Enlarge / RFA's first stage during a four-engine test-firing in May. (credit: Rocket Factory Augsburg)

The first stage of Rocket Factory Augsburg's first orbital launcher was destroyed in a fireball during a test-firing Monday evening at a spaceport in Scotland, the company said.

The German launch startup aimed to send its first rocket into space later this year and appeared to be running ahead of several competitors in Europe's commercial launch industry that are also developing rockets to deploy small satellites in orbit.

Within the last few months, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) delivered all three stages of its first rocket, named RFA One, to its launch site at SaxaVord Spaceport, located on Unst, one of the Shetland Islands and the northernmost inhabited island in the United Kingdom. The company is based in Augsburg, Germany.

Enlarge / The two spacecraft for NASA's ESCAPADE mission at Rocket Lab's factory in Long Beach, California. (credit: Rocket Lab)

Two NASA spacecraft built by Rocket Lab are on the road from California to Florida this weekend to begin preparations for launch on Blue Origin's first New Glenn rocket.

These two science probes must launch between late September and mid-October to take advantage of a planetary alignment between Earth and Mars that only happens once every 26 months. NASA tapped Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company, to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission with a $20 million contract.

Last November, the space agency confirmed the $79 million ESCAPADE mission will launch on the inaugural flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket. With this piece of information, the opaque schedule for Blue Origin's long-delayed first New Glenn mission suddenly became more clear.

Welcome to Edition 7.05 of the Rocket Report! The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for 15 days after a rare failure of its upper stage earlier this month. The FAA gave the green light for Falcon 9 to return to flight July 25, and within a couple of days, SpaceX successfully launched three missions from three launch pads. There's a lot on Falcon 9's to-do list, so we expect SpaceX to quickly return to form with several flights per week.

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.

Big delay for a reusable rocket testbed. The French space agency, CNES, has revealed that the inaugural test flight of its Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator will not take place until late 2025 or early 2026, European Spaceflight reports. CNES unveiled an updated website for the Callisto rocket program earlier this month, showing the test rocket has been delayed from a debut launch later this year to until late 2025 or early 2026. The Callisto rocket is designed to test techniques and technologies required for reusable rockets, such as vertical takeoff and vertical landing, with suborbital flights from the Guiana Space Center in South America.

Enlarge / Astroscale's ADRAS-J spacecraft captured these views of the H-IIA rocket upper stage on July 15. (credit: Astroscale)

There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet.

In February, a Japanese company named Astroscale sent a small satellite into low-Earth orbit on top of a Rocket Lab launcher. A couple of months later, Astroscale's ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) spacecraft completed its pursuit of a Japanese rocket stuck in orbit for more than 15 years.

ADRAS-J photographed the upper stage of an H-IIA rocket from a range of several hundred meters and then backed away. This was the first publicly released image of space debris captured from another spacecraft using rendezvous and proximity operations.

Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft sits on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

NASA and Boeing officials are ready for a second attempt to launch the first crew test flight on the Starliner spacecraft Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Liftoff of Boeing's Starliner capsuled atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is set for 12:25 pm EDT (16:25 UTC). NASA commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, both veteran astronauts, will take the Starliner spacecraft on its first trip into low-Earth orbit with a crew on board.

The first crew flight on a new spacecraft is not an everyday event. Starliner is the sixth orbital-class crew spacecraft in the history of the US space program, following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttle, and SpaceX's Crew Dragon. NASA signed a $4.2 billion contract with Boeing in 2014 to develop Starliner, but the project is running years behind schedule and has cost Boeing nearly $1.5 billion in cost overruns. SpaceX, meanwhile, won a contract at the same time as Boeing and started launching astronauts on the Crew Dragon four years ago this week.

Enlarge / A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China's Shandong province. (credit: VCG via Getty Images)

Welcome to Edition 6.46 of the Rocket Report! It looks like we will be covering the crew test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX keeps up its cadence of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors helping make sure our stories don't use the wrong names.

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

Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea's latest attempt to launch a rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure due to the midair explosion of the rocket during the first-stage flight this week, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports. Video captured by the Japanese news organization NHK appears to show the North Korean rocket disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country's northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite named Malligyong-1-1.

Enlarge / On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 6.44 of the Rocket Report! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX's Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It looks like this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two-and-a-half months after the previous Starship test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.

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

Blue Origin launch on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will launch six passengers on a flight to suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) over West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company, has not flown people to space since a New Shepard rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.

Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket lifts off on the Artemis I mission. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

NASA is looking for ways to get rock samples back from Mars for less than the $11 billion the agency would need under its own plan, so last month, officials put out a call to industry to propose ideas.

Boeing is the first company to release details about how it would attempt a Mars Sample Return mission. Its study involves a single flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the super heavy-lift launcher designed to send astronauts to the Moon on NASA's Artemis missions.

Jim Green, NASA's former chief scientist and longtime head of the agency's planetary science division, presented Boeing's concept Wednesday at the Humans to Mars summit, an annual event sponsored primarily by traditional space companies. Boeing is the lead contractor for the SLS core stage and upper stage and has pitched the SLS, primarily a crew launch vehicle, as a rocket for military satellites and deep space probes.

Enlarge / This image captured by Astroscale's ADRAS-J satellite shows the discarded upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. (credit: Astroscale)

Welcome to Edition 6.42 of the Rocket Report! Several major missions are set for launch in the next few months. These include the first crew flight on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, set for liftoff on May 6, and the next test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket, which could happen before the end of May. Perhaps as soon as early summer, SpaceX could launch the Polaris Dawn mission with four private astronauts, who will perform the first fully commercial spacewalk in orbit. In June or July, Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket is slated to launch for the first time. Rest assured, Ars will have it all covered.

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

German rocket arrives at Scottish spaceport. Rocket Factory Augsburg has delivered a booster for its privately developed RFA One rocket to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, the company announced on X. The first stage for the RFA One rocket was installed on its launch pad at SaxaVord to undergo preparations for a static fire test. The booster arrived at the Scottish launch site with five of its kerosene-fueled Helix engines. The remaining four Helix engines, for a total of nine, will be fitted to the RFA One booster at SaxaVord, the company said.

Enlarge / In March 2021, the International Space Station's robotic arm released a cargo pallet with nine expended batteries. (credit: NASA)

A bundle of depleted batteries from the International Space Station careened around Earth for almost three years before falling out of orbit and plunging back into the atmosphere Friday. Most of the trash likely burned up during reentry, but it's possible some fragments may have reached Earth's surface intact.

Larger pieces of space junk regularly fall to Earth on unguided trajectories, but they're usually derelict satellites or spent rocket stages. This involved a pallet of batteries from the space station with a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds). NASA intentionally sent the space junk on a path toward an unguided reentry.

Naturally self-cleaning

Sandra Jones, a NASA spokesperson, said the agency "conducted a thorough debris analysis assessment on the pallet and has determined it will harmlessly reenter the Earth’s atmosphere." This was, by far, the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station.

Enlarge / This satellite view of SpaceX's Starbase facility shows a fully-stacked Starship rocket on the launch pad, just inland from the Gulf of Mexico. (credit: Maxar)

Welcome to Edition 6.34 of the Rocket Report! It's Starship season again. Yes, SpaceX appears to be about a week away from launching the third full-scale Starship test flight from the company's Starbase site in South Texas, pending final regulatory approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. Ars will be there. SpaceX plans to build a second Starship launch pad at Starbase, and the company's footprint there is also about to get a little bigger, with the expected acquisition of 43 acres of Texas state park land.

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

Astra's founders take the company private. Astra's three-year run as a public company is over. Chris Kemp and Adam London, Astra's co-founders, are taking the company private after a string of rocket failures and funding shortfalls, Ars reports. Kemp and London bought the company for 50 cents a share. Astra's board approved the transaction, the company announced Thursday, as the only alternative to bankruptcy. Kemp and London founded Astra in 2016. After emerging from stealth mode in 2020, Astra launched its light-class launcher, called Rocket 3, seven times, but five of those flights were failures. Astra went public via a special purpose acquisition company (or SPAC) in 2021, reaching a valuation of more than $2 billion. Today, its market cap sits at approximately $13 million.

Enlarge / Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity rocket plane ignites its rocket motor moments after release from a jet-powered carrier aircraft high above New Mexico. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

Last year, Virgin Galactic seemed to finally be hitting a stride toward making commercial suborbital spaceflight. The company flew its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane to the edge of space six times in six months, giving a few Virgin Galactic customers a taste of spaceflight after waiting more than a decade.

Finally, it appeared that Virgin Galactic turned a corner, moving past the setbacks and course corrections that delayed founder Sir Richard Branson's aim of bringing spaceflight to a wider population. Virgin Galactic officials wouldn't describe the company's next step as a setback or a course correction. It's part of an intentional business strategy to make Branson's dream a reality.

"That dream behind Virgin Galactic came into sharp focus as we repeatedly flew spaceship Unity in 2023," said Michael Colglazier, Virgin Galactic's president and CEO, in a quarterly earnings call this week. "Now, in 2024, we're poised for even more meaningful accomplishments as we build the fleet of spaceships that will turn the dream into reality and long-term success."

Enlarge / Space Perspective's first test capsule, Excelsior, has a diameter of approximately 16 feet (4.9 meters). (credit: Space Perspective)

Space Perspective could begin test flights of its privately owned capsule suspended under a high-altitude balloon within the next couple of months, the company's co-founder told Ars this week.

Florida-based Space Perspective released photos of its first completed test capsule Tuesday. The company will use this pressurized capsule, called Excelsior, for a series of test flights this year over the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Cape Canaveral. Taber MacCallum, Space Perspective's co-founder and chief technology officer, said employees have also finished fabricating the giant balloon that will lift the test capsule into the upper atmosphere for the first test flight.

The final piece of the puzzle is a ship, named Marine Spaceport Voyager, that Space Perspective will use to launch the balloon and capsule. This vessel is due to depart an outfitting facility in Louisiana in the next few weeks for a trip to Port Canaveral, Florida, where Space Perspective will load aboard the capsule and balloon. Then, perhaps in four to six weeks, ground teams will be ready for the system's first test flight, according to MacCallum.

Enlarge / This artist's illustration released by Astroscale shows the ADRAS-J spacecraft (left) approaching the defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. (credit: Astroscale)

Astroscale, a well-capitalized Japanese startup, is preparing a small satellite to do something that has never been done in space.

This new spacecraft, delivered into orbit Sunday by Rocket Lab, will approach a defunct upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket that has been circling Earth for more than 15 years. Over the next few months, the satellite will try to move within arm's reach of the rocket, taking pictures and performing complicated maneuvers to move around the bus-size H-IIA upper stage as it moves around the planet at nearly 5 miles per second (7.6 km/s).

These maneuvers are complex, but they're nothing new for spacecraft visiting the International Space Station. Military satellites from the United States, Russia, and China also have capabilities for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), but as far as we know, these spacecraft have only maneuvered in ultra-close range around so-called "cooperative" objects designed to receive them.