Enlarge / The Ariane 5 has been a workhorse since 1996 for the European Space Agency. (credit: ESA/Arianespace)

The Ariane 5 rocket has had a long run, with nearly three decades of service launching satellites and spacecraft. Over that time, the iconic rocket, with a liquid hydrogen-fueled core stage and solid rocket boosters, has come to symbolize Europe's guaranteed access to space.

But now, the road is ending for the Ariane 5. As soon as Tuesday evening, the final Ariane 5 rocket will lift off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. A 90-minute launch window opens at 5:30 pm ET (21:30 UTC). The launch will be webcast on ESA TV.

And after this? Europe's space agency faces some difficult questions.

Enlarge / An image of the Centaur V anomaly that occurred on March 29 during testing of the Vulcan rocket's upper stage at Marshall Space Flight Center. (credit: Anonymous source)

10:30 pm ET Update: Several hours after this article was published, Ars obtained a still image of the Centaur V anomaly that occurred on March 29 during testing of the Vulcan rocket's upper stage. The photo shows the anomaly—a fireball of hydrogen igniting—to the left of Blue Origin's rocket engine test stand.

After the author posted this photo on Twitter, United Launch Alliance chief executive Tory Bruno offered a more detailed assessment of the anomaly. "Most of what you’re seeing is insulation and smaller bits from the test rig. One piece of the hydrogen tank’s dome, about a foot square, ended up a few feet away. The test article is still inside the rig and largely intact, which will significantly help with the investigation", Bruno said via Twitter.

Original post: On the evening of March 29, at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, United Launch Alliance started pressurizing the upper stage of its new Vulcan rocket. But then, suddenly, something went wrong with this Centaur upper stage.

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, without its payload, rolls to the launch pad for tests on March 9, 2023. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

The long-awaited debut of a winged space plane will have to wait a little longer. This week NASA updated its internal schedule to show that Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spacecraft will now berth to the International Space Station no earlier than December 17, 2023.

Previously, Sierra Space had been publicly targeting a launch of Dream Chaser in August, on board United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan rocket.

In a statement to Ars, Sierra Space confirmed the delay. "Sierra Space’s plan is to complete the first launch of Dream Chaser by the end of the fourth quarter this year," the company said.

Enlarge / Japan's next generation "H3" rocket, carrying the advanced optical satellite "Daichi 3", leaves the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan on March 7, 2023. (credit: STR/JIJI Press/AFP via Getty Images)

Welcome to Edition 5.29 of the Rocket Report! It was a big week for new rockets, with the failure of Japan's new H3 booster and then the near-launch of Relativity Space's Terran 1. Speaking of the H3, I guess I didn't quite realize that Japan put a satellite valued at more than a quarter of a billion dollars on the debut flight of the rocket. That was, umm, bold.

Please note: There will no newsletter next week because I'll be enjoying a Spring Break respite with my family

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.

Enlarge / The H3 rocket launches from Tanegashima, Japan, on Tuesday. (credit: JAXA)

The launch of Japan's H3 rocket on Tuesday morning, local time in Tanegashima, failed after the vehicle's second-stage engine did not ignite.

In a terse statement on the failure, Japanese space agency JAXA said, "A destruct command has been transmitted to H3 around 10:52 am (Japan Standard Time), because there was no possibility of achieving the mission. We are confirming the situation."

The Japanese space agency, in concert with the rocket's manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, has spent about $1.5 billion developing the H3 rocket over the last decade. Much of the challenge in building the new rocket involved development of a new LE-9 engine, which is fueled by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, to power the first stage. This appeared to perform flawlessly. The second-stage engine that failed, the LE-5B, was a more established engine.

Enlarge / Astra's Rocket 3.1 takes off on September 11, 2020. It failed 30 seconds into flight. (credit: Astra/John Kraus)

One of the most honest moments in a new book, When the Heavens Went on Sale, comes during a discussion between two aerospace technicians working at the rocket company Astra in December 2018. On a Sunday, Les Martin and Matt Flanagan were watching football inside an RV parked at Astra's facilities near Oakland, California.

Martin in particular had a lot of experience at launch companies, having worked primarily on test stands for SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Firefly Space, and now Astra. The two were discussing the challenges of the launch industry and musing about how any company ever made money launching rockets.

Martin: The challenge is to get there before you run out of money.

Flanagan: Right.

Martin: Because it doesn't take long. I mean, you raise a little money, you can run through it quick. All the money that is being dumped into this is absurd. There's some charlatans in this business for sure. And what's it all for? I don't see the need for all of it. It doesn't make sense. These VCs made their money in software or whatever. And you know, they just love space. I think a lot of it is it's just cool for them to invest their money in this.

Even with us, the whole goal is for us to launch daily. I'm either going to be dead in the ground before that happens or I'll be walking down the street with money falling out of my pockets and won't care that they're launching daily.

Spoiler alert: Astra is not launching daily. In fact, after five failures in seven orbital launch attempts of its Rocket 3 vehicle, the company binned that design. Martin and Flanagan have both been gone from Astra for nearly three years. In hindsight, the exchange offers a succinct and largely accurate summary of the US commercial launch industry's wild ride during the last decade or so. Billions have been invested. We have heard wildly optimistic predictions for launch cadences—such as Astra's preposterous goal of launching daily. Behind it all has been a crap-ton of hard work, sacrifice, and effort, with relatively little to show for it.

Enlarge / A Falcon Heavy rocket launches the USSF-67 mission for the US Space Force in January 2023. (credit: SpaceX)

The US military recently released a rather mundane-sounding document titled "National Security Space Launch Phase 3 DRAFT Request for Proposals #1." That may be a mouthful of jargon, but it's still a rather consequential document. Effectively, its release is the starting gun for the next round of launch contracts for US spy satellites, secure communications satellites, and more.

There is a pile of money at stake. Up for grabs are launch contracts worth billions of dollars—substantially more than $10 billion—as the military seeks to secure launch deals for the late 2020s and early 2030s. The document itself is pretty bland, but in a follow-up teleconference with reporters, two US colonels overseeing space acquisition, Douglas Pentecost and Chad Melone, provided a trove of information.

Wait! I know this sounds dreadfully boring, but it's really not. Based on the document and this hour-long call, it's possible to get a good sense of where the US military believes the country's launch industry is headed. And that matters because in many cases, the contracts offered by the military can make or break launch companies. For example, after the last round of bidding for national security launches ended, Northrop Grumman ended its efforts to develop the Omega rocket.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launched a Starlink mission near sunset on Tuesday, and yeah, the result was gorgeous. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 5.28 of the Rocket Report! We have had a big week for news about United Launch Alliance. All three items in the "Heavy Rockets" section concern the company, which may only be two months away from the much-anticipated debut of its Vulcan booster. Let's go!

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.

Rocket Lab may abandon helicopter recoveries. In comments during a February 28 earnings call, Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said the company was weighing recovering stages from the ocean and refurbishing them for launch rather than catching a stage with a helicopter, Space News reports. During a second "catch" attempt last November, Rocket Lab called off the helicopter's approach because of a momentary loss of telemetry from the booster. The company instead allowed the stage to splash down in the ocean, where a boat recovered it and returned it to Rocket Lab’s facilities.

Enlarge / India's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle takes flight on Feb. 10 2023. (credit: ISRO)

Welcome to Edition 5.26 of the Rocket Report! This week, I would like to congratulate the Indian space agency ISRO on the successful second flight of the SSLV rocket, which adds a new micro-launch capability to the nation's growing fleet of rockets. This is a difficult business, and success should definitely be celebrated when it is finally attained.

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.

India's SSLV soars on second launch. The second test flight of India’s Small Satellite Launch Vehicle was successful last Friday, delivering Indian and US-owned payloads into orbit, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission followed the first SSLV test flight in August, which failed during separation of the second stage about six minutes after liftoff, when vibrations threw off the vehicle’s inertial navigation system.

Enlarge / A Progress spacecraft is seen departing the space station earlier this month. (credit: NASA)

Russia's state-owned space corporation, Roscosmos, reported Saturday that a Progress supply ship attached to the International Space Station has lost pressure in its external cooling system.

In its statement, Roscosmos said there was no threat to the seven crew members on board the orbiting laboratory. NASA, too, said the hatch between the Progress MS-21 vehicle and the space station was open. Notably, the incident with the supply ship came within hours of the safe docking of another Progress ship, MS-22, which is in good health.

Although the initial Roscosmos statement was vague about the depressurization event, Dmitry Strugovets, a former head of space agency Roscosmos' press service, later clarified it was a coolant leak. "All of the coolant has leaked out," he said via Telegram.

Enlarge / A view of the business end of SpaceX's Super Heavy rocket. (credit: SpaceX)

Update, 4:45 pm ET: Well, they did it.

At around 3:15 pm local time in South Texas, SpaceX ignited its Super Heavy rocket for a "full duration" test of its Raptor engines. According to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the launch team turned off one engine just prior to ignition, and another stopped itself. Still, he said 31 of 33 engines would have provided enough thrust to reach orbit. This is a huge milestone for SpaceX that potentially puts the company on track for an orbital test flight during the second half of March or possibly early April.

This is the most engines ignited on a rocket ever. The thrust output of these engines, too, was likely nearly double that of NASA's Saturn 5 rocket or Space Launch System. The good news for SpaceX is that, at least from early views, the launch infrastructure in South Texas looked mostly unscathed.

Enlarge / Map of major earthquakes and aftershocks in Turkey on Monday. (credit: US Geological Survey)

A major earthquake and a series of strong aftershocks shook Southern Turkey and other parts of the Middle East on Monday. The most powerful of these registered 7.8 magnitude, placing it among the five most powerful earthquakes recorded during the 21st century in the world.

This first earthquake, at 4:17 am local time in Turkey (Sunday evening in the United States), was followed later in the day by another powerful temblor hundreds of kilometers away, at magnitude 7.5, as well as additional aftershocks. These earthquakes appeared to be occurring along the East Anatolian Fault, which divides the Eurasian tectonic plate to the north from the Anatolian plate to the south.

Earthquakes of this magnitude produce violent shaking of the ground and landslides and can level buildings. They are terrifying and deadly events for people living nearby. Early death counts, as of Monday, had already exceeded 1,600 people, The New York Times reports.

Enlarge / Stratospheric weather balloons are released every day, such as this one from the Technical University of Munich in 2021. The Chinese balloon is likely much larger and more sophisticated. (credit: Tobias Hase/picture alliance via Getty Images)

On Thursday, US officials confirmed that a high-altitude balloon, launched days ago by the Chinese government, has been flying over the northern United States. This has since become an international incident and led the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to delay a high-profile visit to China to meet with the nation's president, Xi Jinping.

The balloon's flight raises several questions—such as, just what the heck is it doing there? This story will address what is known and not known about the flight. The information below is based on public statements, other news reports, and an interview with a stratospheric balloon expert, Andrew Antonio, whose company, Urban Sky, is developing the world’s first reusable stratospheric balloons for remote sensing.

How big is the balloon?

Enlarge / Vulcan's core stage is lifted into a processing facility at Cape Canaveral, Fla., in January. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

The large Vulcan rocket, which has received dozens of launch orders from the US Department of Defense and Amazon for its Project Kuiper megaconstellation, is due to make its debut at some point this year. But when?

In response to a query from Ars, a spokesperson from the rocket's primary customer, Astrobotic, said the mission is targeted for a launch during the first quarter of 2023, i.e., before the end of March. A spokesperson for Vulcan's manufacturer, United Launch Alliance, did not specify a time frame, saying a launch date would only be set after additional testing was completed.

While there is no official launch date, some interesting clues have turned up in the last week or two, and it's therefore possible to make an educated guess. With much work left to do before the heavy-lift rocket takes flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a reasonable target for a no-earlier launch date is May 2023.

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken (foreground) work on Crew Dragon's touchscreen displays. (credit: NASA)

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday will bestow the Congressional Space Medal of Honor on Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken. The former NASA astronauts launched on the debut flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft in May 2020.

Hurley, the spacecraft commander, and Behnken, its pilot, will receive the medal for "bravery" exhibited during the Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station. Their debut mission was a complete success, and since this pioneering flight, NASA has flown five operational missions on board Crew Dragon, along with two private spaceflights.

An operational Crew Dragon has provided NASA with its sole means of reaching the space station aside from the Russian Soyuz vehicle—saving the space agency from the embarrassment of relying on Russia for this transport amid escalating tensions surrounding the war in Ukraine.

Enlarge / United Launch Alliance hoists its Vulcan Cert-1 booster into the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 5.23 of the Rocket Report! This has been a really fun week for US rockets: Electron made a smashing debut in a launch from Virginia, Vulcan went vertical in Florida, and Starship passed a key test en route to its first orbital launch. I'm looking forward to more great leaps in launch later this year.

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.

Rocket Lab makes successful US debut. For years, the Electron rocket and the company behind it had been stuck in limbo at the Virginia launch site, waiting on various approvals—for regulatory agencies to share enough paperwork with each other to convince everyone that the launch was safe. Then weather and the end-of-year holidays kept pushing the launch back. But on Tuesday, everything went as smoothly as it is possible to imagine, and the Electron shot to orbit almost as soon as the launch window opened, Ars reports.

Enlarge / Artist concept of Demonstration for Rocket to Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) spacecraft. (credit: DARPA)

Nearly three years ago, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced its intent to develop a flyable nuclear thermal propulsion system. The goal was to develop more responsive control of spacecraft in Earth orbit, lunar orbit, and everywhere in between, giving the military greater operational freedom in these domains.

The military agency called this program a Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO for short. The program consists of the development of two things: a nuclear fission reactor and a spacecraft to fly it. In 2021, DARPA awarded $22 million to General Atomics for the reactor and gave small grants of $2.9 million to Lockheed Martin and $2.5 million to Blue Origin for the spacecraft system.

At the same time, NASA was coming to realize that if it were really serious about sending humans to Mars one day, it would be good to have a faster and more fuel-efficient means of getting there. An influential report published in 2021 concluded that the space agency's only realistic path to putting humans on Mars in the coming decades was using nuclear propulsion.

Enlarge / A fully stacked Starship launch system is seen on January 9, 2023. (credit: SpaceX)

After months of preparation, SpaceX is now approaching the critical test phase of its launch campaign for the massive Starship vehicle.

The company has evacuated nearby residents from the launch site in South Texas, near Boca Chica Beach, during the hours of 8 am CT (14:00 UTC) to 8 pm CT on Monday. If preparatory activities go well, the company will load both the Starship upper stage and Super Heavy booster with cryogenic methane and oxygen later today. The countdown will proceed toward liftoff but end just before the transfer of internal power to the launch vehicle.

There will be no engine ignition today. However, the upper stage of this vehicle, Ship 24, previously underwent a successful static fire test of its six Raptor rocket engines on September 8, 2022. The first stage, Booster 7, has seen as many as 14 of its 33 Raptor engines test fired during activity in November.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches on Wednesday morning carrying a GPS III satellite into orbit. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

Welcome to Edition 5.24 of the Rocket Report! I have a blurb about this below, but for me the news of the week is that SpaceX not only launched a Falcon Heavy rocket, but two other Falcon 9 missions on separate coasts as well in just five days. The operational challenges of this are immense and, I think, underappreciated outside of people directly involved in this kind of work.

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.

ABL updates on RS1 failure. On Wednesday ABL Space Systems provided an update on the January 10 failure of its RS1 launch vehicle. Long story short, the first stage of the vehicle suffered a "complete loss of power" at 10.87 seconds into flight, leading to a simultaneous shutdown of all nine of the vehicle's main engines. The rocket impacted the ground about 20 meters from the launch site. "Approximately 95 percent of the vehicle total propellant mass was still onboard, creating an energetic explosion and over-pressure wave that caused damage to nearby equipment and facilities," the company said.

Enlarge / Sir Richard Branson took to the sky in the summer of 2021. But since then, with no additional spaceflights, Virgin Galactic's stock has taken a nose dive. (credit: Virgin Galactic)

Private investment in the space sector declined by 58 percent in the year 2022, according to a new Space Investment Quarterly report from the firm Space Capital.

The $20.1 billion in private market equity investment last year is the lowest annual total since 2015, said Chad Anderson, the founder and managing partner of Space Capital. While early stage investments were largely unchanged, the large decline came in late- and growth-stage companies.

The report cites several factors for the pullback, including the fastest interest rate hike cycle since 1988, a challenging investment environment, and a continued economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.