The US military's robotic mini-space shuttle dropped out of orbit and glided to a runway in California late Thursday, ending a 434-day mission that pioneered new ways of maneuvering in space.
The X-37B spaceplane touched down on Runway 12 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 11:22 pm local time Thursday (2:22 am EST Friday), capping its high-flying mission with an automated reentry and landing on the nearly three-mile-long runway at the West Coast's spaceport.
The Space Force did not publicize the spacecraft's return ahead of time, keeping with the Pentagon's policy of secrecy surrounding the X-37B program. This was the seventh flight of an X-37B spaceplane, or Orbital Test Vehicle, since its first foray into orbit in 2010.
Β© US Space Force
SpaceX's Starship launcher spun out of control minutes after liftoff Thursday, showering fiery debris over the Bahamas and dealing another setback to Elon Musk's rocket program after a failure under similar circumstances less than two months ago.
Starship and its Super Heavy booster, loaded with millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen propellants, lumbered off their launch pad in Texas at 5:30 pm CST (6:30 pm EST; 23:30 UTC) to begin the eighth full-scale test flight of SpaceX's new-generation rocket. Thirty-three Raptor engines propelled the 404-foot-tall (123.1-meter) rocket through a clear afternoon sky with more than twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket, the workhorse of the Apollo lunar program.
Repeating a feat SpaceX accomplished with Starship twice before, the rocket's Super Heavy booster separated from the Starship upper stage roughly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight, then guided itself back to the Texas coastline for a catch by mechanical arms on the launch pad's tower. SpaceX is now 3-for-3 with attempts to catch a Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, a sign that engineers are well on their way to mastering how to recover and reuse boosters in a similar way as they do with the smaller workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Β© GeneDoctorB via X
Europe's Ariane 6 rocket lifted off Thursday from French Guiana and deployed a high-resolution reconnaissance satellite into orbit for the French military, notching a success on its first operational flight.
The 184-foot-tall (56-meter) rocket lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 11:24 am EST (16:24 UTC). Twin solid-fueled boosters and a hydrogen-fueled core stage engine powered the Ariane 6 through thick clouds on an arcing trajectory north from the spaceport on South America's northeastern coast.
The rocket shed its strap-on boosters a little more than two minutes into the flight, then jettisoned its core stage nearly eight minutes after liftoff. The spent rocket parts fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The upper stage's Vinci engine ignited two times to reach a nearly circular polar orbit about 500 miles (800 kilometers) above the Earth. A little more than an hour after launch, the Ariane 6 upper stage deployed CSO-3, a sharp-eyed French military spy satellite, to begin a mission providing optical surveillance imagery to French intelligence agencies and military forces.
Β© ESA-CNES-Arianespace-P. Piron
Firefly Aerospace became the first commercial company to make a picture-perfect landing on the Moon early Sunday, touching down onΒ an ancient basaltic plain, named Mare Crisium, to fulfill a $101 million contract with NASA.
The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon's surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A few dozen engineers in Firefly's mission control room monitored real-time data streaming down from a quarter-million miles away.
"Yβall stuck the landing, weβre on the Moon!" announced Will Coogan, the lander's chief engineer, to the Firefly team gathered in Leander, Texas, a suburb north of Austin. Down the street, at a middle-of-the-night event for Firefly employees, their families, and VIPs, the crowd erupted in applause and toasted champagne.
Β© Firefly Aerospace
SpaceX plans to launch the eighth full-scale test flight of its enormous Starship rocket as soon as Monday after receiving regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The test flight will be a repeat of what SpaceX hoped to achieve on the previous Starship launch in January, when the rocket broke apart and showered debris over the Atlantic Ocean and Turks and Caicos Islands. The accident prevented SpaceX from completing many of the flight's goals, such as testing Starship's satellite deployment mechanism and new types of heat shield material.
Those things are high on the to-do list for Flight 8, set to lift off at 5:30 pm CST (6:30 pm EST; 23:30 UTC) Monday from SpaceX's Starbase launch facility on the Texas Gulf Coast. Over the weekend, SpaceX plans to mount the rocket's Starship upper stage atop the Super Heavy booster already in position on the launch pad.
Β© SpaceX
Welcome to Edition 7.33 of the Rocket Report! Phew, what a week for Rocket Lab! The company released a bevy of announcements in conjunction with its quarterly earnings report Thursday. Rocket Lab is spending a lot of money to develop the medium-liftΒ Neutron rocket, and as we'll discuss below, a rocket landing platform and a new satellite design. For now, the company is sticking by its public statements that the Neutron rocket will launch this yearβthe official line is it will debut in the second half of 2025βbut this schedule assumes near-perfect execution on the program. "Weβve always been clear that we run aggressive schedules," said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab's founder and CEO. The official schedule doesn't quite allow me to invoke a strict interpretation of Berger's Law, which states that if a rocket's debut is predicted to happen in the fourth quarter of a year, and that quarter is six or more months away, the launch will be delayed. However, the spirit of the law seems valid here. This time last year, Rocket Lab targeted a first launch by the end of 2024, an aggressive target that has come and gone.
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.
Australian startup sets a launch date. The first attempt to send an Australian-made rocket into orbit is set to take place no sooner than March 15, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. Gilmour Space Technologies' launch window announcement marks a major development for the company, which has been working toward a test launch for a decade. Gilmour previously hoped to launch its test rocket, Eris, in May 2024, but had to wait for the Australian government to issue a launch license and airspace approvals for the flight to go forward. Those are now in hand, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before liftoff.
Β© Rocket Lab
There's a scene in the film InterstellarΒ where Matthew McConaughey's character flies his spaceplane up to meet a mothership spinning out of control. The protagonist rises to the challenge with a polished piece of piloting and successfully links up with his objective.
Real life, of course, isn't quite this dramatic. Slow down that spin to a tranquil tumble, and replace McConaughey's hand on the joystick with the autonomous wits of a computer, and you'll arrive at an approximation of what Japanese company Astroscale has accomplished within the last year.
Still, it's an impressive feat of engineering and orbital dynamics. Astroscale's ADRAS-J mission became the first spacecraft (at least in the unclassified world) to approach a piece of space junk in low-Earth orbit. This particular object, a derelict upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket, has been in orbit since 2009. It's one of about 2,000 spent rocket bodies circling the Earth and one of more than 45,000 objects in orbit tracked by US Space Command.
Β© Astroscale
CEDAR PARK, TexasβEarly Sunday morning, while most of America is sleeping, a couple dozen engineers in Central Texas will have their eyes glued to monitors watching data stream in from a quarter-million miles away.
These ground controllers at Firefly Aerospace hope that their robotic spacecraft, named Blue Ghost, will become the second commercial mission to complete a soft landing on the Moon, following the landing of a spacecraft by Intuitive Machines last year. This is the first lunar mission for Firefly Aerospace, a company established in 2014 to develop a small satellite launcher.
Since then, Firefly has undergone changes in ownership, a bankruptcy, and a renaming. Recognizing that the company had to diversify to survive, Firefly executives began pursuing other business opportunitiesβspacecraft manufacturing, lunar missions, and a medium-class rocketβto go alongside its small Alpha launch vehicle.
Β© Firefly Aerospace
Isar Aerospace, a German startup founded seven years ago, is positioned to become the first in a new generation of European launch companies to reach orbit with a privately funded rocket.
The company announced Friday that the first stage of its Spectrum rocket recently completed a 30-second test-firing on a launch pad in the northernmost reaches of mainland Europe. The nine-engine booster ignited on a launch pad at AndΓΈya Spaceport in Norway on February 14.
The milestone follows a similar test-firing of the Spectrum rocket's second stage last year. With these two accomplishments, Isar Aerospace says its launch vehicle is qualified for flight.
Β© Isar Aerospace
Welcome to Edition 7.32 of the Rocket Report! It's true that the US space program has always been political. Domestic and global politics have driven nearly all of the US government's decisions on major space issues, most notably President John F. Kennedy's challenge to land astronauts on the Moon amid intense Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. The Nixon administration's decision to end the Apollo program and focus on building a reusable Space Shuttle was a political move. More than 30 years later, the Clinton administration ordered a reevaluation NASA's plans for a massive space station in low-Earth orbit. In the post-Cold War zeitgeist of the 1990s, this resulted in Russia's inclusion in the International Space Station program. Flawed or not, these decisions were backstopped with some level of reasoning, debate, and national consensus-building. Today, the politics of space seem personal, small, and mean-spirited. Thankfully, there's a lot of launch action next week that might thrust us out of the abyss, even just for a moment.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Rocket Lab launches for the 60th time.Β It's safe to say Rocket Lab is an established player in the launch business. The company launched its 60th Electron rocket Tuesday from New Zealand, Space News reports. It was the second Electron launch of the year, coming just 10 days after Rocket Lab's previous mission. The payload was a new-generation small electro-optical reconnaissance satellite for BlackSky. Rocket Lab has not disclosed a projected number of Electron launches for the year beyond estimating it will be more than the 16 Electron missions in 2024. The company said on its launch webcast that the next Electron launch was planned from New Zealand in "a few short weeks."
Β© SpaceX
Last October, United Launch Alliance started stacking its third Vulcan rocket on a mobile launch platform in Florida in preparation for a mission for the US Space Force by the end of the year.
That didn't happen, and ULA is still awaiting the Space Force's formal certification of its new rocket, further pushing out delivery schedules for numerous military satellites booked to fly to orbit on the Vulcan launcher.
Now, several months after stacking the next Vulcan rocket, ULA has started taking it apart. First reported by Spaceflight Now, the "de-stacking" will clear ULA's vertical hangar for assembly of an Atlas V rocketβthe Vulcan's predecessorβto launch the first batch of operational satellites for Amazon's Kuiper Internet constellation.
Β© United Launch Alliance
Welcome to Edition 7.30 of the Rocket Report! The US government relies on SpaceX for a lot of missions. These include launching national security satellites, putting astronauts on the Moon, and global broadband communications. But there are hurdlesβtechnical and, increasingly, politicalβon the road ahead. To put it generously, Elon Musk, without whom much of what SpaceX does wouldn't be possible, is one of the most divisive figures in American life today.
Now, a Democratic lawmaker in Congress has introduced a bill that would end federal contracts for special government employees (like Musk), citing conflict-of-interest concerns. The bill will go nowhere with Republicans in control of Congress, but it is enough to make me pause and think. When the Trump era passes and a new administration takes the White House, how will they view Musk? Will there be an appetite to reduce the government's reliance on SpaceX? To answer this question, you must first ask if the government will even have a choice. What if, as is the case in many areas today, there's no viable replacement for the services offered by SpaceX?
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.
Β© SpaceX
Something in the sky captured the attention of astronomers in the final days of 2024. A telescope in Chile scanning the night sky detected a faint point of light, and it didn't correspond to any of the thousands of known stars, comets, and asteroids in astronomers' all-sky catalog.
The detection on December 27 came from one of a network of telescopes managed by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a NASA-funded project to provide warning of asteroids on a collision course with Earth.
Within a few days, scientists gathered enough information on the asteroidβofficially designated 2024 YR4βto determine that its orbit will bring it quite close to Earth in 2028, and then again in 2032. Astronomers ruled out any chance of an impact with Earth in 2028, but there's a small chance the asteroid might hit our planet on December 22, 2032.
Β© ATLAS
Boeing announced Monday it lost $523 million on the Starliner crew capsule program last year, putting the aerospace company $2 billion in the red on its NASA commercial crew contract since late 2019.
The updated numbers are included in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Risk remains that we may record additional losses in future periods," Boeing wrote in the filing.
In 2014, NASA picked Boeing and SpaceX to develop and certify two commercial crew transporter vehicles. Like SpaceX, Boeing's contract, now worth up to $4.6 billion, is structured as a fixed-price deal, meaning the contractor is on the hook to pay for cost overruns that go over NASA's financial commitment.
Β© Photo by Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty Images
The seventh test flight of SpaceX's gigantic Starship rocket came to a disappointing end a little more than two weeks ago. The in-flight failure of the rocket's upper stage, or ship, about eight minutes after launch on January 16 rained debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Atlantic Ocean.
Amateur videos recorded from land, sea, and air showed fiery debris trails streaming overhead at twilight, appearing like a fireworks display gone wrong. Within hours, posts on social media showed small pieces of debris recovered by residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos. Most of these items were modest in size, and many appeared to be chunks of tiles from Starship's heat shield.
Unsurprisingly, the Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship and ordered an investigation into the accident on the day after the launch. This decision came three days before the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Elon Musk's close relationship with Trump, coupled with the new administration's appetite for cutting regulations and reducing the size of government, led some industry watchers to question whether Musk's influence might change the FAA's stance on SpaceX.
Β© SpaceX
One of the new Trump administration's first national security directives aims to defend against missile and drone attacks targeting the United States, and several elements of the plan require an expansion of the US military's presence in space, the White House announced Monday.
For more than 60 years, the military has launched reconnaissance, communications, and missile warning satellites into orbit. Trump's executive order calls for the Pentagon to come up with a design architecture, requirements, and an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield within 60 days.
A key tenet of Trump's order is to develop and deploy space-based interceptors capable of destroying enemy missiles during their initial boost phase shortly after launch.
Β© Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Welcome to Edition 7.28 of the Rocket Report! After last week's jam-packed action in the launch business, things are a bit quieter this week. Much of the space world's attention has turned to Washington as the Trump administration takes the helm of the federal government. Some of the administration's policy changes will likely impact the launch industry, with commercial spaceflight poised to become a beneficiary of actions over the next four years. As for the specifics, Ars has reported that NASA is expected to review the future of the Space Launch System rocket. Investments in the military space program could bring in more business for launch companies. And regulatory changes may reduce government oversight of commercial spaceflight.
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.
What happened to China's reusable rocket testbed? A Chinese state-owned company performed a rocket flight on January 18 (US time) aimed at testing reusable launch vehicle technology without announcing the outcome, Space News reports. The Longxing-2 test article lifted off from a makeshift launch area near Haiyang, Shandong province. The methane-fueled rocket was expected to fly to an altitude of 75 kilometers (about 246,000 feet) before performing a reentry burn and a landing burn to guide itself to a controlled splashdown in the Yellow Sea, replicating the maneuvers required to recover a reusable booster like the first stage of SpaceX's Falcon 9. This was China's most ambitious reusable rocket demonstration flight to date.
Β© Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
SpaceX launched an upgraded version of its massive Starship rocket from South Texas on Thursday, but the flight ended less than nine minutes later after engineers lost contact with the spacecraft.
For a few moments, SpaceX officials discussing the launch on the company's live webcast were unsure of the outcome of the test flight. However, within minutes, residents and tourists in the Turks and Caicos Islands, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico shared videos showing a shower of debris falling through the atmosphere along Starship's expected flight corridor.
The videos confirmed Starshipβthe rocket's upper stageβbroke apart in space, or experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" in SpaceX-speak. This happened well short of the spacecraft's planned trajectory, which would have seen it fly halfway around the world and splash down in the Indian Ocean after more than an hour of flight.
Β© Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
SpaceX plans to launch the seventh full-scale test flight of its massive Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket Thursday afternoon. It's the first of what might be a dozen or more demonstration flights this year as SpaceX tries new things with the most powerful rocket ever built.
There are many things on SpaceX's Starship to-do list in 2025. They include debuting an upgraded, larger Starship, known as Version 2 or Block 2, on the test flight preparing to launch Thursday. The one-hour launch window opens at 5 pm EST (4 pm CST; 22:00 UTC) at SpaceX's launch base in South Texas. You can watch SpaceX's live webcast of the flight here.
SpaceX will again attempt to catch the rocket's Super Heavy boosterβmore than 20 stories tall and wider than a jumbo jetβback at the launch pad using mechanical arms, or "chopsticks," mounted to the launch tower. Read more about the Starship Block 2 upgrades in our story from last week.
Β© SpaceX
