Rocket Report: Blue Origin flies six to space; when will Starship launch again?

Welcome to Edition 7.09 of the Rocket Report! When will SpaceX launch the next test flight of Starship? It certainly doesn't look to be imminent, with SpaceX ground teams in Texas feverishly working to beef up the launch pad in preparation for an attempt to catch the rocket's massive Super Heavy booster when it returns to the launch site on the next flight. Meanwhile, the FAA is reviewing SpaceX's proposal to recover the booster on land for the first time. And on Thursday, a NASA official monitoring SpaceX's Starship effort said the next test flight was scheduled for launch in the "fall," suggesting it could be a month or more away. Also, we've listed the next three launches as "TBD" (To Be Determined) because SpaceX is waiting for FAA approval to resume Falcon 9 launches following a booster landing failure this week, and the Polaris Dawn mission is on hold due to an unfavorable weather forecast.

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 has a new chief executive. Jason Kim, former head of Boeing-owned satellite-maker Millennium Space Systems, has been appointed CEO of Firefly Aerospace effective October 1, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. Kim joins Firefly as the ambitious space transportation startup, which has raised close to $600 million from investors since its 2021 founding, looks to launch a commercial lunar lander for NASA before the end of the year. Firefly is also working on a medium-lift rocket in partnership with Northrop Grumman, with the goal of competing for missions to resupply the International Space Station and launch payloads for the US military and commercial customers.

Kim brings national security chops ... At Millennium, Kim shepherded several national security space missions to completion, including Victus Nox, a responsive satellite and launch mission for the US Space Force. Millennium manufactured the satellite for the Victus Nox mission, and Firefly Aerospace successfully launched it on an Alpha rocket just 27 hours after receiving the launch order from the military. This required Millennium and Firefly to integrate the satellite with the Alpha rocket on short notice. Kim replaces Bill Weber, who left the CEO role at Firefly in July after allegations he had an improper relationship with a female employee.

New Shepard flies again. Blue Origin launched six passengers, including a NASA-sponsored researcher and the youngest woman to fly in space, on a sub-orbital trip out of the lower atmosphere Thursday in the company's eighth crewed spaceflight, CBS News reports. University of Florida researcher Rob Ferl, philanthropist Nicolina Elrick, adventurer Eugene Grin, Vanderbilt University cardiologist Elman Jahangir, American-Israeli entrepreneur Ephraim Rabin, and University of North Carolina senior Karsen Kitchen lifted off from Jeff Bezos' West Texas launch site on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket. Kitchen became the youngest woman to fly higher than 100 kilometers (62 miles), and Ferl was the first NASA-funded researcher to fly on a suborbital rocket. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, its competitor in the suborbital human spaceflight market, have long touted their vehicles' ability to support human-tended research in microgravity.

Three good chutes ... This was Blue Origin's first New Shepard flight since May 19, when one of the crew capsule's three main parachutes failed to open fully on the descent. The passengers on that flight were fine, and Blue Origin says the capsule can return safely with just a single parachute if two fail. Blue Origin said it identified the cause of the parachute issue on the May flight, but didn't offer details other than that the investigation "focused on the dis-reefing system that transitions the parachutes from the reefed to the disreefed state that did not function as designed on one of the three parachutes on NS-25," Space News reports.

ABL's rocket test failure damaged ground systems. A fiery malfunction on an Alaska launch pad last month not only destroyed the RS1 rocket ABL Space Systems was preparing for launch, but also damaged some ground systems at the site, ABL said in an update posted on X. The company said a fire developed "external to RS1's base" after the booster's 11 engines shut down during an aborted test-firing at Kodiak Island, Alaska. The fire was fed by fuel leaks from two of the engines, and ABL's launch team was able to use water and inert gases to suppress the fire for more than 11 minutes. But the remote launch site doesn't have a direct water supply, and mobile water tanks ran dry, causing the fire to grow until the rocket collapsed. ABL said a majority of the plumbing and electrical connections to the launch mount were damaged, but the launch mount's structure, flame deflector, and other equipment were unharmed.

Few details on next steps ... ABL published a detailed update on its investigation into the test failure, and its openness is worth noting. Engineers found two of the engines—the ones that leaked and fueled the fire—experienced "combustion instability" during their startup sequence. ABL said it believes differences in this RS1 rocket, called a Block 2 design, resulted in a higher-energy startup than expected. The company will return its damaged ground support equipment from Alaska to a facility in Long Beach, California, for refurbishment, and ABL says its next RS1 rocket is "well into production." But the company didn't share any information on corrective actions or a timeline for implementing them and returning to the launch pad with RS1. ABL aims to compete with other, more established small satellite launch companies like Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace, but its RS1 rocket hasn't made it far from the launch pad. ABL's first orbital launch attempt in January 2023 ended when the RS1 rocket lost power and fell back on its launch pad.

Hello, 2025, for Rocket Factory Augsburg. Rocket Factory Augsburg no longer plans a maiden flight this year after losing part of its RFA One rocket during a static fire test, Space News reports. “We won’t be firing another first stage this year and the first test flight has also been postponed until next year,” RFA spokesperson Jonas Kellner told Space News via email. The German startup had aimed to fly RFA One for the first time in a matter of weeks, before its first stage was destroyed August 19 during tests at SaxaVord Spaceport, Scotland. The inaugural mission had appeared set to be the first-ever vertical launch to orbit from British soil.

Post-mortem ... RFA has identified a fire in an oxygen pump on one of the rocket's nine engines as the cause for the test failure. The company released a video of raw footage from the fiery incident on X, showing several views of the fire igniting and growing until the RFA One rocket's first-stage booster tipped over and fell off its test stand in Scotland. RFA's chief operating officer, Stefan Brieschenk, said in the video that the company is working on a second booster for the RFA One rocket, with more than 100 improvements. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 booster lost on landing. For the first time in more than three years, SpaceX lost one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters on landing following a liftoff Wednesday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with a batch of Starlink Internet satellites, Ars reports. The booster touched down on SpaceX's drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean, but it was destroyed after it tipped over a moment later. Before Wednesday's landing failure, SpaceX had landed 267 boosters in a row. The company's last failure occurred in February 2021. The cause of the failure was not immediately clear, and SpaceX said "teams are assessing the booster's flight data and status." This booster was SpaceX's fleet leader and was on its 23rd flight since debuting in November 2020. The Falcon 9's upper stage continued into orbit and successfully deployed its Starlink payloads.

FAA grounding ... The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket family while the company investigates what went wrong with the landing. But the grounding is likely to be short-lived, and the FAA will allow SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 launches once the company shows the cause of the failure does not impact public safety. A timetable for Falcon 9's return to flight was unclear at the time of this writing; however, SpaceX has not ruled out launching another Starlink mission on a Falcon 9 from California as soon as Thursday night (local time in California). Meanwhile, the all-private Polaris Dawn crew mission was supposed to launch this week from Florida, but it has been delayed primarily by a poor weather forecast in the Dragon spacecraft's offshore recovery zone. Jared Isaacman, commander of the mission, posted on X Thursday that the cause of the Falcon 9 booster landing failure "is well understood."

Space Command chief laments China's space debris problem. The head of US Space Command said Wednesday he would like to see more transparency from the Chinese government on space debris, especially as one of China's newer rockets has shown a propensity for breaking apart and littering low-Earth orbit with hundreds of pieces of space junk, Ars reports. Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, says he has observed some improvement in the dialogue between US and Chinese military officials this year. But the disintegration of the upper stage from a Long March 6A rocket earlier this month showed China could do more to prevent the creation of space debris and communicate openly about it when it happens.

China lags behind US and Russia ... US launch companies typically either reserve enough propellant on their upper stages to remove them from orbit after they deploy their payloads, or vent their tanks and drain their batteries to reduce any explosive hazards if the rockets will remain adrift in space. Russian rockets also do this. But China has a track record of leaving behind a lot of space junk. Space Command says two Long March 6A incidents in the last two years have created more than 800 pieces of debris in orbit. LeoLabs, a commercial company specializing in tracking orbiting objects, says there are nearly 1,000 abandoned rocket bodies in low-Earth orbit, with an average mass of 1.5 metric tons. "While Russia and the US have improved their 'rocket body abandonment behavior' over the last 20 years, the relative contribution by other countries has grown by a factor of five and China by 50x," LeoLabs says.

NASA's launch tower is more expensive than the world's tallest building. NASA's problems with the mobile launch tower that will support a larger version of its Space Launch System rocket are getting worse rather than better, Ars reports. According to a new report from NASA's inspector general, the estimated cost of the tower, which is a little bit taller than the length of a US football field with its end zones, is now $2.7 billion. Such a cost is nearly twice the funding it took to build the largest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which is seven times taller. This is a remarkable explosion in costs as, only five years ago, NASA awarded a contract to the Bechtel engineering firm to build and deliver a second mobile launcher (ML-2) for $383 million, with a due date of March 2023. That deadline came and went with Bechtel barely beginning to cut metal.

Why does NASA need two launch platforms? … This second mobile launcher (ML-2) is required for an upgraded version of the SLS rocket that will begin flying with the Artemis IV mission, which is slated to be the second lunar landing mission for NASA's Artemis program. This version of the SLS, called the Block 1B, is taller than the SLS Block 1 rocket that flew in 2022 on the Artemis I mission, and will fly again on Artemis II and III. The SLS Block 1B has a more powerful Boeing-built upper stage with four engines, instead of the single engine on SLS Block 1, to haul heavier cargo out to the vicinity of the Moon. Artemis IV has a nominal launch date in 2028, but there's practically zero chance of this happening due to the issues with building ML-2, aside from any rocket or spacecraft problems that may crop up.

SpaceX is beefing up its own launch tower. Pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks, workers wielding welding guns and torches have climbed onto SpaceX's Starship launch pad in South Texas to make last-minute upgrades ahead of the next test flight of the world's largest rocket, Ars reports. Most of the work appears to be on two mechanical arms that will close around the Starship rocket's Super Heavy booster as it slows to a near-hover over the launch pad. SpaceX intends to use the arms to catch the booster in mid-air after it returns to Earth on the next Starship test flight, which will be the fifth full-scale launch of Starship overall. It will be the first time SpaceX tries to recover the Super Heavy booster intact.

More to do … While Starship, itself, appears to be ready to fly, SpaceX officials clearly believe there's more work to do on the launch pad. Closer views revealed welders are installing structural supports, or doublers, to certain parts of the catch arms. Elsewhere on the arms, workers were seen removing and adding other unknown pieces of hardware. SpaceX hasn't specified exactly what kind of work teams are doing on the Starship launch pad in Texas, but the focus is on beefing up hardware necessary for catching the Super Heavy booster. The FAA, meanwhile, says it is reviewing SpaceX's proposed flight plan for the next Starship flight, which presumably includes a description of the planned catch of the booster.

FAA review of Starship on hold. The Federal Aviation Administration has answered one question about why it suddenly postponed public meetings earlier this month related to SpaceX's proposal to increase the flight rate of the Starship rocket from Texas. The FAA said Thursday that it postponed the meetings after the FAA became aware of allegations that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act at its Starbase launch facility located at Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. "The FAA was unable to confirm the accuracy of certain representations in SpaceX's license application and the draft tiered environmental assessment prior to the public meetings," the agency said in a statement.

SpaceX has strongly denied these claims ... This all stems from a story published by CNBC on August 12 reporting that SpaceX violated environmental regulations by repeatedly releasing pollutants into or near bodies of water. In a series of posts on X, SpaceX strongly denied the accusations, saying that its water deluge system at Starbase uses only potable water, and that state and federal environmental regulators told the company it could continue launch operations.

Next three launches

TBD: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-5 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | TBD

TBD: Falcon 9 | Starlink 8-10 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | TBD

TBD: Falcon 9 | Polaris Dawn | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | TBD