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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

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

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Rocket Report: SpaceX achieved daily launch this week; ULA recovers booster

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Firefly Aerospace reveals why its Alpha booster exploded after launch in April.

Starship and its Super Heavy booster ascend through a clear sky over Starbase, Texas, on Tuesday evening. A visible vapor cone enveloped the rocket as it passed through maximum aerodynamic pressure and the speed of sound. Credit: Stephen Clark/Ars Technica

Welcome to Edition 8.08 of the Rocket Report! What a week it’s been for SpaceX. The company completed its first successful Starship test flight in nearly a year, and while it wasn’t perfect, it sets up SpaceX for far more ambitious tests ahead. SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9, launched six times since our last edition of the Rocket Report. Many of these missions were noteworthy in their own right, including the launch of the US military’s X-37B spaceplane, an upgraded Dragon capsule to boost the International Space Station to a higher orbit, and the record 30th launch and landing of a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster. All told, that’s seven SpaceX launches in seven days.

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.

Firefly announces cause of Alpha launch failure. Firefly Aerospace closed the investigation into the failure of one of its Alpha rockets during an April mission for Lockheed Martin and received clearance from the FAA to resume launches, Payload reports. The loss of the launch vehicle was a dark cloud hanging over the company’s otherwise successful IPO this month. The sixth flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket launched in April from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and failed when its first stage booster broke apart milliseconds after stage separation. This created a shockwave that destroyed the engine nozzle extension on the second stage, damaging the engine before the second stage ran out of propellant seconds before it attained orbital velocity. Both stages ultimately fell into the Pacific Ocean.

Too much stress … Investigators concluded that “plume induced flow separation” caused the failure. The phenomenon occurs when a rocket’s exhaust disrupts airflow around the vehicle in flight. In this case, Firefly said the rocket was flying at a higher angle of attack than prior missions, which resulted in the flow separation and created intense heat that broke the first stage apart just after it jettisoned from the second stage. Firefly will increase heat shielding on the first stage of the rocket and fly at reduced angles of attack on future missions. Alpha has now launched six times since 2021, with only two complete successes. Firefly said it was working on setting a date for the seventh Alpha launch. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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ESA books a ticket on European launchers. The European Space Agency has awarded launch service contracts to Avio and Isar Aerospace under its Flight Ticket Initiative, European Spaceflight reports. Announced in October 2023, the Flight Ticket Initiative is a program run jointly by ESA and the European Union that offers subsidized flight opportunities for European companies and organizations seeking to demonstrate new satellite technologies in orbit. The initiative is part of ESA’s strategy to foster the continent’s commercial space industry, offering institutional funding to support satellite and launch companies. Avio won contracts to launch three small European space missions as secondary payloads on Vega C rockets flying into low-Earth orbit. Isar Aerospace will launch two small satellite missions to orbit for European companies.

No other options … Avio and Isar Aerospace were the obvious contenders for the Flight Ticket Initiative from a pool of five European companies eligible for launch awards. The other companies, PLD Space, Orbex, and Rocket Factory Augsburg, haven’t launched their orbital-class rockets yet. Avio, based in Italy, builds the now-operational Vega C rocket, and Germany’s Isar Aerospace launched its first Spectrum rocket earlier this year, but it failed to reach orbit. Avio’s selection replaces Arianespace, which was originally part of the Flight Ticket Initiative. Arianespace was previously responsible for marketing and sales for the Vega rocket, but ESA transferred its Flight Ticket Initiative eligibility to Avio following its split from Arianespace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Canadian rocket company ready for launch. NordSpace is preparing to launch its 6-meter tall Taiga rocket from Newfoundland, CBC reports. It will be a suborbital launch, meaning it won’t orbit Earth, but NordSpace says the launch will be the first of a Canadian commercial rocket from a Canadian commercial spaceport. The rocket is powered by a 3D-printed liquid-fueled engine and is a stepping stone to an orbital-class rocket NordSpace is developing called Tundra, scheduled to debut in 2027. The smaller Taiga rocket will launch partially fueled and fire its engine for approximately 60 seconds, according to NordSpace.

Newfoundland to space … The launch site, called the Atlantic Spaceport Complex, is located on the Atlantic coast near the town of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland. It will have two launch pads, one for suborbital flights like Taiga, and another for orbital missions by the Tundra rocket and other launch vehicles from US and European companies. The Taiga launch is scheduled no earlier than Friday morning at 5: 00 am EDT (09: 00 UTC). NordSpace says it is a “fully privately funded and managed initiative crucial for Canada to build a space launch capability that supports our security, economy, and sovereignty.” (submitted by Matthew P)

SpaceX’s reuse idea isn’t so dumb after all. A Falcon 9 rocket launched early Thursday from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, with another batch of Starlink Internet satellites. These types of missions launch multiple times per week, but this flight was special. The first stage of the Falcon 9, designated Booster 1067, launched and landed on drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean, completing its 30th flight to space and back, Ars reports. This is a new record for a reusable orbital-class booster stage and comes less than 24 hours after a preceding SpaceX launch from Florida that marked the 400th Falcon 9 landing on a drone ship since the first offshore recovery in 2016.

30 going for 40 … SpaceX is now aiming for at least 40 launches per Falcon 9 first stage, four times as many flights as the company’s original target for Falcon 9 booster reuse. Many people in the industry were skeptical about SpaceX’s approach to reuse. In the mid-2010s, both the European and Japanese space agencies were looking to develop their next generation of rockets. In both cases, Europe with the Ariane 6 and Japan with the H3, the space agencies opted for traditional, expendable rockets instead of pushing toward reuse. In the United States, the main competitor to SpaceX has historically been United Launch Alliance. Their reaction to SpaceX’s plan to reuse first stages a decade ago was dismissive. ULA dubbed its plan to reuse just the engine section of its Vulcan rocket “Smart Reuse” a few years ago. But ULA hasn’t even attempted to recover the engines from the Vulcan core stage yet, and reuse is still at least several years away.

Russia nears debut of Soyuz-5 rocket. In recent comments to the Russian state-run media service TASS, the chief of Roscosmos said the country’s newest rocket, the Soyuz-5, should take flight for the first time before the end of this year, Ars reports. “Yes, we are planning for December,” said Dmitry Bakanov, the director of Roscosmos, Russia’s main space corporation. “Everything is in place.” According to the report, translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell, the debut launch of Soyuz-5 will mark the first of several demonstration flights, with full operational service not expected to begin until 2028. It will launch from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

Breaking free of Ukraine … From an innovation standpoint, the Soyuz-5 vehicle does not stand out. It has been a decade in the making and is fully expendable, unlike a lot of newer medium-lift rockets coming online in the next several years. However, for Russia, this is an important advancement because it seeks to break some of the country’s dependency on Ukraine for launch technology. The new rocket is also named Irtysh, a river that flows through Russia and Kazakhstan. The rocket has been in development since 2016 and largely repurposes older technology. But for Russia, a key advantage is that it takes rocket elements formerly made in Ukraine and now manufactures them in Russia.

SpaceX launches mission to reboost the ISS. SpaceX completed its 33rd cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS) early Monday, when a Dragon supply ship glided to an automated docking with more than 5,000 pounds of scientific experiments and provisions for the lab’s seven-person crew, Ars reports. The resupply flight is part of the normal rotation of cargo and crew missions that keep the space station operating, but this one carries something new. What’s different with this mission is a new rocket pack mounted inside the Dragon spacecraft’s rear trunk section. In the coming weeks, SpaceX and NASA will use this first-of-its-kind propulsion system to begin boosting the altitude of the space station’s orbit.

A rocket on a rocket … SpaceX engineers installed two small Draco rocket engines in the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft. The thrusters have their own dedicated propellant tanks and will operate independently of 16 other Draco thrusters used to maneuver Dragon on its journey to the ISS. When NASA says it’s the right time, SpaceX controllers will command the Draco thrusters to ignite and gently accelerate the massive 450-ton space station. All told, the reboost kit can add about 20 mph, or 9 meters per second, to the space station’s already-dizzying speed. Maintaining the space station’s orbit has previously been the responsibility of Russia.

X-37B rides with SpaceX again. The US military’s reusable winged spaceship rocketed back into orbit from Florida on August 21 atop a SpaceX rocket, kicking off a mission that will, among other things, demonstrate how future spacecraft can navigate without relying on GPS signals, Ars reports. The core of the navigation experiment is what the Space Force calls the “world’s highest performing quantum inertial sensor ever used in space.” The spaceplane also hosts a laser inter-satellite communications demo. This is the eighth flight of the X-37B spaceplane, and the third to launch with SpaceX.

Back to LEO … This mission launched on a Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit (LEO) a few hundred miles above the Earth. This marks a return to LEO after the previous X-37B mission flew on a Falcon Heavy rocket into a much higher orbit. Many of the spaceplane’s payloads have been classified, but officials typically identify a handful of unclassified experiments flying on each X-37B mission. Past X-37B missions have also deployed small satellites into orbit before returning to Earth for a runway landing at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

Rocket Lab cuts the ribbon on Neutron launch pad. Launch Complex 3, the Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and home to Rocket Lab’s newest reusable rocket, Neutron, is now complete and celebrated its official opening Thursday, WAVY-TV reports. Officials said Launch Complex 3 is ready to bring the largest orbital launch capacity in the spaceport’s history with Neutron, Rocket Lab’s reusable launch vehicle, a medium-lift vehicle capable of launching 33,000 pounds (15 metric tons) to space for commercial constellations, national security, and interplanetary missions.

Not budging … “We’re trying as hard as we can to get this on the pad by the end of the year and get it away,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO. Beck is holding to his hope the Neutron rocket will be ready to fly in the next four months, but time is running out to make this a reality. The Neutron rocket will be Rocket Lab’s second orbital-class launch vehicle after the Electron, which can place payloads of several hundred pounds in orbit. Electron has a launch pad in Virginia, too, but most Electron rockets take off from New Zealand.

Starship completes a largely successful test flight. SpaceX launched the 10th test flight of the company’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening, sending the stainless steel spacecraft halfway around the world to an on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean, Ars reports. The largely successful mission for the world’s largest rocket was an important milestone for SpaceX’s Starship program after months of repeated setbacks, including three disappointing test flights and a powerful explosion on the ground that destroyed the ship that engineers were originally readying for this launch.

Lessons to learn … For the first time, SpaceX engineers received data on the performance of the ship’s upgraded heat shield and control flaps during reentry back into the atmosphere. The three failed Starship test flights to start the year ended before the ship reached reentry. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has described developing a durable, reliable heat shield as the most pressing challenge for making Starship a fully and rapidly reusable rocket. But there were lessons to learn from Tuesday’s flight. A large section of the ship transitioned from its original silver color to a rusty hue of orange and brown by the time it reached the Indian Ocean. Officials didn’t immediately address this or say whether it was anticipated.

ULA recovering boosters, too. United Launch Alliance decided to pull four strap-on solid rocket boosters from the Atlantic Ocean after their use on the company’s most recent launch. Photos captured by Florida photographer Jerry Pike showed a solid rocket motor casing on a ship just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Tory Bruno, ULA’s president and CEO, wrote on X that the booster was one of four flown on the USSF-106 mission earlier this month, which marked the third flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and the first with a US national security payload.

A GEM from the sea … The boosters, built by Northrop Grumman, are officially called Graphite Epoxy Motors, or GEMs. They jettison from the Vulcan rocket less than two minutes after liftoff and fall into the ocean. They’re not designed for reuse, but ULA decided to recover this set of four from the Atlantic for inspections. The company also raised from the sea two motors from the previous Vulcan launch last year after one of them suffered a nozzle failure during launch. Bruno wrote on X that “performance and ballistics were spot on” with all four boosters from the more recent USSF-106 mission, but that engineers decided to go ahead and recover them to close out a “nice data set” from inspections of now six recovered motors—two from last year and four this year.

Next three launches

Aug. 30: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-7 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 03: 09 UTC

Aug. 31: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-14 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 11: 15 UTC

Sept. 3:  Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-8 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02: 33 UTC

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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: SpaceX achieved daily launch this week; ULA recovers booster Read More »

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With recent Falcon 9 milestones, SpaceX vindicates its “dumb” approach to reuse

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As SpaceX’s Starship vehicle gathered all of the attention this week, the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket continued to hit some impressive milestones.

Both occurred during relatively anonymous launches of the company’s Starlink satellites but are nonetheless notable because they underscore the value of first-stage reuse, which SpaceX has pioneered over the last decade.

The first milestone occurred on Wednesday morning with the launch of the Starlink 10-56 mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first stage that launched these satellites, Booster 1096, was making its second launch and successfully landed on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship. Strikingly, this was the 400th time SpaceX has executed a drone ship landing.

Then, less than 24 hours later, another Falcon 9 rocket launched the Starlink 10-11 mission from a nearby launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. This first stage, Booster 1067, subsequently returned and landed on another drone ship, A Shortfall of Gravitas.

This is a special booster, having made its debut in June 2021 and launching a wide variety of missions, including two Crew Dragon vehicles to the International Space Station and some Galileo satellites for the European Union. On Thursday, the rocket made its 30th flight, the first time a Falcon 9 booster has hit that level of experience.

A decade in the making

These milestones came about one decade after SpaceX began to have some success with first-stage reuse.

The company first made a controlled entry of the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage in September 2013, during the first flight of version 1.1 of the vehicle. This proved the viability of the concept of supersonic retropropulsion, which was, until that time, just theoretical.

This involves igniting the rocket’s nine Merlin engines while the vehicle is traveling faster than the speed of sound through the upper atmosphere, with external temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to the blunt force of this reentry, the engines in the outer ring of the rocket wanted to get splayed out, the company’s chief of propulsion at the time, Tom Mueller, told me for the book Reentry. Success on the first try seemed improbable.

He recalled watching this launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and observing reentry as a camera aboard SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s private jet tracked the rocket. The first stage made it all the way down, intact.

With recent Falcon 9 milestones, SpaceX vindicates its “dumb” approach to reuse Read More »

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Rocket Report: Ariane 6 beats Vulcan to third launch; China’s first drone ship

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Why is China’s heavy-lift Long March 5B able to launch only 10 Guowang satellites at a time?

Wearing their orange launch and reentry spacesuits, Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman (bottom) and pilot Victor Glover (top) walk out of an emergency egress basket during nighttime training at Launch Complex 39B.

Welcome to Edition 8.06 of the Rocket Report! Two of the world’s most storied rocket builders not named SpaceX achieved major successes this week. Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket launched from French Guiana on its third flight Tuesday night with a European weather satellite. Less than 20 minutes later, United Launch Alliance’s third Vulcan rocket lifted off from Florida on a US military mission. These are two of the three big rockets developed in the Western world that have made their orbital debuts in the last two years, alongside Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher. Ariane 6 narrowly won the “race” to reach its third orbital flight, but if you look at it another way, Ariane 6 reached its third flight milestone 13 months after its inaugural launch. It took Vulcan more than 19 months, and New Glenn has flown just once. SpaceX’s Super Heavy/Starship rocket has flown nine times but has yet to reach orbit.

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.

Sixth success for sea-launched Chinese rocket. Private Chinese satellite operator Geespace added 11 spacecraft to its expanding Internet of Things constellation on August 8, aiming to boost low-power connectivity in key emerging markets, Space News reports. The 11 satellites rode into orbit aboard a solid-fueled Jielong 3 (Smart Dragon 3) rocket lifting off from an ocean platform in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Rizhao, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province. This was the sixth flight of the Jielong 3, a rocket developed by a commercially oriented spinoff of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology.

Mistaken for a meteor … The fourth stage of the Jielong 3 rocket, left in orbit after deploying its 11 satellite payloads, reentered the atmosphere late Sunday night. The fiery and destructive reentry created a fireball that streaked across the skies over Spain, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reports. Many Spanish residents identified the streaking object as a meteor associated with the Perseid meteor shower. But it turned out to be a piece of China’s Jielong 3 rocket. Any debris that may have survived the scorching reentry likely fell into the Mediterranean Sea.

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Portugal green-lights Azores spaceport. The Portuguese government has granted the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium a license to build and operate a rocket launch facility on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores, European Spaceflight reports. The Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC) was founded in 2019 with the goal of developing a commercial spaceport on Santa Maria, 1,500 kilometers off the Portuguese mainland. In September 2024, the company showcased the island’s suitability as a launch site by launching two small solid-fuel amateur-class rockets that it developed in-house.

What’s on deck? … The spaceport license granted by Portugal’s regulatory authorities does not cover individual launches themselves. Those must be approved in a separate licensing process. It’s likely that the launch site on Santa Maria Island will initially host suborbital launches, including flights by the Polish rocket company SpaceForest. The European Space Agency has also selected Santa Maria as the landing site for the first flight of the Space Rider lifting body vehicle after it launches into orbit, perhaps in 2027. (submitted by claudiodcsilva)

Why is Jeff Bezos buying launches from Elon Musk? Early Monday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from its original launch site in Florida. Remarkably, it was SpaceX’s 100th launch of the year. Perhaps even more notable was the rocket’s payload: two-dozen Project Kuiper satellites, which were dispensed into low-Earth orbit on target, Ars reports. This was SpaceX’s second launch of satellites for Amazon, which is developing a constellation to deliver low-latency broadband Internet around the world. SpaceX, then, just launched a direct competitor to its Starlink network into orbit. And it was for the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, who owns a rocket company of his own in Blue Origin.

Several answers … So how did it come to this—Bezos and Elon Musk, competitors in so many ways, working together in space? There are several answers. Most obviously, launching payloads for customers is one of SpaceX’s two core business areas, alongside Starlink. SpaceX sells launch services to all comers and typically offers the lowest price per kilogram to orbit. There’s immediate revenue to be made if a company with deep pockets like Amazon is willing to pay SpaceX. Second, the other options to get Kuiper satellites into orbit just aren’t available at the volume Amazon needs. Amazon has reserved the lion’s share of its Kuiper launches with SpaceX’s competitors: United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Jeff Bezos’ own space company Blue Origin. Lastly, SpaceX could gain some leverage by providing launch services to Amazon. In return for a launch, SpaceX has asked other companies with telecom satellites, such as OneWeb and Kepler Communications, to share spectrum rights to enable Starlink to expand into new markets.

Trump orders cull of commercial launch regulations. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday directing government agencies to “eliminate or expedite” environmental reviews for commercial launch and reentry licenses, Ars reports. The FAA, part of the Department of Transportation, is responsible for granting the licenses after ensuring launch and reentries don’t endanger the public, comply with environmental laws, and comport with US national interests. The drive toward deregulation will be welcome news for companies like SpaceX, led by onetime Trump ally Elon Musk; SpaceX conducts nearly all of the commercial launches and reentries licensed by the FAA.

Deflecting scrutiny? … The executive order does several things, and not all of them will be as controversial as the potential elimination of environmental reviews. The order includes a clause directing the government to reevaluate, amend, or rescind a slate of launch-safety regulations written during the first Trump administration. The FAA published the new regulations, known as Part 450, in 2020, and they went into effect in 2021, but space companies have complained that they are too cumbersome and have slowed down the license approval process. The Biden administration established a committee last year to look at reforming the regulations in response to industry’s outcry. Another part of the order that will likely lack bipartisan support is a call for making the head of the FAA’s commercial spaceflight division a political appointee. This job has historically been held by a career civil servant.

Ariane 6 launches European weather satellite. Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket successfully launched for a third time on Tuesday night, carrying a satellite into orbit for weather forecasting and climate monitoring, Euronews reports. “The success of this second commercial launch confirms the performance, reliability, and precision of Ariane 6,” said Martin Sion, CEO of ArianeGroup, operator of the rocket. “Once again, the new European heavy-lift launcher meets Europe’s needs, ensuring sovereign access to space,” Sion added. It marks the second commercial flight of the rocket, which has been in development for almost a decade with the European Space Agency (ESA). It is significant as it gives Europe independent access to space and reduces its reliance on Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Eumetsat returns to Europe … The polar-orbiting weather satellite launched by the Ariane 6 rocket this week is owned by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, or Eumetsat. Headquartered in Germany, Eumetsat is a multinational organization that owns and operates geostationary and polar-orbiting weather satellites, watching real-time storm development over Europe and Africa, while feeding key data into global weather and climate models. Just last month, Eumetsat’s newest geostationary weather satellite launched from Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket because of delays with the Ariane 6 program.

Rocket Lab isn’t giving up on 2025 yet. Rocket Lab continues to push for a first launch of its medium-lift Neutron rocket before the end of the year, but company executives acknowledge that schedule has no margin for error, Space News reports. It may seem unlikely, but Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, Peter Beck, said in a conference call with investment analysts last week that the company has a “green light” schedule to debut the Neutron rocket within the next four-and-a-half months. There’s still much work to do to prepare for the first launch, and the inaugural flight seems almost certain to slip into 2026.

Launch pad nearly complete … Rocket Lab plans to host a ribbon-cutting at the Neutron rocket’s new launch pad on Wallops Island, Virginia, on August 28. This launch pad is located just south of the spaceport’s largest existing launch facility, where Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket lifts off on resupply missions to the International Space Station. Rocket Lab has a small launch pad for its light-class Electron launcher co-located with the Antares pad at Wallops.

Chinese company reveals drone ship. The Chinese launch company iSpace has released the first photos of an ocean-going recovery ship to support the landings of reusable first-stage boosters. The company hosted a dedication ceremony in Yangzhou, China, earlier this month for the vessel, which looks similar to SpaceX’s rocket landing drone ships. In a press release, iSpace said the ship, named “Interstellar Return,” is China’s first marine rocket recovery ship, and the fifth such vessel in the world. SpaceX has three drone ships in its fleet for the Falcon 9 rocket, and Blue Origin has one for the New Glenn booster.

Rocket agnostic … The recovery ship will be compatible with various medium- and large-sized reusable rockets, iSpace said. But its main use will be as the landing site for the first stage booster for iSpace’s own Hyperbola 3 rocket, a medium-lift launcher with methane-fueled engines. The company has completed multiple vertical takeoff and landing tests of prototype boosters for the Hyperbola 3. The recovery ship measures about 100 meters long and 42 meters wide, with a displacement of 17,000 metric tons, and it has the ability to perform “intelligent unmanned operations” thanks to a dynamic positioning system, according to iSpace.

Vulcan’s first national security launch. United Launch Alliance delivered multiple US military satellites into a high-altitude orbit after a prime-time launch Tuesday night, marking an important transition from development to operations for the company’s new Vulcan rocket, Ars reports. This mission, officially designated USSF-106 by the US Space Force, was the first flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket to carry national security payloads. Two test flights of the Vulcan rocket last year gave military officials enough confidence to certify it for launching the Pentagon’s medium-to-large space missions.

Secrecy in the fairing  … The Vulcan rocket’s Centaur upper stage released its payloads into geosynchronous orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator roughly seven hours after liftoff. One of the satellites deployed by the Vulcan rocket is an experimental navigation testbed named NTS-3. It will demonstrate new technologies that could be used on future GPS navigation satellites. But the Space Force declined to disclose any information about the mission’s other payloads.

Artemis II crew trains for nighttime ops. The four astronauts training to fly around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis II mission next year have been at Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week. One of the reasons they were at Kennedy was to run through a rehearsal for what it will be like to work at the launch pad if the Artemis II mission ends up lifting off at night. Astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen put on their spacesuits and rehearsed emergency procedures at Launch Complex 39B, replicating a daytime simulation they participated in last year.

Moving forward … The astronauts also went inside the Vehicle Assembly Building to practice using egress baskets they would use to quickly escape the launch pad in the event of a prelaunch emergency. The baskets are fastened to the mobile launch tower inside the VAB, where technicians are assembling and testing the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II mission. Later this year, the astronauts will return to Kennedy for a two-part countdown demonstration test. First, the crew members will board their Orion spacecraft once it’s stacked atop the SLS rocket inside the VAB. Then, in part two, the astronauts will again rehearse emergency evacuation procedures once the rocket rolls to the launch pad.

China’s Long March 5B flies again. China is ramping up construction of its national satellite-Internet megaconstellation with the successful deployment of another batch of Guowang satellites by a heavy-lift Long March 5B rocket on Wednesday, Space.com reports. Guowang, whose name translates as “national network,” will be operated by China SatNet, a state-run company established in 2021. The constellation will eventually consist of about 13,000 satellites if all goes to plan.

Make this make sense … Guowang is a long way from that goal. Wednesday’s launch was the eighth overall for the network, but it was the fourth for the project in less than three weeks. Each mission lofts just five to 10 Guowang spacecraft, apparently because each satellite is quite large. For comparison, SpaceX launches 24 to 28 satellites on each mission to assemble its Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which currently consists of nearly 8,100 operational spacecraft. The Long March 5B is China’s most powerful operational rocket, with a lift capacity somewhat higher than SpaceX’s Falcon 9 but below that of the Falcon Heavy. It begs the question of just how big the Guowang satellites really are, and do they have a purpose beyond broadband Internet service?

Next three launches

Aug. 16: Kinetica 1 | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 07: 35 UTC

Aug. 17: Long March 4C | Unknown Payload | Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China | 09: 05 UTC

Aug. 17: Long March 6A | Unknown Payload | Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China | 14: 15 UTC

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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: Ariane 6 beats Vulcan to third launch; China’s first drone ship Read More »

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Space Force officials take secrecy to new heights ahead of key rocket launch

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The Vulcan rocket checks off several important boxes for the Space Force. First, it relies entirely on US-made rocket engines. The Atlas V rocket it is replacing uses Russian-built main engines, and given the chilled relations between the two powers, US officials have long desired to stop using Russian engines to power the Pentagon’s satellites into orbit. Second, ULA says the Vulcan rocket will eventually provide a heavy-lift launch capability at a lower cost than the company’s now-retired Delta IV Heavy rocket.

Third, Vulcan provides the Space Force with an alternative to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which have been the only rockets in their class available to the military since the last national security mission was launched on an Atlas V rocket one year ago.

Col. Jim Horne, mission director for the USSF-106 launch, said this flight marks a “pretty historic point in our program’s history. We officially end our reliance on Russian-made main engines with this launch, and we continue to maintain our assured access to space with at least two independent rocket service companies that we can leverage to get our capabilities on orbit.”

What’s onboard?

The Space Force has only acknowledged one of the satellites aboard the USSF-106 mission, but there are more payloads cocooned inside the Vulcan rocket’s fairing.

The $250 million mission that officials are willing to talk about is named Navigation Technology Satellite-3, or NTS-3. This experimental spacecraft will test new satellite navigation technologies that may eventually find their way on next-generation GPS satellites. A key focus for engineers who designed and will operate the NTS-3 satellite is to look at ways of overcoming GPS jamming and spoofing, which can degrade satellite navigation signals used by military forces, commercial airliners, and civilian drivers.

“We’re going to be doing, we anticipate, over 100 different experiments,” said Joanna Hinks, senior research aerospace engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s space vehicles directorate, which manages the NTS-3 mission. “Some of the major areas we’re looking at—we have an electronically steerable phased array antenna so that we can deliver higher power to get through interference to the location that it’s needed.”

Arlen Biersgreen, then-program manager for the NTS-3 satellite mission at the Air Force Research Laboratory, presents a one-third scale model of the NTS-3 spacecraft to an audience in 2022. Credit: US Air Force/Andrea Rael

GPS jamming is especially a problem in and near war zones. Investigators probing the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 last December determined GPS jamming, likely by Russian military forces attempting to counter a Ukrainian drone strike, interfered with the aircraft’s navigation as it approached its destination in the Russian republic of Chechnya. Azerbaijani government officials blamed a Russian surface-to-air missile for damaging the aircraft, ultimately leading to a crash in nearby Kazakhstan that killed 38 people.

“We have a number of different advanced signals that we’ve designed,” Hinks said. “One of those is the Chimera anti-spoofing signal… to protect civil users from spoofing that’s affecting so many aircraft worldwide today, as well as ships.”

The NTS-3 spacecraft, developed by L3Harris and Northrop Grumman, only takes up a fraction of the Vulcan rocket’s capacity. The satellite weighs less than 3,000 pounds (about 1,250 kilograms), about a quarter of what this version of the Vulcan rocket can deliver to geosynchronous orbit.

Space Force officials take secrecy to new heights ahead of key rocket launch Read More »

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Rocket Report: SpaceX to make its own propellant; China’s largest launch pad

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United Launch Alliance begins stacking its third Vulcan rocket for the second time.

Visitors walk by models of a Long March 10 rocket, lunar lander, and crew spacecraft during an exhibition on February 24, 2023 in Beijing, China. Credit: Hou Yu/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

Welcome to Edition 8.02 of the Rocket Report! It’s worth taking a moment to recognize an important anniversary in the history of human spaceflight next week. Fifty years ago, on July 15, 1975, NASA launched a three-man crew on an Apollo spacecraft from Florida and two Russian cosmonauts took off from Kazakhstan, on course to link up in low-Earth orbit two days later. This was the first joint US-Russian human spaceflight mission, laying the foundation for a strained but enduring partnership on the International Space Station. Operations on the ISS are due to wind down in 2030, and the two nations have no serious prospects to continue any partnership in space after decommissioning the station.

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.

Sizing up Europe’s launch challengers. The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent’s incumbent launch service provider, Ars reports. The five small launch companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar’s Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March. None of these companies is guaranteed an ESA contract or funding. Over the next several months, ESA and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA’s ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency’s budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.

Let’s rank ’em … Ars Technica’s space reporters ranked the five selectees for the European Launcher Challenge in order from most likely to least likely to reach orbit. We put Munich-based Isar Aerospace, the most well-funded of the group, at the top of the list after attempting its first orbital launch earlier this year. Paris-based MaiaSpace, backed by ArianeGroup, comes in second, with plans for a partially reusable rocket. Rocket Factory Augsburg, another German company, is in third place after getting close to a launch attempt last year before its first rocket blew up on a test stand. Spanish startup PLD Space is fourth, and Britain’s Orbex rounds out the list. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Japan’s Interstellar Technologies rakes in more cash. Interstellar Technologies raised 8.9 billion yen ($61.8 million) to boost the development of its Zero rocket and research and development of satellite systems, Space News reports. The money comes from Japanese financial institutions, venture capital funds, and debt financing. Interstellar previously received funding through agreements with the Japanese government and Toyota, which Interstellar says will add expertise to scale manufacturing of the Zero rocket for “high-frequency, cost-effective launches.” The methane-fueled Zero rocket is designed to deploy a payload of up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. The unfortunate news from Interstellar’s fundraising announcement is that the company has pushed back the debut flight of the Zero rocket until 2027.

Straight up … Interstellar has aspirations beyond launch vehicles. The company is also developing a satellite communications business, and some of the money raised in the latest investment round will go toward this segment of the company. Interstellar is open about comparing its ambition to that of SpaceX. “On the satellite side, Interstellar is developing communications satellites that benefit from the company’s own launch capabilities,” the company said in a statement. “Backed by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and JAXA’s Space Strategy Fund, the company is building a vertically integrated model, similar to SpaceX’s approach with Starlink.”

Korean startup completes second-stage qual testing. South Korean launch services company Innospace says it has taken another step toward the inaugural launch of its Hanbit-Nano rocket by the year’s end with the qualification of the second stage, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The second stage uses an in-house-developed 34-kilonewton (7,643-pound-thrust) liquid methane engine. Innospace says the engine achieved a combustion time of 300 seconds, maintaining stability of the fuel and oxidizer supply system, structural integrity, and the launch vehicle integrated control system.

A true micro-launcher … Innospace’s rocket is modest in size and capacity, even among its cohorts in the small launch market. The Hanbit-Nano rocket is designed to launch approximately 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload into Sun-synchronous orbit. “With the success of this second stage engine certification test, we have completed the development of the upper stage of the Hanbit-Nano launch vehicle,” said Kim Soo-jong, CEO of Innospace. “This is a very symbolic and meaningful technological achievement that demonstrates the technological prowess and test operation capabilities that Innospace has accumulated over a long period of time, while also showing that we have entered the final stage for commercial launch. Currently, all executives and staff are doing their best to successfully complete the first stage certification test, which is the final gateway for launch, and we will make every effort to prepare for a smooth commercial launch in the second half of the year.”

Two companies forge unlikely alliance in Dubai. Two German entrepreneurs have joined forces with a team of Russian expats steeped in space history to design a rocket using computational AI models, Payload reports. The “strategic partnership” is between LEAP 71, an AI-enabled design startup, and Aspire Space, a company founded by the son of a Soviet engineer who was in charge of launching Zenit rockets from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the 1980s. The companies will base their operations in Dubai. The unlikely pairing aims to develop a new large reusable launch vehicle capable of delivering up to 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. Aspire Space is a particularly interesting company if you’re a space history enthusiast. Apart from the connections of Aspire’s founder to Soviet space history, Aspire’s chief technology officer, Sergey Sopov, started his career at Baikonur working on the Energia heavy-lift rocket and Buran space shuttle, before becoming an executive at Sea Launch later in his career.

Trust the computer … It’s easy to be skeptical about this project, but it has attracted an interesting group of people. LEAP 71 has just two employees—its two German co-founders—but boasts lofty ambitions and calls itself a “pioneer in AI-driven engineering.” As part of the agreement with Aspire Space, LEAP 71 will use a proprietary software program called Noyron to design the entire propulsion stack for Aspire’s rockets. The company says its AI-enabled design approach for Aspire’s 450,000-pound-thrust engine will cut in half the time it took other rocket companies to begin test-firing a new engine of similar size. Rudenko forecasts Aspire’s entire project, including a launcher, reusable spacecraft, and ground infrastructure to support it all, will cost more than $1 billion. So far, the project is self-funded, Rudenko told Payload. (submitted by Lin Kayser)

Russia launches ISS resupply freighter. A Russian Progress supply ship launched July 3 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Soyuz-2.1a rocket, NASASpaceflight reports. Packed with 5,787 pounds (2,625 kilograms) of cargo and fuel, the Progress MS-31 spacecraft glided to an automated docking at the International Space Station two days later. The Russian cosmonauts living aboard the ISS will unpack the supplies carried inside the Progress craft’s pressurized compartment. This was the eighth orbital launch of the year by a Russian rocket, continuing a downward trend in launch activity for the Russian space program in recent years.

Celebrating a golden anniversary … The Soyuz rocket that launched Progress MS-31 was painted an unusual blue and white scheme, as it was originally intended for a commercial launch that was likely canceled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also sported a logo commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975.

Chinese rocket moves closer to first launch. Chinese commercial launch firm Orienspace is aiming for a late 2025 debut of its Gravity-2 rocket following a recent first-stage engine hot fire test, Space News reports. The “three-in-one” hot fire test verified the performance of the Gravity-2 rocket’s first stage engine, servo mechanisms, and valves that regulate the flow of propellants into the engine, according to a press release from Orienspace. The Gravity-2 rocket’s recoverable and reusable first stage will be powered by nine of these kerosene-fueled engines. The recent hot fire test “lays a solid foundation” for future tests leading up to the Gravity-2’s inaugural flight.

Extra medium … Orienspace’s first rocket, the solid-fueled Gravity-1, completed its first successful flight last year to place multiple small satellites into orbit. Gravity-2 is a much larger vehicle, standing 230 feet (70 meters) tall, the same height as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Orienspace’s new rocket will fly in a core-only configuration or with the assistance of two solid rocket boosters. An infographic released by Orienspace in conjunction with the recent engine hot fire test indicates the Gravity-2 rocket will be capable of hauling up to 21.5 metric tons (47,400 pounds) of cargo into low-Earth orbit, placing its performance near the upper limit of medium-lift launchers.

Senator calls out Texas for trying to steal space shuttle. A political effort to remove space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian and place it on display in Texas encountered some pushback on Thursday, as a US senator questioned the expense of carrying out what he described as a theft, Ars reports. “This is not a transfer. It’s a heist,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) during a budget markup hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee. “A heist by Texas because they lost a competition 12 years ago.” In April, Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both representing Texas, introduced the “Bring the Space Shuttle Home Act” that called for Discovery to be relocated from the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia and displayed at Space Center Houston. They then inserted an $85 million provision for the shuttle relocation into the Senate version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which, to comply with Senate rules, was more vaguely worded but was meant to achieve the same goal. That bill was enacted on July 4, when President Donald Trump signed it into law.

Dollar signs … As ridiculous as it is to imagine spending $85 million on moving a space shuttle from one museum to another, it’ll actually cost a lot more to do it safely. Citing research by NASA and the Smithsonian, Durbin said that the total was closer to $305 million, and that did not include the estimated $178 million needed to build a facility to house and display Discovery once it was in Houston. Furthermore, it was unclear if Congress even has the right to remove an artifact, let alone a space shuttle, from the Smithsonian’s collection. The Washington, DC, institution, which serves as a trust instrumentality of the US, maintains that it owns Discovery. The paperwork signed by NASA in 2012 transferred “all rights, interest, title, and ownership” for the spacecraft to the Smithsonian. “This will be the first time ever in the history of the Smithsonian someone has taken one of their displays and forcibly taken possession of it. What are we doing here? They don’t have the right in Texas to claim this,” said Durbin.

Starbase keeps getting bigger. Cameron County, Texas, has given SpaceX the green light to build an air separator facility, which will be located less than 300 feet from the region’s sand dunes, frustrating locals concerned about the impact on vegetation and wildlife, the Texas Tribune reports. The commissioners voted 3–1 to give Elon Musk’s rocket company a beachfront construction certificate and dune protection permit, allowing the company to build a facility to produce gases needed for Starship launches. The factory will separate air into nitrogen and oxygen. SpaceX uses liquid oxygen as a propellant and liquid nitrogen for testing and operations.

Saving the roads … By having the facility on site, SpaceX hopes to make the delivery of those gases more efficient by eliminating the need to have dozens of trucks deliver them from Brownsville. The company says they need more than 200 trucks of liquid nitrogen and oxygen delivered for each launch, a SpaceX engineer told the county during a meeting last week. With their application, SpaceX submitted a plan to mitigate expected negative effects on 865 square feet of dune vegetation and 20 cubic yards of dunes, as well as compensate for expected permanent impacts to 7,735 square feet of dune vegetation and 465 cubic yards of dunes. While the project will be built on property owned by SpaceX, the county holds the authority to manage the construction that affects Boca Chica’s dunes.

ULA is stacking its third Vulcan rocket. A little more than a week after its most recent Atlas V rocket launch, United Launch Alliance rolled a Vulcan booster to the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on July 2 to begin stacking its first post-certification Vulcan rocket, Spaceflight Now reports. The operation, referred to by ULA as Launch Vehicle on Stand (LVOS), is the first major milestone toward the launch of the third Vulcan rocket. The upcoming launch will be the first operational flight of ULA’s new rocket with a pair of US military payloads, following two certification flights in 2024.

For the second time … This is the second time that this particular Vulcan booster was brought to Space Launch Complex 41 in anticipation of a launch campaign. It was previously readied in late October of last year in support of the USSF-106 mission, the Space Force’s designation for the first national security launch to use the Vulcan rocket. However, plans changed as the process of certifying Vulcan to fly government payloads took longer than expected, and ULA pivoted to launch two Atlas V rockets on commercial missions from the same pad before switching back to Vulcan launch preps.

Progress report on China’s Moon rocket. China’s self-imposed deadline of landing astronauts on the Moon by 2030 is now just five years away, and we’re starting to see some tangible progress. Construction of the launch pad for the Long March 10 rocket, the massive vehicle China will use to launch its first crews toward the Moon, is well along at the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. An image shared on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, and then reposted on X, shows the Long March 10’s launch tower near its final height. A mobile launch platform presumably for the Long March 10 is under construction nearby.

Super heavy … The Long March 10 will be China’s most powerful rocket to date, with the ability to dispatch 27 metric tons of payload toward the Moon, a number comparable to NASA’s Space Launch System. Designed for partial reusability, the Long March 10 will use an all-liquid propulsion system and stand more than 92 meters (300 feet) tall. The rocket will launch Chinese astronauts inside the nation’s next-generation Mengzhou crew capsule, along with a lunar lander to transport crew members from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon using an architecture similar to NASA’s Apollo program.

Next three launches

July 11: Electron | JAKE 4 | Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia | 23: 45 UTC

July 13: Falcon 9 | Dror 1 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 04: 31 UTC

July 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-2 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 02: 27 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: SpaceX to make its own propellant; China’s largest launch pad Read More »

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The Pentagon seems to be fed up with ULA’s rocket delays

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Some of the displeasure was apparent in April when the US military announced that it would ask SpaceX to launch a plurality of its missions during the next round of national security launches, reversing the preeminent role that ULA had held for the last two decades.

ULA retired its Delta IV Heavy rocket in April 2024, and the handful of Atlas V rockets that remain are committed to other missions. This has left the Air Force dependent on SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles, as the only provider of launch services to get its most expensive and highest priority satellites into orbit.

ULA must “repair trust”

In his testimony, Purdy said ULA completed certification of the initial variant of its Vulcan rocket for military launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 25, but added that “open work” remains. The military and the company are currently working through “risk reduction plans” to limit the chances of an issue with the first launch of a military payload on Vulcan.

“To address these challenges ULA has increased its engineering resources and management focus to resolve design issues,” Purdy wrote. “Government and Federally Funded Research and Development Center personnel have increased involvement in technical and program management challenges.

Vulcan’s first military mission, USSF-106, currently has a no earlier than launch date of July 2025, Purdy wrote. These outstanding risks will ultimately be assessed during a Flight Readiness Review a week or two prior to this launch.

At the end of his written testimony, Purdy emphasized that he expected ULA to do better. As part of his job as the Service Acquisition Executive for Space (SAE), Purdy noted that he has been tasked to transform space acquisition and to become more innovative.

“For these programs, the prime contractors must re-establish baselines, establish a culture of accountability, and repair trust deficit to prove to the SAE that they are adopting the acquisition principles necessary to deliver capabilities at speed, on cost and on schedule,” Purdy said.

The Pentagon seems to be fed up with ULA’s rocket delays Read More »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next three launches

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

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

April 14: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-73 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 01: 59 UTC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Capability sitting on the ground”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spreading the wealth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Navigating NSSL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rocket Report: ULA confirms cause of booster anomaly; Crew-10 launch on tap

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The head of Poland’s space agency was fired over a bungled response to SpaceX debris falling over Polish territory.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company’s Dragon spacecraft on top is seen during sunset Tuesday at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX

Welcome to Edition 7.35 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX’s steamroller is still rolling, but for the first time in many years, it doesn’t seem like it’s rolling downhill. After a three-year run of perfect performance—with no launch failures or any other serious malfunctions—SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has suffered a handful of issues in recent months. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket is having problems, too. Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, addressed some (but not all) of these concerns in a post on X this week. Despite the issues with the Falcon 9, SpaceX has maintained a remarkable launch cadence. As of Thursday, SpaceX has launched 28 Falcon 9 flights since January 1, ahead of last year’s pace.

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.

Alpha rocket preps for weekend launch. While Firefly Aerospace is making headlines for landing on the Moon, its Alpha rocket is set to launch again as soon as Saturday morning from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The two-stage, kerosene-fueled rocket will launch a self-funded technology demonstration satellite for Lockheed Martin. It’s the first of up to 25 launches Lockheed Martin has booked with Firefly over the next five years. This launch will be the sixth flight of an Alpha rocket, which has become a leader in the US commercial launch industry for dedicated missions with 1 ton-class satellites.

Firefly’s OG … The Alpha rocket was Firefly’s first product, and it has been a central piece of the company’s development since 2014. Like Firefly itself, the Alpha rocket program has gone through multiple iterations, including a wholesale redesign nearly a decade ago. Sure, Firefly can’t claim any revolutionary firsts with the Alpha rocket, as it can with its Blue Ghost lunar lander. But without Alpha, Firefly wouldn’t be where it is today. The Texas-based firm is one of only four US companies with an operational orbital-class rocket. One thing to watch for is how quickly Firefly can ramp up its Alpha launch cadence. The rocket only flew once last year.

Isar Aerospace celebrates another win. In last week’s Rocket Report, we mentioned that the German launch startup Isar Aerospace won a contract with a Japanese company to launch a 200-kilogram commercial satellite in 2026. But wait, there’s more! On Wednesday, the Norwegian Space Agency announced it awarded a contract to Isar Aerospace for the launch of a pair of satellites for the country’s Arctic Ocean Surveillance initiative, European Spaceflight reports. The satellites are scheduled to launch on Isar’s Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in Norway by 2028.

First launch pending … These recent contract wins are a promising sign for Isar Aerospace, which is also vying for contracts to launch small payloads for the European Space Agency. The Spectrum rocket could launch on its inaugural flight within a matter of weeks, and if successful, it could mark a transformative moment for the European space industry, which has long been limited to a single launch provider: the French company Arianespace. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

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Mother Nature holds up Oz launch. The first launch by Gilmour Space has been postponed again due to a tropical cyclone that brought severe weather to Australia’s Gold Coast region earlier this month, InnovationAus.com reports. Tropical Cyclone Alfred didn’t significantly impact Gilmour’s launch site, but the storm did cause the company to suspend work at its corporate headquarters in Southeast Queensland. With the storm now over, Gilmour is reassessing when it might be ready to launch its Eris rocket. Reportedly, the delay could be as long as two weeks or more.

A regulatory storm … Gilmour aims to become the first Australian company to launch a rocket into orbit. Last month, Gilmour announced the launch date for the Eris rocket was set for no earlier than March 15, but Tropical Cyclone Alfred threw this schedule out the window. Gilmour said it received a launch license from the Australian Space Agency in November and last month secured approvals to clear airspace around the launch site. But there’s still a hitch. The license is conditional on final documentation for the launch being filed and agreed with the space agency, and this process is stretching longer than anticipated. (submitted by ZygP)

What is going on at SpaceX? As we mention in the introduction to this week’s Rocket Report, it has been an uncharacteristically messy eight months for SpaceX. These speed bumps include issues with the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage on three missions, two lost Falcon 9 boosters, and consecutive failures of SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket on its first two test flights of the year. So what’s behind SpaceX’s bumpy ride? Ars wrote about the pressures facing SpaceX employees as Elon Musk pushes his workforce ever-harder to accelerate toward what Musk might call a multi-planetary future.

Headwinds or tailwinds? … No country or private company ever launched as many times as SpaceX flew its fleet of Falcon 9 rockets in 2024. At the same time, the company has been attempting to move its talented engineering team off the Falcon 9 and Dragon programs and onto Starship to keep that ambitious program moving forward. This is all happening as Musk has taken on significant roles in the Trump administration, stirring controversy and raising questions about his motives and potential conflicts of interest. However, it may be not so much Musk’s absence from SpaceX that is causing these issues but more the company’s relentless culture. As my colleague Eric Berger suggested in his piece, it seems possible that, at least for now, SpaceX has reached the speed limit for commercial spaceflight.

A titan of Silicon Valley enters the rocket business. Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has taken a controlling interest in the Long Beach, California-based Relativity Space, Ars reports. Schmidt’s involvement with Relativity has been quietly discussed among space industry insiders for a few months. Multiple sources told Ars that he has largely been bankrolling the company since the end of October, when the company’s previous fundraising dried up. Now, Schmidt is Relativity’s CEO.

Unclear motives … It is not immediately clear why Schmidt is taking a hands-on approach at Relativity. However, it is one of the few US-based companies with a credible path toward developing a medium-lift rocket that could potentially challenge the dominance of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. If the Terran R booster becomes commercially successful, it could play a big role in launching megaconstellations. Schmidt’s ascension also means that Tim Ellis, the company’s co-founder, chief executive, and almost sole public persona for nearly a decade, is now out of a leadership position.

Falcon 9 deploys NASA’s newest space telescope. Satellites come in all shapes and sizes, but there aren’t any that look quite like SPHEREx, an infrared observatory NASA launched Tuesday night in search of answers to simmering questions about how the Universe, and ultimately life, came to be, Ars reports. The SPHEREx satellite rocketed into orbit from California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, beginning a two-year mission surveying the sky in search of clues about the earliest periods of cosmic history, when the Universe rapidly expanded and the first galaxies formed. SPHEREx will also scan for pockets of water ice within our own galaxy, where clouds of gas and dust coalesce to form stars and planets.

Excess capacity … SPHEREx has lofty goals, but it’s modest in size, weighing just a little more than a half-ton at launch. This meant the Falcon 9 rocket had plenty of extra room for four other small satellites that will fly in formation to image the solar wind as it travels from the Sun into the Solar System. The four satellites are part of NASA’s PUNCH mission. SPHEREx and PUNCH are part of NASA’s Explorers program, a series of cost-capped science missions with a lineage going back to the dawn of the Space Age. SPHEREx and PUNCH have a combined cost of about $638 million. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

China has launched another batch of Internet satellites. A new group of 18 satellites entered orbit Tuesday for the Thousand Sails constellation with the first launch from a new commercial launch pad, Space News reports. The satellites launched on top of a Long March 8 rocket from Hainan Commercial Launch Site near Wenchang on Hainan Island. The commercial launch site has two pads, the first of which entered service with a launch last year. This mission was the first to launch from the other pad at the commercial spaceport, which is gearing up for an uptick in Chinese launch activity to continue deploying satellites for the Thousand Sails network and other megaconstellations.

Sailing on … The Thousand Sails constellation, also known as Qianfan, or G60 Starlink, is a broadband satellite constellation spearheaded by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), also known as Spacesail, Space News reported. The project, which aims to deploy 14,000 satellites, seeks to compete in the global satellite Internet market. Spacesail has now launched 90 satellites into near-polar orbits, and the operator previously stated it aims to have 648 satellites in orbit by the end of 2025. If Spacesail continues launching 18 satellites per rocket, this goal would require 31 more launches this year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

NASA, SpaceX call off astronaut launch. With the countdown within 45 minutes of launch, NASA called off an attempt to send the next crew to the International Space Station Wednesday evening to allow more time to troubleshoot a ground system hydraulics issue, CBS News reports. During the countdown Wednesday, SpaceX engineers were troubleshooting a problem with one of two clamp arms that hold the Falcon 9 rocket to its strongback support gantry. Hydraulics are used to retract the two clamps prior to launch.

Back on track … NASA confirmed Thursday SpaceX ground teams completed inspections of the hydraulics system used for the clamp arm supporting the Falcon 9 rocket and successfully flushed a suspected pocket of trapped air in the system, clearing the way for another launch attempt Friday evening. This mission, known as Crew-10, will ferry two NASA astronauts, a Japanese mission specialist, and a Russian cosmonaut to the space station. They will replace a four-person crew currently at the ISS, including Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been in orbit since last June after flying to space on Boeing’s Starliner capsule. Starliner returned to Earth without its crew due to a problem with overheating thrusters, leaving Wilmore and Williams behind to wait for a ride home with SpaceX.

SpaceX’s woes reach Poland’s space agency. The president of the Polish Space Agency, Grzegorz Wrochna, has been dismissed following a botched response to the uncontrolled reentry of a Falcon 9 second stage that scattered debris across multiple locations in Poland, European Spaceflight reports. The Falcon 9’s upper stage was supposed to steer itself toward a controlled reentry last month after deploying a set of Starlink satellites, but a propellant leak prevented it from doing so. Instead, the stage remained in orbit for nearly three weeks before falling back into the atmosphere February 19, scattering debris fragments at several locations in Poland.

A failure to communicate … In the aftermath of the Falcon 9’s uncontrolled reentry, the Polish Space Agency (POLSA) claimed it sent warnings of the threat of falling space debris to multiple departments of the Polish government. One Polish ministry disputed this claim, saying it was not adequately warned about the uncontrolled reentry. POLSA later confirmed it sent information regarding the reentry to a wrong email address. Making matters worse, the Polish Space Agency reported it was hacked on March 2. The Polish government apparently had enough and fired the head of the space agency March 11.

Vulcan booster anomaly blamed on “manufacturing defect.” The loss of a solid rocket motor nozzle on the second flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur last October was caused by a manufacturing defect, Space News reports. In a roundtable with reporters Wednesday, ULA chief executive Tory Bruno said the problem has been corrected as the company awaits certification of the Vulcan rocket by the Space Force. The nozzle fell off the bottom of one of the Vulcan launcher’s twin solid rocket boosters about a half-minute into its second test flight last year. The rocket continued its climb into space, but ULA and Northrop Grumman, which supplies solid rocket motors for Vulcan, set up an investigation to find the cause of the nozzle malfunction.

All the trimmings … Bruno said the anomaly was traced to a “manufacturing defect” in one of the internal parts of the nozzle, an insulator. Specific details, he said, remained proprietary, according to Space News. “We have isolated the root cause and made appropriate corrective actions,” he said, which were confirmed in a static-fire test of a motor at a Northrop test site in Utah in February. “So we are back continuing to fabricate hardware and, at least initially, screening for what that root cause was.” Bruno said the investigation was aided by recovery of hardware that fell off the motor while in flight and landed near the launch pad in Florida, as well as “trimmings” of material left over from the manufacturing process. ULA also recovered both boosters from the ocean so engineers could compare the one that lost its nozzle to the one that performed normally. The defective hardware “just stood out night and day,” Bruno said. “It was pretty clear that that was an outlier, far out of family.” Meanwhile, ULA has trimmed its launch forecast for this year, from a projection of up to 20 launches down to a dozen. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Next three launches

March 14: Falcon 9 | Crew-10 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 23: 03 UTC

March 15: Electron | QPS-SAR-9 | Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand | 00: 00 UTC

March 15: Long March 2B | Unknown Payload | Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, China | 04: 10 UTC

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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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ULA’s Vulcan rocket still doesn’t have the Space Force’s seal of approval

Amazon, kuiper, launch, military space, Science, Space, space force, united launch alliance, vulcan / /

ULA crews at Cape Canaveral have already stacked the next Vulcan rocket on its mobile launch platform in anticipation of launching the USSF-106 mission. But with the Space Force’s Space Systems Command still withholding certification, there’s no confirmed launch date for USSF-106.

So ULA is pivoting to another customer on its launch manifest.

Amazon’s first group of production satellites for the company’s Kuiper Internet network is now first in line on ULA’s schedule. Amazon confirmed last month that it would ship Kuiper satellites to Cape Canaveral from its factory in Kirkland, Washington. Like ULA, Amazon has run into its own delays with manufacturing Kuiper satellites.

“These satellites, built to withstand the harsh conditions of space and the journey there, will be processed upon arrival to get them ready for launch,” Amazon posted on X. “These satellites will bring fast, reliable Internet to customers even in remote areas. Stay tuned for our first launch this year.”

Amazon and the Space Force take up nearly all of ULA’s launch backlog. Amazon has eight flights reserved on Atlas V rockets and 38 missions booked on the Vulcan launcher to deploy about half of its 3,232 satellites to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network. Amazon also has launch contracts with Blue Origin, which is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, along with Arianespace and SpaceX.

The good news is that United Launch Alliance has an inventory of rockets awaiting an opportunity to fly. The company plans to finish manufacturing its remaining 15 Atlas V rockets within a few months, allowing the factory in Decatur, Alabama, to focus solely on producing Vulcan launch vehicles. ULA has all the major parts for two Vulcan rockets in storage at Cape Canaveral.

“We have a stockpile of rockets, which is kind of unusual,” Bruno said. “Normally, you build it, you fly it, you build another one… I would certainly want anyone who’s ready to go to space able to go to space.”

Space Force officials now aim to finish the certification of the Vulcan rocket in late February or early March. This would clear the path for launching the USSF-106 mission after the next Atlas V. Once the Kuiper launch gets off the ground, teams will bring the Vulcan rocket’s components back to the hangar to be stacked again.

The Space Force has not set a launch date for USSF-106, but the service says liftoff is targeted for sometime between the beginning of April and the end of June, nearly five years after ULA won its lucrative contract.

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