Welcome to Edition 8.27 of the Rocket Report! If all goes well this weekend, NASA will complete a wet dress rehearsal test of the Space Launch System rocket in Florida. This is the final key test, in which the rocket is fueled and brought to within seconds of engine ignition, before the liftoff of the Artemis II mission. This is set to occur no earlier than February 6. Ars will have full coverage of the test this weekend.
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.
Why did the UK abandon Orbex? European Spaceflight explores the recent announcement that British launch company Orbex is preparing to sell the business to The Exploration Company in close cooperation with the UK government. This represents a reversal from early 2025, when the United Kingdom appeared prepared to back Orbex as a means of using British rockets to launch British satellites into space. Now the government is prepared to walk away. So what happened? “There are still too many unknowns to count, and the story is far from told,” the publication states.
Why would someone want to buy Orbex? … My sense is that there is not too much of a mystery here. UK space officials probably looked under the hood of what hardware Orbex had developed and its current financial status and likely decided that the company had a low probability of reaching orbit even with a significant infusion of cash. Also curious is a decision by The Exploration Company, which builds spaceships, to consider acquiring Orbex. The European Spaceflight article speculates that this could be to capture funding through the UK’s share of the European Launch Challenge, rather than any faith in Orbex’s ability to launch its vehicles. That sounds plausible.
Canada Rocket Company emerges from stealth. A Toronto-based launch startup, Canada Rocket Company, emerged from stealth earlier this month with the announcement of a $6.2 million CDN ($4.5 million) seed funding round—and with plans to create sovereign light- and medium-lift launch capabilities, Payload reports. According to CEO Hugh Kolias, the company was founded late last year in response to Canada’s rapidly increasing investment in the space domain.
A quick deadline … Canada is concerned about relations with the United States, where it has long turned for access to space. Accordingly, last November, the country announced its Launch the North challenge, committing $105 million CDN ($75.7 million) in public funds to help stand up sovereign launch capabilities. However, the Launch the North challenge incentivizes companies that are on track to reach orbit by 2028. The new company’s strategy to meet the aggressive 2028 deadline is to build a scalable architecture around a familiar methalox engine and field much of the tech with mature subsystems from the Canadian and European ecosystem. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
The Ars Technica Rocket Report
The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger’s and Stephen Clark’s reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox. Sign Me Up!Vega C nabs Brazilian launch contract. A Brazilian government agency will launch an Earth observation satellite on a Vega C rocket, Space News reports. Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, known by the Portuguese acronym INPE, said Tuesday it will launch the Amazonia-1B satellite on a Vega C in 2027. Curiously, INPE contracted not with Avio, which is assuming responsibility for Vega C launch services, but with SpaceLaunch, a Texas-based launch broker.
Launch price disclosed … Marcy Mabry, co-founder and chief executive of SpaceLaunch, said she previously worked with INPE to arrange the launch of Amazonia-1 while at Spaceflight, a launch services provider later acquired by Firefly Aerospace. That spacecraft launched on an Indian PSLV rocket in 2021. The companies did not disclose the value of the contract. However, a January 21 Brazilian procurement document states that the contract between INPE and SpaceLaunch is worth 188.2 million Brazilian real ($35.6 million). This is a rare public data point for the cost of a Vega launch.
Russia reportedly testing plasma engine. Indian Defence Review reports that Russia is testing a new plasma propulsion system that may accelerate future missions to Mars, reducing travel time from multiple months to just one or two. The engine, developed by Rosatom’s Troitsk Institute, is now in ground-based trials but could be space-ready by 2030. The propulsion system uses electromagnetic fields to accelerate hydrogen particles.
Is it real? … According to the publication, a prototype of the engine is operating at 300 kilowatts, and it has already demonstrated a service life of 2,400 hours. If so, the engine has already surpassed the experimental VASIMR electrothermal engine under development in Houston by former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz. Regardless, I would advise caution about engines that may work in the lab but struggle in the outerspace environment. Moreover, such achievements are likely to be hyped, so it’s difficult to know where reality lies in Russia. (submitted by tbnelson777)
SpaceX and xAI may merge. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and xAI are in discussions to merge ahead of a blockbuster public offering planned for later this year, Reuters reports. The plan would give fresh momentum to SpaceX’s effort to launch data centers into orbit as Musk battles for supremacy in the rapidly escalating AI race against tech giants like Google, Meta, and OpenAI. Under the proposed merger, shares of xAI would be exchanged for shares in SpaceX. Two entities have been set up in Nevada to facilitate the transaction.
Is this inevitable? … SpaceX is already the world’s most valuable privately held company, last valued at $800 billion in a recent insider share sale. xAI was valued at $230 billion in November, according to The Wall Street Journal. Musk has previously confirmed that SpaceX plans to go public sometime this year, with a valuation expected above $1 trillion. Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Musk said, “The lowest cost place to put AI will be in space. And that will be true within two years, maybe three at the latest.”
How a 5-ton satellite fell off a Japanese rocket. The H3 is a relatively new vehicle, with last month’s launch marking the eighth flight of Japan’s flagship rocket. It lifted off from Tanegashima Island in southern Japan on December 22, local time, carrying a roughly 5-ton navigation satellite into space. The rocket was supposed to place the Michibiki 5 satellite into an orbit ranging more than 20,000 miles above the Earth. Everything was going well until the H3 jettisoned its payload fairing, the two-piece clamshell covering the satellite during launch, nearly four minutes into the flight.
And then? … Something went wrong when the rocket released its payload shroud. Video beamed back from the rocket’s onboard cameras showed a shower of debris surrounding the satellite, which started wobbling and leaning in the moments after fairing separation. Sensors also detected sudden accelerations around the attachment point connecting the spacecraft with the top of the H3 rocket. In a new report, Ars explores new information released by JAXA that shows the satellite effectively fell off the rocket. It appears to be an entirely novel failure mechanism.
FAA expects continuing growth in launches. The Federal Aviation Administration office that regulates commercial spaceflight expects continued growth in launches, Space News reports. Speaking at the Global Spaceport Alliance’s Spaceport Summit on January 27, Minh Nguyen, deputy associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA, said his office licensed 205 operations in 2025, including launches and reentries, a 25 percent increase from 2024.
Double again in a few years … “The acceleration in commercial space transportation has consistently exceeded our expectations. We’re seeing remarkable growth year after year,” he said. The 2025 total, he added, was 12 percent above the high end of the FAA’s forecast for the year. The FAA expects that growth to continue, with projections showing the number of licensed operations could double by 2029. That growth has put pressure on the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, to keep up with the increased cadence.
ESA to study Falcon 9 breakup over Poland. The European Space Agency has published a call to tender for a study examining the reentry and breakup of a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage in February last year, European Spaceflight reports. In the early hours of February 19, 2025, a Falcon 9 second stage underwent an uncontrolled atmospheric re-entry over Poland. At least four fragments of the stage survived re-entry and landed in various locations across the country. While no one was injured and no property was damaged, at least one fragment landed in a populated area.
Not just an academic study … ESA hopes to use data collected during the reentry of the Falcon 9 upper stage over Poland to help predict the risks associated with the re-entry of elongated upper stages. There are currently considerable uncertainties surrounding the physics and dynamics of destructive reentry in the very low-Earth orbit regime, below 150km. It’s not an academic study, as in 2015 there were approximately 80 orbital rocket launches. A decade on, that figure has almost quadrupled, with 317 successful orbital rocket launches occurring in 2025. (submitted by EllPeaTea)
SpaceX targets mid-March for next Starship launch. The company plans to launch Starship’s next test flight in six weeks, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Sunday, January 25, Space.com reports. The flight will be the 12th overall for Starship but the first of the bigger, more powerful, and much-anticipated “Version 3” (V3) iteration of the vehicle.
A better engine … Starship V3 is slightly taller than V2—408.1 feet (124.4 meters) vs. 403.9 feet (123.1 m), but considerably more powerful. V3 can loft more than 100 tons of payload to low-Earth orbit, compared to about 35 tons for V2, according to Musk. The increased brawn comes courtesy of Raptor 3, a new variant of the engine that will fly for the first time on the upcoming test mission. SpaceX is hoping it proves more reliable than V2 as well.
Seeking information about Challenger artifacts. Back in 2010, Robert Pearlman of CollectSpace bought a batch of 18 space shuttle-era “Remove Before Flight” tags on eBay. It was only later that he pieced together that these tags were, in fact, removed from the external tank of STS 51-L, the ill-fated flight of space shuttle Challenger in 1986. He wrote about the experience on Ars.
How did they get to eBay? … “When the tags were first identified, contacts at NASA and Lockheed, among others, were unable to explain how they ended up on eBay and, ultimately, with me,” Pearlman said. He wants to gather more information about the provenance of the tags so that he can donate them to museums, with their full backstory.
Next three launches
January 30: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-101 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 05:51 UTC
February 2: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-32 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 15:17 UTC
February 3: Falcon 9 | Starlink 6-103 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 22:12 UTC
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