NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon and bolster a rapidly growing commercial space industry is facing an infrastructure obstacle.

A new report from NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) warns that launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia are approaching capacity as demand accelerates across the agency and the private sector. Support infrastructure — such as roads, electricity, and gas and fuel pipelines that laid the foundation for KSC's network of launch pads built to support the Apollo program in the 1960s — are being increasingly stretched by the demands of NASA's Artemis missions, SpaceX, Blue Origin, United Launch Alliance (ULA) and other users.

"Based on current launch projections, Kennedy and Wallops are expected to operate near capacity in the 2028 to 2029 time frame," states the report, which was released on Monday (June 22). Though it credits NASA for already taking steps to address these issues, agency officials estimate it will take at least $1 billion to complete all the necessary upgrades, of which only $250 million was provided as part of NASA's funds allocated in last year's 2025 H.R.1 reconciliation bill.

On Florida's Space Coast, the assessment encompasses launch facilities at KSC as well as Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), which saw an increase of NASA-supported launches from 31 in 2020 to 109 in 2025, according to the report. Wallops, where there are fewer and smaller launch pads, doesn't traditionally see as many missions compared to KSC. But the Virginia site has experienced an even sharper jump, percentage-wise, over the same timeframe — from three launches in 2020 to 17 in 2025 (a 467% rise). By 2030, NASA expects traffic at both sites to increase by another 150% or so. And NASA officials told auditors that raw launch counts don't fully capture the strain on infrastructure, because launch campaigns require days or weeks of support activity before liftoff.

The report outlines launch infrastructure shortcomings at both facilities, but notes that Wallops' challenges have been partially mitigated by recent upgrades across its seven active launch sites. Wallops generally hosts small and medium-lift launch vehicles, like Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket and Rocket Lab's Electron, but has taken steps to support Rocket Lab's upcoming Neutron, as well as Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket, which is expected to launch from the site sometime this year.

The major launch pads in question at KSC and CCSFS include Launch Complex-39A (LC-39A) and LC-39B, used by SpaceX and NASA, respectively; Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40), also used by SpaceX; SLC-41, used by ULA's Atlas and Vulcan rockets; and SLC-36, used by Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket.

SpaceX has transitioned to launching its Falcon 9 rocket primarily from SLC-40 and has reserved LC-39A for Falcon Heavy launches while construction of the first Florida launch tower for its Starship rocket is underway at the same pad. SpaceX hopes to start launching Starship from this pad before the end of 2026.

The company also has plans for a second Space Coast pad for Starship, at SLC-37. Once Starship, which is still under development at SpaceX's Starbase, Texas, facility, becomes fully operational, the company expects up to 44 launches a year from KSC, with an additional 76 launches per year projected from SLC-37 at CCSFS. That equals about one Starship launch every eight days for LC-39A, but a higher cadence will be needed to successfully support NASA's Artemis program.

Artemis missions utilize NASA's Orion spacecraft to transport astronauts from the Earth to the moon, and the agency has contracted Starship, as well as Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, to be the program's crewed lunar landers. All of these vehicles require heavy-lift rockets.

Orion launches on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket from LC-39B. For Artemis 4, currently scheduled for 2028, NASA plans to dock Orion with Starship in Earth orbit, and use Starship to propel the two spacecraft to orbit around the moon. Starship will then undock from Orion, carry a set of astronauts down to the lunar surface, and then launch them back to orbit around the moon to rendezvous and dock again with Orion.

To accomplish this, Starship will require at least 15 refueling flights to top off its tanks before its initial burn for the moon, which would fly in addition to the company's projected eight-day launch cadence, according to the report.

Growing demand for heavy-lift rockets is also increasing pressure to find additional launch sites. Blue Moon is designed to launch on New Glenn, and will also require refueling launches to reach the moon. Setting aside the fact that New Glenn recently exploded during a fueling test that severely damaged SLC-36, the report indicates that Blue Origin officials have told NASA that the pad alone may not provide sufficient long-term capacity and resiliency for the company's future plans, and noted that the constraints have already forced the company to delay launches.

Much of the infrastructure between KSC and CCSFS facilities is considered "common-use," the report says, which puts added stress on available resources shared across different launch providers. That includes a massive electrical grid; 231 miles (372 kilometers) of roadway, much of which was paved in the 1960s without consideration for the weight and frequency of super heavy rocket stages being transported to and from launch pads; and more than 40 miles (64 km) of gaseous pipeline supporting nitrogen (GN2) and helium distribution, which is unable to supply high-flow operations from multiple users in its current state.

"This issue created a major scheduling challenge during preparation for the New Glenn-1 mission that launched in January 2025," the report says. It also anticipates further Artemis mission launch constraints if the issue is not addressed.

Artemis 3, targeted for 2027, will require launches of SLS, New Glenn and multiple Starships all within a small handful of days. The mission will see both private landers — if they're both ready — rendezvous with Orion to practice docking maneuvers in low Earth orbit over the course of about two weeks, but the OIG report calls the feasibility of those back-to-back launches into question.

"Kennedy will be unable to provide GN2 for future Space Launch System launches for Artemis from LC 39B while simultaneously supporting Blue Origin's New Glenn launch vehicle launching from Space Launch Complex 36 at CCSFS," the report says. It projects a possible one- to two-month blackout period of GN2 availability as a result of future SLS launches.

The report further found that NASA has struggled to maintain and modernize its launch infrastructure, partially due to declining maintenance budgets and poor funding structures that prevent an equitable recoupment of costs from commercial providers leasing the launch facilities. "Significant statutory funding barriers prevent the Agency from receiving money directly from commercial partners for use of the Agency’s launch infrastructure," the report says. And, as it currently stands, any commercial investment in NASA's infrastructure is deducted from the agency's budget appropriation, in addition to being a violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the agency from spending federal funds without Congressional approval.

Ultimately, the report recommends prioritizing improvements to NASA's transportation networks, utility systems and resource distribution infrastructure while exploring additional funding mechanisms to support future upgrades. It also suggests three key action items for the space agency:

1. Perform an assessment and create a mitigation strategy to address roadway degradation caused by the increased traffic from heavy-lift launch vehicle transportation and commercial providers.
2. Prioritize the allocation of available funds for the maintenance of common-use launch infrastructure, including roads, electricity distribution, and gaseous pipelines and resource reserves.
3. Explore alternative funding mechanisms and evaluate commercial partnership policies to charge an "Other Approved Indirect Rate" to contribute to upgrades necessary to maintain the aforementioned infrastructure.

"While NASA’s goal is to renew — replace, repair, or upgrade — its infrastructure every 66 years, the current renewal rate, based on the available budget, is over 260 years," the report says.

Update for June 9: NASA's Artemis 3 crew reveal and mission update is now scheduled for today at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT), about 30 minutes later than originally announced. You can watch it live on Space.com's homepage and on our preview page here.

NASA is about to reveal the astronauts who will launch to space on the Artemis 3 mission.

Speculation about who will be in that four-person crew has been high since the return of the Artemis 2 mission, which flew four astronauts around the moon in April. At the time, NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said the announcement of the Artemis 3 crew would come "soon," but he didn't specify a target date.

We have one now: The announcement is scheduled for June 9. Until then, we can make some educated guesses that point to some likely, and also some unlikely, candidates for this very high-profile mission. And the picks might not necessarily all come from the group of 18 astronauts that make up the original Artemis cadre announced in 2020. Here's a look at which astronauts are eligible, and which are probably not up for consideration.

Before we dive into the full list, however, we can whittle it down some by ruling out those least likely to be up for a spot on Artemis 3. NASA is targeting mid- to late 2027 for Artemis 3, so timing and crew schedules aboard the International Space Station (ISS) play a big part in who will be available for the training leading up to the mission. Technical specialties and backgrounds may also have a hand in deciding who is chosen for Artemis 3, which differs significantly in its objectives compared to Artemis 2.

Artemis 2 launched NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as the Canadian Space Agency's (CSA) Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day mission aboard an Orion capsule, which flew a single figure-eight loop around the far side of the moon and back to Earth. The mission was Orion's first test flight with astronauts aboard. Now that it's proven that capability, the crew of Artemis 3 will be tasked with a very different mission.

Artemis 3 won't fly to the moon. Instead, it will launch Orion into low Earth orbit (LEO), where the crewmates will practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or two privately developed lunar lander vehicles. Artemis 3 astronauts will also have the opportunity, to some extent, to test new extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits designed for missions to the lunar surface. So NASA will most likely be looking for astronauts with experience piloting new or unproven vehicles, and at least one or two candidates who've completed a spacewalk.

NASA has contracted SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft as Human Landing System (HLS) landers to deliver astronauts to the surface of the moon on the first several Artemis missions to the lunar surface. But the agency hasn't yet decided which of them will be awarded the program's first crewed landing, which is scheduled to take place in late 2028 on Artemis 4.

That decision will largely depend on the outcome of Artemis 3. Both landers have faced development delays, and NASA has indicated a willingness to fly Artemis 3 with either or both vehicles, should one of them not be ready to launch in time. And there's already a big risk of that — one of Blue Origin's New Glenn rockets, the launch vehicle for Blue Moon, recently exploded on the pad during an engine test.

In any case, the goals of Artemis 3 are much more focused on things like spacecraft piloting and operations than they are on lunar exploration, which is definitely something NASA will have kept in mind when deciding its crew.

Because they just flew on Artemis 2, it's unlikely Wiseman, Glover, Koch or Hansen will be up for consideration for the upcoming mission. Historically, NASA does not schedule astronauts for back-to-back flights. With that in mind, some of the Artemis cadre currently aboard the ISS and those scheduled to launch to the station in the coming months can probably be ruled out as well. That includes original NASA Artemis cadre astronauts Jessica Meir, currently in space, and Jessica Watkins, who is scheduled to launch to the station as commander of SpaceX Crew-13 sometime in late summer or early fall. NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Chris Williams are also currently aboard the ISS, and spaceflight rookie Luke Delaney is launching on Crew-13 as well, and can all likely be ruled out.

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Jonny Kim both returned from the ISS in 2025, which is relatively recent, but their backgrounds and experience make both of them possible contenders for Artemis 3.

Kim joined NASA as a part of the agency's 2017 astronaut class. He spent eight months aboard the ISS last year and has an extensive background that includes experience as a special-operations Navy SEAL, pilot, physician, combat medic and flight surgeon.

McClain came home from a five-month mission to the ISS last summer as commander of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission. Its return wrapped up her second stint aboard the station and a cumulative 350 days on orbit, which also featured two spacewalks totaling almost 19 hours. Before being chosen for NASA's 2013 astronaut class, she had a background in aerospace engineering and served as a U.S. Army aviator and test pilot, logging more than 2,000 flight hours in more than 20 aircraft.

Some of the remaining members of the 2020 NASA Artemis astronaut cadre that could be ruled out include Kate Rubins, who retired from NASA in 2025, as well as Joe Acaba, Kjell Lindgren and Scott Tingle. They are each listed as NASA "management astronauts," who the agency says are no longer eligible for flight assignments in their current role. However, Tingle currently serves as chief of NASA's astronaut office, which is the same position Wiseman held prior to his selection for Artemis 2, so while their selection remains less likely, it's not impossible.

As for those remaining on the list, a few rise to the top.

Since his mission to the ISS as commander of SpaceX's Crew-3 ended in 2022, Raja Chari has led astronaut development and testing for HLS at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, which includes lunar lander hardware integration with Orion and Artemis EVA suit designs. That, combined with the two EVAs Chari performed during his time aboard the space station and his background as an Air Force test pilot and aerospace engineer, make him a top-tier choice for Artemis 3.

Another possibility with similar credentials is Jasmin Moghbeli. She also has aerospace engineering and test piloting experience, served in the Marine Corps and has played a role in HLS development since her return after commanding the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the ISS. But she has one fewer EVA on her record than Chari and seems not to have as much hands-on time with HLS, so between the two of them, Chari might have a slight advantage.

Nicole Mann is also among those likely under serious consideration for Artemis 3. She spent about 5.5 months aboard the ISS as commander of SpaceX Crew-5 in 2022, during which she completed two EVAs. Mann was part of NASA's 2013 astronaut class and joined the agency with a test pilot and mechanical engineering background. She also flew F/A-18 fighter jets as a Marine Corps colonel. In addition to her spaceflight experience, Mann has served as NASA's assistant to the chief astronaut for exploration, helping with Orion, SLS and the exploration ground systems division that oversees launch infrastructure.

Kayla Barron, from NASA's 2017 astronaut class, is also highly qualified for Artemis 3, probably with as much chance of selection as Mann. Barron launched on SpaceX's Crew-3 mission to the ISS, completed two EVAs, and has worked to support operational concepts for the Artemis program, including its next-generation spacesuits and lunar rovers. Her experience helping develop Artemis rovers, however, may make her more suited for Artemis 4, Artemis 5 or a later mission that's expected to include a rover on the surface of the moon.

Other Artemis astronaut cadre members include Matthew Dominick, Frank Rubio and Warren "Woody" Hoburg. Hoburg served on NASA’s independent Orion heat shield review team but hasn't had as much hands-on experience with the spacecraft's operations as other possible picks for Artemis 3. Dominick and Rubio both have piloting experience, but their post-spaceflight public resumes don’t show the same Orion-focused assignments as some of their Artemis cadre counterparts.

The last original Artemis cadre member is Stephanie Wilson. Hers is a slightly more unique consideration compared to her peers. Wilson has three launches under her belt, but those were all aboard the space shuttle, and she flew her last mission in 2010. The 16-year gap between spaceflights doesn't necessarily worsen her chances of selection for Artemis 3, though. Wilson was previously scheduled for a mission to the ISS as a part of SpaceX Crew-9 in 2024. However, issues with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which was docked with the space station at the time, necessitated that Crew-9 launch with only two of its four original astronauts, and Wilson was moved off the mission.

Given the training she's already undergone to launch on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft for a rotation aboard the space station, it's possible Wilson will be reassigned to a future ISS expedition crew, but her rescheduled spaceflight may also position her for readiness to fly the Artemis 3 mission as well.

Because Wiseman wasn't part of NASA's original Artemis cadre when he was chosen for Artemis 2, other astronauts in the agency's directory may also warrant some consideration. At least four astronauts fit the bill for relevant Artemis 3 experience, whether that be through long-term stints aboard the ISS, EVA experience or assignments with strong leadership positions. Loral O'Hara, Nichole Ayers and Zena Cardman all fall into those categories in at least one way and shouldn't be counted out.

The fourth non-cadre astronaut may, in fact, be one of the strongest candidates for selection on Artemis 3. Andre Douglas trained as part of the backup crew for Artemis 2. This means he trained alongside the Artemis 2 astronauts right up until the day of their launch. He's a spaceflight rookie from NASA's 2021 astronaut class, but his extensive familiarity with Orion and mission procedures make him a very likely contender for Artemis 3. It was common for members of backup crews for NASA's Apollo program to be assigned as the main crew for later missions. While none flew on the missions directly following their backup crew assignments, Douglas stands as one of NASA's most experienced astronauts when it comes to Orion training, and is speculated as one of Artemis 3's top potential picks.

CSA astronaut Jenni Gibbons also served as Hansen's backup crew member for Artemis 2, and whether or not she will be considered for Artemis 3 raises the question if NASA will include any international astronauts for the upcoming mission. Nearly 2.5 years before the Artemis 2 crew announcement (which occurred in April 2023), NASA committed to flying a CSA astronaut on Artemis 2 as part of its agreement for Canada to supply critical components for the lunar Gateway space station. NASA reached a similar deal with Japan's space agency, JAXA, which committed to contribute critical components for Gateway's life support systems in exchange for seats on future missions to the cislunar outpost.

Plans for a space station orbiting the moon, though, have since been scrapped, and NASA has not indicated how that cancellation may affect its arrangements to include crews from outside agencies. Without Gateway, Japan’s clearest crew path is probably tied to contributions to lunar surface infrastructure, and a Japanese astronaut will therefore not likely be included on the first four Artemis flights.

If NASA does opt to give an Artemis 3 seat to an international partner, an astronaut from the European Space Agency (ESA) likely has the best chance of getting chosen. ESA builds Orion's service module, which is responsible for supplying the space capsule with power, propulsion, water, oxygen and thermal control. With a spot on Artemis 2 already given to CSA, ESA may be next in line.

Some strong ESA astronaut possibilities include Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti, as well as Matthias Maurer and Alexander Gerst, both from Germany. Germany is ESA's biggest financial contributor, and ESA officials have previously stated that a German will fly as ESA's first astronaut on an Artemis mission to the moon. But Gateway's cancellation, and the restructuring of Artemis 3 from a moon landing mission to one flying to Earth orbit, may have complicated those arrangements as well.

The inclusion of an ESA astronaut on an Artemis mission that doesn't fly to the moon may alter Europe's approach to crew selection. If ESA still wants to reserve a moon mission for a German astronaut, Gerst and Maurer would likely be at the front of the line. Gerst's background in geophysics and volcanology, and Maurer's involvement in ESA's planetary geology and astrobiology programs, make them both excellent candidates for Artemis' future lunar excursions.

So, if ESA manages to get a seat on Artemis 3, Cristoforetti could emerge as a compelling option — a veteran astronaut with Crew Dragon, ISS and EVA experience who would give Europe a high-profile Artemis presence.

There is the chance, though, that all four seats aboard the Artemis 3 Orion spacecraft will be filled by NASA astronauts. In that case, the list of names to look out for include the following:

• Top tier:
  • Raja Chari
  • Nicole Mann
  • Kayla Barron
  • Andre Douglas
• Middle tier:
  • Jasmin Moghbeli
  • Frank Rubio
  • Zena Cardman
  • Stephanie Wilson
  • Matthew Dominick
• Bottom tier:
  • Anne McClain
  • Jonny Kim
  • Woody Hoburg
  • Nichole Ayers
  • Loral O’Hara

After its rocket explosion, Blue Origin wants to complete repairs and put another New Glenn on the launchpad before the end of 2026, according to CEO Dave Limp. That's very ambitious.

The company's New Glenn rocket stood at Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station last Thursday (May 28) for a static hot fire test ahead of the vehicle's fourth launch. Blue Origin has yet to complete an investigation into the incident, but whatever the cause, New Glenn exploded on the launchpad in an enormous fireball visible for more than a hundred miles, destroying the launch vehicle and spreading damage across LC-36 and the surrounding vegetation.

Now that the smoke has settled, Limp has shed some light on the extent of that damage, and thinks the company can have New Glenn ready for launch before the end of the year. "before the end of this year," he said in a post on X, which ended with the phrase, "Gradatim Ferociter," the company's motto that means "step by step, ferociously."

Limp said that amongst the ruins of LC-36, which can be seen from space, there was still some promising news to share. In addition to the facility's water tower, "the propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG (liquid nitrogen) tanks are all in good shape," he said. But the pad didn't survive unscathed.

The large tower that helps coordinate systems and ground infrastructure at the pad sustained significant charring in the blast, but is in fine-enough shape that Limp said it can be repaired rather than needing to be torn down and rebuilt. The transporter-erector — the strongback that delivers and erects New Glenn at the pad — was destroyed beyond repair, but instead of rebuilding the structure, it will be replaced by "an alternative vertical conop (operational concept)," Limp said, which Blue Origin "had already been working for some time."

Setting the goal to return New Glenn to flight before the end of 2026 is an ambitious one, and with a timeline nearly half as long as comparable undertakings at other launch facilities.

For example, SpaceX launched its first Starship rocket test flight in April 2023, before building a flame trench under the launchpad at its Starbase facility in South Texas. As a result, the 33 Raptor engines of the vehicle's Super Heavy booster blasted a crater in the pad's concrete, spewing heavy debris throughout the pad and surrounding area as the rocket lifted off.

The second Starship test flight occurred about seven months later, in November 2023, aligning with Blue Origin's hopeful timeline for LC-36, but damage from the power of a rocket's engines, and damage from that entire rocket exploding on the launchpad are different levels of destruction.

In 2016, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex-40 exploded during the same type of static hot fire test that New Glenn was undergoing, and facilities there didn't support another launch for a year. And it was almost two years between launches at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility after the Orb-3 mission in 2014, when an Antares rocket failed seconds after liftoff and crashed back down to its pad just below.

LC-36 is Blue Origin's only launchpad, meaning each day that it remains out of operation is another delay to the company's efforts to prove New Glenn's reliability not only to its customers, like Amazon, which has contracted Blue Origin to launch several Leo wireless internet satellite missions, but also NASA, which is relying on New Glenn for critical parts of the Artemis program and the agency's efforts to return astronauts to the moon.

NASA has contracted SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft as the first two lunar landers for Artemis, and a delay in Blue Origin's ability to launch Blue Moon to orbit could mean the company takes a backseat to humanity's return to the moon.

It could also lead to a delay in that return all together. Starship and Blue Moon both have a ways to go before NASA will certify the vehicles to fly astronauts, so any time lost on that front by Blue Origin could further narrow NASA's options and increase the risk of setbacks to the agency's lunar landing timeline.

NASA is currently targeting 2027 for Artemis 3, a mission to low Earth orbit for astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with one or both lunar landers, based on their availability. The first Artemis lunar landing mission is scheduled for 2028, and whatever role Blue Origin plays between now and then will likely be heavily influenced by its ability to get LC-36 up and running again.

The dust has settled in the aftermath of last week's giant New Glenn rocket explosion, which shook Florida's Space Coast and the space industry itself.

Blue Origin was conducting a fueling test on May 28, ahead of New Glenn's fourth mission, when a yet unknown event led to the total destruction of the vehicle and significant damage to the ground infrastructure at Launch Complex-36 (LC-36). No one was hurt in the incident, but the loss dealt a serious blow to Blue Origin's ability to meet NASA's timeline to support the Artemis missions to return astronauts to the moon, and further stalls the growth of the Amazon Leo wireless internet constellation meant to compete against SpaceX's Starlink satellite network.

The explosion caused extensive damage to LC-36, Blue Origin's only launchpad capable of supporting a rocket as large as New Glenn. So extensive, in fact, that the damage can be measured from space, as seen in images captured by Planet Lab's SkySat-C9 satellite, and processed by Spacefromspace.

Satellite imagery shows charred vegetation stretched out in nearly every direction around the half-mile-wide (1 kilometer) New Glenn pad. Blue Origin leases LC-36, which is located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). Visible damage across the scorched facility, now in ruin, can be seen on the launch tower, flame trench and other support systems.

Blue Origin is currently working out how to repair the damage. "We will start clearing the pad soon and have a good rebuild plan in place," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a post to X on May 31. Limp and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos toured LC-36 with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman on May 30, according to Isaacman, who promised the agency's full support in the investigation ahead.

New Glenn is one of the rockets NASA is counting on to land astronauts on the moon during future Artemis missions. Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander is one of two spacecraft contracted by NASA to carry out those landings — the other is SpaceX's Starship — and until Blue Origin can complete repairs to LC-36, Blue Moon doesn't have a ride to space.

Blue Origin had planned to launch the first Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1), a smaller cargo variant of the eventual MK2 model designed to support a crew, on a mission to the lunar surface this fall, and stood to deliver a suite of NASA payloads as part of the agency's Moon Base 1 phase to establish a future permanent outpost. But the restoration of LC-36 will very likely delay that launch for several months. That will have ripple effects for Blue Origin's readiness to supply a Blue Moon vehicle for the upcoming Artemis 3 mission to launch the lunar landers to Earth orbit to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with the Orion spacecraft. That, in turn, could either delay Artemis 3 or create an untenable timeline for Blue Moon to gain its certification to carry astronauts in time for the first Artemis mission lunar landing on Artemis 4.

When an Antares rocket exploded and damaged its launchpad in 2014, it was nearly two years until the affected facilities at NASA's Wallops Space Flight Center supported another launch. SpaceX suffered a similar static test fire accident to New Glenn's in September 2016, when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded at CCSFS's Launch Complex-40 leading up to the launch of the Amos-6 communications satellite. SpaceX spent just over a year repairing its facilities there, launching a mission from LC-40 in December 2017.

Blue Origin hasn't come out with an estimated repair time for LC-16, and has yet to release an overall assessment of the damage. Following his tour with Isaacman, Bezos voiced his determination for the company to press onward, and his appreciation to the administrator for NASA's support. "Thank you for being here today," Bezos said in a post on X. "We will get back to flight, and we will get to the moon. Gradatim Ferociter."

The recent explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket during a routine test is a big setback for the private spaceflight company, and will likely have implications for NASA's Artemis program timeline and the nation's efforts to return astronauts to the surface of the moon.

The May 28 incident, in which no one was injured, occurred while Blue Origin prepared its fourth New Glenn rocket for launch. A static test fire of the vehicle's engines at Launch Complex-36 (LC-36), located at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida, was the rocket's last major milestone before a liftoff targeted for June 4. During that test, however, an explosion destroyed the rocket and severely damaged launch infrastructure on the ground. (The payload for that flight, a group of 48 Amazon Leo internet satellites, was not aboard the rocket when it exploded.)

The mishap is a major blow to Blue Origin's progress with New Glenn, which was only cleared to proceed with the upcoming flight a week ago. New Glenn had been grounded pending a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation after the NG-3 mission in April, when a failure of the rocket's second stage stranded AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite payload in an unstable orbit. Now, with another investigation opening, and extensive repairs needed at LC-36, New Glenn may be grounded for a while, potentially forcing NASA to change its expectations for how Blue Origin will support upcoming Artemis missions.

"This is a pretty significant incident to happen to Blue Origin," Kathleen Curlee, a commercial space industry research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told Space.com in an interview.

New Glenn is Blue Origin's partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle, designed to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Starship rockets. Before New Glenn, New Shepard was the only rocket Blue Origin ever launched to space, and each of those flights was suborbital. Though long delayed in its initial debut, New Glenn made it to orbit on its first launch in January 2025 and performed a successful landing of the rocket's first stage during its second mission (NG-2). And, despite the second stage shortfalls of NG-3, that mission managed to reuse NG-2's landed booster core (with new engines), which performed a second successful landing on Blue Origin's recovery droneship "Jacklyn," in the Atlantic Ocean.

All that progress now comes to a screeching halt while Blue Origin investigates the cause of New Glenn's explosion and faces the task of rebuilding LC-36. In the meantime, the 2027 target to launch the next mission in NASA's Artemis program, Artemis 3, inches ever closer, and the time for Blue Origin to RSVP to the party draws nearer.

The Artemis program aims to create a sustained human presence with a base on the moon, and eventually develop technologies that can support crewed missions to Mars. The agency selected Blue Origin and SpaceX to support that effort, contracting each company to design and build lunar landers capable of delivering astronauts to the moon's surface and launching them back to lunar orbit to rendezvous with NASA's Orion spacecraft.

The first of those lunar landing missions is Artemis 4, which NASA hopes to launch in late 2028. Artemis 3 is a stepping stone to that achievement, but one which relies on at least one lunar lander making it to space. And right now, Blue Origin's contribution, the Blue Moon lander, has no way of getting there.

Blue Moon is designed to launch on New Glenn. The first prototype for that lander, the Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1), was scheduled to launch in fall 2026 to deliver the first building blocks for NASA's Moon Base 1 mission phase. With a delay of that mission now likely, the development and qualification timeline for the crew-capable Blue Moon MK2 may now slip as well.

"It's a good lander, it's a good system, but they cannot get it to the moon without their New Glenn, and their New Glenn is grounded," Curlee said.

The goal of Artemis 3 is to launch Orion with a crew of astronauts into Earth orbit to rendezvous and dock with one or both of the program's lunar landers. Before a program architecture redesign earlier this year, NASA chose Starship to fly the first Artemis lunar landing mission. But development of SpaceX's megarocket spacecraft faced its own delays, and NASA has since indicated a willingness to fly with whichever lunar lander can be ready when the time comes to launch the missions ahead. The loss of New Glenn and the damage to the rocket's only launch pad now give SpaceX a potential leg up in that competition.

Starship has faced its own delays over the past several years — even explosions in flight and on the test stand. The spacecraft's 12th overall test flight launched on May 22, for instance, and experienced issues with the vehicle's new Raptor 3 engines that led to a failure in the first stage's boostback burn, and its subsequent fiery plunge into the Gulf of Mexico. But that incident, during an otherwise successful flight, doesn't quite stack up against New Glenn's explosive mishap, Curlee said.

"In the launch industry, it is a success if you get your rocket off of the launch pad," she said. "Yes, [SpaceX] had anomalies … but they did not blow up their launch pad, and they were able to achieve flight. For Blue Origin, this exploding on the launch pad is a pretty significant failure."

SpaceX is no stranger to destroying launch pads, however. In September 2016, the company experienced an accident similar to New Glenn's explosion: A Falcon 9 rocket exploded at CCSFS's Launch Complex-40 (LC-40) during the static fire test for the Amos-6 communications satellite launch. (The satellite was aboard the rocket at the time and was destroyed.) According to Curlee, though, that loss wasn't as hard a blow to SpaceX as this fresh one will be to Blue Origin.

Following an incident investigation at the time, SpaceX was able to return Falcon 9 to flight about four months later, but only because of the company's additional launch pads at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, which is next door to CCSFS, and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Launches didn't return to LC-40 until December 2017.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman toured LC-36 Friday, alongside Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Dave Limp. "NASA is committed to helping the Blue team recover, continue to advance their lunar lander and get New Glenn back to launching as soon as safely possible," Isaacman said in a post on X.

Blue Origin has no other launch pads for New Glenn, so regardless of the length of the company's investigation into the cause of the explosion, New Glenn is grounded until LC-36 can get back up and running.

"Launch pads are a pretty high-value real estate item," Curlee said. "There's only a few launch pads that can handle the size of the New Glenn, and the one that [Blue Origin] had was LC-36, which has now been destroyed. So this is a pretty significant setback."

Still, she doesn't think it heralds the end of NASA's lunar ambitions. "I think overall this doesn't mean that we've lost the moon … but NASA is going to have significantly readjust its Artemis and Moon Base programs to account for the fact that this happened."

An explosion on Florida's Space Coast last night lit up the sky more than 100 miles away.

During a test of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket in the evening hours on May 28, ahead of an upcoming mission to deliver a batch of Amazon Leo internet satellites to low Earth orbit, the launch vehicle experienced an anomaly that led to its complete loss and what is likely significant damage to the Launch Complex-36 (LC-36), at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos confirmed in a post on X that no one was hurt in the accident, and said, "It's too early to know the root cause but we're already working to find it. Very rough day, but we'll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It's worth it." Dozens of other posts to social media quickly spread views of the explosion seen from nearby Cocoa Beach all the way to Tampa, on Florida's west coast.

A flyover image taken this morning (May 29) of LC-36 gives an idea to the extent of damage sustained by the launchpad infrastructure.

One X user, @leesteapleton, posted a video sent to him by a patron of Cocoa Beach restaurant Coconuts on the Beach, located about 11.5 miles (18.5 kilometers) from the launchpad.

Farther north near Jetty Park, a popular launch viewing location in Port Canaveral about 5.5 miles (8.9 kilometers) from LC-36, X user @JConcilus called the explosion "absolutely enormous."

The incident was also captured in nearby waters off the shore. Instagram user @gofly2 saw the explosion while aboard a yacht on the way back into Port Canaveral.

This Ring doorbell footage from @huntermanely, on X, caught the explosion lighting up the night sky as a delivery driver dropped off some food.

X user @ItsAlexQuinn, who happened to be in the sky at the time of the incident, posted a video from his airplane window seat while flying above Orlando, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the launchpad.

The glow from the New Glenn explosion was so bright, in fact, that it could be seen all the way on the opposite end of the state. X user @radiolassi shared a video from Tampa, FL, showing the sky illuminating in a bright flash from more than 100 miles away.

"120 miles away. That's the distance between Tampa and the New Glenn explosion in this video. Yet the blast was still visible across Florida's night sky. Moments like this remind you just how powerful modern rockets are," they said in their post.

Both Blue Origin and Space Force officials are instructing the public to report any debris that may wash up on nearby shores. "Debris from our recent hotfire anomaly may wash ashore in the coming days/weeks. If you encounter any debris, do not touch or approach it for your safety," Blue Origin said in a post on X.

People are urged to call Blue Origin's Wreckage Management Hotline if they should happen upon such debris, but also to call 911 if items pose "an immediate public safety hazard," Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, who oversee Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, said in their post, directing the public "not touch or attempt to recover suspected debris."

Blue Origin just hit a hurdle on its way to the moon.

The company's powerful New Glenn rocket exploded during a routine prelaunch engine test at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday night (May 28), creating a huge fireball that lit up the dark Space Coast skies.

"We experienced an anomaly during today's hotfire test," Blue Origin wrote in an statement. " All personnel have been accounted for. We will provide updates as we learn more."

Nobody was injured, Blue Origin said in an update on X on Thursday night. But damage to the pad — Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) — could be extensive, judging by the extent of the explosion, which multiple rocket-watchers captured on video.

"All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it," Jeff Bezos, the billionaire and founder of Blue Origin, wrote in a statement on social media. "Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.

The accident could have big implications for Blue Origin, NASA and the United States' moon plans.

Blue Origin, which Amazon's Bezos founded back in 2000, sees the 320-foot-tall (98 meters) New Glenn as its launch workhorse, a powerhouse rocket that will help humanity establish a foothold away from Earth.

Indeed, New Glenn is the rocket ride for Blue Origin's Blue Moon, one of the two private vehicles (along with SpaceX's Starship) that NASA selected to land astronauts on the moon for its Artemis program.

And the agency announced earlier this week that Blue Moon will land two private lunar rovers on the lunar surface — missions that are key to the buildout of NASA's planned moon base near the south pole. The agency wants at least one of those rovers to be on the moon before the first crewed Artemis mission (Artemis 4) touches down, a milestone targeted for late 2028.

But Blue Moon is supposed to head to the moon considerably sooner than that. Blue Origin is gearing up to send a robotic prototype of the vehicle, called Blue Moon Mark 1, to the lunar surface later this year, to demonstrate the vehicle’s capabilities.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman addressed the New Glenn explosion on Thursday night, showing how important the rocket is to the agency's plans going forward.

"Spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing new heavy-lift launch capability is extraordinarily difficult," Isaacman said in an X post. "We will work with our partners to support a thorough investigation of this anomaly, assess near-term mission impacts, and get back to launching rockets. 
We will provide information on any impacts to the Artemis and Moon Base programs as it becomes available."

New Glenn has flown just three times to date, and things haven't always gone swimmingly. For example, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounded the rocket briefly after its third flight, which occurred on April 19. During that mission, New Glenn failed to deploy its payload, the BlueBird 7 communications satellite, into the proper orbit.

Thursday's explosion occurred during a "hotfire" engine test meant to clear the path for New Glenn's fourth flight, which was supposed to deploy 49 satellites for Amazon's nascent broadband constellation. That mission was scheduled to fly on June 4.

LC-36 is currently the only pad that hosts New Glenn launches, so extensive damage to the pad would likely keep the rocket grounded for a while.

Editor's note: This story was updatedon May 29 to include additional statements from Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos.

SpaceX's next-gen Starship megarocket finally got off the ground last week.

On May 22, SpaceX's first Starship V3 ("Version 3") vehicle lifted off from a brand-new pad at the company's Starbase site in South Texas. It was the first Starship launch in more than seven months, a lag caused by the time it took to develop and incorporate V3's many upgrades over its predecessors. (The destruction of a V3 Super Heavy booster during testing in November didn't help, either.)

Though Starship V3 suffered a few engine glitches on May 22, and its Super Heavy booster didn't steer itself down for a soft ocean splashdown as planned, SpaceX heralded the suborbital test flight as a success. That's a big deal, because V3 is expected to carry a heavy load for the company, and for NASA, in the coming years.

Great expectations

The 408-foot-tall (124.4 meters) Starship V3 is the biggest and most powerful iteration of Starship yet. It's the first variant of the vehicle outfitted with SpaceX's new Raptor 3 engine, the sleekest, lightest and brawniest Raptor that the company has built.

V3 sports many other upgrades as well. For example, its Super Heavy first stage has an improved fuel-transfer system that allows the booster's 33 engines to fire more quickly, according to a May 12 SpaceX update.

The Ship upper stage, meanwhile, features a more efficient propulsion system, larger propellant tanks and docking ports that will enable meetups with refueling "tanker" vehicles in Earth orbit, among other modifications.

Those in-space meetups will be a big part of Starship missions in the future. Any Starship flight to the moon, Mars or another deep-space destination will require the launch of a dozen or more Ships to haul its required propellant to space, experts say. (The exact number of necessary tanker missions is hard to pin down.)

And the moon is indeed a target. In 2021, NASA selected Ship to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of lunar exploration. SpaceX is currently working to get Ship ready for the next two Artemis missions — Artemis 3, a docking test with NASA's Orion crew capsule in low Earth orbit, and Artemis 4, which will land astronauts near the lunar south pole. If all goes to plan, Artemis 3 will launch in mid-2027, and Artemis 4 will lift off in late 2028.

Ship isn't guaranteed to fly on either of these missions, however. NASA also picked Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft to be an Artemis lander, and both are still in the running for Artemis 3 and Artemis 4. (Both private landers could fly on Artemis 3, NASA officials have said, but only one will make the trip to the moon a year later.)

Next steps

SpaceX is working to get Starship V3 up and running in time for Artemis 3. And it needs to move quickly, for there's a lot still needs to be done.

The immediate priority is determining why Super Heavy failed to stick its landing during the May 22 test flight. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration declared that failure a mishap and has grounded Starship until SpaceX wraps up an investigation into the matter.

After Starship V3 has been cleared to fly again, it will need to notch some big milestones in the final frontier — notably, reaching Earth orbit and topping off its tanks there. And SpaceX has laid out how it plans to tick those boxes.

"It will start with a Starship launched from Starbase to spend an extended time on orbit, gathering data on vehicle propulsion and thermal behavior on an extended duration mission, including long duration propellant storage and boil-off characterization," the company wrote in an update on Oct. 30, about two weeks after Starship's 11th test flight. "A second Starship will then launch to rendezvous with the first to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer in Earth orbit."

SpaceX aims to launch both of those Starship flights this year, the company added. But we don't know if the next Starship launch will kick off the first leg of that refueling test; SpaceX hasn't announced details about Flight 13 (including its flight date).

We should expect Starship to launch again relatively soon, however, for SpaceX prioritizes flight-testing as the best way to develop and mature its hardware. And there's no shortage of hardware to fly at the moment: The company has built up a stockpile of Starship V3 vehicles, according to founder and CEO Elon Musk.

"The Starship production pipeline is full and will complete roughly 10 more ships and about half that number of boosters this year," Musk wrote on May 18 via X, the social media platform he owns.

SpaceX also needs to integrate a life-support system into Starship ahead of Artemis 4. That vital tech may not be necessary for Artemis 3, however; NASA is still defining the parameters of that docking test and has left open the possibility that the astronauts will not enter whichever private lander flies on Artemis 3.

SpaceX has been operating life-support systems in space since 2020, when it launched its first Crew Dragon astronaut mission to the International Space Station. And the company has been working on a Starship version of the tech as well.

In the October 2025 update, SpaceX wrote that it has completed "lunar environmental control and life support and thermal control system demonstrations, using a full-scale cabin module inhabited by multiple people to test the capability to inject oxygen and nitrogen into the cabin environment and accurately manage air distribution and sanitation, along with humidity and thermal control."

There's other vital gear to integrate as well — the elevator, for instance. Ship stands a whopping 171 feet (52 meters) tall, so the astronauts who fly on it to the moon will need a way to get from the vehicle's nose (where the cabin will be) down to the gray dirt.

SpaceX has already conducted a demonstration of Ship elevator and airlock tech, according to the October 2025 update. That test — performed with Axiom Space, which is building the Artemis program's spacesuits — occurred at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California in mid-2024.

Over the longer term, we can expect an accelerating cadence of increasingly ambitious test flights as SpaceX gets even more proficient at building and flying Starship hardware.

Perhaps the most important of these trials is an uncrewed test flight to the lunar surface, which both Ship and Blue Moon will need to ace before the private vehicles are certified to carry NASA astronauts.

There's no stated timeline for either of those landmark flights, though at least one of them will have to occur before late 2028 to keep Artemis 4 on schedule. (A robotic prototype of Blue Moon will launch on a lunar-landing mission this fall, if all goes to plan. But the mature, crew-capable variant of Blue Moon will still have to duplicate the feat before astronauts can climb aboard.)

What can we expect once Starship gets fully up and running? It's hard to say, but Musk has certainly set expectations high.

"Our goal is launching Starship >10k/year, which would be more than once an hour," the world's richest man wrote via X on May 23. "Probably over 200 tons of useful load to a useful orbit per flight by then."

The next big Artemis announcement is just hours away.

In Houston today (June 9), NASA will reveal the four-person Artemis 3 crew and provide a progress update about the mission, agency officials said on Tuesday evening (May 26).

The crew reveal will take place at NASA's Johnson Space Center, during an event that starts at 11:30 a.m. EDT (1530 GMT), about 30 minutes later than previously announced. You can watch it live here Space.com when the time comes, as well as directly on the Space.com YouTube channel.

Artemis 3 was originally supposed to be the first landing mission of the Artemis program, which aims to establish a lasting human presence on the moon over the next decade or so.

In late February, however, NASA chief Jared Isaacman announced a big change to the Artemis architecture: Artemis 3 will test rendezvous and docking operations in Earth orbit between NASA's Orion crew capsule and one or both of the program's crewed lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

"The mission will test critical rendezvous and docking capabilities between Orion and commercial human landing systems needed to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface," NASA wrote in a statement. "Building on the successful Artemis II crewed test flight in April, Artemis III will pave the way for future surface missions."

Artemis 3 is scheduled to launch in mid-2027, so we'll learn about the crew about a year before liftoff if all goes to plan. For perspective, NASA announced the four astronauts of the Artemis 2 around-the-moon mission, which launched on April 1 of this year, in April 2023.

If all goes well with Artemis 3 and other developments, Artemis 4 will put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2028. It's unclear at this point whether Starship or Blue Moon will fly on that mission.

NASA gave us some other Artemis news on Tuesday. The agency announced more than $1 billion in contracts for rovers, lunar landers and other vehicles that will help build out a planned base near the moon's south pole.

NASA also told us that it wants that base to cover hundreds of square miles.

Editor's note: This story was updated to reflect the new time for NASA's Artemis 3 mission update and crew reveal.

NASA is definitely thinking big on the moon.

The U.S. space agency plans to build a crewed lunar base over the next decade or so via its Artemis program — and we just got a sense of that project's impressive scope.

"We envision the moon base to be hundreds of square miles, with different assets all building up to the objective of permanent lunar presence on the moon," Carlos García-Galán, the manager of NASA's Moon Base program at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., said during a press conference Tuesday (May 26).

The base will be constructed over the next decade or so near the lunar south pole, which is thought to harbor large amounts of water ice. This precious resource has been accumulating for billions of years on the permanently shadowed floors of craters in the region, scientists say.

NASA didn't go into the moon base-planning process with a big footprint as a priority. Rather, it emerged naturally, as all of the envisioned elements started coming together in planners' heads.

"There's no one spot that covers all the science, all the technology, all the habitation needs of the surface, and even within the local area, you have to consider the terrain," NASA's Nujoud Merancy, chief architect of the Moon Base program, said during today's briefing.

"So, you'll have the habitats on the tops of the hills where they get sunlight," she added. "Power systems — nuclear systems — need to be a kilometer or more away for the radiation protection, so all of these things, when you start putting them together, end up sprawling a little bit more like a city as you start building it out."

And scientists and mission planners still don't know a lot about the lunar south pole, which is another reason for a settlement there to cover a lot of ground, according to García-Galán.

"We're going to want to explore different sites to really maximize the mix of scientific objectives and viability of a permanent presence," he said.

NASA plans to reduce the uncertainty via the use of MoonFall drones — small, hopping robots that will scout out the south polar region ahead of moon base construction. The first MoonFall batch, a set of three or four spacecraft, will launch to the moon in 2028 aboard a lander built by Firefly Aerospace, NASA announced today. (Firefly nabbed a $75 million contract for the mission, the company said.)

Those drones, or others like it, could also help mark the moon base's borders, said García-Galán.

"We're going to be able to basically put them at the corners of the areas where we think we have either key scientific objectives or we want to build up the moon base," he said.

China plans to build a base on the moon in the coming years as well (its first astronaut landing is aimed for 2030), and U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of getting the American one up and running first. The U.S. wants to be the one establishing norms of responsible behavior on Earth's nearest neighbor, the argument goes.

So, during today's press conference, Ars Technica's Eric Berger asked García-Galán and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who also participated in the event, if the MoonFall drones could help delineate a keep-out zone of sorts.

"I think it's important for us to get there first," Isaacman said. "I think the idea that there are areas of great interest on the lunar surface — we do want to get there and explore them, and we also obviously want to be very mindful of the Outer Space Treaty, so that we are respectful of other nations that are putting assets on the on the lunar surface. We would expect that to be reciprocal."

The moon base's envisioned size was just a sidelight of today's event. The main purpose was to announce contracts that the agency just awarded to get the ball rolling on the outpost's construction.

Firefly wasn't the only compay to win a NASA Moon Base program contract. NASA is giving California-based Astrolab $219 million and Colorado's Lunar Outpost $220 million for production of their lunar terrain vehicles (LTVs).

LTVs are large rovers that Artemis astronauts will use to explore the lunar surface. These vehicles will also be capable of autonomous operation, meaning they can land before crewed missions, be remotely controlled from Earth, and meet up with astronauts at their touchdown sites. And that is indeed the goal: NASA wants to have at least one LTV on the lunar surface before Artemis 4 touches down near the lunar south pole in late 2028.

Both LTVs will be delivered to the lunar surface by Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, NASA announced today. Those two contracts are worth $234 million apiece, agency officials said during the briefing.

Blue Origin is also building a crewed variant of Blue Moon, which is in the running to fly the Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 astronaut missions, as well as future flights.

Artemis 3 is a docking test in Earth orbit between NASA's Orion capsule and one or both of the program's privately developed crewed lunar landers — Blue Moon and SpaceX's Starship. NASA aims to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027, Isaacman said today.

NASA plans to build the moon base in three phases. Phase One, which runs from now through 2029, will gather detailed information and "secure reliable access" to the lunar surface, according to the agency.

Phase Two runs from 2029 to 2032 and will set up the base's "initial operating capability." Phase Three, which runs from 2032 far into the future, will "achieve semi-permanent crew presence" on the moon.

“The Moon Base will be America's and humanity's first outpost on another celestial world," Isaacman said in a NASA statement today. "Every mission, crewed and uncrewed, will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable."

NASA has launched two Artemis missions to date. Artemis 1 sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back in late 2022, and Artemis 2 took four astronauts around the moon in Orion last month. Both missions were successful.

A new NASA satellite will test critical technologies for storing and transferring super-chilled, cryogenic fuels in space in order to help astronauts reach the moon and potentially Mars someday.

The Liquid Oxygen Flight demonstration (LOXSAT) will launch to orbit around the Earth later this year to test the fluid management capabilities that will be needed to maintain cryogenic fuels in microgravity, which come with additional challenges compared to other propellants. In a statement, NASA said these in-space propellant depots could some day be "essentially gas stations in space that could support long-term exploration."

LOXSAT will head to low Earth orbit (LEO) this summer aboard a Rocket Lab Photon satellite bus, hitching a ride on an Electron launch vehicle, from the company's facilities in New Zealand no earlier than July 17, according to NASA's statement. The mission is set to last for nine months, and will conduct tests on 11 different components of cryogenic fluid management to collect data to mature the technologies for scaling.

Cryogenic fuels must be managed with tight temperature controls to prevent them from boiling off, whether on Earth or in space. The same temperature conditions that make those liquids hard to store also make them hard to transfer, and the ability to do so between vehicles in space is a crucial step to unlocking missions to deep space, like those of NASA's Artemis program to return astronauts to the moon and other exploration efforts such as crewed missions to Mars.

The mission is a collaboration with Eta Space of Rockledge, Florida, and NASA hopes the technology can evolve to support on-orbit fueling depots for spacecraft designed for long-term deep space objectives. It's central to the success of the agency's upcoming lunar goals, and part of a larger Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio Project involving scientists and engineers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Glenn Research Center, and Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

Eta Space was selected under NASA's Tipping Point initiative, which chose 14 companies to develop a variety of technologies to support the Artemis program's goal of sustained operations on the surface of the moon by 2030. Managing cryogenic fuels in space is a critical part of that architecture.

Both Artemis lunar landers commissioned under NASA's Human Landing System contracts rely on cryogenic propellants, and require on-orbit refueling in order to complete their missions of landing astronauts on the lunar surface and delivering them back to lunar orbit.

Both landers also use liquid oxygen as the oxidizer for their respective propellants. SpaceX's Starship is powered by a mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid methane (methalox). The other, Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (hydrolox) — both of which require constant cryogenic refrigeration to maintain their liquid state. Neither landers (or any other spacecraft, to date) have yet demonstrated how they will handle long-term storage of those super-chilled fuels, or the ability to transfer them between vehicles. That means LOXSAT may be the first.

SpaceX and Blue Origin continue advancing their lunar lander tests. SpaceX's Starship is poised to launch its twelfth test flight later this week (currently no earlier than May 20), and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) is undergoing late-stage testing at the company's facilities near KSC, in Florida.

The outcome of Starship's Flight 12 will have deep implications for how the vehicle's development progresses through the rest of the year. It's the first launch of Starship Version 3, and the first iteration of the spacecraft designed to eventually demonstrate capabilities like on-orbit refueling. A successful test on its first launch could mean a higher cadence of test launches moving forward — seven months have passed between Starship's upcoming launch and its last. But a failure could delay Starship's development further, and, in turn, potentially set back the timeline for NASA's Artemis missions.

Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1 is progressing towards launch readiness, but the company's New Glenn rocket is currently grounded due to a mishap with its second stage during its most recent mission, which failed to deliver its payload to orbit. MK1 is a cargo variant of the crewed lander Blue Origin plans to use for NASA's Artemis missions, and is scheduled to perform a lunar landing demonstration later this year, pending the completion of the FAA's investigation into New Glenn's previous failure.

NASA is targeting late 2027 for the Artemis 3 mission, which will launch four astronauts to LEO to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers between their Orion spacecraft and one or both of the program's lunar landers. NASA has indicated the agency will fly with whichever is ready when it comes time to launch the mission, even if that means leaving one behind on Earth.

By then, LOXSAT will have completed its own on-orbit demonstrations, and, if all goes according to plan, provided scientists and engineers useful data that could potentially inform SpaceX's and Blue Origin's efforts to achieve cryogenic fuel management in microgravity, and eventually lead to orbital refueling stations that can support Artemis and other missions to the moon, Mars and other deep space destinations.

We just learned a little more about NASA's next Artemis mission.

The agency dropped a few details on Wednesday (May 13) about Artemis 3, a crewed mission that will test rendezvous and docking operations with one or more lunar landers close to home.

"While this is a mission to Earth orbit, it is an important stepping stone to successfully landing on the moon with Artemis 4," Jeremy Parsons, Moon to Mars acting assistant deputy administrator at NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., said in a statement on Wednesday. "Artemis 3 is one of the most highly complex missions NASA has undertaken."

We already knew the broad outlines of Artemis 3: It will use NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket to send four astronauts to orbit aboard the Orion spacecraft. Orion will then rendezvous and dock with one or both of the Artemis program's privately developed lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

This architecture was announced in late February. It's a big departure from the original Artemis 3 plan, which would have used one of the landers to put astronauts down near the moon's south pole.

NASA is still working to define the details of Artemis 3, but the agency has made some progress, as Wednesday's announcement shows. For example, NASA revealed that the astronauts will spend more time aboard Orion on Artemis 3 than they did on Artemis 2, "further advancing the evaluation of life support systems."

Artemis 2, which sent four astronauts on an epic journey around the moon, lasted about 10 days, launching this past April 1 and splashing down on April 10. Wednesday's statement does not give an estimate for how long Artemis 3 will last.

NASA also revealed on Wednesday that the Artemis 3 SLS will employ a dummy "spacer" rather than a functional upper stage.

"The spacer will maintain the same overall dimensions and interface connection points as the upper stage between the Orion stage adapter and launch vehicle stage adapter," NASA officials wrote in the statement, noting that spacer "design and fabrication activities" are underway at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

This development makes a certain amount of cost-saving sense. The SLS upper stage (known as the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, or ICPS), propels Orion out of Earth orbit and toward the moon. And Artemis 3 isn't going to the moon.

"After the rocket delivers Orion to orbit, the spacecraft's European-built service module will provide propulsion to circularize Orion's orbit around the planet in low Earth orbit," NASA officials wrote. "This orbit increases overall mission success by allowing more launch opportunities for each element as compared to a lunar mission — SLS carrying Orion and its crew, SpaceX's Starship human landing system pathfinder, and Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 human landing system pathfinder."

There's also a bit of news here: Most of us had assumed that Artemis 3 will head to low Earth orbit (as opposed to more distant paths around our planet), but NASA had not explicitly confirmed that until now.

Wednesday's statement also noted that Artemis 3 will use a new, upgraded Orion heat shield (which we already knew) and said that mission astronauts "could potentially enter at least one lander test article."

We still don't know which lander will fly on the mission, Starship or Blue Moon (or perhaps both). There are plenty of other specifics that still need to be worked out as well, including Artemis 3's duration, which astronauts will fly on it, what science experiments they might conduct and how the mission will test the new Artemis spacesuits, which are being built by the Houston-based company Axiom Space.

"NASA has asked for industry input on potential solutions to improve the communications with the ground during the mission since the Deep Space Network will not be used," agency officials added in Wednesday's statement.

"The agency also is seeking both international and domestic interest in potentially flying cubesats to deploy in Earth orbit, and may share other opportunities as the concept of operations for the mission is further defined," they added.

NASA's Orion space capsule training simulator is located inside Building 9 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's a full-scale, high-fidelity model of the real thing, and where the Artemis 2 astronauts spent more than a year preparing for their recent mission around the moon.

For a long time, the Orion simulator sat alone in its own corner, away from the group of International Space Station training modules lined up inside the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF). But now, Orion has a neighbor.

A mockup of Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 (MK2) lunar lander has been assembled at the SVMF, and is ready for astronauts to come aboard to begin training, according to a NASA release. Standing adjacent to the Orion capsule, the Blue Moon crew cabin and exterior resemble the design of the lander's Mark 2 variant, which will eventually land Artemis astronauts on the moon, if all goes according to plan.

With Blue Origin's mockup now assembled at JSC, astronauts can now seamlessly transition from training inside Orion to training in Blue Moon as they prepare for the Artemis missions ahead. The next mission, Artemis 3, is dependent on at least one lunar lander being ready to fly before the mission can launch.

Blue Moon is one of two lunar landers NASA has chosen through the agency's Human Landing System (HLS) contracts, the other being SpaceX's Starship, and is a critical component of NASA's Artemis program that aims to establish a permanent presence on the moon's surface.

Both landers have faced delays in development, but Blue Moon is the first of the pair to integrate a cabin model for training at a NASA facility. Astronauts wearing Artemis spacesuit prototypes from Axiom Space have had the opportunity to test some of Starship's early cabin designs, as well as the spacecraft's elevator that will be used to lower crews down the roughly 170 feet (52 meters) from Starship's cabin section to its base, but those tests have so far been limited to SpaceX's own facilities.

For comparison, the Blue Moon MK 2 will be about 52 feet (16 meters) tall, with the crew cabin located near the base.

Artemis 3 is scheduled for late 2027, according to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who based the timetable on Blue Origin's and SpaceX's estimations of the earliest completion for their respective landers. NASA has indicated a willingness to fly with either or both vehicles, depending on their readiness.

The mission will fly four astronauts aboard Orion into low Earth orbit, where the spacecraft will rendezvous with the lunar lander vehicles to practice docking procedures and verify their life support and communications systems. Artemis 3 astronauts may also have the chance to don Axiom's new spacesuits, but those have also faced significant delays.

If Artemis 3 goes according to plan, and the landers and spacesuits are ready in time, NASA is targeting 2028 for a moon landing on Artemis 4, and possibly again on Artemis 5 that same year. But the landers have a long way to go before NASA will qualify either to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface.

The Artemis moon landers will need to touch down safely on the moon, as well as deliver crews back to lunar orbit for transfer back aboard Orion. That's different from how Apollo astronauts performed lunar landings, flying aboard a two-stage vehicle that left half a spacecraft behind on the surface in order to shed the necessary weight to make it back to orbit. NASA's long-term, sustainable habitation approach for the Artemis program makes abandoning half a lunar lander on the surface for every mission untenable.

To pull off the single-stage landing and launch back to orbit, both Starship and Blue Moon will need several on-orbit refueling flights, requiring transfer and long-term storage of cryogenic propellants — neither of which capabilities have ever been demonstrated in space. Once those milestones have been accomplished, NASA is also requiring successful uncrewed missions to the lunar surface for each lander, before they can qualify to carry astronauts.

The Blue Moon lander mockup now operational in the SVMF is not the final design of the vehicle, inside or out, but NASA plans to use the test article to provide feedback on its design as Blue Origin continues the real MK2's development, according to a NASA release.

Blue Moon MK1, a smaller cargo variant of the lunar lander, recently completed vacuum chamber testing at JSC and shipped to Blue Origin's facilities near NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. It's slated to launch aboard a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket on an uncrewed mission to land on the moon later this year, though that may face its own delay as the company completes an investigation with the FAA into the failure of New Glenn's upper stage on its most recent launch.

Blue Origin continues putting its first lunar lander through its paces, testing the spacecraft at NASA centers across the nation to prepare it for its upcoming mission to the moon.

That vehicle, named "Endurance," is Blue Origin's uncrewed Blue Moon MK1 test lander, which is designed to pave the way for the more advanced MK2 version that will be capable of flying astronauts to the moon's surface. Blue Moon is one of two private lunar landers, from Blue Origin and SpaceX, that NASA has contracted to support its Artemis program, and both of those vehicles have a lengthy list of tests and qualifications to check off in order to meet the agency's timeline.

NASA is targeting late 2027 for the launch of Artemis 3, which will fly four astronauts to Earth orbit aboard an Orion space capsule. The mission will practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers with either Blue Moon or SpaceX's Starship, or both. NASA has indicated a willingness to fly with whichever lander is ready when it comes time to launch.

Endurance recently completed vacuum chamber testing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and was shipped to Blue Origin's facilities near Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida last month. Now, the lander is being prepared for radio frequency compatibility testing inside the company's Lunar Plant 1, to ensure the lander's communication systems won't experience any interference before flight.

NASA is targeting 2028 for the first Artemis program moon landing on Artemis 4. However, before NASA certifies either Starship or Blue Moon to deliver astronauts to the surface, both must complete a series of qualifications, including an uncrewed lunar touchdown, which Blue Origin hopes to accomplish later this year with Endurance. In order to pull off a successful landing, the spacecraft will also need to demonstrate autonomous navigation, cryogenic fuel transfer and prolonged storage, and then prove its ability to launch back into lunar orbit.

Part of Endurance's landing mission will include two science demonstration payloads for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, a side-by-side initiative with Artemis that partners with private industry to deliver payloads to the moon to further evolve the technologies needed to support future long-term lunar habitation missions with astronauts.

Whether Endurance can make it to space before the end of 2026 is dependent on how it fares in the tests ahead, and whether Blue Origin encounters any anomalies along the way. And, in addition to the prelaunch tests still ahead for the MK1, the lander's intended launch vehicle, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, is currently grounded pending an FAA investigation into a second-stage failure during its most recent mission.

Starship may have a leg up in its development timeline, with 11 test launches to space under its belt (and a 12th expected in a week or so) already. But the SpaceX vehicle hasn't actually flown a full orbit around Earth yet, and it faces the same list of to-dos as Blue Moon.

It's unclear to what extent NASA will require either lander's development to have progressed in order to qualify to fly on Artemis 3. For example, the agency hasn't announced whether or not the astronauts will enter the landers while in Earth orbit, or whether Orion will dock with the spacecraft at all, or simply perform proximity operations maneuvers around them.

Blue Origin's moon lander has passed its tests in the vacuum chamber.

This marks one big step forward for the company and its possible participation in humanity's return to the moon.

What is it?

Blue Origin's uncrewed cargo lunar lander, called Moon Mark 1 (MK1) and nicknamed Endurance, has completed its testing in the vacuum chamber, NASA shared on May 4.

The lander, which is being developed in support of NASA's Artemis program, was tested in Thermal Vacuum Chamber A at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. These tests evaluated how the spacecraft can hold up against extreme temperatures, and modeled how it will eventually fare in the extreme environments of spaceflight and in the vacuum of outer space.

Why is it incredible?

Blue Origin's lander is being developed as part of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the lunar surface in 2028.

With the recent success of Artemis 2, which saw astronauts fly around the moon and back, the program established the first human presence at the moon since the agency's Apollo program launched its last lunar mission in 1972.

MK1 is scheduled to carry NASA science experiments and technology to the moon's south pole as early as late 2026. The success of this test represents a step forward in solidifying the public-private partnership that will support this return to the moon.

With the Artemis 2 crew back home after their historic circumlunar voyage, attention now turns to getting astronauts back on the surface of the moon. But how are the landers that will make such an ambitious endeavor possible progressing?

NASA recently outlined a revised plan for Artemis 3, which has the mission performing a crewed test in Earth orbit in late 2027 rather than the previously planned 2028 lunar landing. The mission will instead be an Earth-orbit rendezvous of NASA's Orion spacecraft with one or both of the program's moon landers, analogous to the Apollo 9 mission, setting up a lunar landing attempt with Artemis 4 in late 2028. But this plan relies on swift action by NASA's partners.

The agency earlier selected two private companies to provide crewed Artemis moon landers: SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System (HLS) and Blue Origin's Blue Moon lander, both of which are in development and facing tight deadlines for future missions.

With a number of major milestones on the horizon, the coming months will indicate if these landers can be readied for their planned 2027 orbital tests.

SpaceX and Starship HLS

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has long talked about getting humans to Mars, but recently he's shifted his attention to the moon, despite earlier calling our natural satellite "a distraction." Now, he's talking about a lunar settlement. First, however, SpaceX needs to get its Starship HLS lander ready.

That vehicle, which NASA selected in 2021, is a specific configuration of Starship, which comprises the 33-engine Super Heavy booster and Starship, or "Ship," upper stage. SpaceX says that, as of late October last year, it has hit 49 milestones related to developing the subsystems, infrastructure and operations needed to land astronauts on the moon. These include lunar life support, Raptor cold start demonstrations, Raptor lunar landing throttle tests, software, debris protection and elevator and airlock tests. The key to the major progress needed in the next 18 months, however, is flying Starship regularly and demonstrating on-orbit docking and propellant transfer.

Starship has flown 11 suborbital missions over the past three years. The 12th flight, expected later this month, will be the debut of the larger and more powerful Version 3, equipped with its new V3 Raptor engines, which will be used for orbital flights and operational payloads.

In its multiple flight tests, SpaceX has hit some big development milestones, including relighting engines in space, payload deployment demonstrations and spectacular "chopstick" booster recoveries. But many more lie ahead, with time running out. These include not just reaching Earth orbit by also demonstrating orbital refueling, which involves a propellant transfer demo between two Starship upper stages. This is required, as the HLS Starship needs to be fueled up in Earth orbit with tanker missions to allow it to head for the moon.

This requirement alone demands a high launch cadence, with multiple tanker flights needed to fuel a single lunar mission, while there is also a need to verify long-duration life support for astronauts. There's lots on the menu for SpaceX for HLS advancement, and a positive first flight of Starship V3 will be crucial.

Blue Origin's Blue Moon

Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mk2 crewed variant lunar lander is a simpler system compared to Starship HLS, selected in 2023 and intended for the Artemis 5 mission and beyond, rather than what is now Artemis 4. But the shakeup of NASA's Artemis plans has opened the door to an earlier landing, if Blue Moon can be made ready.

Unlike SpaceX, Blue Origin is pursuing a stepwise approach, beginning with an uncrewed cargo lander before attempting a crewed system. The biggest test on the horizon is the launch of the smaller Blue Moon Mark-1 (Mk1) cargo lander, which is expected to launch to the moon later this year after recently undergoing vacuum chamber testing. One major issue, however, is the grounding of its rocket ride — Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn — after a recent launch anomaly.

Getting the New Glenn launcher and uncrewed Mk1 lander ready and then acing a lunar landing will be crucial to Blue's lunar ambitions with Artemis. As with Starship HLS, there is also the need to develop and test the life support systems for Blue Moon Mk2.

The company is typically reserved in terms of public updates on the program, but recent Congressional meetings have provided some insight into developments.

In a NASA budget hearing held by the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies on April 27, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that the companies assured him of their efforts to be ready.

"I've received responses from both vendors, both SpaceX and Blue Origin, to meet our needs for a late 2027 rendezvous docking and test the interoperability out of both landers in advance of a landing attempt in 2028," Isaacman said.

NASA has indicated it is willing to fly with whichever lander is ready in late 2027 for Artemis 3, meaning the race is on, and could determine whether SpaceX or Blue Origin gets to ferry astronauts down to the moon on Artemis 4.

Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket has been temporarily grounded.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is requiring an investigation into New Glenn's third-ever mission, which launched on Sunday morning (April 19) and resulted in the loss of its payload — the BlueBird 7 internet-beaming satellite.

"The FAA will oversee the Blue Origin-led investigation, be involved in every step of the process, and approve Blue Origin's final report, including any corrective actions," the FAA wrote in an update on Monday (April 20).

Sunday's mission, which Blue Origin called NG-3, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The 322-foot-tall (98 meters) New Glenn performed well at first; its reusable first stage even aced its return to Earth, landing as planned in the Atlantic Ocean atop the Blue Origin droneship "Jacklyn."

But the rocket's upper stage ran into problems while hauling BlueBird 7 to low Earth orbit (LEO). One of the stage's two BE-3U engines didn't produce enough thrust during a key burn, according to Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, and the satellite was deployed into the wrong spot as a result.

"While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited," BlueBird 7's operator, the Texas company AST SpaceMobile, wrote in an update on Sunday. "The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company's insurance policy."

AST SpaceMobile is building out a constellation of direct-to-cellphone satellites in LEO. BlueBird 7 was the second of the company's "Block 2" spacecraft to lift off, after BlueBird 6. These satellites are huge, featuring antennas that cover 2,400 square feet (223 square m) when deployed.

A lot of eyes will be on this mishap investigation, because a lot is riding on New Glenn's success — and not just for Blue Origin.

For example, later this year, the rocket is supposed to launch the first-ever test flight of the company's Blue Moon spacecraft, one of the two contracted crewed lunar landers for NASA's Artemis program.

"Dave, I have no doubt the team at Blue Origin will get back to the pad and fly again soon — overcoming setbacks only gets us closer to achieving the near-impossible. I’m confident Blue's sustained achievements — like the successful reuse and recovery of the New Glenn first stage we saw this week — will keep us on track for success with the Artemis program," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on Tuesday (April 21), in an X post addressed to Limp.

"Thank you, Jared. Learnings from this setback will make us better. We'll be back on the pad soon for AST SpaceMobile, NASA, and all our customers," Limp replied.

Blue Origin, the space launch company founded by Jeff Bezos, just achieved a successful recovery of its first reused orbital-class rocket, but the payload it placed into space has ended up in the wrong location.

The New Glenn rocket lifted off on its third-ever mission on Sunday (April 19), and the 7:25 a.m. EDT (1125 GMT) liftoff from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida initially went as planned. So did the propulsive recovery of the rocket's first stage — called "Never Tell Me The Odds" and being reused for the first time — when it touched down on Blue Origin's "Jacklyn" droneship in the Atlantic Ocean about six minutes later.

Indeed, the company's updates were celebratory until 9:40 a.m. EDT (1340 GMT), when Blue Origin acknowledged a problem on social media.

"We have confirmed payload separation. AST SpaceMobile has confirmed the satellite has powered on. The payload was placed into an off-nominal orbit. We are currently assessing and will update when we have more detailed information," the company wrote.

Later on Sunday, AST SpaceMobile issued its own update, which delivered some bad news.

"While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited," AST SpaceMobile wrote. "The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy."

AST SpaceMobile's BlueBird 7 satellite was intended to join the largest communications array ever deployed in low Earth orbit to expand the network's ability to provide space based cellular broadband to consumer smartphones. BlueBird 7 is one of the largest satellites in space, with an antenna that spans 2,400 square feet (223 square meters).

It's unclear at the moment what effect the BlueBird 7 issue will have on future New Glenn launches, including Blue Origin's planned uncrewed moon landing later this year.

The company is using its prototype MK1 "Endurance" lander as a test vehicle and precursor to its much larger MK2, which will support NASA's Artemis astronaut missions to the lunar south pole.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:50 p.m. ET on April 19 with the news that BlueBird 7 will be deorbited.

Jeff Bezos' space company just notched a big reusability milestone — but also suffered a sizable setback.

Blue Origin's huge New Glenn rocket launched into space for the third time ever Sunday morning (April 19) — but, in a first for the company, it soared into orbit powered by previously flown hardware. The mission, called NG-3, carried the massive payload BlueBird 7, a direct-to-cellphone internet satellite, to low Earth orbit (LEO), and flew atop the same first-stage booster core that launched NG-2, but with new engines.

Things went well at first, but BlueBird 7 did not make it to its planned destination.

Liftoff for NG-3 occurred at 7:25 a.m. EDT (1125 GMT) from Blue Origin's Launch Complex 36 pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Blue Origin had hoped to launch the flight at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT), at the start of a two-hour window, but paused the countdown at T-3 minutes, 57 seconds for a bit due to an undisclosed reason. The clock resumed with a new launch time a just after 7 a.m. EDT.

New Glenn's first stage shut off its engines and separated from the upper part of the rocket about 3.5 minutes into flight, landing back on Blue Origin's droneship "Jacklyn" in the Atlantic Ocean around six minutes later.

Blue Origin workers across the country cheered loudly as the booster returned to Earth, chanting GS-1 (the technical name of the booster, which Blue Origin calls "Never Tell Me The Odds") during landing.

Jordan Charles, vice president of New Glenn for Blue Origin, said during launch commentary that engineers refurbished the thermal protection system along the base of the rocket so it could better handle the heat of reentry.

"That gets pretty hot as you're coming in during our reentry process," Charles said. "So we want to definitely see and correlate a bit better our thermal environments as we're flying this particular mission."

Blue Origin also made guidance system upgrades to the booster for today's flight.

"We made a few tweaks with respect to how the rocket actually reenters, and then on the inside of the rocket, just making sure all of our systems continue to work as we as we expect that they will," Charles said.

The first reuse of a New Glenn first stage, even if its engines are new, is a significant step toward the company's ultimate vision for the rocket, whose first stages are designed to fly at least 25 times apiece.

Of the two New Glenn missions to date, only NG-2 successfully landed its first stage aboard the Jacklyn droneship. That mission launched NASA's ESCAPADE probes on a mission to Mars in November 2025. New Glenn debuted in January 2025, on a mission that reached orbit successfully but did not pull off a first-stage landing.

A hefty payload

The main goal of Sunday's New Glenn rocket launch was not to demonstrate reusability, but to launch a massive satellite into orbit.

BlueBird 7 was supposed to be the second "Block 2" satellite in the internet constellation of Texas-based company AST SpaceMobile. Its predecessor, BlueBird 6, launched on an Indian LVM3 rocket last December. BlueBird 6 is one of the largest satellites in space, with an antenna that spans 2,400 square feet (223 square meters). BlueBird 7 has the same dimensions.

BlueBirds 1-5, the "Block 1" version, while sizable in their own right, pale in comparison; their antennas cover a more modest 693 square feet (64.4 m) apiece.

Bluebird 7 was scheduled to be deployed into orbit from New Glenn's upper stage about 1 hour and 15 minutes after liftoff. But about 2 hours after liftoff, Blue Origin reported that something appeared to go wrong.

"We have confirmed payload separation. AST SpaceMobile has confirmed the satellite has powered on," Blue Origin wrote in a social media update. "The payload was placed into an off-nominal orbit. We are currently assessing and will update when we have more detailed information."

A little later on Sunday, AST SpaceMobile provided its own update, and the news was not good.

"While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will [be] de-orbited," the company said in a statement. "The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy."

This third launch of New Glenn was a major milestone for Blue Origin, which has designed the rocket's first stage to be fully reusable. Such a capability would allow the company to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship rockets, the only orbital-capable boosters to date with proven reusability.

New Glenn stands 322 feet (98 meters) tall — about the same size as the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that launched the Artemis 2 mission around the moon, and nearly 100 feet (30 m) taller than the 230-foot (70-m) Falcon 9.

New Glenn's first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines, which burn a fuel mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid methane, known as methalox — the same fuel used by the 33 SpaceX-built Raptor engines that power Starship's Super Heavy booster. And right now, both launch vehicles need to prove themselves.

Blue Origin is relying on New Glenn to launch the company's Blue Moon lander, one of two commercial vehicles NASA selected to land astronauts on the moon as part of the agency's Artemis program.

SpaceX had been NASA's first choice for a crewed lunar lander, with Starship slated to put astronauts on the moon on the Artemis 3 mission. But delays in the development of both companies' spacecraft and a recent shakeup of Artemis architecture has put Blue Moon back in the spotlight.

During Sunday's launch, Blue Origin officials said its Mark 1 Blue Moon lander, an uncrewed version of the lander, will launch to the moon by the end of this summer. The lander recently completed environmental testing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. It is now back at Blue Origin's Rocket Park facility in Cape Canaveral for final work.

The problem New Glenn experienced on today's launch could complicate that timeline, however.

Artemis 3 will no longer go to the moon. NASA now wants astronauts aboard its Orion spacecraft to practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers in Earth orbit with either or both of the lunar landers, and has indicated a willingness to fly with whichever is ready once it's time to launch — hopefully, in mid-2027.

Both landers have a list of qualifications and technology demonstrations to complete before NASA certifies either to support astronauts aboard, such as on-orbit cryogenic fuel transfer and uncrewed lunar landings, but each is making progress.

SpaceX is currently performing prelaunch tests on the Version 3 of its Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage, which are expected to lift off on the vehicle's 12th test flight in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the Mark 1 (Mk1) Blue Moon vehicle recently completed a stint inside the massive vacuum chamber at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and was later shipped to the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, for further testing.

Editor's note: This story was updated on April 19 to include details of the successful launch and landing of Blue Origin's NG-3, as well as the off-nominal orbit of its BlueBird 7 payload. It was updated again at 4:10 p.m. ET on April 19 with the news that BlueBird 7 will be deorbited.

The astronauts who flew NASA's Artemis 2 mission around the moon splashed down less than a week ago — and they're back at work helping the agency prepare for the program's next giant leap.

NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen captivated the world earlier this month, as they flew on a 10-day mission around the far side of the moon and back to Earth aboard the Orion spacecraft "Integrity."

During their journey, the crew shared inspiring images of our celestial neighbor and reflections that spoke to the hearts of millions of people who followed their flight from its April 1 launch to its April 10 splashdown.

"We wanted to go out and try to do something that would bring the world together, to unite the world," Wiseman, the Artemis 2 commander, said during a press conference on Thursday (April 16).

He thanked not only those at NASA who helped ensure the astronauts' safe return but also members of the media and the world at large for "just tuning in for a second and getting hooked on this mission."

Artemis 2 was the first crewed mission of the Artemis program, as well as the first crewed flight of the Orion space capsule. Principally, Artemis 2 was a test flight of Orion's life support systems and a shakedown cruise to verify that the craft can sustain a crew during a mission to lunar space. And from the perspective of the astronauts aboard: Mission accomplished.

Wiseman and his crewmates said they gained a deeper understanding about life aboard Orion during their time in space. And what they learned bodes well for future Artemis missions.

"The thing that really surprised me on this mission was how well the spacecraft handled and how well the machine supported the four humans on board," Wiseman said.

"There's always things we need to improve," he said, listing a few small items that needed to be troubleshot on orbit, like cabin temperature.

"We were a little cold the first two days. They warmed it up. They fixed everything that we asked," he said. "They could put the Artemis 3 Orion on the Space Launch System [rocket] tomorrow and launch it, and the crew would be in great shape."

"It's important for us to run these processes out," Glover said, "because we are still making changes and learning ways that we're going to support the 30- and 45-day missions of Artemis 3, 4, 5. And so it's really important for us to keep practicing, keeping our heads in the game."

Artemis 3 is the next launch planned for the program, and will see another crew aboard Orion practice rendezvous and docking maneuvers in Earth orbit with one or both of the contracted Artemis lunar landers. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have been tapped to provide landers for the program, and NASA indicated a willingness to fly with either or both once Artemis 3 is ready to launch.

That mission is scheduled to lift off in mid-2027, but had, until recently, been slated as the first Artemis moon landing, targeting 2028. Now, with Artemis 2 in the books, Wiseman says that a crewed moon landing seems more obtainable than ever.

"It's not the leap I thought it was," he said on Thursday, reflecting on his time approaching and flying around the moon. "If we had a first-flight lander on board that thing, I know at least three of my crewmates would have been in it, trying to land on the moon."

"It's going to be extremely technically challenging, but this team needs to show up every day knowing it is absolutely doable, and it's doable soon."

If NASA's schedule holds, and Artemis 3 goes well, Artemis 4 will put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2028.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket just took a big step toward its first-ever reflight.

Blue Origin conducted a 19-second static fire test with New Glenn at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station this morning (April 16), firing up its seven first-stage engines while the rocket remained anchored to the pad.

The milestone kept New Glenn on track for the planned Sunday (April 19) launch of NG-3, a mission that will reuse a booster from a previous flight — a first for the vehicle.

The two-stage, 322-foot-tall (98 meters) New Glenn has launched twice to date. It debuted on a test flight in January 2025, then successfully sent NASA's twin ESCAPADE probes toward Mars this past November.

Blue Origin landed New Glenn's first stage during the ESCAPADE launch, bringing it down softly on the drone ship "Jacklyn" in the Atlantic Ocean. And that booster will fly again on NG-3.

Well, the shell of it will, anyway; some key hardware will be new.

"With our first refurbished booster, we elected to replace all seven engines and test out a few upgrades including a thermal protection system on one of the engine nozzles. We plan to use the engines we flew for NG-2 on future flights," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said via X on Monday (April 13).

Sunday's mission, which is scheduled to launch at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT), could be the first of many reflights for this particular booster. Each New Glenn first stage is designed to fly at least 25 times, Blue Origin has said.

NG-3 will send a Block 2 BlueBird direct-to-cellphone internet satellite to low Earth orbit (LEO) for the Texas company AST SpaceMobile.

One Block 2 BlueBird has reached space to date, getting there in December aboard an Indian rocket. It's one of the largest satellites in space, with an antenna that covers a whopping 2,400 square feet (223 square meters).

Block 2 BlueBirds are considerably larger than their predecessors, five of which reached LEO. Each of those satellites' antennas cover 693 square feet (64.4 m).

Artemis 2 has come home.

The four Artemis 2 astronauts splashed down off the coast of San Diego this evening (April 10), wrapping up an epic mission that broke spaceflight records, caught the attention of the world and set the stage for even more ambitious moonshots to come.

"From the pages of Jules Verne to a modern-day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. Integrity's astronauts are back on Earth," NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said just after splashdown, referring to the name of Artemis 2's Orion capsule.

A mission of firsts

Artemis 2 launched on April 1, sending four explorers — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen — toward the moon inside Integrity.

It was the second-ever liftoff for NASA's huge Space Launch System rocket and the first crewed flight for both SLS and Orion.

Artemis 2 was a mission of firsts in many other ways as well. For starters, it launched humanity back to the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in December 1972. Glover was the first person of color ever to leave Earth orbit, and Koch and Hansen were the first woman and first non-American, respectively, to do so. (The Apollo astronauts had been the only people to achieve this feat, and they were all white American men.)

"We sent four amazing people to the moon and safely returned them to Earth for the first time in more than 50 years," Lori Glaze, NASA's Artemis program manager, said after the splashdown. "To the generation that now knows what we're capable of, 'Welcome to our moonshot.'"

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who watched the Artemis 2 astronauts return to Earth from the deck of their recovery ship, the USS John P. Murtha, seemed in awe of the entire mission.

"Honestly, I'm still at a loss for words," Isaacman said after splashdown during NASA's televised commentary. "The childhood Jared, right now, can't believe what I just saw. I mean, I've almost been waiting my whole lifetime to see to see this, and then it's as NASA administrator. I just couldn't be more proud of the entire workforce, the years, the effort, the late nights, all the hard work from across the country that contributed to this incredible moment right now."

Artemis 2 also took a unique path to Earth's nearest neighbor — a "free-return" trajectory that featured a single loop around the far side. The Apollo moon missions, by contrast, targeted lunar orbit, after which some of them touched down on the gray dirt.

Apollo 13 ended up flying a free-return trajectory in April 1970, but that wasn't by design; that mission was supposed to orbit and then land on the moon, but it suffered an explosion en route that scuttled that plan and forced its astronauts into survival mode.

Apollo 13's unplanned lunar loop sent it 248,655 miles (400,171 kilometers) from Earth, farther than any humans had ever gone before. Artemis 2 broke that record during its own flyby on Monday (April 6), which took the crewmates 252,756 miles (406,771 km) from their home planet. (From liftoff to landing, the Artemis 2 crew flew a total of 700,237 miles, or 1.1 million km.)

They don't want to hold this record for half a century, though, for that would signal a disappointing stagnation in human spaceflight.

"We, most importantly, choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long-lived," Hansen said shortly after Artemis 2 surpassed Apollo 13.

The Apollo capsules held a maximum of three astronauts. So Artemis 2 was the first mission to fly four people to deep space, as well as the first to send a bona fide toilet beyond Earth orbit. Artemis 2's space toilet had some issues, but it was still a giant leap for deep-space hygiene; the Apollo astronauts did their business into handheld bags.

The moon up close — and a solar eclipse, too!

But Artemis 2 wasn't about setting records. It was primarily a shakeout cruise, designed to show that SLS and Orion can fly crewed missions beyond Earth orbit.

There were some science objectives, too. After all, the Artemis 2 astronauts were getting humanity's first up-close looks at the moon in more than 50 years.

And their free-return trajectory, which featured a lunar close-approach distance of 4,067 miles (6,545 km), gave them different, more zoomed-out views than those of the Apollo astronauts, who mostly observed the moon from a tight orbit. Indeed, during their flyby, the Artemis 2 astronauts saw parts of the far side never before seen with human eyes, which are incredibly capable instruments.

"Human eyes and brains are highly sensitive to subtle changes in color, texture and other surface characteristics," NASA officials wrote in an Artemis 2 explainer.

"Having astronaut eyes observe the lunar surface directly, in combination with the context of all the advances that scientists have made about the moon over the last several decades, may uncover new discoveries and a more nuanced appreciation for the features on the surface of the moon," they added.

So NASA scientists prepped the Artemis 2 crewmates extensively, giving them a long list of viewing targets and instructions on how to observe them.

One of the highest-priority landforms was Orientale Basin. This 600-mile-wide (965 km) crater, known as the "Grand Canyon of the moon," had never been seen in sunlight before, so the science team was keen to get Artemis 2's eyes on it.

The astronauts obliged, returning detailed observations of Orientale. They reported back effusively about many other features as well. Glover, for example, was particularly taken with the terminator, the boundary between day and night on the moon.

"There's just so much magic in the terminator — the islands of light, the valleys that look like black holes; you'd fall straight to the center of the moon if you stepped in some of those," he radioed to Mission Control during the flyby. "It's just so visually captivating." The crew reported seeing colors on the moon as well, describing some regions as green and brown.

The Artemis 2 astronauts also got to see a total solar eclipse during Monday's flyby, a happy accident of orbital dynamics locked in by the fact that they launched on April 1. (The eclipse wasn't visible to us here on Earth.)

Because the moon loomed so large in Artemis 2's view, it blocked the sun for a whopping 54 minutes — far longer than totality lasts during solar eclipses seen from Earth.

The astronauts dutifully recorded details of the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, during the epic event. But they took some time to appreciate it on an emotional level as well.

"When that actually happened, it just blew us all away," Glover said in a call with reporters on Wednesday (April 8). He called it "unreal" when he watched it in real-time.

There were many such human moments on this mission, and we got to see them thanks to NASA's 24/7 livestream. For instance, just after Artemis 2 broke Apollo 13's distance record, Hansen radioed Mission Control asking for permission to name two heretofore anonymous craters on the moon — one after Integrity and one after Wiseman's late wife Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020.

As Hansen made the case for Carroll Crater, his crewmates fought off tears, without much success.

"For me personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission," Wiseman said in Wednesday's call. "That was, I think, where the four of us were the most forged, the most bonded, and we came out of that really focused on that day ahead."

Mission Control agreed to both name proposals, by the way, though they won't get onto official moon maps until the International Astronomical Union gives the thumbs-up as well.

Coming home

Monday's lunar flyby did more than break a spaceflight record and enable unprecedented science observations; it also charted Integrity's course back to Earth. Indeed, that was the main reason NASA picked the free-return trajectory for Artemis 2: Relying on lunar gravity to send Orion home eliminated the need for a major engine burn, reducing risks for this test mission.

So there wasn't a lot of drama over the past few days as Integrity made its way back toward Earth. But that was just as well, for today's homecoming had plenty of drama — and a fair bit of danger.

Spacecraft returning from the moon hit Earth's atmosphere at tremendous speeds — 24,000 mph (38,600 kph) or thereabouts. This generates huge amounts of frictional heating; temperatures around the vehicle can hit 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,800 degrees Celsius).

Orion has a heat shield to deal with such temperatures — the biggest one ever built for crewed flight, in fact, at 16.5 feet (5 meters) wide. But that heat shield showed some cracks on the lone previous Artemis mission — Artemis 1, which successfully sent an uncrewed Orion to lunar orbit and back in late 2022.

Because of that unexpected damage, NASA tweaked Artemis 2's reentry profile, bringing Integrity in on a steeper angle to limit the amount of time its heat shield was exposed to extreme conditions in the atmosphere. But the agency didn't modify the heat shield itself, stressing that the hardware was up to the challenge.

Still, when Orion hit the Earth's atmosphere and went radio silent for six minutes due to the interference from plasma during descent, there was some nervousness in Mission Control.

"Certainly, there's anxiety," Artemis 2 entry flight director Rick Henfling said after splashdown in a press conference. "If you didn't have anxiety bringing the spacecraft home, you probably didn't have a pulse."

But he and his team had extreme confidence in Orion's heat shield and performance, as did the rest of Mission Control and the astronauts themselves.

That confidence was well placed, for Integrity survived its trial by fire today. The capsule hit the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean southeast of Hawaii at 7:53 p.m. (2353 GMT). Ten minutes later, the capsule's drogue parachutes deployed as planned, followed in short succession by its three big main chutes.

The mains helped slow Integrity's descent to 19 mph (31 kph) — the speed it was traveling when it hit the water at 8:07 p.m. EDT (0007 GMT on April 11) off the coast of San Diego, about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the spot where it first slammed into the atmosphere.

"A perfect bulls-eye splashdown for Integrity and its four astronauts," Navias said. "It was, for all intents and purposes, a textbook mission."

The USS John P. Murtha, from Naval Base San Diego — was waiting in the area to welcome the astronauts home, and to get them to shore for medical checks. All four were reported to be in good health and good spirits.

Bigger things coming

Artemis 2 was a big deal, but it will lead to even more ambitious missions in the next few years, if all goes according to plan.

It's a step toward the chief goal of the Artemis program: establishing a crewed outpost near the moon's south pole by the early 2030s. This region is thought to be rich in water ice, which can be used for life support and also processed into rocket fuel. NASA believes that building such a base will help it map out an even grander project — landing astronauts on Mars, which the agency aims to do in the late 2030s or early 2040s.

With Artemis 2 in the books, NASA can now turn its attention to Artemis 3, which is scheduled to send astronauts to Earth orbit in mid-2027. They'll test docking procedures up there using Orion and one or both of the Artemis program's contracted lunar landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon.

After that will come Artemis 4, which will use one of those privately developed vehicles to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2028. The timeline is aggressive by design: China aims to pull off its own crewed lunar landing by 2030, and the U.S. wants to win this new space race.

"The path to the lunar surface is open, but the work ahead is greater than the work behind us. It always will be," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said in the briefing. "Fifty-three years ago, humanity left the moon. This time, we return to stay."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:30 a.m. ET on April 11 to include additional details and comments from NASA's post Artemis 2 splashdown briefing. Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this report.

Artemis 2 is an ambitious mission, sending four astronauts on a 10-day loop around the moon and back to Earth. But it's not too ambitious: The quartet won't touch down on the lunar surface.

Artemis 2, which could launch as soon as April 1, consists of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (commander), Victor Glover (pilot) and Christina Koch (mission specialist), and Canadian Space Agency astronaut and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen.

Glover will be the first Black astronaut ever to fly a moon mission, while Koch will be the first woman and Hansen the first non-American to do so. They will become the humans to visit the moon's neighborhood since Apollo 17 did so in 1972.

Why no moon landing on Artemis 2?

The first moon landing of the Artemis program is expected to take place on Artemis 4, no earlier than 2028. That's because, simply put, the Artemis program isn't built to put Artemis 2 on the moon. The Orion spacecraft the astronauts will use has no landing capability, and NASA is taking a staged testing approach before committing to a moon landing.

Artemis 1 successfully sent an uncrewed Orion spacecraft to lunar orbit and back in late 2022, on the first-ever launch of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. It was the second mission for Orion, which had launched on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV on an uncrewed Earth-circling trip in December 2014.

Artemis 2 is also a test mission to the moon, but this time with crew. Orion will carry life-support systems for the first time, and the crew will test their ability to maneuver the capsule in Earth orbit before committing to an engine burn to reach the moon.

Artemis 2 "will confirm all the spacecraft’s systems operate as designed with crew aboard in the actual environment of deep space," NASA wrote in a mission description. "The mission will pave the way for lunar surface missions, establishing long-term lunar science and exploration capabilities and inspire the next generation of explorers."

NASA originally planned for Artemis 3 to make the program's first crewed lunar landing in 2027. In late February of this year, however, the agency restructured the Artemis program, changing Artemis 3 to a mission that will practice docking and rendezvous operations in Earth orbit between Orion and one or both of the program's private crewed landers (SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon). If all goes well with Artemis 3, Artemis 4 will put boots on the moon in 2028.

The eventual goal of the greater Artemis program is twofold: to establish a sustainable presence on the moon's surface and to demonstrate U.S. norms in cislunar space through the Artemis Accords (which is also framed as a race against China to the surface).

From 2024 to 2028

Long-time followers of Artemis may remember that the initial moon-landing deadline was 2024. That was set in March 2019, when then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announced the formation of the Artemis program. To be sure, the announcement built on previous work: many elements of Artemis (including Orion and SLS) predate the formation of the program by many years, and President Donald Trump made a crewed lunar return the official policy of the United States in December 2017 with the signing of Space Policy Directive 1.

In December 2019, a new senior NASA manager of the time showed off a "d-minus pin," which he made himself, showing that 1,855 days were left until Dec. 31, 2024. His intent was to update it daily and to wear it prominently during visits with the NASA workforce. That manager, Douglas Loverro, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, added that he did not want to "go ahead and tell people to rush" but instead wished to remind people to "make every day count."

By March 2021, however, NASA's Office of the Inspector General said it was "not feasible" to land humans on the moon by 2024 due to delays with developing the next generation of moon spacesuits, called the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU). (NASA later pivoted to a commercial solution from Axiom Space, which is still under development.)

Later in 2021, official aims of meeting the ambitious 2024 date quickly faded as space policy experts reflected on the beginning of the Biden administration. "Candidly, I don't think anyone thought that 2024 timeline was realistic. It was ambitious and aspirational, but I don't think realistic," Eric Stallmer, who had recently left his long-standing post as president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told Space.com at the time.

Today, under the second Trump administration, the landing of Artemis 4 is set for 2028. Why is it still two years away? The spacesuit delays aren't the only factor; the human landing system and Orion's heat shield have also played a role.

Human landing system

In April 2021, SpaceX was awarded a sole-source contract by NASA, valued at $2.9 billion, to use Starship for the Artemis 3 landing. Three companies had competed for the opportunity, and it was widely expected that NASA would choose multiple vendors.

Competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics filed protests with the Government Accountability Office, with billionaire Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin promising to cover up to $2 billion in payments that the company might receive from NASA for the contract, among other things. Both protests were ultimately denied. Blue Origin then filed a lawsuit, which it lost in federal court.

NASA was later directed by the Senate Appropriations Committee to find a second HLS vendor, which ended up being Blue Origin in May 2023. The company got an award worth $3.4 billion and was expected to start landing NASA astronauts on the moon on the Artemis 5 mission.

Meanwhile, Starship's first fully stacked flight test took place in April 2023, which planned to fly the upper stage almost all of the way around Earth and end with a splashdown off Hawaii. But after the two stages of the vehicle didn't separate as expected, SpaceX made a controlled destruction of Starship over the Gulf of Mexico before the flight had reached four minutes of air time.

Also in 2023, NASA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) said that Starship development issues would likely push back the moon landing two years to 2026, and NASA also made a series of declarations saying it was worried about Starship's progress: "If you figure they need a number of launches to do their depot for our crewed flight, they need a number of launches to do the demo, they need a number of launches just to get flying — they have a significant number of launches to go, and that of course gives me concern," said Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development, in one example from June 2023.

Starship has made considerable progress since then. In 2025 alone, SpaceX achieved five test flights. The first three didn't meet all goals, but SpaceX declared the August and October missions full successes. On both occasions, the Ship upper stage survived its trip to suborbital space and back to Earth for a splashdown off the coast of Western Australia, while the Super Heavy booster made a pinpoint landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

But that wasn't enough for Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. In October 2025, he threatened to open the Starship first-landing contract (which at that time was still for Artemis 3) to other companies. "I love SpaceX; it's an amazing company. The problem is, they're behind. They've pushed their timelines out, and we're in a race against China," Duffy said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." =

Days later, SpaceX released a "simplified" Artemis 3 architecture proposal to speed up the work. And by early 2026, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk leaned harder into moon work, with a proposal to put a city on the lunar surface — a milestone that, of course, depends on the successful operation of Starship. Meanwhile, competitor Blue Origin put its New Shepard suborbital launch and space tourism program on hold for at least two years to pour more resources into lunar missions, presumably to help make its case to be called upon by NASA.

The Orion heat shield

The Artemis 1 mission of late 2022 achieved its major goals, but it also uncovered a major concern: By early 2023, NASA was noting that Orion's heat shield lost more material than expected during the high-speed reentry from the moon. The agency pledged to investigate the cause and to resolve it.

In May 2024, the OIG released a report about the issue, showing that Artemis 1 "revealed anomalies with the Orion heat shield, separation bolts and power distribution that pose significant risks to the safety of the crew." One key finding was that NASA uncovered more than 100 areas on Orion's heat shield that had ablated "differently than expected."

In December 2024, NASA officials elected to push back the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 target launch dates to 2026 and 2027, respectively, to give themselves the room they needed to investigate the issue. The agency has also decided to fly a different reentry profile with Artemis 2 rather than replace the heat shield. NASA has said that it "can keep the crew safe during the planned mission, with changes to Orion's trajectory."

Readying for Artemis 3 and Artemis 4

The agency will evaluate the results of the Artemis 2 mission, after it flies, to inform the development of Artemis 3 and Artemis 4. But as things stand now, NASA plans to launch Artemis 3 in 2027 and Artemis 4 in 2028.

Both of those missions will require at least one of the two private lunar landers to be ready. Notably, an internal SpaceX document obtained by Politico in November 2025 showed that the company expects a September 2028 astronaut landing after achieving two major Starship testing milestones for the flight: June 2026 for the first orbital refueling demonstration between Starship vehicles, and an uncrewed lunar landing in June 2027.

A space-focused executive order from the Trump administration in December 2025 also acknowledged the updated timeline, in part directing "returning Americans to the moon by 2028 through the Artemis program."

New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, in comments published Feb. 10 in Aerospace America, said that he wants a crewed Artemis moon landing to happen as soon as possible. But he noted the importance of on-orbit propellant transfer operations being achieved as one key milestone ahead of that landing. Isaacman also has committed to "absolute needle-moving objectives" intended to spur the workforce, with a new workforce directive aiming to consider creating more civil service positions if needed to meet NASA's goals.

NASA is officially sidelining the long-planned lunar Gateway space station to focus its efforts on establishing a base on the surface of the moon.

The change comes as the agency continues to lay out its accelerated plan for returning astronauts to the moon and building a sustained human presence there as a part of the Artemis program. During an event announcing updates to its planned campaign of moon exploration on Tuesday (March 24), NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman framed the pivot as part of a broader push to hone the agency's workforce, simplify program architecture, increase launch cadence and compete with China's lunar ambitions.

"We find ourselves with a real geopolitical rival, challenging American leadership in the high ground of space," Isaacman said. NASA has committed to landing astronauts back on the moon, "before the end of President Trump's term," Isaacman stated, and said the next step toward building a moon base is a pivot away from a space station in lunar orbit. "It should not really surprise anyone that we are pausing Gateway in its current form and focusing on infrastructure that supports sustained operations on the lunar surface."

Instead, NASA will concentrate on expanding its Artemis program surface architecture through crewed and uncrewed landers, rovers and habitats. In that light, existing Gateway hardware and international partner contributions will be repurposed wherever possible for surface systems or other program needs.

The announcement was made one week before NASA's targeted launch of Artemis 2, scheduled for April 1. It's the first crewed mission of the program, and will fly three NASA and one Canadian Space Agency astronaut on a 10-day flight around the moon. The mission is designed as a stepping stone toward a lunar landing and eventual permanent base.

NASA is targeting 2027 for Artemis 3 to test integrated operations of Orion and one or both of the program's current lunar landers in Earth orbit, and 2028 for the program's first lunar landing attempt on Artemis 4 — no longer including a Gateway rendezvous.

One of the reasons NASA is officially excluding Gateway from its plans is to the ease of its integration with lunar landers' ability to travel from the space station, down to the surface and back. Gateway was meant to be launched into what NASA calls a near rectilinear halo orbit around the moon, with an apogee far above the lunar surface that demanded tight fuel constraints for landers needed to traverse the distance.

"Despite some of the very real hardware and scheduled challenges, we can repurpose equipment and international partner commitments to support surface and other program objectives," Isaacman said. "It's worth pointing out that shifting NASA workforce priority to the surface, which has lots of advantages for safety, tech demonstration and science … does not preclude revisiting the orbital outpost in the future.

The new approach calls for an increased cadence of not only Artemis launches, but also support missions that will be needed to build out the infrastructure for astronauts on the moon's surface step-by-step through programs like the Human Landing System (HLS), Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) and the Lunar Transit Vehicle (LTV). Isaacman says the lunar base will be developed in three phases through the end of the decade, and cost roughly $20 billion. These plans extend far beyond NASA's 2028 lunar landing schedule, and rule out — for now — the inclusion of an outpost in lunar orbit.

Phase one expands robotic and early surface lunar landings through CLPS, HLS and LTV to deliver rovers and landers for technology demonstrations. These missions will test things like power, communications and navigation systems needed for short-term crewed excursions.

The second phase introduces semi-habitable modules and routine logistics to enable longer-term missions, leaning on "significant contributions from our great partners, like JAXA's (Japan's space agency) pressurized rover," Isaacman said.

Phase three introduces permanent infrastructure, enabled by higher cargo capacity from commercial landing systems, with the goal of long-duration habitation modules and systems to support a sustained human presence on the moon.

As NASA prepares to send astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than half a century, the agency is revising its long-term plans for Earth's natural satellite.

Speaking at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on Monday (March 16), NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said that Artemis 2 remains on track for an April 1 launch. If successful, the mission will send astronauts farther from Earth than humans have ever traveled before, surpassing the distance record set by Apollo 13 in 1970.

"The most exciting point is, we're getting back to it," Kshatriya said. "We're getting back to contemplating what human exploration of the moon could look like."

The roughly 10-day mission will carry commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen on a trajectory around the far side of the moon. At closest approach, the moon will appear to them about the size of a basketball held at arm's length. From that vantage point, the astronauts will document various surface features, including regions scientists believe have never been seen by humans.

"We tell the crew that their verbal descriptions are actually going to be the monumental scientific data set from this mission," said Ariel Deutsch, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California and a member of the science team helping plan Artemis 2 observations. "As humans, the crew provides critical perceptual context that just can't be replicated with robotic sensors."

The Artemis 2 crew may spend up to six hours conducting observations, using handheld Nikon cameras, recording verbal descriptions, and making sketches and annotations on tablets. While many lunar targets are large or otherwise easy to identify, scientists are particularly interested in subtle variations in color, lighting and terrain — features human perception can capture in ways that instruments alone may miss, Deutsch said.

To guide the effort, NASA has developed an interactive lunar atlas to help the crew track priority targets based on lighting and viewing conditions during the flyby. The final observation plan will be uploaded after launch, once the spacecraft's precise trajectory is confirmed, said Deutsch.

Preparation for Artemis 2 has included three years of training rooted in Apollo-era techniques, particularly field geology, along with an intensive "lunar fundamentals" course designed to build the vocabulary and observational skills needed to describe the moon from orbit, said Cindy Evans of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, who led the geology training program for the crew.

"We practiced a lot their visual observations and their descriptions," Evans said, "so that they would feel confident in being able to talk about the moon and knowing that they were talking about critical features that are important to lunar scientists back on the Earth."

A more flexible path back to the moon

Artemis 2 was, until recently, billed as the precursor to a crewed lunar landing in 2028. But in late February, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that milestone will shift from Artemis 3, as originally planned, to Artemis 4, which is now positioned to become the first crewed moon landing since the Apollo era.

The ultimate destination remains the lunar south pole, a region believed to harbor water ice — a crucial resource for future human exploration — in permanently shadowed craters. But the terrain there is far more challenging than the relatively smooth equatorial sites visited during Apollo, with steep slopes, rugged mountains and extreme lighting conditions.

"The whole point is to get down to the south pole," Kshatriya said. "I think we agree, still, hopefully, that that's the right place to go. We are going to keep our sights there."

To make that goal "more achievable," NASA is opening up the performance specifications for early Artemis landing missions "in as many ways as we can," Kshatriya said. The changes allow greater flexibility in spacecraft orbits and mission design, accounting for capabilities and limitations of current systems while giving industry partners more freedom to propose faster paths forward, he said.

"But we're not yet giving up on the south pole, and I don't think we will, because I think that's a place we need to go," Kshatriya said. "We need to challenge ourselves, and we need to go to some place that we've never been."

The revised strategy places increased emphasis on robotic precursor missions to lay the groundwork for a sustained human presence. NASA envisions a steady cadence of robotic landings near the south pole — potentially as often as monthly — beginning as early as 2027, to gather data on temperature extremes, soil properties and communications challenges.

The data will help reduce risk for future crews and "actually give ourselves a credible shot at aggregating a lunar base in the right spot," Kshatriya said.

"We're not just going to plop down a magical bubble dome that everybody lives in and has plants and amazing things," he said. "We know that that's not credible."

The strategy shift comes amid delays to SpaceX's massive Starship rocket, whose upper stage NASA tapped to be the Artemis program's first crewed moon lander. Under the original architecture, Artemis 3 depended on the completion of several complex milestones that Starship has yet to demonstrate. These include large-scale transfer and storage of super-cooled propellant in space, as well as a dozen or so refueling flights in Earth orbit before the vehicle can head to the moon.

NASA has also selected the Blue Moon lander from Blue Origin, which has paused its suborbital space tourism efforts for at least two years to accelerate development of its lunar lander. NASA plans to test the rendezvous and docking capabilities of Orion alongside Starship and/or Blue Moon in Earth orbit during Artemis 3, which is now targeted to launch in 2027

NASA hopes the revised plan will keep it on track for a lunar landing in 2028, while also positioning the agency to return astronauts to the moon before China — and before the end of the current U.S. presidential term in January 2029.

Kshatriya said meeting that timeline will require what he described as "a sea change" in how NASA works with industry.

"It's going to take NASA folks rolling up their sleeves and getting side by side with industry to finish some of these things," he said, "which I think a lot of us want to do anyway, but that's what it's going to take."

"It's ambitious, but I think we can do it."

Blue Origin is teaming up with NASA to thwart asteroids that may be on collision courses with Earth.

Jeff Bezos' company has partnered with researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology to study how to integrate Earth defense capabilities into its existing Blue Ring spacecraft platform. The concept is called the Near Earth Objects (NEO) Hunter mission, and it relies on multiple technologies to scan, deflect and divert incoming asteroids away from possible impacts with Earth.

It's the latest application for Blue Ring, Blue Origin's modular satellite bus built to support up to 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of mission payloads distributed between as many as 13 different connection ports. Blue Ring is designed to operate anywhere from low Earth and geostationary orbits to cislunar space, Mars and other deep-space destinations.

NEO Hunter will utilize multiple techniques to intercept, assess and, if needed, redirect the trajectories of potentially hazardous asteroids, according to a March 11 Blue Origin post on X.

Across two separate mission phases, NEO Hunter will release a group of cubesats to rendezvous with and characterize a potential space object threat. Understanding as much as possible about an object's composition, mass and density can inform which strategies can most successfully be deployed to ensure an altered trajectory.

One of those strategies can be carried out using NEO Hunter's powerful ion beam emitter. The spacecraft will be capable of shooting a ray of charged particles onto an asteroid to change its orbit. Ion drive engines expel charged particles to propel a spacecraft, like the one used on NASA's DART probe. Similarly, an ion beam can direct a concentrated stream of charged atoms with enough force to theoretically alter the heading of an object in space.

If an asteroid is too big, or moving too fast, to be effectively influenced by NEO Hunter's ion beam, the spacecraft can enter a second mission phase called "Robust Kinetic Disruption."

That technique was first demonstrated by DART, a space probe that NASA slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022. DART effectively changed Dimorphos' orbit around its binary partner asteroid Didymos, and also altered the binary pair's orbit around the sun.

In the same way, NEO Hunter can set a course for a high-velocity intercept with its target asteroid to crash into the space rock as fast as 22,600 mph (36,370 kph). Before doing so, however, NEO Hunter will release another smaller satellite called the "Slamcam" to document the impact and confirm mission success.

"This is another example of how commercial platforms like Blue Ring can conduct low-cost, high-priority science, exploration and planetary defense missions," Blue Origin said in the post.

The company has designed Blue Ring for many applications, including its use as a Mars telecommunications orbiter. The satellite's bus landed its first customer last year, when Blue Origin partnered with Scout Space to fly an orbital domain awareness sensor as Blue Ring's first payload.

Planetary defense against near Earth objects is gaining increasing attention these days, as shown by interest in events like the recent crash of a meteorite through someone's roof in Germany and the occasional near-miss of an asteroid flying between the Earth and the moon. Astronomers have been on the case for decades, however, building a catalogue of asteroids that are big enough to be dangerous and also have a chance of hitting Earth at some point in the future. So far, they haven't found any serious imminent threats.

The International Space Station could keep flying a bit longer than we thought.

The orbiting lab, which has hosted rotating astronaut crews continuously since November 2000, is currently slated to be deorbited in late 2030. However, a newly advanced NASA Authorization bill pushes that retirement back by two years, to Sept. 30, 2032.

The goal of the extension is "to avoid a gap in continuous human presence and capabilities in LEO [low Earth orbit], thus avoiding ceding leadership to China before commercial stations are ready," the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation wrote in a summary of the bill, which it approved on Wednesday (March 4).

Staying ahead of China in human spaceflight is a key priority of the committee and its chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Last September, for example, the committee held a hearing titled "There's a Bad Moon on the Rise," which stressed the importance of returning astronauts to the lunar surface with NASA's Artemis program before China can pull off the feat (which the nation plans to do by 2030). But it wasn't all moon talk.

"This is a pivotal moment for our nation's space program," Cruz said during the September hearing. "America must maintain leadership in low Earth orbit while also embarking on a new era of exploration with Artemis."

And U.S. leadership in LEO is under threat.

China got a crewed foothold in LEO in 2021, when it launched the core module of its Tiangong space station. The nation finished building the T-shaped, three-module Tiangong in late 2022 and apparently plans to operate it into the mid-2030s.

The United States, meanwhile, plans to replace the aging ISS with one or more commercial outposts. NASA has been encouraging the development of such stations via its Commercial LEO Destinations program, which has awarded more than $500 million since its establishment in 2021, most of it to Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Voyager Technologies, two companies leading the planned Orbital Reef and Starlab space stations, respectively.

Other outposts are in the works, too. The California startup Vast, for example, just raised $500 million for its planned Haven-2 station. And the Houston company Axiom Space aims to operate its own LEO outpost, which will consist of modules that originally launched to, and docked with, the ISS.

The companies behind all of these commercial outposts plan to get them up and running before 2030. But the newly advanced NASA Authorization bill suggests the Senate committee is skeptical of its ability to meet that timeline.

Indeed, it instructs NASA not to begin phasing out the ISS until a successor is operational.

"When one or more commercial space stations is capable of providing services to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Administrator shall begin the process of an orderly, managed transition of operations from the International Space Station to commercial providers in such a way as to maintain a continuous human presence," the bill states.

There's quite a bit else to chew on in the NASA Authorization bill, which was introduced in March 2025. (The version that the Senate committee just passed is a revision of that original bill.)

For instance, it rejects President Trump's planned 24% cut to NASA funding, allocating $24.7 billion to NASA for fiscal year 2026 and $25.3 billion for fiscal year 2027. (Trump's budget request allocated just $18.8 billion to NASA for the current year.) The bill also directs NASA to start building a crewed base on the moon, which is already a key objective of the Artemis program.

"The lunar base will be capable of long-duration habitation, as well as robotic and human-tended industrial operations to advance science, technology and strategic interests," reads a press release issued by the Senate science committee on Wednesday.

"A sustained human and robotic presence at the lunar base will support priority scientific investigations that lay the foundation for a successful mission to Mars," the release adds.

Advancing out of committee is just one step for the NASA Authorization bill. To become law, it will also have to be approved by the full Senate and the House of Representatives, then be signed by President Trump.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently announced a significant restructuring of the Artemis program, and how the agency intends to return astronauts to the moon.

The new plan shortens the time between missions and redraws the map of which launches will achieve various program milestones. Nothing will change for Artemis 2, which may lift off in a matter of weeks, carrying four astronauts on a 10-day flight around the moon and back to Earth. Every mission after Artemis 2, however, has been adjusted.

The programmatic shuffle is rendering parts of the old Artemis plan obsolete, leaving major ground hardware half-built and an uncertain future for the Gateway moon-orbiting space station under development.

Isaacman announced the changes during a press conference on Feb. 27, citing unacceptable wait times between missions for Artemis' Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and an increased risk of relying on unproven technologies to carry out mission-critical objectives like landing astronauts safely on the lunar surface.

The Artemis 2 SLS is currently undergoing repairs in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with a potential rollback to its launch pad in time for a launch window that opens April 1. Artemis 2 will bethe first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft and the first return of astronauts to lunar space in more than half a century. Under the previous framework, it was meant to be followed by Artemis 3 in 2028, which would carry out the program's first moon landing with astronauts aboard SpaceX's Starship vehicle.

For Artemis 4, NASA planned to upgrade to the SLS Block 1B, which features a design powerful enough to launch elements of the Gateway space station intended for lunar orbit. Beginning with Artemis 4, NASA aimed to use the Gateway outpost around the moon for deep-space science and as an orbital layover stop where Orion and the program's lunar lander could dock to transfer crews headed down to the surface. Gateway, however, is nowhere to be found in any of NASA's recent Artemis updates.

Under NASA's new plan, there will be no SLS Block 1B. In the hope of shortening launch cadences from the current 3.5-year interval to the desired 10 months, SLS is being standardized into a single configuration. Instead of relying on SLS' current Interim Cryogenic Propulsion upper stage, NASA is reportedly considering converting United Launch Alliance's Centaur V upper stage for use on SLS for all Artemis launches after Artemis 3.

The revised Artemis program is now targeting 2027 for the launch of Artemis 3, but instead of landing on the moon, the mission will fly to low Earth orbit for rendezvous and docking maneuvers with either or both of the Artemis program's contracted moon landers — SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft — depending on their relative readiness for orbital missions.

NASA partnered with SpaceX for Starship to serve as the lander for Artemis 3 and 4 and contracted Blue Moon for Artemis 5. But the agency is now signaling that it's ready to fly Artemis 3 with whichever lander can be made safely available when launch time rolls around.

With Artemis 3 turned into a lunar landing stepping stone around Earth, Artemis 4 has been tapped as the program's first crewed landing on the moon, which NASA still hopes to accomplish in 2028, with a possible second moon landing that same year on Artemis 5.

It's a major reshaping of Artemis' original mission progression, but the plan has been purposed to maximize both crew safety and NASA's chances of success, according to Isaacman. The shakeup doesn't come without some sacrifice, though.

Gateway's fate remains undetermined under NASA's new plan. Many components of Gateway are already in various states of assembly, but there is now no rocket to launch some of them once they're ready and no missions yet assigned to rendezvous with the proposed outpost. Congress advanced a revised NASA authorization bill on Wednesday (March 4) that supports many of Isaacman's proposed changes to the Artemis program, but only requires he brief lawmakers on Gateway's status within a few months' of the bill's passing.

If Gateway is on the chopping block, as seems likely, there is potential for its existing hardware to be repurposed for use in a possible base on the lunar surface, which has been a longstanding component of the Artemis program's goals and NASA's vision for a sustained human presence on the moon. One of the revisions in the authorization bill even grants the NASA administrator the freedom to "repurpose, reprogram, reconfigure, or reassign existing programs, platforms, modules, or hardware originally developed for other programs" in order to ensure that the space agency's Artemis goals are successful.

Canceling future SLS upgrades also has implications for some of Artemis' ground infrastructure, which is being built to support the larger rocket variant. To transfer the 322-foot-tall (98 meters) SLS Block 1 from the VAB to its launch pad, NASA uses the huge Crawler-Transporter 2 vehicle to traverse the distance with the rocket standing on its mobile launch platform (MLP). The MLP contains the SLS launch tower, which helps secure the rocket in place and provides the umbilicals that help fuel SLS before liftoff.

Previous block upgrades to SLS were substantial enough to require a separate MLP (Mobile Launcher 2) be built, rather than upgrading the existing platform. But in an update on March 3, NASA confirmed that "the agency is no longer planning to use the Exploration Upper Stage or Mobile Launcher 2."

The contract for Mobile Launcher 2 was awarded in 2019, and has cost about $1.6 billion to date, about 98% of which has already been paid. Seven years later, the Mobile Launcher 2 is currently nearing completion outside the VAB, but it now may never realize its originally intended purpose. And relying on a single MLP to support Artemis launches less than a year apart could cause a schedule jam. The SLS MLP required refurbishment from damage caused after the Artemis 1 launch in November 2022.

Preparing the existing mobile launcher for an Artemis 4 flight with a new Centaur V-based upper stage could take a year or more, because the work would go beyond normal post-launch refurbishment. Engineers would have to reconfigure upper-stage umbilicals, fluid and electrical interfaces, and control systems, then complete testing to certify the update for launching SLS.

Potentially losing Gateway, or having to halt construction and/or repurpose the hardware from Mobile Launcher 2, isn't necessarily a total loss for NASA or the Artemis program, though. The agency has a long history of repurposing or evolving massive hardware for use on new or revised missions. Elements from both could be utilized to support Artemis or other future missions as NASA's plans continue to evolve.

NASA has revealed a huge shakeup to its Artemis program of crewed moon exploration.

The announcement came last week, just after the agency's Artemis 2 rocket was rolled back to the hangar for repairs. What was expected as an update to the timeline for Artemis 2's mission ended up being an explanation of the restructuring of the Artemis program itself.

The plan for Artemis 2 remains the same: Launch a crew of four astronauts on a 10-day journey around the moon and back to Earth aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft. With maintenance already underway, NASA is hoping the repairs to the Artemis 2 rocket can be made in time to meet a launch window that opens April 1. Until now, the mission had been billed as the precursor to an actual landing on the lunar surface on Artemis 3 in 2028, but that is no longer the case. NASA hasn't changed its goal of returning astronauts to the moon in 2028, but Artemis 3 won't be the mission to carry it out.

Instead, that task will fall to Artemis 4, with Artemis 3 launching sooner with a different mission framework, and with a potential second crewed lunar landing on Artemis 5 in late 2028. The approach mirrors that of NASA's early Apollo program, which launched incremental, quick-succession missions to test and prove the technologies necessary to safely land astronauts on the moon.

"We didn't go right to Apollo 11," said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman during a Feb. 27 press conference. "We had a whole Mercury program, Gemini [and] lots of Apollo missions before we ultimately landed."

In contrast, Artemis' architecture previously outlined a jump from Orion's first uncrewed mission to the moon in 2022, a crewed lunar flyby on the upcoming Artemis 2 mission and a moon landing on Artemis 3 in 2028. But three or more years between missions, and a leap from lunar space to the lunar surface without at least one test-run with Orion and its landing vehicle left too many "firsts" for Artemis 3 to take on and posed a significant safety risk, according to a recent report from the NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP).

"The numerous and unprecedented mission objectives — many being attempted for the first time within a single flight — result in a compounded level of technical and safety risk," the ASAP report said.

Indeed, under its original design, the success of Artemis 3 depended on a lot of things going right. The mission's moon lander, SpaceX's Starship spacecraft, is expected to need more than a dozen refueling flights in Earth orbit in order to complete its objectives of rendezvousing and docking with Orion in orbit around the moon, landing astronauts on the lunar surface and launching them back to orbit to rendezvous and dock again with Orion, which will safely ferry the astronauts home.

Artemis 3's success was not only dependent on all of those things going exactly right for the first time, but also on a number of operational milestones SpaceX has yet to demonstrate during Starship's ongoing development. One such milestone is the ability to transfer and store large amounts of cryogenic propellant in space, which has never been done before.

Now, NASA is breaking up those objectives between multiple missions. Artemis 3 will now launch in 2027, and will rendezvous with one or both of NASA's contracted moon landers in Earth orbit. In addition to Starship, NASA has also tapped the Blue Moon lander from Blue Origin to support the Artemis program, and the space agency is eager to test out Orion with Starship, Blue Moon or both on next year's Artemis 3 flight.

"It's challenging, it's ambitious, but with this course correction, we are on a more stable foundation, and a more realistic path to the mountains we have ahead," NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya said on Friday (Feb. 27).

In the same way that Artemis 2 parallels the objectives of Apollo 8 to test out the crew capsule's flight systems around the moon, Artemis 3's mission to demonstrate rendezvous and docking with the lunar landers in Earth orbit, as well as testing out new spacesuits, is now closely aligned with Apollo 9.

NASA also wants to shorten the cadence between Artemis launches. Apollo 8 launched on Dec. 21, 1968, and was followed less than three months later by Apollo 9 — a much quicker turnaround than Artemis' current wait time of three-plus years.

To do this, NASA is backing away from some of the more complex design upgrades intended for Aretmis' rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). SLS Block 1 was designed with the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) to launch the first three Artemis missions. Artemis 4 and the missions to follow were supposed to employ more powerful SLS variants — Block 1B, Block 2 and so forth — which feature an enhanced Exploration Upper Stage to launch heavier elements of the program, such as components for the Gateway space station planned for lunar orbit.

Now, NASA is planning a more standardized SLS, with an upper stage solidified for its design rather than customized for each Artemis mission, and a new NASA graphic paints a picture of what that and other plans for Artemis' future might look like.

An image released in concert with last week's Artemis announcement illustrates NASA's new vision for the program and humanity's return to the moon, and has some details that may bring clarity to how that vision will unfold.

The newly unveiled image is divided into three frames: Artemis 2, Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 and beyond. The Artemis 2 panel contains no surprises; it shows Orion's launch on SLS, lunar flyby and return to Earth. Artemis 3 shows the mission's new plan, with Orion still flying with ICPS, docking with both Starship and Blue Moon above Earth.

The image's bottom panel — Artemis 4 and beyond — is the most interesting. It shows the standardized SLS Block 1 configuration launching alongside SpaceX's Starship rocket and Blue Origin's New Glenn. Orion is then seen flying next to both landers in space, still attached to its SLS upper stage, which is notably not the ICPS.

Instead, the spacecraft appears to be powered by a dual-engine Centaur vehicle, which is the upper stage for United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan rocket. While NASA has not yet confirmed that it plans to outfit Centaur for SLS and Orion, doing so could make a lot of sense. The stage is nearly equal in diameter to Orion and its service module, has been proven reliable on all of ULA's Vulcan missions to date, and doesn't need to be designed from scratch to support the needs of future Artemis launches.

Other significant inclusions in NASA's illustration are seen on the lunar surface. Next to a handful of Starship and Blue Moon landers stands a robotic Intuitive Machines lander — notably, the first commercial lander to touch down on the moon, which it did as a part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program in early 2024.

Moon rovers bearing a striking resemblance to Astrolab's FLEX lunar excursion vehicle are also seen scattered around the modules of a lunar base. Astrolab's rover design is one of three in the running for Artemis, along with rovers from Intuitive Machines and Lunar Outpost, neither of which appears to be included in NASA's graphic.

NASA is hoping its Artemis restructuring will accelerate its readiness for a 2028 crewed lunar landing, while also breaking its missions down into more manageable milestones. It's an ambitious undertaking for an increased launch cadence by the space agency, which has run into repeated delays over the course of the last 10 or so years leading up the program's first crewed flight.

Some experts aren't sure the space agency can pull off the new plan in such a short amount of time, but still see the reorganization as a step in the right direction. As Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013, said in an online post, "We didn't 'wait' 3.5 yrs between launches because we wanted to, that is what it took. The new plan increases the probability that the next US moon landing attempt will be successful — even though it is still likely more years away than we hope."

Her post received a response directly from Isaacman, who agreed that "after decades, America’s return to the moon has to be more than just talk."

"I would describe launching SLS every 10 months as extremely difficult," Isaacman wrote, "which is supposed to be our specialty at NASA."

NASA's Artemis 3 mission will no longer land astronauts on the moon — and it might not involve SpaceX's Starship megarocket, either.

On Friday (Feb. 27), the space agency announced that it's revamping the architecture of its Artemis program of lunar exploration. One of the biggest changes involves Artemis 3, which was originally supposed to land astronauts on the moon using Starship's upper stage.

NASA's new plan launches Artemis 3 in 2027 but keeps it in low Earth orbit. The mission will aim to demonstrate a range of technologies and capabilities there, including a rendezvous and docking procedure between the Orion crew capsule and "one or both commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin," agency officials said in a statement on Friday.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, is developing a crewed lander called Blue Moon. That vehicle was supposed to carry NASA astronauts for the first time on Artemis 5, a lunar landing mission previously targeted for 2030.

But NASA has mused about pressing Blue Moon into service sooner than that. Last October, for example, then-Acting Administrator Sean Duffy announced that he planned to open the Artemis 3 landing contract to competition, explaining that he wasn't satisfied with the pace of Starship's development. (Starship has flown 11 test flights to date, and the most recent two were fully successful. However, the vehicle has yet to reach Earth orbit.)

Blue Origin was the only realistic competitor for that moon-landing gig. And it would appear the company remains in the running for the mission in its revised form, given the wording of Friday's announcement.

"Otherwise, they could have simply said in this statement today that they're going to dock the Orion with the Starship lunar lander and do their testing," Don Platt, head of the Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, told Space.com on Friday. "But they didn't. They didn't say that."

Pace of development isn't the only factor going into this decision, according to Platt, who also leads the university's Spaceport Education Center.

"NASA does not want to have to rely on only one one contractor, either," he said. "I think that's why they're really kind of pushing this competition between Blue Origin and SpaceX."

Blue Origin appears to be leaning into the competition. In late January, the company announced that it's pausing its suborbital space tourism flights for at least two years "to further accelerate development of the company's human lunar capabilities."

"The decision reflects Blue Origin's commitment to the nation's goal of returning to the moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence," the company said in a statement at the time.

The revised Artemis architecture now envisions the first crewed lunar landing since the Apollo era to take place on Artemis 4 in 2028, with a possible second touchdown occurring that same year, on Artemis 5.

The new plans are part of a broader shift, which prioritizes a step-by-step approach and an increased launch cadence. (It's been more than three years since the first — and so far only — Artemis mission lifted off; NASA is gearing up to launch the Artemis 2 crewed mission around the moon in a month or so.)

For example, NASA officials said on Friday that they want to keep flying Artemis' Space Launch System rocket in a configuration as close to the current "Block I" as possible. Previously, Artemis 4 had been slated to use the "Block IB" variant, which would have featured a new, more capable upper stage.

The ultimate goal of Artemis is to establish a permanent, sustainable human presence on and around the moon in the next five to 10 years. NASA also wants to land the first Artemis astronauts before China puts boots on the moon, which the nation aims to do by 2030.

"With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays and achieve our objectives," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in Friday's statement.

"Standardizing vehicle configuration, increasing flight rate and progressing through objectives in a logical, phased approach, is how we achieved the near-impossible in 1969, and it is how we will do it again," he added.

NASA's plan to return humans to the moon has changed.

As engineers work to fix issues with the Artemis 2 mission's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, NASA officials are reexamining what flights will follow and are shaking up plans for which of those will actually land astronauts on the moon.

In short, Artemis 3 is changing from a crewed mission to the lunar surface to an Earth-orbit rendezvous of NASA's Orion spacecraft with one or more of the program's moon landers in 2027, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced on Friday (Feb. 27). The program's first moon landing will now take place on Artemis 4, in 2028, with a potential second landing that same year with Artemis 5.

In addition, SLS' design will be standardized to streamline production, and the rocket's launch cadence will be shortened from once every three years to once every10 months, if all goes to plan. To accomplish this, NASA plans to bolster its workforce in order to "rebuild core competencies," Isaacman said, "that will directly contribute to NASA's launch cadence."

It's a major shift in the architecture of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustained human presence on the moon and in lunar orbit. A recent report from NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), however, cast serious doubts on the previous architecture, calling into question the agency's timeline, projected mission safety and the readiness of the Human Landing System (HLS) vehicles that NASA has contracted from private companies to perform lunar landings.

As originally designed, Artemis 3 encompassed a long list of technological firsts, with a heavy dependency on HLS, which the ASAP determined posed "significant risks at the mission level."

"This is just not the right pathway forward," Isaacman said. "Going right to the moon … is not a pathway to success."

"We want to reduce complexity to the greatest extent possible," he added. "We want to accelerate manufacturing, pull in the hardware and increase launch rate, which obviously has a direct safety consideration to it as well."

With the new framework, Artemis 3 is drastically simplified, and less dependent on the readiness of a moon lander's ability to actually land on the moon. The development of both private HLS landers chosen by NASA has fallen short of the space agency's hopeful timeline, resulting in impending delays.

NASA contracted SpaceX's Starship to land astronauts on the Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 moon missions. Starship has flown 11 suborbital test flights over the past three years but has yet to notch several critical milestones needed to qualify the spacecraft for lunar landings with astronauts onboard.

NASA picked Blue Origin's Blue Moon spacecraft, meanwhile, to land astronauts on the Artemis 5 moon mission. A Blue Moon pathfinder known as Mark 1 is currently undergoing testing at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Before NASA will let either Starship or Blue Moon carry astronauts to the lunar surface, the vehicles will have to demonstrate their ability to transfer and store cryogenic fuels in space, rendezvous and dock with Orion, as well as execute an uncrewed moon landing and successful ascent back to lunar orbit.

Now, NASA plans to use Artemis 3 as a safe proving ground for those procedures in low Earth orbit before entrusting the landers to be 100% successful on their first flights to the moon.

Previous architecture for Artemis 4 used an upgraded version of SLS, called Block 1B, which featured the enhanced Exploration Upper Stage in place of SLS' current Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS). If NASA's launch cadence with SLS remained unchanged, Artemis 4 would have launched sometime around 2030.

Space agency officials are counting on a standardized SLS configuration to shorten the wait time between launches, and are now targeting an Artemis 4 liftoff in 2028 as the program's first crewed lunar landing, with the potential for Artemis 5 to repeat the feat later that same year.

"I think what we're doing is directly in line with what ASAP asked us to do," Isaacman told Space.com during Friday's briefing. "I think it should be incredibly obvious you don't go from one uncrewed launch of Orion and SLS, wait three years, go around the moon, wait three years and land on it."

Isaacman compared the need for an increased SLS launch cadence to the United States' first lunar program, saying, "There has to be a better way, in line with our history."

"We did not just jump right to Apollo 11. We did it through Mercury, Gemini and lots of Apollo missions with the launch cadence every three months," Isaacman said. "We shouldn't be comfortable with the current cadence. We should be getting back to basics and doing what we know works."

In the meantime, teams at NASA's Kennedy Space Center continue to work toward an April launch date for Artemis 2, despite its recent relocation from the pad at Launch Complex-39B to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for repairs.

Engineers conducting routine post-fueling procedures after a Feb. 19 countdown rehearsal for the Artemis 2 rocket encountered a helium flow pressurization issue on ICPS that they could address only back inside the VAB. That countdown practice run was the second "wet dress rehearsal" for the Artemis 2 SLS, which experienced liquid hydrogen leaks and an early countdown termination during testing on Feb. 2.

"The suspected system component for the helium flow will be removed, and they're going to undergo detailed sections and assess the cause of the issue," Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, said on Friday. "We hope to get down to the root cause of that and make changes, not just to the hardware, but to our operational procedures, so that we don't encounter the same issue again when we roll back out to the pad."

Counting on a quick diagnosis and fix, NASA officials hope to have SLS back on the pad in time to meet Artemis 2's next launch window, which opens April 1, with additional opportunities April 3-6 and April 30.

Artemis 2 will be Orion's first mission with a crew onboard. They are NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The quartet will launch on a 10-day mission to fly in a single loop around the moon before returning to Earth.

Artemis 1 successfully sent an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit and back to Earth in late 2022.

A Chinese space firm is booking passengers for its suborbital tourism flights and has now signed up a celebrity for an early flight.

Commercial company InterstellOr unveiled a full-scale experimental version of its CYZ1 (ChuanYueZhe 1) crew capsule on Jan. 22, Asia Business Daily reported, and also performed a landing buffer test.

CYZ1 is designed to allow occupants to experience a few minutes of microgravity, taking passengers above the Kármán Line, an arbitrary boundary 62 miles (100 kilometers) above mean sea level that's commonly used to define where space begins.

The company is targeting its first crewed flights in 2028 and is already taking bookings, though timelines are dependent on development, testing and certification progresses. InterstellOr has, however, announced that the Chinese actor Johnny Huang Jingyu has signed up as its first celebrity space tourist and will fly as passenger 009, state media ECNS reported.

Initial tickets are reported to be around 3 million Chinese yuan, or US$430,000. A 10% deposit is needed to make a reservation. The company also previously announced that Lin Xiaoyan, a Chinese-American poet, is set to become the first overseas Chinese female astronaut.

The moves echo those of Western space tourism companies, particularly Blue Origin, which flies passengers on short trips to just above the Kármán Line with its New Shepard vehicle. Blue Origin has also flown a number of celebrities on its suborbital flights, including actor William Shatner, NFL legend Michael Strahan and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.

Beijing-based InterstellOr was founded in January 2023, with members of its core technical team having experience from China's state-led human spaceflight program, according to reports.

InterstellOr is not the only company aiming to bring suborbital tourism services to China. CAS Space, a spinoff from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is working on its own program, and earlier in January performed a first launch test of an uncrewed capsule for microgravity experiments. Another commercial firm, Deep Blue Aerospace, also has eyes on suborbital tourism using reusable rockets.

Blue Origin won't be launching any more space tourism missions for a while.

Jeff Bezos' aerospace company announced today (Jan. 30) that it's grounding its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for at least two years, so it can focus on sending people much farther afield.

The move allows Blue Origin to "shift resources to further accelerate development of the company's human lunar capabilities," the company wrote in a statement today. "The decision reflects Blue Origin's commitment to the nation's goal of returning to the moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence."

Blue Origin's lunar ambitions are concrete: The company holds a contract to land NASA astronauts on the moon using its Blue Moon spacecraft. If all goes to plan, Blue Moon will do so for the first time on the Artemis 5 mission, which is targeted to launch in 2029.

But Blue Origin could hit the gray dirt much sooner than that: It plans to launch a pathfinder version of Blue Moon on a robotic demonstration mission to the lunar surface later this year.

Artemis 2, the first-ever crewed mission of the Artemis program, could launch on its round-the-moon flight as soon as Feb. 8. Artemis 3 and Artemis 4, the first crewed Artemis flights to the lunar surface, are slated to use SpaceX's Starship vehicle as a lander.

New Shepard, a reusable rocket-capsule combo, launched for the first time in April 2015. It now has 38 total flights under its belt, including 17 crewed missions, which together have carried 98 people to and from suborbital space. (Six people have flown twice, so a total of 92 different individuals have flown on New Shepard.)

New Shepard flew most recently just last week, when it sent six people up on a mission called NS-38.

Passengers get to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space during New Shepard flights, each of which lasts 10 to 12 minutes. Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices for the vehicle.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is about to show its reusability chops.

New Glenn will loft one of AST SpaceMobile's huge Block 2 BlueBird internet-beaming satellites on its next mission, which is targeted for late February, Blue Origin announced on Thursday (Jan. 22).

That flight will be the third overall for New Glenn, and the first to feature a flight-proven booster: It will reuse the first stage from New Glenn's second flight (NG-2), which launched NASA's twin ESCAPADE Mars probes on Nov. 13, Blue Origin said on Thursday.

The two-stage New Glenn is one of the largest rockets in the world, standing 322 feet (98 meters) tall. Its first stage is designed for extensive reuse — at least 25 flights, according to Blue Origin.

New Glenn debuted in January 2025, successfully sending a test version of Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft to orbit. The rocket's first stage crashed during its touchdown try on that flight, but NG-2 was a different story: The booster landed softly on Blue Origin's drone ship "Jacklyn," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

And now it will fly again.

The upcoming NG-3 mission will lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, as NG-1 and NG-2 did. It will deliver a Block 2 BlueBird to low Earth orbit, helping build out Texas-based AST SpaceMobile's direct-to-cellphone internet constellation.

Block 2 BlueBirds have antennas that span about 2,400 square feet (223 square meters), making them some of the largest satellites in space. One Block 2 BlueBird has reached orbit to date, getting there atop an Indian rocket this past December.

AST SpaceMobile has also sent five first-generation BlueBirds to LEO. Those satellites have 693-square-foot (64.4 square m) communications arrays.

"We're proud to have AST SpaceMobile as our customer on NG-3," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a statement on Thursday. "Our customers need a reliable, cost-effective launch vehicle, and New Glenn is purpose-built to serve their needs."

Blue Origin had experience with reusable rockets before the first New Glenn booster recovery. The company has been flying New Shepard, a reusable rocket-capsule combo, to and from suborbital space since 2015.

New Shepard has launched 38 times to date, 17 times with space tourists on board. The most recent crewed flight occurred on Thursday.

The company is following in SpaceX's footsteps, however, in the recovery and reuse of orbital-class rockets. Elon Musk's company pulled off its first landing on an orbital flight in December 2015 and has now done so more than 500 times.

Blue Origin just sent its latest batch of space tourists to the final frontier.

The company, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, launched its New Shepard vehicle today (Jan. 22), sending six passengers on a brief trip to suborbital space.

It was Blue Origin's 17th human spaceflight to date and the 38th mission overall for New Shepard, the company's autonomous, reusable rocket-capsule combo. That latter fact explains the flight's name: NS-38.

New Shepard lifted off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site today at 11:25 a.m. EST (1625 GMT; 10:25 a.m. local time in Texas), after a brief delay caused by "unauthorized personnel on the range," according to the Blue Origin stream.

The six people inside the vehicle's capsule were entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; Linda Edwards, a retired obstetrician/gynecologist; real estate developer Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur Alberto Gutiérrez; Jim Hendren, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations.

Stiles was a late addition to the crew. She replaced Andrew Yaffe, who had to drop out due to illness but will fly on a future New Shepard mission, according to Blue Origin.

The sextet enjoyed a few minutes of weightlessness and saw Earth against the blackness of space.

They also earned their astronaut wings, as New Shepard carried them above the Kármán Line, the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) boundary that's widely recognized as the start of outer space. (It's not unanimous, however; both NASA and the U.S. Air Force deem space to begin 50 miles, or 80 km, above Earth.) Telemetry during today's flight indicated the capsule reached an altitude of nearly 350,000 feet (106,680 meters).

NS-38 ended quickly, as all New Shepard flights do. The vehicle's rocket came back to Earth for a powered touchdown at its designated landing pad at 7 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff. The capsule followed suit roughly three minutes later, raising a cloud of dust in the West Texas desert as it settled down softly under parachutes.

Blue Origin has now flown 98 people to space over its 17 human spaceflights, the first of which took place on July 20, 2021 — the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. That tally includes 92 different individuals, as six people have ridden the capsule twice.

Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices. For perspective, Virgin Galactic, the company's main competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, charges $600,000 per seat.

Yet another satellite megaconstellation is in the works, this one from Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.

The Washington-based aerospace company announced today (Jan. 21) that it plans to build a network called TeraWave, which will consist of 5,280 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) and 128 a bit higher up, in medium Earth orbit (MEO).

"This network will service tens of thousands of enterprise, data center and government users who require reliable connectivity for critical operations," Blue Origin said in an X post today.

As that post notes, TeraWave is targeting a customer base of big businesses and government agencies — organizations that want or need very high-throughput communications services.

TeraWave's LEO satellites will deliver speeds of up to 144 gigabits per second using radio frequency links, according to a Blue Origin statement. And the MEO spacecraft will be even more capable, using lasers to provide speeds of up to 6 terabits per second.

"TeraWave addresses the unmet needs of customers who are seeking higher throughput, symmetrical upload/download speeds, more redundancy and rapid scalability," Blue Origin's statement reads. "It enables customers to choose throughput and physical presence in response to changes in their needs."

Blue Origin plans to start building out the constellation in the fourth quarter of 2027.

A number of other satellite-internet megaconstellations are under construction. SpaceX's Starlink, for example, already services customers around the globe using a network of more than 9,500 satellites (and that number is growing all the time).

Two Chinese megaconstellations — Guowang ("National Network") and Qianfan ("Thousand Sails") — are under construction in LEO as well. Both will eventually consist of more than 13,000 spacecraft, if all goes according to plan.

And Amazon, which Bezos founded back in 1994, is assembling a 3,200-satellite network in LEO called, appropriately enough, Amazon Leo (though it was initially named Project Kuiper). Like Starlink, Amazon Leo is tailored more to everyday residential users.

Six space tourists will launch to the final frontier on Thursday (Jan. 22), and you can watch the action live.

Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its NS-38 suborbital mission from West Texas on Thursday, during a window that opens at 11:00 a.m. EST (1600 GMT; 10:00 a.m. local Texas time).

You can watch it live here at Space.com courtesy of Blue origin, or directly via the company. Coverage will start 30 minutes before launch.

As its name suggests, NS-38 will be the 38th flight of New Shepard, Blue Origin's reusable rocket-capsule combo. Sixteen of the vehicle's 37 missions to date have carried people; the others have been uncrewed research flights.

New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to the capsule's parachute-aided touchdown. During this time, passengers get to experience a brief period of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space.

Blue Origin has not revealed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard. Virgin Galactic, the company's chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, has done so; Virgin Galactic tickets are $600,000 apiece.

The six people going up on NS-38 are entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; retired obstetrician/gynecologist Linda Edwards; real estate developer and investor Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur and technologist Alberto Gutiérrez; retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jim Hendren, who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations. You can read more about them all via Blue Origin.

Stiles is a late addition to the manifest. Blue Origin just announced her inclusion today (Jan. 20), explaining that she's replacing a passenger who can no longer fly on Thursday due to illness (but will get to participate in a future mission).

The person who dropped out is presumably Andrew Yaffe, a veteran of the recycling industry who was identified as an NS-38 crewmember in Blue Origin's first update about the mission.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:45 p.m. ET on Jan. 21 with the new launch target time of 11:00 a.m. ET on Jan. 22.

2026 is shaping up to be a spectacular year for lunar exploration, with a growing fleet of commercial missions set to attempt to land on Earth's celestial neighbor.

It will be a huge year for the moon overall. NASA plans to send humans back to the vicinity of the moon with the Artemis 2 mission no earlier than February, while China, in the second half of the year, aims to land at the lunar south pole and seek out water ice with its robotic Chang'e 7 spacecraft. But it's not only national agencies targeting Earth's companion, as commercial companies are also taking aim with a series of robotic landers at what could be the start of a sustained, more market-driven lunar presence for humanity.

Below are the commercial missions currently targeting lunar landing attempts in 2026, pending launch schedules and mission readiness.

Blue Origin: Blue Moon Pathfinder Mission 1

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin is set to take its first shot at the moon with the Blue Moon Mark 1 pathfinder. The robotic lander is due to launch on a New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral as soon as early 2026, the company said in November, soon after the rocket successfully launched NASA's ESCAPADE Mars mission.

The mission is designed to be a technology demonstration of the Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander design, including precision landing systems and propulsion tech that will support later commercial and NASA payload deliveries to the lunar surface, with a capacity of up to 6,600 pounds (3,000 kilograms).

The lander will target the lunar south pole and will carry a NASA SCALPSS payload that will study how the lander's exhaust interacts with the moon's surface during the landing. There's a lot at stake: Blue Origin is a prime contractor for NASA's Human Landing System (HLS) with its Blue Moon lander, which is intended to land astronauts on the moon later this decade, making Mark 1 pathfinder a key rehearsal.

Firefly: Blue Ghost M2

Texas-based Firefly is gearing up to return to the moon one year after its historic landing of Blue Ghost in Mare Crisium on the near side. Blue Ghost M2 is the next step in the company's push to become a repeatable commercial lunar delivery provider. It will fly as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, while also carrying commercial and international payloads.

Blue Ghost M2 will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than the second quarter of 2026, aiming to land on the far side of the moon — a feat that only China has achieved to date, with Chang'e 4 in 2019 and Chang'e 6 in 2024. Among six government and commercial payloads will be the Rashid Rover 2 for the United Arab Emirates and a wireless power receiver for Volta Space.

The mission also carries the European Space Agency's Lunar Pathfinder orbiter, which will be deployed into lunar orbit by Firefly's Elytra orbital transfer vehicle. Elytra will also act as a communications relay for Blue Ghost M2 during its 10 days of operations. A comms relay is a necessity, because the far side of the moon is not visible from Earth.

Intuitive Machines: IM-3

Intuitive Machines will attempt its third lunar landing in the second half of 2026 with IM-3, looking to build on the efforts of the IM-1 Odysseus spacecraft in February 2024 and last year's IM-2 Athena, both of which toppled onto their side shortly after touching down on the lunar surface.

IM-3, again using the NOVA-C lander, will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and target a landing in the Reiner Gamma region on the near side, which features a mysterious lunar swirl with an associated local magnetic field. The lander will be packed with science payloads, including magnetometers and plasma instruments, as part of the CLPS program.

Astrobotic: Griffin mission 1

Astrobotic's first moon lander, Peregrine, launched in January 2024 but suffered a propulsion anomaly due to a faulty valve and ended up in the Pacific Ocean. But the Pennsylvania-based company is back with its first Griffin lander, currently scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2026 on a Falcon Heavy rocket.

Griffin-1 will target the south pole of the moon. It was initially planned to carry NASA's VIPER rover to seek out volatiles, but the rover has moved to a later mission, following its cancellation and subsequent revival. Instead, Astrolab's four-wheeled, 1,000-pound (450 kg) FLIP moon rover will join Griffin-1 for the ride, along with Astrobotic's own, much smaller CubeRover. The lander will also carry further small commercial and cultural payloads.

Together, the missions represent another expansion of efforts to explore the moon, testing technologies and deploying science payloads that will be used for or inform future missions, including the Artemis program, as well as growing the commercial footprint in space. How the missions perform will signal if private moon landers are ready to move from the experimental to the routine.

2025 was a very busy year for spaceflight, for better and for worse.

We saw quite a few milestones notched in the final frontier this year, including the first-ever fully successful private moon landing and the official arrival of Blue Origin's New Glenn heavy lifter on the spaceflight scene. But there were a number of failures as well, some of them quite dramatic.

Here's a brief rundown of 12 of 2025's most memorable mishaps. One caveat first, though: There is no shame in being on the following list. Spaceflight is hard, and coming up short sometimes is part of the deal. It took SpaceX four tries to reach orbit for the first time, after all, and look at where the company is today.

12. Indian rocket fails during satellite launch

An Indian PSLV-XL rocket launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on May 17, carrying the EOS-09 Earth-observing radar satellite aloft for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). But EOS-09 didn't make it to its destination: The PSLV-XL suffered an issue with its third stage about six minutes into flight, and the satellite was lost.

11. Firefly Aerospace suffers a 1-2 punch

Texas company Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket lifted off from California on April 29 on its sixth-ever mission, hauling a technology demonstration for Lockheed Martin toward low Earth orbit. Alpha's upper stage got about 200 miles (320 kilometers) up, but it failed to reach orbital velocity due to a problem suffered shortly after stage separation, and the payload was lost.

Firefly diagnosed the problem and began gearing up for Alpha's return to flight. But the company then suffered another setback on Sept. 29: The Flight 7 first-stage booster exploded on the stand during testing. The company traced the problem to a "process error" during integration and aims to launch Flight 7 (with a different first stage) in early 2026.

10. Landspace's Zhuque-2 rocket fails

The Zhuque-2, a two-stage rocket operated by Chinese startup Landspace, failed on its sixth-ever mission, which launched Aug. 14 from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. The company did not disclose the payloads that were riding on the rocket. It was the second failure for the Zhuque-2, whose engines burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen, like SpaceX's Raptor, which powers the company's Starship megarocket.

9. Galactic Energy's Ceres-1, too

Nearly three months later, another Chinese rocket went up in flames — a Ceres-1, built by Beijing-based Galactic Energy. The Ceres-1 launched Nov. 9 from Jiuquan, carrying two commercial Earth-observing satellites and a third spacecraft manifested by a Chinese university. The rocket's first three stages performed well, according to media reports, but its fourth and final stage suffered an anomaly that doomed the mission.

There may have been another Chinese rocket failure this year as well. A Kuaizhou 1A vehicle — built by the company ExPace, a subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation — apparently exploded on a pad at Jiuquan before launch on March 1, though reports of its demise remain unconfirmed.

8. Japan's H3 rocket fails during launch of navigation satellite

Japan suffered a failure, too, with just 10 days left in 2025. The country's H3 rocket experienced a problem with its second stage on Dec. 21, during the launch of the Michibiki 5 navigation satellite. The rocket did not deliver Michibiki 5 to the proper orbit, and officials with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) declared the satellite lost.

7. The 1st orbital launch from European soil crashes and burns

On March 30, the German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. It was the first liftoff for Spectrum and the first-ever orbital flight from European soil, but it didn't last very long: The rocket suffered an anomaly 18 seconds into flight, crashed back to Earth and exploded, generating a blazing orange fireball in a gorgeous wintry landscape.

Isar is bouncing back, however: It's currently gearing up for its second-ever launch, which will also take place from Andøya.

6. Australia's 1st homegrown orbital rocket comes up short

A similar story unfolded a few months later half a world away. On July 29, Australian company Gilmour Space debuted its Eris rocket from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in coastal Queensland. It was the first-ever orbital launch attempt for a homegrown Australian rocket, but Eris soon came back to Earth: It slid sideways off the pad and fell back to terra firma 14 seconds after liftoff.

5. South Korean's 1st private orbital rocket, too

South Korean startup Innospace made history this year as well, launching the nation's first-ever private orbital rocket on Dec. 22. However, that vehicle, the Hanbit-Nano, suffered an anomaly about a minute into flight and came crashing back to Earth.

So it was a tough year for rocket debuts all the way around. But that's not exactly surprising: It's always been rare for a new launcher to ace its first-ever liftoff.

4. Returning boosters that didn't stick the landing

There were four failed landing attempts during orbital launches this year — one each by the first-stage boosters of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket (on Jan. 15), SpaceX's Falcon 9 (on March 3), Landspace's Zhuque-3 (on Dec. 3) and the Chinese government's Long March 12A (on Dec. 22).

It's not entirely fair to include any of them on this list, as all four rockets reached orbit as planned, and landing the booster was a secondary objective for each of them. Plus, it was the first-ever flight for New Glenn (which stuck the landing on its second launch this past November), Zhuque-3, and the Long March 12A (both of which were attempting China's first-ever orbital booster touchdown). The loss of the Falcon 9 was the only landing hiccup for SpaceX this year out of more than 160 attempts. Still, they were technically failures, and all were memorable.

3. Private American lander tips over on the moon

On March 6, Athena, a robotic lander built by the Houston company Intuitive Machines, landed successfully on the moon with a passel of NASA science payloads. But Athena soon toppled over. Its prone position prevented some payloads from deploying properly, and the lander couldn't collect enough sunlight to recharge its batteries. Intuitive Machines declared Athena dead a day later.

It was the second such outcome in a little over a year for Intuitive Machines. The company made history in February 2024 with the lunar landing of its Odysseus spacecraft. But Odysseus toppled over as well, apparently after breaking a leg during its touchdown, cutting its mission short.

Intuitive Machines will be back on the moon soon, if all goes to plan: Its third robotic mission for NASA is currently targeted for the first half of 2026.

2. Private Japanese lander crashes into the moon

The Tokyo-based company ispace tried to put its Resilience lander down on the moon on June 5 but came up short; the vehicle slammed hard into the gray dirt in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold"). It was the second such setback for ispace, which also failed during a lunar landing try in April 2023.

There were plenty of silver linings on both missions, however; the company's lander made it to lunar orbit successfully on both occasions, notching a number of milestones but coming up short during the final stages of descent. And ispace plans to try again in 2027.

1. Starship's test-flight fireworks

SpaceX's Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, launched five times in 2025, on suborbital test flights from the company's Starbase site in South Texas. The first three did not go entirely according to plan.

On Jan. 16, Starship's first stage, a huge booster called Super Heavy, successfully came back to Starbase, where it was caught by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms. But the Ship upper stage exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff, raining debris down over the Turks and Caicos Islands. A similar outcome occurred on March 6's test flight, which was the second Starship launch of 2025 and the eighth overall.

Flight 9, which lifted off on May 27, was something of a step backward for Starship, as both stages were lost prematurely (though Ship did fly for quite a bit longer than it managed to do on Flight 7 and Flight 8). A few weeks later, on June 18, the program suffered another setback: The Ship that SpaceX was prepping for Flight 10 exploded on a test stand at Starbase.

But SpaceX, and Starship, bounced back: The vehicle aced Flight 10 and Flight 11, which launched on Aug. 26 and Oct. 13, respectively. The company is now gearing up for the first test flight of Starship Version 3, a bigger and more powerful variant that will be capable of reaching Mars — the destination that SpaceX has long had in mind for the vehicle. Part of that prep featured the buckling of a Super Heavy during testing on Nov. 21, but SpaceX, as usual, is powering through.

2025 was a very busy year in spaceflight.

Over the past 12 months, we saw multiple spaceflight records broken, the debut of a powerful new reusable rocket and the first-ever fully successful private moon landing.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 spaceflight stories of the year.

10. Astronauts fly over Earth's poles for the first time ever

On March 31, SpaceX launched the private Fram2 mission, which sent four private astronauts on a 3.5-day mission to Earth orbit aboard a Crew Dragon capsule. It was SpaceX's 17th crewed mission to date, but it still broke new ground: Fram2 circled our planet over the poles, which no astronaut flight had ever done before.

There are a number of reasons why human spaceflight planners have avoided this trajectory. Chief among them is that the most common astronaut destinations — these days, the International Space Station (ISS) and China's Tiangong outpost — don't take polar paths. Flying over the poles also exposes astronauts to higher levels of radiation and imposes communications challenges.

The Fram2 crew — led by billionaire commander and mission funder Chun Wang — performed a few dozen scientific experiments during their flight. They also got unprecedented views of our planet's icy extremes, some of which they shared with those of us stuck down here on terra firma.

9. India completes its first in-space docking

India notched a big milestone shortly after the calendar turned this year: On Jan. 15, the two spacecraft of the nation's Space Docking Experiment, or SpaDex for short, linked up in Earth orbit. The success made India just the fourth nation ever to pull off an in-space docking, after the USSR/Russia, the United States and China.

Those other countries are all space powers, a status that India seeks to attain as well. And SpaDex is a step along this path: Mastery of docking tech is necessary to achieve big things in the final frontier, like building a space station and returning samples from the moon.

8. European mission creates its first artificial solar eclipse

An "eclipse machine" came online in 2025. The European Space Agency's two-satellite Proba-3 mission launched to Earth orbit in December 2024, tasked with generating artificial solar eclipses via precise formation flying: One Proba-3 spacecraft blocks out the sun from the perspective of the other, which observes the phenomenon using an onboard telescope.

Proba-3 was designed to help scientists study the sun's wispy, superhot corona, or outer atmosphere, which is swamped by our star's overwhelming brightness — except during total solar eclipses. And Proba-3 delivered the goods for the first time on May 23, capturing an eclipse of its own creation.

7. Suni Williams breaks spacewalk record

Suni Williams' latest space stay lasted far longer than she or anyone else had expected — and the unplanned extension allowed her to break a spacewalk record.

Williams and fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore launched toward the ISS on June 5, 2024, on the first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. Their mission was supposed to last just 10 days or so. But Starliner suffered thruster problems and helium leaks on the way up, so NASA delayed the vehicle's return to study the issues. The agency eventually decided to bring Starliner home uncrewed, which happened without incident on Sept. 7, 2024, and kept Williams and Wilmore on the ISS until March of this year, when they returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

NASA integrated Williams and Wilmore into the ISS' full-time crew, and the duo used their extra time well. Williams, for example, performed two spacewalks: one on Jan. 16 and the other on Jan. 30. That second excursion brought her career spacewalking time (accrued over nine extravehicular activities) to 62 hours, 6 minutes. That set a new record for female spaceflyers, besting NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson's total time by 1 hour, 45 minutes. The overall record is 82 hours, 22 minutes, held by cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev.

Whitson still holds the American and female-astronaut records for the most total time spent in space, at 675 days. Williams has been off Earth for a total of 608 days.

6. China launches a mission to sample a "quasi-moon" of Earth

China continued its bold advance into the final frontier this year, launching its first-ever asteroid sample-return mission. That project, called Tianwen 2, isn't targeting any old asteroid — it's on the way to Kamo'oalewa (also known as 2016 HO3), which may be a piece of the moon blasted into space by a giant impact. Kamo'oalewa is weird in another way as well: It's one of Earth's seven known "quasi-moons," objects that don't circle our planet but orbit the sun in lockstep with it.

Tianwen 2 launched on May 28. If all goes according to plan, it will return samples of Kamo'oalewa to Earth in 2027, giving scientists their first up-close look at an intriguing and mysterious object.

5. SpaceX breaks its launch record — again

No surprises here: SpaceX broke its single-year launch record in 2025. Elon Musk's company has launched 170 times so far this year — 165 flights of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket and five suborbital test missions of Starship, the giant, fully reusable vehicle designed to help humanity settle Mars and the moon. More than 70% of the Falcon 9 launches have been devoted to building out SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, which consists of more than 9,000 operational satellites (and counting).

It was the sixth year in a row that SpaceX has set a new launch record. That mark has increased from 25 in 2020 to 31 (2021) to 61 (2022) to 98 (2023) to 138 (2024) and, now, to 170. And SpaceX is planning to launch two more Falcon 9 missions before the calendar turns, so that number should reach 172.

4. China launches its first reusable rocket

The Chinese company Landspace has developed its own version of the Falcon 9. The rocket, called Zhuque-3, features a reusable first stage powered by nine engines. Zhuque-3 took flight for the first time on Dec. 3, successfully reaching orbit and nearly pulling off a booster landing as well. Zhuque-3's first stage crashed and burned near its touchdown zone, however, apparently after suffering an engine loss during the descent.

Zhuque-3 may well pull off China's first-ever orbital rocket landing on its next flight. Or another vehicle may claim that mantle — Space Pioneer's Tianlong-3, perhaps, or the Long March 12A, which was developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Both of those rockets feature reusable first stages and are scheduled to make their debut flights soon.

3. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket comes online

An even more powerful, partially reusable rocket earned its wings this year: New Glenn, the heavy lifter developed by Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' aerospace company.

New Glenn debuted Jan. 16, successfully reaching orbit with a dummy version of Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft platform on board. The company tried to land the rocket's reusable first stage on a ship at sea during the flight, but that didn't work out. The second try was the charm, however: New Glenn's booster aced its ocean landing during flight number two, which occurred Nov. 13. The rocket succeeded in its primary mission that day as well, sending the twin ESCAPADE Mars probes into the final frontier for NASA.

Each New Glenn first stage is designed to fly at least 25 times, according to Blue Origin. If the company can attain such SpaceX-levels of reuse, it could achieve some very big things down the road.

2. SpaceX's Starship aces two straight test flights

Speaking of reuse: SpaceX's fully reusable vehicle, the Starship megarocket, flew five test flights in 2025. The first three were checkered affairs, featuring the loss of at least one of Starship's two stages. But the final two, which lifted off in August and October, were unqualified successes.

On both missions, Starship's Super Heavy booster came back to Earth for a pinpoint touchdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The vehicle's upper stage reached space, deployed dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, and splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned.

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, still has to check off some pretty big boxes before it's up and running. It needs to reach orbit, for example, and demonstrate in-space refueling of the upper stage, which will be needed on all missions to the moon and Mars. But Starship enters 2026 with some serious momentum.

1. A private company lands on the moon

On March 2, Firefly Aerospace's robotic Blue Ghost lander touched down successfully on the moon. It remained operational for about two weeks thereafter, allowing the science instruments it carried to do their planned work.

This was an unprecedented achievement for private industry and spaceflight in general. Another company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, put its Odysseus lunar lander down in February 2024, but that vehicle soon toppled over, shortening its mission and those of some of its payloads. Intuitive Machines' second lunar lander, Athena, suffered a similar fate shortly after its touchdown on March 6 of this year.

Blue Ghost's success was also a victory for NASA, which booked the mission (and those of Odysseus and Athena) via its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. More CLPS missions — by Firefly, Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic and other companies — are scheduled to launch soon, potentially opening up the moon to more research and human exploration activities — and perhaps even settlement down the road.

Aerospace engineer Michi Benthaus made spaceflight history on Saturday morning (Dec. 20).

Blue Origin launched Benthaus and her five crewmates on a suborbital spaceflight from the company's West Texas launch site on Saturday, lifting off at 9:15 a.m. EST (1415 GMT; 8:15 a.m. local Texas time).

Benthaus became the first wheelchair user ever to reach the final frontier.

The launch was originally scheduled to occur on Thursday, but that attempt was called off due to an "issue with built-in checks prior to flight," Blue Origin commentators said during the livestream that day.

Benthaus, who works at the European Space Agency, has used a wheelchair since suffering a mountain-biking accident in 2018. Joining her on the Saturday's flight are investors Joey Hyde and Adonis Pouroulis, aerospace engineer Hans Koenigsmann, entrepreneur Neal Milch and self-proclaimed "space nerd" Jason Stansell.

Koenigsmann's name and face are familiar to many space fans, for he worked at SpaceX from 2002 to 2021. He served as the company's vice president of build and flight reliability for the final 10 years of that tenure and participated in many post-launch press conferences in that capacity.

Blue Origin designated the mission NS-37, because it was the 37th liftoff of New Shepard, an autonomous, fully reusable rocket-capsule combo.

New Shepard flights are suborbital and brief, lasting just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers get to see Earth against the blackness of space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.

They also get astronaut wings. New Shepard gets above the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) Kármán line, the widely recognized boundary where outer space begins.

As of Saturday, 16 of New Shepard's 37 flights have carried passengers; the other 20 have been uncrewed research missions. The 16 crewed flights have lofted a total of 92 people, though just 86 individuals — six passengers have been repeat customers.

Blue Origin has not disclosed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. ET on Dec. 22 to correct an error: New Shepard has now launched 16 crewed missions to date, not 17.

A wheelchair user will reach space next week for the first time ever, if all goes according to plan.

Blue Origin announced today (Dec. 11) that it's targeting Dec. 18 for its NS-37 mission, which will send six people on a brief trip to suborbital space and back.

One of the passengers is Michaela (Michi) Benthaus, an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency who has used a wheelchair since suffering a spinal cord injury in a 2018 mountain-biking accident. She is poised to break new ground for access and inclusion in human spaceflight.

NS-37 will lift off from Blue Origin's West Texas site on Dec. 18 during a window that opens at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT; 8:30 a.m. local time). The company will stream the action live, beginning about 40 minutes before launch.

As its name suggests, NS-37 will be the 37th overall flight of Blue Origin's autonomous New Shepard vehicle, which consists of a crew capsule and a rocket, both of which are reusable.

New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. Passengers feel a few minutes of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space.

The five folks who will get this experience on NS-37 along with Benthaus are investor Joey Hyde, aerospace engineer Hans Koenigsmann, entrepreneur Neal Milch, investor Adonis Pouroulis, and self-proclaimed "space nerd" Jason Stansell.

Other space nerds may recognize Koenigsmann's name: He was one of the first employees at SpaceX, working there from 2002 to 2021. For roughly half of that time, he served as the company's vice president of build and flight reliability and was a frequent participant in launch webcasts and press conferences.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, also released the NS-37 mission patch today, along with an explanation of what some of its symbols mean. Here's that explanation, verbatim from the company:

• The DNA symbolizes the importance and impact of science to Neal Milch. 
• The hippo represents Michaela (Michi) Benthaus' favorite animal. Her plush hippo, which comforted her in the hospital after her accident, will join her in space. The tennis ball symbolizes another of Michi's competitive passions. 
• A baobab tree, iconic to South Africa, represents Adonis Pouroulis' roots. 
• A spiral galaxy symbolizes Joey Hyde's astrophysics research. 
• A dog-bone shape, stars in the crew capsule windows represent the number 201, and "K" are in memoriam of Jason Stansell's brother. 
• The shards represent Blue Origin's commitment to breaking down the barriers to accessing space, including cost, nationality, and ability.  

Blue Origin has become one of the most talked-about names in the modern space age.

Founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos in 2000, the company has steadily built a reputation for innovation, ambition, and a bold vision of humanity's future beyond Earth. From reusable rockets to lunar landers, Blue Origin is shaping the next chapter of space exploration.

This quiz dives into the company's origins, its technological breakthroughs, and the missions that have captured global attention.

Whether you're prepping for a trivia night or just want to flex your spaceflight smarts, this quiz will take you on a journey through the stars.

See how well you score below!

Blue Origin is gearing up for its NS-37 flight, which will rocket six passengers to suborbital space and back.

One traveler on board that mission, which does not yet have a set launch date, is Michaela "Michi" Benthaus. Her voyage carries special significance: She is on a trajectory to become the first wheelchair user in space.

In 2018, Benthaus became wheelchair-bound after a mountain biking accident resulted in a spinal cord injury. Passionate about space travel, Benthaus was selected to fly in 2022 with AstroAccess on a parabolic flight, becoming one of the first wheelchair users to test accessibility experiments in weightlessness.

Since then, Benthaus' journey has included 18 parabolas and first-of-its-kind accessibility experiments, with a focus on demonstrating innovative methods for making sure that differently abled people can anchor, maneuver and secure themselves in microgravity.

Paving the way

Currently, Benthaus is at the TUM School of Engineering and Design in Munich, Germany and is a young graduate trainee at the European Space Agency (ESA).

AstroAccess is a project of SciAccess, Inc., dedicated "to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts."

Founded in 2021, AstroAccess has conducted five microgravity missions in which disabled scientists, veterans, students, athletes and artists perform demonstrations onboard parabolic flights with the Zero Gravity Corporation — the first step in a progression toward flying a diverse range of people to space.

The message from AstroAccess: "If we can make space accessible, we can make any space accessible."

Historical context

Former NASA official Alan Ladwig considers the upcoming suborbital launch of Benthaus as "a historical flight." He is the author of "See You in Orbit? Our Dream Of Spaceflight" (To Orbit Productions, 2019).

Ladwig's career at NASA began in 1981, when he joined as a program manager for the Shuttle Student Involvement Project. He later played a significant role in the Space Flight Participant Program, which was designed to allow civilians, including teachers and journalists, to experience space travel.

"First, some historical context," Ladwig told Space.com. In June 1984, the space shuttle program's STS-41D mission experienced an abort at T-4 seconds. The six astronauts safely egressed, but it was a moment of high anxiety, he said.

"In 1985, a National Finalist for the Journalist in Space Program was a paraplegic," Ladwig said. "Citing the STS-41D incident, an astronaut complained to me that it would be highly dangerous if this person would have been selected. If getting out of the [shuttle] orbiter needed to be done quickly, how was he supposed to exit safely with a paraplegic? At this point, safely flying a civilian was controversial, much less a person with a disability."

Equal opportunity

Ladwig recalled that the late Harriet Jenkins, who was the head of the then NASA Office of Equal Opportunity, led a study on the possibilities for people with disabilities to fly on the space shuttle.

"If memory serves me, her report came out in late 1985 … and back in the day when equal opportunity wasn't considered woke," he said.

With the space shuttle Challenger accident in January 1986, Jenkins' report was quietly put on the back burner, Ladwig said. "In any case, after the accident, it was clear it would be a long time before any [other] civilian would fly on the space shuttle, much less a person with a disability," he said.

ESA's Parastronaut project

But times have changed. For example, the ESA astronaut class selected in November 2022 included John McFall, a former Paralympic athlete, Ladwig said. His selection was part of a Parastronaut Feasibility Project to determine if people with disabilities can safely participate in a mission to the International Space Station.

"The study, completed in 2024, concluded it was feasible to integrate a person with a disability on ISS," said Ladwig, "but I'm not aware of any specific plans to do so."

In Ladwig's view, AstroAccess is to be commended for flying people with disabilities on parabolic flights. The current effort for a Blue Origin flight with Michaela Benthaus "will be an important step for opening up space travel to all who have orbital dreams," he concluded.

Michi Benthaus is about to make history.

Benthaus, an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency, is one of the six passengers on Blue Origin's next space tourism launch, the company announced today (Dec. 3). She'll become the first wheelchair user ever to reach the final frontier.

Here's some information about Benthaus and her five crewmates on the upcoming flight, which Blue Origin calls NS-37. (The company has not yet announced a launch date, but we should learn that soon.)

• Michaela (Michi) Benthaus "has dedicated her career to scientific collaboration for the advancement of interplanetary exploration," Blue Origin wrote in a description of the NS-37 crew. A spinal cord injury, suffered in a mountain biking accident in 2018, affected Benthaus' ability to walk but not her passion for the final frontier. She flew on a weightlessness-inducing parabolic airplane flight in 2022 and completed a two-week-long analog astronaut mission in Poland in 2024.
• Joey Hyde, an investor who recently retired from "a leading hedge fund," according to Blue Origin. He holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics and has long been fascinated by human spaceflight.
• Hans Koenigsmann, a German-American aerospace engineer who worked for SpaceX from 2002 until 2021. For the last 10 of those years, he served as the company's vice president of build and flight reliability, the higher-up who's ultimately responsible for the safety and success of space missions.
• Neal Milch, an entrepreneur and executive who currently chairs the board of trustees at Jackson Laboratory, a nonprofit biomedical research institute that was established in Maine in 1929.
• Adonis Pouroulis, a mining engineer, investor and entrepreneur with a focus on natural resources and the energy sector. "His career and philanthropic work reflect a consistent commitment to education and the responsible and sustainable development of Earth’s resources," Blue Origin wrote.
• Jason Stansell, "a self-proclaimed space nerd" based in West Texas, according to Blue Origin. "Jason is looking to inspire healthy skepticism and promote science education through his experience. He is also dedicating his flight to his brother, Kevin, who passed away in 2016 to a hard-fought battle with brain cancer."

As its name suggests, NS-37 will be the 37th flight of Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard rocket-capsule combo. Each of these suborbital jaunts lasts just 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown but gets above the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) Kármán Line, the widely regarded boundary of outer space.

Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, has not disclosed how much it charges for this experience.

NS-37 will be the 16th crewed flight overall for the autonomous New Shepard, and its seventh such mission of 2025. To date, the vehicle has carried 86 people to and from suborbital space (but just 80 individuals, as six of them have been repeat customers).

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket aced its first-ever landing last week — and even managed to stay pretty, despite the ordeal.

The milestone occurred on Nov. 13, during the launch of NASA's twin ESCAPADE Mars probes from Florida's Space Coast. New Glenn's first stage came back to Earth about nine minutes after liftoff, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean on Blue Origin's drone ship "Jacklyn."

The booster looked pristine, its white, gold and blue livery sparkling in the afternoon sun. It was quite a departure from the baseline visual most of us have of a landed rocket — consider a soot-streaked SpaceX Falcon 9 booster, for instance, its char marks worn like a badge of honor.

But there's a simple explanation for the difference between a landed Falcon 9 and a landed New Glenn — their respective propellants.

SpaceX's Merlin engines, which power both stages of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, run on liquid oxygen and RP-1, a rocket-grade form of kerosene. Kerosene creates soot when it burns, and Falcon boosters therefore fly through self-generated clouds of this gunk when they come back down to Earth.

New Glenn's BE-4 first-stage engines, on the other hand, burn liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a combo known as methalox. Methane combustion doesn't generate appreciable soot, so the big rocket came home clean last week. (New Glenn's upper stage features two BE-3U engines, which are powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.)

SpaceX has developed a methalox engine of its own, by the way — Raptor, which powers the company's next-gen Starship megarocket. Starship is designed to help humanity settle Mars, and methane makes sense as a fuel for a Red Planet rocket, according to company founder and CEO Elon Musk: It can be produced on Mars from components in the planet's atmosphere.

Blue Origin will soon find out if the landed New Glenn booster is in as good a shape as it looks: The rocket just made it back to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Launch Complex 36, where the company will inspect and refurbish it.

The plan is to fly the booster again, and again ... and again.

Each New Glenn first stage is designed to launch at least 25 times, in fact. That level of reuse would be quite a feat, but Blue Origin is following a trail that SpaceX has blazed. Multiple Falcon 9 boosters have dozens of flights under their belts, and one has launched a record 31 times. That soot is just a cosmetic issue, after all.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is getting even more powerful.

Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company announced today (Nov. 20) that it's upgrading New Glenn, a partially reusable heavy lifter that aced its second-ever mission just last week. On that flight, New Glenn sent NASA's twin ESCAPADE Mars probes on their desired trajectory, and the rocket's first stage landed successfully on a ship at sea.

"The enhancements span propulsion, structures, avionics, reusability and recovery operations, and will be phased into upcoming New Glenn missions beginning with NG-3," Blue Origin wrote in an update today. (NG-3 is the rocket's third mission, which is expected to launch early next year.)

New Glenn's reusable first stage is powered by seven of Blue Origin's BE-4 engines, and its second stage features two BE-3Us. According to the update, both of these engines are getting an upgrade, which will boost the first stage's thrust from 3.9 million to 4.5 million pounds per foot (17,219 to 19,928 kilonewtons) and the upper stage's from 320,000 to 400,000 pounds per foot (1,423 to 1,779 kN).

"Additional vehicle upgrades include a reusable fairing to support increased flight rates, an updated lower-cost tank design and a higher-performing and reusable thermal protection system to improve turnaround time," Blue Origin said.

Today's update also includes some even bigger news: Blue Origin plans to build a "super-heavy" version of the rocket, which it calls New Glenn 9x4. The name is a nod to the increased number of engines — nine BE-4s on the first stage and four BE-3Us up top.

New Glenn 9x4 will be capable of lofting 77 tons (70 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit, compared to 50 tons (45 mt) for the original "7x2" variant. The new rocket will also have an even bigger payload fairing — one that's 28.5 feet (8.7 meters) wide, compared to an initial 23 feet (7 m).

That baseline 23-foot-wide fairing was already a space industry standout. For example, the payload fairing of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket is 17 feet (5.2 m) across.

Today's update doesn't give a timeline for the development of New Glenn 9x4 (which could really use a catchier name). But it does stress that the new rocket won't displace its older cousin.

Both New Glenn variants "will serve the market concurrently, giving customers more launch options for their missions, including megaconstellations, lunar and deep-space exploration, and national security imperatives such as Golden Dome," Blue Origin wrote.

Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket had a very big day on Thursday (Nov. 13), and a new video lets us all relive part of it.

New Glenn launched for the second time ever on Thursday afternoon, successfully sending NASA's twin ESCAPADE Mars probes into the final frontier from Florida's Space Coast.

But that wasn't all. The two-stage rocket's huge first stage came back to Earth as planned, acing a landing on "Jacklyn," Blue Origin's drone ship, which was stationed about 375 miles (604 kilometers) offshore.

Previously, only one company had ever pulled off this dramatic maneuver — SpaceX, which has pioneered the recovery and reuse of orbital rockets.

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos celebrated the New Glenn landing on X, posting several videos of the 188-foot-tall (57 meters) booster steering its way through the sky toward Jacklyn.

One video showed the landing itself, during which the booster sidled over to Jacklyn rather than drop directly onto it from above.

"We nominally target a few hundred feet away from Jacklyn to avoid a severe impact if engines fail to start or start slowly," Bezos wrote in the Friday morning (Nov. 14) X post that featured this video. "We’ll incrementally reduce that conservatism over time. We are all excited and grateful for yesterday. Amazing performance by the team! Gradatim Ferociter."

(Gradatim Ferociter, Latin for "Step by Step, Ferociously," is Blue Origin's motto.)

Blue Origin named the first stage that flew on Thursday "Never Tell Me the Odds," a nod to the perceived improbability of a successful touchdown.

"It turns out 'Never Tell Me The Odds' had perfect odds — never before in history has a booster this large nailed the landing on the second try," Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in a company statement. "This is just the beginning as we rapidly scale our flight cadence and continue delivering for our customers."

Each New Glenn first stage is designed to fly at least 25 times, according to Blue Origin. "Never Tell Me the Odds" looks intact — startlingly clean, in fact — in post-landing photos, so don't be surprised to see the booster on the pad again before too much longer.

For the first time in more than five years, humanity has launched a mission to Mars — but it won't be arriving at the Red Planet anytime soon.

NASA's twin ESCAPADE probes launched Thursday (Nov. 13) on the second-ever flight of Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket. It was the first Mars liftoff since July 30, 2020, when NASA's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter took flight atop an Atlas V rocket.

New Glenn sent the ESCAPADE pair not toward Mars, however, but to another deep-space destination — the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet.

That's because Earth and Mars line up for efficient interplanetary flight just once every 26 months, and the next such window doesn't open until late 2026. So, the ESCAPADE probes will hang out at L2 for 12 months, studying space weather in the region before looping back toward our planet in November 2026 for a speed-boosting "gravity assist" that will send them toward Mars.

ESCAPADE's circuitous trajectory is novel and could aid further exploration of the Red Planet down the road, according to mission team members.

"Can we launch to Mars when the planets are not aligned? ESCAPADE is paving the way for that," Jeffrey Parker of Advanced Space LLC, one of NASA's partners on the $80 million mission, said at a conference earlier this year, according to an ESCAPADE explainer posted by the University of California, Berkeley on Nov. 5.

UC Berkeley is another partner: The university will manage and operate the ESCAPADE ("Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer") probes for NASA. In a nod to this fact, the twin spacecraft are named Blue and Gold, the university's colors.

The trip to Mars from L2 will take about 10 months; Blue and Gold, which were built by the California company Rocket Lab, will arrive in Mars orbit in September 2027. They'll then spend another seven months lowering and synchronizing their paths around the Red Planet, "so that they essentially are in the same orbit, following each other like a pair of pearls on a string," ESCAPADE principal investigator Robert Lillis, of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, said in the explainer.

"That's important scientifically because it lets us monitor the short timescale variability of the system. We don’t know what it is right now because the missions that have gone before, like MAVEN and Europe's Mars Express, have had to wait until the following orbit, about four or five hours later, to see what conditions are like in a particular region," Lillis added. "When we have two spacecraft crossing those regions in quick succession, we can monitor how those regions vary on timescales as short as two minutes and up to 30 minutes."

Blue and Gold are both outfitted with the same science gear — a visible-light and infrared camera system, a magnetometer, an electrostatic analyzer and a Langmuir probe (which measures the properties of plasma).

Over the course of 11 months, they will use these instruments to map Mars' upper atmosphere and magnetic fields, "providing the first stereo view of the Red Planet’s unique near-space environment," UC Berkeley's explainer reads. "What they find will help scientists understand how and when Mars lost its atmosphere and provide key information about conditions on the planet that could affect people who land or settle on Mars."

Mission team members will have to be patient, as it'll take a while for this data to come rolling in. But that shouldn't be a problem; space scientists are used to playing the long game.

All Mars launches are big deals, but this one had some extra juice.

NASA's ESCAPADE Mars mission lifted off atop Blue Origin's powerful New Glenn rocket from Florida's Space Coast on Thursday (Nov. 13), kicking off a circuitous trip to the Red Planet.

It was a big moment for NASA, for planetary scientists and for private spaceflight. Here's a brief rundown of why it mattered so much.

1. The first Mars launch in more than five years

Though NASA has explored the Red Planet extensively over the past few decades, launches to the fourth planet from the sun remain relatively rare. The last such liftoff occurred on July 30, 2020, when NASA's sample-collecting Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter roared into Earth's skies atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

ESCAPADE (short for "Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers") consists of two identical orbiters, which represents another first: No other Red Planet mission has sent more than one spacecraft to linger in Mars orbit. (There have been other multi-spacecraft Mars missions — NASA's Viking 1 and Viking 2 each consisted of an orbiter and a lander, for example, and the agency's Mars Exploration Rover effort sent two wheeled robots, Spirit and Opportunity, to the surface.)

Each ESCAPADE spacecraft carries the same four science instruments, which the probes will use to study how Mars' magnetic environment interacts with the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from the sun. The mission's data should help scientists better understand how the Red Planet lost its thick atmosphere long ago, NASA officials have said.

2. A new trajectory to the Red Planet

Earth and Mars align properly for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months, so Red Planet probes tend to fly in mini-waves. A week before Perseverance and Ingenuity took off, for example, China launched Tianwen 1, its first-ever mission to Mars (and another two-spacecraft effort, by the way).

But ESCAPADE is bucking that trend, as the next Mars launch window doesn't open until late 2026. They'll still hit it, in a way; the twin probes are headed to the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet. They'll linger there for a year, studying space weather, until the Mars transfer window opens. Then, they'll journey to the Red Planet after getting a speed-boosting "gravity assist" from Earth.

This novel trajectory could pave the way for greater exploration of Mars down the road, according to mission team members.

"If humans plan to settle Mars in the future, hundreds to thousands of crewed and uncrewed ships will need to head out during every alignment," according to an ESCAPADE explainer posted Nov. 5 by the University of California, Berkeley, whose Space Sciences Laboratory will operate the two probes for NASA.

"Since Earth has a limited number of launch pads and weather and technical delays are common, the flexible trajectory ESCAPADE will pioneer could allow all these spacecraft to launch over many months, 'queueing up' before zipping off to Mars during the planetary alignment," the explainer adds.

3. Rocket Lab's first interplanetary mission

The two ESCAPADE probes — which are named Blue and Gold, the school colors of UC-Berkeley — were built by Rocket Lab. And that's another important milestone: The California-based company had never been part of an interplanetary mission before. (It's not Rocket Lab's first deep-space project of any kind, however; its Electron launcher sent NASA's CAPSTONE mission to the moon back in June 2022.)

And ESCAPADE won't be an interplanetary one-off for Rocket Lab, if all goes to plan. The company is working on a private mission that will hunt for signs of life in the clouds of Venus and also aims to help NASA get Perseverance's collected samples from Mars to Earth.

4. The first operational New Glenn launch

New Glenn is the first orbital rocket developed by Blue Origin, which was founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. The two-stage heavy lifter had just one flight under its belt before Thursday — a test mission that lifted off in January 2025, sending a prototype version of Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft platform to orbit.

Blue Origin has big plans for New Glenn, which stands 321 feet (98 meters) tall, can haul about 50 tons (45 metric tons) of payload to low Earth orbit and features a reusable first stage.

"The rocket is engineered with the safety and redundancy required to fly humans, and will enable our vision of building a road to space for the benefit of Earth," the company wrote in a New Glenn description.

Proving that New Glenn can ace an operational mission, sending payloads on their desired trajectory into the final frontier, is an important step down that road.

So, Thursday was a very big day for Blue Origin. And New Glenn was up to the challenge, acing its first-ever flight to feature customer payloads.

"We are open for business, baby, on New Glenn!" Blue Origin's Ariane Cornell said during the ESCAPADE launch webcast. "A new day, a new chapter, has just opened for, as we said, Blue Origin but also the space industry."

5. The first New Glenn rocket landing

Each New Glenn first stage is designed to fly at least 25 times, a feature that will make the rocket more affordable and more efficient. But such extensive reuse requires a pinpoint landing after each liftoff, which we'd never seen with the rocket — until Thursday, that is.

Blue Origin tried to bring New Glenn's first stage down on its recovery ship — nicknamed Jacklyn, after Bezos' mom — during the rocket's debut flight in January, but the booster crashed into the sea. The company succeeded during the ESCAPADE launch, however, joining very rarefied air: Previously, only SpaceX had managed to bring a booster down safely during an orbital launch.

SpaceX has done this more than 500 times with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, so Blue Origin has some catching up to do. But it's a very important start.