Robert Goddard, a Massachusetts-born physicist, launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on this date 100 years ago.

It was not an overly impressive flight. The rocket, fueled by gasoline and liquid oxygen, rose just 41 feet into the air, and the flight lasted 2.5 seconds before it struck ice and snow.

Nevertheless, this rocket, named “Nell,” represented a historic achievement that would help launch the modern age of spaceflight. Three decades later, the first objects would begin to ride liquid-fueled rockets into space, followed shortly by humans. A little more than 40 years would pass before humans walked on the Moon.

To mark this historic moment, a few Ars staffers are sharing some of their most memorable launches. Please add yours in the comments below.

Space Shuttle Endeavour

In February 2010, I was lucky enough to attend the penultimate night launch of the shuttle program, STS-130. This mission was a major ISS assembly flight, carrying both Node 3 and Cupola to the ISS. This one had nothing to do with me—instead, I was there as a plus-one for my wife, who had worked on Node 3 at Boeing and who had been invited to witness the hardware she’d worked on finally fly.

The day before the launch was a whirlwind of private tours through various KSC locations—we got to see one of the Crawler-Transporters up close, and then we had a photo-op right next to pad 39-A, where Endeavour was staged and ready. We got to see the VAB, the Orbiter Processing Facility, and the Space Station Processing Facility. There was also a big team lunch with some of the ESA partners my wife had worked with (including a group of Italian engineers from Alenia who, being ever Italian, had brought along a lot of wine).

Laura and Lee Hutchinson, standing near LC-39A on February 6, 2010, with Endeavour staged in the background.

Credit: Lee Hutchinson

The launch was originally scheduled for 04:39 Eastern the next morning, February 7, which meant no sleep. After a brief post-tour evening rest, we were all herded onto buses from the hotel at about midnight and then transported with the other program guests to the Banana Creek launch viewing area, about four miles from LC-39A. The Banana Creek viewing area is attached to the Saturn V visitor’s center, so we spent the hours before launch perusing the exhibits and enjoying KSC’s fantastic collection of historic human spaceflight artifacts.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/a-century-after-the-first-rocket-launch-ars-staffers-pick-their-favorites/

NASA assessed 1-in-276 odds for loss of crew on the first flight of astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in 2020. For Boeing’s Starliner in 2024, the probability was 1 in 295. You wouldn’t be wrong to question those numbers given the proven performance of Dragon and Starliner.

This chart from NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance describes the agency’s process for conducting probabilistic risk assessments.

Credit: NASA

So, what do the Artemis II astronauts make of all this?

The mission’s commander, Reid Wiseman, said the crew members were trying to prepare their families “honestly and openly” for the hazards of a circumlunar flight.

“I went on a walk with my kids, and I told them, ‘Here’s where the will is, here’s where the trust documents are, and if anything happens to me, here’s what’s going to happen to you,’” Wiseman said. “That is a part of this life. I actually wish more people in everyday life talked to their families that way because you never know what the next day is going to bring.”

Any sailor knows you can’t stay in the harbor forever. Test pilots and astronauts take calculated risks for a living.

“When you see numbers like Mach 39 at entry, when you see numbers like 38,000 miles, 250,000 miles, and 5 or 6 million pounds on the pad, those are just insane numbers,” Wiseman said. “These numbers, you don’t even comprehend. There’s risk in that. We don’t know what we don’t know right now, so we’ll go learn all that [on the mission].

Despite the unknowns, Wiseman is ready: “For me, I actually feel completely 100 percent bought in. When I get into Orion, it’s like climbing into my bed, and I’ll feel warm and tucked in.”

The formal risk matrix for Artemis II is similar to that of Artemis I, with MMOD again at the top of the list. Matt Ramsey, NASA’s Artemis II mission manager, told Ars in January that the Orion spacecraft’s environmental control and life support system, which didn’t fly with its full capability on Artemis I, is the second-highest risk for Artemis II. “Those two are my biggest worries,” said Ramsey, who has been with NASA since 2002.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/flying-to-the-moon-for-the-first-time-in-54-years-is-risky-but-how-risky/

Welcome to Edition 8.33 of the Rocket Report! NASA officials seem optimistic about launching the Artemis II mission next month, so confident that they will forgo another fueling test on the Space Launch System rocket to check the integrity of fickle seals in a liquid hydrogen loading line. The rocket will return to the launch pad next week, with liftoff targeted for April 1 at 6:24 pm EDT (22:24 UTC). NASA has six launch dates available in early April after the agency added April 2 to the launch period. April 1 and 2 each have launch windows that open before sunset, an added bonus for those of us who prefer a day launch, for purely aesthetic reasons.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. 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.

Firefly’s Alpha rocket flies again. Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket successfully returned to flight Wednesday, March 11, launching a technology demonstration mission more than 10 months after the rocket’s previous launch failed, Space News reports. The launch followed several delays and scrubbed launch attempts. The two-stage Alpha rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and headed southwest over the Pacific Ocean, reaching orbit about eight minutes later. Firefly said the rocket’s upper stage later reignited its engine, demonstrating the restart capability required for some orbit insertion missions. This was the seventh flight of Firefly’s Alpha rocket, capable of hauling more than a ton of payload to low-Earth orbit.

Block II preview... The recent setbacks for Firefly’s Alpha program included a launch failure last April and a fire that destroyed a booster stage on the test stand. The Texas-based company billed this week’s flight as a purely demonstration mission to validate several upgrades for the Alpha Block II rocket configuration, which will debut on the next launch. The Block II will include a 7-foot (2-meter) increase to Alpha’s length, consolidated batteries and avionics built in-house, improved thermal protection systems, and stronger carbon-composite structures built with automated machinery. This week’s flight carried the rocket’s new in-house avionics suite and enhanced thermal protection system, Firefly said. “Flight 7 served as a critical opportunity to validate Alpha’s performance ahead of our Block II upgrade, and this team knocked it out of the park,” said Adam Oakes, Firefly’s vice president of launch. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/rocket-report-pentagon-needs-more-missile-interceptors-artemis-ii-clears-review/

In addition to parrying with SpaceX over its proposed, vastly larger orbital data center constellation, Amazon is seeking some regulatory relief of its own. Most pressing for Amazon is a deadline to deploy half of its Amazon Leo constellation, intended to ultimately comprise 3,236 satellites, by July 30. The company will not meet this deadline, with only a little more than three months to go, and Amazon has requested an extension, asking for it to be moved to July 30, 2028.

Carr pulls up

On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr injected himself into the SpaceX-Amazon fracas over megaconstellations.

“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr said on X, the social media network owned by Musk.

There are arguments to be made in favor of both SpaceX and Amazon regarding their competing concerns. For example, SpaceX is likely to be able to greatly accelerate the rate at which it launches satellites with the forthcoming Starship rocket. So saying it will take centuries to put its data centers into space is not likely true.

However, it is valid to criticize SpaceX’s application for 1 million satellites, which is an extraordinary number of spacecraft that would completely change many things about low-Earth orbit. The SpaceX application did not contain critical information about the size, mass, and other details needed to evaluate the constellation for safety and other concerns.

It cannot be comfortable for Amazon and Bezos to see Carr weighing in so publicly and favorably on Musk’s side. Legally, Carr is allowed to have strongly held policy views. But he is not supposed to single out companies for preferential treatment.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/fcc-chair-blasts-amazon-after-it-criticizes-spacex-megaconstellation/

No one on the ground has ever been injured by falling space junk, but there are examples of space debris causing property damage.

NASA’s two Van Allen Probes launched into elliptical orbits ranging from a few hundred miles above Earth up to an apogee, or high point, of nearly 20,000 miles. The orbits are inclined 10 degrees to the equator, limiting the risk of injury or damage to a swath of the tropics. NASA ended the mission in 2019 when the satellites ran out of fuel.

At that time, NASA engineers expected the spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere in 2034. But higher-than-anticipated solar activity caused the atmosphere to swell outward, increasing atmospheric drag on the satellites beyond initial estimates, according to NASA. Van Allen Probe B is expected to reenter no earlier than 2030, with a similar risk to the public.

The two spacecraft were built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. NASA said the mission made several major discoveries, including “the first data showing the existence of a transient third radiation belt, which can form during times of intense solar activity.”

Several NASA satellites have reentered the atmosphere without complying with the government’s risk standard. One of the satellites, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, fell out of orbit in 2018 with a 1-in-1,000 chance of harming someone on the ground. No one was hurt. RXTE was launched in 1995, just four months before NASA issued its first standard on orbital debris mitigation and reentry risk management.

While NASA has exceeded its standards before, the US government is not a top offender when it comes to unmitigated reentry risks. China launched four heavy-lift Long March 5B rockets between 2020 and 2022, and left its massive core stages in orbit to fall back to Earth. The four abandoned rocket cores, each nearly 24 tons in mass, reentered the atmosphere uncontrolled. Two of them dropped wreckage on land—in the Ivory Coast and Borneo—but no injuries were reported.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/nasa-approved-a-safety-waiver-for-this-weeks-reentry-of-van-allen-probe/

The report notes that during every one of the Apollo program’s crewed lunar landings, astronauts engaged the backup manual control method. (Of course, this occurred six decades ago, when flight software was considerably less sophisticated than today.)

As NASA and SpaceX near a key decision point, known as Critical Design Review, the issue remains unresolved. The new report suggests that this may result in automation being the only landing method.

A similar fight over Dragon

The space agency and SpaceX engaged in a similar back-and-forth during the design process for the Crew Dragon spacecraft a decade ago. SpaceX initially wanted touchscreens only, with limited flight commands available to astronauts. NASA pushed back and wanted what were essentially joysticks for astronauts to fly the vehicles like previous spacecraft. A former NASA astronaut then working at SpaceX, Garret Reisman, helped broker a compromise by which astronauts could manually fly the vehicles using controls on touchscreens.

However, the new report says the flight controls for Dragon were built on many successful missions by a cargo version of the vehicle that flew to the International Space Station.

“Starship will not have the same level of proven flight heritage in the actual operating environment for its crewed lunar missions,” the report states. “Incorporating this system capability is a key element of HLS’s human-rating certification and part of an essential crew survival strategy.”

A design for Blue Origin’s manual control has not yet been made, according to the inspector general.

There is other interesting information in the report, including details on the uncrewed demonstration flights that SpaceX and Blue Origin are both required to fly before human missions can take place. The inspector general notes that these flights will not require life support systems and airlocks, as human missions will. Nor will the tall Starship vehicle be required to test an elevator to bring crew down to the surface.

There will also be a limited ability to test the abrasive impact of lunar dust, expected to be returned inside the vehicles after Moonwalks, on life support equipment during these uncrewed demonstrations.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/nasa-and-spacex-disagree-about-manual-controls-for-lunar-lander/

The email from Limp did not provide details about the new plan, other than saying, “As Blue achieves its goals and increase in value your equity will grow alongside it.”

To compete with SpaceX, Blue must continue to grow. The exact numbers that SpaceX will target with its IPO have not been set, but the company is likely to seek a valuation in the vicinity of $1.5 trillion, which would raise between $30 billion and $50 billion in cash. This is on top of SpaceX’s estimated 2026 revenue of $22 billion to $24 billion.

This gives SpaceX CEO Elon Musk a massive pile of capital to throw at his Starship rocket, Starlink constellation, AI, and orbital data centers.

Bezos has expressed an interest in all of these technologies, too, with his 9×4 New Glenn rocket, lunar lander program, TeraWave constellation, and space-based data centers.

But—and yes, this is a strange thing to write about one of the top five richest people in the world—Bezos does not have the resources to match SpaceX. Blue Origin’s annual revenues are not publicly known, but they are likely on the order of $1 billion a year. Bezos is pumping multiples of that annually to fund the company, but this total is still dwarfed by SpaceX’s annual revenue. And that’s before an IPO.

Until a few years ago, Bezos could more or less match the revenues SpaceX had available with annual contributions to Blue Origin. Both companies had a workforce of over 10,000 people and broad ambitions. But as Starlink sprints ahead, and with an IPO on the horizon, SpaceX is taking a significant leap upward.

All of this raises the possibility that Bezos may finally consider taking on outside investment if he wants Blue Origin to remain competitive with SpaceX.

“He’s never really talked about going for outside investment,” said Chris Davenport, author of Rocket Dreams, about Bezos. “The fact that Elon has had a number of liquidity events is going to put some pressure on Jeff and Blue Origin to at least think about it.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/after-years-of-missteps-blue-origin-to-finally-offer-meaningful-stock-options/

Now, you might think NASA would ask industry for solutions to this problem. After all, United Launch Alliance was developing a more powerful upper stage for its Vulcan rocket, the Centaur V, that used the same propellant as the core stage of the SLS rocket. And Blue Origin was also developing a powerful upper stage engine, the BE-3U, powered by hydrogen. These options were cheaper, available, and … summarily ignored.

10 years, billions of dollars, and not much to show for it

Congress, smelling jobs, wanted NASA to develop a brand new upper stage. So in 2016, lawmakers allocated $85 million for preliminary work on the upper stage, and have since awarded more than $3.5 billion.

For the development of a rocket’s second stage.

With engines (RL-10s) that have been flying in space for six decades.

And after all of this, a decade later, the upper stage remains years from being ready to fly.

In some ways, the Exploration Upper Stage was the perfect vehicle for pork. It not only spread largesse among Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne (for the engines), but it also necessitated a massive new launch tower in Florida. That was good for the Exploration Ground Systems program at Kennedy Space Center.

The original cost estimates of these projects are always instructive to look back on. Boeing’s initial contract to build the Exploration Upper Stage started at $962 million, and NASA planned to launch the rocket on the second flight of the SLS in 2021. Oops. As for the launch tower, the initial estimate for its cost was $383 million, but as of late, it was heading north of $2 billion. So we are talking billions and billions and billions of dollars for a relatively straightforward upper stage, using off-the-shelf engines and a large launch tower.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/ding-dong-the-exploration-upper-stage-is-dead/

Planet Labs, one of the world’s leading commercial satellite imaging companies, said Friday it is placing a hold on releasing imagery of some parts of the Middle East as a regional war enters its second week.

The company, which brands itself as Planet, operates a fleet of several hundred Earth-imaging satellites designed to record views of every landmass on Earth at least once per day. Its customers include think tanks, NGOs, academic institutions, news media, and commercial users in the agriculture, forestry, and energy industries, among others.

Planet also holds lucrative contracts selling overhead imagery to the US military and US government intelligence agencies.

“In response to the conflict in the Middle East, Planet is implementing temporary restrictions on data access within specific areas of the affected region,” Planet said in a statement emailed to Ars. “Effective immediately, all new imagery collected over the Gulf States, Iraq, Kuwait, and adjacent conflict zones will be subject to a mandatory 96-hour delay before it is made available in our archive.”

Imagery over Iran will remain available as soon as it is acquired, the company said. “This change applies to all users except authorized government users who maintain immediate access for mission-critical operations.”

Infographic with satellite images showing damage at a selection of four US military sites, or sites hosting US personnel, in the Middle East in the context of Iranian strikes since February 28, 2026, using images from Planet Labs.

Credit: Graphic by Nalini Lepetit-Chella and Sabrina Blanchard/AFP via Getty Images)/© 2026 Planet Labs/AFP

Overhead intelligence

In the last few days, Planet’s satellite imagery showed the aftermath of Iranian missile and drone strikes on US and allied bases in the region, including damage to the US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and to a $1 billion US-built early warning radar in Qatar used for tracking incoming projectiles. Planet said it wants to prevent “adversarial actors” from using its data for “Battle Damage Assessment (BDA)” purposes. In other words, the company doesn’t want to help Iran’s military know where it succeeded and where it failed.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/satellite-firm-pauses-imagery-after-revealing-irans-attacks-on-us-bases/

There are many details about the EPO/CoLA orbit in the research paper, but critically, its closest point to the Moon lies just 100 km above the Moon’s surface (the apolune distance is 6,500 km). For many landing sites, the paper notes, a Human Landing System vehicle can perform a single burn to reach a much lower orbit.

As part of his change in plans, Isaacman said the Space Launch System rocket’s upper stage would be “standardized” for Artemis IV and beyond. That means the first lunar landing mission will use a new upper stage, likely the Centaur V built by United Launch Alliance. This will have more propulsive capabilities than the current rocket, so it is possible that for Artemis IV, Orion could reach an even more favorable orbit (i.e., closer to the Moon, requiring less energy to reach the surface) than EPO/CoLA.

Can Starship be accelerated?

At the end of the day, it’s helpful to find new orbits and relax requirements where appropriate. But it will still be up to the lander contractors to deliver the goods, and for NASA, the sooner the better.

Last November, Ars looked at several ways Starship might be brought online faster as a lunar lander. Perhaps the biggest problem with using Starship as a lander is the need to fly multiple uncrewed tanker missions to refuel Starship in low-Earth orbit before it transits to the Moon and awaits a crew aboard Orion. This necessitates an estimated one- or two-dozen launches.

The best solution we could come up with was flying an optimized, expendable Starship tanker stage that would maximize propellant delivery per flight. When asked about this, though, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shot down the idea. Once Starship begins flying at rate, Musk believes, a dozen or more tanker missions per lunar flight will not pose a major impediment.

So it should come as no surprise that SpaceX has not proposed significant changes to its Human Landing System hardware. In response to NASA’s desire to accelerate the Artemis timeline, the company has indicated that it will prioritize the Human Landing System more as part of the Starship program. The company also suggested that eliminating the requirement to dock in near-rectilinear halo orbit could open up new mission plans, including potentially docking with Orion in orbit around Earth rather than the Moon.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/nasa-has-shuffled-its-artemis-rockets-but-what-of-the-lunar-landers/