Welcome to Edition 8.04 of the Rocket Report! The Pentagon's Golden Dome missile defense shield will be a lot of things. Along with new sensors, command and control systems, and satellites, Golden Dome will require a lot of rockets. The pieces of the Golden Dome architecture operating in orbit will ride to space on commercial launch vehicles. And Golden Dome's space-based interceptors will essentially be designed as flying fuel tanks with rocket engines. This shouldn't be overlooked, and that's why we include a couple of entries discussing Golden Dome in this week's Rocket Report.

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Space-based interceptors are a real challenge. The newly installed head of the Pentagon's Golden Dome missile defense shield knows the clock is ticking to show President Donald Trump some results before the end of his term in the White House, Ars reports. Gen. Michael Guetlein identified command-and-control and the development of space-based interceptors as two of the most pressing technical challenges for Golden Dome. He believes the command-and-control problem can be "overcome in pretty short order." The space-based interceptor piece of the architecture is a different story.

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Welcome to Edition 8.03 of the Rocket Report! We are at an interesting stage in Europe, with its efforts to commercialize spaceflight. Finally, it seems the long-slumbering continent is waking up to the need to leverage private capital to drive down the costs of space access, and we are seeing more investment flow into European companies. But it is critical that European policymakers make strategic investments across the industry or companies like PLD Space, which outlined big plans this week, will struggle to get off the launch pad.

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Avio celebrates freedom from Arianespace. Representatives from Italy, Germany, and France met at the European Space Agency headquarters last week to sign the Launcher Exploitation Declaration, which officially began the transfer of Vega C launch operation responsibilities from Arianespace to the rocket’s builder, Avio, European Spaceflight reports. "It is a historic step that reinforces our nation's autonomy in access to space and assigns us a strategic responsibility towards Europe," said Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo. "We are ready to meet this challenge with determination, and we are investing in technologies, expertise, and infrastructure to ensure a competitive service."

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Welcome to Edition 8.02 of the Rocket Report! It's worth taking a moment to recognize an important anniversary in the history of human spaceflight next week. Fifty years ago, on July 15, 1975, NASA launched a three-man crew on an Apollo spacecraft from Florida and two Russian cosmonauts took off from Kazakhstan, on course to link up in low-Earth orbit two days later. This was the first joint US-Russian human spaceflight mission, laying the foundation for a strained but enduring partnership on the International Space Station. Operations on the ISS are due to wind down in 2030, and the two nations have no serious prospects to continue any partnership in space after decommissioning the station.

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.

Sizing up Europe's launch challengers. The European Space Agency has selected five launch startups to become eligible for up to 169 million euros ($198 million) in funding to develop alternatives to Arianespace, the continent's incumbent launch service provider, Ars reports. The five small launch companies ESA selected are Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD Space, and Orbex. Only one of these companies, Isar Aerospace, has attempted to launch a rocket into orbit. Isar's Spectrum rocket failed moments after liftoff from Norway on a test flight in March. None of these companies is guaranteed an ESA contract or funding. Over the next several months, ESA and the five launch companies will negotiate with European governments for funding leading up to ESA's ministerial council meeting in November, when ESA member states will set the agency's budget for at least the next two years. Only then will ESA be ready to sign binding agreements.

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Welcome to Edition 8.01 of the Rocket Report! Today's edition will be a little shorter than normal because, for one day only, we celebrate fake rockets—fireworks—rather than the real thing. For our American readers, we hope you have a splendid Fourth of July holiday weekend. For our non-American readers, you may be wondering what the heck is happening in our country right now. Alas, making sense of <waves hands> all this is beyond the scope of this humble little newsletter.

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Will Orbex ever launch an orbital rocket? Orbex, a launch services company based in the United Kingdom, has announced the postponement of its first orbital launch to 2026 due to infrastructure limitations and other issues, Orbital Today reports. At the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, Orbex chief executive Miguel Bello Mora announced that the company is now targeting next year for the liftoff of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord in Scotland. He said the delay is partly due to the limited launch infrastructure at SaxaVord and a "bottleneck" in site operations.

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Welcome to Edition 7.50 of the Rocket Report! We're nearly halfway through the year, and it seems like a good time to look back on the past six months. What has been most surprising to me in the world of rockets? First, I didn't expect SpaceX to have this much trouble with Starship Version 2. Growing pains are normal for new rockets, but I expected the next big hurdles for SpaceX to clear with Starship to be catching the ship from orbit and orbital refueling, not completing a successful launch. The state of Blue Origin's New Glenn program is a little surprising to me. New Glenn's first launch in January went remarkably well, beating the odds for a new rocket. Now, production delays are pushing back the next New Glenn flights. The flight of Honda's reusable rocket hopper also came out of nowhere a few weeks ago.

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.

Isar raises 150 million euros. German space startup Isar Aerospace has obtained 150 million euros ($175 million) in funding from an American investment company, Reuters reports. The company, which specializes in satellite launch services, signed an agreement for a convertible bond with Eldridge Industries, it said. Isar says it will use the funding to expand its launch service offerings. Isar's main product is the Spectrum rocket, a two-stage vehicle designed to loft up to a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. Spectrum flew for the first time in March, but it failed moments after liftoff and fell back to the ground near its launch pad. Still, Isar became the first in a new crop of European launch startups to launch a rocket theoretically capable of reaching orbit.

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Welcome to Edition 7.49 of the Rocket Report! You may have noticed we are a little late with the report this week, and that is due to the Juneteenth holiday celebrated in the United States on Thursday. But that hasn't stopped a torrent of big news this week, from exploding Starships to significant reuse milestones being reached in Asia.

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Honda stamps passport to the skies with a hopper. An experimental reusable rocket developed by the research and development arm of Honda Motor Company flew to an altitude of nearly 900 feet (275 meters) Tuesday, then landed with pinpoint precision at the carmaker's test facility in northern Japan, Ars reports. Honda's hopper is the first prototype rocket outside of the United States and China to complete a flight of this kind, demonstrating vertical takeoff and vertical landing technology that could underpin the development of a reusable launch vehicle.

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Welcome to Edition 7.48 of the Rocket Report! The shock of last week's public spat between President Donald Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has worn off, and Musk expressed regret for some of his comments going after Trump on social media. Musk also backtracked from his threat to begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft, currently the only way for the US government to send people to the International Space Station. Nevertheless, there are many people who think Musk's attachment to Trump could end up putting the US space program at risk, and I'm not convinced that danger has passed.

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Quebec invests in small launch company. The government of Quebec will invest CA$10 million ($7.3 million) into a Montreal-area company that is developing a system to launch small satellites into space, The Canadian Press reports. Quebec Premier François Legault announced the investment into Reaction Dynamics at the company's facility in Longueuil, a Montreal suburb. The province's economy minister, Christine Fréchette, said the investment will allow the company to begin launching microsatellites into orbit from Canada as early as 2027.

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Welcome to Edition 7.44 of the Rocket Report! We had some interesting news on Thursday afternoon from Down Under. As Gilmour Space was preparing for the second launch attempt of its Eris vehicle, as part of the pre-launch preparations, something triggered the payload fairing to deploy. We would love to see some video of that. Please.

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Rotating detonation rocket engine takes flight. On Wednesday, US-based propulsion company Venus Aerospace completed a short flight test of its rotating detonation rocket engine at Spaceport America in New Mexico, Ars reports. It is believed to be the first US-based flight test of an idea that has been discussed academically for decades. The concept has previously been tested in a handful of other countries, but never with a high-thrust engine.

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Welcome to Edition 7.43 of the Rocket Report! There's been a lot of recent news in hypersonic testing. We cover some of that in this week's newsletter, but it's just a taste of the US military's appetite for fielding its own hypersonic weapons, and conversely, the Pentagon's emphasis on the detection and destruction of an enemy's hypersonic missiles. China has already declared its first hypersonic weapons operational, and Russia claims to have them, too. Now, the Pentagon is finally close to placing hypersonic missiles with combat units. Many US rocket companies believe the hypersonics sector is a lucrative business. Some companies have enough confidence in this emerging market—or lack of faith in the traditional space launch market—to pivot entirely toward hypersonics. I'm interested in seeing if their bets pay off.

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Stratolaunch tests reusable hypersonic rocket plane. Stratolaunch has finally found a use for the world's largest airplane. Twice in the last five months, the company launched a hypersonic vehicle over the Pacific Ocean, accelerated it to more than five times the speed of sound, and autonomously landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Ars reports. Stratolaunch used the same Talon-A vehicle for both flights, demonstrating its reusability, a characteristic that sets it apart from competitors. Zachary Krevor, Stratolaunch's president and CEO, said his team aims to ramp up to monthly flights by the end of the year.

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Welcome to Edition 7.41 of the Rocket Report! NASA and its contractors at Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue building a new mobile launch tower for the Space Launch System Block 1B rocket, a taller, upgraded version of the SLS rocket being used for the agency's initial Artemis lunar missions. Workers stacked another segment of the tower a couple of weeks ago, and the structure is inching closer to its full height of 355 feet (108 meters). But this is just the start. Once the tower is fully assembled, it must be outfitted with miles of cabling, tubing, and piping and then be tested before it can support an SLS launch campaign. Last year, NASA's inspector general projected the tower won't be ready for a launch until the spring of 2029, and its costs could reach $2.7 billion. The good news, if you can call it that, is that there probably won't be an SLS Block 1B rocket that needs to use it in 2029, whether it's due to delays or cancellation.

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Fresh details on Astra's strategic pivot. Astra, the once high-flying rocket startup that crashed back to Earth with investors before going private last year, has unveiled new details about its $44 million contract with the Department of Defense, Space News reports. The DOD contract announced last year supports the development of Rocket 4, a two-stage, mobile launch vehicle with ambitions to deliver cargo across the globe in under an hour. While Astra's ill-fated Rocket 3 focused on launching small satellites into low-Earth orbit, Astra wants to make Rocket 4 a military utility vehicle. Rocket 4 will still be able to loft conventional satellites, but Astra's most lucrative contract for the new launch vehicle involves using the rocket for precise point-to-point delivery of up to 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of supplies from orbit via specialized reentry vehicles. The military has shown interest in developing a rocket-based rapid global cargo delivery system for several years, and it has a contract with SpaceX to study how the much larger Starship rocket could do a similar job.

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Welcome to Edition 7.39 of the Rocket Report! Not getting your launch fix? Buckle up. We're on the cusp of a boom in rocket launches as three new megaconstellations have either just begun or will soon begin deploying thousands of satellites to enable broadband connectivity from space. If the megaconstellations come to fruition, this will require more than a thousand launches in the next few years, on top of SpaceX's blistering Starlink launch cadence. We discuss the topic of megaconstellations in this week's Rocket Report.

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.

So, what is SpinLaunch doing now? Ars Technica has mentioned SpinLaunch, the company that literally wants to yeet satellites into space, in previous Rocket Report newsletters. This company enjoyed some success in raising money for its so-crazy-it-just-might-work idea of catapulting rockets and satellites into the sky, a concept SpinLaunch calls "kinetic launch." But SpinLaunch is now making a hard pivot to small satellites, a move that, on its face, seems puzzling after going all-in on kinetic launch and even performing several impressive hardware tests, throwing a projectile to altitudes of up to 30,000 feet. Ars got the scoop, with the company's CEO detailing why and how it plans to build a low-Earth orbit telecommunications constellation with 280 satellites.

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Welcome to Edition 7.38 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX test fired a Super Heavy booster that launched in January on Thursday, in South Texas. This sets up the possibility of a reused Super Heavy rocket launching within the next several weeks, and would be an important step forward in the Starship launch program. It's also a bold step given that there is a lot riding on this Starship launch, given that the last two have failed due to propulsion issues with the rocket's upper stage.

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.

European commercial launch industry joins the space race. The first flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket didn't last long on Sunday, Ars reports. The booster's nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, ending the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular, fiery crash into the sea. However, it marked the beginning of something new in Europe as commercial startups begin launching rockets.

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