Ars Technica
• Stephen Clark
A Chinese company has successfully landed a reusable rocket booster and says it will return the vehicle to service for another flight as soon as possible. The milestone points to an active effort to demonstrate booster reuse and accelerate commercial launch operations.
Launch Vehicles & Space Transportation
Latest source-backed stories
A Chinese company has successfully landed a reusable rocket booster and says it will return the vehicle to service for another flight as soon as possible. The milestone points to an active effort to demonstrate booster reuse and accelerate commercial launch operations.
America’s space economy is growing faster than the industrial base needed to support it, making supply chain resilience the industry’s next major challenge. The mismatch places manufacturing capacity, supplier depth and production scalability at the center of continued expansion across the sector.
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Chinese startup LandSpace successfully soft-landed the first stage of its methalox-fueled Zhuque-3 rocket after its second orbital launch from Jiuquan on August 18. The achievement places LandSpace among the few private companies to recover an orbital-class booster and advances China’s reusable-launch ambitions.
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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured the clearest views so far of a new lunar crater created when a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage struck the Moon at roughly 8,700 km/h after drifting in space for 19 months. The images document the unexpected impact and its comparatively small crater.
VinSpace, the recently formed space unit of Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup, has signed a launch contract with SpaceX for in-orbit demonstration satellites. The spacecraft are planned to fly on a 2027 Transporter rideshare mission, marking an early step in Vietnam’s emerging commercial space sector.
United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin rocket joint venture, is wrapping up a $1.5 billion private-bond transaction—three times the deal’s original size. The financing gives the venture a significantly larger capital-markets transaction as it advances its rocket business.
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SpaceX has towed Starship Ship 40 into a protected bay at Christmas Island after a 24-day voyage through the Indian Ocean. The vehicle, which achieved the program’s first intact ocean splashdown during Flight 13 on July 24, will undergo further analysis by SpaceX engineers ahead of the next test flight.
SpaceX plans to conduct its 100th mission of the year on Aug. 18, marking a significant annual launch milestone. The event will be livestreamed, giving industry observers a real-time view of the company’s continuing launch cadence.
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