SpainSat NG-1 satellite from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A. The Falcon 9 first-stage booster used on this launch saw its 21st and final flight, Florida Today reports. SpaceX said the reason it was not trying to recover the booster was due to the extra power needed to reach the satellite’s intended orbit.

Into the drink … The well-traveled booster had launched a variety of missions during its lifetime: 13 Starlink missions, SES-22, ispace’s HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1, GSAT-20, and Thuraya-4. The Airbus-built satellite, known as SpainSat NG-1 (New Generation), is the first of two satellites for Hisdesat. It was developed under a partnership with the European Space Agency, making its launch on a Falcon 9 somewhat notable.

India marks first launch of 2025. India conducted its first launch of the year late Tuesday, sending a new-generation navigation satellite toward geostationary orbit, Space News reports. A Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk II lifted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Aboard was the NVS-02 satellite, sent into geosynchronous transfer orbit. The satellite is the second of five new-generation spacecraft for the Navigation with Indian Constellation.

A busy year planned … The mission was the first of 10 orbital launches planned by India in 2025, which would mark a domestic launch record. Major missions include a joint Earth science mission between NASA and ISRO, named NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, expected to launch around March on a GSLV rocket, and an uncrewed test flight for the Gaganyaan human spaceflight program on a human-rated LVM-3 launcher. The first launch of the Vikram-1 for private company Skyroot Aerospace could also take place this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

New Glenn represents a milestone moment for Blue Origin. In a feature, Ars Technica explores what the successful launch of the New Glenn rocket means for Blue Origin. The near-term step is clear: getting better at building engines and rockets and flying New Glenn regularly. In an interview, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos sounded a lot like SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has spoken about “building the machine that builds the machine” over the last decade with respect to both Tesla vehicles and SpaceX rockets. Asked about Blue’s current priorities, Bezos responded, “Rate manufacturing and driving urgency around the machine that makes the machine.”

The tortoise and the hare … There are those who wonder why Blue Origin, which has a “tortoise” as its unofficial mascot, has moved so slowly when compared to SpaceX’s progress over the last quarter of a century. Bezos responded that the space age is just beginning. “It’s still absolutely day one,” he said. “There are going to be multiple winners. SpaceX is going to be successful. Blue Origin is going to be successful. And there are other companies who haven’t even been founded yet that are going to grow into fantastic, giant space companies. So the vision that I think people should have is that this is the absolute beginning.”

Space Force has big dreams for ULA this year. The US Space Force is projecting 11 national security launches aboard United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket in 2025, Space News reports. This ambitious schedule comes as the National Security Space Launch program continues to wait on Vulcan’s readiness. The heavy lift rocket, which debuted last year after prolonged schedule setbacks, is a cornerstone of the national security’s Phase 2 program, under which ULA was selected in 2020 as the primary launch provider for national security missions through 2027.

That seems like a lot … However, Vulcan remains under review, with certification expected in late February following its second demonstration flight in October 2024. There is a lot of pressure on ULA to execute with Vulcan, due not only to the need to fly out Phase 2 launches, but because the military is nearing a decision on how to award launch contracts under Phase 3 of the program. The more complex “Lane 2” missions are likely to be divided up between ULA and SpaceX. Reaching 11 national security launches on Vulcan this year seems like a stretch for ULA. The company probably will only launch two rockets during the first half of this year, one of which probably will be an Atlas V booster. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

April 2026 a “no later than” date for Artemis II. In a Space News article citing current contractors defending NASA’s Artemis plan to return humans to the Moon, a space agency official said the current timeline for Artemis II is achievable. April 2026 is actually a no-later-than date for the mission, Matt Ramsay, Artemis 2 mission manager at NASA, said during a panel discussion. “The agency has challenged us to do better, and we’re in the process of figuring out what better looks like,” he said, with a “work-to” launch date coming in the next few weeks.

NET or NLT? … This is interesting, because a good source told Ars about a month ago that the present date for the Artemis II mission to fly astronauts around the Moon has almost no schedule margin. However, Ramsay said the key factor driving the launch date will be work assembling the vehicle. Crews are currently stacking segments of the SLS’s twin solid rocket boosters, a process that should be complete in the next two to three weeks. This all assumes the Artemis II mission goes forward as designed. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Next three launches

Jan. 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-4 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 11 UTC

Feb. 2: H3 | Demo Flight | Michibiki 6 | Tanegashima Space Center, Japan | 8: 30 UTC

Feb. 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-3 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 8: 54 UTC

Rocket Report: SpaceX tosses away a Falcon 9; a Somalian spaceport? Read More »

Rocket Report: Did China’s reusable rocket work?; DOT may review SpaceX fines

rocket report, Science, Space / 9u50fv / January 25, 2025

Rocket Lab announced it will soon launch a batch of eight German-owned wildfire-detection satellites.

The Chinese Longxing-2 rocket is erected at Haiyang Dongfang Spaceport in Shandong province on January 13, 2025. This single stage booster lifted off January 19 on a high-altitude demonstration flight to test reusable rocket technology, but the outcome of the test remains unclear. Credit: Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 7.28 of the Rocket Report! After last week’s jam-packed action in the launch business, things are a bit quieter this week. Much of the space world’s attention has turned to Washington as the Trump administration takes the helm of the federal government. Some of the administration’s policy changes will likely impact the launch industry, with commercial spaceflight poised to become a beneficiary of actions over the next four years. As for the specifics, Ars has reported that NASA is expected to review the future of the Space Launch System rocket. Investments in the military space program could bring in more business for launch companies. And regulatory changes may reduce government oversight of commercial spaceflight.

What happened to China’s reusable rocket testbed? A Chinese state-owned company performed a rocket flight on January 18 (US time) aimed at testing reusable launch vehicle technology without announcing the outcome, Space News reports. The Longxing-2 test article lifted off from a makeshift launch area near Haiyang, Shandong province. The methane-fueled rocket was expected to fly to an altitude of 75 kilometers (about 246,000 feet) before performing a reentry burn and a landing burn to guide itself to a controlled splashdown in the Yellow Sea, replicating the maneuvers required to recover a reusable booster like the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This was China’s most ambitious reusable rocket demonstration flight to date.

State-sanctioned silence … Amateur footage near the launch area showed the rocket rise slowly from the tower and perform an ascent phase with no apparent anomalies. But the video ended before the rocket descended to Earth, and there have been no official updates on the results of the test flight from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), the state-owned enterprise responsible for the demonstration. SAST published results and video footage of a previous reusable rocket demonstration to an altitude of 12 kilometers last year. The lack of official updates this time raises questions about the success of the test, which could indicate challenges during reentry or landing phases. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A timely launch for Rocket Lab. A dedicated flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron launcher will soon deploy eight small spacecraft for a German company building a constellation of wildfire-monitoring satellites. Rocket Lab announced the deal Wednesday, saying the mission will launch from the company’s spaceport in New Zealand. The eight satellites are owned by the German startup OroraTech. Rocket Lab said the launch will take place within “just a few weeks,” representing a relatively quick turnaround from contract signing to liftoff. This schedule will allow OroraTech to “meet the season-sensitive requirements of its wildfire-detection mission,” Rocket Lab said.

Infrared eyes … OroraTech’s satellites will host thermal infrared cameras to provide 24/7 monitoring of wildfires globally, supporting better and faster wildfire response to protect forests, people, and infrastructure, according to Rocket Lab. These eight satellites follow the launch of OroraTech’s first three prototype wildfire-detection spacecraft since 2022. The company plans to expand its constellation with up to 100 satellites by 2028. While this launch isn’t directly tied to the ongoing wildfire crisis in Southern California, OroraTech’s mission highlights the role of space-based detection for future firefighters. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Sign Me Up!

US green-lights space-related exports to Norway. The United States and Norway have signed an agreement to allow the export of American space hardware to Norway for launches there, Space News reports. The Technology Safeguards Agreement, or TSA, ensures the protection of US space technology exported to Norway. It allows for American satellites and potentially launch vehicles to operate from Andøya Spaceport, located on an island above the Arctic Circle in Norway.

A valuable alliance … There are no US companies with publicly known plans to launch from Andøya, but the US military has touted the value of allies in funding, launching, and operating space-based platforms for communications, navigation, and reconnaissance. This agreement, announced on January 16 in the final days of the Biden administration, follows similar space tech transfer agreements with New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace is scheduled to launch its first Spectrum rocket from the Norwegian spaceport as soon as this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Lunar lander test-fires uprated rocket engine. The Leros 4 rocket engine, developed by Nammo UK in Buckinghamshire, has successfully ignited in space, powering the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost lunar lander, European Spaceflight reports. This is a higher-thrust version of Nammo’s flight-proven Leros engine design that has provided propulsion for NASA probes to the planets and for numerous telecommunications satellites. Like other engines in the Leros line, the Leros 4 consumes a bipropellant mix of hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, which combust when coming into contact with one another.

Thrusting toward the Moon … Firefly announced the successful main engine burn Sunday to begin raising the Blue Ghost spacecraft’s orbit around the Earth. Subsequent burns will further raise the craft’s altitude before eventually attaining enough speed to reach the Moon for a landing in early March. This is the first time a Leros 4 engine has fired in space. The variant flying on Blue Ghost is known as the “Leros 4-Extra Thrust” version, and it provides approximately 294 pounds of thrust (1,310 newtons), roughly double the power of Nammo’s next-largest engine. It’s designed specifically for interplanetary missions and is particularly well-suited for lunar landers because it can sustain thrust for lengthy burns or pulse at high frequency to control a spacecraft’s descent rate toward the Moon’s surface.

Trump’s DOT nominee says he’ll review FAA’s SpaceX fines. President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the US Transportation Department said he’d review penalties aviation regulators have proposed against SpaceX if confirmed for the role, Bloomberg reports. Transportation Secretary nominee Sean Duffy told senators during a hearing on January 15 that he’d also look into “what’s been happening at the FAA with regard to launches.” Last year, the FAA proposed more than $633,000 in fines on SpaceX due to alleged violations of the company’s launch license associated with two flights of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. It is rare for the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division to fine launch companies.

It’s about more than the money … In addition to the proposed fines related to SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, Elon Musk’s space company has also criticized regulators for taking too much time to review applications for launch licenses for the Starship mega-rocket. Some of the regulatory reviews were triggered by environmental concerns rather than public safety, which the FAA is responsible for ensuring during commercial rocket launches and reentries. Musk’s close relationship with Trump has led to speculation that the FAA will now have a lighter touch with SpaceX. So far, there’s no clear evidence of this happening, but it warrants observation. The FAA ordered a grounding of SpaceX’s Starship rocket after a failure of a test flight on January 16, and there’s been no announcement of a change in the agency’s posture regarding this test flight.

Falcon 9 flexes its muscles. SpaceX launched its latest batch of Starlink satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on Tuesday, and this time, the company set a new record by deploying 27 second-generation Starlinks on the same rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission was delayed from Sunday after an aircraft strayed into a keep-out zone near the launch site. This launch included a new type of Starlink spacecraft bus, or chassis, called the Starlink V2 Mini Optimized version. These satellites are considerably lighter than the previous V2 Mini design but also debut upgrades, such as a new backhaul antenna with a SpaceX-designed and built dual-band chip and improved avionics, propulsion, and power systems.

29 at a time … This means SpaceX can launch up to 29 Starlink V2 Mini Optimized satellites on a single Falcon 9 rocket. Before now, SpaceX never launched more than 24 V2 Mini satellites on a single flight. SpaceX has launched the V2 Mini satellite design since 2023. Initially, this design was supposed to be a stopgap until SpaceX began launching much larger Starlink V3 satellites on the Starship rocket. However, SpaceX has now launched more than 3,000 V2 Mini satellites, and the debut of the optimized version suggests SpaceX plans to keep the V2 Mini around for a while longer.

Coming together in Kourou. ArianeGroup has shared that the core stage and two solid-fueled boosters for the second flight of the Ariane 6 rocket have been assembled on the ELA-4 launch pad at the Guiana Space Center in South America, European Spaceflight reports. At the same time, the flight’s payload, the French military CSO-3 spy satellite, arrived at Félix Eboué airport in French Guiana aboard an Antonov transport plane. With the launch campaign in full swing in French Guiana, it’s likely that the liftoff of the second Ariane 6 flight is just a few weeks away. The most recent publicly available schedule showed the launch is slated for February 25, but this information is now a couple of months old.

What it was made for … This launch follows the largely successful inaugural flight of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket last July, in which the launcher deployed multiple CubeSats into an on-target orbit, but faltered before completing a deorbit burn to maneuver the upper stage toward reentry. Nevertheless, European officials are confident the issue that caused the upper-stage problem last year will not affect the upcoming launch of the French military’s newest surveillance satellite. This is the kind of mission the often-criticized Ariane 6 rocket was made for—launching a sensitive and costly European government payload to orbit with a European rocket from European territory. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Jan. 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-6 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 14: 07 UTC

Jan. 25: Long March 8A | Demo Flight | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 10: 00 UTC

Jan. 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-7 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 19: 21 UTC

Rocket Report: Did China’s reusable rocket work?; DOT may review SpaceX fines Read More »

Rocket Report: Starship experiences a RUD; Blue Origin nails its debut launch

rocket report, Space / DJ Henderson / January 18, 2025

“The computed numbers below prove that this is quite feasible with margins to spare.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station early on Thursday morning. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.27 of the Rocket Report! Thursday was an eventful day in super heavy lift launch, with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket having a highly successful debut launch before dawn in Florida, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Then, on Thursday afternoon, an upgraded Starship took flight from South Texas. The first stage performed well, but the Starship upper stage experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent. Ars will, of course, have full and ongoing coverage.

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.

RFA receives launch license. The UK Civil Aviation Authority has issued Rocket Factory Augsburg a vertical launch license to conduct the inaugural flight of its RFA ONE rocket from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. The license is for the launch of the company’s RFA One rocket, which has an advertised payload of 1.3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. RFA said it intends to complete the launch sometime this year.

A new era for BritSpace… The company might have launched sooner, but last year, a fire during testing destroyed the rocket’s first stage, forcing RFA to build a replacement before proceeding with the initial launch attempt. An orbital-class rocket has never launched in a vertical configuration before from the United Kingdom, and no rocket has ever successfully reached orbit from there. “This is a new era for aerospace, and granting the first vertical launch license from UK soil builds toward a historic milestone for the nation,” said Rob Bishton, chief executive of the civil authority. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Chinese rocket launches from sea platform. China launched a Jielong-3 solid rocket from a mobile sea platform late Sunday, successfully placing 10 Centispace navigation enhancement satellites into orbit, Space News reports. This was the fifth Jielong-3 (or Smart Dragon-3) solid propellant rocket, and it lifted off from a specially converted sea barge off the coast of Haiyang city in the Eastern province of Shandong.

Seeking to scale up quickly… The launch was carried out using facilities belonging to the Haiyang Eastern spaceport for sea launches. The spaceport plans more than 10 for 2025, having conducted six sea launches in 2024. The launch was China’s second orbital launch attempt of 2025 and the second success in as many tries.

Sign Me Up!

Utah considering a spaceport. State Sen. Jerry Stevenson has introduced a bill to form a committee that would investigate whether Utah should invest in a spaceport and what benefits it could bring to the state, KUTV Salt Lake City reports. The legislation would provide $500,000 for a committee to study the potential benefits of a launch site. Stevenson said the committee would look into both scientific uses and opportunities to expand Utah’s tourism industry, but questions remain over whether such a taxpayer-funded investment makes financial sense.

Something to build on… When asked how the state would get a return on its investment, Stevenson said the spaceport would align with Utah’s current industries and infrastructure. “We think that this fits very well into what’s going on in the state of Utah and what’s already here and what we can build on,” Stevenson said. Still, critics wondered if the state should focus on space tourism, especially given the potential costs, possibly on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Stoke Space goes nova in fundraising round. The Washington-based launch company announced Wednesday that it had raised $260 million in Series C funding, a significant capital raise at a time when it has become more difficult for some space companies to attract funding, Ars reports. “The market is tough, but I think what we’re doing is poised to go straight to the end state of the industry, and I think investors recognize that,” said Andy Lapsa, Stoke Space’s co-founder and chief executive officer.

Full reuse right out of the gate… By “end state of the industry,” Lapsa means that Stoke is developing a fully reusable medium-lift rocket named Nova. The vehicle’s first stage will land vertically, similar to a Falcon 9 rocket, and the second stage, which has a novel metallic heat shield and engine design, will also land back on Earth. Historically, it is unlikely for a company to move from engine testing to a first orbital launch attempt in the same year, so a Nova debut in 2026 seems more likely. Nevertheless, the new funding from investors signals confidence that Stoke is making credible technical progress on its vehicle development. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The initial launch plan for Neutron. Rocket Lab is closing in on the completion of its Neutron rocket, and the company plans to launch the medium-lift booster for the first time later this year. With a capacity of 13 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, the rocket will be sold at a cost of $50 million to undersell SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for megaconstellation launches. Falcon 9 can launch 17.5 metric tons to LEO in a reusable configuration, which is often a higher capability than the customer needs, Payload reports. So on a price-per-launch basis, if Neutron can deliver, it could provide credible competition.

A slow ramp-up… Rocket Lab intends to launch a single Neutron this year, followed by three rockets in 2026 and five in 2027. This may not be as flashy as saying the company will ramp up to a dozen rockets next year, but I appreciate the realism in launch cadence. Companies never increase their launch cadence as quickly as they say they will. However, speaking of realism, it’s realistic to question whether Neutron will actually make it to the launch pad this year. I’d bet no, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Two lunar landers launch on Falcon 9. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida early Wednesday and deployed two commercial lunar landers on separate trajectories to reach the Moon in the next few months, Ars reports. It took about an hour and a half for the Falcon 9 rocket to release both payloads into two slightly different orbits, ranging up to 200,000 and 225,000 miles (322,000 and 362,000 kilometers) from Earth.

A lunar double shot… The two robotic lunar landers—one from Firefly Aerospace based near Austin, Texas, and another from the Japanese space company ispace—will use their own small engines for the final maneuvers required to enter orbit around the Moon in the coming months. Firefly and ispace reported that their landers, each about the size of an SUV, were healthy as ground teams in Texas and Japan activated the spacecraft soon after their separation from the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

ArianeGroup completes Prometheus engine test. Although it was not revealed until January 9, ArianeGroup completed a successful hot fire test of the Prometheus rocket engine in late December 2024, European Spaceflight reports. European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher referred to the “very important” test during his annual press briefing. Afterward, an ESA spokesperson confirmed that the test had taken place on December 19 on the PF20 test bench at the ArianeGroup facilities in Vernon, France.

A nominal test… The test of the liquid oxygen and biomethane engine lasted for 41 seconds, with the engine reaching 100 percent of its thrust. Prometheus is slated to initially power the Themis reusable booster demonstrator, a project also being developed by ArianeGroup under an ESA contract. In addition to its use by Themis, Prometheus will also be utilized by ArianeGroup subsidiary MaiaSpace to power its partially reusable Maia rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

The hidden MVP of SpaceX’s high cadence. On any given day, SpaceX is probably launching a Falcon 9 rocket, rolling one out to the launch pad, or bringing one back into port. With three active Falcon 9 launch pads and an increasing cadence at the Starbase facility in Texas, SpaceX’s teams are often doing all three. The company achieved another milestone last Friday with the 25th successful launch and landing of a single Falcon 9 booster. This rocket, designated B1067, launched a batch of 21 Starlink Internet satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Ars has reported on these rocket reuse milestones before, but SpaceX is breaking its own records so often that we’ve dialed back our coverage.

Building a lot of upper stages… SpaceX’s accomplishment of 25 flights offers an opportunity to step back and take in some context. Although everyone focuses on reuse, SpaceX is still building new second stages for every launch. The task of building so many spaceships in a year is a tall order. While SpaceX’s competency with reusing Falcon 9 boosters gets a lot of attention—landing a rocket is still incredible, even after seeing it nearly 400 times—the high-rate manufacturing of Falcon 9 upper stages is the secret MVP. It also suggests that the company’s goal to build 100 Starships a year is not crazy.

New Glenn makes a triumphant first flight. For the first time since its founding nearly a quarter of a century ago, Blue Origin has reached orbit. The long-awaited debut launch of the New Glenn rocket, a super-heavy lift vehicle developed largely with private funding, was a smashing success in its debut launch early on Thursday morning, Ars reports. The launch occurred a little more than one hour into the launch window. Liftoff was delayed, at first, by an unspecified issue with properly chilling the BE-4 engines ahead of launch. Then there was a wayward boat.

No landing, no problem… Ultimately, the rocket launched at 2: 03 am in the morning, local time, at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The first and second stages both appeared to perform nominally, and the Blue Ring pathfinder was put into its intended orbit. The only downer came a bit later when Blue Origin’s Ariane Cornell confirmed that the first stage did not successfully return to a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. But no one who really understands the difficulties of launching and landing rockets believed that Blue Origin would succeed in catching its first orbital booster, and the company deserves credit for making the attempt rather than criticism for failing to stick the landing.

How to do Artemis without SLS or Starship. There has been a lot of discussion about potential changes to the Artemis Program under the incoming Trump administration, including on Ars. In The Space Review, engineer Ajay Kothari offers an architecture that is based on the Falcon Heavy rocket rather than NASA’s Space Launch System or SpaceX’s Starship rocket. “The computed numbers below prove that this is quite feasible with margins to spare,” Kothari wrote about using Falcon Heavy to get Orion to the Moon. “Although three dockings in LEO would be required for the Orion, there is no refueling need and it is a much smaller number than the Starship HLS refueling estimates.”

There is a catch… Because there is always a catch, right? Kothari writes: “The lander would have to be built by NASA. It would be like the Apollo 17 Lunar Module, called Challenger, which carried two astronauts to the surface from LLO. It had a mass of 16.5 tons, so the new one here is bookkept at 18 tons wet mass, including higher consumable for a 6.5-day stay.” If we’re being realistic, if NASA were to put out a call for bids for a lunar lander tomorrow, it would not have one in hand before the end of the decade at the very earliest. So if NASA is going to the lunar surface in the 2020s, it’s likely Starship or bust.

Upgraded Ariane booster to undergo tests. The European Space Agency will begin testing the P160 solid-fuel booster in March 2025, European Spaceflight reports. The booster, which is to be strapped onto the Ariane 6 rocket, will replace the current P120 booster and will be a key element in enabling Arianespace to deliver on an 18-launch contract for Amazon. For 16 of its 18 missions for Amazon to launch Project Kuiper satellites, the Ariane 6 rocket will launch with four of the more powerful boosters.

Don’t forget about Vega… The P160 motor will replace the P120 booster currently in service. The upgraded boosters will increase the capacity of the Ariane 6 rocket by about 2 tons to low-Earth orbit. In addition to Ariane 6, the P160 boosters will also be utilized by Avio aboard the upgraded Vega C+ and the company’s next-generation Vega E rocket. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Jan. 18: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-8 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 15: 57 UTC

Jan. 21: Falcon 9 | Starlink 13-1 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 05: 13 UTC

Jan. 22: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-6 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 14: 38 UTC

Rocket Report: Starship experiences a RUD; Blue Origin nails its debut launch Read More »

Rocket Report: China launches refueling demo; DoD’s big appetite for hypersonics

blue origin, china, hypersonic vehicles, launch, military space, NASA, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship / 9u50fv / January 10, 2025

We’re just a few days away from getting a double-dose of heavy-lift rocket action.

Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic rocket plane will be used for military tests involving hypersonic missile technology. Credit: Stratolaunch

Welcome to Edition 7.26 of the Rocket Report! Let’s pause and reflect on how far the rocket business has come in the last 10 years. On this date in 2015, SpaceX made the first attempt to land a Falcon 9 booster on a drone ship positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, the rocket crash-landed. In less than a year and a half, though, SpaceX successfully landed reusable Falcon 9 boosters onshore and offshore, and now has done it nearly 400 times. That was remarkable enough, but we’re in a new era now. Within a few days, we could see SpaceX catch its second Super Heavy booster and Blue Origin land its first New Glenn rocket on an offshore platform. Extraordinary.

Our annual ranking of the top 10 US launch companies. You can easily guess who made the top of the list: the company that launched Falcon rockets 134 times in 2024 and launched the most powerful and largest rocket ever built on four test flights, each accomplishing more than the last. The combined 138 launches is more than NASA flew the Space Shuttle over three decades. SpaceX will aim to launch even more often in 2025. These missions have far-reaching impacts, supporting Internet coverage for consumers worldwide, launching payloads for NASA and the US military, and testing technology that will take humans back to the Moon and, someday, Mars.

Are there really 10? … It might also be fairly easy to rattle off a few more launch companies that accomplished big things in 2024. There’s United Launch Alliance, which finally debuted its long-delayed Vulcan rocket and flew two Atlas V missions and the final Delta IV mission, and Rocket Lab, which launched 16 missions with its small Electron rocket this year. Blue Origin flew its suborbital New Shepard vehicle on three human missions and one cargo-only mission and nearly launched its first orbital-class New Glenn rocket in 2024. That leaves just Firefly Aerospace as the only other US company to reach orbit last year.

DoD announces lucrative hypersonics deal. Defense technology firm Kratos has inked a deal worth up to $1.45 billion with the Pentagon to help develop a low-cost testbed for hypersonic technologies, Breaking Defense reports. The award is part of the military’s Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) 2.0 program. The MACH-TB program, which began as a US Navy effort, includes multiple “Task Areas.” For its part, Kratos will be tasked with “systems engineering, integration, and testing, to include integrated subscale, full-scale, and air launch services to address the need to affordably increase hypersonic flight test cadence,” according to the company’s release.

Multiple players … The team led by Kratos, which specializes in developing airborne drones and military weapons systems, includes several players such as Leidos, Rocket Lab, Stratolaunch, and others. Kratos last year revealed that its Erinyes hypersonic test vehicle successfully flew for a Missile Defense Agency experiment. Rocket Lab has launched multiple suborbital hypersonic experiments for the military using a modified version of its Electron rocket, and Stratolaunch reportedly flew a high-speed test vehicle and recovered it last month, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology. The Pentagon is interested in developing hypersonic weapons that can evade conventional air and missile defenses. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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ESA will modify some of its geo-return policies. An upcoming European launch competition will be an early test of efforts by the European Space Agency to modify its approach to policies that link contracts to member state contributions, Space News reports. ESA has long used a policy known as geo-return, where member states are guaranteed contracts with companies based in their countries in proportion to the contribution those member states make to ESA programs.

The third rail of European space … Advocates of geo-return argue that it provides an incentive for countries to fund those programs. This incentivizes ESA to lure financial contributions from its member states, which will win guaranteed business and jobs from the agency’s programs. However, critics of geo-return, primarily European companies, claim that it creates inefficiencies that make them less competitive. One approach to revising geo-return is known as “fair contribution,” where ESA first holds competitions for projects, and member states then make contributions based on how companies in their countries fared in the competition. ESA will try the fair contribution approach for the upcoming launch competition to award contracts to European rocket startups. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

RFA is building a new rocket. German launch services provider Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) is currently focused on building a new first stage for the inaugural flight of its RFA One rocket, European Spaceflight reports. The stage that was initially earmarked for the flight was destroyed during a static fire test last year on a launch pad in Scotland. In a statement given to European Spaceflight, RFA confirmed that it expects to attempt an inaugural flight of RFA One in 2025.

Waiting on a booster … RFA says it is “fully focused on building a new first stage and qualifying it.” The rocket’s second stage and Redshift OTV third stage are already qualified for flight and are being stored until a new first stage is ready. The RFA One rocket will stand 98 feet (30 meters) tall and will be capable of delivering payloads of up to 1.3 metric tons (nearly 2,900 pounds) into polar orbits. RFA is one of several European startups developing commercial small satellite launchers and was widely considered the frontrunner before last year’s setback. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Pentagon provides a boost for defense startup. Defense technology contractor Anduril Industries has secured a $14.3 million Pentagon contract to expand solid-fueled rocket motor production, as the US Department of Defense moves to strengthen domestic manufacturing capabilities amid growing supply chain concerns, Space News reports. The contract, awarded under the Defense Production Act, will support facility modernization and manufacturing improvements at Anduril’s Mississippi plant, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Doing a solid … The Pentagon is keen to incentivize new entrants into the solid rocket manufacturing industry, which provides propulsion for missiles, interceptors, and other weapons systems. Two traditional defense contractors, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris, control almost all US solid rocket production. Companies like Anduril, Ursa Major, and X-Bow are developing solid rocket motor production capability. The Navy previously awarded Anduril a $19 million contract last year to develop solid rocket motors for the Standard Missile 6 program. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Relativity’s value seems to be plummeting. For several years, an innovative, California-based launch company named Relativity Space has been the darling of investors and media. But the honeymoon appears to be over, Ars reports. A little more than a year ago, Relativity reached a valuation of $4.5 billion following its latest Series F fundraising round. This was despite only launching one rocket and then abandoning that program and pivoting to the development of a significantly larger reusable launch vehicle. The decision meant Relativity would not realize any significant revenue for several years, and Ars reported in September on some of the challenges the company has encountered developing the much larger Terran R rocket.

Gravity always wins … Relativity is a privately held company, so its financial statements aren’t public. However, we can glean some clues from the published quarterly report from Fidelity Investments, which owns Relativity shares. As of March 2024, Fidelity valued its 1.67 million shares at an estimated $31.8 million. However, in a report ending November 29 of last year, which was only recently published, Fidelity’s valuation of Relativity plummeted. Its stake in Relativity was then thought to be worth just $866,735—a per-share value of 52 cents. Shares in the other fundraising rounds are also valued at less than $1 each.

SpaceX has already launched four times this year. The space company is off to a fast start in 2025, with four missions in the first nine days of the year. Two of these missions launched Starlink internet satellites, and the other two deployed an Emirati-owned geostationary communications satellite and a batch of Starshield surveillance satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. In its new year projections, SpaceX estimates it will launch more than 170 Falcon rockets, between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Spaceflight Now reports. This is in addition to SpaceX’s plans for up to 25 flights of the Starship rocket from Texas.

What’s in store this year?… Highlights of SpaceX’s launch manifest this year will likely include an attempt to catch and recover Starship after returning from orbit, a first in-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer demonstration with Starship, and perhaps the debut of a second launch pad at Starbase in South Texas. For the Falcon rocket fleet, notable missions this year will include launches of commercial robotic lunar landers for NASA’s CLPS program and several crew flights, including the first human spaceflight mission to fly in polar orbit. According to public schedules, a Falcon 9 rocket could launch a commercial mini-space station for Vast, a privately held startup, before the end of the year. That would be a significant accomplishment, but we won’t be surprised if this schedule moves to the right.

China is dipping its toes into satellite refueling. China kicked off its 2025 launch activities with the successful launch of the Shijian-25 satellite Monday, aiming to advance key technologies for on-orbit refueling and extending satellite lifespans, Space News reports. The satellite launched on a Long March 3B into a geostationary transfer orbit, suggesting the unspecified target spacecraft for the refueling demo test might be in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator.

Under a watchful eye … China has tested mission extension and satellite servicing capabilities in space before. In 2021, China launched a satellite named Shijian-21, which docked a defunct Beidou navigation satellite and towed it to a graveyard orbit above the geostationary belt. Reportedly, Shijian-21 satellite may have carried robotic arms to capture and manipulate other objects in space. These kinds of technologies are dual-use, meaning they have civilian and military applications. The US Space Force is also interested in satellite life extension and refueling tech, so US officials will closely monitor Shijian-25’s actions in orbit.

SpaceX set to debut upgraded Starship. An upsized version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket rolled to the launch pad early Thursday in preparation for liftoff on a test flight next week, Ars reports. The rocket could lift off as soon as Monday from SpaceX’s Starbase test facility in South Texas. This flight is the seventh full-scale demonstration launch for Starship. The rocket will test numerous upgrades, including a new flap design, larger propellant tanks, redesigned propellant feed lines, a new avionics system, and an improved antenna for communications and navigation.

The new largest rocket … Put together, all of these changes to the ship raise the rocket’s total height by nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters), so it now towers 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall. With this change, SpaceX will break its own record for the largest rocket ever launched. SpaceX plans to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster back at the launch site in Texas and will target a controlled splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean.

Blue Origin targets weekend launch of New Glenn. Blue Origin is set to launch its New Glenn rocket in a long-delayed, uncrewed test mission that would help pave the way for the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos to compete against Elon Musk’s SpaceX, The Washington Post reports. Blue Origin has confirmed it plans to launch the 320-foot-tall rocket during a three-hour launch window opening at 1 am EDT (06: 00 UTC) Sunday in the company’s first attempt to reach orbit.

Finally … This is a much-anticipated milestone for Blue Origin and for the company’s likely customers, which include the Pentagon and NASA. Data from this test flight will help the Space Force certify New Glenn to loft national security satellites, providing a new competitor for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in the heavy-lift segment of the market. Blue Origin isn’t quite shooting for the Moon on this inaugural launch, but the company will attempt to reach orbit and try to land the New Glenn’s first stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Jan. 10: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-12 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 18: 11 UTC

Jan. 12: New Glenn | NG-1 Blue Ring Pathfinder | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 00 UTC

Jan. 13: Jielong 3 | Unknown Payload | Dongfang Spaceport, Yellow Sea | 03: 00 UTC

Rocket Report: China launches refueling demo; DoD’s big appetite for hypersonics Read More »

Rocket Report: Avio named top European launch firm; New Glenn may launch soon

rocket report, Space / Beth Washington / January 4, 2025

“We are making it simpler for new competitors to get consistent access to the spectrum they need.”

A Falcon 9 rocket lofts a Starlink mission on Dec. 30, the final SpaceX mission of 2024, completing the company’s 134th orbital launch. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.25 of the Rocket Report! Happy New Year! It’s a shorter edition of the newsletter this week because most companies (not named Blue Origin, this holiday season) took things easier over the last 10 days. But after the break we’re back in the saddle for the new year, and eager to see what awaits us in the world of launch.

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.

Avio lands atop list of European launch firms. You know it probably was not a great year for European rocket firms when the top-ranked company on the continent is Avio, which launched a grand total of two rockets in 2024. The Italian rocket firm earned this designation from European Spaceflight after successfully completing the final flight of the Vega rocket in September and returning the Vega C rocket to flight in December.

Three European launches in 2024 … The only other firm to launch a rocket on the list was ArianeGroup, which had a single launch last year. Granted, it was an important flight, the successful debut of the Ariane 6 rocket. Germany-based Isar Aerospace came in third place, followed by a company I had never heard of, Germany-based Bayern-Chemie. It builds solid-fuel upper stages for sounding rockets. It’s hard to disagree with too much on the list, although it certainly demonstrates that Europe could do with more companies launching rockets, and fewer only talking about it.

India launches space docking demonstration mission. The Indian Space Research Organization launched a space docking experiment on a PSLV rocket at the end of the year, NASASpaceflight.com reports. This SpaDeX mission—yes, the name is a little confusing—will demonstrate the capability to rendezvous, dock, and undock in orbit. This technology is important for the country’s human spaceflight plans as well as future missions to the Moon.

Target and chaser … The SpaDeX experiment will be conducted around 10 days following launch when the two satellites, the SDX01 “Chaser” and the SDX02 “Target,” will be released with a small relative velocity between them. The pair will drift apart for around a day until they are separated by a distance of around 10 to 15 km. Once this is achieved, Target will eliminate the velocity difference between itself and Chaser using its propulsion system.

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HyPrSpace conducts hot-fire test. French launch services startup HyPrSpace has completed the first test of its second hot fire test campaign for its subscale Terminator stage demonstrator, European Spaceflight reports. HyPrSpace is developing a two-stage launch vehicle called Orbital Baguette One (OB-1) that will be capable of delivering up to 250 kilograms to low Earth orbit.

Like a finely baked bread … In July, the company completed an initial hot fire test campaign of Terminator, an eight-tonne demonstrator of a hybrid rocket stage. Over the course of this first test campaign, HyPrSpace completed a total of four hot fire tests. HyPrSpace CEO Alexandre Mangeot said the company achieved an average engine efficiency of 94 percent during the latest test. Mangeot added that this represented the “propulsive performance we need for our orbital launcher.”

A new annual record for orbital launches. The world set another record for orbital launches in 2024 in a continuing surge of launch activity driven almost entirely by SpaceX, Space News reports. There were 259 orbital launch attempts in 2024, a 17 percent increase from the previous record of 221 orbital launch attempts in 2023. That figure does not include suborbital launches, such as four SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy test flights or two launches of the HASTE suborbital variant of Rocket Lab’s Electron.

SpaceX v. world … That increase in overall launches matches the increase by SpaceX alone, which performed 134 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches in 2024, up from 96 in 2023. The company performed more orbital launches than the rest of the world combined. China performed 68 launches in 2024, breaking a record of 67 launches set in 2023. Russia performed 17 launches, followed by Japan (7), India (5), Iran (4), Europe (3) and North Korea (1).

Russian family of rockets reaches 2,000th launch. The Russian space program reached a significant milestone over the holidays with the 2,000th launch of a rocket from the “R-7” family of boosters. The launch took place on Christmas Day when an R-7 rocket lifted off, carrying a remote-sensing satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Ars reports. This family of rockets has an incredible heritage dating back nearly six decades. The first R-7 vehicle was designed by the legendary Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev. It flew in 1957 and was the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile.

Good and bad news … Although it’s certainly worth commemorating the 2,000th launch of the R-7 family of rockets, the fleet’s longevity also offers a cautionary tale. In many respects, the Russian space program continues to coast on the legacy of Korolev and the Soviet space feats of the 1950s and 1960s. That Russia has not developed a more cost-competitive and efficient booster in nearly six decades reveals the truth about its space program: It lacks innovation at a time when the rest of the space industry is rapidly sprinting toward reusability.

Overview of Chinese launch plans for 2025. New Long March rockets and commercially developed launch vehicles are expected to have their first flights in 2025, boosting China’s overall launch capabilities, Space News reports. The launchers will compete for contracts to launch satellites for China’s megaconstellation projects—Thousand Sails and Guowang—space station cargo missions and commercial and other contracts, helping to boost the country’s overall access to space and launch rate in the coming years.

Many new faces on the launch pad … Among the highlights for the coming year is the Long March 8A rocket, a variant of the existing Long March 8, but with a larger, more powerful second stage, boosting payload capacity to a 700-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit from 5,000 kilograms to 7,000 kg. It is likely to be a workhorse for megaconstellation launches. The Long March 12A rocket could undergo vertical takeoff and landing tests. And the privately developed Zhuque-3 rocket could make its first orbital launch this year.

To deal with more launches, FCC adds spectrum. The Federal Communications Commission has formally allocated additional spectrum for launch applications, fulfilling a provision in a bill passed earlier this year, Space News reports. The FCC published December 31 a report and order that allocated spectrum between 2360 and 2395 megahertz for use in communications to and from commercial launch and reentry vehicles on a secondary basis. That band currently has a primary use for aircraft and missile testing communications.

Keep rockets talking to the ground … Both the FCC and launch companies have said the additional spectrum was needed to accommodate growth in launch activities. “By identifying more bandwidth for vital links to launch vehicles, we are making it simpler for new competitors to get consistent access to the spectrum they need,” Jessica Rosenworcel, chairwoman of the FCC, said in a December 19 statement calling for approval of the then-proposed report and order.

New Glenn completes static fire test. On Friday, December 27, Blue Origin successfully ignited the seven main engines on its massive New Glenn rocket for the first time, Ars reports. Blue Origin said it fired the vehicle’s engines for a duration of 24 seconds. They fired at full thrust for 13 of those seconds. Additionally, several hours before the test firing, the Federal Aviation Administration said it had issued a launch license for the rocket.

New Glenn wen? … These two milestones set up a long-anticipated launch of the New Glenn rocket in January. Although the company has yet to announce a date publicly, sources indicate that Blue Origin is working toward a launch time of no earlier than 1 am ET (06: 00 UTC) on Monday, January 6, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, though it could slip a few days. If all goes well with the debut flight of the vehicle, Blue Origin will also attempt to recover the first stage of the rocket on a drone ship down range in the Atlantic Ocean. (submitted by Jay5000001)

Next three launches

Jan. 4: Falcon 9 | Thuraya 4-NGS | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 27 UTC

Jan. 6: New Glenn | Blue Ring pathfinder | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06: 00 UTC

Jan. 6: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-11 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 16: 19 UTC

Rocket Report: Avio named top European launch firm; New Glenn may launch soon Read More »

Rocket Report: ULA has a wild idea; Starliner crew will stay in orbit even longer

rocket report, Science, Space / Beth Washington / December 20, 2024

ULA’s Vulcan rocket is at least several months away from flying again, and Stoke names its engine.

Stoke Space’s Zenith booster engine fires on a test stand at Moses Lake, Washington. Credit: Stoke Space

Welcome to Edition 7.24 of the Rocket Report! This is the last Rocket Report of the year, and what a year it’s been. So far, there have been 244 rocket launches to successfully reach orbit this year, a record for annual launch activity. And there are still a couple of weeks to go before the calendar turns to 2025. Time is running out for Blue Origin to launch its first heavy-lift New Glenn rocket this year, but if it flies before January 1, it will certainly be one of the top space stories of 2024.

Corkscrew in the sky. A Japanese space startup said its second attempt to launch a rocket carrying small satellites into orbit had been terminated minutes after liftoff Wednesday and destroyed itself again, nine months after the company’s first launch attempt in an explosion, the Associated Press reports. The startup that developed the rocket, named Space One, launched the Kairos rocket from a privately owned coastal spaceport in Japan’s Kansai region. Company executive and space engineer Mamoru Endo said an abnormality in the first stage engine nozzle or its control system is likely to have caused an unstable flight of the rocket, which started spiraling in mid-flight and eventually destroyed itself about three minutes after liftoff, using its autonomous safety mechanism.

0-for-2 … The launch failure this week followed the first attempt to launch the Kairos rocket in March, when the launcher exploded just five seconds after liftoff. An investigation into the failed launch in March concluded the rocket’s autonomous destruct system activated after detecting its solid-fueled first stage wasn’t generating as much thrust as expected. The Kairos rocket is Japan’s first privately funded orbital-class rocket, capable of placing payloads up to 550 pounds (250 kilograms) into low-Earth orbit. (submitted by Jay500001, Ken the Bin, and EllPeaTea)

A fit check for Themis. ArianeGroup has brought the main elements of the Themis reusable booster demonstrator together for the first time in France during a “full-fit check,” European Spaceflight reports. This milestone paves the way for the demonstrator’s inaugural test, which is expected to take place in 2025. Themis, which is funded by the European Space Agency, is designed to test vertical launch and landing capabilities with a new methane-fueled rocket engine. According to ESA, the full-fit check is one of the final steps in the development phase of Themis.

Slow progress … ESA signed the contract with ArianeGroup for the Themis program in 2020, and at that time, the program’s schedule called for initial low-altitude hop tests in 2022. It’s now taken more than double the time officials originally projected to get the Themis rocket airborne. The first up-and-down hops will be based at the Esrange Space Center in Sweden, and will use the vehicle ArianeGroup is assembling now in France. A second Themis rocket will be built for medium-altitude tests from Esrange, and finally, a three-engine version of Themis will fly on high-altitude tests from the Guiana Space Center in South America. At the rate this program is proceeding, it’s fair to ask if Themis will complete a full-envelope launch and landing demonstration before the end of the decade, if it ever does. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Sign Me Up!

Baguette One is going critical. French launch startup HyPrSpace has announced that it has completed preliminary design reviews for its Baguette One and Orbital Baguette One (OB-1) rockets, European Spaceflight reports. Baguette One will be a suborbital demonstrator for the OB-1 rocket, designed to use a hybrid propulsion system that combines liquid and solid propellants and doesn’t require a turbopump. With the preliminary design complete, HyPrSpace said it is moving on to the critical design phase for both rockets, a stage of development where detailed engineering plans are finalized and components are prepared for manufacturing.

Heating the oven … HyPrSpace has previously stated the Orbital Baguette One rocket will be capable of delivering a payload of up to 550 pounds (250 kilograms) to low-Earth orbit. Last year, the startup announced it raised 35 million euros in funding, primarily from the French government, to complete the critical design phase of the OB-1 rocket and launch the Baguette One on a suborbital test flight. HyPrSpace has not provided an updated schedule for the first flight of either rocket. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

A new player on the scene. RTX weapons arm Raytheon and defense startup Ursa Major Technologies have completed two successful test flights of a missile propelled by a new solid rocket motor, Breaking Defense reports. The two test flights, held at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California, involved a Raytheon-made missile propelled by an Ursa Major solid rocket motor measuring less than 10 inches in diameter, according to Dan Jablonsky, Ursa Major’s CEO. Details about the missile are shrouded in mystery, and Raytheon officials referred questions on the matter to the Army.

Joining the club … The US military is interested in fostering the development of a third supplier of solid rocket propulsion for weapons systems. Right now, only Northrop Grumman and L3Harris’s Aerojet Rocketdyne are available as solid rocket vendors, and they have struggled to keep up with the demand for weapons systems, especially to support the war in Ukraine. Ursa Major is one of several US-based startups entering the solid rocket propulsion market. “There is a new player on the scene in the solid rocket motor industry,” Jablonsky said. “This is an Army program that we’ve been working on with Raytheon. In this particular program, we went from concept and design to firing and flight on the range in just under four months, which is lightning fast.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX’s rapid response. In a mission veiled in secrecy, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, sending a military Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite to a medium orbit about 12,000 miles above Earth, Space News reports. Named Rapid Response Trailblazer-1 (RRT-1), this mission was a US national security space launch and was also intended to demonstrate military capabilities to condense a typical two-year mission planning cycle to less than six months. The payload, GPS III SV-07, is the seventh satellite of the GPS III constellation, built by Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft was in storage awaiting a launch on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.

Tightening the timeline … “We decided to pull SV-07 out of storage and try to get it to the launch pad as quickly as possible,” Col. James Horne, senior material leader for launch execution at the US Space Force’s Space Systems Command, told Space News. “It’s our way of demonstrating that we can be responsive to operator needs.” Rather than the typical mission cycle of two years, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and the Space Force worked together to prep this GPS satellite for launch in a handful of months. Military officials decided to launch SV-07 with SpaceX as ULA’s Vulcan rocket faced delays in becoming certified to launch national security payloads. According to Space News, Horne emphasized that this move was less about Vulcan delays and more about testing the boundaries of the NSSL program’s flexibility. “This is a way for us to demonstrate to adversaries that we can be responsive,” he said. Because SV-07 was switched to SpaceX, ULA will get to launch GPS III SV-10, originally assigned to SpaceX. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

An update on Butch and Suni. NASA has announced that it is delaying the SpaceX Crew-10 launch, a move that will keep astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—who already had their stay aboard the International Space Station unexpectedly extended—in orbit even longer, CNN reports. Williams and Wilmore launched to space in June, piloting the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Their trip, expected to last about a week, ballooned into a months-long assignment after their vehicle experienced technical issues en route to the space station and NASA determined it would be too risky to bring them home aboard the Starliner.

Nearly 10 months in orbit … The astronauts stayed aboard the space station as the Starliner spacecraft safely returned to Earth in September, and NASA shuffled the station’s schedule of visiting vehicles to allow Wilmore and Williams to come home on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with two crewmates to end the Crew-9 mission in February, soon after the arrival of Crew-10. Now, Crew-10 will get off the ground at least a month later than expected because NASA and SpaceX teams need “time to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission,” the space agency said. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Stoke Space names its engine. Stoke Space, the only other company besides SpaceX developing a fully reusable orbital rocket, has revealed the name of the methane-fueled engine that will power the vehicle’s booster stage. “Say hello to Zenith, our full-flow staged-combustion booster engine, built to power Nova to orbit,” Stoke Space wrote in a post on X. The naming announcement came a few days after Stoke Space said it hot-fired the “Block 2” or “flight layout” version of the main engine on a test stand in Moses Lake, Washington.

Stoked by the progress … “As we build towards the future of space mobility, we’re building on top of the pinnacle–the zenith–of rocket engine cycles: full-flow staged combustion,” Stoke Space said. Only a handful of rocket engines have been designed to use the full-flow staged combustion cycle, and only one has actually flown on a rocket: SpaceX’s Raptor. Seven Zenith engines will power the first stage of the Nova rocket when it takes off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A hydrogen-fueled propulsion system will power the second stage of Nova, which is designed to launch up to 5 metric tons (11,000 pounds) of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Upgrades coming for Vega. The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed 350 million euros in contracts with Avio to further evolve the Vega launcher family,” Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The contracts cover the development of the Vega-E and upgrades to the current Vega-C’s ground infrastructure to increase the launch cadence. Vega-E, scheduled to debut in 2027, will replace the Vega-C rocket’s third and fourth stages with a single methane-fueled upper stage under development by Avio. It will also offer a 30 percent increase in Vega’s payload lift capability, and will launch from a new complex to be built on the former Ariane 5 launch pad at the European-run Guiana Space Center in South America.

Adaptations … The fresh tranche of funding from ESA will also pay for Avio’s work to “adapt” the former Ariane 5 integration building at the spaceport in French Guiana, according to ESA. “This will allow technicians to work on two rockets being assembled simultaneously–one on the launch pad and one in the new assembly building–and run two launch campaigns in parallel,” ESA said. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

New Glenn coming alive. In a widely anticipated test, Blue Origin will soon ignite the seven main engines on its New Glenn rocket at Launch Complex-36 in Florida, Ars reports. Sources indicated this hot-fire test might occur as soon as Thursday, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Blue Origin’s launch team loaded cryogenic propellants into the New Glenn rocket on the launch pad, but stopped short of igniting the main engines.

Racing the clock … The hot-fire is the final test the company must complete before verifying the massive rocket is ready for its debut flight, and it is the most dynamic. This will be the first time Blue Origin has ever test-fired the BE-7 engines altogether. Theoretically, at least, it remains possible that Blue Origin could launch New Glenn this year—and the company’s urgency certainly speaks to this. On social media this week, some Blue Origin employees noted that they were being asked to work on Christmas Day this year in Florida.

China begins building a new megaconstellation. The first batch of Internet satellites for China’s Guowang megaconstellation launched Monday on the country’s heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket, Ars reports. The satellites are the first of up to 13,000 spacecraft a consortium of Chinese companies plans to build and launch over the next decade. The Guowang fleet will beam low-latency high-speed Internet signals in an architecture similar to SpaceX’s Starlink network, although Chinese officials haven’t laid out any specifics, such as target markets, service specifications, or user terminals.

No falling debris, this time … China used its most powerful operational rocket, the Long March 5B, for the job of launching the first 10 Guowang satellites this week. The Long March 5B’s large core stage, which entered orbit on the rocket’s previous missions and triggered concerns about falling space debris, fell into a predetermined location in the sea downrange from the launch site. The difference for this mission was the addition of the Yuanzheng 2 upper stage, which gave the rocket’s payloads the extra oomph they needed to reach their targeted low-Earth orbit. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Elon Musk’s security clearance under review. A new investigation from The New York Times suggests that SpaceX founder Elon Musk has not been reporting his travel activities and other information to the Department of Defense as required by his top-secret clearance, Ars reports. According to the newspaper, concerns about Musk’s reporting practices have led to reviews by three different bodies within the military: the Air Force, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and the Defense Department Office of Inspector General. However, none of the federal agencies cited in the Times article has accused Musk of disclosing classified material.

It won’t matter … Since 2021, Musk has failed to self-report details of his life, including travel activities, people he has met, and drug use, according to the Times. The government is also concerned that SpaceX did not ensure Musk’s compliance with the reporting rules. Musk’s national security profile has risen following his deep-pocketed and full-throated support of Donald Trump, who won the US presidential campaign in November and will be sworn into office next month. After this inauguration, Trump will have the power to grant security clearance to whomever he wishes.

ULA’s CEO has a pretty wild idea. Ars published a feature story last week examining the US Space Force’s new embrace of offensive weapons in space. In the story, Ars discusses concepts for different types of space weapons, including placing roving “defender” satellites into orbit, with the sole purpose of guarding high-value US satellites against an attack. Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, wrote about the defender concept in a Medium post earlier this month. He added more detail in a recent conversation with reporters, describing the defender concept as “a lightning-fast, long-range, lethal, if necessary, vehicle to defend our assets on orbit.” And guess what? The Centaur upper stage for ULA’s own Vulcan rocket could do the job just fine, according to Bruno.

Death throes or a smart pivot? … A space tug or upper stage like the Centaur could be left in orbit after a launch to respond to threats against US or allied satellites, Bruno said. These wouldn’t be able to effectively defend a spacecraft against a ground-based anti-satellite missile, which can launch without warning. But a space-based attack might involve an enemy satellite taking days or weeks to move close to a US satellite due to limitations in maneuverability and the tyranny of orbital mechanics. Several launch companies have recently pitched their rockets as solutions for weapons testing, including Rocket Lab and ABL. But the concept proposed by Bruno would take ULA far from its core business, where its efforts to compete with SpaceX have often fallen short. However, the competition is still alive, as shown by a comment from SpaceX’s vice president of Falcon launch vehicles, Jon Edwards. In response to Ars’s story, Edwards wrote on X: “The pivot to ‘interceptor’ or ‘target vehicle’ is a common final act of a launch vehicle in its death throes.” (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Vulcan is months away from flying again. Speaking of ULA, here’s an update on the next flight of the company’s Vulcan rocket. The first national security mission on Vulcan might not launch until April 2025 at the earliest, Spaceflight Now reports. This will be the third flight of a Vulcan rocket, following two test flights this year to gather data for the US Space Force to certify the rocket for national security missions. On the second flight, the nozzle fell off one of Vulcan’s solid rocket boosters shortly after liftoff, but the rocket successfully continued its climb into orbit. The anomaly prompted an investigation, and ULA says it is close to determining the root cause.

Stretching the timeline … The Space Force’s certification review of Vulcan is taking longer than anticipated. “The government team has not completed its technical evaluation of the certification criteria and is working closely with ULA on additional data required to complete this evaluation,” a Space Force spokesperson told Spaceflight Now. “The government anticipates completion of its evaluation and certification in the first quarter of calendar year 2025.” The spokesperson said this means the launch of a US military navigation test satellite on the third Vulcan rocket is now slated for the second quarter of next year. (submitted by Ken the Bin and EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

Dec. 21: Falcon 9 | “Astranis: From One to Many” | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03: 39 UTC

Dec. 21: Falcon 9 | Bandwagon 2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 11: 34 UTC

Dec. 21: Electron | “Owl The Way Up” | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 13: 00 UTC

Rocket Report: ULA has a wild idea; Starliner crew will stay in orbit even longer Read More »

Rocket Report: Chinese national flies drone near Falcon 9, Trouble down under

rocket report, Space / Kelly Newman / December 13, 2024

“I am convinced that a collaboration between Avio and MaiaSpace could be established.”

SpaceX conducted a static fire test of its flight seven Super Heavy booster this week. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.23 of the Rocket Report! We’re closing in on the end of the year, with a little less than three weeks remaining in 2024. Can you believe it? I hardly can. The biggest question left in launch is whether Blue Origin will make its deadline for launching New Glenn by the end of this year. It’s been a long-time goal of founder Jeff Bezos, but the clock is ticking. We wish them luck!

Virgin Galactic studies Italian spaceport. The US-based suborbital space tourism company said Thursday it has signed an “agreement of cooperation” with Italy’s civil aviation authority to study the feasibility of Virgin Galactic conducting spaceflight operations from Grottaglie Spaceport in the Puglia region of Southern Italy. Phase one of the study, anticipated to be completed in 2025, will examine Grottaglie’s airspace compatibility with Virgin Galactic’s requirements and unique flight profile.

Follows earlier flight … The announcement comes 18 months after members of the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy conducted research aboard Virgin Galactic’s June 2023 ‘Galactic 01’ mission from Spaceport America in New Mexico. The flight marked the company’s first commercial spaceflight. It’s all well and good to be making such strategic announcements, but this is all dependent upon the company delivering on its new generation of Delta-class spaceships.

For some reason, Avio and MaiaSpace may partner. MaiaSpace CEO Johann Leroy has suggested that a partnership with Italian rocket-builder Avio could benefit both companies and bolster Europe’s independent access to space, European Spaceflight reports. “The goal of MaiaSpace is to design, produce, and operate the mini-launcher, as well as to market the related launch services, and to stay focused and responsive to market developments,” said Leroy. “However, I am convinced that a collaboration between Avio and MaiaSpace could be established. It would be an advantage for both companies and for Europe.”

But it’s not clear why … Founded in early 2022 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup, MaiaSpace is developing a 50-meter tall, two-stage, partially reusable rocket designed to deliver small satellites to orbit. Avio builds solid rocket motors and is best known for its Vega rockets. It’s not clear why a reusable launch company would want to partner with a company that builds solids, which are not reusable. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Sign Me Up!

Australian space center shuts down. A spaceport in the Northern Territory of Australia will cease operations immediately, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports. The company running the spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia, said it was now in conversations with the Queensland government to relocate its operations to Cape York. The space center’s claim to fame was the 2022 launch of three NASA sounding rockets from the facility.

Disagreements over territory … The company, Equatorial Launch Australia, had been planning a major expansion of the Arnhem Space Centre at its East Arnhem Land location. However that process apparently got bogged down, and the spaceport company blamed the delays on the Northern Land Council. This council pushed back and described those claims as a “falsehood.” The wait for a renewal of orbital launches from Down Under continues. (submitted by Marzipan)

Ukrainian launch company finds refuge in Maine. Promin Aerospace, a small launch company from Dnipro, Ukraine, opened its doors in Maine this month with a goal of hiring US engineers to complete development of its first rocket in time for a test launch in mid-2026, Payload reports. Promin’s goal of launching Ukraine’s first rocket from the coast of the Black Sea was put on hold after Russia invaded the country in February 2022.

Lobsters and launches … For the past two and a half years, Promin has been developing its unique rocket technology amid power outages, Internet connectivity problems, and sporadic attacks on Dnipro from Russian forces. The search started in Europe but quickly moved across the pond to take advantage of the speed and resources that US industry provides. “[Europe moves] very slow, so a lot of things that we expected would be done by our partners in 2022, they’re only going to be done in 2025,” said Misha Rudominski, Promin’s co-founder and CEO. The Maine Space Corporation was more welcoming. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Long March-8A rocket set for debut. After successfully completing a wet dress rehearsal and other pre-launch tests, the first Long March-8A rocket is set for its debut launch in January 2025, China’s state-run news service, Xinhua, reports. The news service adds that the rocket is “designed to serve as China’s future primary launch vehicle for medium- and low-Earth orbit missions.” The rocket is capable of lofting up to 7 metric tons to a 700-km Sun-synchronous orbit.

Satellite workhorse … The newer rocket offers increased performance over the Long March 8 rocket and a larger 5.2-meter payload fairing. As such, it is being counted on to help deploy one or more of China’s planned satellite Internet megaconstellations. “The Long March-8A is an upgraded version of the Long March-8 rocket, specifically developed to meet the launch requirements of large-scale constellation networks in medium- and low-Earth orbits,” said Song Zhengyu, chief designer of the Long March-8 rocket. (submitted by gizmo23)

Chinese national arrested after flying drone near SpaceX pad. Federal police arrested Yinpiao Zhou on Monday after he was allegedly caught flying a drone over the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, The Telegraph reports. In a criminal complaint, the US Attorney’s Office said Zhou flew a drone over the base and took photographs on November 30, the same day a Falcon 9 rocket launched a payload on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office. He has been accused of violating national defense air space and of failing to register an aircraft as required under US law.

Is that a drone in your pocket? … The complaint against Zhou, filed in California, says he admitted to installing software on his drone to evade limits on the height the device could fly at, and over a virtual fence around the Vandenberg base. The drone was allegedly in the air for 59 minutes and took photographs of SpaceX rocket pads and other sensitive areas. The flight was picked up by the base’s security team, who traced Zhou to nearby Ocean Park, where he was standing with another man. After initially hiding the drone in his coat, Zhou admitted he had flown it over the base.

Blue Origin says New Glenn is ready. Blue Origin said Tuesday that the test payload for the first launch of its new rocket, New Glenn, is ready for liftoff, Ars reports. The company published an image of the “Blue Ring” pathfinder nestled up against one half of the rocket’s payload fairing. This week’s announcement—historically Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about new products but is opening up more as it nears the debut of its flagship New Glenn rocket—appears to serve a couple of purposes.

Still targeting 2024 for liftoff … First of all, the relatively small payload contrasted with the size of the payload fairing highlights the greater volume the rocket offers over most conventional boosters. Additionally, the company appears to be publicly signaling the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulatory agencies that it believes New Glenn is ready to fly, pending approval to conduct a hot-fire test at Launch Complex-36, and then for a liftoff from Florida. This is a not-so-subtle message to regulators to please hurry up and complete the paperwork necessary for launch activities. A company official said the plan remains to launch New Glenn before the end of 2024.

SpaceX static-fires booster for next Starship flight. Only three weeks after Flight 6, SpaceX has static-fired Booster 14 and rolled Ship 33 to Masseys to complete its own engine testing, NASASpaceflight.com reports. Once both vehicles are tested, SpaceX will begin the final drive to Flight 7, potentially launching in January. Booster 14 is more or less identical to Booster 13 on the outside except for the ship engine chill pipe extensions on previous boosters. These are no longer needed, as Block 2 of the ship has its engine chill pipes running through the aft flap fairing with a flare outward at the bottom. This simplifies the connection between the ship and the booster and reduces mass.

Block 2 upgrades … Ship 33 has many changes compared to past ships, as it is the first Block 2 ship. First and foremost for Block 2 are the extended propellant tanks. SpaceX added a ring on the ship, making it 21 rings tall, and moved around the common and forward domes to be able to load 300 more tons of propellant into the ship. This addition will allow SpaceX to increase its payload to orbit with Block 2. The sacrifice was a smaller payload bay section, which went from five rings to three rings. However, SpaceX retained most of its usable payload space, as the nose cone on Block 2 was completely redesigned. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

ULA expects to be certified for national security launch soon. United Launch Alliance expects to gain Space Force certification for national security payloads within a few months, company chief executive Tory Bruno told Breaking Defense. He added that no further testing of the Vulcan Centaur will be needed to meet certification, saying the company has met all the requirements from the Pentagon. Two successful launches are requisite to achieve certification for carrying payloads under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program.

Seeking a higher cadence … A January launch was deemed a success, but there was an anomaly during the second flight in October with one of Vulcan’s solid rocket boosters that currently is under investigation. Overall, he said, the company has 20 launches manifested for 2025, with 16 Vulcan rockets stored away for use and no worries that production won’t be able to keep up with demand. Looking forward, Bruno said he hopes to have 20-30 Vulcan launches a year, about “half” of which would be for national security. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Super heavy lift is ‘essential’ to Europe. This week the European Space Agency has published a third iteration of a proposed pathfinder study for the development of a European reusable super heavy-lift rocket capable of delivering 60 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, European Spaceflight reports. Twice before, in November and early December, the space agency published and then deleted a call for a study. While the first and second iterations made no mention of Ariane 6, currently Europe’s only heavy-lift rocket, the third iteration highlights the limitations of the ArianeGroup-built rocket.

A final decision may come next year … The text states that the development of a “European very-heavy launch system” is essential for Europe’s future ambitions in space and represents a necessary step to ensure the continent remains competitive in the global launch market. Once the study is complete, ESA hopes to have a detailed end-to-end development roadmap with a well-defined business case that could be used to move forward with the project quickly. A decision on whether to adopt the program will likely be made at the ESA ministerial meeting in late 2025. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

Dec. 13: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 19: 28 UTC

Dec. 14: Electron | Stonehenge | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 00: 45 UT

Dec. 14: Falcon 9 | GPS-3 10 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 04 UTC

Rocket Report: Chinese national flies drone near Falcon 9, Trouble down under Read More »

Rocket Report: NASA delays Artemis again; SpinLaunch spins a little cash

rocket report, Science, Space / DJ Henderson / December 7, 2024

All the news that’s fit to lift

A report in which we read some tea leaves.

Look a the rocket which has now launched 400 times. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news is the Trump administration’s announcement that commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman would be put forward as the nominee to serve as the next NASA Administrator. Isaacman has flown to space twice, and demonstrated that he takes spaceflight seriously. More background on Isaacman, and possible changes, can be found here.

Orbex pauses launch site work in Sutherland, Scotland. Small-launch vehicle developer Orbex will halt work on its own launch site in northern Scotland and instead use a rival facility in the Shetland Islands, Space News reports. Orbex announced December 4 that it would “pause” construction of Sutherland Spaceport in Scotland and instead use the SaxaVord Spaceport on the island of Unst in the Shetlands for its Prime launch vehicle. Orbex had been linked to Spaceport Sutherland since the UK Space Agency announced in 2018 it selected the site for a vertical launch complex.

Pivoting to medium lift? … The move, Orbex said, will free up resources to allow the company to focus on launch vehicle development, including both Prime and a new medium-class vehicle called Proxima. “This decision will help us to reach first launch in 2025 and provides SaxaVord with another customer to further strengthen its commercial proposition. It’s a win-win for UK and Scottish space,” Phil Chambers, chief executive of Orbex, said. If you’re reading the tea leaves here, one might guess that the smaller Prime rocket will never launch, and the medium-lift design is a hail mary. We’ll see. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpinLaunch raises a little cash. Space startup SpinLaunch is fundraising again, though TechCrunch reports that it was exploring raising a significantly more ambitious sum earlier this year. The company has closed an $11.5 million round out of a planned $25 million, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. SpinLaunch confirmed funding to TechCrunch but did not comment on the amount raised. It last raised $71 million in a Series B funding round in 2022. SpinLaunch, as the name implies, plans to build a kinetic launch system as a low-cost, high-cadence alternative to rockets.

Putting the spin into SpinLaunch … A person familiar with the company’s plans told TechCrunch that the startup had talked to investors around nine months ago, hoping they would pile into a $350 million round at a $2 billion valuation. In response to a question about this fundraising target, SpinLaunch CEO David Wrenn said the figures were “highly inaccurate and misleading” and that he was “pleased with our recently closed financing.” Someone is spinning something, clearly. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Sign Me Up!

Vega C successfully returns to flight. After originally targeting November 29 for the return-to-flight mission of the Vega C rocket, Arianespace successfully launched the vehicle on Thursday, December 5, Space News reports. The three solid-fuel lower stages of the Vega C performed as expected, followed by three burns by the liquid-propellant AVUM+ upper stage. That upper stage deployed its payload, the Sentinel-1C satellite, about one hour and 45 minutes after liftoff. The launch was the first for the Vega C since a December 2022 launch failure on the rocket’s second flight that destroyed two Pléiades Neo imaging satellites.

Eyes in the sky … The payload, Sentinel-1C, is a radar imaging satellite built by Thales Alenia Space for the Copernicus program of Earth observation missions run by ESA and the European Commission. It replaces the Sentinel-1B spacecraft that malfunctioned in orbit nearly three years ago. It joins the existing, but aging, Sentinel-1A satellite and includes new capabilities to monitor maritime traffic with an Automatic Identification System receiver.

PLD Space secures loan for Miura 5 rocket. The Spanish launch company said this week that it had secured an 11 million euro loan ($11.6 million) from COFIDES, a state-owned development fund, to support the development of the launch site for its Miura 5 rocket in Kourou, French Guiana. The company said the funding bolsters its mission to ensure autonomous and competitive European access to space while strengthening Europe’s space infrastructure.

A public-private partnership … “This initiative exemplifies the critical role of public-private collaboration in supporting strategic and innovative projects, which rely on institutional backing as an anchor investor during the early stages of technological development,” added Spanish Secretary of State for Trade Amparo López Senovilla. The Miura 5 rocket will have an estimated payload capacity of 1 metric ton to low-Earth orbit and may make its debut in 2026. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX value may soar higher. SpaceX is in talks to sell insider shares in a transaction valuing the rocket and satellite maker at about $350 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports. That would be a significant premium to a previously mulled valuation of $255 billion as reported by Bloomberg News and other media outlets just last month. SpaceX was last valued at about $210 billion in a tender offer earlier this year.

A big post-election bump … The current conversations are ongoing, and the details could change depending on interest from insider sellers and buyers, sources told the publication. The potential transaction would cement SpaceX’s status as the most valuable private startup in the world and rival the market capitalizations of some of the largest public companies. SpaceX has established itself as the industry’s preeminent rocket launch provider, lofting satellites, cargo, and people to space for NASA, the Pentagon, and commercial partners, and is building out a large network of Starlink satellites providing Internet service. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

China debuts a new medium-lift rocket. China’s new Long March 12 rocket made a successful inaugural flight Saturday, placing two experimental satellites into orbit and testing uprated, higher-thrust engines that will allow a larger Chinese launcher in development to send astronauts to the Moon. The Long March 12 is the newest member of China’s Long March rocket family, which has been flying since China launched its first satellite into orbit in 1970, Ars reports.

Rocket likely to be used for megaconstellation deployment … Like all of China’s other existing rockets, the Long March 12 configuration that flew Saturday is fully disposable. At the Zhuhai Airshow earlier this month, China’s largest rocket company displayed another version of the Long March 12 with a reusable first stage but with scant design details. The Long March 12 is powered by four kerosene-fueled YF-100K engines on its first stage, generating more than 1.1 million pounds, or 5,000 kilonewtons, of thrust at full throttle. These engines are upgraded, higher-thrust versions of the YF-100 engines used on several other types of Long March rockets. (submitted by EllPeaTea and Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 rocket reaches some remarkable milestones. About 10 days ago, SpaceX launched a batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the 400th successful mission by the Falcon 9 rocket. Additionally, it was the Falcon program’s 375th booster recovery, according to SpaceX. Finally, with this mission, the company shattered its record for turnaround time from the landing of a booster to its launch to 13 days and 12 hours, down from 21 days, Ars reports.

A rapidly reusable shuttle … All told, in November, SpaceX launched 16 Falcon 9 rockets. The previous record for monthly launches by the Falcon 9 rocket was 14. SpaceX is on pace to launch 135 or more Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions this year. That is a meaningful number, because over the course of the three decades it flew into orbit, NASA’s space shuttle flew 135 missions. The space shuttle was a significantly more complex vehicle, and unlike the Falcon 9 rocket, humans flew aboard it during every mission. However, there is some historical significance in the fact that the Falcon rocket may fly as many missions in a single year as the space shuttle did during its lifetime.

Long March 3B hits a milestone. China launched a new communication engineering test satellite early Tuesday with its workhorse Long March 3B rocket. This added to a series of satellites potentially for undisclosed military purposes, Space News reports. The launch was, notably, the 100th of the workhorse Long March 3B.

First time to the century marker … The rocket has performed 96 successful launches with two failures and two partial failures. The first launch, in February 1996 carrying Intelsat 708, infamously saw the rocket veer off course shortly after clearing the tower and impacting a nearby village. Developed by the state-run China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, the three-stage and four-liquid-booster rocket is the only Chinese launcher to reach 100 launches. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

NASA delays Artemis launches again. In a news conference Thursday, NASA officials discussed changes to the timeline for future Artemis missions due to problems with Orion’s heat shield. The agency announced it is now targeting April 2026 for Artemis II (from September 2025) and mid-2027 for Artemis III (from September 2026). NASA said it now understands the technical cause of the heat shield issues observed during the Artemis I flight in late 2022 and will fly the heat shield as-is on Artemis II, with some changes to the reentry profile.

This may not be the final plan … The timing of this news conference was interesting, as there will be a changing of administrations at NASA in the coming weeks. The Trump administration has put forward commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, and as Ars reported Thursday, there are likely some significant shakeups coming in the Artemis program. One possibility is that the Space Launch System rocket could be scrapped, with commercial rockets used to fly the Artemis missions.

Next three launches

Dec. 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05: 10 UTC

Dec. 12: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 19: 33 UTC

Dec. 12: Falcon 9 | O3b mPOWER 7 & 8 | Kennedy Space Center, Fla. | 20: 58 UTC

Rocket Report: NASA delays Artemis again; SpinLaunch spins a little cash Read More »

Rocket Report: A good week for Blue Origin; Italy wants its own launch capability

blue origin, china, human spaceflight, italy, launch, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex / Mike M. / November 28, 2024

Blue Origin is getting ready to test-fire its first fully integrated New Glenn rocket in Florida.

Blue Origin’s first fully integrated New Glenn rocket rolls out to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 7.21 of the Rocket Report! We’re publishing the Rocket Report a little early this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We don’t expect any Thanksgiving rocket launches this year, but still, there’s a lot to cover from the last six days. It seems like we’ve seen the last flight of the year by SpaceX’s Starship rocket. A NASA filing with the Federal Aviation Administration requests approval to fly an aircraft near the reentry corridor over the Indian Ocean for the next Starship test flight. The application suggests the target launch date is January 11, 2025.

Another grim first in Ukraine. For the first time in warfare, Russia launched an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile against a target in Ukraine, Ars reports. This attack on November 21 followed an announcement from Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier the same week that the country would change its policy for employing nuclear weapons in conflict. The IRBM, named Oreshnik, is the longest-range weapon ever used in combat in Europe, and could be refitted to carry nuclear warheads on future strikes.

Putin’s rationale … Putin says his ballistic missile attack on Ukraine is a warning to the West after the US and UK governments approved Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied ATACMS and Storm Shadow tactical ballistic missiles against targets on Russian territory. The Russian leader said his forces could attack facilities in Western countries that supply weapons for Ukraine to use on Russian territory, continuing a troubling escalatory ladder in the bloody war in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, this attack has another rocket connection. The target was apparently a factory in Dnipro that, not long ago, produced booster stages for Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket.

Blue Origin hops again. Blue Origin launched its ninth suborbital human spaceflight over West Texas on November 22, CollectSpace reports. Six passengers rode the company’s suborbital New Shepard booster to the edge of space, reaching an altitude of 347,661 feet (65.8 miles or 106 kilometers), flying 3 miles (4.8 km) above the Kármán line that serves as the internationally-accepted border between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. The pressurized capsule carrying the six passengers separated from the booster, giving them a taste of microgravity before parachuting back to Earth.

Dreams fulfilled … These suborbital flights are getting to be more routine, and may seem insignificant compared to Blue Origin’s grander ambitions of flying a heavy-lift rocket and building a human-rated Moon lander. However, we’ll likely have to wait many years before truly routine access to orbital flights becomes available for anyone other than professional astronauts or multimillionaires. This means tickets to ride on suborbital spaceships from Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic are currently the only ways to get to space, however briefly, for something on the order of $1 million or less. That puts the cost of one of these seats within reach for hundreds of thousands of people, and within the budgets of research institutions and non-profits to fund a flight for a scientist, student, or a member of the general public. The passengers on the November 22 flight included Emily Calandrelli, known online as “The Space Gal,” an engineer, Netflix host, and STEM education advocate who became the 100th woman to fly to space. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Sign Me Up!

Rocket Lab flies twice in one day. Two Electron rockets took flight Sunday, one from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula and the other from Wallops Island, Virginia, making Rocket Lab the first commercial space company to launch from two different hemispheres in a 24-hour period, Payload reports. One of the missions was the third of five launches for the French Internet of Things company Kinéis, which is building a satellite constellation. The other launch was an Electron modified to act as a suborbital technology demonstrator for hypersonic research. Rocket Lab did not disclose the customer, but speculation is focused on the defense contractor Leidos, which signed a four-launch deal with Rocket Lab last year.

Building cadence … SpaceX first launched two Falcon 9 rockets in 24 hours in 2021. This year, the company launched three Falcon 9s in a single day from pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Rocket Lab has now launched 14 Electron rockets this year, more than any other Western company other than SpaceX. “Two successful launches less than 24 hours apart from pads in different hemispheres. That’s unprecedented capability in the small launch market and one we’re immensely proud to deliver at Rocket Lab,” said Peter Beck, the company’s founder and CEO. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Italy to reopen offshore launch site. An Italian-run space center located in Kenya will once again host rocket launches from an offshore launch platform, European Spaceflight reports. The Italian minister for enterprises, Adolfo Urso, recently announced that the country decided to move ahead with plans to again launch rockets from the Luigi Broglio Space Center near Malindi, Kenya. “The idea is to give a new, more ambitious mission to this base and use it for the launch of low-orbit microsatellites,” Urso said.

Decades of dormancy … Between 1967 and 1988, the Italian government and NASA partnered to launch nine US-made Scout rockets from the Broglio Space Center to place small satellites into orbit. The rockets lifted off from the San Marco platform, a converted oil platform in equatorial waters off the Kenyan coast. Italian officials have not said what rocket might be used once the San Marco platform is reactivated, but Italy is the leading contributor on the Vega C rocket, a solid-fueled launcher somewhat larger than the Scout. Italy will manage the reactivation of the space center, which has remained in service as a satellite tracking station, under the country’s Mattei Plan, an initiative aimed at fostering stronger economic partnerships with African nations. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX flies same rocket twice in two weeks. Less than 14 days after its previous flight, a Falcon 9 booster took off again from Florida’s Space Coast early Monday to haul 23 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit, Spaceflight Now reports. The booster, numbered B1080 in SpaceX’s fleet of reusable rockets, made its 13th trip to space before landing on SpaceX’s floating drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The launch marked a turnaround of 13 days, 12 hours, and 44 minutes from this booster’s previous launch November 11, also with a batch of Starlink satellites. The previous record turnaround time between flights of the same Falcon 9 booster was 21 days.

400 and still going … SpaceX’s launch prior to this one was on Saturday night, when a Falcon 9 carried a set of Starlinks aloft from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The flight Saturday night was the 400th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket since 2010, and SpaceX’s 100th launch from the West Coast. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Chinese firm launches upgraded rocket. Chinese launch startup LandSpace put two satellites into orbit late Tuesday with the first launch of an improved version of the Zhuque-2 rocket, Space News reports. The enhanced rocket, named the Zhuque-2E, replaces vernier steering thrusters with a thrust vector control system on the second stage engine, saving roughly 880 pounds (400 kilograms) in mass. The Zhuque-2E rocket is capable of placing a payload of up to 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit, according to LandSpace.

LandSpace in the lead … Founded in 2015, LandSpace is a leader among China’s crop of quasi-commercial launch startups. The company hasn’t launched as often as some of its competitors, but it became the first launch operator in the world to successfully reach orbit with a methane/liquid oxygen (methalox) rocket last year. Now, LandSpace has improved on its design to create the Zhuque-2E rocket, which also has a large niobium allow nozzle extension on the second stage engine for reduced weight. LandSpace also claims the Zhuque-2E is China’s first rocket to use fully supercooled propellant loading, similar to the way SpaceX loads densified propellants into its rockets to achieve higher performance. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

NASA taps Falcon Heavy for another big launch. A little more than a month after SpaceX launched NASA’s flagship Europa Clipper mission on a Falcon Heavy rocket, the space agency announced its next big interplanetary probe will also launch on a Falcon Heavy, Ars reports. What’s more, the Dragonfly mission the Falcon Heavy will launch in 2028 is powered by a plutonium power source. This will be the first time SpaceX launches a rocket with nuclear materials onboard, requiring an additional layer of safety certification by NASA. The agency’s most recent nuclear-powered spacecraft have all launched on United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets, which are nearing retirement.

The details … Dragonfly is one of the most exciting robotic missions NASA has ever developed. The mission is to send an automated rotorcraft to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, where Dragonfly will soar through a soupy atmosphere in search of organic molecules, the building blocks of life. It’s a hefty vehicle, about the size of a compact car, and much larger than NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter. The launch period opens July 5, 2028, to allow Dragonfly to reach Titan in 2034. NASA is paying SpaceX $256.6 million to launch the mission on a Falcon Heavy. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

New Glenn is back on the pad. Blue Origin has raised its fully stacked New Glenn rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of pre-launch testing, Florida Today reports. The last time this new 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket was visible to the public eye was in March. Since then, Blue Origin has been preparing the rocket for its inaugural launch, which could yet happen before the end of the year. Blue Origin has not announced a target launch date.

But first, more tests … Blue Origin erected the New Glenn rocket vertical on the launch pad earlier this year for ground tests, but this is the first time a flight-ready (or close to it) New Glenn has been spotted on the pad. This time, the first stage booster has its full complement of seven methane-fueled BE-4 engines. Before the first flight, Blue Origin plans to test-fire the seven BE-4 engines on the pad and conduct one or more propellant loading tests to exercise the launch team, the rocket, and ground systems before launch day.

Second Ariane 6 incoming. ArianeGroup has confirmed that the first and second stages for the second Ariane 6 flight have begun the transatlantic voyage from Europe to French Guiana aboard the sail-assisted transport ship Canopée, European Spaceflight reports. The second Ariane 6 launch, previously targeted before the end of this year, has now been delayed to no earlier than February 2025, according to Arianespace, the rocket’s commercial operator. This follows a mostly successful debut launch in July.

An important passenger … While the first Ariane 6 launch carried a cluster of small experimental satellites, the second Ariane 6 rocket will carry a critical spy satellite into orbit for the French armed forces. Shipping the core elements of the second Ariane 6 to the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, is a significant step in the launch campaign. Once in Kourou, the stages will be connected together and rolled out to the launch pad, where technicians will install two strap-on solid rocket boosters and the payload fairing containing France’s CSO-3 military satellite.

Next three launches

Nov. 29: Soyuz-2.1a | Kondor-FKA 2 | Vostochny Cosmodrome, Russia | 21: 50 UTC

Nov. 30: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-65 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05: 00 UTC

Nov. 30: Falcon 9 | NROL-126 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 08: 08 UTC

Rocket Report: A good week for Blue Origin; Italy wants its own launch capability Read More »