Welcome to edition 6.48 of the Rocket Report! Fresh off last week’s dramatic test flight of SpaceX’s Starship, teams in Texas are wasting no time preparing for the next launch. Ground crews are replacing the entire heat shield on the next Starship spacecraft to address deficiencies identified during last week’s flight. SpaceX has a lot to accomplish with Starship in the coming months if NASA wants to land astronauts on the moon by the end of 2026.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, you can subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-compatible versions of the site). Each report contains information on small, medium and heavy rockets, as well as a brief preview of the next three launches on the calendar.
Virgin Galactic won’t be flying again anytime soon. After an impressive but short burst of space activity – seven human spaceflights in a year, even into suborbital space, is unprecedented for a private company – Virgin Galactic will now be grounded again for at least two years, Ars reports. That’s because Colglazier and Virgin Galactic are investing everything in the development of a future ‘Delta class’ of spaceships, following the example of VSS unit, which made its final flight into suborbital space on Saturday. Founded by Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic is now at a crossroads in its quest for profitability VSS unit had no hope of helping achieve this, despite twenty years of development and billions of dollars spent.
An uncertain future …Now Virgin Galactic’s already anemic revenue numbers will drop to near zero as the company spends more capital to bring two Delta-class starships online. The goal is to start flying it in 2026. These vehicles are designed to be more easily reusable and can carry six passengers instead of four. This timeline seems very ambitious, as the company is currently only developing tooling for the vehicles and won’t start production of major parts until later this year. Virgin Galactic is betting on Delta-class ships as its share price has fallen dramatically in recent years. Virgin Galactic even announced a reverse stock split this week in an effort to maintain its listing on the New York Stock Exchange. (submitted by Ken de Bin)
Discover North Korea’s progress in missiles. At the end of last month, North Korea indicated that it has made – or rather is still trying to make – a significant leap forward in missile technology. The isolated totalitarian state’s official news agency said it tested a new type of satellite launcher powered by petroleum fuel and cryogenic liquid oxygen on May 27. This is a radical change in North Korea’s missile program that has surprised astute outside observers. Previous North Korean missiles used hypergolic propellants, usually hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, or solid fuels, which are also well suited for military ballistic missiles. Kerosene and liquid oxygen, on the other hand, are not great rocket propellants, but are good for a pure space launch vehicle.
Who helps?…The May 27 launch failed shortly after launch, while the unnamed rocket was still in its first stage of flight over the Yellow Sea. But there is tangible and circumstantial evidence that Russia played a role in the launch. Details are still unclear, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a Russian spaceport last September and met with Russian Vladimir Putin, who suggested that Russian assistance for the North’s satellite launch program was on the agenda at the summit. South Korean defense officials said Russian experts visited North Korea ahead of the May 27 launch. If Russia were to export a kerosene-powered rocket engine, or perhaps an entire booster, to North Korea, it wouldn’t be the first time Russia has shipped launch technology to the Korean Peninsula. Russia provided South Korea’s nascent space launch program with three fully equipped rocket boosters for test flights in 2009, 2010 and 2023 before the South developed a fully domestic rocket on its own.
ABL signs deal with new launch customer. ABL Space Systems, which is still trying to get its light launch vehicle into orbit, has a new customer. Scout Space announced this week that it has signed a launch agreement with ABL to launch a small spacecraft called “Owlet-01” on the third flight of ABL’s RS1 rocket, Space News reports. Scout Space, which describes itself as focused on space security and encompassing space domain awareness, is developing optical sensors to monitor the space environment. Owlet-01 will pilot a telescope designed to detect other objects in space, a capability highly sought after by the US military.
Still waiting for flight 2 … The launch agreement between ABL and Space Scout is dependent on the outcome of the second flight of the RS1 rocket, which ABL has been preparing in recent months. ABL has not provided any public updates on the status of the second RS1 test flight since announcing in March that preparations for the flight were underway at Kodiak Island, Alaska. The first RS1 rocket fell back to its launch pad in Alaska a few seconds after liftoff in January 2023. The RS1 can deliver a payload of more than 1.3 tons to low Earth orbit. (submitted by Ken de Bin)