Hamilton would often bring her 4-year-old daughter, Lauren, to the lab on nights and weekends. The child loved pretending to be an astronaut in the simulators, and one day her random button-pressing caused the system to inexplicably crash. Apparently Lauren had typed “P01,” a pre-launch sequence, in the middle of the mission. Hamilton asked NASA if she could add a safeguard to prevent this from happening on an actual mission, but the higher-ups didn’t take it seriously. Then astronaut Jim Lovell actually made that error during the Apollo 8 manned mission to orbit the Moon, causing the navigational data to vanish. Hamilton was called in to retrieve the data, jokingly referring to this as the “Lauren bug.”

By 1968, Hamilton was assistant director in charge of the Command and Service Module team. Hamilton had the idea to incorporate a failsafe into the system software’s “priority display” interface routines, should the onboard guidance computer become overloaded with more tasks than it could handle in real time.

President Barack Obama awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.

That’s exactly what happened on the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969. As the Eagle lunar module approached the Moon, Buzz Aldrin entered the codes to display altitude and other relevant data on the screen. The onboard computer started flashing alarms, forcing Mission Control to consider aborting the landing. Hamilton’s fail-safe meant that the computer was prioritizing essential tasks and canceling nonessential ones, and the alarm was to let astronauts know that this was happening. Thanks to Hamilton’s foresight, Eagle still safely landed on the Sea of Tranquility.

As Hamilton herself later recalled in a 1971 letter:

The computer (or rather the software in it) was smart enough to recognize that it was being asked to perform more tasks than it should be performing. It then sent out an alarm, which meant to the astronaut, “I’m overloaded with more tasks than I should be doing at this time and I’m going to keep only the more important tasks”; i.e., the ones needed for landing … Actually, the computer was programmed to do more than recognize error conditions. A complete set of recovery programs was incorporated into the software. The software’s action, in this case, was to eliminate lower priority tasks and re-establish the more important ones … If the computer hadn’t recognized this problem and taken recovery action, I doubt if Apollo 11 would have been the successful Moon landing it was.

The Apollo software she helped develop was added to GitHub in 2015. In 2019, Google marked the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing—and Hamilton’s crucial contribution—by training over 100,000 mirrors at its Mojave Desert solar power farm to create a massive portrait of Hamilton in reflected moonlight.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/10/r-i-p-margaret-hamilton-whose-code-saved-the-apollo-11-moon-landing/

An attempt to save NASA’s $500 million Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory from dropping out of orbit fell short, but the behind-the-scenes machinations required just to make a rescue possible deserve recognition, government and commercial space officials said in a recounting of the mission.

The rescue mission was developed by Katalyst Space Technologies, working under a $30 million contract awarded by NASA last September. NASA gave Katalyst nine months to build and launch a satellite to capture Swift flying some 200 miles above the Earth and boost it into a higher orbit.

Katalyst’s rescue spacecraft, known as Link, successfully launched July 3 and completed some of its initial checkouts before a malfunction caused it to spin out of control a few weeks later. NASA announced in August that Link would not be able to reach Swift as intended, and the rescue mission was aborted.

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https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/10/heres-why-nasa-is-celebrating-the-failed-mission-to-save-the-swift-observatory/

Imagine starting a space company in October 2019 with the aim of changing the world. Then, a few months later, a global pandemic shuts the world down.

“Little did we know what the world had in store for us,” said Trevor Bennett, an engineer who co-founded Starfish Space after a few years at Blue Origin. “But that’s kind of become part of our story, showing some resilience along the way.”

At Blue Origin, he saw, up close, the ambitions of billionaires to build big rockets and put massive numbers of satellites into orbit. Bennett and his co-founder, another engineer from Blue Origin named Austin Link, began to think about the implications. How would humanity deal with that increased volume of satellites in orbit? Could low-Earth orbit be preserved?

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https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/after-seven-years-a-spacecraft-company-is-releasing-its-otters-into-the-wild/

The first in a new class of space telescopes is on track to reach the launch pad in the early 2030s, NASA announced this week.

The PRIMA mission will be the first of NASA’s Probe Explorers, a new line of observatories intended to do more science for less money. The agency’s space telescopes typically fall into lower-cost “Explorer-class” missions, with cost caps in the range of a few hundred million dollars, or flagship observatories like the recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which came with a price tag of some $4.3 billion.

With the Probe Explorers, NASA officials seek to find a better balance between the smaller Explorer missions and multibillion-dollar flagships. NASA has studied potential Probe Explorer mission concepts for several years after an independent panel of scientists recommended the new mission category. But it wasn’t clear until recently whether NASA’s science budget, which is under pressure from the Trump administration, would be sufficient to actually start developing one.

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https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/nasa-green-lights-billion-dollar-infrared-observatory-for-launch-in-early-2030s/

Welcome to Edition 9.12 of the Rocket Report! The big story in the global launch industry remains SpaceX’s plans to wind down Falcon 9 operations for commercial launches, possibly within the next two or three years. That has created a scramble among satellite operators and some positioning among up-and-coming launch providers. Notably, in this week’s newsletter, there’s a story about how Firefly expects launch to become more expensive, and that customers got too used to rapid, reliable launch with the Falcon 9. I’m not sure that philosophy will work out long term.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

The best-named rocket in the world is sadly delayed. French launch startup HyPrSpace announced that it has pushed the inaugural flight of its Baguette One suborbital rocket to 2027, European Spaceflight reports. The 10-meter Baguette One rocket is a single-stage vehicle is capable of carrying up to 300 kg. It is powered by the company’s hybrid propulsion system, which combines liquid oxygen with solid polyethylene fuel.

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https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/rocket-report-era-of-cheap-launch-is-over-astra-sets-early-2027-target-for-return/

Did you know that the first character that Walt Disney created to specifically appear on television was inspired, in part, by early Space Age rocket scientists?

On this day 65 years ago (September 24, 1961), Disney introduced the “renowned scientist, lecturer, psychologist [and] world traveler,” Ludwig Von Drake. A member of the Duck family (he is the “brilliant and eccentric” uncle of Donald Duck), Von Drake was “the outstanding genius of the century” (per Disney himself) who helped to explain scientific principles and technological concepts to the millions of people who tuned in every Sunday to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on NBC.

A few years later, after expertly (but often absent-mindedly) addressing topics such as how color television works, the health benefits of exercising, and the history of aviation, Von Drake dove into the topic for which he said he wrote the book on, in the February 10, 1963, episode “Inside Outer Space.”

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https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/disneys-ludwig-von-drake-was-inspired-by-rocket-scientists-65-years-ago/

Google is taking its first step toward making Project Suncatcher a reality. Announced last year, Suncatcher is Google’s “moonshot” effort to design orbital AI data centers, which AI boosters like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have pitched as an alternative to divisive terrestrial data centers. Google’s first experimental satellite will launch on October 1 with the aim of validating Google’s vision for a constellation of AI satellites.

The satellite, dubbed MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator. Inside, it has four of Google’s custom TPU AI accelerators, which are used to train AI models and run inference to generate tokens for AI workloads. On Earth, a data center will run thousands of these chips, which consume massive amounts of power—one of the reasons putting solar-powered AI hardware in space is so attractive.

MVP is starting small, with solar panels that supply only about one kilowatt of power, The New York Times reports. That’s enough to power a microwave or a hair dryer. Google did not build the satellite from scratch. While the AI hardware inside is Google’s, the spacecraft comes from a satellite imagery firm called Planet Labs. The initial plan was to launch two custom satellites in 2027, but Google wanted to accelerate its efforts. So the company opted to integrate its chips into a satellite that Planet Labs had already built for an early test.

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https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/09/googles-first-suncatcher-orbital-data-center-test-launches-october-1/

Welcome to Edition 9.11 of the Rocket Report! The most interesting story of the week, in our view, is a deep dive by Stephen Clark, linked below, into the dwindling fortunes of United Launch Alliance. As recently as a decade ago, the launch company, co-owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, could claim dominance over the US industry. But those glory days are fading fast. So what’s next for a company that is tied to an expendable rocket?

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Avio seeks to cash in on Falcon 9 retreat. Italian launch services provider Avio has seen an influx of customers who were unable to secure launch opportunities with SpaceX, European Spaceflight reports. “I can tell you SpaceX has already gone captive because we have a whole bunch of customers coming to us and saying, ‘Oh my God, can you fly us?’” Avio CEO Giulio Ranzo said during the company’s September 10 earnings call. In recent months, SpaceX told multiple prospective customers that it was no longer accepting new orders for commercial Falcon 9 launches.

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https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/rocket-report-ula-flies-into-uncertain-future-falcon-9-family-hits-700-launches/

The International Meteor Organization, the nonprofit that coordinates and publishes amateur and professional observations of meteor phenomena, said its infrastructure has suffered a “critical blow” from a cyberattack.

“We recently suffered a cyberattack that dealt a critical blow to aging infrastructure, taking much of our site offline,” a static page on its website on Wednesday said. “We expect several weeks of partial downtime as we transition to new infrastructure and services.”

“I am very sad to see the site down”

In the meantime, the IMO said it’s prioritizing the reporting of fireball observations, which can be reported here. The organization is also providing some information on its Facebook page.

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https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/nonprofit-that-tracks-meteors-taken-down-by-critical-blow-from-a-cyberattack/

Pending regulatory approval, SpaceX said today it intends to launch its 14th Starship mission as early as September 22. This flight is notable, as it will be the first time that SpaceX attempts to launch the experimental vehicle into orbit.

The company set a target liftoff time of 7:15 am local in Texas (12:15 UTC), with a 75-minute launch window. Sunrise in Brownsville, Texas, is 7:17 am CT, so the launch could make for some striking imagery.

The super heavy lift rocket will be carrying 26 of the larger V3 Starlink satellites into an orbit 275 km above the Earth. In an update on its website, SpaceX said the Starship upper stage will seek to complete six orbits around the Earth before completing its mission after about 10 hours.

Reaching orbit would mark a significant milestone in the company’s Starship development campaign, which conducted its first test flight on April 20, 2023, and has since made progress in fits and starts. With the upcoming mission, SpaceX continues to make modifications to the Starship vehicle as it seeks to improve the third iteration of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage. After recent successes, the company appears to be closer to developing a fully reusable, super heavy lift rocket.

First-stage modifications

During the most recent Starship test flight on July 24, the vehicle’s first stage performed nominally during ascent. However, after a successful boostback burn, the vehicle experienced problems during the return through Earth’s atmosphere.

“In the terminal phase of the burn, the three center engines showed signs of ice clogging, which triggered an early end to the maneuver,” SpaceX said in its update on Tuesday. “The booster went on to attempt a landing burn, with 8 of the 13 planned engines reigniting before the booster made a hard splashdown in the Gulf. The Super Heavy on this upcoming flight has hardware modifications to improve filtering to the engines and software changes to enhance relight reliability.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/spacex-sets-launch-date-for-first-starship-orbital-flight/