Space – Page 2

Is the Dream Chaser space plane ever going to launch into orbit?

Dream Chaser, iss, NASA, Sierra space, Space / 9u50fv / August 5, 2025

“We wanted to have a fuel system that was green instead of using hypergolics, so we could land it on a runway and we could walk up to the vehicle without being in hazmat suits,” Tom Vice, then Sierra’s chief executive, told Ars in late 2023. “That was hard, I have to say.”

Apparently it still is because, according to Weigel, the process to finish testing of the propulsion system and certify it for an uncrewed spaceflight remains ongoing.

“We still have some of our integrated safety reviews to do, and we’re in the process with updating both of our schedules to try to understand where does that really put us,” she said. “And so Sierra’s working on that, and so I need to wait and just get information back from them to see where they think some of that work lines out.”

First mission may not berth with ISS

According to one source, Sierra is considering a modification to its first mission to shorten the certification period.

The company had planned to fly the vehicle close enough to the space station such that it could be captured and berthed to the orbiting laboratory. One option now under consideration is a mission that would bring Dream Chaser close enough to the station to test key elements of the vehicle in flight but not have it berth.

This would increase confidence in the spacecraft’s propulsion system and provide the data NASA and partner space agencies need to clear the vehicle to approach and berth with the station on its second flight. However, this would require a modification of the company’s contract with NASA, and a final decision has not yet been reached on whether to perform a flyby mission before an actual berthing.

It appears highly unlikely that Dream Chaser will be ready for its debut spaceflight this year for these technical reasons. Another challenge is the availability of its Vulcan launch vehicle. After years of delays, Vulcan is finally due to make its first national security launch as early as this coming Sunday. Assuming this launch is successful, Vulcan has a busy manifest in the coming months for the US Space Force.

Given this, it is uncertain when a Vulcan launch vehicle will become available for Dream Chaser, which was initially designated to fly on Vulcan’s second flight. However, because Dream Chaser was not ready last fall, that rocket flew with a mass simulator on this second launch, back in October 2024.

Is the Dream Chaser space plane ever going to launch into orbit? Read More »

With Trump’s cutbacks, crew heads for ISS unsure of when they’ll come back

commercial crew, crew dragon, crew-11, dragon, falcon 9, human spaceflight, international space station, NASA, Science, Space, spacex / DJ Henderson / August 2, 2025

“We are looking at the potential to extend this current flight, Crew-11.”

NASA astronaut Zena Cardman departs crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for the ride to SpaceX’s launch pad. Credit: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images

The next four-person team to live and work aboard the International Space Station departed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, taking aim at the massive orbiting research complex for a planned stay of six to eight months.

Spacecraft commander Zena Cardman leads the mission, designated Crew-11, that lifted off from Florida’s Space Coast at 11: 43 am EDT (15: 43 UTC) on Friday. Sitting to her right inside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule was veteran NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, serving as the vehicle pilot. Flanking the commander and pilot were two mission specialists: Kimiya Yui of Japan and Oleg Platonov of Russia.

Cardman and her crewmates rode a Falcon 9 rocket off the launch pad and headed northeast over the Atlantic Ocean, lining up with the space station’s orbit to set the stage for an automated docking at the complex early Saturday.

Goodbye LZ-1

The Falcon 9’s reusable first stage booster detached and returned to a propulsive touchdown at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a few miles south of the launch site. This was the 53rd and final rocket landing at LZ-1 since SpaceX aced the first intact recovery of a Falcon 9 booster there on December 21, 2015.

On most of SpaceX’s missions, Falcon 9 boosters land on the company’s offshore drone ships hundreds of miles downrange from the launch site. For launches with enough fuel margin, the first stage can return to an onshore landing. But the Space Force, which leases out the landing zones to SpaceX, wants to convert the site of LZ-1 into a launch site for another rocket company.

SpaceX will move onshore rocket landings to new landing zones to be constructed next to the two Falcon 9 launch pads at the Florida spaceport. Landing Zone 2, located adjacent to Landing Zone 1, will also be decommissioned and handed back over to the Space Force once SpaceX activates the new landing sites.

“We’re working with the Cape and with the Kennedy Space Center folks to figure out the right time to make that transition from Landing Zone 2 in the future,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability. “But I think we’ll stay with Landing Zone 2 at least near-term, for a little while, and then look at the right time to move to the other areas.”

The Falcon 9 booster returns to Landing Zone 1 after the launch of the Crew-11 mission on Friday, August 1, 2025. Credit: SpaceX

Meanwhile, the Falcon 9’s second stage fired its single engine to accelerate the Crew Dragon spacecraft into low-Earth orbit. Less than 10 minutes after liftoff, the capsule separated from the second stage to wrap up the 159th consecutive successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket.

“I have no emotions but joy right now,” Cardman said moments after arriving in orbit. “That was absolutely transcendent, the ride of a lifetime.”

This is the first trip to space for Cardman, a 37-year-old geobiologist and Antarctic explorer selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017. She was assigned to command a Dragon flight to the ISS last year, but NASA bumped her and another astronaut from the mission to make room for the spacecraft to return the two astronauts left behind on the station by Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule.

Mike Fincke, 58, is beginning his fourth spaceflight after previous launches on Russian Soyuz spacecraft and NASA’s space shuttle. He was previously training to fly on the Starliner spacecraft’s first long-duration mission, but NASA moved him to Dragon as the Boeing program faced more delays.

“Boy, it’s great to be back in orbit!” Fincke said. “Thank you to SpaceX and NASA for getting us here. What a ride!”

Yui is on his second flight to orbit. The 55-year-old former fighter pilot in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force spent 141 days in space in 2015. Platonov, a 39-year-old spaceflight rookie, was a fighter pilot in the Russian Air Force before training to become a cosmonaut.

A matter of money

There’s some unexpected uncertainty going into this mission about how long the foursome will be in space. Missions sometimes get extended for technical reasons, or because of poor weather in recovery zones on Earth, but there’s something different in play with Crew-11. For the first time, there’s a decent chance that NASA will stretch out this expedition due to money issues.

The Trump administration has proposed across-the-board cuts to most NASA programs, including the International Space Station. The White House’s budget request for NASA in fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1, calls for an overall cut in agency funding of nearly 25 percent.

The White House proposes a slightly higher reduction by percentage for the International Space Station and crew and cargo transportation to and from the research outpost. The cuts to the ISS would keep the station going through 2030, but with a smaller crew and a reduced capacity for research. Effectively, the ISS would limp toward retirement after more than 30 years in orbit.

Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said the agency’s engineers are working with SpaceX to ensure the Dragon spacecraft can stay in orbit for at least eight months. The current certification limit is seven months, although officials waived the limit for one Dragon mission that lasted longer.

“When we launch, we have a mission duration that’s baseline,” Stich said in a July 10 press conference. “And then we can extend [the] mission in real-time, as needed, as we better understand… the reconciliation bill and the appropriations process and what that means relative to the overall station manifest.”

An update this week provided by Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS program manager, indicated that officials are still planning for Crew-11 to stay in space a little longer than usual.

“We are looking at the potential to extend this current flight, Crew-11,” Weigel said Wednesday. “There are a few more months worth of work to do first.”

This photo of the International Space Station was captured by a crew member on a Soyuz spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Roscosmos

Budget bills advanced in the Senate and House of Representatives in July would maintain funding for most NASA programs, including the ISS and transportation, close to this year’s levels. But it’s no guarantee that Congress will pass an appropriations bill for NASA before the deadline of midnight on October 1. It’s also unknown whether President Donald Trump would sign a budget bill into law that rejects his administration’s cuts.

If Congress doesn’t act, lawmakers must pass a continuing resolution as a temporary stopgap measure or accept a government shutdown. Some members of Congress are also concerned that the Trump administration might simply refuse to spend money allotted to NASA and other federal agencies in any budget bill. This move, called impoundment, would be controversial, and its legality would likely have to be adjudicated in the courts.

A separate amendment added in Congress to a so-called reconciliation bill and signed into law by Trump on July 4 also adds $1.25 billion for ISS operations through 2029. “We’re still evaluating how that’s going to affect operations going forward, but it’s a positive step,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.

Suffice it to say that while Congress has signaled its intention to keep funding the ISS and many other NASA programs, the amount of money the space agency will actually receive remains uncertain. Trump appointees have directed NASA managers to prepare to operate as if the White House’s proposed cuts will become reality.

For officials in charge of the International Space Station, this means planning for fewer astronauts, reductions in research output, and longer-duration missions to minimize the number of crew rotation flights NASA must pay for. SpaceX is NASA’s primary contractor for crew rotation missions, using its Dragon spacecraft. NASA has a similar contract with Boeing, but that company’s Starliner spacecraft has not been certified for any operational flights to the station.

SpaceX’s next crew mission to the space station, Crew-12, is scheduled to launch early next year. Weigel said NASA is looking at the “entire spectrum” of options to cut back on the space station’s operations and transportation costs. One of those options would be to launch three crew members on Crew-12 instead of the regular four-person complement.

“We don’t have to answer that right now,” Weigel said. “We can actually wait pretty late to make the crew size smaller if we need to. In terms of cargo vehicles, we’re well-supplied through this fall, so in the short term, I’d say, through the end of this year and the beginning of ’26, things look pretty normal in terms of what we have planned for the program.

“But we’re evaluating things, and we’ll be ready to adjust when the budget is passed and when we figure out where we really land.”

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

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The curious case of Russia’s charm offensive with NASA this week

iss, NASA, roscosmos, russia, Space / DJ Henderson / August 2, 2025

Although NASA and its counterpart in Russia, Roscosmos, continue to work together on a daily basis, the leaders of the two organizations have not held face-to-face meetings since the middle of the first Trump administration, back in October 2018.

A lot has changed in the nearly eight years since then, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rocky departure of Roscosmos leader Dmitry Rogozin in 2022 who was subsequently dispatched to the front lines of the war, several changes in NASA leadership, and more.

This drought in high-level meetings was finally broken this week when the relatively new leader of Roscosmos, Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov, visited the United States to view the launch of the Crew-11 mission from Florida, which included cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Bakanov has also met with some of NASA’s human spaceflight leaders at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Notably, NASA has provided almost no coverage of the visit. However, the state-operated Russian news service, TASS, has published multiple updates. For example, on Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, TASS reported that Bakanov and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy discussed the future of the International Space Station.

Future of ISS partnership

“The conversation went quite well,” Bakanov is quoted as saying. “We agreed to continue using the ISS until 2028. It’s important that the new NASA chief confirmed this. We will work on the deorbiting process until 2030.”

A separate TASS report also quoted Duffy as saying NASA and Roscosmos should continue to work together despite high geopolitical tensions on Earth.

“What’s unique is we might find disagreement with conflict here, which we have,” Duffy said. “We have wild disagreement with the Russians on Ukraine, but what you see is we find points of agreement and points of partnership, which is what we have with the International Space Station and Russians, and so through hard times, we don’t throw those relationships away. We’re going to continue to work on the problems that we have here, but we’re going to continue to build alliances and partnerships and friendships as humanity continues to advance in space exploration.”

The curious case of Russia’s charm offensive with NASA this week Read More »

The military’s squad of satellite trackers is now routinely going on alert

Features, military space, raj agrawal, Science, Space, space debris, space operations command, US Space Force / Shannon Garcia / August 1, 2025

“I hope this blows your mind because it blows my mind.”

A Long March 3B rocket carrying a new Chinese Beidou navigation satellite lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on May 17, 2023. Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images

This is Part 2 of our interview with Col. Raj Agrawal, the former commander of the Space Force’s Space Mission Delta 2.

If it seems like there’s a satellite launch almost every day, the numbers will back you up.

The US Space Force’s Mission Delta 2 is a unit that reports to Space Operations Command, with the job of sorting out the nearly 50,000 trackable objects humans have launched into orbit.

Dozens of satellites are being launched each week, primarily by SpaceX to continue deploying the Starlink broadband network. The US military has advance notice of these launches—most of them originate from Space Force property—and knows exactly where they’re going and what they’re doing.

That’s usually not the case when China or Russia (and occasionally Iran or North Korea) launches something into orbit. With rare exceptions, like human spaceflight missions, Chinese and Russian officials don’t publish any specifics about what their rockets are carrying or what altitude they’re going to.

That creates a problem for military operators tasked with monitoring traffic in orbit and breeds anxiety among US forces responsible for making sure potential adversaries don’t gain an edge in space. Will this launch deploy something that can destroy or disable a US satellite? Will this new satellite have a new capability to surveil allied forces on the ground or at sea?

Of course, this is precisely the point of keeping launch details under wraps. The US government doesn’t publish orbital data on its most sensitive satellites, such as spy craft collecting intelligence on foreign governments.

But you can’t hide in low-Earth orbit, a region extending hundreds of miles into space. Col. Raj Agrawal, who commanded Mission Delta 2 until earlier this month, knows this all too well. Agrawal handed over command to Col. Barry Croker as planned after a two-year tour of duty at Mission Delta 2.

Col. Raj Agrawal, then-Mission Delta 2 commander, delivers remarks to audience members during the Mission Delta 2 redesignation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on October 31, 2024. Credit: US Space Force

Some space enthusiasts have made a hobby of tracking US and foreign military satellites as they fly overhead, stringing together a series of observations over time to create fairly precise estimates of an object’s altitude and inclination.

Commercial companies are also getting in on the game of space domain awareness. But most are based in the United States or allied nations and have close partnerships with the US government. Therefore, they only release information on satellites owned by China and Russia. This is how Ars learned of interesting maneuvers underway with a Chinese refueling satellite and suspected Russian satellite killers.

Theoretically, there’s nothing to stop a Chinese company, for example, from taking a similar tack on revealing classified maneuvers conducted by US military satellites.

The Space Force has an array of sensors scattered around the world to detect and track satellites and space debris. The 18th and 19th Space Defense Squadrons, which were both under Agrawal’s command at Mission Delta 2, are the units responsible for this work.

Preparing for the worst

One of the most dynamic times in the life of a Space Force satellite tracker is when China or Russia launches something new, according to Agrawal. His command pulls together open source information, such as airspace and maritime warning notices, to know when a launch might be scheduled.

This is not unlike how outside observers, like hobbyist trackers and space reporters, get a heads-up that something is about to happen. These notices tell you when a launch might occur, where it will take off from, and which direction it will go. What’s different for the Space Force is access to top-secret intelligence that might clue military officials in on what the rocket is actually carrying. China, in particular, often declares that its satellites are experimental, when Western analysts believe they are designed to support military activities.

That’s when US forces swing into action. Sometimes, military forces go on alert. Commanders develop plans to detect, track, and target the objects associated with a new launch, just in case they are “hostile,” Agrawal said.

We asked Agrawal to take us through the process his team uses to prepare for and respond to one of these unannounced, or “non-cooperative,” launches. This portion of our interview is published below, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Ars: Let’s say there’s a Russian or Chinese launch. How do you find out there’s a launch coming? Do you watch for NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen), like I do, and try to go from there?

Agrawal: I think the conversation starts the same way that it probably starts with you and any other technology-interested American. We begin with what’s available. We certainly have insight through intelligence means to be able to get ahead of some of that, but we’re using a lot of the same sources to refine our understanding of what may happen, and then we have access to other intel.

The good thing is that the Space Force is a part of the Intelligence Community. We’re plugged into an entire Intelligence Community focused on anything that might be of national security interest. So we’re able to get ahead. Maybe we can narrow down NOTAMs; maybe we can anticipate behavior. Maybe we have other activities going on in other domains or on the Internet, the cyber domain, and so on, that begin to tip off activity.

Certainly, we’ve begun to understand patterns of behavior. But no matter what, it’s not the same level of understanding as those who just cooperate and work together as allies and friends. And if there’s a launch that does occur, we’re not communicating with that launch control center. We’re certainly not communicating with the folks that are determining whether or not the launch will be safe, if it’ll be nominal, how many payloads are going to deploy, where they’re going to deploy to.

I certainly understand why a nation might feel that they want to protect that. But when you’re fielding into LEO [low-Earth orbit] in particular, you’re not really going to hide there. You’re really just creating uncertainty, and now we’re having to deal with that uncertainty. We eventually know where everything is, but in that meantime, you’re creating a lot of risk for all the other nations and organizations that have fielded capability in LEO as well.

Find, fix, track, target

Ars: Can you take me through what it’s like for you and your team during one of these launches? When one comes to your attention, through a NOTAM or something else, how do you prepare for it? What are you looking for as you get ready for it? How often are you surprised by something with one of these launches?

Agrawal: Those are good questions. Some of it, I’ll be more philosophical on, and others I can be specific on. But on a routine basis, our formation is briefed on all of the launches we’re aware of, to varying degrees, with the varying levels of confidence, and at what classifications have we derived that information.

In fact, we also have a weekly briefing where we go into depth on how we have planned against some of what we believe to be potentially higher threats. How many organizations are involved in that mission plan? Those mission plans are done at a very tactical level by captains and NCOs [non-commissioned officers] that are part of the combat squadrons that are most often presented to US Space Command…

That integrated mission planning involves not just Mission Delta 2 forces but also presented forces by our intelligence delta [Space Force units are called deltas], by our missile warning and missile tracking delta, by our SATCOM [satellite communications] delta, and so on—from what we think is on the launch pad, what we think might be deployed, what those capabilities are. But also what might be held at risk as a result of those deployments, not just in terms of maneuver but also what might these even experimental—advertised “experimental”—capabilities be capable of, and what harm might be caused, and how do we mission-plan against those potential unprofessional or hostile behaviors?

As you can imagine, that’s a very sophisticated mission plan for some of these launches based on what we know about them. Certainly, I can’t, in this environment, confirm or deny any of the specific launches… because I get access to more fidelity and more confidence on those launches, the timing and what’s on them, but the precursor for the vast majority of all these launches is that mission plan.

That happens at a very tactical level. That is now posturing the force. And it’s a joint force. It’s not just us, Space Force forces, but it’s other services’ capabilities as well that are posturing to respond to that. And the truth is that we even have partners, other nations, other agencies, intel agencies, that have capability that have now postured against some of these launches to now be committed to understanding, did we anticipate this properly? Did we not?

And then, what are our branch plans in case it behaves in a way that we didn’t anticipate? How do we react to it? What do we need to task, posture, notify, and so on to then get observations, find, fix, track, target? So we’re fulfilling the preponderance of what we call the kill chain, for what we consider to be a non-cooperative launch, with a hope that it behaves peacefully but anticipating that it’ll behave in a way that’s unprofessional or hostile… We have multiple chat rooms at multiple classifications that are communicating in terms of “All right, is it launching the way we expected it to, or did it deviate? If it deviated, whose forces are now at risk as a result of that?”

A spectator takes photos before the launch of the Long March 7A rocket carrying the ChinaSat 3B satellite from the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China on May 20, 2025. Credit: Meng Zhongde/VCG via Getty Images

Now, we even have down to the fidelity of what forces on the ground or on the ocean may not have capability… because of maneuvers or protective measures that the US Space Force has to take in order to deviate from its mission because of that behavior. The conversation, the way it was five years ago and the way it is today, is very, very different in terms of just a launch because now that launch, in many cases, is presenting a risk to the joint force.

We’re acting like a joint force. So that Marine, that sailor, that special operator on the ground who was expecting that capability now is notified in advance of losing that capability, and we have measures in place to mitigate those outages. And if not, then we let them know that “Hey, you’re not going to have the space capability for some period of time. We’ll let you know when we’re back. You have to go back to legacy operations for some period of time until we’re back into nominal configuration.”

I hope this blows your mind because it blows my mind in the way that we now do even just launch processing. It’s very different than what we used to do.

Ars: So you’re communicating as a team in advance of a launch and communicating down to the tactical level, saying that this launch is happening, this is what it may be doing, so watch out?

Agrawal: Yeah. It’s not as simple as a ballistic missile warning attack, where it’s duck and cover. Now, it’s “Hey, we’ve anticipated the things that could occur that could affect your ability to do your mission as a result of this particular launch with its expected payload, and what we believe it may do.” So it’s not just a general warning. It’s a very scoped warning.

As that launch continues, we’re able to then communicate more specifically on which forces may lose what, at what time, and for how long. And it’s getting better and better as the rest of the US Space Force, as they present capability trained to that level of understanding as well… We train this together. We operate together and we communicate together so that the tactical user—sometimes it’s us at US Space Force, but many times it’s somebody on the surface of the Earth that has to understand how their environment, their capability, has changed as a result of what’s happening in, to, and from space.

Ars: The types of launches where you don’t know exactly what’s coming are getting more common now. Is it normal for you to be on this alert posture for all of the launches out of China or Russia?

Agrawal: Yeah. You see it now. The launch manifest is just ridiculous, never mind the ones we know about. The ones that we have to reach out into the intelligence world and learn about, that’s getting ridiculous, too. We don’t have to have this whole machine postured this way for cooperative launches. So the amount of energy we’re expending for a non-cooperative launch is immense. We can do it. We can keep doing it, but you’re just putting us on alert… and you’re putting us in a position where we’re getting ready for bad behavior with the entire general force, as opposed to a cooperative launch, where we can anticipate. If there’s an anomaly, we can anticipate those and work through them. But we’re working through it with friends, and we’re communicating.

We’re not having to put tactical warfighters on alert every time … but for those payloads that we have more concern about. But still, it’s a very different approach, and that’s why we are actively working with as many nations as possible in Mission Delta 2 to get folks to sign on with Space Command’s space situational awareness sharing agreements, to go at space operations as friends, as allies, as partners, working together. So that way, we’re not posturing for something higher-end as a result of the launch, but we’re doing this together. So, with every nation we can, we’re getting out there—South America, Africa, every nation that will meet with us, we want to meet with them and help them get on the path with US Space Command to share data, to work as friends, and use space responsibly.”

A Long March 3B carrier rocket carrying the Shijian 21 satellite lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on October 24, 2021. Credit: Li Jieyi/VCG via Getty Images

Ars: How long does it take you to sort out and get a track on all of the objects for an uncooperative launch?

Agrawal: That question is a tough one to answer. We can move very, very quickly, but there are times when we have made a determination of what we think something is, what it is and where it’s going, and intent; there might be some lag to get it into a public catalog due to a number of factors, to include decisions being made by combatant commanders, because, again, our primary objective is not the public-facing catalog. The primary objective is, do we have a risk or not?

If we have a risk, let’s understand, let’s figure out to what degree do we think we have to manage this within the Department of Defense. And to what degree do we believe, “Oh, no, this can go in the public catalog. This is a predictable elset (element set)”? What we focus on with (the public catalog) are things that help with predictability, with spaceflight safety, with security, spaceflight security. So you sometimes might see a lag there, but that’s because we’re wrestling with the security aspect of the degree to which we need to manage this internally before we believe it’s predictable. But once we believe it’s predictable, we put it in the catalog, and we put it on space-track.org. There’s some nuance in there that isn’t relative to technology or process but more on national security.

On the flip side, what used to take hours and days is now getting down to seconds and minutes. We’ve overhauled—not 100 percent, but to a large degree—and got high-speed satellite communications from sensors to the centers of SDA (Space Domain Awareness) processing. We’re getting higher-end processing. We’re now duplicating the ability to process, duplicating that capability across multiple units. So what used to just be human labor intensive, and also kind of dial-up speed of transmission, we’ve now gone to high-speed transport. You’re seeing a lot of innovation occur, and a lot of data fusion occur, that’s getting us to seconds and minutes.

The military’s squad of satellite trackers is now routinely going on alert Read More »

Rocket Report: NASA finally working on depots, Air Force tests new ICBM

rocket report, Space / Shannon Garcia / August 1, 2025

“I didn’t expect that we would get to orbit.”

Gilmour Space’s Eris rocket lifts off from Bowen Orbital Spaceport in Austraia. Credit: Gilmour Space

Welcome to Edition 8.05 of the Rocket Report! One of the most eye-raising things I saw this week was an online update from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center touting its work on cryogenic propellant management in orbit. Why? Because until recently, this was a forbidden research topic at the space agency, as propellant depots would obviate the need for a large rocket like the Space Launch System. But now that Richard Shelby is retired…

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.

Australian launch goes sideways. Back-to-back engine failures doomed a privately developed Australian rocket moments after liftoff Tuesday, cutting short a long-shot attempt to reach orbit with the country’s first homegrown launch vehicle, Ars reports. The 82-foot-tall (25-meter) Eris rocket ignited its four main engines and took off from its launch pad in northeastern Australia, but the rocket quickly lost power from two of its engines and stalled just above the launch pad before coming down in a nearby field. The crash sent a plume of smoke thousands of feet over the launch site, which sits on a remote stretch of coastline on Australia’s northeastern frontier.

Setting expectations … Gilmour Space, the private company that developed the rocket, said in a statement that there were no injuries and “no adverse environmental impacts” in the aftermath of the accident. The launch pad also appeared to escape any significant damage. The company’s cofounder and CEO, Adam Gilmour, spoke with Ars a few hours after the launch. Gilmour said he wasn’t surprised by the outcome of the Eris rocket’s inaugural test flight, which lasted just 14 seconds. “I didn’t expect that we would get to orbit,” he said. “Never did. I thought best case was maybe 40 seconds of flight time, but I’ll take 14 as a win.” (submitted by zapman987 and Tfargo04)

Firefly seeks to go public. Firefly Aerospace seeks to raise more than $600 million through a public stock offering, an arrangement that would boost the company’s market valuation to nearly $5.5 billion, according to a document filed with the SEC on Monday, Ars reports. The launch of Firefly’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) comes as the company works to build on a historic success in March, when Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander touched down on the surface of the Moon. Firefly plans to sell 16.2 million shares of common stock at a price of between $35 and $39 per share. Under those terms, Firefly could raise up to $631.8 million on the public market.

A lot of financial needs … In a statement, Firefly said it will use the funds to pay off a “substantial” amount of debt and support dividend payments and “for general corporate purposes.” Firefly’s general corporate purposes include a spectrum of activities, and some are going better than others. Firefly is deep into the capital-intensive development of a new medium-class rocket named Eclipse in partnership with Northrop Grumman, which made a $50 million strategic investment into Firefly in May. And Firefly is developing a spacecraft line called Elytra, a platform that can host military sensors and other payloads and maneuver them into different orbits.

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Air Force tests new ICBM. It’s been half a decade since the Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a sole-source contract to develop a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, known as the LGM-35 Sentinel. The missiles will carry thermonuclear warheads and are intended to replace all 450 Minuteman III missiles starting in 2029. This week, the Air Force announced that testing of the rocket’s second stage motor in a vacuum chamber to simulate high-altitude conditions is going well. “This test reflects our disciplined digital engineering approach and the continued momentum behind the Sentinel program,” said Brig. Gen. William S. Rogers of the Air Force.

Real-world tests to validate models … The stage-two motor is one of three booster segments that make up the three-stage Sentinel missile. According to the Air Force, this test is part of a series intended to qualify the stage-two design and validate predictive performance models developed in a digital engineering environment. The data gathered from the test will be used to refine design elements and reduce technical risk as the program moves toward production. The milestone follows the stage-one rocket motor test conducted in March at Northrop Grumman’s facility in Promontory, Utah.

Starship debris clouds future of SpaceX Bahamas landings. In a new report, Reuters provides additional details about the deal between SpaceX and the Bahamas to land Falcon 9 first stages there and why it still may go sideways. The Bahamas rocket-landing deal, which unlocked a more efficient path to space for SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9, was signed in February last year by Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper. Sources told the publication that the quick approval created tension within the Bahamian government, with some officials expressing misgivings about a lack of transparency in the negotiations.

Landing agreement on hold … SpaceX’s deal with the Bahamas, the government said, included a $1 million donation to the University of Bahamas, where the company pledged to conduct quarterly seminars on space and engineering topics. The company must also pay a $100,000 fee per landing. In April, the landing agreement was put on hold after the explosion of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, whose mid-flight failure sent hundreds of pieces of debris washing ashore on Bahamian islands. Local activists have increased criticism of the Falcon 9 landing agreement since then, which remains under review. (submitted by Tom Nelson)

A single cloud delays Crew 11 launch. The SpaceX Crew-11 mission was a little more than a minute away from the planned launch Thursday onboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft when cumulus clouds popped up in just the right spot to trigger a scrub, Spaceflight Now reports. The four astronauts, led by NASA’s Zena Cardman, are bound for the International Space Station when they leave Earth.

Forecasters for the win? … On Wednesday, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 90 percent chance for favorable weather at launch. Meteorologists said there was a low probability for interference from cumulus clouds, but that proved to be enough to stymie a launch attempt. As a meteorologist, I feel like I should apologize for my colleagues. Another attempt is likely Friday, although weather conditions will deteriorate somewhat.

Mysterious rocket engine undergoes testing. The Exploration Company has successfully completed a six-week test campaign of the oxygen-rich preburner for its Typhoon rocket engine, European Spaceflight reports. With co-financing from the French space agency CNES, The Exploration Company began work on its Typhoon rocket engine in January 2024. The reusable engine uses a full-flow staged combustion cycle and is designed to produce 250 metric tons of thrust, which is comparable to a SpaceX Raptor. On Thursday, the company announced that it had completed a series of 16 hot-fire tests of the oxygen-rich preburner for the Typhoon engine.

What is the engine for? … At this point, the Typhoon engine does not have a confirmed application, as it is far too powerful for any of the company’s current in-space logistics projects. According to information provided to European Spaceflight by the company, The Exploration Company partnered with an industrial prime contractor to submit a proposal for the European Space Agency’s European Launcher Challenge. While unconfirmed, the company’s contribution to the bid likely included the Typhoon engine.

India’s GSLV delivers for NASA. A $1.5 billion synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, a joint project between NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO, successfully launched into orbit on Wednesday aboard that nation’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, Ars reports. The mission, named NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), was subsequently deployed into its intended orbit 464 miles (747 km) above the Earth’s surface. From this Sun-synchronous orbit, it will collect data about the planet’s land and ice surfaces two times every 12 days.

A growing collaboration … After Wednesday’s launch, the spacecraft will undergo a three-month commissioning phase. The NISAR mission is notable both for its price tag—Earth observation missions typically cost less because they do not need to be hardened for long-duration flight in deep space—as well as the partnership with India. In terms of complexity and cost, this is the largest collaboration between NASA and ISRO to date and could set a template for further cooperation in space as part of the Artemis program or other initiatives.

You can now see a Merlin engine at the Smithsonian. The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts, Ars reports. The new exhibitions shine a modern light on returning displays and restore the museum’s almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical.

The mighty Merlin … Among the artifacts debuting in “Futures in Space” are a Merlin engine and grid fin that flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Sian Proctor’s pressure suit that she wore on the private Inspiration4 mission in 2021, and a mockup of a New Shepard crew module that Blue Origin has pledged to replace with its first flown capsule when it is retired from flying. It’s great to see elements of the Falcon 9 rocket in the museum. Although the booster is still active, it is by far the most-flown US rocket in history, and the Merlin engine is the most reliable rocket engine over that timeframe.

Reason Foundation calls for termination of SLS. A libertarian think tank, the Reason Foundation, has published a new report that is deeply critical of NASA’s Artemis program and its use of the Space Launch System Rocket and Orion spacecraft. “NASA needs to bite the bullet and end its use of obsolete, non-reusable launch vehicles and sole-source, cost-plus contracts,” the report states. “It should shift to state-of-the-art reusable spacecraft and public-private partnerships like those now transporting cargo and people between Earth and the International Space Station.”

How to get to the Moon … The report estimates that canceling the SLS rocket, its ground systems, Orion, and the Lunar Gateway would save NASA $5.25 billion a year. The authors posit several different architectures for a lunar lander that would be ready sooner and be compatible with existing rockets. This includes a novel plan to use Crew Dragon, with legs, as a lander. It is not clear how much impact the report will have, as Congress seems to want to fly the SLS indefinitely, and the Trump administration seeks to cancel the rocket after two more flights.

NASA is finally interested in propellant depots. This week NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center posted an update noting its recent work on developing and testing technology to manage cryogenic propellants in space. Teams at the field center in Huntsville, Alabama tested an innovative approach to achieve zero boiloff storage of liquid hydrogen using two stages of active cooling, which could prevent the loss of valuable propellant. “Technologies for reducing propellant loss must be implemented for successful long-duration missions to deep space like the Moon and Mars,” said Kathy Henkel, acting manager of NASA’s Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio Project, based at NASA Marshall.

If only this had been done earlier … This is great, obviously, as long-term storage of liquid propellants such as oxygen, hydrogen, and methane are critical to the strategies of SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other companies working to develop reusable and more cost-effective space transportation vehicles. However, it is somewhat ironic to see NASA and Marshall promoting this work after it was suppressed for a decade by US Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican. As Ars has previously reported, in order to protect the Space Launch System rocket, Shelby directed NASA to end its work on storage and transfer of cryogenic propellants, going so far as to say he would fire anyone who used the word ‘depot.’ Well, we will say it: Depot.

Next three launches

August 1: Falcon 9 | Crew-11 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 15: 43 UTC

August 2: Electron | JAKE 4 suborbital flight | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 01: 45 UTC

August 4: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-30 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04: 11 UTC

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

Rocket Report: NASA finally working on depots, Air Force tests new ICBM Read More »

The first company to complete a fully successful lunar landing is going public

Science, Space / 9u50fv / July 29, 2025

The financial services firm Charles Schwab reported last month that IPOs are on the comeback across multiple sectors of the market. “After a long dry spell, there are signs of life in the initial public offerings space,” Charles Schwab said in June. “An increase in offerings can sometimes suggest an improvement in overall market sentiment.”

Firefly Aerospace started as a propulsion company. This image released by Firefly earlier this year shows the company’s family of engines. From left to right: Miranda for the Eclipse rocket; Lightning and Reaver for the Alpha rocket; and Spectre for the Blue Ghost and Elytra spacecraft.

Firefly is eschewing a SPAC merger in favor of a traditional IPO. Another space company, Voyager Technologies, closed an Initial Public Offering on June 11, raising nearly $383 million with a valuation peaking at $3.8 billion despite reporting a loss of $66 million in 2024. Voyager’s stock price has been in a precipitous decline since then.

Financial information disclosed by Firefly in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals the company registered $60.8 million in revenue in 2024, a 10 percent increase from the prior year. But Firefly’s net loss widened from $135 million to $231 million, largely due to higher spending on research and development for the Eclipse rocket and Elytra spacecraft.

Rocket Lab, too, reported a net loss of $190 million in 2024 and another $60.6 million in the first quarter of this year. Despite this, Rocket Lab’s stock price has soared for most of 2025, further confirming that near-term profits aren’t everything for investors.

Chad Anderson, the founder and managing partner of Space Capital, offered a “gut check” to investors listening to his quarterly podcast last week.

“90 percent of IPOs that double on day one deliver negative returns over three years,” Anderson said. “And a few breakout companies become long-term winners… Rocket Lab being chief among them. But many fall short of expectations, even with some collapsing into bankruptcy, again, as we’ve seen over the last few years.

“There’s a lot of excitement about the space economy, and rightly so,” Anderson said. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for investors, but unfortunately, I think this is going to be another example of why specialist expertise is required and the ability to read financial statements and understand the underlying business fundamentals, because that’s what’s really going to take companies through in the long term.”

The first company to complete a fully successful lunar landing is going public Read More »

Smithsonian Air and Space opens halls for “milestone” and “future” artifacts

blue origin, Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, Futures in Space, inspiration4, National Air and Space Museum, reimagined galleries, renovation, Smithsonian, Space, Space exploration, space history, spacex / Mike M. / July 28, 2025

$900M renovation nearing completion

John Glenn’s Friendship 7 returns as SpaceX and Blue Origin artifacts debut.

“Futures in Space” recaptures the experience of the early visitors to the National Air and Space Museum, where the objects on display were contemporary to the day. A mockup of a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule and SpaceX Merlin rocket engine are among the items on display for the first time. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

The National Air and Space Museum welcomed the public into five more of its renovated galleries on Monday, including two showcasing spaceflight artifacts. The new exhibitions shine modern light on returning displays and restore the museum’s almost 50-year-old legacy of adding objects that made history but have yet to become historical.

Visitors can again enter through the “Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall,” which has been closed for the past three years and has on display some of the museum’s most iconic items, including John Glenn’s Friendship 7 Mercury capsule and an Apollo lunar module.

From there, visitors can tour through the adjacent “Futures in Space,” a new gallery focused on the different approaches and technology that spaceflight will take in the years to come. Here, the Smithsonian is displaying for the first time objects that were recently donated by commercial spaceflight companies, including items used in space tourism and in growing the low-Earth orbit economy.

a museum gallery with air and spacecraft displayed on the terrazzo floor and suspended from the ceiling — The artifacts are iconic, but the newly reopened Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the National Air and Space Museum is all new. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We are thrilled to open this next phase of exhibitions to the public,” said Chris Browne, the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the National Air and Space Museum, in a statement. “Reopening our main hall with so many iconic aerospace artifacts, as well as completely new exhibitions, will give visitors much more to see and enjoy.”

The other three galleries newly open to the public are devoted to aviation history, including the “Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight,” “World War I: The Birth of Military Aviation,” and the “Allan and Shelley Holt Innovations Gallery.”

What’s new is not yet old

Among the artifacts debuting in “Futures in Space” are a Merlin engine and grid fin that flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Sian Proctor’s pressure suit that she wore on the private Inspiration4 mission in 2021, and a mockup of a New Shepard crew module that Blue Origin has pledged to replace with its first flown capsule when it is retired from flying.

“When the museum first opened back in 1976 and people came here and saw things like the Apollo command module and Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, or really anything related to human spaceflight, at that point it was all still very recent,” said Matt Shindell, one of the curators behind “Futures in Space,” in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “So when you would come into the museum, it wasn’t so much a history of space but what’s happening now and what could happen next. We wanted to have a gallery that would recapture that feeling.”

Instead of being themed around a single program or period in history, the new gallery invites visitors to consider a series of questions, including: Who decides who goes to space? Why do we go? And what will we do when we get there?

a black and white astronaut's pressure suit and other space artifacts are displayed behind glass in a museum gallery with blue flooring and walls — Curatores designed “Futures in Space” around a list of questions, including “Why go to space?” On display is a pressure suit worn by Sian Proctor on the Inspiration4 mission and a 1978 NASA astronaut “TFNG” T-shirt. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We really wanted the gallery to be one that engaged visitors in these questions and that centered the experience around what they thought should be happening in the future and what that would mean for them,” said Shindell. “We also have visions of the future presented throughout the gallery, including from popular culture—television shows, movies and comic books—that have explored what the future might look like and what it would mean for the people living through it.”

That is why the gallery also includes R2-D2, or rather a reproduction of the “Star Wars” droid as built by Adam Savage of Tested. In George Lucas’ vision of the future (“a long, long time ago”), Astromech droids serve as spacecraft navigators, mechanics, and companion aides.

Beyond the artifacts and exhibits (which also include an immersive 3D-printed Mars habitat and Yuri Gagarin’s training pressure suit), there is a stage and seating area at the center of “Futures.”

“I think of it as a TED Talk-style stage,” said Shindell. “We’re hoping to bring in people from industry, stakeholders, people who have flown, people who are getting ready to fly, and people who have ideas about what should be happening to come and talk to visitors from that stage about the same questions that we’re asking in the gallery.”

Modernized “Milestones”

The artifacts presented in the “Boeing Milestones of Flight” are mostly the same as they were before the hall was closed in 2022. The hall underwent a renovation in 2014 ahead of the museum’s 40th anniversary, so its displays did not need another redesign.

Still, the gallery looks new due to the work done surrounding the objects.

“What is new for the ‘Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall’ is, at some level, most noticeably the floor and media elements,” said Margaret Weitekamp, curator and division chair at the National Air and Space Museum, in an interview.

“We have a wonderful 123-foot (37-meter) media band that goes across the front of the mezzanine, and we have 20 different slide shows that work as a digest of what you’ll find in the new galleries throughout the building,” said Weitekamp. “So as people come into the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall, they’ll be greeted by that and get a taste of what they’re going to see inside.”

And then there is the new flooring. In the past, the hall had been lined in maroon or dark gray carpet. It is now a much lighter color terrazzo.

“It really brightens up the room,” Weitekamp told collectsPACE.

“Also, you’ll notice that as you are going up and down the hallways, there are medallions embedded in the floor that display quotes from significant aviation and spaceflight figures. So we’ve been able to put some quotes from Carl Sagan, Sally Ride, and Chuck Yeager into the floor,” she said.

the view looking down and into a museum gallery with aircraft suspended from the ceiling, spacecraft on display and a binary map embedded in the flooring — The pattern on the floor of the Boeing Milesones of Flight Hall is the pulsar-based map to Earth’s solar system that was mounted to the Pioneer and Voyager probes, now updated for 2026. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Visitors should also pay attention to what look like lines of dashes converging at the hall’s center. The design is an update to a NASA graphic.

“We have a revised version of the pulsar map from Pioneer 10 and 11 and the Voyager interstellar record,” said Weitekamp, referring to the representation of the location of Earth for any extraterrestrial species that might discover the probes in the future. “The map located Earth’s solar system with relationship to 14 pulsars.”

When the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft were launched, astronomers didn’t know that pulsars (or rotating neutron stars) slow down over time.

“So we worked with a colleague of ours to make it a map to our solar system as would be accurate for 2026, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the museum’s building and the 250th birthday of the nation,” Weitekamp said.

Thirteen open, eight to go

Monday’s opening followed an earlier debut of eight reimagined galleries in 2022. Also open is the renovated Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, which joins the planetarium, the museum store, and the Mars Café that were reopened earlier.

the exterior entrance to a building with a tall, spike-like silver sculpture standing front and center — The redesigned north entrance to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum opened to the public on Monday, July 28, 2025. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

“We are nearing the end of this multi-year renovation project,” said Browne. “We look forward to welcoming many more people into these modernized and inspiring new spaces,”

Eight more exhibitions are scheduled to open next year in time for the 50th anniversary of the National Air and Space Museum. Among those galleries are three that are focused on space: “At Home in Space,” “National Science Foundation Discovering Our Universe,” and “RTX Living in the Space Age Hall.”

Admission to the National Air and Space Museum and the new galleries is free, but timed-entry passes, available from the Smithsonian’s website, are required.

Robert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a daily news publication and online community focused on where space exploration intersects with pop culture. He is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of “Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He is on the leadership board for For All Moonkind and is a member of the American Astronautical Society’s history committee.

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A secretive space plane is set to launch and test quantum navigation technology

Space, space force, X-37b / Shannon Garcia / July 28, 2025

The mission’s goals include tests of “high-bandwidth inter-satellite laser communications technologies.”

“OTV-8’s laser communications demonstration will mark an important step in the US Space Force’s ability to leverage commercial space networks as part of proliferated, diversified, and redundant space architectures,” said US Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman in a statement. “In so doing, it will strengthen the resilience, reliability, adaptability, and data transport speeds of our satellite communications architectures.”

Navigating in a world without GPS

The space plane will also advance the development of a new navigation technology based on electromagnetic wave interference. The Space Force news release characterizes this as the “highest-performing quantum inertial sensor ever tested in space.”

Boeing has previously tested a quantum inertial measurement unit, which detects rotation and acceleration using atom interferometry, on conventional aircraft. Now, an advanced version of the technology is being taken to space to demonstrate its viability. The goal of the in-space test is to demonstrate precise positioning, navigation, and timing in an environment where GPS services are not available.

“Bottom line: testing this tech will be helpful for navigation in contested environments where GPS may be degraded or denied,” Saltzman said in a social media post Monday, describing the flight.

Quantum inertial sensors could also be used near the Moon, where there is no comparable GPS capability, or for exploration further into the Solar System.

Notably, the small X-37B is back to launching on a medium-lift rocket with this new mission. During its most recent flight that ended in March, the space plane launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time. This allowed the X-37B to fly beyond low-Earth orbit and reach an elliptical high-Earth orbit.

A secretive space plane is set to launch and test quantum navigation technology Read More »

Ars spoke with the military’s chief orbital traffic cop—here’s what we learned

china, Features, military space, raj agrawal, russia, Science, Space, space debris, space traffic management, US Space Force / DJ Henderson / July 28, 2025

“We have some 2,000 or 2,200 objects that I call the ‘red order of battle.'”

Col. Raj Agrawal participates in a change of command ceremony to mark his departure from Mission Delta 2 at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Col. Barry Croker became the new commander of Mission Delta 2 on July 3.

For two years, Col. Raj Agrawal commanded the US military unit responsible for tracking nearly 50,000 human-made objects whipping through space. In this role, he was keeper of the orbital catalog and led teams tasked with discerning whether other countries’ satellites, mainly China and Russia, are peaceful or present a military threat to US forces.

This job is becoming more important as the Space Force prepares for the possibility of orbital warfare.

Ars visited with Agrawal in the final weeks of his two-year tour of duty as commander of Mission Delta 2, a military unit at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. Mission Delta 2 collects and fuses data from a network of sensors “to identify, characterize, and exploit opportunities and mitigate vulnerabilities” in orbit, according to a Space Force fact sheet.

This involves operating radars and telescopes, analyzing intelligence information, and “mapping the geocentric space terrain” to “deliver a combat-ready common operational picture” to military commanders. Agrawal’s job has long existed in one form or another, but the job description is different today. Instead of just keeping up with where things are in space—a job challenging enough—military officials now wrestle with distinguishing which objects might have a nefarious purpose.

From teacher to commander

Agrawal’s time at Mission Delta 2 ended on July 3. His next assignment will be as Space Force chair at the National Defense University. This marks a return to education for Agrawal, who served as a Texas schoolteacher for eight years before receiving his commission as an Air Force officer in 2001.

“Teaching is, I think, at the heart of everything I do,” Agrawal said.

He taught music and math at Trimble Technical High School, an inner city vocational school in Fort Worth. “Most of my students were in broken homes and unfortunate circumstances,” Agrawal said. “I went to church with those kids and those families, and a lot of times, I was the one bringing them home and taking them to school. What was [satisfying] about that was a lot of those students ended up living very fulfilling lives.”

Agrawal felt a calling for higher service and signed up to join the Air Force. Given his background in music, he initially auditioned for and was accepted into the Air Force Band. But someone urged him to apply for Officer Candidate School, and Agrawal got in. “I ended up on a very different path.”

Agrawal was initially accepted into the ICBM career field, but that changed after the September 11 attacks. “That was a time with anyone with a name like mine had a hard time,” he said. “It took a little bit of time to get my security clearance.”

Instead, the Air Force assigned him to work in space operations. Agrawal quickly became an instructor in space situational awareness, did a tour at the National Reconnaissance Office, then found himself working at the Pentagon in 2019 as the Defense Department prepared to set up the Space Force as a new military service. Agrawal was tasked with leading a team of 100 people to draft the first Space Force budget.

Then, he received the call to report to Peterson Space Force Base to take command of what is now Mission Delta 2, the inheritor of decades of Air Force experience cataloging everything in orbit down to the size of a softball. The catalog was stable and predictable, lingering below 10,000 trackable objects until 2007. That’s when China tested an anti-satellite missile, shattering an old Chinese spacecraft into more than 3,500 pieces large enough to be routinely detected by the US military’s Space Surveillance Network.

This graph from the European Space Agency shows the growing number of trackable objects in orbit. Credit: European Space Agency

Two years later, an Iridium communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian spacecraft, adding thousands more debris fragments to low-Earth orbit. A rapid uptick in the pace of launches since then has added to the problem, further congesting busy orbital traffic lanes a hundred miles above the Earth. Today, the orbital catalog numbers roughly 48,000 objects.

“This compiled data, known as the space catalog, is distributed across the military, intelligence community, commercial space entities, and to the public, free of charge,” officials wrote in a fact sheet describing Mission Delta 2’s role at Space Operations Command. Deltas are Space Force military units roughly equivalent to a wing or group command in the Air Force.

The room where it happens

The good news is that the US military is getting better at tracking things in space. A network of modern radars and telescopes on the ground and in space can now spot objects as small as a golf ball. Space is big, but these objects routinely pass close to one another. At speeds of nearly 5 miles per second, an impact will be catastrophic.

But there’s a new problem. Today, the US military must not only screen for accidental collisions but also guard against an attack on US satellites in orbit. Space is militarized, a fact illustrated by growing fleets of satellites—primarily American, Chinese, and Russian—capable of approaching another country’s assets in orbit, and in some cases, disable or destroy them. This has raised fears at the Pentagon that an adversary could take out US satellites critical for missile warning, navigation, and communications, with severe consequences impacting military operations and daily civilian life.

This new reality compelled the creation of the Space Force in 2019, beginning a yearslong process of migrating existing Air Force units into the new service. Now, the Pentagon is posturing for orbital warfare by investing in new technologies and reorganizing the military’s command structure.

Today, the Space Force is responsible for predicting when objects in orbit will come close to one another. This is called a conjunction in the parlance of orbital mechanics. The US military routinely issues conjunction warnings to commercial and foreign satellite operators to give them an opportunity to move their satellites out of harm’s way. These notices also go to NASA if there’s a chance of a close call with the International Space Station (ISS).

The first Trump administration approved a new policy to transfer responsibility for these collision warnings to the Department of Commerce, allowing the military to focus on national security objectives.

But the White House’s budget request for next year would cancel the Commerce Department’s initiative to take over collision warnings. Our discussion with Agrawal occurred before the details of the White House budget were made public last month, and his comments reflect official Space Force policy at the time of the interview. “In uniform, we align to policy,” Agrawal wrote on his LinkedIn account. “We inform policy decisions, but once they’re made, we align our support accordingly.”

US Space Force officials show the 18th Space Defense Squadron’s operations floor to officials from the German Space Situational Awareness Centre during an “Operator Exchange” event at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on April 7, 2022. Credit: US Space Force/Tech. Sgt. Luke Kitterman

Since our interview, analysts have also noticed an uptick in interesting Russian activity in space and tracked a suspected Chinese satellite refueling mission in geosynchronous orbit.

Let’s rewind the tape to 2007, the time of China’s game-changing anti-satellite test. Gen. Chance Saltzman, today the Space Force’s Chief of Space Operations, was a lieutenant colonel in command of the Air Force’s 614th Space Operations Squadron at the time. He was on duty when Air Force operators first realized China had tested an anti-satellite missile. Saltzman has called the moment a “pivot point” in space operations. “For those of us that are neck-deep in the business, we did have to think differently from that day on,” Saltzman said in 2023.

Agrawal was in the room, too. “I was on the crew that needed to count the pieces,” he told Ars. “I didn’t know the significance of what was happening until after many years, but the Chinese had clearly changed the nature of the space environment.”

The 2007 anti-satellite test also clearly changed the trajectory of Agrawal’s career. We present part of our discussion with Agrawal below, and we’ll share the rest of the conversation tomorrow. The text has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Ars: The Space Force’s role in monitoring activities in space has changed a lot in the last few years. Can you tell me about these changes, and what’s the difference between what you used to call Space Situational Awareness, and what is now called Space Domain Awareness?

Agrawal: We just finished our fifth year as a Space Force, so as a result of standing up a military service focused on space, we shifted our activities to focus on what the joint force requires for combat space power. We’ve been doing space operations for going on seven decades. I think a lot of folks think that it was a rebranding, as opposed to a different focus for space operations, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Compared to Space Domain Awareness (SDA), Space Situational Awareness (SSA) is kind of the knowledge we produce with all these sensors, and anybody can do space situational awareness. You have academia doing that. You’ve got commercial, international partners, and so on. But Space Domain Awareness, Gen. [John “Jay”] Raymond coined the term a couple years before we stood up the Space Force, and he was trying to get after, how do we create a domain focused on operational outcomes? That’s all we could say at the time. We couldn’t say war-fighting domain at the time because of the way of our policy, but our policy shifted to being able to talk about space as a place where, not that we want to wage war, but that we can achieve objectives, and do that with military objectives in mind.

We used to talk about detect, characterize, attribute, predict. And then Gen. [Chance] Saltzman added target onto the construct for Space Domain Awareness, so that we’re very much in the conversation of what it means to do a space-enabled attack and being able to achieve objectives in, from, and to space, and using Space Domain Awareness as a vehicle to do those things. So, with Mission Delta 2, what he did is he took the sustainment part of acquisition, software development, cyber defense, intelligence related to Space Domain Awareness, and then all the things that we were doing in Space Domain Awareness already, put all that together under one command … and called us Mission Delta 2. So, the 18th Space Defense Squadron … that used to kind of be the center of the world for Space Domain Awareness, maybe the only unit that you could say was really doing SDA, where everyone else was kind of doing SSA. When I came into command a couple years ago, and we face now a real threat to having space superiority in the space domain, I disaggregated what we were doing just in the 18th and spread out through a couple of other units … So, that way everyone’s got kind of majors and minors, but we can quickly move a mission in case we get tested in terms of cyber defense or other kinds of vulnerabilities.

This multi-exposure image depicts a satellite-filled sky over Alberta. Credit: Alan Dyer/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

We can’t see the space domain, so it’s not like the air domain and sea domain and land domain, where you can kind of see where everything is, and you might have radars, but ultimately it’s a human that’s verifying whether or not a target or a threat is where it is. For the space domain, we’re doing all that through radars, telescopes, and computers, so the reality we create for everyone is essentially their reality. So, if there’s a gap, if there’s a delay, if there are some signs that we can’t see, that reality is what is created by us, and that is effectively the reality for everyone else, even if there is some other version of reality in space. So, we’re getting better and better at fielding capability to see the complexity, the number of objects, and then translating that into what’s useful for us—because we don’t need to see everything all the time—but what’s useful for us for military operations to achieve military objectives, and so we’ve shifted our focus just to that.

We’re trying to get to where commercial spaceflight safety is managed by the Office of Space Commerce, so they’re training side by side with us to kind of offload that mission and take that on. We’re doing up to a million notifications a day for conjunction assessments, sometimes as low as 600,000. But last year, we did 263 million conjunction notifications. So, we want to get to where the authorities are rightly lined, where civil or commercial notifications are done by an organization that’s not focused on joint war-fighting, and we focus on the things that we want to focus on.

Ars: Thank you for that overview. It helps me see the canvas for everything else we’re going to talk about. So, today, you’re not only tracking new satellites coming over the horizon from a recent launch or watching out for possible collisions, you’re now trying to see where things are going in space and maybe even try to determine intent, right?

Agrawal: Yeah, so the integrated mission delta has helped us have intel analysts and professionals as part of our formation. Their mission is SDA as much as ours is, but they’re using an intel lens. They’re looking at predictive intelligence, right? I don’t want to give away tradecraft, but what they’re focused on is not necessarily where a thing is. It used to be that all we cared about was position and vector, right? As long as you knew an object’s position and the direction they were going, you knew their orbit. You had predictive understanding of what their element set would be, and you only had to do sampling to get a sense of … Is it kind of where we thought it was going to be? … If it was far enough off of its element set, then we would put more energy, more sampling of that particular object, and then effectively re-catalog it.

Now, it’s a different model. We’re looking at state vectors, and we’re looking at anticipatory modeling, where we have some 2,000 or 2,200 objects that I call the “red order of battle”—that are high-interest objects that we anticipate will do things that are not predicted, that are not element set in nature, but that will follow some type of national interest. So, our intel apparatus gets after what things could potentially be a risk, and what things to continue to understand better, and what things we have to be ready to hold at risk. All of that’s happening through all the organizations, certainly within this delta, but in partnership and in support of other capabilities and deltas that are getting after their parts of space superiority.

Hostile or friendly?

Ars: Can you give some examples of these red order of battle objects?

Agrawal: I think you know about Shijian-20 (a “tech demo” satellite that has evaded inspection by US satellites) and Shijian-24C (which the Space Force says demonstrated “dogfighting” in space), things that are advertised as scientific in nature, but clearly demonstrate capability that is not friendly, and certainly are behaving in ways that are unprofessional. In any other domain, we would consider them hostile, but in space, we try to be a lot more nuanced in terms of how we characterize behavior, but still, when something’s behaving in a way that isn’t pre-planned, isn’t pre-coordinated, and potentially causes hazard, harm, or contest with friendly forces, we now get in a situation where we have to talk about is that behavior hostile or not? Is that escalatory or not? Space Command is charged with those authorities, so they work through the legal apparatus in terms of what the definition of a hostile act is and when something behaves in a way that we consider to be of national security interest.

We present all the capability to be able to do all that, and we have to be as cognizant on the service side as the combatant commanders are, so that our intel analysts are informing the forces and the training resources to be able to anticipate the behavior. We’re not simply recognizing it when it happens, but studying nations in the way they behave in all the other domains, in the way that they set policy, in the way that they challenge norms in other international arenas like the UN and various treaties, and so on. The biggest predictor, for us, of hazardous behaviors is when nations don’t coordinate with the international community on activities that are going to occur—launches, maneuvers, and fielding of large constellations, megaconstellations.

A stack of Starlink satellites in space right before deployment — Starlink satellites. Credit: Starlink

There are nearly 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit today. SpaceX adds dozens of satellites to the constellation each week. Credit: SpaceX

As you know, we work very closely with Starlink, and they’re very, very responsible. They coordinate and flight plan. They use the kind of things that other constellations are starting to use … changes in those elsets (element sets), for lack of a better term, state vectors, we’re on top of that. We’re pre-coordinating that. We’re doing that weeks or months in advance. We’re doing that in real-time in cooperation with these organizations to make sure that space remains safe, secure, accessible, profitable even, for industry. When you have nations, where they’re launching over their population, where they’re creating uncertainty for the rest of the world, there’s nothing else we can do with it other than treat that as potentially hostile behavior. So, it does take a lot more of our resources, a lot more of our interest, and it puts [us] in a situation where we’re posturing the whole joint force to have to deal with that kind of uncertainty, as opposed to cooperative launches with international partners, with allies, with commercial, civil, and academia, where we’re doing that as friends, and we’re doing that in cooperation. If something goes wrong, we’re handling that as friends, and we’re not having to involve the rest of the security apparatus to get after that problem.

Ars: You mentioned that SpaceX shares Starlink orbit information with your team. Is it the same story with Amazon for the Kuiper constellation?

Agrawal: Yeah, it is. The good thing is that all the US and allied commercial entities, so far, have been super cooperative with Mission Delta 2 in particular, to be able to plan out, to talk about challenges, to even change the way they do business, learning more about what we are asking of them in order to be safe. The Office of Space Commerce, obviously, is now in that conversation as well. They’re learning that trade and ideally taking on more of that responsibility. Certainly, the evolution of technology has helped quite a bit, where you have launches that are self-monitored, that are able to maintain their own safety, as opposed to requiring an entire apparatus of what was the US Air Force often having to expend a tremendous amount of resources to provide for the safety of any launch. Now, technology has gotten to a point where a lot of that is self-monitored, self-reported, and you’ll see commercial entities blow up their own rockets no matter what’s onboard if they see that it’s going to cause harm to a population, and so on. So, yeah, we’re getting a lot of cooperation from other nations, allies, partners, close friends that are also sharing and cooperating in the interest of making sure that space remains sustainable and secure.

“We’ve made ourselves responsible”

Ars: One of the great ironies is that after you figure out the positions and tracks of Chinese or Russian satellites or constellations, you’re giving that data right back to them in the form of conjunction and collision notices, right?

Agrawal: We’ve made ourselves responsible. I don’t know that there’s any organization holding us accountable to that. We believe it’s in our interests, in the US’s interests, to provide for a safe, accessible, secure space domain. So, whatever we can do to help other nations also be safe, we’re doing it certainly for their sake, but we’re doing it as much for our sake, too. We want the space domain to be safe and predictable. We do have an apparatus set up in partnership with the State Department, and with a tremendous amount of oversight from the State Department, and through US Space Command to provide for spaceflight safety notifications to China and Russia. We send notes directly to offices within those nations. Most of the time they don’t respond. Russia, I don’t recall, hasn’t responded at all in the past couple of years. China has responded a couple of times to those notifications. And we hope that, through small measures like that, we can demonstrate our commitment to getting to a predictable and safe space environment.

A model of a Chinese satellite refueling spacecraft on display during the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition on October 1, 2021, in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province of China. Credit: Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Ars: What does China say in response to these notices?

Agrawal: Most of the time it’s copy or acknowledged. I can only recall two instances where they’ve responded. But we did see some hope earlier this year and last year, where they wanted to open up technical exchanges with us and some of their [experts] to talk about spaceflight safety, and what measures they could take to open up those kinds of conversations, and what they could do to get a more secure, safer pace of operations. That, at some point, got delayed because of the holiday that they were going through, and then those conversations just halted, or at least progress on getting those conversations going halted. But we hope that there’ll be an opportunity again in the future where they will open up those doors again and have those kinds of conversations because, again, transparency will get us to a place where we can be predictable, and we can all benefit from orbital regimes, as opposed to using them exploitively. LEO is just one of those places where you’re not going to hide activity there, so you just are creating risk, uncertainty, and potential escalation by launching into LEO and not communicating throughout that whole process.

Ars: Do you have any numbers on how many of these conjunction notices go to China and Russia? I’m just trying to get an idea of what proportion go to potential adversaries.

Agrawal: A lot. I don’t know the degree of how many thousands go to them, but on a regular basis, I’m dealing with debris notifications from Russian and Chinese ASAT (anti-satellite) testing. That has put the ISS at risk a number of times. We’ve had maneuvers occur in recent history as a result of Chinese rocket body debris. Debris can’t maneuver, and unfortunately, we’ve gotten into situations with particularly those two nations that talk about wanting to have safer operations, but continue to conduct debris-causing tests. We’re going to be dealing with that for generations, and we are going to have to design capability to maneuver around those debris clouds as just a function of operating in space. So, we’ve got to get to a point where we’re not doing that kind of testing in orbit.

Ars: Would it be accurate to say you send these notices to China and Russia daily?

Agrawal: Yeah, absolutely. That’s accurate. These debris clouds are in LEO, so as you can imagine, as those debris clouds go around the Earth every 90 minutes, we’re dealing with conjunctions. There are some parts of orbits that are just unusable as a result of that unsafe ASAT test.

Ars spoke with the military’s chief orbital traffic cop—here’s what we learned Read More »

Starlink kept me connected to the Internet without fail—until Thursday

broadband, Space, spacex, starlink, Ukraine / Beth Washington / July 26, 2025

A rare global interruption in the Starlink satellite Internet network knocked subscribers offline for more than two hours on Thursday, the longest widespread outage since SpaceX opened the service to consumers nearly five years ago.

The outage affected civilian and military users, creating an inconvenience for many but cutting off a critical lifeline for those who rely on Starlink for military operations, health care, and other applications.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering, wrote on X that the network outage lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls wrote. “We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, apologized for the interruption in service on X: “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Effects big and small

The Ukrainian military has been at the leading edge of adopting Starlink services and adapting the system for use in war zones. Ukraine’s exploitation of Starlink connectivity has been instrumental in directing military operations, supporting battlefield communications, and controlling drones engaged in reconnaissance and offensive strikes.

The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, Robert Brovdi, confirmed Thursday’s Starlink outage reached his country’s ongoing war with Russia.

“Starlink went down across the entire front,” Brovdi wrote on Telegram. “Combat operations were carried out without broadcasts; reconnaissance was carried out … using shock weapons.”

Brovdi added that the interruption in service illustrates the importance of having multiple paths of connectivity, especially for time-critical military operations. “This incident, which lasted 150 minutes in the war, points to bottlenecks,” he wrote, urging the military to diversify its means of communication and connectivity.

Oleksandr Dmitriev, the founder of a Ukrainian system that centralizes feeds from thousands of drone crews across the frontline, told Reuters the outage was an example of the shortcomings of relying on cloud services for military operations, particularly battlefield drone reconnaissance.

Starlink kept me connected to the Internet without fail—until Thursday Read More »

Rocket Report: Channeling the future at Wallops; SpaceX recovers rocket wreckage

artemis, china, FAA, falcon 9, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, space launch system, spacex, starship, super heavy, tianlong 3 / Shannon Garcia / July 25, 2025

China’s Space Pioneer seems to be back on track a year after an accidental launch.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a payload of 24 Starlink Internet satellites soars into space after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, shortly after sunset on July 18, 2025. This image was taken in Santee, California, approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) away from the launch site. Credit: Kevin Carter/Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.04 of the Rocket Report! The Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense shield will be a lot of things. Along with new sensors, command and control systems, and satellites, Golden Dome will require a lot of rockets. The pieces of the Golden Dome architecture operating in orbit will ride to space on commercial launch vehicles. And Golden Dome’s space-based interceptors will essentially be designed as flying fuel tanks with rocket engines. This shouldn’t be overlooked, and that’s why we include a couple of entries discussing Golden Dome 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.

Space-based interceptors are a real challenge. The newly installed head of the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense shield knows the clock is ticking to show President Donald Trump some results before the end of his term in the White House, Ars reports. Gen. Michael Guetlein identified command-and-control and the development of space-based interceptors as two of the most pressing technical challenges for Golden Dome. He believes the command-and-control problem can be “overcome in pretty short order.” The space-based interceptor piece of the architecture is a different story.

Proven physics, unproven economics … “I think the real technical challenge will be building the space-based interceptor,” Guetlein said. “That technology exists. I believe we have proven every element of the physics that we can make it work. What we have not proven is, first, can I do it economically, and then second, can I do it at scale? Can I build enough satellites to get after the threat? Can I expand the industrial base fast enough to build those satellites? Do I have enough raw materials, etc.?” Military officials haven’t said how many space-based interceptors will be required for Golden Dome, but outside estimates put the number in the thousands.

Sign Me Up!

One big defense prime is posturing for Golden Dome. Northrop Grumman is conducting ground-based testing related to space-based interceptors as part of a competition for that segment of the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile-defense initiative, The War Zone reports. Kathy Warden, Northrop Grumman’s CEO, highlighted the company’s work on space-based interceptors, as well as broader business opportunities stemming from Golden Dome, during a quarterly earnings call this week. Warden identified Northrop’s work in radars, drones, and command-and-control systems as potentially applicable to Golden Dome.

But here’s the real news … “It will also include new innovation, like space-based interceptors, which we’re testing now,” Warden continued. “These are ground-based tests today, and we are in competition, obviously, so not a lot of detail that I can provide here.” Warden declined to respond directly to a question about how the space-based interceptors Northrop Grumman is developing now will actually defeat their targets. (submitted by Biokleen)

Trump may slash environmental rules for rocket launches. The Trump administration is considering slashing rules meant to protect the environment and the public during commercial rocket launches, changes that companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX have long sought, ProPublica reports. A draft executive order being circulated among federal agencies, and viewed by ProPublica, directs Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to “use all available authorities to eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for launch licenses. It could also, in time, require states to allow more launches or even more launch sites along their coastlines.

Getting political at the FAA … The order is a step toward the rollback of federal oversight that Musk, who has fought bitterly with the Federal Aviation Administration over his space operations, and others have pushed for. Commercial rocket launches have grown exponentially more frequent in recent years. In addition to slashing environmental rules, the draft executive order would make the head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation a political appointee. This is currently a civil servant position, but the last head of the office took a voluntary separation offer earlier this year.

There’s a SPAC for that. An unproven small launch startup is partnering with a severely depleted SPAC trust to do the impossible: go public in a deal they say will be valued at $400 million, TechCrunch reports. Innovative Rocket Technologies Inc., or iRocket, is set to merge with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC, founded by former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. But the most recent regulatory filings by this SPAC showed it was in a tenuous financial position last year, with just $1.6 million held in trust. Likewise, iRocket isn’t flooded with cash. The company has raised only a few million in venture funding, a fraction of what would be needed to develop and test the company’s small orbital-class rocket, named Shockwave.

SpaceX traces a path to orbit for NASA. Two NASA satellites soared into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday, commencing a $170 million mission to study a phenomenon of space physics that has eluded researchers since the dawn of the Space Age, Ars reports. The twin spacecraft are part of the NASA-funded TRACERS mission, which will spend at least a year measuring plasma conditions in narrow regions of Earth’s magnetic field known as polar cusps. As the name suggests, these regions are located over the poles. They play an important but poorly understood role in creating colorful auroras as plasma streaming out from the Sun interacts with the magnetic field surrounding Earth. The same process drives geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting GPS navigation, radio communications, electrical grids, and satellite operations.

Plenty of room for more … The TRACERS satellites are relatively small, each about the size of a washing machine, so they filled only a fraction of the capacity of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Three other small NASA tech demo payloads hitched a ride to orbit with TRACERS, kicking off missions to test an experimental communications terminal, demonstrate an innovative scalable satellite platform made of individual building blocks, and study the link between Earth’s atmosphere and the Van Allen radiation belts. In addition to those missions, the European Space Agency launched its own CubeSat to test 5G communications from orbit. Five smallsats from an Australian company rounded out the group. Still, the Falcon 9 rocket’s payload shroud was filled with less than a quarter of the payload mass it could have delivered to the TRACERS mission’s targeted Sun-synchronous orbit.

Tianlong launch pad ready for action. Chinese startup Space Pioneer has completed a launch pad at Jiuquan spaceport in northwestern China for its Tianlong 3 liquid propellent rocket ahead of a first orbital launch, Space News reports. Space Pioneer said the launch pad passed an acceptance test, and ground crews raised a full-scale model of the Tianlong 3 rocket on the launch pad. “The rehearsal test was successfully completed,” said Space Pioneer, one of China’s leading private launch companies. The activation of the launch pad followed a couple of weeks after Space Pioneer announced the completion of static loads testing on Tianlong 3.

More to come … While this is an important step forward for Space Pioneer, construction of the launch pad is just one element the company needs to finish before Tianlong 3 can lift off for the first time. In June 2024, the company ignited Tianlong 3’s nine-engine first stage on a test stand in China. But the rocket broke free of its moorings on the test stand and unexpectedly climbed into the sky before crashing in a fireball nearby. Space Pioneer says the “weak design of the rocket’s tail structure was the direct cause of the failure” last year. The company hasn’t identified next steps for Tianlong 3, or when it might be ready to fly. Tianlong 3 is a kerosene-fueled rocket with nine main engines, similar in design architecture and payload capacity to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Also, like Falcon 9, Tianlong 3 is supposed to have a recoverable and reusable first stage booster.

Dredging up an issue at Wallops. Rocket Lab has asked regulators for permission to transport oversized Neutron rocket structures through shallow waters to a spaceport off the coast of Virginia as it races to meet a September delivery deadline, TechCrunch reports. The request, which was made in July, is a temporary stopgap while the company awaits federal clearance to dredge a permanent channel to the Wallops Island site. Rocket Lab plans to launch its Neutron medium-lift rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Virginia, a lower-traffic spaceport that’s surrounded by shallow channels and waterways. Rocket Lab has a sizable checklist to tick off before Neutron can make its orbital debut, like mating the rocket stages, performing a “wet dress” rehearsal, and getting its launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration. Before any of that can happen, the rocket hardware needs to make it onto the island from Rocket Lab’s factory on the nearby mainland.

Kedging bets … Access to the channel leading to Wallops Island is currently available only at low tides. So, Rocket Lab submitted an application earlier this year to dredge the channel. The dredging project was approved by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission in May, but the company has yet to start digging because it’s still awaiting federal sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers. As the company waits for federal approval, Rocket Lab is seeking permission to use a temporary method called “kedging” to ensure the first five hardware deliveries can arrive on schedule starting in September. We don’t cover maritime issues in the Rocket Report, but if you’re interested in learning a little about kedging, here’s a link.

Any better ideas for an Exploration Upper Stage? Not surprisingly, Congress is pushing back against the Trump administration’s proposal to cancel the Space Launch System, the behemoth rocket NASA has developed to propel astronauts back to the Moon. But legislation making its way through the House of Representatives includes an interesting provision that would direct NASA to evaluate alternatives for the Boeing-built Exploration Upper Stage, an upgrade for the SLS rocket set to debut on its fourth flight, Ars reports. Essentially, the House Appropriations Committee is telling NASA to look for cheaper, faster options for a new SLS upper stage.

CYA EUS? … The four-engine Exploration Upper Stage, or EUS, is an expensive undertaking. Last year, NASA’s inspector general reported that the new upper stage’s development costs had ballooned from $962 million to $2.8 billion, and the project had been delayed more than six years. That’s almost a year-for-year delay since NASA and Boeing started development of the EUS. So, what are the options if NASA went with a new upper stage for the SLS rocket? One possibility is a modified version of United Launch Alliance’s dual-engine Centaur V upper stage that flies on the Vulcan rocket. It’s no longer possible to keep flying the SLS rocket’s existing single-engine upper stage because ULA has shut down the production line for it.

Raising Super Heavy from the deep. For the second time, SpaceX has retrieved an engine section from one of its Super Heavy boosters from the Gulf of Mexico, NASASpaceflight.com reports. Images posted on social media showed the tail end of a Super Heavy booster being raised from the sea off the coast of northern Mexico. Most of the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines appear to still be attached to the lower section of the stainless steel booster. Online sleuths who closely track SpaceX’s activities at Starbase, Texas, have concluded the rocket recovered from the Gulf is Booster 13, which flew on the sixth test flight of the Starship mega-rocket last November. The booster ditched in the ocean after aborting an attempted catch back at the launch pad in South Texas.

But why? … SpaceX recovered the engine section of a different Super Heavy booster from the Gulf last year. The company’s motivation for salvaging the wreckage is unclear. “Speculated reasons include engineering research, environmental mitigation, or even historical preservation,” NASASpaceflight reports.

Next three launches

July 26: Vega C | CO3D & MicroCarb | Guiana Space Center, French Guiana | 02: 03 UTC

July 26: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-26 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 08: 34 UTC

July 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 55 UTC

Rocket Report: Channeling the future at Wallops; SpaceX recovers rocket wreckage Read More »

Lawmakers writing NASA’s budget want a cheaper upper stage for the SLS rocket

artemis, Boeing, congress, NASA, nasa space policy, Science, Space, space launch system / Mike M. / July 25, 2025

Eliminating the Block 1B upgrade now would save NASA at least $500 million per year.

Artist’s illustration of the Boeing-developed Exploration Upper Stage, with four hydrogen-fueled RL10 engines. Credit: NASA

Not surprisingly, Congress is pushing back against the Trump administration’s proposal to cancel the Space Launch System, the behemoth rocket NASA has developed to propel astronauts back to the Moon.

Spending bills making their way through both houses of Congress reject the White House’s plan to wind down the SLS rocket after two more launches, but the text of a draft budget recently released by the House Appropriations Committee suggests an openness to making some major changes to the program.

The next SLS flight, called Artemis II, is scheduled to lift off early next year to send a crew of four astronauts around the far side of the Moon. Artemis III will follow a few years later on a mission to attempt a crew lunar landing at the Moon’s south pole. These missions follow Artemis I, a successful unpiloted test flight in 2022.

After Artemis III, the official policy of the Trump administration is to terminate the SLS program, along with the Orion crew capsule designed to launch on top of the rocket. The White House also proposed canceling NASA’s Gateway, a mini-space station to be placed in orbit around the Moon. NASA would instead procure commercial launches and commercial spacecraft to ferry astronauts between the Earth and the Moon, while focusing the agency’s long-term gaze toward Mars.

CYA EUS?

House and Senate appropriations bills would preserve SLS, Orion, and the Gateway. However, the House version of NASA’s budget has an interesting paragraph directing NASA to explore cheaper, faster options for a new SLS upper stage.

NASA has tasked Boeing, which also builds SLS core stages, to develop an Exploration Upper Stage for debut on the Artemis IV mission, the fourth flight of the Space Launch System. This new upper stage would have large propellant tanks and carry four engines instead of the single engine used on the rocket’s interim upper stage, which NASA is using for the first three SLS flights.

The House version of NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget raises questions about the long-term future of the Exploration Upper Stage. In one section of the bill, House lawmakers would direct NASA to “evaluate alternatives to the current Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) design for SLS.” The committee members wrote the evaluation should focus on reducing development and production costs, shortening the schedule, and maintaining the SLS rocket’s lift capability.

“NASA should also evaluate how alternative designs could support the long-term evolution of SLS and broader exploration goals beyond low-Earth orbit,” the lawmakers wrote. “NASA is directed to assess various propulsion systems, stage configurations, infrastructure compatibility, commercial and international collaboration opportunities, and the cost and schedule impacts of each alternative.”

The SLS rocket is expensive, projected to cost at least $2.5 billion per launch, not counting development costs or expenses related to the Orion spacecraft and the ground systems required to launch it at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Those figures bring the total cost of an Artemis mission using SLS and Orion to more than $4 billion, according to NASA’s inspector general.

NASA’s Block 1B version of the SLS rocket will be substantially larger than Block 1. Credit: NASA

The EUS is likewise an expensive undertaking. Last year, NASA’s inspector general reported that the new upper stage’s development costs had ballooned from $962 million to $2.8 billion, and the Boeing-led project had been delayed more than six years. The version of the SLS rocket with the EUS, known as Block 1B, is supposed to deliver a 40 percent increase in performance over the Block 1 configuration used on the first three Space Launch System flights. Overall, NASA’s inspector general projected Block 1B’s development costs to total $5.7 billion.

Eliminating the Block 1B upgrade now would save NASA at least $500 million per year, and perhaps more if NASA could also end work on a costly mobile launch tower specifically designed to support SLS Block 1B missions.

NASA can’t go back to the interim upper stage, which is based on the design of the upper stage that flew on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA’s) now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket. ULA has shut down its Delta production line, so there’s no way to build any more. What ULA does have is a new high-energy upper stage called Centaur V. This upper stage is sized for ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, with more capability than the interim upper stage but with lower performance than the larger EUS.

A season of compromise, maybe

Ars’ Eric Berger wrote last year about the possibility of flying the Centaur V upper stage on SLS missions.

Incorporating the Centaur V wouldn’t maintain the SLS rocket’s lift capability, as the House committee calls for in its appropriations bill. The primary reason for improving the rocket’s performance is to give SLS Block 1B enough oomph to carry “co-manifested” payloads, meaning it can launch an Orion crew capsule and equipment for NASA’s Gateway lunar space station on a single flight. The lunar Gateway is also teed up for cancellation in Trump’s budget proposal, but both congressional appropriations bills would save it, too. If the Gateway escapes cancellation, there are ways to launch its modules on commercial rockets.

Blue Origin also has an upper stage that could conceivably fly on the Space Launch System. But the second stage for Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket would be a more challenging match for SLS for several reasons, chiefly its 7-meter (23-foot) diameter—too wide to be a drop-in replacement for the interim upper stage used on Block 1. ULA’s Centaur V is much closer in size to the existing upper stage.

The House budget bill has passed a key subcommittee vote but won’t receive a vote from the full appropriations committee until after Congress’s August recess. A markup of the bill by the House Appropriations Committee scheduled for Thursday was postponed after Speaker Mike Johnson announced an early start to the recess this week.

Ars reported last week on the broad strokes of how the House and Senate appropriations bills would affect NASA. Since then, members of the House Appropriations Committee released the text of the report attached to their version of the NASA budget. The report, which includes the paragraph on the Exploration Upper Stage, provides policy guidance and more detailed direction on where NASA should spend its money.

The House’s draft budget includes $2.5 billion for the Space Launch System, close to this year’s funding level and $500 million more than the Trump administration’s request for the next fiscal year, which begins October 1. The budget would continue development of SLS Block 1B and the Exploration Upper Stage while NASA completes a six-month study of alternatives.

The report attached to the Senate appropriations bill for NASA has no specific instructions regarding the Exploration Upper Stage. But like the House bill, the Senate’s draft budget directs NASA to continue ordering spares and long-lead parts for SLS and Orion missions beyond Artemis III. Both versions of the NASA budget require the agency to continue with SLS and Orion until a suitable commercial, human-rated rocket and crew vehicle are proven ready for service.

In a further indication of Congress’ position on the SLS and Orion programs, lawmakers set aside more than $4 billion for the procurement of SLS rockets for the Artemis IV and Artemis V rockets in the reconciliation bill signed into law by President Donald Trump earlier this month.

Congress must pass a series of federal appropriations bills by October 1, when funding for the current fiscal year runs out. If Congress doesn’t act by then, it could pass a continuing resolution to maintain funding at levels close to this year’s budget or face a government shutdown.

Lawmakers will reconvene in Washington, DC, in early September in hopes of finishing work on the fiscal year 2026 budget. The section of the budget that includes NASA still must go through a markup hearing by the House Appropriations Committee and pass floor votes in the House and Senate. Then the two chambers will have to come to a compromise on the differences in their appropriations bill. Only then can the budget be put to another vote in each chamber and go to the White House for Trump’s signature.

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