Could Blue Moon Mark 1 launch on other rockets? SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan vehicles both likely have the lift capacity to push the vehicle to the Moon. But Vulcan is also sidelined at present and has a long line of Space Force payloads in the queue. So what of Falcon Heavy?

The Mark 1 lander is powered by the BE-7 engine, which runs on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. There may be compatibility issues related to the Falcon rocket’s kerosene-powered upper stage, although this has not been confirmed. Also, it is unlikely that Blue Origin would partner with a direct rival, SpaceX, in this manner.

Artemis program

Due to the Mark 1 issues outlined above, there will either be significant delays to, or the need to restructure the early phases of, the Moon Base program. The lunar rovers under development by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, for example, have a mass of about 1 ton. Only Mark 1 and SpaceX’s Starship have that kind of delivery capacity.

There are also major implications for the main Artemis crewed missions.

NASA recently changed Artemis III to become a mission that will see the Orion spacecraft rendezvous with one or both of the Human Landing Systems under development by Blue Origin (Blue Moon) and SpaceX (Starship) in low-Earth orbit. NASA appears determined to launch this mission in 2027 and plans to announce its four crew members in a couple of weeks.

But it’s now all but certain that a Blue Moon lander will not be ready for such a mission within the next 18 months. NASA will need to decide whether to wait on Blue Origin or press ahead solely with a Starship mission.

As for Artemis IV, the lunar landing mission, this failure further complicates that plan. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a crew-rated Blue Moon lander is ready at any point in 2028 now. Even if the hardware is far along, Blue Origin still needs to fly test missions with Blue Moon Mark 1, which are on hold indefinitely.

A number of senior NASA officials had come to view Blue Origin’s plan to use a slimmed down version of the Mark 2 lander, which would not require in-space refueling, as the prime option for Artemis IV. Now, like much of the US space industry, NASA finds itself highly dependent on SpaceX’s ability to deliver with Starship.

Note: This article has been edited to clarify interoperability issues between the Blue Moon Mark 1 lander and the Falcon Heavy rocket.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/heres-why-the-failure-of-blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-is-so-catastrophic/

Then there is the larger Blue Moon Mark 2 lander, which is due to fly on a larger and more powerful version of the New Glenn rocket with nine first stage engines, known as 9×4. NASA is counting on the Mark 2 lander, alongside SpaceX’s Starship vehicle, to carry humans to the Moon on a regular basis—and soon.

Pad infrastructure severely damaged

It is too early to determine the impacts from this failure, but they will be considerable. Early reports from sources suggest that the launch infrastructure at LC-36A is severely damaged. A source indicated that one of the lightning towers may not be salvageable, and that the transporter-erector may also be damaged beyond repair.

The company recently began construction on a second New Glenn launch site nearby, LC-36B. However, the work there is in its early stages. It is possible, however, that completing this new launch tower may be faster than rebuilding LC-36A. New Glenn almost certainly will not launch again in 2026, and frankly a launch during the first half of 2027 would be heroic given the launch site concerns.

Blue Origin has been doing a lot of developmental work on the larger 9×4 rocket, which is expected to become the workhorse of the fleet over the smaller 7×2 rocket variant that exploded on Thursday evening in Florida. It is possible that the company now throws all of its efforts into completing work on this larger rocket.

Bezos, who made his fortune from Amazon, has largely funded Blue Origin since its founding a quarter of a century ago. He has put tens of billions of dollars into the company. Fortunately for Blue Origin, he has the financial wherewithal to sustain the company through this failure and to accelerate its recovery efforts. NASA, too, will be very keen to see Blue Origin get back on its feet as expeditiously as possible.

If there’s a small silver lining, it’s that the rocket that exploded Thursday night did not carry its payload of Amazon Leo Internet satellites. They were safe, in a nearby integration facility, awaiting launch.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-just-exploded-during-a-static-fire-test/

Engineer Jaakko Karras inspects a next-generation Mars helicopter rotor blade prior to testing it at supersonic speeds in the 25-foot Space Simulator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 2025.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The first series of tests used a three-bladed rotor design that could be flown on missions after SkyFall. A second test campaign used the actual two-bladed design that will fly on SkyFall. These blades are slightly longer, so they reached the same supersonic speed at a lower rpm. The faster spin resulted in a 30 percent boost in lift capability.

The team pushed rotor tip speeds to Mach 1.08, boosting the Mars vehicle’s lift capability by 30 percent. This breakthrough allows future missions to support heavier scientific payloads, including advanced sensors and larger batteries for extended flight.

“We thought we’d be lucky to hit Mach 1.05, and we reached Mach 1.08 on our last runs. We’re still digging into the data, and there may be even more thrust on the table. These next-gen helicopters are going to be amazing,” said Shannah Withrow-Maser, an aerodynamicist from NASA’s Ames Research Center.

At the same time that engineers are preparing to send more helicopters to Mars, NASA is working on a more massive rotorcraft named Dragonfly destined for Saturn’s moon Titan. Dragonfly will weigh nearly a ton, but flying on more distant Titan poses fewer challenges than on Mars because its atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s.

The only payloads on the Ingenuity helicopter were two cameras: a black-and-white imager for navigation and a higher-resolution color camera. Its longest flight in 2022 covered less than a half-mile and lasted 161 seconds. The aircraft had to land and recharge its batteries using solar arrays, and it used the nearby Perseverance rover as a base station to communicate with ground teams on Earth.

The SkyFall mission won’t have a rover nearby. The helicopters will have to communicate with mission controllers through orbiting relay satellites or a direct-to-Earth link. Future rotorcraft will use larger batteries to enable longer flights. Scientists would like to mount more sophisticated instruments on Mars helicopters to search for things like ice in the Martian soil. All of this will require heavier vehicles.

Breaking the sound barrier without breaking hardware moves us a step closer to fully exploiting this new mode of planetary exploration.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/engineers-at-nasas-jet-propulsion-lab-make-a-breakthrough-in-rotor-technology/

And on Friday, the Department of Defense (which has renamed itself the Department of War without the required authorization from the US Congress) began releasing those files.

So what’s in there? You can see for yourself here. The short answer is “not much.”

Example photo from the UAP files released Friday.

Credit: US military

The longer answer is that there are pages and pages of old FBI records, unresolved cases, eyewitness interviews, and the usual grainy, black-and-white images that show dots but nothing remotely conclusive about aliens, alien spaceships, or any alien technology.

In short, there is no truly meaningful evidence here for aliens, alien visitations, alien abductions, or anything like that.

Shocking, we know.

This is not extraordinary evidence

The release doesn’t preclude the possibility that aliens have visited Earth, of course. It’s a massive galaxy, and in recent years, scientists have confirmed that many of the billions of stars in just our Milky Way Galaxy alone have vibrant planetary systems. And there are billions of galaxies. So there are a massive number of worlds out there where life could have evolved and attained sentience and spaceflight capabilities. Perhaps we are alone. Perhaps we live in a “dark forest” universe. We just don’t know.

But we do know that claiming aliens have visited Earth is a major statement. Here, we should remember the words of Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

The release of files by the US military on Friday is only the beginning. There is more to come. But what we have seen today falls far, far short of extraordinary evidence.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/the-us-military-just-released-a-bunch-of-uap-files-but-theres-no-there-there/

Chosen for impact to humanity … The Falcon 9 team was chosen from a long list of impressive nominees. “In the end, the deciding factor was what we felt like was the team’s impact to humanity,” said Dan Dumbacher, chair of the Neil Armstrong Space Prize selection committee. “Their work has had a very clear impact and a very visible impact.” Hard to disagree with that.

Chinese firm pursues aerodynamic recovery. Chinese commercial launch startup Nayuta Space has completed consecutive Pre-A financing rounds to support development of its unconventional Xuanniao-R rocket concept, Space News reports. The two-stage, 70-meter-long, 3.8m-diameter Xuanniao-R launcher features an aerodynamic deceleration and horizontal landing approach to reusability, with Nayuta targeting a debut test flight of the Xuanniao-R in the first half of 2027.

Probably not going to meet that target … While Nayuta Space claims its aerodynamic deceleration approach can reduce the dependence on a launcher engines’ reignition, propulsive braking, and high-precision control capabilities for vertical recovery, the approach will demand new aerodynamic structures, bringing challenges, including increased weight and complexity. The size of the launcher, the novel and unproven approach, and uncertain funding levels suggest that the 2027 timeline for a debut flight is very ambitious.

New record set for safe booster landings. On Tuesday, SpaceX launched another routine Falcon 9 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, putting yet another batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites into orbit. It was the 611th successful recovery overall of a Falcon booster.

That’s a lot of landings … However, a writer at NASASpaceflight.com, Alex Alcantarilla Romera, noted that this actually represents a significant milestone. With this landing, SpaceX has set a record for consecutive successful booster landings at 268. This matters because with its Starship program, SpaceX ultimately aims to land humans back on Earth via vertical landing, and demonstrating a sustained record of success with this method builds confidence in this technology.

Starship nearing Flight 12. SpaceX on Thursday conducted a 15-second test firing of the Super Heavy booster stage for its Starship launch vehicle, and it appeared to go well based on independent videos of the test. This was a critical test in the campaign to ready the newest iteration of Starship, V3, for its debut launch. SpaceX has not announced a launch date, but mid-May appears possible.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/rocket-report-flying-past-peak-falcon-9-rocket-lab-revenue-soars/

The bottom line: Astronauts likely won’t exceed Artemis II’s distance from Earth on most lunar landing missions, but it’s conceivable that on some occasions, circumstances will align to propel a crew a little beyond the 252,756-mile mark. The sure bet will come when someone finally takes aim at Mars.

“Big disappointment”

Haise, the only Apollo 13 astronaut still living, didn’t care much for the record he and his crewmates set in 1970. It was a consolation prize, of sorts, for Haise. You probably know the story of Apollo 13’s aborted lunar landing and the around-the-clock, high-stakes effort to bring the crew home.

Still, among the more than 100 billion people who have walked the Earth in human history, the Artemis II astronauts have ventured farther from the cradle than anyone else. Sure, it’s not walking on the Moon, but it’s something more than a piece of trivia.

Haise, 92, spoke with Ars as Artemis II made its way back to Earth earlier this month. We present our conversation below, lightly edited for clarity.

Ars: How closely have you followed the Artemis II mission?

Fred Haise: Not real close. Today, I have not seen anything. I just got home from my great-grandson’s baseball game. I noticed, from their projected flight plan, they’re past the Moon, sort of on their cruise back toward Earth for the reentry. I’ve seen the pictures they’ve shot, which are excellent. They have better cameras and better equipment than we had on Apollo, because it really looks like they got much higher-resolution pictures than we were able to from that altitude.

Ars: I presume this all brings back some memories for you.

Haise: Vaguely. When they splash down Friday, if you go to the next day, Saturday, the 11th, that’s when I launched, 56 years ago. So, yes, I’ve lived several lifetimes, the Shuttle program, then in the business world. It was a long time ago.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/artemis-ii-broke-fred-haises-distance-record-but-he-is-happy-to-pass-it-on/

The US Space Force released a list Friday of a dozen companies working on Space-Based Interceptors for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome initiative, a multilayer defense system to shield US territory from drones and ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile attacks.

The roster of Golden Dome Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) contractors, some of which were previously reported, includes Anduril Industries, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Mission Systems, GITAI USA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quindar, Raytheon, Sci-Tec, SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Turion Space.

The Space Force made 20 individual awards the 12 companies in late 2025 and early 2026 using an acquisition mechanism known as Other Transaction Authority, or OTA, agreements. OTAs allow the Pentagon to bypass federal acquisition regulations and cast a wide net to attract a larger number of potential contractors, and are especially useful for rapid prototyping. That is exactly what the Space Force wants to see with the first phase of the SBI program.

The agreements have a combined value of up to $3.2 billion, and will capitalize on a mix of public and private investment to move SBIs closer to testing in low-Earth orbit.

Officials have not released details of each company’s contribution, but the contractors come to the SBI program with different skill sets. The agreements are for early stage development and tech demos, not for full-scale production, which will come with a significantly higher price tag.

“No additional information will be available at this time due to operational security requirements regarding the SBI program,” the Space Force said in a statement.

The usual players

Some of the companies on the list, such as SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, are well known in the space industry. They seem positioned to become lead or prime contractors. Others, such as Anduril and True Anomaly, are full-stack developers that are newer to the space industry but have lofty ambitions in the national security market. Sci-Tec and Quindar have expertise in software. Turion develops space sensing technology, and GITAI USA had its start as an in-space robotics company.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/this-is-whos-developing-golden-domes-orbital-interceptors-if-theyre-ever-built/

“Through these contracts, Thales Alenia Space will call on the full sum of our expertise to expand our knowledge base and push back the frontiers of the cislunar exploration,” Massimo Claudio Comparini, a senior official, said in 2020 when the contracts were announced.

Ars reached out to Thales on Wednesday evening for a comment about the corrosion issues. We received no reply until Friday morning, when a spokesperson said, “We are working on a statement. We will come back to you early next week.”

Northrop Grumman provided a comment within several hours of a request on Wednesday.

The European Space Agency, which was overseeing European contributions to the Gateway, finally offered a comment on Friday. The agency attributed the issue to a “combination of factors,” including materials.

“Following the identification of corrosion on HALO, a comprehensive investigation was promptly initiated,” a European Space Agency spokesperson said. “Preliminary findings indicate that the issue likely results from a combination of factors, including aspects of the forging process, surface treatment, and material properties.”

After the issue was discovered, the European Space Agency established a “tiger team” to investigate. “Based on the investigation and available data, the corrosion issue was understood to be technically manageable and did not constitute a showstopper for I‑HAB, which was, in any case, in better conditions than HALO from [a] corrosion point of view,” the spokesperson said.

The I-HAB module remains under construction and has not yet been delivered to NASA. Its fate remains unclear as European space officials contemplate their participation in the Moon base initiative.

After publication of this story on Friday, Axiom Space confirmed that it has also experienced corrosion issues. In a statement, the company said: “Axiom Space has experienced a similar phenomenon with the first module; we are leveraging the expertise of NASA and Thales Alenia Space to address the issue. Module 1 is on track to launch in 2028.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/well-this-is-embarrassing-the-lunar-gateways-primary-modules-are-corroded/

But where money does that come from? … SpaceX expects more than 90 percent of that market, or $26.5 trillion, to stem from the AI sector. The vast majority of that, $22.7 trillion, could come ​from AI for businesses. The company is moving ahead with an IPO expected this summer targeting a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion and seeking ⁠to raise about $75 billion, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history. “We believe we have identified the largest actionable total addressable market in human ​history,” according to the filing.

Falcon boosters have now landed 600 times. SpaceX completed its 600th Falcon booster landing during a Starlink mission Sunday, Spaceflight Now reports. The Starlink 17-22 mission added another 25 broadband Internet satellites into the company’s low Earth orbit constellation that consists of more than 10,200 spacecraft.

Don’t forget the hard-working ships … SpaceX used Falcon 9 first stage booster B1097, which was flying for the seventh time. It previously launched Sentinel-6B, Twilight, and five previous batches of Starlink satellites. A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1097 landed on the SpaceX drone ship, “Of Course I Still Love You.” It was the 191st landing on this vessel. Another droneship, “Just Read the Instructions,” will now be dedicated to supporting Starship operations.

Two steps forward, one step back for New Glenn. The third flight of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn launcher began Sunday with the company’s first successful reflight of an orbital-class booster, but ended with a setback for Jeff Bezos’ flagship rocket, Ars reports. After the launch, the booster settled onto the ship for a smoky but on-target touchdown less than 10 minutes after liftoff. The landing marked the end of the second flight for this booster, a stunning success for the company.

Second-stage issues … But Blue Origin could not celebrate the achievement for long. Within a couple of hours, it became clear that something went wrong with the mission’s remaining milestones. Blue Origin confirmed New Glenn’s upper stage missed its aim and released its payload, a cellular broadband communications satellite for AST SpaceMobile, into an inaccurate orbit. The satellite later reentered Earth’s atmosphere. The second stage issue will force Blue Origin to stand down New Glenn at a time when NASA needs the vehicle to ramp up operations to support the Artemis Program.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/rocket-report-some-canadians-dont-want-a-spaceport-falcon-hits-600-landings/

Specifically suited

The Vast Astronaut Flight Suit was developed with the company’s clients in mind, from its fit to its features.

Worn as either a one- or two-piece garment by zipping (or unzipping) the jacket from the pants, the flight suit will be tailored to each crew member while also offering increased comfort and mobility through back vents and shoulder gussets. The suit also has pockets and hook-and-loop fasteners (Velcro) so tools can be easily stowed and retrieved.

With utility in mind, Vast sought to create a highly functional flight suit optimized for both training on Earth and daily use aboard Haven-1 in orbit.

Credit: Vast

“In microgravity, you need your hands free and your tools always within reach,” said former NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, who is also advising Vast. “You’re constantly moving through small spaces and positioning your body in ways we don’t experience on Earth.”

Despite its clean white color and uniform design, the suit also provides for points of personal customization. Each crew’s suits will sport their own mission patch, and it has a place for each crew member’s flight badge, “wings” that they will individually earn from Vast “by launching, living on orbit and performing mission operations in space,” according to the company.

Separate from the flight suit but along the same lines, each Vast crew member will also wear the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive, a timepiece designed by the Swiss luxury watchmaker IWC Schaffhausen and tested in partnership with Vast. IWC engineered the watch to meet the challenges presented during human spaceflight, including replacing the crown with a more glove-friendly rotating bezel. Vast ensured the watch could withstand vibrations and pressure changes and be compatible with the Haven-1 on-board environment.

IWC Schaffhausen partnered with Vast to certify its Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive, a wristwatch designed for space.

Credit: IWC Schaffhausen

(IWC Schaffhausen is offering the Pilot’s Venturer Vertical Drive to anyone for $28,200.)

“It’s something astronauts can actually use,” said Feustel. “This is the flight suit for the commercial, crewed spaceflight era, and it’s really just the beginning.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/04/vast-reveals-flight-suit-tests-timepiece-for-commercial-space-station/