Sandra Erwin

~4 minutes

WASHINGTON — Defense technology company Anduril and space transportation startup Impulse Space are preparing to demonstrate one of the most complex operations in space: autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations in geosynchronous Earth orbit.

The mission, announced Sept. 16, is the next step in the companies’ strategic partnership unveiled last year to develop maneuverable spacecraft designed for national security. The two companies say this will be an internally funded demonstration, but the technologies are aimed squarely at U.S. Space Force priorities.

The demonstration, targeted for 2026, will attempt to showcase a spacecraft’s ability to approach, image and maneuver around other objects in orbit without direct human control. Rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) in the geostationary belt 36,000 kilometers above Earth — where the most valuable military and commercial satellites operate — is viewed as a capability of strategic importance. What the mission involves

Impulse’s Mira spacecraft, a 300-kilogram vehicle designed to move satellites from LEO to higher orbits, will be the test platform. Mira will be outfitted with Anduril’s software-defined payloads, including a mission data processor, a long-wave infrared (LWIR) imager and third-party sensors to enable high-precision navigation. Anduril also will use its AI-powered software for autonomous vehicle operations.

To reach GEO, Mira will ride aboard Helios, Impulse’s new “space tug” that provides the energy needed to transport payloads from LEO to higher orbits. Helios is under development with support from the U.S. Space Force through a STRATFI contract — a co-funding program where government and private investors share the costs of maturing commercial technologies that have military utility.

Once in GEO, Mira will detach from Helios and begin its RPO demonstrations: capturing images of designated objects, analyzing them onboard and autonomously executing maneuvers to observe the targets from different angles.

Being able to maneuver in GEO is an emerging priority for the U.S. Space Force. Spacecraft that can quickly reposition to inspect or monitor satellites give military commanders a way to gain “eyes on” suspicious activity, such as an adversary satellite approaching an American system. Tactical responsiveness

Impulse Space is promoting Helios as a transportation option to deliver payloads to GEO faster and at lower cost than traditional approaches, which either rely on direct-to-GEO rocket launches or months-long orbital climbs using electric propulsion. That speed, combined with Mira’s maneuverability, is meant to provide what defense leaders call tactically responsive space — the ability to react quickly to new threats or intelligence requirements.

5–6 minutes

PARIS — A loss of attitude control and an open valve contributed to the loss of Isar Aerospace’s first Spectrum rocket in March as the company gears up for a second flight.

In a Sept. 15 briefing held in conjunction with World Space Business Week, company executives discussed the outcome of the investigation into the March 30 launch of Spectrum from the Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway. The vehicle activated its flight termination system about half a minute after liftoff, shutting down its engines and plummeting into waters just offshore of the pad.

The primary issue with the rocket was a loss of attitude control. Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar, said that the company had not properly characterized bending modes of the vehicle at liftoff.

“The controllability has to be tuned in order to counter such behavior,” he said. That environment was not fully modeled and incorporated into the vehicle’s control system. “We were outside the environment that we expected, so that the controllability does not succeed.”

That loss of attitude control caused the vehicle to go outside the safety zone at the launch site. That, in turn, triggered the flight termination system on the rocket. He said the company has revised its modeling of vehicle modes at liftoff to correct the problem.

A second, unrelated issue was a vent valve in the rocket that was unintentionally opened before liftoff, allowing cryogenic vapors to escape. That would have caused problems later in the launch if the flight had continued, Dalloneau said. Isar is fixing that problem by having flight software, rather than ground software, close the valve.

Despite the failure to get to orbit, Dalloneau considers the first Spectrum launch a successful test flight. “This flight test for Spectrum was a fully successful story for the company,” he said, exercising vehicle systems and demonstrating the professionalism of the team.

What was most important, he argued, was the successful demonstration of the vehicle’s flight termination system, which Isar developed in-house. “We demonstrated that our system was safe and in line with what was simulated,” he said. “That’s a huge criterion for us to come back on the pad because we can guarantee a safe system if something goes wrong.”

The company is working towards a second flight of Spectrum. The first stage of that vehicle is at Andøya for pre-launch tests while the second stage completes assembly at Isar’s factory in Germany. Isar is also working with Norwegian regulators for a license for the second launch.

That launch will take place “as soon as possible,” Dalloneau said. He did not give a specific target launch date but officials indicated they were hoping to launch near the end of this year or early next year.

The goal of the second launch will be to get to orbit, he said, qualifying the vehicle for operations. The launch will carry several cubesats as part of the European Space Agency’s “Boost!” program.

Isar is proposing a gradual increase in launch cadence, said Stella Guillen, the company’s chief commercial officer, reaching six to eight launches in 2028. “We’re hoping for more as we’re trying to figure out how to produce and launch faster.”

That is driven by the strong interest the company is seeing in Spectrum, particularly from European programs like the Flight Ticket Initiative and European Launcher Challenge. “The demand is so huge right now, especially on the defense side in Europe,” she said. “If you want to launch in 2029, we need to talk right now.”

The company has long-term plans to produce 30 to 40 vehicles a year. The Andøya launch site has a cap of 15 launches a year, but Isar also plans to use a shared launch pad at the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, that will be able to accommodate up to 20 launches annually among several companies.

Isar is one of several European launch startups competing to be the first to successfully reach orbit. “I think it’s important that we can get to the cadence that the market needs and that we do it reliably,” Guillen said when asked if it was a goal for the company to be first. “We are in the front right now, anyway.”

4–6 minutes

PARIS — Launch companies are reiterating plans to sharply increase flight rates to meet growing government and commercial demand, even as some fall short of earlier projections.

Executives speaking at a Sept. 15 panel at the World Space Business Week conference highlighted efforts to scale up flights of new vehicles that have entered service in the last two years.

“The key for us is cadence,” said Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn mission management at Blue Origin, citing investments in tooling and automation “so that we can scale up with a really dramatic increase in the coming year to meet the needs of all of our customers.”

At the same conference a year ago, another Blue Origin executive projected the company would conduct 8 to 10 New Glenn launches in 2025. To date, New Glenn has launched once this year, the vehicle’s inaugural mission in January.

Maginnis said Blue Origin is preparing for New Glenn’s second launch, carrying NASA’s ESCAPADE Mars smallsat mission, “in the coming weeks,” but she did not provide a date. Rocket Lab, which built the twin spacecraft, noted in a Sept. 12 social media post that it had yet to ship them to the launch site, suggesting liftoff may still be a couple of months away.

She added that Blue Origin is building a fleet of reusable New Glenn boosters and has produced eight upper stages to increase its cadence. “Next year, we’ll be launching multiple times per month. That’s our target.”

Blue Origin is not alone in falling short of forecasts. United Launch Alliance projected 20 launches in 2025 between the Atlas 5 and Vulcan Centaur, but in August CEO Tory Bruno said the company now expects nine.

As recently as June, Arianespace projected five Ariane 6 launches this year, including the debut of the more powerful Ariane 64, with four solid-rocket boosters, but has completed only two Ariane 62 flights, including one in August.

During the panel, Arianespace CEO David Cavaillolès said the company plans two more launches this year for a total of four and declined to confirm if the Ariane 64 will fly before year’s end.

The next launch, scheduled in “a couple of weeks,” will be an Ariane 62 carrying the Sentinel-1D radar imaging satellite for Europe’s Copernicus Earth observation program. The customer and configuration for the other mission will be announced later.

“What I can share is that the development of Ariane 64 is going in the right direction,” Cavaillolès said. “Next year we’ll have quite a lot of Ariane 64. We see, talking to customers, that this is a product that is highly relevant.”

Speakers agreed that demand for launch services remains strong from both commercial constellation operators and governments reacting to a shifting geopolitical landscape. That includes potential demand from the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system in the United States.

“We do see that Golden Dome is going to require a lot of launches,” said Nicole Jordan, who leads business development and strategy for launch vehicles at Northrop Grumman. That includes Eclipse, the medium-lift rocket Northrop is developing with Firefly Aerospace. “Eclipse is being designed to be able to serve a lot of those national security space missions, including Golden Dome.”

Capacity remains tight across most launch providers, with a few exceptions. “We have some room for commercial flights in the near term,” said Nobuyuki Shiina, deputy general manager for business development at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI) space systems unit.

He said demand is prompting MHI to increase launch rates for its H3 rocket. “The original plan was launching six launches per year,” he said, but is now projecting growth. “Not drastically, but year by year: six launches, seven launches, eight launches.”

4–5 minutes

PARIS — A Falcon 9 launched an upgraded version of a Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station Sept. 14.

The Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:11 p.m. Eastern. The NG-23 Cygnus spacecraft separated from the upper stage about 14 and a half minutes later. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the station early Sept. 17.

NG-23 is the first flight of a larger version of Cygnus, known as Cygnus XL. Its cargo module is 1.6 meters longer than the previous version, increasing its payload capacity by about a third to 5,000 kilograms. NASA did not provide the specific amount of cargo on the Cygnus, or how that was allocated among science, crew supplies and station equipment, before launch.

The increased size of Cygnus XL required some analysis by NASA to identify its effect on station systems such as life support and thermal control, said Dina Contella, NASA ISS deputy program manager, at a Sept. 12 briefing. The agency also assessed changes to operations by the Canadarm2 robotic arm, which grapples the Cygnus and berths it to the station.

Cygnus is scheduled to remain at the station until next spring. However, NASA plans to temporarily unberth Cygnus in November, when the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft is scheduled to dock at an adjacent port, to avoid potential interference with the Soyuz and its approach corridor.

“Just to be on the safe side, we’re trying to keep the neighboring port free,” Contella said. The robotic arm will unberth Cygnus and move it to another side of the station during the docking before reberthing it. If that set of maneuvers is not possible, she said Cygnus would be unberthed and depart before the Soyuz arrival.

The NG-23 mission was the first Cygnus flight since NG-21 in August 2024. Damage to the pressurized cargo module during shipment to Cape Canaveral forced NASA and Northrop Grumman in March to indefinitely delay the NG-22 Cygnus mission that was scheduled to launch earlier this year.

“It was a very unfortunate situation,” said Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. He said the module was damaged at sea during shipment. He did not discuss the extent of the damage or how it will be repaired, saying it “is still in work here” with the supplier. The module is made by Thales Alenia Space in Italy.

However, Northrop still plans to fly that spacecraft. “NG-22 will fly,” he said. “We’re working with NASA to determine, as we complete the path forward there, exactly what the timing will be.”

This was the third Cygnus mission to launch on a Falcon 9, after NG-20 in January 2024 and NG-21 in August 2024. Northrop had used its own Antares rocket for most previous Cygnus missions — three launched on Atlas 5 rockets after the failure of an Antares rocket in 2014 — but the company retired the existing version of Antares after a final launch in 2023 because of its use of a Ukrainian-built first stage with Russian engines.

Northrop announced in August 2022 a partnership with Firefly Aerospace to develop a new version of Antares, called Antares 330, with a new Firefly-produced first stage. As a stopgap, Northrop said it would acquire three Falcon 9 launches for Cygnus missions.

“We’re making great progress on the Antares 330 and that’s getting queued up to be used at some point, be ready to go, in 2026,” Tintner said at the prelaunch briefing, but noted NG-24 will launch on a fourth Falcon 9 next year. “Beyond that, we’re working with NASA to manifest appropriately.”

4–5 minutes

WASHINGTON — The chief executive of commercial space station developer Vast says he supports NASA’s revised approach to supporting development of such stations, calling it the best way to avoid a gap in U.S. human presence in orbit.

Speaking Sept. 11 at the Global Aerospace Summit, Max Haot endorsed NASA’s new strategy, announced more than a month ago, that calls for multiple Space Act Agreements to support development leading to a four-person, 30-day demonstration mission.

“We think it’s really the right direction,” he said, noting it accelerates the award timeline. NASA said in a draft solicitation this month it expects to award multiple funded agreements by April 2026, months sooner than under earlier plans.

Haot also backed awarding two or three agreements. “We’ve seen in commercial crew, between Boeing and SpaceX, why it’s really critical to keep two winners, two companies competing all the way to the end,” he said. Earlier plans might have produced just one winner, likely with little or no station experience. “That’s just not wise.”

He said he also supported the 30-day demo mission, the most debated part of the new approach. Some viewed it as NASA stepping back from a permanent human presence in low Earth orbit after the International Space Station retires.

Haot disagreed, calling the demo a steppingstone to a permanently crewed station. “If you say, ‘I want permanent presence on day one,’ all you do is you delay when you see that,” he said.

NASA is expected to seek longer missions in a later phase, when it buys services from commercial stations. Angela Hart, manager of NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations program, said at a Sept. 8 industry day that it is “not NASA’s long-term goal to have only a one-month mission.”

Some in industry argue Vast benefits from the change, since it is developing Haven-1, a single-module station designed for four-person crews on several missions totaling about 40 days. Haot said the company is not altering its plans, which already included a larger Haven-2 station intended to support NASA. He emphasized Vast’s commitment to long-term human presence.

“We think it’s critical to stay in low Earth orbit, not to cede it to China,” he said. “What are we selling? The number one thing we’re selling is missions on orbit, seats and time in a space station. Of course we are incentivized and we want to sell the U.S. government full-year occupancy instead of 30 days.”

Haot said Vast expects NASA to be the anchor customer, but not the only customer. He projected 20% to 30% of revenue would come from the U.S. government, with a larger share from international partners. Private individuals, he said, would make up 10% to 15% of revenue, focused on research and exploration rather than tourism.

Companies developing stations should work to be profitable with those customers alone, he argued. Future markets, from in-space manufacturing to sponsorship and media, could be much larger, “but no one knows it if will take five years, two years or ten years.”

“Our view is, if you’re profitable in the current market, we will get to unlock that,” he said. “And that will be our upside.”