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“what-the-hell-are-you-doing?”-how-i-learned-to-interview-astronauts,-scientists,-and-billionaires

“What the hell are you doing?” How I learned to interview astronauts, scientists, and billionaires

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The best part about journalism is not collecting information. It’s sharing it.

Inside NASA's rare Moon rocks vault (2016)

Sometimes the best place to do an interview is in a clean room. Credit: Lee Hutchinson

Sometimes the best place to do an interview is in a clean room. Credit: Lee Hutchinson

I recently wrote a story about the wild ride of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station last summer. It was based largely on an interview with the commander of the mission, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore.

His account of Starliner’s thruster failures—and his desperate efforts to keep the vehicle flying on course—was riveting. In the aftermath of the story, many readers, people on social media, and real-life friends congratulated me on conducting a great interview. But truth be told, it was pretty much all Wilmore.

Essentially, when I came into the room, he was primed to talk. I’m not sure if Wilmore was waiting for me specifically to talk to, but he pretty clearly wanted to speak with someone about his experiences aboard the Starliner spacecraft. And he chose me.

So was it luck? I’ve been thinking about that. As an interviewer, I certainly don’t have the emotive power of some of the great television interviewers, who are masters of confrontation and drama. It’s my nature to avoid confrontation where possible. But what I do have on my side is experience, more than 25 years now, as well as preparation. I am also genuinely and completely interested in space. And as it happens, these values are important, too.

Interviewing is a craft one does not pick up overnight. During my career, I have had some funny, instructive, and embarrassing moments. Without wanting to seem pretentious or self-indulgent, I thought it might be fun to share some of those stories so you can really understand what it’s like on a reporter’s side of the cassette tape.

March 2003: Stephen Hawking

I had only been working professionally as a reporter at the Houston Chronicle for a few years (and as the newspaper’s science writer for less time still) when the opportunity to interview Stephen Hawking fell into my lap.

What a coup! He was only the world’s most famous living scientist, and he was visiting Texas at the invitation of a local billionaire named George Mitchell. A wildcatter and oilman, Mitchell had grown up in Galveston along the upper Texas coast, marveling at the stars as a kid. He studied petroleum engineering and later developed the controversial practice of fracking. In his later years, Mitchell spent some of his largesse on the pursuits of his youth, including astronomy and astrophysics. This included bringing Hawking to Texas more than half a dozen times in the 1990s and early 2000s.

For an interview with Hawking, one submitted questions in advance. That’s because Hawking was afflicted with Lou Gehrig’s disease and lost the ability to speak in 1985. A computer attached to his wheelchair cycled through letters and sounds, and Hawking clicked a button to make a selection, forming words and then sentences, which were sent to a voice synthesizer. For unprepared responses, it took a few minutes to form a single sentence.

George Mitchell and Stephen Hawking during a Texas visit.

Credit: Texas A&M University

George Mitchell and Stephen Hawking during a Texas visit. Credit: Texas A&M University

What to ask him? I had a decent understanding of astronomy, having majored in it as an undergraduate. But the readership of a metro newspaper was not interested in the Hubble constant or the Schwarzschild radius. I asked him about recent discoveries of the cosmic microwave background radiation anyway. Perhaps the most enduring response was about the war in Iraq, a prominent topic of the day. “It will be far more difficult to get out of Iraq than to get in,” he said. He was right.

When I met him at Texas A&M University, Hawking was gracious and polite. He answered a couple of questions in person. But truly, it was awkward. Hawking’s time on Earth was limited and his health failing, so it required an age to tap out even short answers. I can only imagine his frustration at the task of communication, which the vast majority of humans take for granted, especially because he had such a brilliant mind and so many deep ideas to share. And here I was, with my banal questions, stealing his time. As I stood there, I wondered whether I should stare at him while he composed a response. Should I look away? I felt truly unworthy.

In the end, it was fine. I even met Hawking a few more times, including at a memorable dinner at Mitchell’s ranch north of Houston, which spans tens of thousands of acres. A handful of the world’s most brilliant theoretical physicists were there. We would all be sitting around chatting, and Hawking would periodically chime in with a response to something brought up earlier. Later on that evening, Mitchell and Hawking took a chariot ride around the grounds. I wonder what they talked about?

Spring 2011: Jane Goodall and Sylvia Earle

By this point, I had written about science for nearly a decade at the Chronicle. In the early part of the year, I had the opportunity to interview noted chimpanzee scientist Jane Goodall and one of the world’s leading oceanographers, Sylvia Earle. Both were coming to Houston to talk about their research and their passion for conservation.

I spoke with Goodall by phone in advance of her visit, and she was so pleasant, so regal. By then, Goodall was 76 years old and had been studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania for five decades. Looking back over the questions I asked, they’re not bad. They’re just pretty basic. She gave great answers regardless. But there is only so much chemistry you can build with a person over the telephone (or Zoom, for that matter, these days). Being in person really matters in interviewing because you can read cues, and it’s easier to know when to let a pause go. The comfort level is higher. When you’re speaking with someone you don’t know that well, establishing a basic level of comfort is essential to making an all-important connection.

A couple of months later, I spoke with Earle in person at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. I took my older daughter, then nine years old, because I wanted her to hear Earle speak later in the evening. This turned out to be a lucky move for a couple of different reasons. First, my kid was inspired by Earle to pursue studies in marine biology. And more immediately, the presence of a curious 9-year-old quickly warmed Earle to the interview. We had a great discussion about many things beyond just oceanography.

President Barack Obama talks with Dr. Sylvia Earle during a visit to Midway Atoll on September 1, 2016.

Credit: Barack Obama Presidential Library

President Barack Obama talks with Dr. Sylvia Earle during a visit to Midway Atoll on September 1, 2016. Credit: Barack Obama Presidential Library

The bottom line is that I remained a fairly pedestrian interviewer back in 2011. That was partly because I did not have deep expertise in chimpanzees or oceanography. And that leads me to another key for a good interview and establishing a rapport. It’s great if a person already knows you, but even if they don’t, you can overcome that by showing genuine interest or demonstrating your deep knowledge about a subject. I would come to learn this as I started to cover space more exclusively and got to know the industry and its key players better.

September 2014: Scott Kelly

To be clear, this was not much of an interview. But it is a fun story.

I spent much of 2014 focused on space for the Houston Chronicle. I pitched the idea of an in-depth series on the sorry state of NASA’s human spaceflight program, which was eventually titled “Adrift.” By immersing myself in spaceflight for months on end, I discovered a passion for the topic and knew that writing about space was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was 40 years old, so it was high time I found my calling.

As part of the series, I traveled to Kazakhstan with a photographer from the Chronicle, Smiley Pool. He is a wonderful guy who had strengths in chatting up sources that I, an introvert, lacked. During the 13-day trip to Russia and Kazakhstan, we traveled with a reporter from Esquire named Chris Jones, who was working on a long project about NASA astronaut Scott Kelly. Kelly was then training for a yearlong mission to the International Space Station, and he was a big deal.

Jones was a tremendous raconteur and an even better writer—his words, my goodness. We had so much fun over those two weeks, sharing beer, vodka, and Kazakh food. The capstone of the trip was seeing the Soyuz TMA-14M mission launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Kelly was NASA’s backup astronaut for the flight, so he was in quarantine alongside the mission’s primary astronaut. (This was Butch Wilmore, as it turns out). The launch, from a little more than a kilometer away, was still the most spectacular moment of spaceflight I’ve ever observed in person. Like, holy hell, the rocket was right on top of you.

Expedition 43 NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly walks from the Zvjozdnyj Hotel to the Cosmonaut Hotel for additional training, Thursday, March 19, 2015, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Expedition 43 NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly walks from the Zvjozdnyj Hotel to the Cosmonaut Hotel for additional training, Thursday, March 19, 2015, in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Immediately after the launch, which took place at 1: 25 am local time, Kelly was freed from quarantine. This must have been liberating because he headed straight to the bar at the Hotel Baikonur, the nicest watering hole in the small, Soviet-era town. Jones, Pool, and I were staying at a different hotel. Jones got a text from Kelly inviting us to meet him at the bar. Our NASA minders were uncomfortable with this, as the last thing they want is to have astronauts presented to the world as anything but sharp, sober-minded people who represent the best of the best. But this was too good to resist.

By the time we got to the bar, Kelly and his companion, the commander of his forthcoming Soyuz flight, Gennady Padalka, were several whiskeys deep. The three of us sat across from Kelly and Padalka, and as one does at 3 am in Baikonur, we started taking shots. The astronauts were swapping stories and talking out of school. At one point, Jones took out his notebook and said that he had a couple of questions. To this, Kelly responded heatedly, “What the hell are you doing?”

Not conducting an interview, apparently. We were off the record. Well, until today at least.

We drank and talked for another hour or so, and it was incredibly memorable. At the time, Kelly was probably the most famous active US astronaut, and here I was throwing down whiskey with him shortly after watching a rocket lift off from the very spot where the Soviets launched the Space Age six decades earlier. In retrospect, this offered a good lesson that the best interviews are often not, in fact, interviews. To get the good information, you need to develop relationships with people, and you do that by talking with them person to person, without a microphone, often with alcohol.

Scott Kelly is a real one for that night.

September 2019: Elon Musk

I have spoken with Elon Musk a number of times over the years, but none was nearly so memorable as a long interview we did for my first book on SpaceX, called Liftoff. That summer, I made a couple of visits to SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, interviewing the company’s early employees and sitting in on meetings in Musk’s conference room with various teams. Because SpaceX is such a closed-up company, it was fascinating to get an inside look at how the sausage was made.

It’s worth noting that this all went down a few months before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In some ways, Musk is the same person he was before the outbreak. But in other ways, he is profoundly different, his actions and words far more political and polemical.

Anyway, I was supposed to interview Musk on a Friday evening at the factory at the end of one of these trips. As usual, Musk was late. Eventually, his assistant texted, saying something had come up. She was desperately sorry, but we would have to do the interview later. I returned to my hotel, downbeat. I had an early flight the next morning back to Houston. But after about an hour, the assistant messaged me again. Musk had to travel to South Texas to get the Starship program moving. Did I want to travel with him and do the interview on the plane?

As I sat on his private jet the next day, late morning, my mind swirled. There would be no one else on the plane but Musk, his three sons (triplets, then 13 years old) and two bodyguards, and me. When Musk is in a good mood, an interview can be a delight. He is funny, sharp, and a good storyteller. When Musk is in a bad mood, well, an interview is usually counterproductive. So I fretted. What if Musk was in a bad mood? It would be a super-awkward three and a half hours on the small jet.

Two Teslas drove up to the plane, the first with Musk driving his boys and the second with two security guys. Musk strode onto the jet, saw me, and said he didn’t realize I was going to be on the plane. (A great start to things!) Musk then took out his phone and started a heated conversation about digging tunnels. By this point, I was willing myself to disappear. I just wanted to melt into the leather seat I was sitting in about three feet from Musk.

So much for a good mood for the interview.

As the jet climbed, the phone conversation got worse, but then Musk lost his connection. He put away his phone and turned to me, saying he was free to talk. His mood, almost as if by magic, changed. Since we were discussing the early days of SpaceX at Kwajalein, he gathered the boys around so they could hear about their dad’s earlier days. The interview went shockingly well, and at least part of the reason has to be that I knew the subject matter deeply, had prepared, and was passionate about it. We spoke for nearly two hours before Musk asked if he might have some time with his kids. They spent the rest of the flight playing video games, yucking it up.

April 2025: Butch Wilmore

When they’re on the record, astronauts mostly stick to a script. As a reporter, you’re just not going to get too much from them. (Off the record is a completely different story, of course, as astronauts are generally delightful, hilarious, and earnest people.)

Last week, dozens of journalists were allotted 10-minute interviews with Wilmore and, separately, Suni Williams. It was the first time they had spoken in depth with the media since their launch on Starliner and return to Earth aboard a Crew Dragon vehicle. As I waited outside Studio A at Johnson Space Center, I overheard Wilmore completing an interview with a Tennessee-based outlet, where he is from. As they wrapped up, the public affairs officer said he had just one more interview left and said my name. Wilmore said something like, “Oh good, I’ve been waiting to talk with him.”

That was a good sign. Out of all the interviews that day, it was good to know he wanted to speak with me. The easy thing for him to do would have been to use “astronaut speak” for 10 minutes and then go home. I was the last interview of the day.

As I prepared to speak with Wilmore and Williams, I didn’t want to ask the obvious questions they’d answered many times earlier. If you ask, “What was it like to spend nine months in space when you were expecting only a short trip?” you’re going to get a boring answer. Similarly, although the end of the mission was highly politicized by the Trump White House, two veteran NASA astronauts were not going to step on that landmine.

I wanted to go back to the root cause of all this, the problems with Starliner’s propulsion system. My strategy was simply to ask what it was like to fly inside the spacecraft. Williams gave me some solid answers. But Wilmore had actually been at the controls. And he apparently had been holding in one heck of a story for nine months. Because when I asked about the launch, and then what it was like to fly Starliner, he took off without much prompting.

Butch Wilmore has flown on four spacecraft: the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner, and Crew Dragon.

Credit: NASA/Emmett Given

Butch Wilmore has flown on four spacecraft: the Space Shuttle, Soyuz, Starliner, and Crew Dragon. Credit: NASA/Emmett Given

I don’t know exactly why Wilmore shared so much with me. We are not particularly close and have never interacted outside of an official NASA setting. But he knows of my work and interest in spaceflight. Not everyone at the space agency appreciates my journalism, but they know I’m deeply interested in what they’re doing. They know I care about NASA and Johnson Space Center. So I asked Wilmore a few smart questions, and he must have trusted that I would tell his story honestly and accurately, and with appropriate context. I certainly tried my best. After a quarter of a century, I have learned well that the most sensational stories are best told without sensationalism.

Even as we spoke, I knew the interview with Wilmore was one of the best I had ever done. A great scientist once told me that the best feeling in the world is making some little discovery in a lab and for a short time knowing something about the natural world that no one else knows. The equivalent, for me, is doing an interview and knowing I’ve got gold. And for a little while, before sharing it with the world, I’ve got that little piece of gold all to myself.

But I’ll tell you what. It’s even more fun to let the cat out of the bag. The best part about journalism is not collecting information. It’s sharing that information with the world.

Photo of Eric Berger

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

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Rocket Report: “No man’s land” in rocket wars; Isaacman lukewarm on SLS

blue origin, falcon 9, falcon heavy, human spaceflight, international space station, launch, new glenn, rocket lab, rocket report, russia, Science, soyuz, Space, space launch system, spacex, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

China’s approach to space junk is worrisome as it begins launching its own megaconstellations.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket rolls to its launch pad in Florida in preparation for liftoff with 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband network. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Welcome to Edition 7.39 of the Rocket Report! Not getting your launch fix? Buckle up. We’re on the cusp of a boom in rocket launches as three new megaconstellations have either just begun or will soon begin deploying thousands of satellites to enable broadband connectivity from space. If the megaconstellations come to fruition, this will require more than a thousand launches in the next few years, on top of SpaceX’s blistering Starlink launch cadence. We discuss the topic of megaconstellations in this week’s Rocket Report.

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.

So, what is SpinLaunch doing now? Ars Technica has mentioned SpinLaunch, the company that literally wants to yeet satellites into space, in previous Rocket Report newsletters. This company enjoyed some success in raising money for its so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea of catapulting rockets and satellites into the sky, a concept SpinLaunch calls “kinetic launch.” But SpinLaunch is now making a hard pivot to small satellites, a move that, on its face, seems puzzling after going all-in on kinetic launch and even performing several impressive hardware tests, throwing a projectile to altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. Ars got the scoop, with the company’s CEO detailing why and how it plans to build a low-Earth orbit telecommunications constellation with 280 satellites.

Traditional versus kinetic … The planned constellation, named Meridian, is an opportunity for SpinLaunch to diversify away from being solely a launch company, according to David Wrenn, the company’s CEO. We’ve observed this in a number of companies that started out as rocket developers before branching out to satellite manufacturing or space services. Wrenn said SpinLaunch could loft all of the Meridian satellites on a single large conventional rocket, or perhaps two medium-lift rockets, and then maintain the constellation with its own kinetic launch system. A satellite communications network presents a better opportunity for profit, Wrenn said. “The launch market is relatively small compared to the economic potential of satellite communication,” he said. “Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center. Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry.”

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Peter Beck suggests Electron is here to stay. The conventional wisdom is that the small launch vehicle business isn’t a big moneymaker. There is really only one company, Rocket Lab, that has gained traction in selling dedicated rides to orbit for small satellites. Rocket Lab’s launcher, Electron, can place payloads of up to a few hundred pounds into orbit. As soon as Rocket Lab had some success, SpaceX began launching rideshare missions on its much larger Falcon 9 rocket, cobbling together dozens of satellites on a single vehicle to spread the cost of the mission among many customers. This offers customers a lower price point than buying a dedicated launch on Electron. But Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, says his company has found a successful market providing dedicated launches for small satellites, despite price pressure from SpaceX, Space News reports. “Dedicated small launch is a real market, and it should not be confused with rideshare,” he argued. “It’s totally different.”

No man’s land … Some small satellite companies that can afford the extra cost of a dedicated launch realize the value of controlling their schedule and orbit, traits that a dedicated launch offers over a rideshare, Beck said. It’s easy to blame SpaceX for undercutting the prices of Rocket Lab and other players in this segment of the launch business, but Beck said companies that have failed or withdrawn from the small launch market didn’t have a good business plan, a good product, or good engineering. He added that the capacity of the Electron vehicle is well-suited for dedicated launch, whereas slightly larger rockets in the one-ton-to-orbit class—a category that includes Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha and Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rockets—are an ill fit. The one-ton performance range is “no man’s land” in the market, Beck said. “It’s too small to be a useful rideshare mission, and it’s too big to be a useful dedicated rocket” for smallsats. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

ULA scrubs first full-on Kuiper launch. A band of offshore thunderstorms near Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday night forced United Launch Alliance to scrub a launch attempt of the first of dozens of missions on behalf of its largest commercial customer, Amazon, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission will use an Atlas V rocket to deploy 27 satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper network. It’s the first launch of what will eventually be more than 3,200 operational Kuiper satellites beaming broadband connectivity from space, a market currently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink. As of Thursday, ULA hadn’t confirmed a new launch date, but airspace warning notices released by the FAA suggest the next attempt might occur Monday, April 14.

What’s a few more days? … This mission has been a long time coming. Amazon announced the Kuiper megaconstellation in 2019, and the company says it’s investing at least $10 billion in the project (the real number may be double that). Problems in manufacturing the Kuiper satellites, which Amazon is building in-house, delayed the program’s first full-on launch by a couple of years. Amazon launched a pair of prototype satellites in 2023, but the operational versions are different, and this mission fills the capacity of ULA’s Atlas V rocket. Amazon has booked more than 80 launches with ULA, Arianespace, Blue Origin, and SpaceX to populate the Kuiper network. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Space Force swaps ULA for SpaceX. For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance’s launch schedule, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, which oversees the military’s launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force’s fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world. The move allows the GPS satellite to launch as soon as the end of May, the Space Force said. The military executed a similar rocket swap for a GPS mission that launched on a Falcon 9 in December.

Making ULA whole … The Space Force formally certified ULA’s Vulcan rocket for national security missions last month, so Vulcan may finally be on the cusp of delivering for the military. But there are several military payloads in the queue to launch on Vulcan before GPS III SV-08, which was already completed and in storage at its Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado. Meanwhile, SpaceX is regularly launching Falcon 9 rockets with ample capacity to add the GPS mission to the manifest. In exchange for losing the contract to launch this particular GPS satellite, the Space Force swapped a future GPS mission that was assigned to SpaceX to fly on ULA’s Vulcan instead.

Russia launches a former Navy SEAL to space. Jonny Kim, a former Navy SEAL, Harvard Medical School graduate, and now a NASA astronaut, blasted off with two cosmonaut crewmates aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket early Tuesday, CBS News reports. Three hours later, Kim and his Russian crewmates—Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky—chased down the International Space Station and moved in for a picture-perfect docking aboard their Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft. “It was the trip of a lifetime and an honor to be here,” Kim told flight controllers during a traditional post-docking video conference.

Rotating back to Earth … Ryzhikov, Zubritsky, and Kim joined a crew of seven living aboard the International Space Station, temporarily raising the lab’s crew complement to 10 people. The new station residents are replacing an outgoing Soyuz crew—Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Wagner, and Don Pettit—who launched to the ISS last September and who plan to return to Earth aboard their own spacecraft April 19 to wrap up a 219-day stay in space. This flight continues the practice of launching US astronauts on Russian Soyuz missions, part of a barter agreement between NASA and the Russian space agency that also reserves a seat on SpaceX Dragon missions for Russian cosmonauts.

China is littering in LEO. China’s construction of a pair of communications megaconstellations could cloud low Earth orbit with large spent rocket stages for decades or beyond, Space News reports. Launches for the government’s Guowang and Shanghai-backed but more commercially oriented Qianfan (Thousand Sails) constellation began in the second half of 2024, with each planned to consist of over 10,000 satellites, demanding more than a thousand launches in the coming years. Placing this number of satellites is enough to cause concern about space debris because China hasn’t disclosed its plans for removing the spacecraft from orbit at the end of their missions. It turns out there’s another big worry: upper stages.

An orbital time bomb … While Western launch providers typically deorbit their upper stages after dropping off megaconstellation satellites in space, China does not. This means China is leaving rockets in orbits high enough to persist in space for more than a century, according to Jim Shell, a space domain awareness and orbital debris expert at Novarum Tech. Space News reported on Shell’s commentary in a social media post, where he wrote that orbital debris mass in low-Earth orbit “will be dominated by PRC [People’s Republic of China] upper stages in short order unless something changes (sigh).” So far, China has launched five dedicated missions to deliver 90 Qianfan satellites into orbit. Four of these missions used China’s Long March 6A rocket, with an upper stage that has a history of breaking up in orbit, exacerbating the space debris problem. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

SpaceX wins another lunar lander launch deal. Intuitive Machines has selected a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch a lunar delivery mission scheduled for 2027, the Houston Chronicle reports. The upcoming IM-4 mission will carry six NASA payloads, including a European Space Agency-led drill suite designed to search for water at the lunar south pole. It will also include the launch of two lunar data relay satellites that support NASA’s so-called Near Space Network Services program. This will be the fourth lunar lander mission for Houston-based Intuitive Machines under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Falcon 9 has the inside track … SpaceX almost certainly offered Intuitive Machines the best deal for this launch. The flight-proven Falcon 9 rocket is reliable and inexpensive compared to competitors and has already launched two Intuitive Machines missions, with a third one set to fly late this year. However, there’s another factor that made SpaceX a shoe-in for this contract. SpaceX has outfitted one of its launch pads in Florida with a unique cryogenic loading system to pump liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants into the Intuitive Machines lunar lander as it sits on top of its rocket just before liftoff. The lander from Intuitive Machines uses these super-cold propellants to feed its main engine, and SpaceX’s infrastructure for loading it makes the Falcon 9 rocket the clear choice for launching it.

Time may finally be running out for SLS. Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, said Wednesday in a Senate confirmation hearing that he wants the space agency to pursue human missions to the Moon and Mars at the same time, an effort that will undoubtedly require major changes to how NASA spends its money. My colleague Eric Berger was in Washington for the hearing and reported on it for Ars. Senators repeatedly sought Isaacman’s opinion on the Space Launch System, the NASA heavy-lifter designed to send astronauts to the Moon. The next SLS mission, Artemis II, is slated to launch a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon next year. NASA’s official plans call for the Artemis III mission to launch on an SLS rocket later this decade and attempt a landing at the Moon’s south pole.

Limited runway … Isaacman sounded as if he were on board with flying the Artemis II mission as envisioned—no surprise, then, that the four Artemis II astronauts were in the audience—and said he wanted to get a crew of Artemis III to the lunar surface as quickly as possible. But he questioned why it has taken NASA so long, and at such great expense, to get its deep space human exploration plans moving. In one notable exchange, Isaacman said NASA’s current architecture for the Artemis lunar plans, based on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, is probably not the ideal “long-term” solution to NASA’s deep space transportation plans. The smart reading of this is that Isaacman may be willing to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions as conceived, given that much of the hardware is already built. But everything that comes after this, including SLS rocket upgrades and the Lunar Gateway, could be on the chopping block.

Welcome to the club, Blue Origin. Finally, the Space Force has signaled it’s ready to trust Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, for launching the military’s most precious satellites, Ars reports. Blue Origin received a contract April 4 to launch seven national security missions for the Space Force between 2027 and 2032, an opening that could pave the way for more launch deals in the future. These missions will launch on Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, which had a successful debut test flight in January. The Space Force hasn’t certified New Glenn for national security launches, but military officials expect to do so sometime next year. Blue Origin joins SpaceX and United Launch Alliance in the Space Force’s mix of most-trusted launch providers.

A different class … The contract Blue Origin received last week covers launch services for the Space Force’s most critical space missions, requiring rocket certification and a heavy dose of military oversight to ensure reliability. Blue Origin was already eligible to launch a separate batch of missions the Space Force set aside to fly on newer rockets. The military is more tolerant of risk on these lower-priority missions, which include launches of “cookie cutter” satellites for the Pentagon’s large fleet of missile-tracking satellites and a range of experimental payloads.

Why is SpaceX winning so many Space Force contracts? In less than a week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk’s space company the Pentagon’s leading launch provider, replacing United Launch Alliance in top position. Then, the Space Force assigned the vast majority of this year’s most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX. As we mention earlier in the Rocket Report, the military also swapped a ULA rocket for a SpaceX launch vehicle for an upcoming GPS mission. So, is SpaceX’s main competitor worried Elon Musk is tipping the playing field for lucrative government contracts by cozying up to President Trump?

It’s all good, man … Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, doesn’t seem too worried in his public statements, Ars reports. In a roundtable with reporters this week at the annual Space Symposium conference in Colorado, Bruno was asked about Musk’s ties with Trump. “We have not been impacted by our competitor’s position advising the president, certainly not yet,” Bruno said. “I expect that the government will follow all the rules and be fair and follow all the laws, and so we’re behaving that way.” The reason Bruno can say Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration so far hasn’t affected ULA is simple. SpaceX is cheaper and has a ready-made line of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets available to launch the Pentagon’s satellites. ULA’s Vulcan rocket is now certified to launch military payloads, but it reached this important milestone years behind schedule.

Two Texas lawmakers are still fighting the last war. NASA has a lot to figure out in the next couple of years. Moon or Mars? Should, or when should, the Space Launch System be canceled? Can the agency absorb a potential 50 percent cut to its science budget? If Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz get their way, NASA can add moving a space shuttle to its list. The Lone Star State’s two Republican senators introduced the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” on Thursday, CollectSpace reports. If passed by Congress and signed into law, the bill would direct NASA to take the space shuttle Discovery from the national collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and transport it to Space Center Houston, a museum and visitor attraction next to Johnson Space Center, home to mission control and NASA’s astronaut training base. Discovery has been on display at the Smithsonian since 2012. NASA awarded museums in California, Florida, and New York the other three surviving shuttle orbiters.

Dollars and nonsense … Moving a space shuttle from Virginia to Texas would be a logistical nightmare, cost an untold amount of money, and would create a distraction for NASA when its focus should be on future space exploration. In a statement, Cruz said Houston deserves one of NASA’s space shuttles because of the city’s “unique relationship” to the program. Cornyn alleged in a statement that the Obama administration blocked Houston from receiving a space shuttle for political reasons. NASA’s inspector general found no evidence of this. On the contrary, transferring a space shuttle to Texas now would be an unequivocal example of political influence. The Boeing 747s that NASA used to move space shuttles across the country are no longer flightworthy, and NASA scrapped the handling equipment needed to prepare a shuttle for transport. Moving the shuttle by land or sea would come with its own challenges. “I can easily see this costing a billion dollars,” Dennis Jenkins, a former shuttle engineer who directed NASA’s shuttle transition and retirement program more than a decade ago, told CollectSpace in an interview. On a personal note, the presentation of Discovery at the Smithsonian is remarkable to see in person, with aerospace icons like the Concorde and the SR-71 spy plane under the same roof. Space Center Houston can’t match that.

Next three launches

April 12: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-17 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 01: 15 UTC

April 12: Falcon 9 | NROL-192 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 12: 17 UTC

April 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-73 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 59 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: “No man’s land” in rocket wars; Isaacman lukewarm on SLS Read More »

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Here are the reasons SpaceX won nearly all recent military launch contracts

Donald Trump, elon musk, Space, spacex, united launch alliance / /

“I expect that the government will follow all the rules and be fair and follow all the laws.”

President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, speak to the press as they stand next to a Tesla vehicle on the South Portico of the White House on March 11, 2025. Credit: Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP

In the last week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk’s space company the Pentagon’s leading launch provider, and then it assigned the vast majority of this year’s most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX.

On top of these actions, the Space Force reassigned the launch of a GPS navigation satellite from United Launch Alliance’s long-delayed Vulcan rocket to fly on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. ULA, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is SpaceX’s chief US rival in the market for military satellite launches.

Given the close relationship between Musk and President Donald Trump, it’s not out of bounds to ask why SpaceX is racking up so many wins. Some plans floated by the Trump administration involving SpaceX in recent months have raised concerns over conflicts of interest.

Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, doesn’t seem too worried in his public statements. In a roundtable with reporters this week at the annual Space Symposium conference in Colorado, Bruno was asked about Musk’s ties with Trump.

“We have not been impacted by our competitor’s position advising the president, certainly not yet,” Bruno said. “I expect that the government will follow all the rules and be fair and follow all the laws, and so we’re behaving that way.”

It’s a separate concern whether the Pentagon should predominantly rely on a single provider for access to space, be it a launch company like SpaceX led by a billionaire government insider or a provider like ULA that, so far, hasn’t proven its new Vulcan rocket can meet the Space Force’s schedules.

Military officials are unanimous in their answer to that question: “No.” That’s why the Space Force is keen to add to the Pentagon’s roster of launch providers. In the last 12 months, the Space Force has brought Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Stoke Space to join SpaceX and ULA in the mix for national security launches.

Results matter

The reason Bruno can say Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration so far hasn’t affected ULA is simple. SpaceX is cheaper and has a ready-made line of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets available to launch the Pentagon’s satellites. ULA’s Vulcan rocket is now certified to launch military payloads, but it reached this important milestone years behind schedule.

The Pentagon announced Friday that SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin—Jeff Bezos’ space company—won contracts worth $13.7 billion to share responsibilities for launching approximately 54 of the military’s most critical space missions from 2027 through 2032. SpaceX received the lion’s share of the missions with an award for 28 launches, while ULA got 19. Blue Origin, a national security launch business newcomer, will fly seven missions.

This comes out to a 60-40 split between SpaceX and ULA, not counting Blue Origin’s seven launches, which the Space Force set aside for a third contractor. It’s a reversal of the 60-40 sharing scheme in the last big military launch competition in 2020, when ULA took the top award over SpaceX. Space Force officials anticipate Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will be certified for national security missions next year, allowing it to begin winning launch task orders.

Tory Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance, speaks with reporters at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 6, 2024. Credit: Paul Hennessy/Anadolu via Getty Images

Bruno said he wasn’t surprised with the outcome of this year’s launch competition, known as Phase 3 of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. “We’re happy to get it,” he said Monday.

“I felt that winning 60 percent the first time was a little bit of an upset,” Bruno said of the 2020 competition with SpaceX. “I believe they expected to win 60 then … Therefore, I believed this time around that they would compete that much harder, and that I was not going to price dive in order to guarantee a win.”

While we know roughly how many launches each company will get from the Space Force, the military hasn’t determined which specific missions will fly with ULA, SpaceX, or Blue Origin. Once per year, the Space Force will convene a “mission assignment board” to divvy up individual task orders.

Simply geography

Officials announced Monday that this year’s assignment board awarded seven missions to SpaceX and two launches to ULA. The list includes six Space Force missions and three for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

SpaceX’s seven wins are worth a combined $845.8 million, with an average price of $120.8 million per launch. Three will fly on Falcon 9 rockets, and four will launch on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.

  • NROL-97 on a Falcon Heavy from Cape Canaveral
  • USSF-15 (GPS IIIF-3) on a Falcon Heavy from Cape Canaveral
  • USSF-174 on a Falcon Heavy from Cape Canaveral
  • USSF-186 on a Falcon Heavy from Cape Canaveral
  • USSF-234 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral
  • NROL-96 on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg
  • NROL-157 on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg

The Space Force’s two orders to ULA are valued at $427.6 million, averaging $213.8 million per mission. Both missions will launch from Florida, one with a GPS navigation satellite to medium-Earth orbit and another with a next-generation geosynchronous missile warning satellite named NGG-2.

  • USSF-49 (GPS IIIF-2) on a Vulcan from Cape Canaveral
  • USSF-50 (NGG-2) on a Vulcan from Cape Canaveral

So, why did ULA only get 22 percent of this year’s task orders instead of something closer to 40 percent? It turns out ULA was not eligible for two of these missions because the company’s West Coast launch pad for the Vulcan rocket is still under construction at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The Space Force won’t assign specific West Coast missions to ULA until the launch pad is finished and certified, according to Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, chief of the Space Force’s “Assured Access to Space” office.

Vandenberg, a military facility on the Southern California coast, has a wide range of open ocean to the south, perfect for rockets delivering payloads into polar orbits. Rockets flown out of Cape Canaveral typically fly to the east on trajectories useful for launching satellites into the GPS network or into geosynchronous orbit.

“A company can be certified for a subset of missions while it continues to work on meeting the certification criteria for the broader set of missions,” Panzenhagen said. “In this case, ULA was not certified for West Coast launches yet. They’re working on that.”

Because of this rule, SpaceX won task orders for the NROL-96 and NROL-157 missions by default.

The Space Force’s assignment of the USSF-15 mission to SpaceX makes some sense, too. Going forward, the Space Force wants to have Vulcan and Falcon Heavy as options for adding to the GPS network. This will be the first GPS payload to launch on Falcon Heavy, allowing SpaceX engineers to complete a raft of upfront analysis and integration work. Engineers won’t have to repeat this work on future Falcon Heavy flights carrying identical GPS satellites.

From monopoly to niche

A decade ago, ULA was the sole launch provider to deploy the Pentagon’s fleet of surveillance, communication, and navigation satellites. The Air Force certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket for national security missions in May 2015, opening the market for competition for the first time since Boeing and Lockheed Martin merged their rocket divisions to create ULA in 2006.

ULA’s monopoly, which Bruno acknowledged, has now eroded into making the company a niche player in the military launch market.

“A monopoly is not healthy,” he said. “We were one for a few years before I came to ULA, and that was because no one else had the capability, and there weren’t that many missions. There weren’t enough to support many providers. There are now, so this is better.”

There are at least a couple of important reasons the Space Force is flying more missions than 10 or 20 years ago.

One is that Pentagon officials believe the United States is now in competition with a near-peer great power, China, with a rapidly growing presence in space. Military leaders say this requires more US hardware in orbit. Another is that the cost of launching something into space is lower than it was when ULA enjoyed its dominant position. SpaceX has led the charge in reducing the cost of accessing space, thanks to its success in pioneering reusable commercial rockets.

Many of the new types of missions the Space Force plans to launch in the next few years will go to low-Earth orbit (LEO), a region of space a few hundred miles above the planet. There, the Space Force plans to deploy hundreds of satellites for a global missile detection, missile tracking, and data relay network. Eventually, the military may place hundreds or more space-based interceptors in LEO as part of the “Golden Dome” missile defense program pushed by the Trump administration.

United Launch Alliance’s second Vulcan rocket underwent a countdown dress rehearsal last year. Credit: United Launch Alliance

Traditionally, the military has operated missile tracking and communications satellites in much higher geosynchronous orbits some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) over the equator. At that altitude, satellites revolve around the Earth at the same speed as the planet’s rotation, allowing a spacecraft to maintain a constant vigil over the same location.

The Space Force still has a few of those kinds of missions to launch, along with mobile, globe-trotting surveillance satellites and eavesdropping signals intelligence spy platforms for the National Reconnaissance Office. Bruno argues ULA’s Vulcan rocket, despite being more expensive, is best suited for these bespoke missions. So far, the Space Force’s awards seem to bear it out.

“Our rocket has a unique niche within this marketplace,” Bruno said. “There really are two kinds of missions from the rocket’s standpoint. There are ones where you drop off in LEO, and there are ones where you drop off in higher orbits. You design your rockets differently for that. It doesn’t mean we can’t drop off in LEO, it doesn’t mean [SpaceX] can’t drop off in a higher energy orbit, but we’re more efficient at those because we designed for that.”

There’s some truth in that argument. The Vulcan rocket’s upper stage, called the Centaur V, burns liquid hydrogen fuel with better fuel efficiency than the kerosene-fueled engine on SpaceX’s upper stage. And SpaceX must use the more expensive Falcon Heavy rocket for the most demanding missions, expending the rocket’s core booster to devote more propellant toward driving the payload into orbit.

SpaceX has launched at a rate nearly 34 times higher than United Launch Alliance since the start of 2023, but ULA has more experience with high-energy missions, featuring more complex maneuvers to place military payloads directly into geosynchronous orbit, and sometimes releasing multiple payloads at different locations in the geosynchronous belt.

This is one of the most challenging mission profiles for any rocket, requiring a high-endurance upper stage, like Vulcan’s Centaur V, capable of cruising through space for eight or more hours.

SpaceX has flown a long-duration version of its upper stage on several missions by adding an extended mission kit. This gives the rocket longer battery life and a custom band of thermal paint to help ensure its kerosene fuel does not freeze in the cold environment of space.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket rolls to the launch pad in Florida in June 2024. The rocket’s upper stage sports a strip of gray thermal paint to keep propellants at the proper temperature for a long-duration cruise through space. Credit: SpaceX

On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of SpaceX’s missions target low-Earth orbit, where Falcon 9 rockets deploy Starlink Internet satellites, send crews and cargo to the International Space Station, and regularly launch multi-payload rideshare missions. These launches maximize the Falcon 9’s efficiencies with booster recovery and reuse. SpaceX is proficient and prolific with these missions, launching them every couple of days. Launch, land, repeat.

“They tend to be more efficient at the LEO drop-offs, I’ll be honest about that,” Bruno said. “That means there’s a competitive space in the middle, and then there’s kind of these end cases. So, we’ll keep winning when it’s way over in our space, they will win when it’s way over in theirs, and then in the middle it’s kind of a toss-up for any given mission.”

Recent history seems to support Bruno’s hypothesis. Last year, SpaceX and ULA competed head-to-head for nine specific launch contracts, or task orders, in a different Space Force competition. The launches will place national security satellites into low-Earth orbit, and SpaceX won all nine of them. Since 2020, ULA has won more Space Force task orders than SpaceX for high-energy missions, although the inverse was true in this year’s round of launch orders.

The military’s launch contracting strategy gives the Space Force flexibility to swap payloads between rockets, add more missions, or deviate from the 60-40 share to SpaceX and ULA. This has precedent. Between 2020 and 2024, ULA received 54 percent of military launches, short of the 60 percent anticipated in their original contract. This amounted to ULA winning three fewer task orders, or a lost value of about $350 million, because of delays in development of the Vulcan rocket.

That’s the cost of doing business with the Pentagon. Military officials don’t want their satellites sitting on the ground. The national policy of assured access to space materialized after the Challenger accident in 1986. NASA grounded the Space Shuttle for two-and-a-half years, and the military had no other way to put its largest satellites into orbit, leading the Pentagon to accelerate development of new versions of the Atlas, Delta, and Titan rockets dating back to the 1960s.

Military and intelligence officials were again stung by a spate of failures with the Titan IV in the 1990s, when it was the only heavy-lift launcher in the Pentagon’s inventory. Then, ULA’s Delta IV Heavy rocket was the sole heavy-lifter available to the military for nearly two decades. Today, the Space Force has two heavy-lift options and may have a third soon with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

This all has the added benefit of bringing down costs, according to Col. Doug Pentecost, deputy director of the Space Force’s Assured Access to Space directorate.

“If you bundle a bunch of missions together, you can get a better price point,” he said. “We awarded $13.7 billion. We thought this was going to cost us 15.5, so we saved $1.7 billion with this competition, showing that we have great industry out there trying to do good stuff for us.”

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.

Here are the reasons SpaceX won nearly all recent military launch contracts Read More »

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NASA nominee asks why lunar return has taken so long, and why it costs so much

jared isaacman, NASA, Space / /

WASHINGTON, DC—Over the course of a nearly three-hour committee hearing Wednesday, the nominee to lead NASA for the Trump administration faced difficult questions from US senators who sought commitments to specific projects.

However, maneuvering like a pilot with more than 7,000 hours in jets and ex-military aircraft, entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman dodged most of their questions and would not be pinned down. His basic message to members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation was that NASA is an exceptional agency that does the impossible, but that it also faces some challenges. NASA, he said, receives an “extraordinary” budget, and he vowed to put taxpayer dollars to efficient use in exploring the universe and retaining the nation’s lead on geopolitical competitors in space.

“I have lived the American dream, and I owe this nation a great debt,” said Isaacman, who founded his first business at 16 in his parents’ basement and would go on to found an online payments company, Shift4, that would make him a billionaire. Isaacman is also an avid pilot who self-funded and led two private missions to orbit on Crew Dragon. Leading NASA would be “the privilege of a lifetime,” he said.

The hearing took place in the Russell Senate Office building next to the US Capitol on Wednesday morning, in an expansive room with marbled columns and three large chandeliers. There was plenty of spaceflight royalty on hand, including the four astronauts who will fly on the Artemis II mission, as well as the six private citizens who flew with Isaacman on his two Dragon missions. 

“This may be the most badass assemblage we’ve had at a Senate hearing,” said US Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chair of the committee, commenting on the astronauts in the room.

Committed to staying at the Moon?

However, when the meeting got down to brass tacks, there were sharp questions for Isaacman.

Cruz opened the hearing by stating his priorities for NASA clearly and explicitly: He is most focused on ensuring the United States does not cede any of its preeminence to China in space, and this starts with low-Earth orbit and the Moon.

“Make no mistake, the Chinese Communist Party has been explicit in its desire to dominate space, putting a fully functional space station in low-Earth orbit and robotic rovers on the far side of the Moon,” he said. “We are not headed for the next space race; it is already here.”

Cruz wanted Isaacman to commit to not just flying human missions to the Moon, but also to a sustained presence on the surface or in cislunar space.

In response, Isaacman said he would see that NASA returns humans to the Moon as quickly as possible, beating China in the process. This includes flying Artemis II around the Moon in 2026, and then landing the Artemis III mission later this decade. 

The disagreement came over what to do after this. Isaacman, echoing the Trump administration, said the agency should also press onward, sending humans to Mars as soon as possible. Cruz, however, wanted Isaacman to say NASA would establish a sustained presence at the Moon. The committee has written authorizing legislation to mandate this, Cruz reminded Isaacman.

“If that’s the law, then I am committed to it,” Isaacman said.

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, left, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen watch as Jared Isaacman testifies on Wednesday.

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, left, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen watch as Jared Isaacman testifies on Wednesday. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Cruz also sought Isaacman’s commitment to flying the International Space Station through at least 2030, which is the space agency’s current date for retiring the orbital laboratory. Isaacman said that seemed reasonable and added that NASA should squeeze every possible bit of research out of it until then. However, when Cruz pressed Isaacman about the Lunar Gateway, a space station NASA is developing to fly in an elliptical orbit around the Moon, Isaacman would not be drawn in. He replied that he would work with Congress and space agency officials to determine which programs are working and which ones are not.

The Gateway is a program championed by Cruz since it is managed by Johnson Space Center in Texas. Parochial interests aside, a lot of space community stakeholders question the value of the Gateway to NASA’s exploration plans.

Ten centers and the future of SLS

One of the most tense interactions came between Isaacman and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who wanted commitments from Isaacman that he would not close any of NASA’s 10 field centers, and also that the space agency would fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions on the Space Launch System rocket. 

Regarding field centers, there has been discussion about making the space agency more efficient by closing some of them. This is a politically sensitive topic, and naturally, politicians from states where those centers are located are protective of them. At the same time, there is a general recognition that it would be more cost-effective for NASA to consolidate its operations as part of modernization.

Isaacman did not answer Cantwell’s question about field centers directly. Rather, he said he had not been fully briefed on the administration’s plans for NASA’s structure. “Senator, there’s only so much I can be briefed on in advance of a hearing,” he said. In response to further prodding, Isaacman said, “I fully expect to roll up my sleeves” when it came to ideas to restructure NASA.

Cantwell and other Senators pressed Isaacman on plans to use NASA’s Space Launch System rocket as part of the overall plan to get astronauts to the lunar surface. Isaacman sounded as if he were on board with flying the Artemis II as envisioned—no surprise, then, that this crew was in the audience—and said he wanted to get a crew of Artemis III to the lunar surface as quickly as possible. But he questioned why it has taken NASA so long, and at such great expense, to get its deep space human exploration plans moving.

He noted, correctly, that presidential administrations dating back to 1989 have been releasing plans for sending humans to the Moon or Mars, and that significantly more than $100 billion has been spent on various projects over nearly four decades. For all of that, Isaacman and his private Polaris Dawn crewmates remain the humans to have flown the farthest from Earth since the Apollo Program. They did so last year.

“Why is it taking us so long, and why is it costing us so much to go to the Moon?” he asked.

In one notable exchange, Isaacman said NASA’s current architecture for the Artemis lunar plans, based on the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, is probably not the ideal “long-term” solution to NASA’s deep space transportation plans. The smart reading of this is that Isaacman may be willing to fly the Artemis II and Artemis III missions as conceived, given that much of the hardware is already built. But everything that comes after this, including SLS rocket upgrades and the Lunar Gateway, could be on the chopping block. Ars wrote more about why this is a reasonable path forward last September.

Untangling a relationship with SpaceX

Some of the most intelligent questions came from US Sen. Andy Kim, D-New Jersey. During his time allotment, Kim also pressed Isaacman on the question of a sustained presence on the Moon. Isaacman responded that it was critical for NASA to get astronauts on the Moon, along with robotic missions, to determine the “economic, scientific, and national security value” of the Moon. With this information, he said, NASA will be better positioned to determine whether and why it should have an enduring presence on the Moon.

If this were so, Kim subsequently asked what the economic, scientific, and national security value of sending humans to Mars was. Not responding directly to this question, Isaacman reiterated that NASA should do both Moon and Mars exploration in parallel. NASA will need to become much more efficient to afford that, and some of the US Senators appeared skeptical. But Isaacman seems to truly believe this and wants to take a stab at making NASA more cost-effective and “mission focused.”

Throughout the hearing, Isaacman appeared to win the approval of various senators with his repeated remarks that he was committed to NASA’s science programs and that he was eager to help NASA uphold its reputation for making the impossible possible. He also said it is a “fundamental” obligation of the space agency to inspire the next generation of scientists.

A challenging moment came during questioning from Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who expressed his concern about Isaacman’s relationship to SpaceX founder Elon Musk. Isaacman was previously an investor in SpaceX and has paid for two Dragon missions. In a letter written in March, Isaacman explained how he would disentangle his “actual and apparent” conflicts of interest with SpaceX.

However, Markey wanted to know if Isaacman would be pulling levers at NASA for Musk, and for the financial benefit of SpaceX. Markey pressed multiple times on whether Musk was in the room at Mar-A-Lago late last year when Trump offered Isaacman the position of NASA administrator. Isaacman declined to say, reiterating multiple times that his meeting was with Trump, not anyone else. Asked if he had discussed his plans for NASA with Musk, Isaacman said, “I have not.”

Earlier in the hearing, Isaacman sought to make clear that he was not beholden to Musk in any way.

“My loyalty is to this nation, the space agency, and its world-changing mission,” Isaacman said. Yes, he acknowledged he would talk to contractors for the space agency. It is important to draw on a broad range of perspectives, Isaacman said. But he wanted to make this clear: NASA works for the nation, and the contractors, he added, “work for us.”

A full committee vote on Isaacman is expected later this month after April 15, and if successful, the nomination would pass to the full Senate. Isaacman could be confirmed late this month or in May.

NASA nominee asks why lunar return has taken so long, and why it costs so much Read More »

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Tuesday Telescope: Does this Milky Way image remind you of Powers of 10?

daily telescope, Space / /

Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the Powers of 10 video, which came out in the 1970s. Perhaps you remember it, with the narrator taking us both outward toward the fathomless end of the Universe and then, reversing course, guiding us back to Earth and inside a proton. The film gave a younger me a good sense of just how large the Universe around us really is.

What I did not know until much later is that the short film was made by the Eames Office, which was founded by the noted designers Charles Eames and Ray Kaiser. It’s the same organization that produced the Eames Lounge Chair. It goes to show you the value of good design across genres (shoutout to Ars’ resident designer, Aurich Lawson).

Anyway, I say all that because the Power of 10 film continues to live in my head, rent-free, decades later. It was the first thing I thought of when looking at today’s image of the Milky Way Galaxy’s center. The main image showcases huge vertical filaments, with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core clearly visible. This image, captured by a South African radio telescope named MeerKAT, also shows the ghostly, bubble-like remnants of supernovas that exploded over millennia.

On the right of the image, there is a zoomed-in box taken in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope, and showing the star-forming Sagittarius C region. An estimated 500,000 stars are visible in this image of the Sagittarius C region. There is also a large region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, that contains intriguing needle-like structures.

We don’t really know what those are.

Source: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, SARAO, Samuel Crowe (UVA), John Bally (CU), Ruben Fedriani (IAA-CSIC), Ian Heywood (Oxford)

Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

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A military satellite waiting to launch with ULA will now fly with SpaceX

falcon 9, GPS, launch, military space, Space, spacex, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

For the second time in six months, SpaceX will deploy a US military satellite that was sitting in storage, waiting for a slot on United Launch Alliance’s launch schedule.

Space Systems Command, which oversees the military’s launch program, announced Monday that it is reassigning the launch of a Global Positioning System satellite from ULA’s Vulcan rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. This satellite, designated GPS III SV-08 (Space Vehicle-08), will join the Space Force’s fleet of navigation satellites beaming positioning and timing signals for military and civilian users around the world.

The Space Force booked the Vulcan rocket to launch this spacecraft in 2023, when ULA hoped to begin flying military satellites on its new rocket by mid-2024. The Vulcan rocket is now scheduled to launch its first national security mission around the middle of this year, following the Space Force’s certification of ULA’s new launcher last month.

The “launch vehicle trade” allows the Space Force to launch the GPS III SV-08 satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida, as soon as the end of May, according to a press release.

“Capability sitting on the ground”

With Vulcan now cleared to launch military missions, officials are hopeful ULA can ramp up the rocket’s flight cadence. Vulcan launched on two demonstration flights last year, and ULA eventually wants to launch Vulcan twice per month. ULA engineers have their work cut out for them. The company’s Vulcan backlog now stands at 89 missions, following the Space Force’s announcement last week of 19 additional launches awarded to ULA.

Last year, the Pentagon’s chief acquisition official for space wrote a letter to ULA’s owners—Boeing and Lockheed Martin—expressing concern about ULA’s ability to scale the manufacturing of the Vulcan rocket.

“Currently there is military satellite capability sitting on the ground due to Vulcan delays,” Frank Calvelli, the Pentagon’s chief of space acquisition, wrote in the letter.

Vulcan may finally be on the cusp of delivering for the Space Force, but there are several military payloads in the queue to launch on Vulcan before GPS III SV-08, which was complete and in storage at its Lockheed Martin factory in Colorado.

Col. Jim Horne, senior materiel leader of launch execution, said in a statement that the rocket swap showcases the Space Force’s ability to launch in three months from call-up, compared to the typical planning cycle of two years. “It highlights another instance of the Space Force’s ability to complete high-priority launches on a rapid timescale, which demonstrates the capability to respond to emergent constellation needs as rapidly as Space Vehicle readiness allows,” Horne said.

A military satellite waiting to launch with ULA will now fly with SpaceX Read More »

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With new contracts, SpaceX will become the US military’s top launch provider

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The military’s stable of certified rockets will include Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, and New Glenn.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off on June 25, 2024, with a GOES weather satellite for NOAA. Credit: SpaceX

The US Space Force announced Friday it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin for $13.7 billion in contracts to deliver the Pentagon’s most critical military to orbit into the early 2030s.

These missions will launch the government’s heaviest national security satellites, like the National Reconnaissance Office’s large bus-sized spy platforms, and deploy them into bespoke orbits. These types of launches often demand heavy-lift rockets with long-duration upper stages that can cruise through space for six or more hours.

The contracts awarded Friday are part of the next phase of the military’s space launch program once dominated by United Launch Alliance, the 50-50 joint venture between legacy defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

After racking up a series of successful launches with its Falcon 9 rocket more than a decade ago, SpaceX sued the Air Force for the right to compete with ULA for the military’s most lucrative launch contracts. The Air Force relented in 2015 and allowed SpaceX to bid. Since then, SpaceX has won more than 40 percent of missions the Pentagon has ordered through the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, creating a relatively stable duopoly for the military’s launch needs.

The Space Force took over the responsibility for launch procurement from the Air Force after its creation in 2019. The next year, the Space Force signed another set of contracts with ULA and SpaceX for missions the military would order from 2020 through 2024. ULA’s new Vulcan rocket initially won 60 percent of these missions—known as NSSL Phase 2—but the Space Force reallocated a handful of launches to SpaceX after ULA encountered delays with Vulcan.

ULA’s Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets will launch the remaining 42 Phase 2 missions over the next several years, then move on to Phase 3, which the Space Force announced Friday.

Spreading the wealth

This next round of Space Force launch contracts will flip the script, with SpaceX taking the lion’s share of the missions. The breakdown of the military’s new firm fixed-price launch agreements goes like this:

  • SpaceX will get 28 missions worth approximately $5.9 billion
  • ULA will get 19 missions worth approximately $5.4 billion
  • Blue Origin will get seven missions worth approximately

That equates to a 60-40 split between SpaceX and ULA for the bulk of the missions. Going into the competition, military officials set aside seven additional missions to launch with a third provider, allowing a new player to gain a foothold in the market. The Space Force reserves the right to reapportion missions between the three providers if one of them runs into trouble.

The Pentagon confirmed an unnamed fourth company also submitted a proposal, but wasn’t selected for Phase 3.

Rounded to the nearest million, the contract with SpaceX averages out to $212 million per launch. For ULA, it’s $282 million, and Blue Origin’s price is $341 million per launch. But take these numbers with caution. The contracts include a lot of bells and whistles, pricing them higher than what a commercial customer might pay.

According to the Pentagon, the contracts provide “launch services, mission unique services, mission acceleration, quick reaction/anomaly resolution, special studies, launch service support, fleet surveillance, and early integration studies/mission analysis.”

Essentially, the Space Force is paying a premium to all three launch providers for schedule priority, tailored solutions, and access to data from every flight of each company’s rocket, among other things.

New Glenn lifts off on its debut flight. Credit: Blue Origin

“Winning 60% percent of the missions may sound generous, but the reality is that all SpaceX competitors combined cannot currently deliver the other 40%!,” Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, posted on X. “I hope they succeed, but they aren’t there yet.”

This is true if you look at each company’s flight rate. SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets 140 times over the last 365 days. These are the flight-proven rockets SpaceX will use for its share of Space Force missions.

ULA has logged four missions in the same period, but just one with the Vulcan rocket it will use for future Space Force launches. And Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s space company, launched the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket on its first test flight in January.

“We are proud that we have launched 100 national security space missions and honored to continue serving the nation with our new Vulcan rocket,” said Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, in a statement.

ULA used the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets for most of the missions it has launched for the Pentagon. The Delta IV rocket family is now retired, and ULA will end production of the Atlas V rocket later this year. Now, ULA’s Vulcan rocket will take over as the company’s sole launch vehicle to serve the Pentagon. ULA aims to eventually ramp up the Vulcan launch cadence to fly up to 25 times per year.

After two successful test flights, the Space Force formally certified the Vulcan rocket last week, clearing the way for ULA to start using it for military missions in the coming months. While SpaceX has a clear advantage in number of launches, schedule assurance, and pricing—and reliability comparable to ULA—Bruno has recently touted the Vulcan rocket’s ability to maneuver over long periods in space as a differentiator.

“This award constitutes the most complex missions required for national security space,” Bruno said in a ULA press release. “Vulcan continues to use the world’s highest energy upper stage: the Centaur V. Centaur V’s unmatched flexibility and extreme endurance enables the most complex orbital insertions continuing to advance our nation’s capabilities in space.”

Blue Origin’s New Glenn must fly at least one more successful mission before the Space Force will certify it for Lane 2 missions. The selection of Blue Origin on Friday suggests military officials believe New Glenn is on track for certification by late 2026.

“Honored to serve additional national security missions in the coming years and contribute to our nation’s assured access to space,” Dave Limp, Blue Origin’s CEO, wrote on X. “This is a great endorsement of New Glenn’s capabilities, and we are committed to meeting the heavy lift needs of our US DoD and intelligence agency customers.”

Navigating NSSL

There’s something you must understand about the way the military buys launch services. For this round of competition, the Space Force divided the NSSL program into two lanes.

Friday’s announcement covers Lane 2 for traditional military satellites that operate thousands of miles above the Earth. This bucket includes things like GPS navigation satellites, NRO surveillance and eavesdropping platforms, and strategic communications satellites built to survive a nuclear war. The Space Force has a low tolerance for failure with these missions. Therefore, the military requires rockets be certified before they can launch big-ticket satellites, each of which often cost hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

The Space Force required all Lane 2 bidders to show their rockets could reach nine “reference orbits” with payloads of a specified mass. Some of the orbits are difficult to reach, requiring technology that only SpaceX and ULA have demonstrated in the United States. Blue Origin plans to do so on a future flight.

This image shows what the Space Force’s fleet of missile warning and missile tracking satellites might look like in 2030, with a mix of platforms in geosynchronous orbit, medium-Earth orbit, and low-Earth orbit. The higher orbits will require launches by “Lane 2” providers. Credit: Space Systems Command

The military projects to order 54 launches in Lane 2 from this year through 2029, with announcements each October of exactly which missions will go to each launch provider. This year, it will be just SpaceX and ULA. The Space Force said Blue Origin won’t be eligible for firm orders until next year. The missions would launch between 2027 and 2032.

“America leads the world in space launch, and through these NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 contracts, we will ensure continued access to this vital domain,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. “These awards bolster our ability to launch critical defense satellites while strengthening our industrial base and enhancing operational readiness.”

Lane 1 is primarily for missions to low-Earth orbit. These payloads include tech demos, experimental missions, and the military’s mega-constellation of missile tracking and data relay satellites managed by the Space Development Agency. For Lane 1 missions, the Space Force won’t levy the burdensome certification and oversight requirements it has long employed for national security launches. The Pentagon is willing to accept more risk with Lane 1, encompassing at least 30 missions through the end of the 2020s, in an effort to broaden the military’s portfolio of launch providers and boost competition.

Last June, Space Systems Command chose SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin for eligibility to compete for Lane 1 missions. SpaceX won all nine of the first batch of Lane 1 missions put up for bids. The military recently added Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket and Stoke Space’s Nova rocket to the Lane 1 mix. Neither of those rockets have flown, and they will need at least one successful launch before approval to fly military payloads.

The Space Force has separate contract mechanisms for the military’s smallest satellites, which typically launch on SpaceX rideshare missions or dedicated launches with companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace.

Military leaders like having all these options, and would like even more. If one launch provider or launch site is unavailable due to a technical problem—or, as some military officials now worry, an enemy attack—commanders want multiple backups in their toolkit. Market forces dictate that more competition should also lower prices.

“A robust and resilient space launch architecture is the foundation of both our economic prosperity and our national security,” said US Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. “National Security Space Launch isn’t just a program; it’s a strategic necessity that delivers the critical space capabilities our warfighters depend on to fight and win.”

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.

With new contracts, SpaceX will become the US military’s top launch provider Read More »

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SpinLaunch—yes, the centrifuge rocket company—is making a hard pivot to satellites

Space, spinlaunch / /

Outside of several mentions in the Rocket Report newsletter dating back to 2018, Ars Technica has not devoted too much attention to covering a novel California space company named SpinLaunch.

That’s because the premise is so outlandish as to almost not feel real. The company aims to build a kinetic launch system that spins a rocket around at speeds up to 4,700 mph (7,500 km/h) before sending it upward toward space. Then, at an altitude of 40 miles (60 km) or so, the rocket would ignite its engines to achieve orbital velocity. Essentially, SpinLaunch wants to yeet things into space.

But the company was no joke. After being founded in 2014, it raised more than $150 million over the next decade. It built a prototype accelerator in New Mexico and performed a series of flight tests. The flights reached altitudes of “tens of thousands” of feet, according to the company, and were often accompanied by slickly produced videos.

SpinLaunch goes quiet

Following this series of tests, by the end of 2022, the company went mostly quiet. It was not clear whether it ran out of funding, had hit some technical problems in trying to build a larger accelerator, or what. Somewhat ominously, SpinLaunch’s founder and chief executive, Jonathan Yaney, was replaced without explanation last May. The new leader would be David Wrenn, then serving as chief operating officer.

“I am confident in our ability to execute on the company’s mission and bring our integrated tech stack of low-cost space solutions to market,” Wrenn said at the time. “I look forward to sharing more details about our near- and long-term strategy in the coming months.”

Words like “tech stack” and “low-cost space solutions” sounded like nebulous corporate speak, and it was not clear what they meant. Nor did Wrenn immediately deliver on that promise, nearly a year ago, to share more details about the company’s near- and long-term strategy.

SpinLaunch—yes, the centrifuge rocket company—is making a hard pivot to satellites Read More »

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Rocket Report: Next Starship flight to reuse booster; FAA clears New Glenn

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“The first Super Heavy reuse will be a step towards our goal of zero-touch reflight.”

SpaceX tests a Super Heavy booster that previously launched in January. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.38 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX test fired a Super Heavy booster that launched in January on Thursday, in South Texas. This sets up the possibility of a reused Super Heavy rocket launching within the next several weeks, and would be an important step forward in the Starship launch program. It’s also a bold step given that there is a lot riding on this Starship launch, given that the last two have failed due to propulsion issues with the rocket’s upper stage.

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.

European commercial launch industry joins the space race. The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket didn’t last long on Sunday, Ars reports. The booster’s nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, ending the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular, fiery crash into the sea. However, it marked the beginning of something new in Europe as commercial startups begin launching rockets.

Learning to embrace failure … Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, was the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. Isar is one of a half-dozen or so European launch startups that could fly their orbital-class rockets in the next couple of years. Of this group, Isar has raised the most money, reporting more than 400 million euros ($430 million) of fundraising, primarily from venture capital sources. We are looking forward to the European launch industry heating up after a long period of development.

PLD Space signs launch agreement with D-Orbit. The Spanish launch company, PLD Space, announced an agreement this week with an Italy-based space transportation company, D-Orbit. As part of the agreement, D-Orbit’s ION orbital transfer vehicle will launch on PLD Space’s forthcoming rocket, the Miura 5. Although the announcement did not specify terms of the agreement, PLD Space said it has now filled “more than 80 percent” of the launch slots on its manifest until 2027.

Waiting on the rocket … The ION vehicle, essentially a dispenser of CubeSats, has previously flown several missions. The real question, therefore, concerns the readiness of the Miura 5 small rocket. PLD Space said it is currently ramping up serial production for the Miura 5 using technology from a prototype rocket, with the aim of starting its test flight campaign by the end of 2025. Commercial flights of Miura 5 could begin in 2026 with the objective of scaling up to 30 launches per year by 2030. We shall see about that.

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China shooting for record number of launches. Early on Tuesday morning, a Long March 2D rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, Space News reports. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, a state-owned rocket maker, announced the success of the launch, revealing the payload to be a satellite Internet technology test satellite. Tuesday’s mission was China’s 17th orbital launch of 2025, following the launch of the classified TJS-16 satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit on March 29 via a Long March 7A rocket.

Shooting for a century … This puts the country on pace to launch 68 rockets for the year. This is in line with China’s total orbital launches for each of the last three years (64, 67, and 68 launches respectively). However, Chinese space watcher Andrew Jones believes the country may attempt to go as high as 100 launches this year. This would be driven by growing commercial activity, megaconstellation projects, and new launcher development. A number of new, medium-lift and potentially reusable rockets are targeting debut flights this year, he reports.

Falcon 9 launches first crewed polar mission. Four adventurers suited up and embarked on a first-of-a-kind trip to space Monday night, becoming the first humans to fly in polar orbit aboard a SpaceX crew capsule chartered by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency billionaire, Ars reports. Chun Wang, born in China and now a citizen of Malta, paid SpaceX an undisclosed sum for the opportunity to fly to space and bring three hand-picked crewmates along with him. He named his mission Fram2 in honor of the Norwegian exploration ship Fram used for polar expeditions at the turn of the 20th century.

Rocket follows an unusual trajectory … The Falcon 9 rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center. However, instead of heading to the northeast in pursuit of the International Space Station, the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft departed Launch Complex 39A and arced to the southeast, then turned south on a flight path hugging Florida’s east coast. The unusual trajectory aligned the Falcon 9 with a perfectly polar orbit at an inclination of 90 degrees to the equator, bringing the four-person crew directly over the North or South Pole every 45 minutes. They are the first humans to orbit over the poles.

Amazon targets April 9 for first Kuiper launch. As soon as next week, Amazon plans to send 27 of its satellites into low Earth orbit on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. Launch is scheduled for Wednesday, April 9, during a three-hour window that opens at noon EDT (16: 00 UTC). “We’ve done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time we’ve flown our final satellite design and the first time we’ve deployed so many satellites at once,” said Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper.

Heaviest mission launched by an Atlas … This will be the first mission by United Launch Alliance of this year, and the company’s first in nearly half a year. But officials say that will change soon. In a February interview with Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of Government and Commercial Programs, said that the upcoming launch for Amazon, dubbed Kuiper 1 by ULA and Kuiper Atlas 1 (KA-01) by Amazon, was the first of many planned for the year. “We have quite a few Kuiper Atlases planned this year, as well as Kuiper Vulcans,” Wentz said. Atlas can carry 27 Kuiper satellites, and Vulcans can loft 45.

SpaceX tests previously flown Super Heavy booster. SpaceX is having trouble with Starship’s upper stage after back-to-back failures, but engineers are making remarkable progress with the rocket’s enormous booster. The most visible sign of SpaceX making headway with Starship’s first stage—called Super Heavy—came at 9: 40 am local time (10: 40 am EDT; 14: 40 UTC) Thursday at the company’s Starbase launch site in South Texas. With an unmistakable blast of orange exhaust, SpaceX fired up a Super Heavy booster that has already flown to the edge of space. The burn lasted approximately eight seconds, Ars reports.

Rocket will fly on next Starship test … This was the first time SpaceX has test-fired a “flight-proven” Super Heavy booster, and it paves the way for this particular rocket—designated Booster 14—to fly again soon. A reflight of Booster 14, which previously launched and returned to Earth in January, will happen on the next Starship launch, SpaceX confirmed Thursday. “This booster previously launched and returned on Flight 7 and 29 of its 33 Raptor engines are flight proven,” the company said. “The first Super Heavy reuse will be a step towards our goal of zero-touch reflight.” It is a legitimately and characteristically bold decision to refly a Starship booster on a test flight that SpaceX really needs to succeed. The next test may come late this month or more likely in May.

FAA closes big rocket mishap investigations. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) closed mishap investigations into both the SpaceX Starship flight and Blue Origin New Glenn debut that both took place on Jan. 16, Via Satellite reports. Although the FAA closed the mishap investigation regarding the January 16 Starship flight, the rocket is still grounded because there is still an open mishap investigation into the following March 7 flight. “There were no public injuries and one confirmed report of minor vehicle damage in the Turks and Caicos Islands,” the FAA said in a statement on the January 16 flight.

New Glenn closed out as well … The FAA also completed its mishap investigation of Blue Origin’s first New Glenn flight, which successfully deployed Blue Origin’s own space logistics vehicle Blue Ring. Blue Origin failed to recover the first stage booster, which triggered the mishap investigation. The first stage was not able to restart its engines, which prevented the reentry burn from occurring and caused the loss of the stage. Blue Origin has identified seven corrective actions, and the FAA will verify those have been implemented before the second mission. Blue Origin is targeting a return to flight in late spring and will attempt to land the booster again.

Artemis II one step closer to launch. The four astronauts who will fly on board NASA’s Artemis II mission unveiled the patch for their historic flight on Thursday. The four astronauts who will be the first to fly to the Moon under NASA’s Artemis campaign—Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Koch from NASA, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from Canada—have designed an emblem to represent their mission that references both their distant destination and the home they will return to, the space agency said. It looks great!

Here’s what it means … “This patch designates the mission as “AII,” signifying not only the second major flight of the Artemis campaign, but also an endeavor of discovery that seeks to explore for all and by all. Framed in Apollo 8’s famous Earthrise photo, the scene of the Earth and the Moon represents the dual nature of human spaceflight, both equally compelling: The Moon represents our exploration destination, focused on discovery of the unknown. The Earth represents home, focused on the perspective we gain when we look back at our shared planet and learn what it is to be uniquely human. The orbit around Earth highlights the ongoing exploration missions that have enabled Artemis to set sights on a long-term presence on the Moon and soon, Mars.”

Next three launches

April 4: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-13 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 01: 02 UTC

April 6: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-72 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla. | 02: 40 UTC

April 7: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-11 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 21: 35 UTC

Photo of Eric Berger

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

Rocket Report: Next Starship flight to reuse booster; FAA clears New Glenn Read More »

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Tuesday Telescope: A close-up of the magical camera at the end of a robotic arm

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Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

We’re back! A long-time reader and subscriber recently mentioned in the Ars Forums that they “kind of” missed the Daily Telescope posts that I used to write in 2023 and 2024. Although I would have preferred that everyone desperately missed the Daily Telescope, I appreciate the sentiment. I really do.

I initially stopped writing these posts about a year ago because it just became too much to commit to writing one thing every day. I mean, I could have done it. But doing so on the daily crossed over the line from enjoyable to drudgery, and one of the best things about working for Ars is that it tends very much toward the enjoyable side. Anyway, writing one of these posts on a weekly basis feels more sustainable. I guess we’ll find out!

Today’s image comes to you all the way from Mars. One of the most powerful tools on NASA’s Perseverance rover is the WATSON camera attached to the end of the rover’s robotic arm. In the fine tradition of tortured acronyms at the space agency, WATSON stands for Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering. And because of course it is, WATSON is located on the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument. Seriously, NASA must stand for Not Another Screwball Acronym.

Tuesday Telescope: A close-up of the magical camera at the end of a robotic arm Read More »

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has found the longest chain carbon molecules yet on Mars

Curiosity rover, mars rover, NASA, Science, Space, syndication / /

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The discovery is one of the most significant findings in the search for evidence of past life on Mars. This is because, on Earth at least, relatively complex, long-chain carbon molecules are involved in biology. These molecules could actually be fragments of fatty acids, which are found in, for example, the membranes surrounding biological cells.

Scientists think that, if life ever emerged on Mars, it was probably microbial in nature. Because microbes are so small, it’s difficult to be definitive about any potential evidence for life found on Mars. Such evidence needs more powerful scientific instruments that are too large to be put on a rover.

The organic molecules found by Curiosity consist of carbon atoms linked in long chains, with other elements bonded to them, like hydrogen and oxygen. They come from a 3.7-billion-year-old rock dubbed Cumberland, encountered by the rover at a presumed dried-up lakebed in Mars’s Gale Crater. Scientists used the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on the NASA rover to make their discovery.

Scientists were actually looking for evidence of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins and therefore key components of life as we know it. But this unexpected finding is almost as exciting. The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Among the molecules were decane, which has 10 carbon atoms and 22 hydrogen atoms, and dodecane, with 12 carbons and 26 hydrogen atoms. These are known as alkanes, which fall under the umbrella of the chemical compounds known as hydrocarbons.

It’s an exciting time in the search for life on Mars. In March this year, scientists presented evidence of features in a different rock sampled elsewhere on Mars by the Perseverance rover. These features, dubbed “leopard spots” and “poppy seeds,” could have been produced by the action of microbial life in the distant past, or not. The findings were presented at a US conference and have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found the longest chain carbon molecules yet on Mars Read More »

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NASA to put Starliner’s thrusters through an extensive workout before next launch

Space, starliner / /

More than half a year after an empty Starliner spacecraft safely landed in a New Mexico desert, NASA and Boeing still have not decided whether the vehicle’s next flight will carry any astronauts.

In an update this week, the US space agency said it is still working through the process to certify Starliner for human missions. Whether it carries cargo or humans, Starliner’s next flight will not occur until late this year or, more likely, sometime in 2026.

Two things stand out in the new information provided by NASA. First, there remains a lot of work left to do this year before Starliner will fly again, including extensive testing of the vehicle’s propulsion system. And secondly, it is becoming clear that Starliner will only ever fly a handful of missions to the space station, if that, before the orbiting laboratory is retired.

Long line of tests

Several issues marred Starliner’s first crew flight to the space station last June, but the most serious of these was the failure of multiple maneuvering thrusters. Concerns about these thrusters prompted NASA to fly Starliner’s crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, home on a Crew Dragon vehicle instead. They safely landed earlier this month.

Starliner returned autonomously in early September. Since then, NASA and Boeing have been reviewing data from the test flight. (Unfortunately, the errant thrusters were located on the service module of the spacecraft, which is jettisoned before reentry and was not recovered.)

Although engineers from NASA and Boeing have worked through more than 70 percent of the observations and anomalies that occurred during Starliner’s flight, the propulsion system issues remain unresolved.

NASA to put Starliner’s thrusters through an extensive workout before next launch Read More »