Author: n Eric Bergern

Welcome to Edition 8.19 of the Rocket Report! Thursday was a monumental day in launch history with Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket not just taking off successfully, but with the first stage masterfully returning to the surface of the ocean, hovering near the Jacklyn drone ship, and then making a landing in the center of the barge. It was fantastic to watch, and cements our new reality of reusable rockets. The future of space access is very bright indeed.

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.

Private Chinese rocket fails. Galactic Energy’s solid-fuel Ceres-1 rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Sunday, carrying three satellites toward low Earth orbit. The rocket’s first three stages performed well, according to media reports, but its fourth and final stage shut down too early, leading to the loss of all three payloads, Space.com reports.

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In what will likely be his most consequential act as NASA’s interim leader, Sean Duffy said last month that the space agency was “opening up” its competition to develop a lunar lander that will put humans on the surface of the Moon.

As part of this move, Duffy asked NASA’s current lunar lander contractors, SpaceX and Blue Origin, for more nimble plans. Neither has specified those plans publicly, but a recent update from SpaceX referenced a “simplified” version of the Starship system it’s building to help NASA return humans to the Moon.

“Since the contract was awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artemis III have changed and have shared ideas on how to simplify the mission to align with national priorities,” the company said. “In response to the latest calls, we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.”

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During an earnings call on Monday, Rocket Lab chief executive Pete Beck announced that the company’s medium-lift launch vehicle, Neutron, would not launch this year.

For anyone with the slightest understanding of the challenges involved in bringing a new rocket to the launch pad, as well as a calendar, the delay does not come as a surprise. Although Rocket Lab had been holding on to the possibility of launching Neutron this year publicly, it has been clear for months that a slip into 2026 was inevitable.

According to Beck, speaking during a third-quarter 2025 earnings call, the new timeline has the company bringing Neutron to Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the first quarter of next year. The first launch is scheduled to occur “thereafter,” according to the company’s plans.

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After a long summer and fall of uncertainty, private astronaut Jared Isaacman has been renominated to lead NASA, and there appears to be momentum behind getting him confirmed quickly as the space agency’s 15th administrator. It is possible, although far from a lock, the Senate could finalize his nomination before the end of this year.

It cannot happen soon enough.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is, to put it bluntly, kind of a mess. This is not meant to disparage the many fine people who work at NASA. But years of neglect, changing priorities, mismanagement, creeping bureaucracy, meeting bloat, and other factors have taken their toll. NASA is still capable of doing great things. It still inspires. But it needs a fresh start.

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Blue Origin stands ready to help NASA achieve its goals with regard to landing humans on the Moon as soon as possible, the company’s chief executive said Saturday in an interview with Ars.

“We just want to help the US get to the Moon,” said Dave Limp, CEO of the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. “If NASA wants to go quicker, we would move heaven and Earth, pun intended, to try to get to the Moon sooner. And I think we have some good ideas.”

Limp spoke on Saturday, about 24 hours ahead of the company’s second launch of the large New Glenn rocket. Carrying the ESCAPADE spacecraft for NASA, the mission has a launch window that opens at 2:45 pm ET (19:45 UTC) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, and runs for a little more than two hours.

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One of Russia’s most important projects over the last 15 years has been the construction of the Vostochny spaceport as the country seeks to fly its rockets from native soil and modernize its launch operations.

However, the initiative has been a fiasco from the start. After construction began in 2011, the project was beset by hunger strikes, claims of unpaid workers, and the theft of $126 million. Additionally, a man driving a diamond-encrusted Mercedes was arrested after embezzling $75,000. Five years ago, there was another purge of top officials after another round of corruption.

Through it all, there has been some progress. In 2016, a Soyuz-2 rocket launched from the first pad, “1S.” And eight years later, a second pad, “1A,” opened with a successful Angara rocket launch. Eventually, the Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, would like to operate seven launch pads at the Vostochny in the far eastern area of Russia, so development work continues.

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President Trump announced Tuesday evening that he is renominating private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA.

“Jared’s passion for space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new space economy make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new era,” Trump wrote on his social media network, Truth Social.

In his statement, Trump did not offer an explanation for why he found Isaacman acceptable now after pulling his original nomination in late May.

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In recent weeks, copies of an intriguing policy document have started to spread among space lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The document bears the title “Athena,” and it purports to summarize the actions that private astronaut Jared Isaacman would have taken, were his nomination to become NASA administrator confirmed.

The 62-page plan is notable both for the ideas to remake NASA that it espouses as well as the manner in which it has been leaked to the space community.

After receiving a copy of this plan from an industry official, I spoke with multiple sources over the weekend to understand what is happening. Based upon this reporting there are clearly multiple layers to the story, which I want to unpack.

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As artificial intelligence drives the need for vastly more computing storage and processing power, interest in space-based data centers has spiked.

Although several startup companies, such as Starcloud, have begun to address this problem, the idea has also attracted the interest of tech barons. In May, it emerged that former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt acquired Relativity Space due to his interest in space-based data centers. Then, earlier this month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos predicted that gigawatt-scale data centers will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years.

Now, Elon Musk, whose SpaceX owns and operates significantly more space-based infrastructure than any other company or country in the world, has also expressed interest in the technology.

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