SpaceNews.com
• Andrew Jones
China rolled back the Long March 5 assigned to Chang’e-7, potentially delaying the lunar mission by a year, even as Long March 6C returned to flight with seven Earth-imaging satellites. Meanwhile, CAS Space is preparing its Kinastra upper stage for 2027 service, and Japan’s Sarmony has booked a Kairos demonstration launch.
Launch Vehicles & Space Transportation
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China rolled back the Long March 5 assigned to Chang’e-7, potentially delaying the lunar mission by a year, even as Long March 6C returned to flight with seven Earth-imaging satellites. Meanwhile, CAS Space is preparing its Kinastra upper stage for 2027 service, and Japan’s Sarmony has booked a Kairos demonstration launch.
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SpaceX has completed its 260th and final Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Florida, with future East Coast deployments shifting to Starship. The transition comes as the company expands Starbase Louisiana, planned with more than 12 launch towers and a reported $100 billion investment target for 2029.
Impulse Space plans to increase the cadence of rideshare missions to geostationary orbit, citing strong commercial demand. The expansion signals continued customer interest in dedicated orbital transfer and deployment services for GEO-bound payloads, while adding another demand indicator for the emerging commercial space transportation market.
NASA will omit cubesat secondary payloads from Artemis 3 after carrying small satellites on the first two Space Launch System missions. The change reduces the mission’s rideshare activity and underscores the evolving payload priorities for the next Artemis flight to the Moon.
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NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at SpaceX’s hangar at Launch Complex 39A ahead of its scheduled Aug. 30 launch. The observatory is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets and produce a statistical census of planetary systems, complementing capabilities unavailable from Hubble and JWST.
Companies that built businesses arranging rideshare missions for small satellites are increasingly purchasing entire SpaceX launches for themselves. The shift signals intensifying competition for orbital access and suggests that dedicated launch capacity is becoming strategically valuable even for operators traditionally reliant on shared missions.
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SpaceX plans to build its largest launch complex yet on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, replicating and expanding on its Starbase model in Texas. The proposed $100 billion development would include Starship factories and 10 launch pads, supporting thousands of launches annually and expanding the vehicle’s operational footprint.
Colorado-based Ursa Major plans to merge with a blank-check company and enter public markets in early 2027 at a valuation of about $2.3 billion. The transaction is intended to fund the shift from development and low-rate production to full-rate output of rocket engines, hypersonic systems and solid rocket motors.
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