Rocket Report: A blue mood at Blue; Stoke Space fires a shot over the bow

"Rapid turnaround isn’t merely a goal, it’s baked into the design."

Welcome to Edition 7.31 of the Rocket Report! The unfortunate news this week concerns layoffs. Blue Origin announced a 10 percent cut in its workforce as the company aims to get closer to breaking even. More broadly in the space industry, there is unease about what the Trump administration's cuts to NASA and other federal agencies might mean.

We don't have all the answers, but it does seem that NASA is likely to be subject to less deep cuts than some other parts of the government. We should find out sometime in March when the Trump White House submits its initial budget request. Congress, of course, will have the final say.

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.

PLD Space continues to grow. The Spain-based launch company said this week that it now has more than 300 employees as it works toward an orbital launch attempt. "In this race for space supremacy, the amount of capital raised and the talent gathered have become key indicators of a company's potential for success," the company said. "While capital acts as the fuel for these ambitious initiatives, the talent behind it is the catalyst that drives them."

Working to reach orbit ... The average age of employees at PLD Space is 34, and the company is hiring 15 people a month as it works to develop the Miura 5 rocket. It's unclear which of the commercial launch startups in Europe will succeed, but PLD Space has a decent chance to be among them. With luck, the Miura 5 launch vehicle will make its debut sometime in 2026.

Will NASA launch on a Transporter mission? NASA announced this week that it has selected SpaceX to launch a small exoplanet science mission as a rideshare payload as soon as September, Space News reports. The task order to launch the Pandora mission was made through the Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare launch services contract, intended for small missions with higher acceptance of risk.

Could fly on a Falcon 9 ... Pandora is an ESPA Grande-class spacecraft, a category that includes spacecraft weighing up to 320 kilograms, and is designed to operate in a Sun-synchronous orbit. That suggests Pandora could launch on SpaceX’s Transporter series of dedicated rideshare missions that send payloads to such orbits, but neither NASA nor SpaceX disclosed specifics. The NASA announcement also did not disclose the value of the task order to SpaceX.

Stoke Space dishes on Andromeda upper stage. The Washington-based launch company has revealed the name of its Nova rocket's upper stage, Andromeda, and provided some new details about the design. Andromeda will incorporate hot staging, Stoke says, and will use fewer but larger thrusters—24 instead of 30. The upper stage is now mounted on Stoke's test stand in Moses Lake, Washington, the company said.

Hot staging, hot talk ... The new design is focused on rapid reusability, with easier access and serviceability to components of the engines and heat shield. "These changes further reduce complexity and allow the entire engine to be serviced—or even replaced—within hours or minutes. Rapid turnaround isn’t merely a goal, it’s baked into the design," the company said. The upper stage will also incorporate "hot staging" to improve the capacity to orbit. You've got to appreciate the subtle dig at SpaceX's Starship program, too: the design allows for hot staging "without the need for a heavy one-time-use interstage shield to protect Stage 1." Shots fired!

European space commissioner worried about launch. During a keynote address at the Perspectives Spatiales 2025 event in Paris, European Commissioner for Defence Industry and Space Andrius Kubilius outlined the challenging position the continent's space sector finds itself in, European Spaceflight reports. "Commercial sales are down. Exports are down. Profits are down. And this comes at a time when we need space more than ever. For our security. For our survival."

Actions, not words, needed ... Rhetorical language and bold declarations are inspiring, but when it comes to securing Europe’s place in the global space race, adopted policy and appropriated funding are where aspirations are tested, the European publication stated. Without concrete investments, streamlined regulations, and clear strategic priorities, Europe’s ambition to once again lead the global launch market is likely to amount to little.

Election set to create Starbase, the city. A Texas county on Wednesday approved holding an election sought by SpaceX that would let residents living around the company's launch and production facilities in South Texas decide whether to formally create a new city called Starbase, ABC News reports. The election was set for May 3, and votes can only be cast by residents living near the launch site, which is currently part of an unincorporated area of Cameron County located along the US-Mexico border. Approval is expected.

A busy beehive ... In December, more than 70 area residents signed a petition requesting an election to make Starbase its own municipality. Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño said the county reviewed the petition and found it met the state's requirements for the incorporation process to move forward. Kathy Lueders, Starbase's general manager, has previously said that the incorporation would streamline certain processes to build amenities in the area. More than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the site. (submitted by teb)

China taps into commercial space for station missions. China will launch a pair of low-cost space station resupply spacecraft this year on new commercial launch vehicles, Space News reports. The Haolong cargo space shuttle from the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute will launch on Landspace’s Zhuque-3. The reusable stainless steel, methane-liquid oxygen Zhuque-3 rocket is due to have its first flight in the third quarter of this year. The reusable Haolong vehicle will be 10 meters in length, around 7,000 kilograms in mass, and capable of landing on a runway.

Following a commercial trail laid by NASA ... Meanwhile, the Qingzhou cargo spacecraft from the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will launch on the first flight of the CAS Space Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2) rocket no earlier than September. The development is analogous to NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services program, diversifying China’s options for supplying the Tiangong space station. If even one of these missions takes place successfully within the next year, it would represent a major step forward for China's quasi-commercial space program. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

H3 rocket launches its fifth mission. Japan’s flagship H3 rocket successfully launched the Michibiki 6 navigation satellite early Sunday, enhancing the country’s regional GPS capabilities, Space News reports. The launch was Japan’s first of 2025 and suggests that the relatively new H3 rocket is starting to hit its stride.

Getting up to speed ... The expendable launcher's inaugural launch in March 2023, after numerous delays, suffered a second-stage engine failure, leading controllers to issue a destruct command to destroy the stage and its ALOS-3 payload. Since then, it has had a successful run of launches, most recently the Kirameki 3 communications satellite for defense purposes in November last year. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Blue Origin lays off 10 percent of its employees. A little less than a month after the successful debut of its New Glenn rocket, Blue Origin's workforce will be trimmed by 10 percent, Ars reports. The cuts were announced during an all-hands meeting on Thursday morning led by the rocket company's chief executive, Dave Limp. During the gathering, Limp cited business strategy as the rationale for making the cuts to a workforce of more than 10,000 people.

Growing too fast ... "We grew and hired incredibly fast in the last few years, and with that growth came more bureaucracy and less focus than we needed," Limp wrote in an email to the entire workforce after the meeting. Even before Thursday's announcement, Blue Origin sought to control costs. According to sources, the company has had a hiring freeze for the last six months. And in January, it let the majority of its contractors go. Layoffs suck—here's hoping that those let go this week find a soft landing.

Speaking of Blue, they're targeting spring for next launch. Blue Origin expects to attempt its second New Glenn launch in late spring after correcting problems that prevented the booster from landing on the first launch last month, Space News reports. Speaking at the 27th Annual Commercial Space Conference on Wednesday, Dave Limp suggested a propulsion issue caused the loss of the New Glenn booster during its landing attempt on the Jan. 16 NG-1 launch.

Understanding the issues ... "We had most of the right conditions in the engine but we weren’t able to get everything right to the engine from the tanks," Limp said. "We think we understand what the issues are." A second booster is in production. "I don’t think it’s going to delay our path to flight," Limp said of the investigation. "I think we can still fly late spring." June seems overly optimistic. One source with knowledge of the second booster's production said October might be a more reasonable timeframe for the second launch.

Boeing warns of potential SLS workforce cuts. The primary contractor for the Space Launch System rocket, Boeing, is preparing for the possibility that NASA cancels the long-running program, Ars reports. Last Friday, with less than an hour's notice, David Dutcher, Boeing's vice president and program manager for the SLS rocket, scheduled an all-hands meeting for the approximately 800 employees working on the program. The apparently scripted meeting lasted just six minutes, and Dutcher didn't take questions. Afterward, Ars learned that NASA was not informed the meeting would take place.

Waiting on the president's budget request ... During his remarks, Dutcher said Boeing's contracts for the rocket could end in March and that the company was preparing for layoffs in case the contracts with the space agency were not renewed. The aerospace company, which is the primary contractor for the rocket's large core stage, issued the notifications as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (or WARN) Act. The timing of Friday's hastily called meeting aligns with the anticipated release of President Trump's budget proposal for fiscal year 2026, which should signal the administration's direction on the SLS rocket.

Space Force is still waiting on Vulcan. 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. However, that didn't happen, Ars reports. Now, 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.

Falling short of ambitious goals ... In fact, ULA has started to take the rocket apart. This involves removing the rocket's Centaur upper stage, interstage adapter, and booster stage from its launch mount. Instead, ULA will now focus on launching a batch of Project Kuiper satellites for Amazon on an Atlas V rocket in the next couple of months before pivoting back to Vulcan. ULA hoped to launch as many as 20 missions in 2025, with roughly an even split between its new Vulcan rocket and the Atlas V heading for retirement. Clearly, this now won't happen.

Next three launches

Feb. 15: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-8 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 06:14 UTC

Feb. 17: Falcon 9 | NROL-57 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13:18 UTC

Feb. 18: Falcon 9 | Starlink 10-12 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 23:00 UTC

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