Science

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Some dogs can classify their toys by function

animal behavior, animal cognition, Biology, Dogs, Science / /

Certain dogs can not only memorize the names of objects like their favorite toys, but they can also extend those labels to entirely new objects with a similar function, regardless of whether or not they are similar in appearance, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology. It’s a cognitively advanced ability known as “label extension,” and for animals to acquire it usually involves years of intensive training in captivity. But the dogs in this new study developed the ability to classify their toys by function with no formal training, merely by playing naturally with their owners.

Co-author Claudia Fugazza of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, likens this ability to a person calling a hammer and a rock by the same name, or a child understanding that “cup” can describe a mug, a glass, or a tumbler, because they serve the same function. “The rock and the hammer look physically different, but they can be used for the same function,” she said. “So now it turns out that these dogs can do the same.”

Fugazza and her Hungarian colleagues have been studying canine behavior and cognition for several years. For instance, in 2023, we reported on the group’s experiments on how dogs interpret gestures, such as pointing at a specific object. A dog will interpret the gesture as a directional cue, unlike a human toddler, who will more likely focus on the object itself. It’s called spatial bias, and the team concluded that the phenomenon arises from a combination of how dogs see (visual acuity) and how they think, with “smarter” dog breeds prioritizing an object’s appearance as much as its location. This suggests the smarter dogs’ information processing is more similar to that of humans.

Another aspect of the study involved measuring the length of a dog’s head, which prior research has shown is correlated with visual acuity. The shorter a dog’s head, the more similar their visual acuity is to human vision. That’s because there is a higher concentration of retinal ganglion cells in the center of their field of vision, making vision sharper and giving such dogs binocular depth vision. The testing showed that dogs with better visual acuity, and who also scored higher on the series of cognitive tests, also exhibited less spatial bias. This suggests that canine spatial bias is not simply a sensory matter but is also influenced by how they think. “Smarter” dogs have less spatial bias.

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Right-wing political violence is more frequent, deadly than left-wing violence

hate speech, right-wing extremism, Science, Social science, syndication / /

President Trump’s assertions about political violence ignore the facts.

After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the US, and “they should be put in jail.”

“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”

“We are going to use every resource we have… throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.

But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.

Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the US are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

Political violence rising

The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the recent Department of Justice removal of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.

Political violence in the US has risen in recent months and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation, and doxing.

Kirk’s assassination illustrates the growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.

This follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

These incidents reflect a normalization of political violence. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.

Defining “political violence”

This article relies on some of our research on extremism, other academic research, federal reports, academic datasets, and other monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.

Support for political violence in the US is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, posing serious risks to democratic practices.

But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.

Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions. The FBI and DHS do not investigate people in the US for constitutionally protected speech, activism, or ideological beliefs.

Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. The Global Terrorism Database counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social, or religious motivation.

These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “terrorism” rather than a “hate crime” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.

For example, a politically motivated shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and prosecuted as a homicide or a hate crime at the state level.

Patterns in incidents and fatalities

Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.

Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing, and media coverage.

In the first half of 2025, 35 percent of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted US government personnel or facilities—more than twice the rate in 2024.

Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.

Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75 to 80 percent of US domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.

Illustrative cases include the 2015 Charleston church shooting, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners; the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were murdered; the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre, in which an anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in US history.

By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10 to 15 percent of incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities.

Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which were more likely to target property rather than people.

Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. In 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.

Hard to count

There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.

The US focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, relying on existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions, and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.

Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.

The State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, US law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as terrorist entities because of First Amendment free speech protections.

Rhetoric is not evidence

Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the US.

But we can make some important conclusions.

Politically motivated violence in the US is rare compared with overall violent crime. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy, and deepen societal polarization.

Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence. The number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.

High-profile political violence often brings heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence is essential for democracy.

Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures—to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.

Art Jipson is associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton, and Paul J. Becker is associate professor of sociology at University of Dayton.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community. Our team of editors work with these experts to share their knowledge with the wider public. Our aim is to allow for better understanding of current affairs and complex issues, and hopefully improve the quality of public discourse on them.

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You can hold on to your butts thanks to DNA that evolved in fish

Biology, Development, evolution, how genes, limbs, Science / /

There were some indications that the same thing is true in fish, where the elimination of equivalent hox genes also interfered with the formation of the rays at the ends of fins. This would suggest that digits formed by elaborating on a genetic system that already existed in order to produce fins.

However, when a US-French team started looking at the regulation of one set of hox genes in the limbs, things turned out to be a bit more complicated. The hox gene clusters have two chunks of regulatory DNA that help set the activity of the genes within the cluster, one upstream of the genes, one downstream. (For the molecular biologists among us, that’s on the 5′ and 3′ sides of the gene cluster.) And we know that in vertebrates, some of the key regulatory DNA for one of the clusters is on the upstream side, since deleting it left all the genes in the cluster inactive in the region of the limb where digits form.

Same place, different reasons

So, the research team behind the new work deleted the equivalent region in a fish (the zebrafish) using the gene editing tool CRISPR. And, deleting the same area that wipes out hox gene activity in the digits in mice did… not very much. The hox gene activity was slightly reduced, but these genes were still active in the right place at the right time to make digits. So, while the activity looked the same, the reasons for the activity seem to be different in fish and mice. Which means that hox activity in the digits isn’t the ancestral state; instead, it seems to have evolved separately in the ray-finned fish and vertebrate lineages.

So, the researchers asked a simple question: If the regulatory DNA they deleted didn’t activate these genes in the limb, where was it needed? So, the researchers looked at where these hox genes were active in fish with and without the deletion. They found one region where it seems to matter: the developing cloaca. In fish, the cloaca is a single orifice that handles excretion (both urine and fecal material) as well as reproduction. So, it’s basically the fish equivalent of our rear ends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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northrop-grumman’s-new-spacecraft-is-a-real-chonker

Northrop Grumman’s new spacecraft is a real chonker

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

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

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

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

A bigger keg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Get into the cockpit as new crop of “Top Gun” pilots get their wings

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NatGeo’s new documentary series, Top Guns: The Next Generation, shows the sweat behind the spectacle.

Credit: National Geographic

The blockbuster success of the 1986 film Top Gun—chronicling the paths of young naval aviators as they go through the grueling US Navy’s Fighter Weapons School (aka the titular Top Gun)—spawned more than just a successful multimedia franchise. It has also been credited with inspiring future generations of fighter pilots. National Geographic takes viewers behind the scenes to see the process play out for real, with its new documentary series, Top Guns: The Next Generation.

Each episode focuses on a specific aspect of the training, following a handful of students from the Navy and Marines through the highs and lows of their training. That includes practicing dive bombs at break-neck speeds; successfully landing on an aircraft carrier by “catching the wire”; learning the most effective offensive and defensive maneuvers in dogfighting; and, finally, engaging in a freestyle dogfight against a seasoned instructor to complete the program and (hopefully) earn their golden wings. NatGeo was granted unprecedented access, even using in-cockpit cameras to capture the pulse-pounding action of being in the air, as well as capturing behind-the-scenes candid moments.

How does reality stack up against its famous Hollywood depiction? “I think there is a lot of similarity,” Capt. Juston “Poker” Kuch, who oversees all training and operations at NAS Meridian, told Ars. “The execution portion of the mission gets focused in the movie so it is all about the flight and the dogfighting and dropping the bombs. What they don’t see is the countless hours of preparation that go into the mission, all the years and years of training that it took to get there. You see the battle scenes in Top Gun and you’re inspired, but there’s a lot of time and effort that goes in to get an individual to that point. It doesn’t make for good movies, I guess.”

Kuch went through the program himself, arriving one week before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. He describes the program as being deliberately designed to overwhelm students with information and push them to their limits. “We give them more information, more data than they can possibly process,” said Kuch. “And we give it to them in a volume and speed that they are not going to be capable of handling. But it’s incumbent on them to develop that processing ability to figure out what is the important piece of information [or] data. What do I need to do to keep my aircraft flying, keep my nose pointed in the right direction?”

Ars caught up with Kuch to learn more.

Essential skills

A crew member holds an inert dummy bomb for the camera. National Geographic/Dan Di Martino

Ars Technica: How has the Top Gun training program changed since you went through it?

Juston Koch: It’s still the same hangar that I was in 25 years ago, and the platforms are a little bit different. One of the bigger changes is we do more in the simulator now. The simulators that I went through are now what the students use to train on their own without any instructors, because we now have much newer, nicer, and more capable simulators.

The thing that simulators let us do is they let us pause. When you’re on flight, there’s no pause button, and so you’ve got to do the entire event. A lot of times when there’s learning moments, we’ll try to provide a little bit of debrief in real-time. But the aircraft is still going 400 miles an hour, and you’re on to the next portion of the mission, so it’s tough to really kind of drill down into some of the debrief points. That doesn’t happen in the simulator. You pause it, you can spend five minutes to talk about what just happened, and then set them back up to go ahead and see it again. So you get a lot more sets and reps working through the simulator. So that’s probably one of the bigger differences from when I went through, is just the quality and capability of the simulators.

Ars Technica: Let’s talk about those G forces, particularly the impact on the human body and what pilots can do to offset those effects.

Juston Koch: The G-force that they experienced in their first phase of training is about 2 to 3 Gs, maybe 4 Gs. On the next platform we’ll go up to 6.5  to 7 Gs. Then they’ll continue on to their next platform which gets up to 7.5 Gs. It’s a gradual increase of G-force over time, and they’re training the body to respond. There’s a natural response that your body provides. As blood is draining from your head down to your lower extremities, your body is going to help push it back up. But we have a G-suit, which is an inflatable bladder that is wrapped around our legs and our stomach, and it basically constricts us, our legs, and tries to prevent the blood from going down to the lower extremities. But you have to help that G-suit along by straining your muscles. It’s called the anti-G straining maneuver.

That is part of developing that habit pattern. We do a lot of training with a physiologist [who] spends a lot of time in the ground school portion of training to talk to them about the effects of G-force, how they can physically prepare through physical fitness activities, hitting the gym as they are going through the syllabus. Diet and sleep kind of go along with those to help make sure that they’re at peak performance. We use the phrase, “You got to be an athlete.” Much like an athlete gets a good night’s sleep, has good nutrition to go along with their physical fitness, that’s what we stress to get them at peak performance for pulling Gs.

Learning to dogfight

Capt. Juston “Poker” Kuch during a debriefing. National Geographic

Ars Technica: Those G forces can stress the aircraft, too; I noted a great deal of focus on ensuring students stay within the required threshold.

Juston Kuch: Yes, the engineers have figured out the acceptable level of threshold for Gs. Over time, if the aircraft stays under it, the airframe is going to hold up just fine. But if it’s above it to a certain degree, we have to do inspections. Depending on how much of an overstress [there is], an invasive level of inspection might be required. The last thing we want to do is put an aircraft in the air that has suffered fatigue of a part because of overstress, because that part is now more prone to failing.

Ars Technica: There is a memorable moment where a student admits to being a little scared on his first bombing dive, despite extensive simulator training. How do you help students make the switch from simulations to reality?

Juston Kuch: That’s why we do a mixture of both. The simulator is to help them develop that scan pattern of where to look, what are the important pieces of information at the right time. As they get into the aircraft the first time and they roll in, it’s a natural tendency to look outside at the world getting very big at you or the mountains off in the distance. But you need to take a breath and come back into that scan pattern that you developed in the simulator on what to look for where. It’s very similar as we go to the aircraft carrier. If you go to the aircraft carrier and you’re looking at the boat, or looking at the rest of the ship, you’re probably not doing well. You need to focus on the lens out there in the lineup.

It’s constant corrections that you’re doing. It is very much an eye scan. You have to be looking at certain things. Where is your lead indicator coming from? If you wait for the airspeed to fall off, it’s probably a little bit too late to tell you that you’re underpowered. You need to look for some of the other cues that you have available to you. That’s why there’s so many different sensors and systems and numbers. We’re teaching them not to look at one number, but to look at a handful of numbers and extrapolate what that means for their energy state and their aircraft position.

Ars Technica: All the featured candidates were quite different in many ways, which is a good thing. As one instructor says in the series, they can’t all be “Mavericks.” But are there particular qualities that you find in most successful candidates?

Juston Kuch: The individual personality, whether they’re extroverts, introverts, quiet, are varied. But there is a common thread through all of them: dedication to mission, hard work, willing to take failure and setbacks on board, and get better for the next evolution. That trait is with everybody that I see go through successfully. I never see somebody fail and just say, “Oh, I’m never going to get this. I’m going to quit and go home.” If they do that, they don’t finish the program. So the personalities are different but the core motivations and attributes are there for all naval aviators.

Getting their wings

Ars Technica: I was particularly struck by the importance of resilience in the successful candidates.

Juston Kuch: That is probably one of the key ingredients to our training syllabus. We want the students to be stressed. We want to place demands on them. We want them to fail at certain times. We expect that they are going to fail at certain times. We do this in an incredibly safe environment. There are multiple protocols in place so that nobody is going to get hurt in that training evolution. But we want them to experience that, because it’s about learning and growing. If you fall down eight times, you get back up eight times.

It’s not that you are going to get it right the first time. It’s that you are going to continue to work to get to the right answer or get to the right level of performance. So resiliency is key, and that’s what combat is about, too, to a certain degree. The enemy is going to do something that you’re not expecting. There is the potential that there will be damage or other challenges that the enemy is going to impact on you. What do you do from there? How do you pick yourself up and your team up and continue to move on?

Ars Technica: What do you see for the future of the program as technology continues to develop?

Juston Kuch: I think just continuing to develop our simulator devices, our mixed-reality devices, which are getting better and better. And also the ability to apply that to a debrief. We do a great job in the preparation and the execution for the flights. Right now we evaluate students with an instructor in the back taking notes in real time, then bringing those notes for the debrief. We have some metrics we can download from the planes, as well as tapes. But to be able to automate that over time, particularly in the simulators, is where the real value added lies—where students go into the simulations, execute the profile, and the system provides a real-time debriefing critique. It would give them another opportunity to have a learning evolution as they get to relive the entire evolution and pick apart the portions of the flight that they need to work on.

Top Guns: The Next Generation premieres on National Geographic on September 16, 2025, and will be available for streaming on Disney+ the next day.

Photo of Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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The US is trying to kick-start a “nuclear energy renaissance”

climate change, Energy, nuclear energy, reactors, Science, syndication / /

Push to revive nuclear energy relies on deregulation; experts say strategy is misplaced.

In May, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders to facilitate the construction of nuclear reactors and the development of nuclear energy technology; the orders aim to cut red tape, ease approval processes, and reshape the role of the main regulatory agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC. These moves, the administration said, were part of an effort to achieve American independence from foreign power providers by way of a “nuclear energy renaissance.”

Self-reliance isn’t the only factor motivating nuclear power proponents outside of the administration: Following a decades-long trend away from nuclear energy, in part due to safety concerns and high costs, the technology has emerged as a potential option to try to mitigate climate change. Through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split to release energy, reactors don’t emit any greenhouse gases.

The Trump administration wants to quadruple the nuclear sector’s domestic energy production, with the goal of producing 400 gigawatts by 2050. To help achieve that goal, scientific institutions like the Idaho National Laboratory, a leading research institute in nuclear energy, are pushing forward innovations such as more efficient types of fuel. Companies are also investing millions of dollars to develop their own nuclear reactor designs, a move from industry that was previously unheard of in the nuclear sector. For example, Westinghouse, a Pennsylvania-based nuclear power company, plans to build 10 new large reactors to help achieve the 2050 goal.

However, the road to renaissance is filled with familiar obstacles. Nuclear energy infrastructure is “too expensive to build, and it takes too long to build,” said Allison Macfarlane, a science and technology policy expert at the University of British Columbia who used to chair the NRC from 2012 to 2014.

And experts are divided on whether new nuclear technologies, such as small versions of reactors, are ready for primetime. The nuclear energy field is now “in a hype bubble that is driving unrealistic expectations,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization that has long acted as a nuclear safety watchdog.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to advance nuclear energy by weakening the NRC, Lyman said. “The message is that it’s regulation that has been the obstacle to deploying nuclear power, and if we just get rid of all this red tape, then the industry is going to thrive,” he added. “I think that’s really misplaced.”

Although streamlining the approval process might accelerate development, the true problem lies in the high costs of nuclear, which would need to be significantly cheaper to compete with other sources of energy such as natural gas, said Koroush Shirvan, a nuclear science researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even the license-ready reactors are still not economical,” he said. If the newer reactor technologies do pan out, without government support and subsidies, Shirvan said, it is difficult to imagine them “coming online before 2035.”

It’s déjá vu all over again

Rumblings of a nuclear renaissance give experts a sense of déjà vu. The first resurgence in interest was around 2005, when many thought that nuclear energy could mitigate climate change and be an energy alternative to dwindling supply and rising prices of fossil fuels. But that enthusiasm slowed mainly after the Fukushima accident in 2011, in which a tsunami-triggered power outage—along with multiple safety failures—led to a nuclear meltdown at a facility in Japan. “So, the first nuclear renaissance fizzled out,” said Lyman.

Globally, the proportion of electricity provided by nuclear energy has been dwindling. Although there has been an increase in generation, nuclear energy has contributed less to the share of global electricity demand, dropping to 9 percent in 2024 from a peak of about 17 percent in 2001. In the US, 94 reactors generate about a fifth of the nation’s electricity, a proportion that has held steady since 1990s. But only two of those reactors have come online in the last nearly 30 years.

This renewed push is “a second bite at the apple, and we’ll have to see but it does seem to have a lot more of a headwind now,” said Lyman.

Much of that movement comes from the private sector, said Todd Allen, a nuclear engineer at the University of Michigan. In the last couple of decades, dozens of nuclear energy companies have emerged, including TerraPower, co-founded by Bill Gates. “It feels more like normal capitalism than we ever had in nuclear,” Allen said. Those companies are working on developing the large reactors that have been the backbone of nuclear energy for decades, as well as newer technologies that can bolster the field.

Proponents say small modular reactors, or SMRs, and microreactors, which generate less than 300 megawatts and 20 megawatts, respectively, could offer safer, cheaper, and more flexible energy compared to their more traditional counterparts. (Large reactors have, on average, 900 megawatts of capacity.) One 2022 study found that modularization can reduce construction time by up to 60 percent.

These designs have taken the spotlight: In 2024, a report estimated that the SMR market would reach $295 billion by 2043. In June, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress that DOE will have at least three SMRs running by July of next year. And in July of this year, the Nuclear Energy Agency launched a dashboard to track SMR technologies around the world, which identified 74 SMR designs at different stages around the world. The first commercial SMR in North America is currently being constructed in Canada, with plans to be operational by 2030.

But whether SMRs and microreactors are actually safer and more cost-effective remains to be determined. A 2022 study found that SMRs would likely produce more leakage and nuclear waste than conventional reactors. Studying them, though, is difficult since so few are currently operational.

In part, that may be because of cost. Multiple analyses have concluded that, because of rising construction and operating costs, SMRs might not be financially viable enough to compete for the world’s energy markets, including in developing countries that lack affordable access to electricity.

And recent ventures have hit road bumps: For example, NuScale, the only SMR developer with a design approved by the NRC, had to shut down its operations in November 2023 due to increasingly high costs (though another uprated SMR design was approved earlier this year).

“Nothing is really commercialized yet,” said Macfarlane. Most of the tech companies haven’t figured out expenses, supply chains, the kind of waste they are going to produce or security at their reactors, she added.

Fuel supply is also a barrier since most plants use uranium enriched at low rates, but SMRs and microreactors use uranium enriched at higher levels, which is typically sourced from Russia and not commercially available in the US. So scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory are working to recover enriched uranium from existing reactors and developed new, more cost-effective fuels, said Jess Gehin, the associate laboratory director for the Nuclear Science & Technology Directorate at the INL. They are also using artificial intelligence and modeling simulation tools and capabilities to optimize nuclear energy systems, he added: “We got to reach 400 gigawatts, we need to accelerate all of this.”

Companies are determined to face and surpass these barriers. Some have begun pouring concrete, such as one nuclear company called Kairos Power that began building a demo of their SMR design in Tennessee; the plant is projected to be fully operational by 2027. “I would make the case that we’re moving faster than many in the field, if not the fastest,” Mike Laufer, the company’s CEO and co-founder, told Reuters last year.

Some experts think achieving nuclear expansion can be done—and revel in the progress so far: “I would have never thought we’d be in this position where we’re working so hard to expand nuclear, because for most of my career, it wasn’t that way,” said Gehin. “And I would say each month that goes by exceeds my expectations on the next bigger things that are coming.”

Doing more with less?

Although the Trump administration aims to accelerate nuclear energy through executive orders, in practice, it has not allocated new funding yet, said Matt Bowen, an expert on nuclear energy, waste, and nonproliferation at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. In fact, the initial White House budget proposed cutting $4.7 billion from the Department of Energy, including $408 million from the Office of Nuclear Energy allocated for nuclear research in the 2026 fiscal year.

“The administration was proposing cuts to Office of Nuclear Energy and DOE more broadly, and DOGE is pushing staff out,” said Bowen. “How do you do more with less? Less staff, less money.”

The Trump administration places the blame for the nuclear sector’s stagnation on the NRC, which oversees licensing and recertification processes that cost the industry millions of dollars each year in compliance. In his executive orders, Trump called for a major reorganization of the NRC. Some of the proposed changes, like streamlining the approval process (which can take years for new plants), may be welcomed because “for a long time, they were very, very, very slow,” said Charles Forsberg, a nuclear chemical engineer at MIT. But there are worries that the executive orders could do more than cut red tape.

“Every word in those orders is of concern, because the thrust of those orders is to essentially strip the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its independence from the executive branch, essentially nullifying the original purpose,” said Lyman.

Some experts fear that with these new constraints, NRC staff will have less time and fewer resources to do their jobs, which could impact power plant safety in the future. Bowen said: “This notion that the problem for nuclear energy is regulation, and so all we need to do is deregulate, is both wrong and also really problematic.”

The next few decades will tell whether nuclear, especially SMRs, can overcome economic and technical challenges to safely contribute to decarbonization efforts. Some, like Gehin, are optimistic. “I think we’re going to accelerate,” he said. “We certainly can achieve a dramatic deployment if we put our mindset to it.”

But making nuclear financially competitive will take serious commitment from the government and the dozens of companies, with many still skeptical, Shirvan said. “I am quite, I would say, on the pessimistic scale when it comes to the future of nuclear energy in the US.”

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A “tragic capitulation”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An unforeseen contribution from Juno

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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Feds try to dodge lawsuit against their bogus climate report

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Meanwhile, Congress is trying to keep serious scientists from weighing in.

While the Trump administration has continued to refer to efforts to avoid the worst impacts of climate change as a scam, it has done almost nothing to counter the copious scientific evidence that demonstrates that climate change is real and doing real damage to the citizens of the US. The lone exception has been a draft Department of Energy report prepared by a handful of carefully chosen fringe figures that questioned the mainstream understanding of climate change. The shoddy work and questionable conclusions of that report were so extensive that an analysis of it required over 450 pages to detail all of its shortcomings.

But its shortcomings may not have been limited to the science, as a lawsuit alleges that its preparation violated a law that regulates the activities of federal advisory panels. Now, in an attempt to avoid dealing with that lawsuit, the Department of Energy is claiming that it dissolved the committee that prepared the report, making the lawsuit moot.

Meanwhile, Congress is also attempting to muddy the waters. In response to the DOE report, the National Academies of Science announced that it would prepare a report describing the current state of climate science. Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight have responded by announcing an investigation of the National Academies “for undermining the EPA.”

The vanishing committee

As we noted in our original coverage, the members of the advisory group that prepared the DOE report were carefully chosen for having views that are well outside the mainstream of climate science. Based on their past public statements, they could be counted on to produce a report that would question the severity of climate change and raise doubts about whether we had any evidence it was happening. The report they produced went beyond that by suggesting that the net effect of our carbon emissions was likely to be a positive for humanity.

Not only was that shoddy science, but a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists suggested that it was likely illegal. Groups like the one that wrote the report, the suit alleges, fall under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which (among other things) dictates that these groups must be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” rather than be selected in order to reinforce a single point of view.

The “among other things” that the law dictates is that the advisory groups have public meetings that are announced in advance, be chartered with a well-defined mission, and all of their records be made available to the public. In contrast, nobody within the Department of Energy, including the contrarians who wrote the report, acknowledged the work they were doing publicly until the day the draft report was released.

The suit alleges that the work of this group fell under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and the group violated the act in all of the above ways and more. The act asks the courts to force the DOE to disclose all the relevant records involved with the preparation of the report, and to cease relying on it for any regulatory actions. That’s significant because the Environmental Protection Agency cited it in its attempts to roll back its prior finding that greenhouse gases posed a danger to the US public.

This week, the DOE responded in court by claiming the panel that produced the report had been dissolved, making the suit moot. That does not address the fact that the EPA is continuing to rely on the report in its attempts to argue there’s no point in regulating greenhouse gases. It also leaves the report itself in a weird limbo. Its release marked the start of a period of public comment, and said comments were supposed to be considered during the revisions that would take place before the draft was finalized.

Failure to complete the revision process would leave the EPA vulnerable to claims that it’s relying on an incomplete draft report for its scientific justifications. So, while the DOE’s tactics may protect some of its internal documents, it may ultimately cause larger problems for the Trump administration’s agenda.

Attacking the academies

Earlier this year, we were critical of the US’s National Academies of Science for seemingly refusing to respond to the Trump administration’s attacks on science. That reticence appeared to end in August with the release of the DOE climate report and the announcement that the EPA was using that report as the latest word on climate science, which it argued had changed considerably since the initial EPA decisions on this issue in 2009.

In response, the National Academies announced that it would fast-track a new analysis of the risks posed by greenhouse gases, this one done by mainstream scientists instead of a handful of fringe figures. The goal was to get it done before the EPA closed its public comment period on its proposal to ignore greenhouse gases.

Obviously, this poses a threat to the EPA’s planned actions, which apparently prompted Republicans in Congress to step in. Earlier this month, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), announced he was investigating the National Academies for preparing this report, calling it “a blatant partisan act to undermine the Trump Administration.”

Comer has also sent a letter to the National Academies, outlining his concerns and demanding a variety of documents. Some of these are pretty convoluted: “The study is led by a National Academies member who serves as an external advisor to the Science Philanthropy Alliance, which has ties to the left-wing group Arabella Advisors through the New Venture Fund, an organization that promotes a variety of progressive causes and funds major climate litigation,” Comer says, suggesting … it’s not entirely clear what. Another member of the study panel had the audacity to endorse former President Biden for his climate policies. Separately, Comer says he’s concerned about the source of the funds that will pay for this study.

Some of Comer’s demands are consistent with this, focusing on funding for this review. But he goes well beyond that, demanding a list of all the National Academies’ sources of funding, as well as any internal communications about this study. He’s also going on a bit of a witch hunt within the federal government, demanding any communications the NAS has had with government employees regarding the DOE’s report or the EPA’s greenhouse gas decisions.

It’s pretty clear that Comer recognizes that any unbiased presentation of climate science is going to undercut the EPA’s rationale for reversing course on greenhouse gas regulations. So, he’s preparing in advance to undercut that presentation by claiming it’s rife with conflicts of interest—and he’s willing to include “supporting politicians who want to act on climate change” as a conflict.

All of this maneuvering is taking place before the EPA has even finalized its planned U-turn on greenhouse gases, a step that will undoubtedly trigger additional investigations and lawsuits. In many ways, this is likely to reflect many of these parties laying the groundwork for the legal fight to come. And, while some of this is ostensibly about the state of the science that has supported the EPA’s past policy decisions, it’s clear that the administration and its supporters are doing their best to minimize science’s impact on their preferred course of action.

Photo of John Timmer

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

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New pathway engineered into plants lets them suck up more CO₂

biochemistry, Biology, carbon dioxide, metabolism, photosynthesis, plants, Science / /

And, well, it worked remarkably well. The plants carrying all the genes for the McG cycle weighed two to three times as much as control plants that only had some of the genes. They had more leaves, the leaves themselves were larger, and the plants produced more seeds. In a variety of growing conditions, the plants with an intact McG cycle incorporated more carbon, and they did so without increasing their water uptake.

Having a two-carbon output also worked as expected. By feeding the plants radioactive bicarbonate, they were able to trace the carbon showing up in the expected molecules. And imaging confirmed that the plants were making so many lipids that their cells formed internal pockets containing nothing but fatty materials. Triglyceride levels increased by factors of 100 or more.

So, by a variety of measures, the plants actually did better with an extra pathway for fixing carbon. There are a number of cautions, though. For starters, it’s not clear whether what we’re learning using a small weed will also apply to larger plants or crops, or really anything much beyond Arabidopsis at the moment. It could be that having excess globs of fat floating around the cell has consequences for something like a tree. Plants grown in a lab also tend to be provided with a nutrient-rich soil, and it’s not clear whether all of this would apply to a range of real-world conditions.

Finally, we can’t say whether all the excess carbon these plants are sucking in from the atmosphere would end up being sequestered in any useful sense. It could be that all the fat would just get oxidized as soon as the plant dies. That said, there are a lot of approaches to making biofuel that rely on modifying the fats found in plants or algae. It’s possible that this can eventually help make biofuels efficient so they actually have a net positive effect on the climate.

Regardless of practical impacts, however, it’s pretty amazing that we’ve now reached the point where we can fundamentally rewire a bit of metabolism that has been in operation for billions of years without completely messing up plants.

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adp3528  (About DOIs).

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next three launches

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

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

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

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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

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Pentagon begins deploying new satellite network to link sensors with shooters

falcon 9, launch, military space, Science, Space, space development agency, spacex, US Space Force, Vandenberg space force base, york space systems / /

“This is the first time we’ll have a space layer fully integrated into our warfighting operations.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, with a payload of 21 data-relay satellites for the US military’s Space Development Agency. Credit: SpaceX

The first 21 satellites in a constellation that could become a cornerstone for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile-defense shield successfully launched from California Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Falcon 9 took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7: 12 am PDT (10: 12 am EDT; 14: 12 UTC) and headed south over the Pacific Ocean, heading for an orbit over the poles before releasing the 21 military-owned satellites to begin several weeks of activations and checkouts.

These 21 satellites will boost themselves to a final orbit at an altitude of roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). The Pentagon plans to launch 133 more satellites over the next nine months to complete the build-out of the Space Development Agency’s first-generation, or Tranche 1, constellation of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites.

“We had a great launch today for the Space Development Agency, putting this array of space vehicles into orbit in support of their revolutionary new architecture,” said Col. Ryan Hiserote, system program director for the Space Force’s assured access to space launch execution division.

Over the horizon

Military officials have worked for six years to reach this moment. The Space Development Agency (SDA) was established during the first Trump administration, which made plans for an initial set of demonstration satellites that launched a couple of years ago. In 2022, the Pentagon awarded contracts for the first 154 operational spacecraft. The first batch of 21 data-relay satellites built by Colorado-based York Space Systems is what went up Wednesday.

“Back in 2019, when the SDA was stood up, it was to do two things. One was to make sure that we can do beyond line of sight targeting, and the other was to pace the threat, the emerging threat, in the missile-warning and missile-tracking domain. That’s what the focus has been,” said Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, the SDA’s acting director.

Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) pose with industry and government teams in front of the Space Development’s first 21 operational satellites at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Cramer is one the most prominent backers of the Golden Dome program in the US Senate. Credit: US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Daekwon Stith

Historically, the military communications and missile-warning networks have used a handful of large, expensive satellites in geosynchronous orbit some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. This architecture was devised during the Cold War and is optimized for nuclear conflict and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

For example, the military’s ultra-hardened Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites in geosynchronous orbit are designed to operate through an electromagnetic pulse and nuclear scintillation. The Space Force’s missile-warning satellites are also in geosynchronous orbit, with infrared sensors tuned to detect the heat plume of a missile launch.

The problem? Those satellites cost more than $1 billion a pop. They’re also vulnerable to attack from a foreign adversary. Pentagon officials say the SDA’s satellite constellation, officially called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, is tailored to detect and track more modern threats, such as smaller missiles and hypersonic weapons carrying conventional warheads. It’s easier for these missiles to evade the eyes of older early warning satellites.

What’s more, the SDA’s fleet in low-Earth orbit will have numerous satellites. Losing one or several satellites to an attack would not degrade the constellation’s overall capability. The SDA’s new relay satellites cost between $14 and $15 million each, according to Sandhoo. The total cost of the first tranche of 154 operational satellites totals approximately $3.1 billion.

Multi-mission satellites

These satellites will not only detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missile launches; they will also transmit signals between US forces using an existing encrypted tactical data link network known as Link 16. This UHF system is used by NATO and other US allies to allow military aircraft, ships, and land forces to share tactical information through text messages, pictures, data, and voice communication in near real time, according to the SDA’s website.

Up to now, Link 16 radios were ubiquitous on fighter jets, helicopters, naval vessels, and missile batteries. But they had a severe limitation. Link 16 was only able to close a radio link with a clear line of sight. The Space Development Agency’s satellites will change that, providing direct-to-weapon connectivity from sensors to shooters on Earth’s surface, in the air, and in space.

The relay satellites, which the SDA calls the transport layer, are also equipped with Ka-band and laser communication terminals for higher-bandwidth connectivity.

“What the transport layer does is it extends beyond the line of sight,” Sandhoo said. “Now, you’re able to talk not only to within a couple of miles with your Link 16 radios, (but) we can use space to, let’s say, go from Hawaii out to Guam using those tactical radios, using a space layer.”

The Space Development Agency’s “Tranche 1” architecture includes 154 operational satellites, 126 for data relay and 28 for missile tracking. With this illustration, the SDA does its best to show how the complex architecture is supposed to work. Credit: Space Development Agency

Another batch of SDA relay satellites will launch next month, and more will head to space in November. In all, it will take 10 launches to fully deploy the SDA’s Tranche 1 constellation. Six of those missions will carry data-relay satellites, and four will carry satellites with sensors to detect and track missile launches. The Pentagon selected several contractors to build the satellites, so the military is not reliant on a single company. The builders of the SDA’s operational satellites include York, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris.

“We will increase coverage as we get the rest of those launches on orbit,” said Michael Eppolito, the SDA’s acting deputy director.

The satellites will connect with one another using inter-satellite laser links, creating a mesh network with sufficient range to provide regional communications, missile warning, and targeting coverage over the Western Pacific beginning in 2027. US Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees military operations in this region, is slated to become the first combatant command to take up use of the SDA’s satellite constellation.

This is not incidental. US officials see China as the nation’s primary strategic threat, and Indo-Pacific Command would be on the front lines of any future conflict between Chinese and US forces. The SDA has contracts in place for more than 270 second-generation, or Tranche 2, satellites, to further expand the network’s reach. There’s also a third generation in the works, but the Pentagon has paused part of the SDA’s Tranche 3 program to evaluate other architectures, including one offered by SpaceX.

Teaching tactical operators to use the new capabilities offered by the SDA’s satellite fleet could be just as challenging as building the network itself. To do this, the Pentagon plans to put soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines through “warfighter immersion” training beginning next year. This training will allow US forces to “get used to using space from this construct,” Sandhoo said.

“This is different than how it has been done in the past,” Sandhoo said. “This is the first time we’ll have a space layer actually fully integrated into our warfighting operations.”

The SDA’s satellite architecture is a harbinger for what’s to come with the Pentagon’s Golden Dome system, a missile-defense shield for the US homeland proposed by President Donald Trump in an executive order in January. Congress authorized a down payment on Golden Dome in July, the first piece of funding for what the White House says will cost $175 billion over the next three years.

Golden Dome, as currently envisioned, will require thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit to track missile launches and space-based interceptors to attempt to shoot them down. The Trump administration hasn’t said how much of the shield might be deployed by the end of 2028, or what the entire system might eventually cost.

But the capabilities of the SDA’s satellites will lay the foundation for any regional or national missile-defense shield. Therefore, it seems likely that the military will incorporate the SDA network into Golden Dome, which, at least at first, is likely to consist of technologies already in space or nearing launch. Apart from the Space Development Agency’s architecture in low-Earth orbit (LEO), the Space Force was already developing a new generation of missile-warning satellites to replace aging platforms in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), plus a fleet of missile-warning satellites to fly at a midrange altitude between LEO and GEO.

Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of US Northern Command, said in April that Golden Dome “for the first time integrates multiple layers into one system that allows us to detect, track, and defeat multiple types of threats that affect us in different domains.

“So, while a lot of the components and the requirements were there in the past, this is the first time that it’s all tied together in one system,” he said.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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