More swaps coming?… The Vulcan rocket is many months from returning to flight for the US military. One industry source told Ars that the Space Force may not fly another mission on Vulcan before the end of the year. Space Systems Command has moved four launches of new GPS navigation satellites from ULA to SpaceX in the past two years as Vulcan encountered delays. Col. Eric Zarybnisky, head of Space Systems Command’s Space Access office, said the military is “working through a significant number” of potential additional rocket swaps from Vulcan to another launch vehicle, likely SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy.

ESA’s first Mars rover finally has a ride. NASA confirmed Thursday that SpaceX will launch the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, perhaps as soon as late 2028, on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Ars reports. So why is NASA deciding which rocket will launch a flagship European Mars mission? It’s a long story involving the search for extraterrestrial life, crippling political hatchets, and, of all things, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ars explores the mission’s tortured history, a nearly quarter-century of broken promises, technical setbacks, and geopolitical drama.

Taking aim on Mars… The announcement is also notable because it is the first time SpaceX has won a launch contract for a mission to Mars. The red planet is the apple of Elon Musk’s eye, with utopian concepts for a Mars settlement to go along with SpaceX’s more tangible work on a massive rocket to actually fly there. This new rocket, named Starship, is still a ways away from reaching Mars. Therefore, it’s likely SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, no slouch itself, will make the company’s first Mars run on behalf of NASA and the European Space Agency.

Next-gen Starship tested at Starbase. The new, juiced-up version of SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket cleared a big hurdle this week on the path to its first launch, Space.com reports. That liftoff, targeted for early or mid-May, will be the 12th overall for Starship but the first for the vehicle’s “Version 3,” which is bigger and more powerful than its predecessors. The first Starship V3 vehicle fired its six Raptor engines on Tuesday while anchored on a test stand in South Texas. The static fire test follows a series of cryogenic proof tests earlier this year.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/rocket-report-starship-v3-test-fired-esas-tentative-step-toward-crew-launch/

Instead, the agency turned to Russia to launch the orbiter and rover on two Proton rockets and provide the descent system to deliver the rover to Mars. In exchange, ESA agreed to add Russian science instruments to the orbiter and rover missions. This was a boon for Russian scientific institutions. Without an international partnership like ExoMars, they lacked any realistic prospect of ever sending their own research payloads to the red planet.

Russia successfully launched the European-built ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft on a Proton rocket in 2016. The orbiter is still operating around Mars today, returning scientific data and serving as a communications relay for NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. A small European tech demo probe riding piggyback on the orbiter crash landed upon reaching the red planet.

Artist’s illustration of the Rosalind Franklin rover departing its landing platform on Mars.

Credit: Airbus

Additional delays pushed the launch of the ExoMars rover from 2018 until 2020. The rover, by then named for the late British chemist and DNA research pioneer Rosalind Franklin, was nearly ready for launch in 2020 when a series of parachute test failures and the COVID-19 pandemic prompted another delay until late 2022.

Everything changed again when Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. ESA severed most ties with Russia’s space agency, ending the partnership on ExoMars after all of the mission’s elements, including the Russian rocket and Mars descent stage, were already built and ready for final assembly. ESA also removed two Russian science instruments from the mission.

Once again, the US government stepped in to give the Rosalind Franklin rover a ride to Mars. NASA and ESA formalized the new agreement in 2024, with the US side committing to provide a launch vehicle, the braking engines needed to land, and small nuclear-powered heaters to keep the rover’s sensitive electronics warm during Martian nights. NASA long ago delivered a mass spectrometer for the European rover that will analyze Martian soil to look for markers of organic molecules.

ESA is providing the rover and the carrier spacecraft to ferry it to Mars. Europe is also responsible for the overall assembly of the landing platform and operating the rover on the Martian surface. Airbus built the rover in the United Kingdom and is supplying the main structure for the lander, which will settle onto Mars and deploy ramps for the rover to disembark and begin its mission. German company OHB manufactured the carrier spacecraft, or cruise stage, to shepherd the rover from Earth to Mars. Thales Alenia Space of Italy is in charge of putting all the pieces together and readying the mission for launch.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/after-a-saga-of-broken-promises-a-european-rover-finally-has-a-ride-to-mars/

Koch said one thing she and her fellow astronauts learned was that they were well-trained to handle whatever issues arose.

“This mission taught me that the unknown is way scarier than the known,” she said. “Every single time we accomplished a mission test objective, we all looked at each other and were like, ‘ That actually went pretty well.’ That was actually not necessarily easy, because it took a ton of work, but it was easy to accomplish as a team because we had put in the work.”

Landing on the Moon is “absolutely doable”

Another crew member, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, said that as NASA takes further steps into deep space, including setting up a lunar base, astronauts and the teams supporting them on the ground must be ready for a potentially bumpy ride. And, he said, astronauts have to be willing to embrace that risk.

“We have to be willing to accept a little more risk than we were willing to accept in the past, and to just trust that we will figure it out in real time,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to pound everything flat before we go; we’re going to have to trust each other. It was very evident to us out there that this one went really smoothly. I’m not surprised—extraordinary team. But it was also very clear to us that it could get real bumpy, real fast.”

The mission’s commander, Reid Wiseman, said he had a technical epiphany 250,000 miles from Earth. He felt a strong urge to land on the Moon, and if they’d had a lander, they would have eagerly done it. The Moon, he said, was right there for the taking.

“It’s not—oh, I’m gonna eat these words—it’s not the leap I thought it was,” Wiseman said. “If you had given us the keys to the lander, we would have taken it down and landed 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.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/artemis-ii-astronauts-say-landing-on-the-moon-is-absolutely-doable-soon/

Shuffling the deck

Space Systems Command has moved four launches of new GPS navigation satellites from ULA to SpaceX in the past two years. The next GPS payload, previously assigned to Vulcan, will instead launch next week on a Falcon 9 rocket. This satellite was already at the launch site in Florida to prepare for a Vulcan launch this spring when ULA encountered the booster malfunction in February. Military officials made a quick swap to the Falcon 9, which flies from the launch pad next to ULA’s Vulcan launch complex at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Zarybnisky said the military is “working through a significant number” of potential additional rocket swaps from Vulcan to another launch vehicle. “I really take in two factors as we’re working through how we do swaps,” he said. “One is the availability of the spacecraft. If the spacecraft is ready to go, that’s going to give it a priority.”

“It’s also talking to the warfighter, talking to Combat Forces Command, talking to the Headquarters, and understanding their priorities, that’s how we decide which missions we’re going to swap,” Zarybnisky said. “As far as the maximum number, I will say there are definitely missions that need Vulcan. We need Vulcan flying for this nation, but I continue to push my team… How do we get capability on orbit as fast as possible?”

Officials are also looking at modifying payload packages to make them light enough to launch on a Vulcan rocket without any solid rocket boosters. Garrant said this is an option for rideshare missions for the Space Development Agency, a Space Force unit deploying a fleet of missile-tracking and data-relay satellites. Each launch for the Space Development Agency carries multiple satellites—21 spacecraft in the case of a SpaceX launch last year. Removing a few satellites from a launch could make the payload stack light enough to reach orbit without needing the extra boost from strap-on motors.

Technicians prepare to mate a Northrop Grumman-built solid rocket motor to the core stage of ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

Other national security missions awaiting launch on Vulcan rockets this year include the first in a new generation of Space Force missile-warning satellites in geosynchronous orbit. The Pentagon considers these satellites, each costing several billion dollars, as critical strategic assets. Another Vulcan launch this year was supposed to deliver the next set of Silent Barker space surveillance satellites to geosynchronous orbit for the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office. The launch of a new wide-band geosynchronous communications satellite is also affected by the Vulcan grounding.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/space-force-looks-at-moving-significant-number-of-launches-from-ula-to-spacex/

The Artemis era well and truly began Friday evening when a shiny spacecraft that had traveled 700,000 miles around the Moon, carrying four astronauts, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

For NASA, for its international partners, and for all of humanity the successful conclusion of the Artemis II mission marked a return to deep space by our species after more than half a century.

It was a spectacular achievement, and NASA deserves credit for making something what is very difficult look relatively easy. But it also raises an important question: What comes next?

NASA recently revised its mission plans for Artemis III and IV, to provide a stepping stone mission before undertaking the landing of humans on the Moon. Much, and more, work needs to be done to make those flights happen. And to be perfectly blunt, the Artemis II mission that concluded Friday was the lowest hanging fruit of the Artemis Program.

“The work ahead is greater than the work behind us,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator, after the landing on Friday night.

What comes next involves more complex operations, requiring multiple vehicles, and ultimately going down to another planetary body. To reach its objectives, NASA will have to take the training wheels off. Here, then, is the status of the major elements that must come together to land humans on the Moon.

Space Launch System

Multiple NASA officials have praised the performance of the Space Launch System rocket during the Artemis II launch on April 1, saying it nailed the target orbit for the mission with greater than 99 percent accuracy.

The core stage for the Artemis III mission is expected to leave the factory in Michoud, Louisiana, later this month for delivery to Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Other rocket elements have already arrived, or will soon.

Meanwhile, the Mobile Launch Tower sustained moderate damage, and it will soon be returned to the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida for refurbishment and then stacking operations for the next mission.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/the-artemis-ii-mission-has-ended-where-does-nasa-go-from-here/

Slamming into the atmosphere at more than 30 times the speed of sound, NASA’s Orion spacecraft blazed a trail over the Pacific Ocean on Friday, returning home with four astronauts and safely capping humanity’s first voyage to the Moon in nearly 54 years.

Temperatures outside the capsule built up to some 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as a sheath of plasma enveloped the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity, and its four long-distance travelers, temporarily blocking radio signals the Moon ship and Mission Control in Houston. Flying southwest to northeast, the spacecraft steered toward a splashdown zone southwest of San Diego, where a US Navy recovery ship held position to await the crew’s homecoming. Ground teams regained communications with Orion commander Reid Wiseman after a six-minute blackout.

Airborne tracking planes beamed live video of Orion’s descent back to Mission Control, showing the capsule jettison its parachute cover and deploy a series of chutes to stabilize its plunge toward the Pacific. Then, three larger main chutes, each with an area of 10,500 square feet, opened to slow Orion for splashdown at 8:07 pm EDT Friday (00:07 UTC Saturday).

In just 14 minutes, Orion bled off nearly 25,000 mph of velocity, subjecting the crew strapped into their seats to two brief periods of about 3.9 Gs.

The USS John P. Murtha amphibious transport dock ship dispatched helicopters and small boats to begin extracting Wiseman and his Artemis II crewmates: Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen. Wiseman reported “four green crew members” inside the cockpit of the Orion spacecraft, confirming good health and high spirits after splashdown.

Koch exited the capsule first, joining Navy divers on an inflatable raft, or “front porch,” assembled next to the spacecraft. Glover was next, then Hansen, a Canadian astronaut, stepped out of Orion onto the front porch. Wiseman, the captain of the ship, was last to leave his seat and join the recovery team. Two helicopters were expected to hoist the astronauts from the sea and fly them them to the John P. Murtha, where they were to undergo medical checks before traveling to San Diego, then back to Houston for a reunion with their families Saturday.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/four-astronauts-are-back-home-after-a-daring-ride-around-the-moon/

NASA’s new administrator, Jared Isaacman, also had questions when he took the job in December 2025. But in January, after a review, Isaacman announced he had “full confidence” in Orion’s heat shield using the new entry profile. He invited Ars Technica to Washington, DC, to sit in on a technical briefing at the time. From this detailed information, it sure seemed like NASA had put in the hard work and testing to back up its decision.

Even so, you’ve got to go fly to be sure. And that’s what will happen this evening.

“There’s no question that I’ll be anxious,” said Amit Kshatriya, the space agency’s top civil servant, this week. “We’ve done the work. It’s impossible to say you don’t have irrational fears left. But I don’t have any rational fears.”

Splashdown

After the heat shield bears the brunt of the heating, Orion will jettison the “forward bay cover” at the top of the spacecraft at about 35,000 feet. This protective cover must be cast off for three small, drogue parachutes to deploy at about 22,000 feet. After three pilot parachutes deploy, the mains are due to come out at about 6,000 feet. The aim is to slow the spacecraft to 20 mph at splashdown.

Parachutes have been deploying from returning spacecraft for nearly seven decades. Even so, it’s a nervous moment since there is no backup. If they fail, the mission fails.

Under a nominal reentry, the crew will experience two brief periods of 3.9 Gs. However, in some scenarios, these G-loads could reach 7.5 Gs, entry flight director Rick Henfling said.

After splashdown, recovery crews from the USS John P. Murtha will approach Orion and deploy an inflatable device at Orion’s hatch, known as the “front porch.” Winds and seas at the recovery area are forecast to be calm. Recovery crew members, in a nominal scenario, will extract astronaut Christina Koch first, followed by Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen, and finally Wiseman.

They will then be transported by two helicopters back to the recovery ship for an initial checkout. If all goes well, the triumphant astronauts will fly back to Houston on Saturday morning to be reunited with their family members.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/heres-what-to-expect-from-the-fiery-14-minute-return-of-artemis-ii/

Accumulating a lot of experience … Booster 1076 entered the SpaceX fleet in 2021 and since then has launched missions including CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, CRS-25, Eutelsat Hotbird 13G, SES O3B mPOWER-A, PSN Satria, Telkomsat Merah Putih 2, Galileo L13, Koreasat-6A Crew-6, and USSF-124, plus 22 batches of Starlink satellites. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Atlas V launches heaviest payload. United Launch Alliance launched its latest Atlas 5 rocket, which carried a batch of 29 Amazon Leo satellites to low-Earth orbit early on April 4, Spaceflight Now reports. The mission was the largest and heaviest payload carried to orbit by an Atlas 5 rocket to date, according to ULA.

Upper stage performance is key … The previous four missions for Amazon Leo that launched on Atlas 5 rockets carried 27 satellites each. ULA and Amazon Leo were able to increase the payload stack to 29 as “a result of detailed engineering work between ULA and Amazon,” according to ULA. Amazon pointed to ULA’s use of the RL10C-1-1 engine on the rocket’s upper stage as a key reason why they were able to add two more satellites to the mission.

SLS rocket successfully delivers Artemis II crew to orbit. On April 1, the Space Launch System rocket majestically launched the Orion spacecraft into orbit from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Ars reports. A few minutes after liftoff, as Artemis II headed east over the Atlantic Ocean, the astronauts got their first glimpse of the full Moon through their forward windows. “We have a beautiful moonrise,” Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman reported. “We’re heading right at it.”

Two for two … The SLS rocket has now launched two times, both successfully. In the days afterward, NASA engineers said the rocket had inserted Orion into its proper orbit with greater than 99 percent accuracy, better even than the Artemis I mission in late 2022. The Mobile Launch tower was being prepared for movement back into the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida for minor repairs and to prepare for the stacking of the SLS rocket for the Artemis III mission. The program is preparing to support a launch in 2027.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/rocket-report-price-parity-between-ariane-6-and-falcon-9-isar-stands-down/

NASA’s schedule currently puts the launch of Artemis III in 2027 and Artemis IV in 2028. Kshatriya said he was confident that NASA, working with the European Space Agency and Airbus, which builds the service module, will be able to fix the valve problem in time for Artemis IV. Manufacturing of the Artemis IV service module is largely complete.

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to need to, at a minimum, tweak the design to prevent the leak rate that we have, if not fundamentally change the way the valve works,” he said.

Valves are a common bugaboo on rockets and spacecraft. Nearly every US human spaceflight program has dealt with malfunctioning or leaky valves. Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule suffered helium leaks in its propulsion system, along with other issues, during a test flight to the International Space Station in 2024. Helium valves on the Space Launch System rocket had to be replaced in the run-up to the Artemis I and Artemis II launches. SpaceX has also scrubbed launches due to valve problems. The list goes on.

“There are a lot of options for how to take care of this problem,” Kshatriya said of the issue on the Orion spacecraft. “If anything, I’d characterize it as a production redesign risk for the Artemis IV mission, which I think we can get in front of, and which is why we put so much attention on it during this mission to make sure [we understand] what we’re seeing.”

The big lesson NASA learned on Artemis I involved the capsule’s heat shield. The ablative thermal barrier burned away unevenly as the craft reentered the atmosphere, but Orion still made it to a safe, on-target splashdown. NASA officials said they are confident the heat shield will hold up on Artemis II after adjusting the path Orion will take through the upper atmosphere. A new heat shield design will debut on Artemis III.

NASA engineers spent two years investigating the heat shield issue after Artemis I. Kshatriya does not expect the valve redesign to take as long.

“It’s not a safety of flight, safety of crew, must-work function like the heat shield investigation sent us down,” he said. “It’s going to take work to get it right, but it’s not of that magnitude.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/nasa-homes-in-on-likely-redesign-to-fix-orion-spacecrafts-leaky-valves/

“We have loved living in Orion,” said Christina Koch, mission specialist on Artemis II. “In fact, we’ve all said that sometimes you can forget where you really are, because we’re in this small space that just gives us everything we need.”

Living in microgravity makes the cramped quarters seem a little more accommodating. The astronauts can take advantage of every corner of the spacecraft.

“It is bigger in microgravity, and yes, we are bumping into each other 100 percent of the time,” Koch said. “A phrase that you often hear in the cabin is, ‘Don’t move your foot. I’m just going to reach for something right under it.’”

NASA named the crew members for the Artemis II mission three years ago. Now, the astronauts will have their names in the history books. With Artemis II, the number of people alive who have traveled to the vicinity of the Moon has nearly doubled. Just five of the 24 men who flew to the Moon are still alive. Four of them walked on its surface.

“I will miss this camaraderie. I will miss being this close with this many people and having a common purpose, a common mission,” Koch said. “This sense of teamwork is something that you don’t usually get as an adult. I mean, we are close, like brothers and sisters, and that is a privilege we will never have again.”

One of the most poignant moments of the mission was a tribute to Wiseman’s late wife, Carroll, who died of cancer in 2020. On Monday, as the crew neared the Moon, Hansen radioed down the crew’s request to name a crater for Carroll.

“When Jeremy spelled Carol’s name, C-A-R-R-O-L- L, I think, for me, that’s when I was overwhelmed with emotion,” Wiseman said. “And I looked over and Christina was crying. I put my hand down on Jeremy’s hand as he was still talking. I could just tell he was trembling, and we all pretty much broke down right there. And just for me, personally, that was kind of the pinnacle moment of the mission. For me, 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 the day ahead.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/astronauts-recall-the-sci-fi-experience-of-flying-in-the-shadow-of-the-moon/