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SpaceX finally got exactly what it needed from Starship V2

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This was the last flight of SpaceX’s second-gen Starship design. Version 3 arrives next year.

Thirty-three methane-fueled Raptor engines power SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster off the launch pad Monday. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX closed a troubled but instructive chapter in its Starship rocket program Monday with a near-perfect test flight that carried the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world from South Texas to the Indian Ocean.

The rocket’s 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines roared to life at 6: 23 pm CDT (7: 23 pm EDT; 23: 23 UTC), throttling up to generate some 16.7 million pounds of thrust, by large measure more powerful than any rocket before Starship. Moments later, the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket began a vertical climb away from SpaceX’s test site in Starbase, Texas, near the US-Mexico border.

From then on, the rocket executed its flight plan like clockwork. This was arguably SpaceX’s most successful Starship test flight to date. The only flight with a similar claim occurred one year ago Monday, when the company caught the rocket’s Super Heavy booster back at the launch pad after soaring to the uppermost fringes of the atmosphere. But that flight didn’t accomplish as much in space.

“Starship’s eleventh flight test reached every objective, providing valuable data as we prepare the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” SpaceX posted on X.

SpaceX’s 11th Starship flight climbs away from Starbase, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX didn’t try to recover the Super Heavy booster on this flight, but the goals the company set before the launch included an attempt to guide the enormous rocket stage to a precise splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of South Texas. The booster, reused from a previous flight in March, also validated a new engine configuration for its landing burn, first reigniting 13 of its engines, then downshifting to five, then to three for the final hover.

That all worked, along with pretty much everything else apart from an indication on SpaceX’s livestream that Starship’s Super Heavy booster stage lost an engine early in its descent. The malfunctioning engine had no impact on the rest of the flight.

Flight 11 recap

This was the fifth and final flight of Starship’s second-generation configuration, known as Version 2, or V2. It was the 11th full-scale Starship test flight overall.

It took a while for Starship V2 to meet SpaceX’s expectations. The first three Starship V2 launches in January, March, and May ended prematurely due to problems in the rocket’s propulsion and a fuel leak, breaking a string of increasingly successful Starship flights since 2023. Another Starship V2 exploded on a test stand in Texas in June, further marring the second-gen rocket’s track record.

But SpaceX teams righted the program with a good test flight in August, the first time Starship V2 made it all the way to splashdown. Engineers learned a few lessons on that flight, including the inadequacy of a new metallic heat shield tile design that left a patch of orange oxidation down the side of the ship. They also found that another experiment with part of the ship’s heat shield showed promising results. This method involved using a soft “crunch wrap” material to seal the gaps between the ship’s ceramic tiles and prevent super-heated plasma from reaching the rocket’s stainless steel skin.

Technicians installed the crunch wrap material in more places for Flight 11, and a first look at the performance of the ship during reentry and splashdown suggested the heat shield change worked well.

Dan Huot from SpaceX’s communications office demonstrates how “crunch wrap” material can fill the gaps between Starship’s heat shield tiles. Credit: SpaceX

After reaching space, Starship shut down its six Raptor engines and coasted across the Atlantic Ocean and Africa before emerging over the Indian Ocean just before reentry. During its time in space, Starship released eight Starlink satellite mockups mimicking the larger size of the company’s next-generation Starlink spacecraft. These new Starlink satellites will only be able to launch on Starship.

Starship also reignited one of its six engines for a brief maneuver to set up the ship’s trajectory for reentry. With that, the stage was set for the final act of the test flight. How would the latest version of SpaceX’s ever-changing heat shield design hold up against temperatures of 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius)?

The answer: Apparently quite well. While SpaceX has brought Starships back to Earth in one piece several times, this was the first time the ship made it through reentry relatively unscathed. Live video streaming from cameras onboard Starship showed a blanket of orange and purple plasma enveloping the rocket during reentry. This is now a familiar sight, thanks to connectivity with Starship through SpaceX’s Starlink broadband network.

What was different on Monday was the lack of any obvious damage to the heat shield or flaps throughout Starship’s descent, a promising sign for SpaceX’s chances of reusing the vehicle and its heat shield over and over again, without requiring any refurbishment. This, according to SpaceX’s Elon Musk, is the acid test for determining Starship’s overall success.

An onboard camera captured this view of Starship during the final minute of flight over the Indian Ocean. At this point of the flight, the vehicle—designated Ship 38 as seen here—is descending in a horizontal orientation before flipping vertical for the final moments before splashdown. Credit: SpaceX

In the closing moments of Monday’s flight, Starship flexed its flaps to perform a “dynamic banking maneuver” over the Indian Ocean, then flipped upright and fired its engines to slow for splashdown, simulating maneuvers the rocket will execute on future missions returning to the launch site. That will be one of the chief goals for the next phase of Starship’s test campaign beginning next year.

Patience for V3

It will likely be at least a few months before SpaceX is ready to launch the next Starship flight. Technicians at Starbase are assembling the next Super Heavy booster and the first Starship V3 vehicle. Once integrated, the booster and ship are expected to undergo cryogenic testing and static-fire testing before SpaceX moves forward with launch.

“Focus now turns to the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy, with multiple vehicles currently in active build and preparing for tests,” SpaceX wrote on its website. “This next iteration will be used for the first Starship orbital flights, operational payload missions, propellant transfer, and more as we iterate to a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle with service to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

Starship V3 will have larger propellant tanks to increase the rocket’s lifting capacity, upgraded Raptor 3 engines, and an improved payload compartment to support launches of real Starlink satellites. SpaceX will also use this version of the rocket for orbital refueling experiments, a long-awaited milestone for the Starship program now planned for sometime next year. Orbital refueling is a crucial enabler for future Starship flights beyond low-Earth orbit and is necessary for SpaceX to fulfill Musk’s ambition to send ships to Mars, the founder’s long-held goal for the company.

It’s also required for Starship flights to the Moon. NASA has signed contracts with SpaceX worth more than $4 billion to develop a human-rated derivative of Starship to land astronauts on the Moon as part of the agency’s Artemis program. The orbital refueling demonstration is a key milestone on the NASA lunar lander contract. Getting this done as soon as possible is vitally important to NASA, which is seeing its Artemis Moon landing schedule slip, in part due to Starship delays.

None of it can really get started until Starship V3 is flying reliably and flying often. If the first Starship V3 flight goes well, SpaceX may attempt to put the next vehicle—Flight 13—into orbit to verify the ship’s endurance in space. At some point, SpaceX will make the first attempt to bring a ship home from orbit for a catch by the launch tower, similar to how SpaceX has caught Super Heavy boosters returning from the edge of space.

But first, ground crews are wrapping up work on a second Starship launch pad designed to accommodate the upgraded, taller Starship V3 rocket. Monday’s flight marked the final launch from Pad 1 in its existing form. The differences with the second launch pad include its flame trench, a common fixture at many launch pads around the world. Pad 1 was not built with a flame trench, but instead features an elevated launch mount where the rocket sits prior to liftoff.

SpaceX is expected to overhaul Pad 1 in the coming months to reactivate it as a second launch pad option for Starship V3. All of this work is occurring in Texas as SpaceX prepares to bring online more Starship launch pads at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX says it will need a lot of pads to ramp up Starship to monthly, weekly, and eventually daily flights.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

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Starship’s elementary era ends today with mega-rocket’s 11th test flight

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Future flights of Starship will end with returns to Starbase, where the launch tower will try to catch the vehicle coming home from space, similar to the way SpaceX has shown it can recover the Super Heavy booster. A catch attempt with Starship is still at least a couple of flights away.

In preparation for future returns to Starbase, the ship on Flight 11 will perform a “dynamic banking maneuver” and test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to its final engine burn to brake for splashdown. If all goes according to plan, the flight will end with a controlled water landing in the Indian Ocean approximately 66 minutes after liftoff.

Turning point

Monday’s test flight will be the last Starship launch of the year as SpaceX readies a new generation of the rocket, called Version 3, for its debut sometime in early 2026. The new version of the rocket will fly with upgraded Raptor engines and larger propellant tanks and have the capability for refueling in low-Earth orbit.

Starship Version 3 will also inaugurate SpaceX’s second launch pad at Starbase, which has several improvements over the existing site, including a flame trench to redirect engine exhaust away from the pad. The flame trench is a common feature of many launch pads, but all of the Starship flights so far have used an elevated launch mount, or stool, over a water-cooled flame deflector.

The current launch complex is expected to be modified to accommodate future Starship V3s, giving the company two pads to support a higher flight rate.

NASA is counting on a higher flight rate for Starship next year to move closer to fulfilling SpaceX’s contract to provide a human-rated lander to the agency’s Artemis lunar program. SpaceX has contracts worth more than $4 billion to develop a derivative of Starship to land NASA astronauts on the Moon.

But much of SpaceX’s progress toward a lunar landing hinges on launching numerous Starships—perhaps a dozen or more—in a matter of a few weeks or months. SpaceX is activating the second launch pad in Texas and building several launch towers and a new factory in Florida to make this possible.

Apart from recovering and reusing Starship itself, the program’s most pressing near-term hurdle is the demonstration of in-orbit refueling, a prerequisite for any future Starship voyages to the Moon or Mars. This first refueling test could happen next year but will require Starship V3 to have a smoother introduction than Starship V2, which is retiring after Flight 11 with, at best, a 40 percent success rate.

Starship’s elementary era ends today with mega-rocket’s 11th test flight Read More »

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Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck

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The long, winding road for Franklin Chang-Diaz’s plasma rocket engine takes another turn.

Blue Origin’s second New Glenn booster left its factory this week for a road trip to the company’s launch pad a few miles away. Credit: Blue Origin

Welcome to Edition 8.14 of the Rocket Report! We’re now more than a week into a federal government shutdown, but there’s been little effect on the space industry. Military space operations are continuing unabated, and NASA continues preparations at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, for the launch of the Artemis II mission around the Moon early next year. The International Space Station is still flying with a crew of seven in low-Earth orbit, and NASA’s fleet of spacecraft exploring the cosmos remain active. What’s more, so much of what the nation does in space is now done by commercial companies largely (but not completely) immune from the pitfalls of politics. But the effect of the shutdown on troops and federal employees shouldn’t be overlooked. They will soon miss their first paychecks unless political leaders reach an agreement to end the stalemate.

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.

Danger from dead rockets. A new listing of the 50 most concerning pieces of space debris in low-Earth orbit is dominated by relics more than a quarter-century old, primarily dead rockets left to hurtle through space at the end of their missions, Ars reports. “The things left before 2000 are still the majority of the problem,” said Darren McKnight, lead author of a paper presented October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney. “Seventy-six percent of the objects in the top 50 were deposited last century, and 88 percent of the objects are rocket bodies. That’s important to note, especially with some disturbing trends right now.”

Littering in LEO … The disturbing trends mainly revolve around China’s actions in low-Earth orbit. “The bad news is, since January 1, 2024, we’ve had 26 rocket bodies abandoned in low-Earth orbit that will stay in orbit for more than 25 years,” McKnight told Ars. China is responsible for leaving behind 21 of those 26 rockets. Overall, Russia and the Soviet Union lead the pack with 34 objects listed in McKnight’s Top 50, followed by China with 10, the United States with three, Europe with two, and Japan with one. Russia’s SL-16 and SL-8 rockets are the worst offenders, combining to take 30 of the Top 50 slots. An impact with even a modestly sized object at orbital velocity would create countless pieces of debris, potentially triggering a cascading series of additional collisions clogging LEO with more and more space junk, a scenario called the Kessler Syndrome.

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New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, launched its sixth crewed New Shepard flight so far this year Wednesday as the company works to increase the vehicle’s flight rate, Space News reports. This was the 36th flight of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket. The passengers included: Jeff Elgin, Danna Karagussova, Clint Kelly III, Will Lewis, Aaron Newman, and Vitalii Ostrovsky. Blue Origin said it has now flown 86 humans (80 individuals) into space. The New Shepard booster returned to a pinpoint propulsive landing, and the capsule parachuted into the desert a few miles from the launch site near Van Horn, Texas.

Two-month turnaround … This flight continued Blue Origin’s trend of launching New Shepard about once per month. The company has two capsules and two boosters in its active inventory, and each vehicle has flown about once every two months this year. Blue Origin currently has command of the space tourism and suborbital research market as its main competitor in this sector, Virgin Galactic, remains grounded while it builds a next-generation rocket plane. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

NASA still interested in former astronaut’s rocket engine. NASA has awarded the Ad Astra Rocket Company a $4 million, two-year contract for the continued development of the company’s Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) concept, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Ad Astra, founded by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, claims the vehicle has the potential to reach Mars with human explorers within 45 days using a nuclear power source rather than solar power. The new contract will enable federal funding to support development of the engine’s radio frequency, superconducting magnet, and structural exoskeleton subsystems.

Slow going … Houston-based Ad Astra said in a press release that it sees the high-power plasma engine as “nearing flight readiness.” We’ve heard this before. The VASIMR engine has been in development for decades now, beset by a lack of stable funding and the technical hurdles inherent in designing and testing such demanding technology. For example, Ad Astra once planned a critical 100-hour, 100-kilowatt ground test of the VASIMR engine in 2018. The test still hasn’t happened. Engineers discovered a core component of the engine tended to overheat as power levels approached 100 kilowatts, forcing a redesign that set the program back by at least several years. Now, Ad Astra says it is ready to build and test a pair of 150-kilowatt engines, one of which is intended to fly in space at the end of the decade.

Gilmour eyes return to flight next year. Australian rocket and satellite startup Gilmour Space Technologies is looking to return to the launch pad next year after the first attempt at an orbital flight failed over the summer, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. “We are well capitalized. We are going to be launching again next year,” Adam Gilmour, the company’s CEO, said October 3 at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney.

What happened? … Gilmour didn’t provide many details about the cause of the launch failure in July, other than to say it appeared to be something the company didn’t test for ahead of the flight. The Eris rocket flew for 14 seconds, losing control and crashing a short distance from the launch pad in the Australian state of Queensland. If there’s any silver lining, Gilmour said the failure didn’t damage the launch pad, and the rocket’s use of a novel hybrid propulsion system limited the destructive power of the blast when it struck the ground.

Stoke Space’s impressive funding haul. Stoke Space announced a significant capital raise on Wednesday, a total of $510 million as part of Series D funding. The new financing doubles the total capital raised by Stoke Space, founded in 2020, to $990 million, Ars reports. The infusion of money will provide the company with “the runway to complete development” of the Nova rocket and demonstrate its capability through its first flights, said Andy Lapsa, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release characterizing the new funding.

A futuristic design … Stoke is working toward a 2026 launch of the medium-lift Nova rocket. The rocket’s innovative design is intended to be fully reusable from the payload fairing on down, with a regeneratively cooled heat shield on the vehicle’s second stage. In fully reusable mode, Nova will have a payload capacity of 3 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, and up to 7 tons in fully expendable mode. Stoke is building a launch pad for the Nova rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

SpaceX took an unusual break from launching. SpaceX launched its first Falcon 9 rocket from Florida in 12 days during the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, Spaceflight Now reports. The launch gap was highlighted by a run of persistent, daily storms in Central Florida and over the Atlantic Ocean, including hurricanes that prevented deployment of SpaceX’s drone ships to support booster landings. The break ended with the launch of 28 more Starlink broadband satellites. SpaceX launched three Starlink missions in the interim from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Weather still an issue … Weather conditions on Florida’s Space Coast are often volatile, particularly in the evenings during summer and early autumn. SpaceX’s next launch from Florida was supposed to take off Thursday evening, but officials pushed it back to no earlier than Saturday due to a poor weather forecast over the next two days. Weather still gets a vote in determining whether a rocket lifts off or doesn’t, despite SpaceX’s advancements in launch efficiency and the Space Force’s improved weather monitoring capabilities at Cape Canaveral.

ArianeGroup chief departs for train maker. Current ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion has been named the new head of French train maker Alstom. He will officially take up the role in April 2026, European Spaceflight reports. Sion assumed the role as ArianeGroup’s chief executive in 2023, replacing the former CEO who left the company after delays in the debut of its main product: the Ariane 6 rocket. Sion’s appointment was announced by Alstom, but ArianeGroup has not made any official statement on the matter.

Under pressure … The change in ArianeGroup’s leadership comes as the company ramps up production and increases the launch cadence of the Ariane 6 rocket, which has now flown three times, with a fourth launch due next month. ArianeGroup’s subsidiary, Arianespace, seeks to increase the Ariane 6’s launch cadence to 10 missions per year by 2029. ArianeGroup and its suppliers will need to drastically improve factory throughput to reach this goal.

New Glenn emerges from factory. Blue Origin rolled the first stage of its massive New Glenn rocket from its hangar on Wednesday morning in Florida, kicking off the final phase of the campaign to launch the heavy-lift vehicle for the second time, Ars reports. In sharing video of the rollout to Launch Complex-36 on Wednesday online, the space company did not provide a launch target for the mission, which seeks to put two small Mars-bound payloads into orbit. The pair of identical spacecraft to study the solar wind at Mars is known as ESCAPADE. However, sources told Ars that on the current timeline, Blue Origin is targeting a launch window of November 9 to November 11. This assumes pre-launch activities, including a static-fire test of the first stage, go well.

Recovery or bust? … Blue Origin has a lot riding on this booster, named “Never Tell Me The Odds,” which it will seek to recover and reuse. Despite the name of the booster, the company is quietly confident that it will successfully land the first stage on a drone ship named Jacklyn. Internally, engineers at Blue Origin believe there is about a 75 percent chance of success. The first booster malfunctioned before landing on the inaugural New Glenn test flight in January. Company officials are betting big on recovering the booster this time, with plans to reuse it early next year to launch Blue’s first lunar lander to the Moon.

SpaceX gets bulk of this year’s military launch orders. Around this time each year, the US Space Force convenes a Mission Assignment Board to dole out contracts to launch the nation’s most critical national security satellites. The military announced this year’s launch orders Friday, and SpaceX was the big winner, Ars reports. Space Systems Command, the unit responsible for awarding military launch contracts, selected SpaceX to launch five of the seven missions up for assignment this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA), a 50-50 joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, won contracts for the other two. These missions for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office are still at least a couple of years away from flying.

Vulcan getting more expensive … A closer examination of this year’s National Security Space Launch contracts reveals some interesting things. The Space Force is paying SpaceX $714 million for the five launches awarded Friday, for an average of roughly $143 million per mission. ULA will receive $428 million for two missions, or $214 million for each launch. That’s about 50 percent more expensive than SpaceX’s price per mission. This is in line with the prices the Space Force paid SpaceX and ULA for last year’s contracts. However, look back a little further and you’ll find ULA’s prices for military launches have, for some reason, increased significantly over the last few years. In late 2023, the Space Force awarded a $1.3 billion deal to ULA for a batch of 11 launches at an average cost per mission of $119 million. A few months earlier, Space Systems Command assigned six launches to ULA for $672 million, or $112 million per mission.

Starship Flight 11 nears launch. SpaceX rolled the Super Heavy booster for the next test flight of the company’s Starship mega-rocket out to the launch pad in Texas this week. The booster stage, with 33 methane-fueled engines, will power the Starship into the upper atmosphere during the first few minutes of flight. This booster is flight-proven, having previously launched and landed on a test flight in March.

Next steps … With the Super Heavy booster installed on the pad, the next step for SpaceX will be the rollout of the Starship upper stage. That is expected to happen in the coming days. Ground crews will raise Starship atop the Super Heavy booster to fully stack the rocket to its total height of more than 400 feet (120 meters). If everything goes well, SpaceX is targeting liftoff of the 11th full-scale test flight of Starship and Super Heavy as soon as Monday evening. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin takes on a new line of business. Blue Origin won a US Space Force competition to build a new payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Spaceflight Now reports. Under the terms of the $78.2 million contract, Blue Origin will build a new facility capable of handling payloads for up to 16 missions per year. The Space Force expects to use about half of that capacity, with the rest available to NASA or Blue Origin’s commercial customers. This contract award follows a $77.5 million agreement the Space Force signed with Astrotech earlier this year to expand the footprint of its payload processing facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Important stuff … Ground infrastructure often doesn’t get the same level of attention as rockets, but the Space Force has identified bottlenecks in payload processing as potential constraints on ramping up launch cadences at the government’s spaceports in Florida and California. Currently, there are only a handful of payload processing facilities in the Cape Canaveral area, and most of them are only open to a single user, such as SpaceX, Amazon, the National Reconnaissance Office, or NASA. So, what exactly is payload processing? The Space Force said Blue Origin’s new facility will include space for “several pre-launch preparatory activities” that include charging batteries, fueling satellites, loading other gaseous and fluid commodities, and encapsulation. To accomplish those tasks, Blue Origin will create “a clean, secure, specialized high-bay facility capable of handling flight hardware, toxic fuels, and explosive materials.”

Next three launches

Oct. 11: Gravity 1 | Unknown Payload | Haiyang Spaceport, China Coastal Waters | 02: 15 UTC

Oct. 12: Falcon 9 | Project Kuiper KF-03 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 00: 41 UTC

Oct. 13: Starship/Super Heavy | Flight 11 | Starbase, Texas | 23: 15 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Rocket Report: Bezos’ firm will package satellites for launch; Starship on deck Read More »

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Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances

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“A disclosure, even with redactions, will reveal whether a security clearance was granted with or without conditions or a waiver,” DCSA argued.

Ultimately, DCSA failed to prove that Musk risked “embarrassment or humiliation” not only if the public learned what specific conditions or waivers applied to Musk’s clearances but also if there were any conditions or waivers at all, Cote wrote.

Three cases that DCSA cited to support this position—including a case where victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking scheme had a substantial privacy interest in non-disclosure of detailed records—do not support the government’s logic, Cote said. The judge explained that the disclosures would not have affected the privacy rights of any third parties, emphasizing that “Musk’s diminished privacy interest is underscored by the limited information plaintiffs sought in their FOIA request.”

Musk’s X posts discussing his occasional use of prescription ketamine and his disclosure that smoking marijuana on a podcast prompted NASA requirements for random drug testing, Cote wrote, “only enhance” the public’s interest in how Musk’s security clearances were vetted. Additionally, Musk has posted about speaking with Vladimir Putin, prompting substantial public interest in how his foreign contacts may or may not restrict his security clearances. More than 2 million people viewed Musk’s X posts on these subjects, the judge wrote, noting that:

It is undisputed that drug use and foreign contacts are two factors DCSA considers when determining whether to impose conditions or waivers on a security clearance grant. DCSA fails to explain why, given Musk’s own, extensive disclosures, the mere disclosure that a condition or waiver exists (or that no condition or waiver exists) would subject him to ’embarrassment or humiliation.

Rather, for the public, “the list of Musk’s security clearances, including any conditions or waivers, could provide meaningful insight into DCSA’s performance of that duty and responses to Musk’s admissions, if any,” Cote wrote.

In a footnote, Cote said that this substantial public interest existed before Musk became a special government employee, ruling that DCSA was wrong to block the disclosures seeking information on Musk as a major government contractor. Her ruling likely paves the way for the NYT or other news organizations to submit FOIA requests for a list of Musk’s clearances while he helmed DOGE.

It’s not immediately clear when the NYT will receive the list they requested in 2024, but the government has until October 17 to request redactions before it’s publicized.

“The Times brought this case because the public has a right to know about how the government conducts itself,” Charlie Stadtlander, an NYT spokesperson, said. “The decision reaffirms that fundamental principle and we look forward to receiving the document at issue.”

Musk’s X posts on ketamine, Putin spur release of his security clearances Read More »

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Elon Musk tries to make Apple and mobile carriers regret choosing Starlink rivals

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SpaceX holds spectrum licenses for the Starlink fixed Internet service for homes and businesses. Adding the EchoStar spectrum will make its holdings suitable for mobile service.

“SpaceX currently holds no terrestrial spectrum authorizations and no license to use spectrum allocated on a primary basis to MSS,” the company’s FCC filing said. “Its only authorization to provide any form of mobile service is an authorization for secondary SCS [Supplemental Coverage from Space] operations in spectrum licensed to T-Mobile.”

Starlink unlikely to dethrone major carriers

SpaceX’s spectrum purchase doesn’t make it likely that Starlink will become a fourth major carrier. Grand claims of that sort are “complete nonsense,” wrote industry analyst Dean Bubley. “Apart from anything else, there’s one very obvious physical obstacle: walls and roofs,” he wrote. “Space-based wireless, even if it’s at frequencies supported in normal smartphones, won’t work properly indoors. And uplink from devices to satellites will be even worse.”

When you’re indoors, “there’s more attenuation of the signal,” resulting in lower data rates, Farrar said. “You might not even get megabits per second indoors, unless you are going to go onto a home Starlink broadband network,” he said. “You might only be able to get hundreds of kilobits per second in an obstructed area.”

The Mach33 analyst firm is more bullish than others regarding Starlink’s potential cellular capabilities. “With AWS-4/H-block and V3 [satellites], Starlink DTC is no longer niche, it’s a path to genuine MNO competition. Watch for retail mobile bundles, handset support, and urban hardware as the signals of that pivot,” the firm said.

Mach33’s optimism is based in part on the expectation that SpaceX will make more deals. “DTC isn’t just a coverage filler, it’s a springboard. It enables alternative growth routes; M&A, spectrum deals, subleasing capacity in denser markets, or technical solutions like mini-towers that extend Starlink into neighborhoods,” the group’s analysis said.

The amount of spectrum SpaceX is buying from EchoStar is just a fraction of what the national carriers control. There is “about 1.1 GHz of licensed spectrum currently allocated to mobile operators,” wireless lobby group CTIA said in a January 2025 report. The group also says the cellular industry has over 432,000 active cell sites around the US.

What Starlink can offer cellular users “is nothing compared to the capacity of today’s 5G networks,” but it would be useful “in less populated areas or where you cannot get coverage,” Rysavy said.

Starlink has about 8,500 satellites in orbit. Rysavy estimated in a July 2025 report that about 280 of them are over the United States at any given time. These satellites are mostly providing fixed Internet service in which an antenna is placed outside a building so that people can use Wi-Fi indoors.

SpaceX’s FCC filing said the EchoStar spectrum’s mix of terrestrial and satellite frequencies will be ideal for Starlink.

“By acquiring EchoStar’s market-access authorization for 2 GHz MSS as well as its terrestrial AWS-4 licenses, SpaceX will be able to deploy a hybrid satellite and terrestrial network, just as the Commission envisioned EchoStar would do,” SpaceX said. “Consistent with the Commission’s finding that potential interference between MSS and terrestrial mobile service can best be managed by enabling a single licensee to control both networks, assignment of the AWS-4 spectrum is critical to enable SpaceX to deploy robust MSS service in this band.”

Elon Musk tries to make Apple and mobile carriers regret choosing Starlink rivals Read More »

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Pentagon contract figures show ULA’s Vulcan rocket is getting more expensive

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A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Psyche spacecraft launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on October 13, 2023. Credit: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

The launch orders announced Friday comprise the second batch of NSSL Phase 3 missions the Space Force has awarded to SpaceX and ULA.

It’s important to remember that these prices aren’t what ULA or SpaceX would charge a commercial satellite customer. The US government pays a premium for access to space. The Space Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and NASA don’t insure their launches like a commercial customer would do. Instead, government agencies have more insight into their launch contractors, including inspections, flight data reviews, risk assessments, and security checks. Government missions also typically get priority on ULA and SpaceX’s launch schedules. All of this adds up to more money.

A heavy burden

Four of the five launches awarded to SpaceX Friday will use the company’s larger Falcon Heavy rocket, according to Lt. Col. Kristina Stewart at Space Systems Command. One will fly on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. This is the first time a majority of the Space Force’s annual launch orders has required the lift capability of a Falcon Heavy, with three Falcon 9 booster cores combining to heave larger payloads into space.

All versions of ULA’s Vulcan rocket use a single core booster, with varying numbers of strap-on solid-fueled rocket motors to provide extra thrust off the launch pad.

Here’s a breakdown of the seven new missions assigned to SpaceX and ULA:

• USSF-149: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Florida

• USSF-63: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-155: Classified payload SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-205: WGS-12 communications satellite on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• NROL-86: Classified payload on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Florida

• USSF-88: GPS IIIF-4 navigation satellite on a ULA Vulcan VC2S (two solid rocket boosters) from Florida

• NROL-88: Classified payload on a ULA Vulcan VC4S (four solid rocket boosters) from Florida

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How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up

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Thanks to some recent reporting, we’ve found a potential solution to the Artemis blues.

A man in a suit speaks in front of a mural of the Moon landing.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that competition is good for the Artemis Moon program. Credit: NASA

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine says that competition is good for the Artemis Moon program. Credit: NASA

For the last month, NASA’s interim administrator, Sean Duffy, has been giving interviews and speeches around the world, offering a singular message: “We are going to beat the Chinese to the Moon.”

This is certainly what the president who appointed Duffy to the NASA post wants to hear. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that Duffy’s sentiment is false. Privately, many people within the space industry, and even at NASA, acknowledge that the US space agency appears to be holding a losing hand. Recently, some influential voices, such as former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, have spoken out.

“Unless something changes, it is highly unlikely the United States will beat China’s projected timeline to the Moon’s surface,” Bridenstine said in early September.

As the debate about NASA potentially losing the “second” space race to China heats up in Washington, DC, everyone is pointing fingers. But no one is really offering answers for how to beat China’s ambitions to land taikonauts on the Moon as early as the year 2029. So I will. The purpose of this article is to articulate how NASA ended up falling behind China, and more importantly, how the Western world could realistically retake the lead.

But first, space policymakers must learn from their mistakes.

Begin at the beginning

Thousands of words could be written about the space policy created in the United States over the last two decades and all of the missteps. However, this article will only hit the highlights (lowlights). And the story begins in 2003, when two watershed events occurred.

The first of these was the loss of space shuttle Columbia in February, the second fatal shuttle accident, which signaled that the shuttle era was nearing its end, and it began a period of soul-searching at NASA and in Washington, DC, about what the space agency should do next.

“There’s a crucial year after the Columbia accident,” said eminent NASA historian John Logsdon. “President George W. Bush said we should go back to the Moon. And the result of the assessment after Columbia is NASA should get back to doing great things.” For NASA, this meant creating a new deep space exploration program for astronauts, be it the Moon, Mars, or both.

The other key milestone in 2003 came in October, when Yang Liwei flew into space and China became the third country capable of human spaceflight. After his 21-hour spaceflight, Chinese leaders began to more deeply appreciate the soft power that came with spaceflight and started to commit more resources to related programs. Long-term, the Asian nation sought to catch up to the United States in terms of spaceflight capabilities and eventually surpass the superpower.

It was not much of a competition then. China would not take its first tentative steps into deep space for another four years, with the Chang’e 1 lunar orbiter. NASA had already walked on the Moon and sent spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond.

So how did the United States squander such a massive lead?

Mistakes were made

SpaceX and its complex Starship lander are getting the lion’s share of the blame today for delays to NASA’s Artemis Program. But the company and its lunar lander version of Starship are just the final steps on a long, winding path that got the United States where it is today.

After Columbia, the Bush White House, with its NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, looked at a variety of options (see, for example, the Exploration Systems Architecture Study in 2005). But Griffin had a clear plan in his mind that he dubbed “Apollo on Steroids,” and he sought to develop a large rocket (Ares V), spacecraft (later to be named Orion), and a lunar lander to accomplish a lunar landing by 2020. Collectively, this became known as the Constellation Program.

It was a mess. Congress did not provide NASA the funding it needed, and the rocket and spacecraft programs quickly ran behind schedule. At one point, to pay for surging Constellation costs, NASA absurdly mulled canceling the just-completed International Space Station. By the end of the first decade of the 2000s, two things were clear: NASA was going nowhere fast, and the program’s only achievement was to enrich the legacy space contractors.

By early 2010, after spending a year assessing the state of play, the Obama administration sought to cancel Constellation. It ran into serious congressional pushback, powered by lobbying from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and other key legacy contractors.

The Space Launch System was created as part of a political compromise between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senators from Alabama and Texas.

Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Space Launch System was created as part of a political compromise between Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and senators from Alabama and Texas. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Obama White House wanted to cancel both the rocket and the spacecraft and hold a competition for the private sector to develop a heavy lift vehicle. Their thinking: Only with lower-cost access to space could the nation afford to have a sustainable deep space exploration plan. In retrospect, it was the smart idea, but Congress was not having it. In 2011, Congress saved Orion and ordered a slightly modified rocket—it would still be based on space shuttle architecture to protect key contractors—that became the Space Launch System.

Then the Obama administration, with its NASA leader Charles Bolden, cast about for something to do with this hardware. They started talking about a “Journey to Mars.” But it was all nonsense. There was never any there there. Essentially, NASA lost a decade, spending billions of dollars a year developing “exploration” systems for humans and talking about fanciful missions to the red planet.

There were critics of this approach, myself included. In 2014, I authored a seven-part series at the Houston Chronicle called Adrift, the title referring to the direction of NASA’s deep space ambitions. The fundamental problem is that NASA, at the direction of Congress, was spending all of its exploration funds developing Orion, the SLS rocket, and ground systems for some future mission. This made the big contractors happy, but their cost-plus contracts gobbled up so much funding that NASA had no money to spend on payloads or things to actually fly on this hardware.

This is why doubters called the SLS the “rocket to nowhere.” They were, sadly, correct.

The Moon, finally

Fairly early on in the first Trump administration, the new leader of NASA, Jim Bridenstine, managed to ditch the Journey to Mars and establish a lunar program. However, any efforts to consider alternatives to the SLS rocket were quickly rebuffed by the US Senate.

During his tenure, Bridenstine established the Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon. But Congress was slow to open its purse for elements of the program that would not clearly benefit a traditional contractor or NASA field center. Consequently, the space agency did not select a lunar lander until April 2021, after Bridenstine had left office. And NASA did not begin funding work on this until late 2021 due to a protest by Blue Origin. The space agency did not support a lunar spacesuit program for another year.

Much has been made about the selection of SpaceX as the sole provider of a lunar lander. Was it shady? Was the decision rushed before Bill Nelson was confirmed as NASA administrator? In truth, SpaceX was the only company that bid a value that NASA could afford with its paltry budget for a lunar lander (again, Congress prioritized SLS funding), and which had the capability the agency required.

To be clear, for a decade, NASA spent in excess of $3 billion a year on the development of the SLS rocket and its ground systems. That’s every year for a rocket that used main engines from the space shuttle, a similar version of its solid rocket boosters, and had a core stage the same diameter as the shuttle’s external tank. Thirty billion bucks for a rocket highly derivative of a vehicle NASA flew for three decades. SpaceX was awarded less than a single year of this funding, $2.9 billion, for the entire development of a Human Landing System version of Starship, plus two missions.

So yes, after 20 years, Orion appears to be ready to carry NASA astronauts out to the Moon. After 15 years, the shuttle-derived rocket appears to work. And after four years (and less than a tenth of the funding), Starship is not ready to land humans on the Moon.

When will Starship be ready?

Probably not any time soon.

For SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, the Artemis Program is a sidequest to the company’s real mission of sending humans to Mars. It simply is not a priority (and frankly, the limited funding from NASA does not compel prioritization). Due to its incredible ambition, the Starship program has also understandably hit some technical snags.

Unfortunately for NASA and the country, Starship still has a long way to go to land humans on the Moon. It must begin flying frequently (this could happen next year, finally). It must demonstrate the capability to transfer and store large amounts of cryogenic propellant in space. It must land on the Moon, a real challenge for such a tall vehicle, necessitating a flat surface that is difficult to find near the poles. And then it must demonstrate the ability to launch from the Moon, which would be unprecedented for cryogenic propellants.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle is the complexity of the mission. To fully fuel a Starship in low-Earth orbit to land on the Moon and take off would require multiple Starship “tanker” launches from Earth. No one can quite say how many because SpaceX is still working to increase the payload capacity of Starship, and no one has real-world data on transfer efficiency and propellant boiloff. But the number is probably at least a dozen missions. One senior source recently suggested to Ars that it may be as many as 20 to 40 launches.

The bottom line: It’s a lot. SpaceX is far and away the highest-performing space company in the Solar System. But putting all of the pieces together for a lunar landing will require time. Privately, SpaceX officials are telling NASA it can meet a 2028 timeline for Starship readiness for Artemis astronauts.

But that seems very optimistic. Very. It’s not something I would feel comfortable betting on, especially if China plans to land on the Moon “before” 2030, and the country continues to make credible progress toward this date.

What are the alternatives?

Duffy’s continued public insistence that he will not let China beat the United States back to the Moon rings hollow. The shrewd people in the industry I’ve spoken with say Duffy is an intelligent person and is starting to realize that betting the entire farm on SpaceX at this point would be a mistake. It would be nice to have a plan B.

But please, stop gaslighting us. Stop blustering about how we’re going to beat China while losing a quarter of NASA’s workforce and watching your key contractors struggle with growing pains. Let’s have an honest discussion about the challenges and how we’ll solve them.

What few people have done is offer solutions to Duffy’s conundrum. Fortunately, we’re here to help. As I have conducted interviews in recent weeks, I have always closed by asking this question: “You’re named NASA administrator tomorrow. You have one job: get NASA astronauts safely back to the Moon before China. What do you do?”

I’ve received a number of responses, which I’ll boil down into the following buckets. None of these strike me as particularly practical solutions, which underscores the desperation of NASA’s predicament. However, recent reporting has uncovered one solution that probably would work. I’ll address that last. First, the other ideas:

  • Stubby Starship: Multiple people have suggested this option. Tim Dodd has even spoken about it publicly. Two of the biggest issues with Starship are the need for many refuelings and its height, making it difficult to land on uneven terrain. NASA does not need Starship’s incredible capability to land 100–200 metric tons on the lunar surface. It needs fewer than 10 tons for initial human missions. So shorten Starship, reduce its capability, and get it down to a handful of refuelings. It’s not clear how feasible this would be beyond armchair engineering. But the larger problem is that Musk wants Starship to get taller, not shorter, so SpaceX would probably not be willing to do this.
  • Surge CLPS funding: Since 2019, NASA has been awarding relatively small amounts of funding to private companies to land a few hundred kilograms of cargo on the Moon. NASA could dramatically increase funding to this program, say up to $10 billion, and offer prizes for the first and second companies to land two humans on the Moon. This would open the competition to other companies beyond SpaceX and Blue Origin, such as Firefly, Intuitive Machines, and Astrobotic. The problem is that time is running short, and scaling up from 100 kilograms to 10 metric tons is an extraordinary challenge.
  • Build the Lunar Module: NASA already landed humans on the Moon in the 1960s with a Lunar Module built by Grumman. Why not just build something similar again? In fact, some traditional contractors have been telling NASA and Trump officials this is the best option, that such a solution, with enough funding and cost-plus guarantees, could be built in two or three years. The problem with this is that, sorry, the traditional space industry just isn’t up to the task. It took more than a decade to build a relatively simple rocket based on the space shuttle. The idea that a traditional contractor will complete a Lunar Module in five years or less is not supported by any evidence in the last 20 years. The flimsy Lunar Module would also likely not pass NASA’s present-day safety standards.
  • Distract China: I include this only for completeness. As for how to distract China, use your imagination. But I would submit that ULA snipers or starting a war in the South China Sea is not the best way to go about winning the space race.

OK, I read this far. What’s the answer?

The answer is Blue Origin’s Mark 1 lander.

The company has finished assembly of the first Mark 1 lander and will soon ship it from Florida to Johnson Space Center in Houston for vacuum chamber testing. A pathfinder mission is scheduled to launch in early 2026. It will be the largest vehicle to ever land on the Moon. It is not rated for humans, however. It was designed as a cargo lander.

There have been some key recent developments, though. About two weeks ago, NASA announced that a second mission of Mark 1 will carry the VIPER rover to the Moon’s surface in 2027. This means that Blue Origin intends to start a production line of Mark 1 landers.

At the same time, Blue Origin already has a contract with NASA to develop the much larger Mark 2 lander, which is intended to carry humans to the lunar surface. Realistically, though, this will not be ready until sometime in the 2030s. Like SpaceX’s Starship, it will require multiple refueling launches. As part of this contract, Blue has worked extensively with NASA on a crew cabin for the Mark 2 lander.

A full-size mock-up of the Blue Origin Mk. 1 lunar lander.

Credit: Eric Berger

A full-size mock-up of the Blue Origin Mk. 1 lunar lander. Credit: Eric Berger

Here comes the important part. Ars can now report, based on government sources, that Blue Origin has begun preliminary work on a modified version of the Mark 1 lander—leveraging learnings from Mark 2 crew development—that could be part of an architecture to land humans on the Moon this decade. NASA has not formally requested Blue Origin to work on this technology, but according to a space agency official, the company recognizes the urgency of the need.

How would it work? Blue Origin is still architecting the mission, but it would involve “multiple” Mark 1 landers to carry crew down to the lunar surface and then ascend back up to lunar orbit to rendezvous with the Orion spacecraft. Enough work has been done, according to the official, that Blue Origin engineers are confident the approach could work. Critically, it would not require any refueling.

It is unclear whether this solution has reached Duffy, but he would be smart to listen. According to sources, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos is intrigued by the idea. And why wouldn’t he be? For a quarter of a century, he has been hearing about how Musk has been kicking his ass in spaceflight. Bezos also loves the Apollo program and could now play an essential role in serving his country in an hour of need. He could beat SpaceX to the Moon and stamp his name in the history of spaceflight.

Jeff and Sean? Y’all need to talk.

Photo of Eric Berger

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

How America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up Read More »

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Rocket Report: Keeping up with Kuiper; New Glenn’s second flight slips

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Amazon plans to conduct two launches of Kuiper broadband satellites just days apart.

An unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension (D5LE) missile launches from an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine off the coast of Florida. Credit: US Navy

Welcome to Edition 8.12 of the Rocket Report! We often hear from satellite operators—from the military to venture-backed startups—about their appetite for more launch capacity. With so many rocket launches happening around the world, some might want to dismiss these statements as a corporate plea for more competition, and therefore lower prices. SpaceX is on pace to launch more than 150 times this year. China could end the year with more than 70 orbital launches. These are staggering numbers compared to global launch rates just a few years ago. But I’m convinced there’s room for more alternatives for reliable (and reusable) rockets. All of the world’s planned mega-constellations will need immense launch capacity just to get off the ground, and if successful, they’ll go into regular replacement and replenishment cycles. Throw in the still-undefined Golden Dome missile shield and many nations’ desire for a sovereign launch capability, and it’s easy to see the demand curve going up.

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.

Sharp words from Astra’s Chris Kemp. Chris Kemp, the chief executive officer of Astra, apparently didn’t get the memo about playing nice with his competitors in the launch business. Kemp made some spicy remarks at the Berkeley Space Symposium 2025 earlier this month, billed as the largest undergraduate aerospace event at the university (see video of the talk). During the speech, Kemp periodically deviated from building up Astra to hurling insults at several of his competitors in the launch industry, Ars reports. To be fair to Kemp, some of his criticisms are not without a kernel of truth. But they are uncharacteristically rough all the same, especially given Astra’s uneven-at-best launch record and financial solvency to date.

Wait, what?! … Kemp is generally laudatory in his comments about SpaceX, but his most crass statement took aim at the quality of life of SpaceX employees at Starbase, Texas. He said life at Astra is “more fun than SpaceX because we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn.” For the record, no SpaceX employees have been beheaded. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day.” Kemp also accused Firefly Aerospace of sending Astra “garbage” rocket engines as part of the companies’ partnership on propulsion for Astra’s next-generation rocket.

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A step forward for Europe’s reusable rocket program. No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress, Ars reports. Last week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket’s first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

Hopping into the future … “This milestone marks the beginning of the ‘combined tests,’ during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad’s mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions,” ArianeGroup said. This particular rocket will likely undergo only short hops, initially about 100 meters. A follow-up vehicle, Themis T1E, is intended to fly medium-altitude tests at a later date. Some of the learnings from these prototypes will feed into a smaller, reusable rocket intended to lift 500 kilograms to low-Earth orbit. This is under development by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup. Eventually, the European Space Agency would like to use technology developed as part of Themis to develop a new line of reusable rockets that will succeed the Ariane 6 rocket.

Navy conducts Trident missile drills. The US Navy carried out four scheduled missile tests of a nuclear-capable weapons system off the coast of Florida within the last week, Defense News reports. The service’s Strategic Systems Programs conducted flights of unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension missiles from a submerged Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine from September 17 to September 21 as part of an ongoing scheduled event meant to test the reliability of the system. “The missile tests were not conducted in response to any ongoing world events,” a Navy release said.

Secret with high visibility … The Navy periodically performs these Trident missile tests off the coasts of Florida and California, taking advantage of support infrastructure and range support from the two busiest US spaceports. The military doesn’t announce the exact timing of the tests, but warnings issued for pilots to stay out of the area give a general idea of when they might occur. One of the launch events Sunday was visible from Puerto Rico, illuminating the night sky in photos published on social media. The missiles fell in the Atlantic Ocean as intended, the Navy said. The Trident II D5 missiles were developed in the 1980s and are expected to remain in service on the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines into the 2040s. The Trident system is one leg of the US military’s nuclear triad, alongside land-based Minuteman ballistic missiles and nuclear-capable strategic bombers. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Firefly plans for Alpha’s return to flight. Firefly Aerospace expects to resume Alpha launches in the “coming weeks,” with two flights planned before the end of the year, Space News reports. These will be the first flights of Firefly’s one-ton-class Alpha rocket since a failure in April destroyed a Lockheed Martin tech demo satellite after liftoff from California. In a quarterly earnings call, Firefly shared a photo showing its next two Alpha rockets awaiting shipment from the company’s Texas factory.

Righting the ship … These next two launches really need to go well for Firefly. The Alpha rocket has, at best, a mixed record with only two fully successful flights in six attempts. Two other missions put their payloads into off-target orbits, and two Alpha launches failed to reach orbit at all. Firefly went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange last month, raising nearly $900 million in the initial public offering to help fund the company’s future programs, namely the medium-lift Eclipse rocket developed in partnership with Northrop Grumman. There’s a lot to like about Firefly. The company achieved the first fully successful landing of a commercial spacecraft on the Moon in March. NASA has selected Firefly for three more commercial landings on the Moon, and Firefly reported this week it has an agreement with an unnamed commercial customer for an additional dedicated mission. But the Alpha program hasn’t had the same level of success. We’ll see if Firefly can get the rocket on track soon. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Avio wins contract to launch “extra-European” mission. Italian rocket builder Avio has signed a launch services agreement with US-based launch aggregator SpaceLaunch for a Vega C launch carrying an Earth observation satellite for an “extra-European institutional customer” in 2027, European Spaceflight reports. Avio announced that it had secured the launch contract on September 18. According to the company, the contract was awarded through an open international competition, with Vega C chosen for its “versatility and cost-effectiveness.” While Avio did not reveal the identity of the “extra-European” customer, it said that it would do so later this year.

Plenty of peculiarities … There are several questions to unpack here, and Andrew Parsonson of European Spaceflight goes through them all. Presumably, extra-European means the customer is based outside of Europe. Avio’s statement suggests we’ll find out the answer to that question soon. Details about the US-based launch broker SpaceLaunch are harder to find. SpaceLaunch appears to have been founded in January 2025 by two former Firefly Aerospace employees with a combined 40 years of experience in the industry. On its website, the company claims to provide end-to-end satellite launch integration, mission management, and launch procurement services with a “portfolio of launch vehicle capacity around the globe.” SpaceLaunch boasts it has supported the launch of more than 150 satellites on 12 different launch vehicles. However, according to public records, it does not appear that the company itself has supported a single launch. Instead, the claim seems to credit SpaceLaunch with launches that were actually carried out during the two founders’ previous tenures at Spaceflight, Firefly Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, and the US Air Force. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon 9 launches three missions for NASA and NOAA. Scientists loaded three missions worth nearly $1.6 billion on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for launch Wednesday, toward an orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, to measure the supersonic stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun, Ars reports. One of the missions, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will beam back real-time observations of the solar wind to provide advance warning of geomagnetic storms that could affect power grids, radio communications, GPS navigation, air travel, and satellite operations. The other two missions come from NASA, with research objectives that include studying the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space and observing the rarely seen outermost layer of our own planet’s atmosphere.

Immense value …All three spacecraft will operate in orbit around the L1 Lagrange point, a gravitational balance point located more than 900,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Bundling these three missions onto the same rocket saved at least tens of millions of dollars in launch costs. Normally, they would have needed three different rockets. Rideshare missions to low-Earth orbit are becoming more common, but spacecraft departing for more distant destinations like the L1 Lagrange point are rare. Getting all three missions on the same launch required extensive planning, a stroke of luck, and fortuitous timing. “This is the ultimate cosmic carpool,” said Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division. “These three missions heading out to the Sun-Earth L1 point riding along together provide immense value for the American taxpayer.”

US officials concerned about China mastering reusable launch. SpaceX’s dominance in reusable rocketry is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday. But several Chinese companies are getting close to fielding their own reusable rockets, Ars reports. “It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”

By the numbers … China has used 14 different types of rockets on its 56 orbital-class missions this year, and none have flown more than 11 times. Eight US rocket types have cumulatively flown 145 times, with 122 of those using SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. Without a reusable rocket, China must maintain more rocket companies to sustain a launch rate of just one-third to one-half that of the United States. This contrasts with the situation just four years ago, when China outpaced the United States in orbital rocket launches. The growth in US launches has been a direct result of SpaceX’s improvements to launch at a higher rate, an achievement primarily driven by the recovery and reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings.

Atlas V launches more Kuiper satellites. Roughly an hour past sunrise Thursday, an Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance took flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Onboard the rocket, flying in its most powerful configuration, were the next 27 Project Kuiper broadband satellites from Amazon, Spaceflight Now reports. This is the third batch of production satellites launched by ULA and the fifth overall for the growing low-Earth orbit constellation. The Atlas V rocket released the 27 Kuiper satellites about 280 miles (450 kilometers) above Earth. The satellites will use onboard propulsion to boost themselves to their assigned orbit at 392 miles (630 kilometers).

Another Kuiper launch on tap … With this deployment, Amazon now has 129 satellites in orbit. This is a small fraction of the network’s planned total of 3,232 satellites, but Amazon has enjoyed a steep ramp-up in the Kuiper launch cadence as the company’s satellite assembly line in Kirkland, Washington, continues churning out spacecraft. Another 24 Kuiper satellites are slated to launch September 30 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, and Amazon has delivered enough satellites to Florida for an additional launch later this fall. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

German military will fly with Ariane 6. Airbus Defense and Space has awarded Arianespace a contract to launch a pair of SATCOMBw-3 communications satellites for the German Armed Forces, European Spaceflight reports. Airbus is the prime contractor for the nearly $2.5 billion (2.1 billion euro) SATCOMBw-3 program, which will take over from the two-satellite SATCOMBw-2 constellation currently providing secure communications for the German military. Arianespace announced Wednesday that it had been awarded the contract to launch the satellites aboard two Ariane 6 rockets. “By signing this new strategic contract for the German Armed Forces, Arianespace accomplishes its core mission of guaranteeing autonomous access to space for European sovereign satellites,” said Arianespace CEO David Cavaillolès.

Running home to Europe … The chief goal of the Ariane 6 program is to provide Europe with independent access to space, something many European governments see as a strategic requirement. Several European military, national security, and scientific satellites have launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets in the last few years as officials waited for the debut of the Ariane 6 rocket. With three successful Ariane 6 flights now in the books, European customers seem to now have the confidence to commit to flying their satellites on Ariane 6. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Artemis II launch targeted for February. NASA is pressing ahead with preparations for the first launch of humans beyond low-Earth orbit in more than five decades, and officials said Tuesday that the Artemis II mission could take flight early next year, Ars reports. Although work remains to be done, the space agency is now pushing toward a launch window that opens on February 5, 2026, officials said during a news conference on Tuesday at Johnson Space Center. The Artemis II mission represents a major step forward for NASA and seeks to send four astronauts—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen—around the Moon and back. The 10-day mission will be the first time astronauts have left low-Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.

Orion named Integrity … The first astronauts set to fly to the Moon in more than 50 years will do so in Integrity, Ars reports. NASA’s Artemis II crew revealed Integrity as the name of their Orion spacecraft during a news conference on Wednesday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We thought, as a crew, we need to name this spacecraft. We need to have a name for the Orion spacecraft that we’re going to ride this magical mission on,” said Wiseman, commander of the Artemis II mission.

FAA reveals new Starship trajectories. Sometime soon, perhaps next year, SpaceX will attempt to fly one of its enormous Starship rockets from low-Earth orbit back to its launch pad in South Texas. A successful return and catch at the launch tower would demonstrate a key capability underpinning Elon Musk’s hopes for a fully reusable rocket. In order for this to happen, SpaceX must overcome the tyranny of geography. A new document released by the Federal Aviation Administration shows the narrow corridors Starship will fly to space and back when SpaceX tries to recover them, Ars reports.

Flying over people … It was always evident that flying a Starship from low-Earth orbit back to Starbase would require the rocket to fly over Mexico and portions of South Texas. The rocket launches to the east over the Gulf of Mexico, so it must approach Starbase from the west when it comes in for a landing. The new maps show SpaceX will launch Starships to the southeast over the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea, and directly over Jamaica, or to the northeast over the Gulf and the Florida peninsula. On reentry, the ship will fly over Baja California and Mexico’s interior near the cities of Hermosillo and Chihuahua, each with a population of roughly a million people. The trajectory would bring Starship well north of the Monterrey metro area and its 5.3 million residents, then over the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas cities of McAllen and Brownsville.

New Glenn’s second flight at least a month away. The second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, carrying a NASA smallsat mission to Mars, is now expected in late October or early November, Space News reports. Tim Dunn, NASA’s senior launch director at Kennedy Space Center, provided an updated schedule for the second flight of New Glenn in comments after a NASA-sponsored launch on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday. Previously, the official schedule from NASA showed the launch date as no earlier than September 29.

No surprise … It was already apparent that this launch wouldn’t happen September 29. Blue Origin has test-fired the second stage for the upcoming flight of the New Glenn rocket but hasn’t rolled the first stage to the launch pad for its static fire. Seeing the rocket emerge from Blue’s factory in Florida will be an indication that the launch date is finally near. Blue Origin will launch NASA’s ESCAPADE mission, a pair of small satellites to study how the solar wind interacts with the Martian upper atmosphere.

Blue Origin will launch a NASA rover to the Moon. NASA has awarded Blue Origin a task order worth up to $190 million to deliver its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the Moon’s surface, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Blue Origin, one of 13 currently active Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) providers, submitted the only bid to carry VIPER to the Moon after NASA requested offers from industry last month. NASA canceled the VIPER mission last year, citing cost overruns with the rover and delays in its planned ride to the Moon aboard a lander provided by Astrobotic. But engineers had already completed assembly of the rover, and scientists protested NASA’s decision to terminate the mission.

Some caveats … Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to a location near the Moon’s south pole in late 2027 using a robotic Blue Moon MK1 lander, a massive craft larger than the Apollo lunar landing module. The company’s first Blue Moon MK1 lander is scheduled to fly to the Moon next year. NASA’s contract for the VIPER delivery calls for Blue Origin to design accommodations for the rover on the Blue Moon lander. The agency said it will decide whether to proceed with the actual launch on a New Glenn rocket and delivery of VIPER to the Moon based partially on the outcome of the first Blue Moon test flight next year.

Next three launches

Sept. 26: Long March 4C | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 19: 20 UTC

Sept. 27: Long March 6A | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 12: 39 UTC

Sept. 28: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-20 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 23: 32 UTC

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Rocket Report: Keeping up with Kuiper; New Glenn’s second flight slips Read More »

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Astra’s Chris Kemp woke up one recent morning and chose violence

astra, blue origin, Chris kemp, firefly, rocket, Space, spacex / /

SpaceX

Kemp generally praises SpaceX for leading the way with iterative design and founder Elon Musk’s willingness to fail publicly in order to move fast. However, in seeking to appeal to interns, he suggested that Astra offered a better working environment than SpaceX’s Starbase factory in South Texas.

“It’s more fun than SpaceX, because we’re not on the border of Mexico where they’ll chop your head off if you accidentally take a left turn,” he said. “And you don’t have to live in a trailer. And we don’t make you work six and a half days a week, 12 hours a day. It’s appreciated if you do, but not required.”

For the record, no SpaceX interns have been beheaded. And honestly, Chris, that is just a really crass thing to say.

Rocket Lab

Kemp’s longest and oldest rival in the launch industry is Rocket Lab and its founder, Peter Beck. This was especially apparent in a recent documentary that covered the rise of both Astra and Rocket Lab, called Wild Wild West. Kemp did not take any direct shots at Beck during his Berkeley speech.

However, in the late 2010s both Astra and Rocket Lab were racing to develop a small-lift rocket capable of lifting dozens to a few hundred kilograms to orbit, Rocket 3 and Electron. In hindsight, Kemp said, these rockets were not large enough to serve the market for satellites. There just were not enough CubeSats to go around.

“That little rocket is too small,” Kemp said in Berkeley about Rocket 3. “And so is Electron.”

A size comparison between Rocket 3, right, and Rocket 4.

Credit: Astra

A size comparison between Rocket 3, right, and Rocket 4. Credit: Astra

Electron may be small, but it has launched more than 70 times. It could generate as much as $200 million in revenue for Rocket Lab this year. And it has provided an excellent test bed for Rocket Lab as it seeks to build the much larger Neutron vehicle, with a reusable first stage.

Overall, Kemp’s talk is insightful, offering thoughtful commentary on Astra’s history and vision for the future. The company is a startup again, now focusing on building a mobile, tactical rocket that could serve national defense interests. Instead of focusing on reuse, the company wants to build a lot of rockets cheaply. It has built a large factory in California to accomplish this.

Also, after nine years in the launch industry, Kemp seems to have finally learned an important lesson about rockets: reliability matters.

“Rocket 3 was the cowboy rocket,” he said, noting the company has worked hard to improve its practices and manufacturing to build vehicles that won’t fail anymore. “The big idea was, you can’t get to scale without reliability.”

Astra’s Chris Kemp woke up one recent morning and chose violence Read More »

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US intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch

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“They have to have on-orbit refueling because they don’t access space as frequently as we do.”

File photo of a reusable Falcon 9 booster moments before landing on a recent flight at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX scored its 500th landing of a Falcon 9 first stage booster on an otherwise routine flight earlier this month, sending 28 Starlink communications satellites into orbit. Barring any unforeseen problems, SpaceX will mark the 500th re-flight of a Falcon first stage later this year.

A handful of other US companies, including Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Stoke Space, are on the way to replicating or building on SpaceX’s achievements in recycling rocket parts. These launch providers are racing a medley of Chinese rocket builders to become the second company to land and reuse a first stage booster.

But it will be many years—perhaps a decade or longer—until anyone else matches the kinds of numbers SpaceX is racking up in the realm of reusable rockets. SpaceX’s dominance in this field is one of the most important advantages the United States has over China as competition between the two nations extends into space, US Space Force officials said Monday.

“It’s concerning how fast they’re going,” said Brig. Gen. Brian Sidari, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for intelligence. “I’m concerned about when the Chinese figure out how to do reusable lift that allows them to put more capability on orbit at a quicker cadence than currently exists.”

Taking advantage

China has used 14 different types of rockets on its 56 orbital-class missions this year, and none have flown more than 11 times. Eight US rocket types have cumulatively flown 142 times, with 120 of those using SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9. Without a reusable rocket, China must maintain more rocket companies to sustain a launch rate of just one-third to one-half that of the United States.

This contrasts with the situation just four years ago, when China outpaced the United States in orbital rocket launches. The growth in US launches has been a direct result of SpaceX’s improvements to launch at a higher rate, an achievement primarily driven by the recovery and reuse of Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings. Last month, SpaceX flew one of its Falcon 9 boosters for the 30th time and set a record at nine days for the shortest turnaround between flights of the same booster in March.

“They’ve put more satellites on orbit,” Sidari said, referring to China. “They still do not compare to the US, but it is concerning once they figure out that reusable lift. The other one is the megaconstellations. They’ve seen how the megaconstellations provide capability to the US joint force and the West, and they’re mimicking it. So, that does concern me, how fast they’re going, but we’ll see. It’s easier said than done. They do have to figure it out, and they do have some challenges that we haven’t dealt with.”

One of those challenges is China’s continued reliance on expendable rockets. This has made it more important for China to make “game-changing” advancements in other areas, according to Chief Master Sgt. Ron Lerch, the Space Force’s senior enlisted advisor for intelligence.

Lerch pointed to the recent refueling of a Chinese satellite in geosynchronous orbit, more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. China’s Shijian-21 and Shijian-25 satellites, known as SJ-21 and SJ-25 for short, came together on July 2 and have remained together ever since, according to open source orbital tracking data.

No one has refueled a spacecraft so far from Earth before. SJ-25 appears to be the refueler for SJ-21, a Chinese craft capable of latching onto other satellites and towing them to different orbits. Chinese officials say SJ-21 is testing “space debris mitigation” techniques, but US officials have raised concerns that China is testing a counter-space weapon that could sidle up to an American or allied satellite and take control of it.

Lerch said satellite refueling is more important to China than it is to the United States. With refueling, China can achieve a different kind of reuse in space while the government waits for reusable rockets to enter service.

“They have to have on-orbit refueling as a capability because they don’t access space as frequently as we do,” Lerch said Monday at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference. “When it comes to replenishing our toolkit, getting more capability (on orbit) and reconstitution, having reusable launch is what affords us that ability, and the Chinese don’t have that. So, pursuing things like refueling on orbit, it is game-changing for them.”

The Nebula 1 rocket from China’s Deep Blue Aerospace just before attempting to land on a vertical takeoff, vertical landing test flight last year. Credit: Deep Blue Aerospace

SpaceX’s rapid-fire cadence is pivotal for a number of US national security programs. The Pentagon uses SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which take up most of the Falcon 9 launch capacity, for commercial-grade global connectivity. SpaceX’s Starshield satellite platform, derived from the Starlink design, has launched in stacks of up to 22 spacecraft on a single Falcon 9 to deploy a constellation of hundreds of all-seeing spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office. The most recent batch of these Starshield satellites launched Monday.

Cheaper, readily available launch services will also be critical to the Pentagon’s aspirations to construct a missile shield to defend against attacks on the US homeland. Sensors and interceptors for the military’s planned Golden Dome missile defense system will be scattered throughout low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX’s inventory of Falcon 9 rockets has enabled the Space Force to move closer to realizing on-demand launch services. On two occasions within the last year, the Space Force asked SpaceX to launch a GPS navigation satellite with just a few months of lead time to prepare for the mission. With a fleet of reusable rockets at the ready, SpaceX delivered.

Meanwhile, China recently started deploying its own satellite megaconstellations. Chinese officials claim these new satellite networks will be used for Internet connectivity. That may be so, but Pentagon officials worry China can use them for other purposes, just as the Space Force is doing with Starlink, Starshield, and other programs.

Copycats in space

Lerch mentioned two other recent Chinese actions in space that have his attention. One is the launch of five Tongxin Jishu Shiyan (TJS) satellites, or what China calls communication technology test satellites, into geosynchronous orbit since January, something Lerch called “highly unusual.” Chinese authorities released (rather interesting) patches for four of these TJS satellites, suggesting they are part of a family of spacecraft.

“More importantly, these spacecraft sitting at GEO (geosynchronous orbit) are not supposed to be sliding all around the GEO belt,” Lerch said. “But the history of these experimental spacecraft have shown that that’s exactly what they do, which is very uncharacteristic for a system that’s supposed to be providing satellite communications.”

US officials believe China uses at least some of the TJS satellites for missile warning or spy missions. TJS satellites filling the role of a reconnaissance mission might have enormous umbrella-like reflectors to try to pick up communication signals transmitted by foreign forces, such as those of the United States.

A modified Long March 7 rocket carrying the Yaogan 45 satellite lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on September 9, 2025, in Wenchang, Hainan Province of China. Credit: Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

China also launched a spy satellite called Yaogan 45 into a peculiar orbit earlier this month. (Yaogan is a cover name for China’s military spy satellites.) Yaogan 45 is a remote sensing platform, Lerch said, but it’s flying much higher than a typical Earth-imaging satellite. Instead of orbiting a few hundred miles above the Earth, Yaogan 45 circles at an altitude of some 4,660 miles (7,500 kilometers).

“That, alone, is very interesting,” Lerch said.

But US intelligence officials believe there’s more to the story. China launched the country’s first two communications satellites into a so-called medium-Earth orbit, or MEO, last year. These satellites are the first in a network called Smart Skynet.

“It looks like a year ago they started to put the infrastructure at MEO to be able to move around data, and then a year later, the Chinese are now putting remote sensing capability at MEO as well,” Lerch said. “That’s interesting, and that starts to paint a picture that they value remote sensing to the point where they want resiliency in layers of it.”

China launched a satellite named Yaogan 41 into geosynchronous orbit in 2023 with a sharp-eyed telescope with enough sensitivity to track car-sized objects on the ground and at sea. From its perch in geosynchronous orbit, Yaogan 41 will provide China’s military with a continuous view of the Indo-Pacific region. A single satellite in low-Earth orbit offers only fleeting views.

Some of this may sound familiar if you follow what the US military and the National Reconnaissance Office are doing with their satellites.

“Our military power has served as a bit of an open book, and adversaries have watched and observed us for years,” said Lt. Gen. Max Pearson, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence.

China’s military has “observed how we fight, the techniques we use, the weapons systems we have,” Pearson said. “When you combine that with intellectual property theft that has fueled a lot of their modernization, they have deliberately developed and modernized to counter our American way of war.”

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

US intel officials “concerned” China will soon master reusable launch Read More »

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Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest ones

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Starship’s next chapter will involve launching over Florida and returning over Mexico.

SpaceX’s Starship vehicle is encased in plasma as it reenters the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean on its most recent test flight in August. Credit: SpaceX

Some time soon, perhaps next year, SpaceX will attempt to fly one of its enormous Starship rockets from low-Earth orbit back to its launch pad in South Texas. A successful return and catch at the launch tower would demonstrate a key capability underpinning Elon Musk’s hopes for a fully reusable rocket.

In order for this to happen, SpaceX must overcome the tyranny of geography. Unlike launches over the open ocean from Cape Canaveral, Florida, rockets departing from South Texas must follow a narrow corridor to steer clear of downrange land masses.

All 10 of the rocket’s test flights so far have launched from Texas toward splashdowns in the Indian or Pacific Oceans. On these trajectories, the rocket never completes a full orbit around the Earth, but instead flies an arcing path through space before gravity pulls it back into the atmosphere.

If Starship’s next two test flights go well, SpaceX will likely attempt to send the soon-to-debut third-generation version of the rocket all the way to low-Earth orbit. The Starship V3 vehicle will measure 171 feet (52.1 meters) tall, a few feet more than Starship’s current configuration. The entire rocket, including its Super Heavy booster, will have a height of 408 feet (124.4 meters).

Starship, made of stainless steel, is designed for full reusability. SpaceX has already recovered and reflown Super Heavy boosters, but won’t be ready to recover the rocket’s Starship upper stage until next year, at the soonest.

That’s one of the next major milestones in Starship’s development after achieving orbital flight. SpaceX will attempt to bring the ship home to be caught back at the launch site by the launch tower at Starbase, Texas, located on the southernmost section of the Texas Gulf Coast near the US-Mexico border.

It was always evident that flying a Starship from low-Earth orbit back to Starbase would require the rocket to fly over Mexico and portions of South Texas. The rocket launches to the east over the Gulf of Mexico, so it must approach Starbase from the west when it comes in for a landing.

New maps published by the Federal Aviation Administration show where the first Starships returning to Texas may fly when they streak through the atmosphere.

Paths to and from orbit

The FAA released a document Friday describing SpaceX’s request to update its government license for additional Starship launch and reentry trajectories. The document is a draft version of a “tiered environmental assessment” examining the potential for significant environmental impacts from the new launch and reentry flight paths.

The federal regulator said it is evaluating potential impacts in aviation emissions and air quality, noise and noise-compatible land use, hazardous materials, and socioeconomics. The FAA concluded the new flight paths proposed by SpaceX would have “no significant impacts” in any of these categories.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket shortly before splashing into the Indian Ocean in August. Credit: SpaceX

The environmental review is just one of several factors the FAA considers when deciding whether to approve a new commercial launch or reentry license. According to the FAA, the other factors are public safety issues (such as overflight of populated areas and payload contents), national security or foreign policy concerns, and insurance requirements.

The FAA didn’t make a statement on any public safety and foreign policy concerns with SpaceX’s new trajectories, but both issues may come into play as the company seeks approval to fly Starship over Mexican towns and cities uprange from Starbase.

The regulator’s licensing rules state that a commercial launch and reentry should each pose no greater than a 1 in 10,000 chance of harming or killing a member of the public not involved in the mission. The risk to any individual should not exceed 1 in 1 million.

So, what’s the danger? If something on Starship fails, it could disintegrate in the atmosphere. Surviving debris would rain down to the ground, as it did over the Turks and Caicos Islands after two Starship launch failures earlier this year. Two other Starship flights ran into problems once in space, tumbling out of control and breaking apart during reentry over the Indian Ocean.

The most recent Starship flight last month was more successful, with the ship reaching its target in the Indian Ocean for a pinpoint splashdown. The splashdown had an error of just 3 meters (10 feet), giving SpaceX confidence in returning future Starships to land.

This map shows Starship’s proposed reentry corridor. Credit: Federal Aviation Administration

One way of minimizing the risk to the public is to avoid flying over large metropolitan areas, and that’s exactly what SpaceX and the FAA are proposing to do, at least for the initial attempts to bring Starship home from orbit. A map of a “notional” Starship reentry flight path shows the vehicle beginning its reentry over the Pacific Ocean, then passing over Baja California and soaring above Mexico’s interior near the cities of Hermosillo and Chihuahua, each with a population of roughly a million people.

The trajectory would bring Starship well north of the Monterrey metro area and its 5.3 million residents, then over the Rio Grande Valley near the Texas cities of McAllen and Brownsville. During the final segment of Starship’s return trajectory, the vehicle will begin a vertical descent over Starbase before a final landing burn to slow it down for the launch pad’s arms to catch it in midair.

In addition to Monterrey, the proposed flight path dodges overflights of major US cities like San Diego, Phoenix, and El Paso, Texas.

Let’s back up

Setting up for this reentry trajectory requires SpaceX to launch Starship into an orbit with exactly the right inclination, or angle to the equator. There are safety constraints for SpaceX and the FAA to consider here, too.

All of the Starship test flights to date have launched toward the east, threading between South Florida and Cuba, south of the Bahamas, and north of Puerto Rico before heading over the North Atlantic Ocean. For Starship to target just the right orbit to set up for reentry, the rocket must fly in a slightly different direction over the Gulf.

Another map released by the FAA shows two possible paths Starship could take. One of the options goes to the southeast between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, then directly over Jamaica as the rocket accelerated into orbit over the Caribbean Sea. The other would see Starship departing South Texas on a northeasterly path and crossing over North Florida before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.

While both trajectories fly over land, they avoid the largest cities situated near the flight path. For example, the southerly route misses Cancun, Mexico, and the northerly path flies between Jacksonville and Orlando, Florida. “Orbital launches would primarily be to low inclinations with flight trajectories north or south of Cuba that minimize land overflight,” the FAA wrote in its draft environmental assessment.

The FAA analyzed two launch trajectory options for future orbital Starship test flights. Credit: Federal Aviation Administration

The proposed launch and reentry trajectories would result in temporary airspace closures, the FAA said. This could force delays or rerouting of anywhere from seven to 400 commercial flights for each launch, according to the FAA’s assessment.

Launch airspace closures are already the norm for Starship test flights. The FAA concluded that the reentry path over Mexico would require the closure of a swath of airspace covering more than 4,200 miles. This would affect up to 200 more commercial airplane flights during each Starship mission. Eventually, the FAA aims to shrink the airspace closures as SpaceX demonstrates improved reliability with Starship test flights.

Eventually, SpaceX will move some flights of Starship to Florida’s Space Coast, where rockets can safely launch in many directions over the Atlantic. By then, SpaceX aims to be launching Starships at a regular cadence—first, multiple flights per month, then per week, and then per day.

This will enable all of the things SpaceX wants to do with Starship. Chief among these goals is to fly Starships to Mars. Before then, SpaceX must master orbital refueling. NASA also has a contract with SpaceX to build Starships to land astronauts on the Moon’s south pole.

But all of that assumes SpaceX can routinely launch and recover Starships. That’s what engineers hope to soon prove they can do.

Photo of Stephen Clark

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

Starship will soon fly over towns and cities, but will dodge the biggest ones Read More »

after-a-very-slow-start,-europe’s-reusable-rocket-program-shows-signs-of-life

After a very slow start, Europe’s reusable rocket program shows signs of life

Europe, falcon 9, reusable rocket, Space, spacex, Themis / /

No one could accuse the European Space Agency and its various contractors of moving swiftly when it comes to the development of reusable rockets. However, it appears that Europe is finally making some credible progress.

This week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it had completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket’s first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

“This milestone marks the beginning of the ‘combined tests,’ during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad’s mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions,” the company said.

Finally getting going

The advancement of the Themis program represents a concrete step forward for Europe, which has had a delayed and somewhat confusing response to the rise of reusable rockets a decade ago.

After several years of development and testing, including the Grasshopper program in Texas to demonstrate vertical landing, SpaceX landed its first orbital rocket in December 2015. Weeks earlier, Blue Origin landed the much smaller New Shepard vehicle after a suborbital hop. This put the industry on notice that first stage reuse was on the horizon.

At this point, the European Space Agency had already committed to a new medium-lift rocket, the Ariane 6, and locked in a traditional design that would not incorporate any elements of reuse. Most of its funding focused on developing the Ariane 6.

However, by the middle of 2017, the space agency began to initiate programs that would eventually lead to a reusable launch vehicle. They included:

After a very slow start, Europe’s reusable rocket program shows signs of life Read More »