Space – Page 5

Russia is about to do the most Russia thing ever with its next space station

iss, nauka, rOS, russia, Space, space station / 9u50fv / December 20, 2025

Meanwhile, the Russian core will fly onward. Some elements will have been in orbit for more than 30 years.

Some in Russia are not happy

In a scathing article on the decision, the Russian newspaper New Izvestia explored its consequences. The article, translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell, recalled comments from Orlov in 2022 about the dangerous bacteria and fungi that have accumulated on the International Space Station over its extended lifetime. Because of these microorganisms from hundreds of visiting astronauts, he said, there is danger to both humans and degraded electrical components. At the time, Orlov was seeking to justify funding for a new station. “Have bacteria and fungi suddenly become less dangerous over the past three years?” the Russian article asks.

There may also not be much time for new research. Russian cosmonauts on the space station currently spend about 50 percent of their time on station maintenance due to the aging infrastructure.

So, at a time when China will have its own Tiangong space station, NASA should have one or more privately operated space stations to visit, and India may also begin the construction of its own orbital outpost, Russian cosmonauts will be left with what, exactly?

“Russia, meanwhile, will be left to carry on the legacy of the ISS, with all its problems,” the New Izvestia article states. “We won’t have a new orbital station with modern capabilities yet, and the Vostochny Cosmodrome is losing much of its significance, meaning investments in a launch pad for manned flights could go down the drain. But let’s be happy for Kazakhstan—its authorities will continue to receive rent from Baikonur.”

This is clearly a money-saving move for Russia. Given its war-strapped economy, the country cannot afford major investments in civil space projects. It has been clear for some time that ROS was largely a vaporware project. However, basing a new station on decades-old elements of the space station, which have shown signs of cracking and leaking, is remarkable even for Russia’s threadbare space program.

Russia’s justification for the change is amusing. Manturov and the chief of Roscosmos, Dmitry Bakanov, have said that putting ROS at an inclination of 51.6 degrees would enable interaction with an Indian station, which may fly in a similar orbit. So maybe there can be some collaboration in the time before Russia’s station falls apart and India’s begins to fly?

That is thin gruel, indeed, upon which to justify such a monumental decision.

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Rocket Report: Russia pledges quick fix for Soyuz launch pad; Ariane 6 aims high

ariane 6, Arianespace, atlas v, china, falcon 9, launch, rocket lab, rocket report, Science, Space, spacex, starship, united launch alliance / 9u50fv / December 20, 2025

South Korean rocket startup Innospace is poised to debut a new nano-launcher.

The fifth Ariane 6 rocket climbs away from Kourou, French Guiana, with two European Galileo navigation satellites. Credit: ESA-CNES-Arianespace

Welcome to Edition 8.23 of the Rocket Report! Several new rockets made their first flights this year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn was the most notable debut, with a successful inaugural launch in January followed by an impressive second flight in November, culminating in the booster’s first landing on an offshore platform. Second on the list is China’s Zhuque-3, a partially reusable methane-fueled rocket developed by the quasi-commercial launch company LandSpace. The medium-lift Zhuque-3 successfully reached orbit on its first flight earlier this month, and its booster narrowly missed landing downrange. We could add China’s Long March 12A to the list if it flies before the end of the year. This will be the final Rocket Report of 2025, but we’ll be back in January with all the news that’s fit to lift.

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.

Rocket Lab delivers for Space Force and NASA. Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design, Ars reports. The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical dispenser on top of the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket when it lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. A little more than an hour later, the rocket’s upper stage released the satellites one at a time at an altitude of about 340 miles (550 kilometers). The launch was the starting gun for a proof-of-concept mission to test the viability of a new kind of satellite called DiskSats, designed by the Aerospace Corporation.

Stack ’em high… “DiskSat is a lightweight, compact, flat disc-shaped satellite designed for optimizing future rideshare launches,” the Aerospace Corporation said in a statement. The DiskSats are 39 inches (1 meter) wide, about twice the diameter of a New York-style pizza, and measure just 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick. Made of composite carbon fiber, each satellite carries solar cells, control avionics, reaction wheels, and an electric thruster to change and maintain altitude. The flat design allows DiskSats to be stacked one on top of the other for launch. The format also has significantly more surface area than other small satellites with comparable mass, making room for more solar cells for high-power missions or large-aperture payloads like radar imaging instruments or high-bandwidth antennas. NASA and the US Space Force cofunded the development and launch of the DiskSat demo mission.

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SpaceX warns of dangerous Chinese launch. China’s recent deployment of nine satellites occurred dangerously close to a Starlink satellite, SpaceX’s vice president of Starlink engineering said. Michael Nicolls wrote in a December 12 social media post that there was a 200-meter close approach between a satellite launched December 10 on a Chinese Kinetica-1 rocket and SpaceX’s Starlink-6079 spacecraft at 560 kilometers (348 miles) altitude, Aviation Week and Space Technology reports. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to change,” Nicolls wrote.

Blaming the customer... The company in charge of the Kinetica-1 rocket, CAS Space, responded to Nicolls’ post on X saying it would “work on identifying the exact details and provide assistance.” In a follow-up post on December 13, CAS Space said the close call, if confirmed, occurred nearly 48 hours after the satellite separated from the Kinetica-1 rocket, by which time the launch mission had long concluded. “CAS Space will coordinate with satellite operators to proceed.”

A South Korean startup is ready to fly. Innospace, a South Korean space startup, will launch its independently developed commercial rocket, Hanbit-Nano, as soon as Friday, the Maeil Business Newspaper reports. The rocket will lift off from the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil. The small launcher will attempt to deliver eight small payloads, including five deployable satellites, into low-Earth orbit. The launch was delayed two days to allow time for technicians to replace components of the first stage oxidizer supply cooling system.

Hybrid propulsion… This will be the first launch of Innospace’s Hanbit-Nano rocket. The launcher has two stages and stands 71 feet (21.7 meters) tall with a diameter of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters). Hanbit-Nano is a true micro-launcher, capable of placing up to 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload mass into Sun-synchronous orbit. It has a unique design, with hybrid engines consuming a mix of paraffin as the fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer.

Ten years since a milestone in rocketry. On December 21, 2015, SpaceX launched the Orbcomm-2 mission on an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket. That night, just days before Christmas, the company successfully landed the first stage for the first time. Ars has reprinted a slightly condensed chapter from the book Reentry, authored by Senior Space Editor Eric Berger and published in 2024. The chapter begins in June 2015 with the failure of a Falcon 9 rocket during launch of a resupply mission to the International Space Station and ends with a vivid behind-the-scenes recounting of the historic first landing of a Falcon 9 booster to close out the year.

First-person account… I have my own memory of SpaceX’s first rocket landing. I was there, covering the mission for another publication, as the Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. In an abundance of caution, Air Force officials in charge of the Cape Canaveral spaceport closed large swaths of the base for the Falcon 9’s return to land. The decision shunted VIPs and media representatives to viewing locations outside the spaceport’s fence, so I joined SpaceX’s official press room at the top of a seven-floor tower near the Port Canaveral cruise terminals. The view was tremendous. We all knew to expect a sonic boom as the rocket came back to Florida, but its arrival was a jolt. The next morning, I joined SpaceX and a handful of reporters and photographers on a chartered boat to get a closer look at the Falcon 9 standing proudly after returning from space.

Roscosmos targets quick fix to Soyuz launch pad. Russian space agency Roscosmos says it expects a damaged launch pad critical to International Space Station operations to be fixed by the end of February, Aviation Week and Space Technology reports. “Launch readiness: end of February 2026,” Roscosmos said in a statement Tuesday. Russia had been scrambling to assess the extent of repairs needed to Pad 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan after the November 27 flight of a Soyuz-2.1a rocket damaged key elements of the infrastructure. The pad is the only one capable of supporting Russian launches to the ISS.

Best-case scenario… A quick repair to the launch pad would be the best-case scenario for Roscosmos. A service structure underneath the rocket was unsecured during the launch of a three-man crew to the ISS last month. The structure fell into the launch pad’s flame trench, leaving the complex without the service cabin technicians use to work on the Soyuz rocket before liftoff. Roscosmos said a “complete service cabin replacement kit” has arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and more than 130 staff are working in two shifts to implement the repairs. A fix by the end of February would allow Russia to resume cargo flights to the ISS in March.

Atlas V closes out an up-and-down year for ULA. United Launch Alliance aced its final launch of 2025, a predawn flight of an Atlas V rocket Tuesday carrying 27 satellites for Amazon’s recently rebranded Leo broadband Internet service, Spaceflight Now reports. The rocket flew northeast from Cape Canaveral to place the Amazon Leo satellites into low-Earth orbit. This was ULA’s fourth launch for Amazon’s satellite broadband venture, previously known as Project Kuiper. ULA closes out 2025 with six launches, one more than the company achieved last year. But ULA’s new Vulcan rocket launched just once this year, disappointingly short of the company’s goal to fly Vulcan up to 10 times.

Taking stock of Amazon Leo… This year marked the start of the deployment of Amazon’s operational satellites. There are now 180 Amazon Leo satellites in orbit after Tuesday’s launch, well short of the FCC’s requirement for Amazon to deploy half of its planned 3,232 satellites by July 31, 2026. Amazon won’t meet the deadline, and it’s likely the retail giant will ask government regulators for a waiver or extension to the deadline. Amazon’s factory is hitting its stride producing and delivering Amazon Leo satellites. The real question is launch capacity. Amazon has contracts to launch satellites on ULA’s Atlas V and Vulcan rockets, Europe’s Ariane 6, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Early next year, a batch of 32 Amazon Leo satellites will launch on the first flight of Europe’s uprated Ariane 64 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

A good year for Ariane 6. Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket launched four times this year after a debut test flight in 2024. The four successful missions deployed payloads for the French military, Europe’s weather satellite agency, the European Union’s Copernicus environmental monitoring network, and finally, on Wednesday, the European Galileo navigation satellite fleet, Space News reports. This is a strong showing for a new rocket flying from a new launch pad and a faster ramp-up of launch cadence than any medium- or heavy-lift rocket in recent memory. All five Ariane 6 launches to date have used the Ariane 62 configuration with two strap-on solid rocket boosters. The more powerful Ariane 64 rocket, with four strap-on motors, will make its first flight early next year.

Aiming high… This was the first launch using the Ariane 6 rocket’s ability to fly long-duration missions lasting several hours. The rocket’s cryogenic upper stage, with a restartable Vinci engine, took nearly four hours to inject two Galileo navigation satellites into an orbit more than 14,000 miles (nearly 23,000 kilometers) above the Earth. The flight profile put more stress on the Ariane 6 upper stage than any of the rocket’s previous missions, but the rocket released its payloads into an on-target orbit. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

ESA wants to do more with Ariane 6’s kick stage. The European Space Agency plans to adapt a contract awarded to ArianeGroup in 2021 for an Ariane 6 kick stage to cover its evolution into an orbital transfer vehicle, European Spaceflight reports. The original contract was for the development of the Ariane 6’s Astris kick stage, an optional addition for Ariane 6 missions to deploy payloads into multiple orbits or directly inject satellites into geostationary orbit. Last month, ESA’s member states committed approximately 100 million euros ($117 million) to refocus the Astris kick stage into a more capable Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV).

Strong support from Germany… ESA’s director of space transportation, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, said the performance of the Ariane 6 OTV will be “well beyond” that of the originally conceived Astris kick stage. The funding commitment obtained during last month’s ESA ministerial council meeting includes strong support from Germany, Tolker-Nielsen said. Under the new timeline, a protoflight mode of the OTV is expected to be ready for ground qualification by the end of 2028, with an inaugural flight following in 2029. (submitted EllPeaTea)

Another Starship clone in China. Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Now, Chinese companies are starting to introduce designs that appear quite similar to SpaceX’s newer, larger Starship rocket, Ars reports. The newest entry comes from a company called “Beijing Leading Rocket Technology.” This outfit took things a step further by naming its vehicle “Starship-1,” adding that the new rocket will have enhancements from AI and is billed as being a “fully reusable AI rocket.”

Starship prime… China has a long history of copying SpaceX. The country’s first class of reusable rockets, which began flying earlier this month, show strong similarities to the Falcon 9 rocket. Now, it’s Starship. The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024, the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country’s state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship. At least two more companies have announced plans for Starship-like rockets using SpaceX’s chopstick-style method for booster recovery. Many of these launch startups will not grow past the PowerPoint phase, of course.

Next three launches

Dec. 19: Hanbit-Nano | Spaceward | Alcântara Launch Center, Brazil | 18: 45 UTC

Dec. 20: Long March 5 | Unknown Payload | Wenchang Space Launch Site, China | 12: 30 UTC

Dec. 20: New Shepard | NS-37 crew mission | Launch Site One, Texas | 14: 00 UTC

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

Rocket Report: Russia pledges quick fix for Soyuz launch pad; Ariane 6 aims high Read More »

Two space startups prove you don’t need to break the bank to rendezvous in space

impulse space, mira, otter, Space, Starfish / Mike M. / December 20, 2025

It may be happening quietly, but there is a revolution taking place with in-space transportation, and it opens up a world of possibilities.

In January, a small spacecraft built by a California-based company called Impulse Space launched along with a stack of other satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket. Upon reaching orbit, the rocket’s upper stage sent the satellites zipping off on their various missions.

And so it went with the Mira spacecraft built by Impulse, which is known as an orbital transfer vehicle. Mira dropped off several small CubeSats and then performed a number of high-thrust maneuvers to demonstrate its capabilities. This was the second flight by a Mira spacecraft, so Impulse Space was eager to continue testing the vehicle in flight.

Giving up control

This was all well and good up until this summer, when a funny thing happened. Impulse handed control of Mira over to another company, which had installed its own software package on the vehicle. And this second company, Starfish Space, took control.

This was more than a little weird, acknowledged Eric Romo, the president and chief operating officer of Impulse Space, in an interview.

“I would walk past mission control, and our teams would be on a call together, and I would just pop my head in and say, ‘Hey, don’t crash spaceship, please,’” Romo said. “It was definitely a new thing.”

But Starfish Space did not crash Mira. Rather, it activated its camera on board the spacecraft and started flying the vehicle. To what end? Founded in 2019, the Washington-based company seeks to build affordable spacecraft that can service satellites in space, providing propulsion or other aids to extend their lifetimes.

Now, flying Mira, the company sought to demonstrate that a single lightweight camera system, along with its closed-loop guidance, navigation, and control software, could autonomously rendezvous with another spacecraft. In this case, it was the very first Mira spacecraft launched by Impulse in November 2023. This vehicle no longer has propellant on board to control its orientation, but its solar panels periodically receive enough charge to allow it to communicate with Impulse’s engineers in California.

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These are the flying discs the government wants you to know about

aerospace, DiskSat, electron rocket, rocket lab, Science, Space / Kelly Newman / December 20, 2025

DiskSat’s design offers “a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites.”

An artist’s illustration of DiskSats deploying from a rocket in low-Earth orbit. Credit: NASA

Four small satellites rode a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle into orbit from Virginia early Thursday, beginning a government-funded technology demonstration mission to test the performance of a new spacecraft design.

The satellites were nestled inside a cylindrical dispenser on top of the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket when it lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at 12: 03 am EST (05: 03 UTC). A little more than an hour later, the rocket’s upper stage released the satellites one at a time at an altitude of about 340 miles (550 kilometers).

The launch was the starting gun for a proof-of-concept mission to test the viability of a new kind of satellite called DiskSats. These satellites were designed by the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit federally funded research and development center. The project is jointly financed by NASA and the US Space Force, which paid for DiskSat’s development and launch, respectively.

“DiskSat is a lightweight, compact, flat disc-shaped satellite designed for optimizing future rideshare launches,” the Aerospace Corporation says in a statement.

The DiskSats are 39 inches (1 meter) wide, about twice the diameter of a New York-style pizza, and measure just 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick. Made of composite carbon fiber, each satellite carries solar cells, control avionics, reaction wheels, and an electric thruster to change and maintain altitude.

“The launch went perfectly, and the DiskSat dispenser worked exactly as designed,” said Darren Rowen, the project’s chief engineer, in a statement. “We’re pleased to have established contact with all four of the DiskSats, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the demonstration mission.”

An engineer prepares Aerospace Corporation’s DiskSats for launch at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: Aerospace Corporation

A new form factor

The Aerospace Corporation has a long history of supporting the US military and NASA since its founding in 1960. A few years ago, engineers at the center developed the DiskSat concept after surveying the government’s emerging needs in spaceflight.

CubeSats have been a ubiquitous part of the satellite industry for nearly a quarter-century. They are based on a cube-shaped design, measuring about 10 centimeters per side, but can be scaled from a single cube “unit” to three, six, 12, or more, depending on mission requirements. The CubeSat standard has become a popular choice for commercial companies, the military, NASA, and universities looking to build small satellites on a tight budget.

By one measure, nearly 3,000 CubeSats have launched since the first one soared into orbit in 2003. After originally being confined to low-Earth orbit, they have now flown to high-altitude orbits, to the Moon, and to Mars.

While CubeSats are now prolific, engineers at the Aerospace Corporation saw an opportunity to improve on the concept. Debra Emmons, Aerospace’s chief technology officer, said the idea originated from Rich Welle, a scientist recently retired from the center’s Experiments Lab, or xLab, division.

“They were asking questions,” Emmons told Ars. “They were looking at CubeSat studies and looking at some alternatives. The typical CubeSat is, in fact, a cube. So, the idea was could you look at some different types of form factors that might be able to generate more power … and offer up benefit for certain mission applications?”

Aerospace’s research team arrived at the DiskSat design. Emmons said the stackable flat-panel format is easier to pack for launch than a CubeSat. The concept is similar to SpaceX’s pioneering approach to launching stackable Starlink Internet satellites, but DiskSats are significantly smaller, lighter, and adaptable to different kinds of missions.

A batch of Starlink satellites prior to launch — A stack of Starlink satellites prior to launch. Credit: SpaceX

DiskSats have several advantages over CubeSats, according to the Aerospace Corporation. Each of the four DiskSats launched Thursday has a mass of about 35 pounds (16 kilograms), less than that of a typical 12U CubeSat. But a DiskSat has more than 13 times the surface area on a single side, providing valuable real estate for developers to load up the satellite with power-generating solar arrays, sensors, antennas, or other payloads that simply won’t fit on a CubeSat.

SpaceX’s current generation of mass-produced Starlink V2 satellites, by comparison, each has a mass of more than 1,100 pounds, or 500 kilograms.

DiskSat’s design offers “a power-to-weight ratio unmatched by traditional aluminum satellites,” the Aerospace Corporation says. In a research paper published earlier this year, engineers from the Aerospace Corporation claimed DiskSat can generate five to 10 times more power than a CubeSat.

A disruptive solution?

What kinds of missions might DiskSat be useful for? One idea involves placing a large radar antenna—too big to fit on any other low-mass satellite—on the broadside of a DiskSat to collect all-weather surveillance imagery. Similarly-sized antennas on other DiskSats could support high-bandwidth communications.

With this demo mission, the Aerospace Corporation will test the performance of the DiskSat platform in space for the first time. Engineers will initially look at how the satellites function at 340 miles, then use their electric thrusters to gradually step down to lower altitudes, where another aspect of DiskSat’s design will shine.

Flying edge-on, the satellite’s pancake shape will minimize aerodynamic drag as the DiskSats encounter thicker air below 250 miles. Continual pulsing from the satellites’ electric thrusters will allow the DiskSats to maintain altitude as they glide through the uppermost layers of the atmosphere.

“The primary mission is to demonstrate and to understand the performance, functionality, and maneuverability of the DiskSat buses on orbit, particularly in low-Earth orbit, or LEO, and very low-Earth orbit, or VLEO,” said Catherine Venturini, DiskSat’s principal investigator.

“In theory, I think you could operate down to 200 kilometers (124 miles) with electric propulsion,” Emmons said. That is two to three times closer to Earth than most commercial radar imaging satellites. Other satellite operators are also assessing the viability of flying remote sensing missions in VLEO.

Flying closer to the ground delivers higher-resolution imagery, bringing cities, ships, airports, and military bases into sharper view. So it’s easy to see why the Space Force is interested in the DiskSat concept.

DiskSat’s engineers acknowledge there are drawbacks to the format. With such a large surface area, it’s more difficult to manage the temperature extremes of low-Earth orbit than it is with a conventional cube-shaped satellite. While DiskSats carry a lot of oomph to change altitude, their shape makes them somewhat clunky and hard to turn, and engineers say they aren’t well-suited for missions requiring agile pointing.

Rocket Lab’s Electron launcher lifts off to begin the DiskSat demo mission, a program co-funded by NASA and the US military’s Space Test Program. Credit: Austin DeSisto/Rocket Lab

The Aerospace Corporation is a research center, not a commercial satellite manufacturer. Officials at the nonprofit are looking to hand over the DiskSat design to industry through a technology transfer agreement. “The plan is to release or license the technology to partners once it is flight-proven,” the Aerospace Corporation says on its website.

“We think this new technology will be disruptive to the small spacecraft enterprise and ecosystem,” said Eric Breckheimer, DiskSat’s program manager.

DiskSat’s stackable design makes it possible to launch a fleet of high-power, low-mass satellites in one go, according to Emmons.

Following the trend toward bigger CubeSats, the DiskSat format could also grow larger to take advantage of heavier rockets. “There’s a key scalability aspect, and with that in mind, you could bring an entire constellation of DiskSats with you in a single launch,” Breckheimer said.

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Trump commits to Moon landing by 2028, followed by a lunar outpost two years later

2028, artemis, isaacman, Space, space policy, Trump / Shannon Garcia / December 20, 2025

Strikingly, there is no mention of a concrete plan to send humans to Mars in this document. There are just two references to the red planet, both of which talk about sending humans there as a far-off goal. One source recently told Ars that as soon as Trump learned there was no way humans could land on Mars during his second term, he was no longer interested in that initiative.

OMB in the picture

Also absent from this document is much reference to space science, with only a mention of “optimizing space research-and-development investments to achieve my Administration’s near-term space objectives.”

The architect of the Trump Administration’s proposed deep cuts in space science (which Congress has largely forestalled) was Russ Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget. It’s probably not a great indicator for science missions that Isaacman is directed to coordinate with Vought’s office to achieve policy objectives in the executive order.

All told, the policies Trump signed are generally forward-looking, seeking to modernize NASA’s exploration efforts. Isaacman will face many challenges, including landing humans on the Moon by 2028 and working with industry to develop an on-time successor to the International Space Station. Whether and how he meets these challenges will be an intriguing storyline in the coming months and years.

Trump commits to Moon landing by 2028, followed by a lunar outpost two years later Read More »

NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can really persevere on Mars

Mars, Mars 2020, Mars Perseverance, Mars Sample Return, NASA, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space / DJ Henderson / December 18, 2025

Engineers at JPL are certifying the Perseverance rover to drive up to 100 kilometers.

The Perseverance rover looks back on its tracks on the floor of Jezero Crater in 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL

When the Perseverance rover arrived on Mars nearly five years ago, NASA officials thought the next American lander to take aim on the red planet would be taking shape by now.

At the time, the leaders of the space agency expected this next lander could be ready for launch as soon as 2026—or more likely in 2028. Its mission would have been to retrieve Martian rock specimens collected by the Perseverance rover, then billed as the first leg of a multilaunch, multibillion-dollar Mars Sample Return campaign.

Here we are on the verge of 2026, and there’s no sample retrieval mission nearing the launch pad. In fact, no one is building such a lander at all. NASA’s strategy for a Mars Sample Return, or MSR, mission remains undecided after the projected cost of the original plan ballooned to $11 billion. If MSR happens at all, it’s now unlikely to launch until the 2030s.

That means the Perseverance rover, which might have to hand off the samples to a future retrieval lander in some circumstances, must continue weathering the harsh, cold, dusty environment of Mars. The good news is that the robot, about the size of a small SUV, is in excellent health, according to Steve Lee, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

“Perseverance is approaching five years of exploration on Mars,” Lee said in a press briefing Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union’s annual fall meeting. “Perseverance is really in excellent shape. All the systems onboard are operational and performing very, very well. All the redundant systems onboard are available still, and the rover is capable of supporting this mission for many, many years to come.”

The rover’s operators at JPL are counting on sustaining Perseverance’s good health. The rover’s six wheels have carried it a distance of about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, since landing inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater in February 2021. That is double the original certification for the rover’s mobility system and farther than any vehicle has traveled on the surface of another world.

This enhanced-color mosaic is made from three separate images taken on September 8, 2025, each of which was acquired using the Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. The images were processed to improve visual contrast and enhance color differences. The view shows a location known as “Mont Musard” and another region named “Lac de Charmes,” where the rover’s team will be looking for more rock core samples to collect in the year ahead. The mountains in the distance are approximately 52 miles (84 kilometers) away.

Going for 100

Now, engineers are asking Perseverance to perform well beyond expectations. An evaluation of the rover’s health concluded it can operate until at least 2031. The rover uses a radioactive plutonium power source, so it’s not in danger of running out of electricity or fuel any time soon. The Curiosity rover, which uses a similar design, has surpassed 13 years of operations on Mars.

There are two systems that are most likely to limit the rover’s useful lifetime. One is the robotic arm, which is necessary to collect samples, and the other is the rover’s six wheels and the drive train that powers them.

“To make sure we can continue operations and continue driving for a long, long way, up to 100 kilometers (62 miles), we are doing some additional testing,” Lee said. “We’ve successfully completed a rotary actuator life test that has now certified the rotary system to 100 kilometers for driving, and we have similar testing going on for the brakes. That is going well, and we should finish those early part of next year.”

Ars asked Lee why JPL decided on 100 kilometers, which is roughly the same distance as the average width of Lake Michigan. Since its arrival in 2021, Perseverance has climbed out of Jezero Crater and is currently exploring the crater’s rugged rim. If NASA sends a lander to pick up samples from Perseverance, the rover will have to drive back to a safe landing zone for a handoff.

“We actually had laid out a traverse path exploring the crater rim, much more of the crater rim than we have so far, and then be able to return to a rendezvous site,” Lee said. “So we did an estimate of the total mission drive duration to complete that mission, added margin for science exploration, added margin in case we need the rendezvous at a different site… and it just turned out to add up to a nice, even 100 kilometers.”

The time-lapse video embedded below shows the Perseverance rover’s record-breaking 1,351-foot (412-meter) drive on June 19, 2025.

Despite the disquiet on the future of MSR, the Perseverance rover has dutifully collected specimens and placed them in 33 titanium sample tubes since arriving on Mars. Perseverance deposited some of the sealed tubes on the surface of Mars in late 2022 and early 2023 and has held onto the remaining containers while continuing to drive toward the rim of Jezero.

The dual-depot approach preserves the option for future MSR mission planners to go after either batch of samples.

Scientists selected Jezero as the target for the Perseverance mission because they suspected it was the site of an ancient dried-up river delta with a surplus of clay-rich minerals. The rover’s instruments confirmed this hypothesis, finding sediments in the crater floor that were deposited at the bottom of a lake of liquid water billions of years ago, including sandstones and mudstones known to preserve fossilized life in comparable environments on Earth.

A research team published findings in the journal Nature in September describing the discovery of chemical signatures and structures in a rock that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. Perseverance lacks the bulky, sprawling instrumentation to know for sure, so ground teams ordered the rover to collect a pulverized specimen from the rock in question and seal it for eventual return to Earth.

Fill but don’t seal

Lee said Perseverance will continue filling sample tubes in the expectation that they will eventually come back to Earth.

“We do expect to continue some sampling,” Lee said. “We have six open sample tubes, unused sample tubes, onboard. We actually have two that we took samples and didn’t seal yet. So we have options of maybe replacing them if we’re finding that there’s even better areas that we want to collect from.”

The rover’s management team at JPL is finalizing the plan for Perseverance through 2028. Lee expects the rover will remain at Jezero’s rim for a while. “There are quite a number of very prime, juicy targets we would love to go explore,” he said.

In the meantime, if Perseverance runs across an alluring rock, scientists will break out the rover’s coring drill and fill more tubes.

“We certainly have more than enough to keep us busy, and we are not expecting a major perturbation to our science explorations in the next two and a half years as a result of sample return uncertainty,” Lee said.

Perseverance has its own suite of sophisticated instruments. The instruments can’t do what labs on Earth can, but the rover can scan rocks to determine what they’re made of, search for life-supporting organic molecules, map underground geology, and capture startling vistas that inspire and inform.

This photo montage shows sample tubes shortly after they were deposited onto the surface by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover in late 2022 and early 2023. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The rover’s sojourn along the Jezero Crater rim is taking it through different geological eras, from the time Jezero harbored a lake to its formation at an even earlier point in Martian history. Fundamentally, researchers are asking the question “What was it like if you were a microbe living on the surface of Mars?” said Briony Horgan, a mission scientist at Purdue University.

Along the way, the rover will stop and do a sample collection if something piques the science team’s interest.

“We are adopting a strategy, in many cases, to fill a tube, and we have the option to not seal it,” Lee said. “Most of our tubes are sealed, but we have the option to not seal it, and that gives us a flexibility downstream to replace the sample if there’s one that we find would make an even stronger representative of the diversity we are discovering.”

An indefinite wait

Planetary scientists have carefully curated the specimens cached by the Perseverance rover. The samples are sorted for their discovery potential, with an emphasis on the search for ancient microbial life. That’s why Perseverance was sent to Jezero in the first place.

China is preparing its own sample-return mission, Tianwen-3, for launch as early as 2028, aiming to deliver Mars rocks back to Earth by 2031. If the Tianwen-3 mission keeps to this schedule—and is successful—China will almost certainly be first to pull off the achievement. Officials have not announced the landing site for Tianwen-3, so the jury is still out on the scientific value of the rocks China aims to bring back.

NASA’s original costly architecture for Mars Sample Return would have used a lander built by JPL and a small solid-fueled rocket to launch the rock samples back into space after collecting them from the Perseverance rover. The capsule containing the Mars rocks would then transfer them to another spacecraft in orbit around Mars. Once Earth and Mars reached the proper orbital alignment, the return spacecraft would begin the journey home. All told, the sample return campaign would last several years.

NASA asked commercial companies to develop their own ideas for Mars Sample Return in 2024. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and Rocket Lab submitted their lower-cost commercial concepts to NASA, but progress stalled there. NASA’s former administrator, Bill Nelson, punted on a decision on what to do next with Mars Sample Return in the final weeks of the Biden administration.

A few months later, the new Trump administration proposed outright canceling the Mars Sample Return mission. Mars Sample Return, known as MSR, was ranked as the top priority for planetary science in a National Academies decadal survey. Researchers say they could learn much more about Mars and the possibilities of past life there by bringing samples back to Earth for analysis.

Budget writers in the House of Representatives voted to restore funding for Mars Sample Return over the summer, but the Senate didn’t explicitly weigh in on the mission. NASA is now operating under a stopgap budget passed by Congress last month, and MSR remains in limbo.

There are good arguments for going with a commercial sample-return mission, using a similar approach to the one NASA used to buy commercial cargo and crew transportation services for the International Space Station. NASA might also offer prizes or decide to wait for a human expedition to Mars for astronauts to scoop up samples by hand.

Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars, discussed these options a few months ago. After nearly a year of revolving-door leadership, NASA finally got a Senate-confirmed administrator this week. It will now be up to the new NASA chief, Jared Isaacman, to chart a new course for Mars Sample Return.

NASA will soon find out if the Perseverance rover can really persevere on Mars Read More »

The $4.3 billion space telescope Trump tried to cancel is now complete

astronomy, dark energy, exoplanets, goddard space flight center, NASA, roman space telescope, Science, Space / Mike M. / December 16, 2025

“We’re going to be making 3D movies of what is going on in the Milky Way galaxy.”

Artist’s concept of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

A few weeks ago, technicians inside a cavernous clean room in Maryland made the final connection to complete assembly of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Parts of this new observatory, named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, recently completed a spate of tests to ensure it can survive the shaking and intense sound of a rocket launch. Engineers placed the core of the telescope inside a thermal vacuum chamber, where it withstood the airless conditions and extreme temperature swings it will see in space.

Then, on November 25, teams at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, joined the inner and outer portions of the Roman Space Telescope. With this milestone, NASA declared the observatory complete and on track for launch as soon as fall 2026.

“The team is ecstatic,” said Jackie Townsend, the observatory’s deputy project manager at Goddard, in a recent interview with Ars. “It has been a long road, but filled with lots of successes and an ordinary amount of challenges, I would say. It’s just so rewarding to get to this spot.”

An ordinary amount of challenges is not something you usually hear a NASA official say about a one-of-a-kind space mission. NASA does hard things, and they usually take more time than originally predicted. Astronomers endured more than 10 years of delays, fixes, and setbacks before the James Webb Space Telescope finally launched in 2021.

Webb is the largest telescope ever put into space. After launch, Webb had to perform a sequence of more than 50 major deployment steps, with 178 release mechanisms that had to work perfectly. Any one of the more than 300 single points of failure could have doomed the mission. In the end, Webb unfolded its giant segmented mirror and delicate sunshield without issue. After a quarter-century of development and more than $11 billion spent, the observatory is finally delivering images and science results. And they’re undeniably spectacular.

The completed Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, seen here with its solar panels deployed inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya

Seeing far and wide

Roman is far less complex, with a 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirror that is nearly three times smaller than Webb’s. While it lacks Webb’s deep vision, Roman will see wider swaths of the sky, enabling a cosmic census of billions of stars and galaxies near and far (on the scale of the Universe). This broad vision will support research into dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up about 95 percent of the Universe. The rest of the Universe is made of regular atoms and molecules that we can see and touch.

It is also illustrative to compare Roman with the Hubble Space Telescope, which has primary mirrors of the same size. This means Roman will produce images with similar resolution to Hubble. The distinction lies deep inside Roman, where technicians have delicately laid an array of detectors to register the faint infrared light coming through the telescope’s aperture.

“Things like night vision goggles will use the same basic detector device, just tuned to a different wavelength,” Townsend said.

These detectors are located in Roman’s Wide Field Instrument, the mission’s primary imaging camera. There are 18 of them, each 4,096×4,096 pixels wide, combining to form a roughly 300-megapixel camera sensitive to visible and near-infrared light. Teledyne, the company that produced the detectors, says this is the largest infrared focal plane ever made.

The near-infrared channel on Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which covers much the same part of the spectrum as Roman, has a single 1,024-pixel detector.

“That’s how you get to a much higher field-of-view for the Roman Space Telescope, and it was one of the key enabling technologies,” Townsend told Ars. “That was one place where Roman invested significant dollars, even before we started as a mission, to mature that technology so that it was ready to infuse into this mission.”

With these detectors in its bag, Roman will cover much more cosmic real estate than Hubble. For example, Roman will be able to re-create Hubble’s famous Ultra Deep Field image with the same sharpness, but expand it to show countless stars and galaxies over an area of the sky at least 100 times larger.

This infographic illustrates the differences between the sizes of the primary mirrors and detectors on the Hubble, Roman, and Webb telescopes. Credit: NASA

Roman has a second instrument, the Roman Coronagraph, with masks, filters, and adaptive optics to block out the glare from stars and reveal the faint glow from objects around them. It is designed to photograph planets 100 million times fainter than their stars, or 100 to 1,000 times better than similar instruments on Webb and Hubble. Roman can also detect exoplanets using the tried-and-true transit method, but scientists expect the new telescope will find a lot more than past space missions, thanks to its wider vision.

“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard, in a press release. “In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”

Big numbers are crucial for learning how the Universe works, and Roman will feed vast volumes of data down to astronomers on Earth. “So much of what physics is trying to understand about the nature of the Universe today needs large number statistics in order to understand,” Townsend said.

In one of Roman’s planned sky surveys, the telescope will cover in nine months what would take Hubble between 1,000 and 2,000 years. In another survey, Roman will cover an area equivalent to 3,455 full moons in about three weeks, then go back and observe a smaller portion of that area repeatedly over five-and-a-half days—jobs that Hubble and Webb can’t do.

“We will do fundamentally different science,” Townsend said. “In some subset of our observations, we’re going to be making 3D movies of what is going on in the Milky Way galaxy and in distant galaxies. That is just something that’s never happened before.”

Getting here and getting there

Roman’s promised scientific bounty will come at a cost of $4.3 billion, including expenses for development, manufacturing, launch, and five years of operations.

This is about $300 million more than NASA expected when it formally approved Roman for development in 2020, an overrun the agency blamed on complications related to the coronavirus pandemic. Otherwise, Roman’s budget has been stable since NASA officials finalized the mission’s architecture in 2017, when it was still known by a bulky acronym: WFIRST, the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope.

At that time, the agency reclassified the Roman Coronagraph as a technology demonstration, allowing managers to relax their requirements for the instrument and stave off concerns about cost growth.

Roman survived multiple attempts by the first Trump administration to cancel the mission. Each time, Congress restored funding to keep the observatory on track for launch in the mid-2020s. With Donald Trump back in the White House, the administration’s budget office earlier this year again wanted to cancel Roman. Eventually, the Trump administration released its fiscal year 2026 budget request in May, calling for a drastic cut to Roman, but not total cancellation.

Once again, both houses of Congress signaled their opposition to the cuts, and the mission remains on track for launch next year, perhaps as soon as September. This is eight months ahead of the schedule NASA has publicized for Roman for the last few years.

Townsend told Ars the mission escaped the kind of crippling cost overruns and delays that afflicted Webb through careful planning and execution. “Roman was under a cost cap, and we operated to that,” she said. “We went through reasonable efforts to preclude those kinds of highly complex deployments that lead you to having trouble in integration and test.”

The outer barrel section of the Roman Space Telescope inside a thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde

There are only a handful of mechanisms that must work after Roman’s launch. They include a deployable cover designed to shield the telescope’s mirror during launch and solar array wings that will unfold once Roman is in space. The observatory will head to an observing post about a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.

“We don’t have moments of terror for the deployment,” Townsend said. “Obviously, launch is always a risk, the tip-off rates that you have when you separate from the launch vehicle… Then, obviously, getting the aperture door open so that it’s deployed is another one. But these feel like normal aerospace risks, not unusual, harrowing moments for Roman.”

It also helps that Roman will use a primary mirror gifted to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency. The NRO originally ordered the mirror for a telescope that would peer down on the Earth, but the spy agency no longer needed it. Before NASA got its hands on the surplus mirror in 2012, scientists working on the preliminary design for what became Roman were thinking of a smaller telescope.

The larger telescope will make Roman a more powerful tool for science, and the NRO’s donation eliminated the risk of a problem or delay manufacturing a new mirror. But the upside meant NASA had to build a more massive spacecraft and use a bigger rocket to accommodate it, adding to the observatory’s cost.

Tests of Roman’s components have gone well this year. Work on Roman continued at Goddard through the government shutdown in the fall. On Webb, engineers uncovered one problem after another as they tried to verify the observatory would perform as intended in space. There were leaky valves, tears in the Webb’s sunshield, a damaged transducer, and loose screws. With Roman, engineers so far have found no “significant surprises” during ground testing, Townsend said.

“What we always hope when you’re doing this final round of environmental tests is that you’ve wrung out the hardware at lower levels of assembly, and it looks like, in Roman’s case, we did a spectacular job at the lower level,” she said.

With Roman now fully assembled, attention at Goddard will turn to an end-to-end functional test of the observatory early next year, followed by electromagnetic interference testing, and another round of acoustic and vibration tests. Then, perhaps around June of next year, NASA will ship the observatory to Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to prepare for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

“We’re really down to the last stretch of environmental testing for the system,” Townsend said. “It’s definitely already seen the worst environment until we get to launch.”

The $4.3 billion space telescope Trump tried to cancel is now complete Read More »

Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China

china, clones, rockets, Space, starship / Beth Washington / December 15, 2025

Every other week, it seems, a new Chinese launch company pops up with a rocket design and a plan to reach orbit within a few years. For a long time, the majority of these companies revealed designs that looked a lot like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

The first of these copy cats, the medium-lift Zhuque-3 rocket built by LandSpace, launched earlier this month. Its primary mission was nominal, but the Zhuque-3 rocket failed its landing attempt, which is understandable for a first flight. Doubtless there will be more Chinese Falcon 9-like rockets making their debut in the near future.

However, over the last year, there has been a distinct change in announcements from China when it comes to new launch technology. Just as SpaceX is seeking to transition from its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket—which has now been flying for a decade and a half—to the fully reusable Starship design, so too are Chinese companies modifying their visions.

Everyone wants a Starship these days

The trend began with the Chinese government. In November 2024 the government announced a significant shift in the design of its super-heavy lift rocket, the Long March 9. Instead of the previous design, a fully expendable rocket with three stages and solid rocket boosters strapped to the sides, the country’s state-owned rocket maker revealed a vehicle that mimicked SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship.

Around the same time, a Chinese launch firm named Cosmoleap announced plans to develop a fully reusable “Leap” rocket within the next few years. An animated video that accompanied the funding announcement indicated that the company seeks to emulate the tower catch-with-chopsticks methodology that SpaceX has successfully employed.

But wait, there’s more. In June a company called Astronstone said it too was developing a stainless steel, methane-fueled rocket that would also use a chopstick-style system for first stage recovery. Astronstone didn’t even pretend to not copy SpaceX, saying it was “fully aligning its technical approach with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”

Oh look, yet another Starship clone has popped up in China Read More »

Rocket Report: Neutron’s Hungry Hippo is deemed ready, whither Orbex?

rocket report, Space / Kelly Newman / December 13, 2025

All the news that’s fit to lift

“That is the moment an IPO suddenly came into play.”

Rocket Lab has completed qualification testing of its “Hungry Hippo” payload fairing. Credit: Rocket Lab

Welcome to Edition 8.22 of the Rocket Report! The big news this week concerns the decision by SpaceX founder Elon Musk to take the company public, via IPO, sometime within the next 12 to 18 months. Musk confirmed this after Ars published a story on Wednesday evening. This understandably raises questions about whether a future SpaceX will be committed more to AI data centers in space or Mars settlement. However, one of the company’s founding employees, Tom Mueller, said this could benefit the company’s Mars plans. Clearly this is something we’ll be following closely.

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

Avio will build solid rocket motors in Virginia. The governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, announced Wednesday that Avio USA has selected his state to produce solid rocket motors for defense and commercial space propulsion purposes. Avio USA’s investment, which will be up to $500 million, is supported by its Italian parent Avio. The company’s factory will encompass 860,000 sq. feet.

From Italy with love … “Avio looks forward to establishing on U.S. soil a solid rocket motor production facility to contribute in strengthening the US industrial base by providing decades of experience in engineering and manufacturing,” said Avio Chief Executive Officer Giulio Ranzo. Final approvals and the site-selection announcement are expected to be completed early next year.

Orbex funding lags in European Launcher Challenge. One of the five launch companies in ESA’s European Launcher Challenge, Orbex, received far less funding than the other four at the agency’s ministerial conference after the United Kingdom deferred a decision on how to allocate most of its contribution. Unlike typical ESA programs, in which members contribute funds with the expectation of receiving contracts proportional to their investments, the launcher challenge allowed member states to choose among five “preselected challengers,” Space News reports.

Orbex not in prime position … Those companies were chosen in July based on technical and business maturity, and each could receive up to 169 million euros. They were: Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Orbex, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA). Isar, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, and RFA each received at least 169 million euros, while Orbex received just 34.9 million euros. The UK left 112.3 million euros unallocated, a move that puzzled many industry observers. “We are working with multiple partners to ensure this funding delivers our requirements for assured access to space and benefits U.K. taxpayers,” a UK Space Agency spokesperson said. This was not exactly a ringing endorsement of the UK-based launch company. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Sign Me Up!

Europe takes a tentative step toward crewed launch. The European Space Agency has published a call for tenders to develop a launch abort system for a future crewed launch capability, European Spaceflight reports. The system would be used in the event of an emergency, either on the launch pad or during the initial stages of flight.

Looking beyond ISS … The new call is part of the European agency’s post-ISS low-Earth orbit strategy. This strategy, the material explains, includes the development of an end-to-end European crewed flight solution. In addition to developing a crewed launch capability, the agency’s post-ISS strategy includes options for low-Earth orbit infrastructure. These options include partnering with a commercial space station or building a European station. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

After Russian launch incident, NASA brings Dragon launches forward. With a key Russian launch pad out of service, NASA is accelerating the launch of two Cargo Dragon spaceships in order to ensure that astronauts on board the International Space Station have all the supplies they need next year, Ars reports. According to the space agency’s internal schedule, the next Dragon supply mission, CRS-34, is moving forward one month, from June 2026 to May. And the next Dragon supply mission after this, CRS-35, has been advanced three months, from November to August.

NET April for pad repairs … A source indicated that the changing schedules are a “direct result” of a launch pad incident on Thanksgiving Day at the Russian spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The issue occurred when a Soyuz rocket launched Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The rocket had no difficulties, but a large mobile platform below the rocket was not properly secured prior to the launch and crashed into the flame trench below, taking the Soyuz pad offline. Russia has told NASA it will require at least four months to repair the pad.

Rocket Lab completes Neutron fairing test. Rocket Lab announced Monday that the Neutron rocket’s innovative “Hungry Hippo” captive fairing has successfully completed qualification testing and is en route to Virginia for Neutron’s first launch. Whereas typical rockets’ fairing halves fall away during launch and are disposable or require collection at sea for reuse, Neutron’s fairing halves open to release the rocket’s second stage and mission payload before closing again to return Neutron to Earth as a single reusable vehicle.

Gobbling marbles … To qualify the Hungry Hippo fairing for Neutron’s first launch, Rocket Lab completed an intensive qualification and acceptance testing campaign that validated the structure’s expected performance during the intense aerodynamic pressure of launch and re-entry featuring full-scale tests as well as a series of sub-component tests. “Building, qualifying, and shipping Hungry Hippo is a fantastic marker of progress toward Neutron’s first launch, and I’m proud of the team for their attention to detail and pulling off this significant milestone,” said Shaun D’Mello, the company’s vice president overseeing Neutron.

Terran R flight tanks assembled. Relativity Space has gone largely silent since being taken over by former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, but the company still provides monthly updates online. On Tuesday the company published its November 2025 update and revealed that progress is being made on flight hardware for the debut launch of the large Terran R rocket. Relativity has not announced a new launch target yet.

More work to be done … “In November, the team completed all circumferential friction stir welds for the first stage tank for first flight,” the company said. “Measuring 163 feet (49.7 meters) in length, the tank is composed of eight barrel sections and three domes, joined by ten circumferential welds. The tank will now move into integration. With both the first and second stage tanks finished, focus has shifted to the interstage.”

Veteran Falcon 9 booster extends record. SpaceX achieved a couple notable milestones with its Falcon 9 rocket launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday, December 8, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission, dubbed Starlink 6-92, featured the use of the company’s most-flown Falcon booster, tail number B1067. On its 32nd flight, it delivered SpaceX’s 3,000th Starlink satellite of the year to low-Earth orbit.

How is your payload fairing? … The use of B1067 on this mission brings SpaceX one step closer to its current goal of certifying its Falcon boosters for up to 40 missions a piece. The ultimate number of missions a booster flies will partially depend on the types of missions for which it was used and if it is needed on an expendable flight. SpaceX is looking to achieve the same level of reuse for the payload fairings on a Falcon rocket’s upper stage, but typically only provides updates on those during the launches of customer missions for the government or from other companies.

SpaceX likely to IPO next year to fund ambitions. SpaceX is planning to raise tens of billions of dollars through an initial public offering next year, and this represents a major change in thinking from the world’s leading space company and its founder, Elon Musk. The question is, why? He has not enjoyed the public scrutiny of Tesla, and feared that shareholder desires for financial return were not consistent with his ultimate goal of settling Mars. Ars attempts to answer this question by speaking to a number of people familiar with Musk’s thinking.

The short-term answer is data centers … Abhi Tripathi, a long-time SpaceX employee, believes that once Musk realized Starlink satellites could be architected into a distributed network of data centers, the writing was on the wall. “That is the moment an IPO suddenly came into play after being unlikely for so long. Much of the AI race comes down to amassing and deploying assets that work quicker than your competition. A large war chest resulting from an IPO will greatly help his cause and disadvantage all others.” Foremost among Musk’s goals right now is to “win” the battle for artificial intelligence. Taking SpaceX public and using it to marshal an incredible amount of resources shows he is playing to win.

New Glenn targets a four-launch certification. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will have to complete four successful orbital flights as its pathway to certification under the US Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program, Space News reports. Gen. Philip Garrant, who leads the Space Systems Command, said Blue Origin selected the four-flight benchmark and the government agreed.

And then there were three? … “The government is supporting a four-flight certification for New Glenn,” Garrant said. The rocket has logged two successful missions so far, and Garrant said a third launch is expected “earlier in the new year than later.” If upcoming flights stay on track, he added, “I think they’re going to be in a fantastic place to become our third certified provider and compete for missions.” If certified, Blue Origin would join SpaceX and United Launch Alliance as the Space Force’s third heavy-lift launch provider. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

December 13: Long March 6 | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 01: 05 UTC

December 14: Electron | RAISE and Shine | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 03: 00 UTC

December 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-12 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 05: 20 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: Neutron’s Hungry Hippo is deemed ready, whither Orbex? Read More »

Investors commit quarter-billion dollars to startup designing “Giga” satellites

Commercial space, k2, satellites, Science, Space / Shannon Garcia / December 12, 2025

A startup established three years ago to churn out a new class of high-power satellites has raised $250 million to ramp up production at its Southern California factory.

The company, named K2, announced the cash infusion on Thursday. K2’s Series C fundraising round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with additional funding from investment firms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. K2 has now raised more than $400 million since its founding in 2022 and is on track to launch its first major demonstration mission next year, officials said.

K2 aims to take advantage of a coming abundance of heavy- and super-heavy-lift launch capacity, with SpaceX’s Starship expected to begin deploying satellites as soon as next year. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket launched twice this year and will fly more in 2026 while engineers develop an even larger New Glenn with additional engines and more lift capability.

Underscoring this trend toward big rockets are other launchers like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, and new vehicles from companies like Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace. K2’s founders believe satellites will follow a similar progression, reversing a trend toward smaller spacecraft in recent years, to address emerging markets like in-space computing and data processing.

Mega, then Giga

K2 is designing two classes of satellites—Mega and Giga—that it will build at an 180,000-square-foot factory in Torrance, California. The company’s first “Mega Class” satellite is named Gravitas. It is scheduled to launch in March 2026 on a Falcon 9 rocket. Once in orbit, Gravitas will test several systems that are fundamental to K2’s growth strategy. One is a 2o-kilowatt Hall-effect thruster that K2 says will be four times more powerful than any such thruster flown to date. Gravitas will also deploy twin solar arrays capable of generating 20 kilowatts of power.

“Gravitas brings our full stack together for the first time,” said Karan Kunjur, K2’s co-founder and CEO, in a company press release. “We are validating the architecture in space, from high-voltage power and large solar arrays to our guidance and control algorithms, and a 20 kW Hall thruster, and we will scale based on measured performance.”

Investors commit quarter-billion dollars to startup designing “Giga” satellites Read More »

NASA just lost contact with a Mars orbiter, and will soon lose another one

Lockheed Martin, Mars, MAVEN, NASA, planetary science, Science, solar system, Space / DJ Henderson / December 11, 2025

Technicians work on the MAVEN spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its launch in 2013. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

But NASA’s two other Mars orbiters have been in space for more than 20 years. The older of the two, named Mars Odyssey, has been at Mars since 2001 and will soon run out of fuel, probably sometime in the next couple of years. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2005, is healthy for its age, with enough fuel to last into the 2030s. MRO is also important to NASA because it has the best camera at Mars, with the ability to map landing sites for future missions.

Two European spacecraft, Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, have radios to relay data between mission controllers and NASA’s landers on the Martian surface. Mars Express, now 22 years old, suffers from the same aging concerns as Mars Odyssey and MRO. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is newer, having arrived at Mars in 2016, but is also operating beyond its original lifetime.

China and the United Arab Emirates also have orbiters circling Mars, but neither spacecraft is equipped to serve as a communications relay.

NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have the capability for direct-to-Earth communications, but the orbiting relay network can support vastly higher data throughput. Without overhead satellites, much of the science data and many of the spectacular images collected by NASA’s rovers might never make it off the planet.

MAVEN’s unique orbit, stretching as far as 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) above Mars, has some advantages for data relay. In that orbit, MAVEN could relay science data from rovers on the surface for up to 30 minutes at a time, longer than the relay periods available through NASA’s lower-altitude orbiters. Because of this, MAVEN could support the largest data volumes of any of the other relay options.

NASA just lost contact with a Mars orbiter, and will soon lose another one Read More »

After key Russian launch site is damaged, NASA accelerates Dragon supply missions

dragon, russia, site 31, Space, spacex / Shannon Garcia / December 10, 2025

With a key Russian launch pad out of service, NASA is accelerating the launch of two Cargo Dragon spaceships in order to ensure that astronauts on board the International Space Station have all the supplies they need next year.

According to the space agency’s internal schedule, the next Dragon supply mission, CRS-34, is moving forward one month from June 2026 to May. And the next Dragon supply mission after this, CRS-35, has been advanced three months from November to August.

A source indicated that the changing schedules are a “direct result” of a launch pad incident on Thanksgiving Day at the Russian spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

The issue occurred when a Soyuz rocket launched Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, on an eight-month mission to the International Space Station. The rocket had no difficulties, but a large mobile platform below the rocket was not properly secured prior to the launch and crashed into the flame trench below, taking the pad offline.

Repairs require at least four months

Russia has other launch pads, both within its borders and neighboring countries, including Kazakhstan, that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. However, Site 31 at Baikonur is the country’s only pad presently configured to handle launches of the Soyuz rocket and two spacecraft critical to the space station, the cargo-only Progress vehicle and the Soyuz crew capsule.

Since the accident Russia’s main space corporation, Roscosmos, has been assessing plans to repair the Site 31 launch site and begun to schedule the delivery of spare parts. Roscosmos officials have told NASA it will take at least four months to repair the site and recover the capability to launch from there.

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