The modern rise of commercial satellite imagery and free public resources such as Europe’s Copernicus satellite imagery has also enabled news agencies and open source intelligence researchers to provide additional transparency on conflicts around the world. But US satellite firms such as Planet Labs and Vantor have largely restricted imagery related to the ongoing Iran war after the US government raised concerns about security risks.

Such restrictions have forced journalists and researchers to rely more heavily on alternatives such as the free Copernicus satellite images and European firms that provide commercial satellite imagery. For example, the independent investigative journalism group Bellingcat released an open source tool that uses Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite imagery to map possible war damage in Iran and the Gulf region.

Similarly, The New York Times and Washington Post have relied on Copernicus satellite imagery to investigate the extent of damage to US military bases and radar installations from Iranian missile and drone strikes. Such reporting comes at a time when the Pentagon under Trump’s administration has become less willing to share information about US military casualties or damage to military assets during the war.

The 24-hour delay in the release of Copernicus satellite imagery is less onerous than US satellite firms’ restrictions and would still allow journalists and researchers to monitor the war.

But the new restriction does create additional friction in providing timely transparency around what is happening. The potentially widening war has already killed thousands of people and created a global energy shock from ongoing disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz shipping lanes—not to mention already costing the United States more than $37 billion, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting another $70 billion.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/european-union-grants-us-request-to-restrict-satellite-images-of-iran-war-region/

The Space Force originally estimated the Lane 1 launch providers would compete for at least 30 task orders over a five-year period. Officials put a ceiling of $5.6 billion on the Lane 1 contract to cover these 30 missions. The Space Force capped the Lane 2 contract at $13.7 billion last year, a number officials thought was sufficient to cover an estimated 54 launches projected for procurement through 2029.

But things have changed rapidly. In April, Space Systems Command said it had identified 25 additional Lane 2 missions on top of the 54 included in the original contract just one year before. Now, the Space Force is tripling the maximum value for the Lane 1 contract. The service has not said how many more missions it expects to order in Lane 1 beyond the initial estimate of 30.

With Friday’s announcement, the combined maximum value of Lane 1 and Lane 2 has reached more than $30 billion, and the number is likely to climb again. Space Force officials have not publicly identified exactly what missions they plan to add to each of the NSSL contracts. But there are a few obvious programs driving the military’s rising launch demand.

One is the Space Force’s recent award of multibillion-dollar contracts to SpaceX for the deployment of numerous satellites for the Pentagon’s Space Data Network and Airborne Moving Target Indicator programs. The SDN and AMTI satellite constellations will provide global connectivity and targeting information for US forces. Another is Golden Dome, the Trump administration’s proposed missile defense shield, which is expected to include an untold number of space-based missile warning sensors and space-based interceptors.

The Trump administration requested $71.1 billion for the Space Force in fiscal year 2027, up from approximately $40 billion allocated for fiscal year 2026. The House Appropriations Committee’s draft 2027 budget for the Pentagon includes $55.5 billion for the Space Force, somewhat less than the White House’s request. The Senate has not released its Pentagon budget bill.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/the-space-force-is-now-seeking-to-buy-up-to-30-billion-in-rocket-launches/

This view of the payload deck of the Vikram-1 rocket’s upper stage was captured moments after orbital insertion Saturday. The rocket deployed two small CubeSats and hosted several more payloads that remained attached to the upper stage.

Credit: Skyroot Aerospace

Skyroot’s breakthrough launch comes as India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeks to supercharge the country’s space industry. India has long had a robust space program, with government-developed rockets such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle and the larger LVM3 often attracting commercial customers from the United States and Europe. India became the fourth country to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon in 2023, and is working on an oft-delayed human-rated crew capsule to fly astronauts to low-Earth orbit.

Modi has told the Indian space industry to increase its annual launch total from about five launches per year to 50 before the end of the decade. The prime minister called Chandana and congratulated the Skyroot team after Saturday’s launch.

“This is a defining moment in India’s space journey,” Modi said in a statement. “The growing participation of our private sector is opening new frontiers and accelerating innovation. This achievement will encourage countless youngsters to dream bigger and innovate fearlessly.”

Chandana, a former engineer at India’s space agency, founded Skyroot in 2018 with another ISRO scientist, Naga Bharath Daka. They decided to focus on developing a solid-fueled launcher first, optimizing for what Chandana described as the lowest development time and the lowest cost per launch. “We wanted to get to an orbital launch vehicle in a few years,” Chandana told Ars.

“It’s a test launch” he said at the time. “Statistically, the first launch from a private company almost always fails. It’s very difficult to succeed with all new systems. But I think we have done everything we can do to ensure the first launch goes well.”

Indeed, the first launch went very well, exceeding all expectations. A second Vikram-1 launch could happen before the end of the year, Chandana said.

“This is a 100 percent designed in India rocket, a 100 percent made in India rocket, built by 100 percent Indian people, for India and for the world,” Chandana said after the launch Saturday. “This was a historic moment for India, but also a very proud moment for the global space sector because the world needs more access to space.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/indias-first-privately-developed-rocket-reaches-orbit-on-dramatic-debut-launch/

How many launches to build a data center megaconstellation? In a new feature, Ars looks into the technical challenges of building orbital data centers and assesses what it might take to build SpaceX’s proposed 1 million satellite megaconstellation. The key to all of this is not radiation or the need to cool data centers in space. The single-most important factor is cheap access to space. For the purpose of the analysis, Ars modeled three scenarios: high-performing Starship and low-satellite mass; medium-performing Starship and satellite mass; and low-performing Starship and high-mass satellites.

The numbers are pretty daunting … The optimistic scenario would require 17,500 Starship launches to deploy 1 million satellites. The most pessimistic scenario would require 77,000 total launches. Over a period of five years, by the way, for the pessimistic scenario that would be 42 Starship launches a day. As for total costs, including launches, satellites, and ground systems, under the most optimistic scenario the constellation could be deployed for $1.45 trillion. Pessimistically? Hold your breath: It’s $9.8 trillion.

NASA mission moves to Falcon Heavy. NASA’s SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the space agency said this week. As part of the announcement, NASA did not announce a launch date for the heliophysics mission, which had originally been scheduled to launch on United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket.

Six new eyes on the Sun … The mission is flying as a rideshare sponsored by the United States Space Force’s Space Systems Command. SunRISE comprises six toaster-oven-size small satellites, or SmallSats, that will operate as one giant radio dish slightly above geosynchronous orbit (about 22,000 miles, or 35,000 kilometers, in altitude) to track the rumbles of radio bursts coming from within the Sun’s atmosphere, or corona. (submitted by Tfargo04)

Next three launches

July 16: Starship | Flight Test 13 | Starbase, Texas | 22:45 UTC

July 18: Vikram 1 | Aagaman test flight | Satish Dhawan Space Center, India | 06:00 UTC

July 20: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-39 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif. | 14:00 UTC

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/rocket-report-indias-vikram-1-nears-debut-flight-ast-to-become-rocket-company/

SpaceX called off a test flight of its powerful Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster as the countdown clock reached zero Thursday at the company’s spaceport in South Texas.

The launch team at Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border, aimed to launch the more than 400-foot-tall rocket at 5:45 pm local time (6:45 pm EDT; 22:45 UTC). The countdown proceeded smoothly throughout the day, culminating in the loading of more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen into the two-stage rocket.

But the computers controlling the countdown called an abort during the Super Heavy booster’s engine startup sequence. SpaceX scrubbed the launch attempt, and engineers began preparations to drain the rocket’s propellant tanks. Officials did not immediately announce when they plan to try to launch again.

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, posted on his social media platform X that the company might not be able to launch during the next available opportunity on Friday evening. “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” Musk wrote. “Now offloading propellant. Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days.”

Later Thursday evening, Musk added that ground teams at Starbase will replace two of the Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster. “Most probable launch timing is early next week.”

Tuning the engine

The Super Heavy booster has 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines, each capable of generating more than half a million pounds of thrust. The engines are supposed to ignite in a staggered sequence after activation of the launch pad’s water-cooled flame diverter, designed to protect the launch facility from the intense heat and vibrations during liftoff of the world’s most powerful rocket.

SpaceX officials did not say how many engines failed to start during the ignition sequence, but a graphic of engine status on SpaceX’s live video stream indicated four of the 33 engines never ignited. The engines on this Starship and Super Heavy come from SpaceX’s third-generation Raptor design. This test flight—the 13th full-scale Starship launch—is the second to use the Raptor 3 engine flying on SpaceX’s upgraded Starship Version 3 rocket.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/spacex-scrubs-starship-launch-after-some-of-its-engines-didnt-start/

Anil Menon, a NASA flight surgeon, felt crushed nine years ago as his hopes and aspirations collapsed around him.

For the fourth time, he had diligently applied to become an astronaut at the US space agency, seeking to fulfill a lifelong dream. Although he made it to the final round, NASA had once again rejected his application at the end of the grueling process.

“I was so sad, and I admitted defeat,” Menon said. “I just did not see a pathway forward. So I pretty much, at that point in time, gave up on being an astronaut. I thought there was a zero percent chance.”

He was 39 years old. In 2017, Menon was already half a decade older than the average age of those selected to become astronaut candidates. He felt a door closing, and looking for a new one to open, devoted time to thinking deeply about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

His life was not without adventure up to that point—far from it. An emergency physician by training, Menon had practiced medicine on Mount Everest, provided relief in Port-au-Prince after a devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and flown search-and-rescue missions with the US military in Afghanistan.

As he considered what should come next, Menon journaled daily about his passions, purpose, and principles. Eventually, he settled on space medicine. If he could not go to space, he would help others do so. And collectively, humanity would advance. “I needed that to be crystal clear in my mind,” Menon said.

It had to be, because Menon and his wife Anna were about to make some momentous decisions. Decisions that would ultimately culminate in not one of them, but both, going to space.

Facing a difficult decision

After spending his childhood years in the Midwest, Menon studied at Harvard University (neurobiology) before attending Stanford University to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering and, in 2006, a medical degree. He worked as an emergency physician in Los Angeles. He also joined the Air National Guard, became a pilot, and worked as a physician on search-and-rescue helicopters in Afghanistan.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/a-most-improbable-astronaut-just-went-to-space/

SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.

Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.

The company’s founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company’s plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company’s numbers about the satellite’s size and power capabilities.

“There’s not some magic that’s necessary that doesn’t exist,” Musk said during the video, reflecting on the challenge of building AI1 satellites. “A lot of this is technology we’ve already made for Starlink V3 satellites. Basically, we don’t think this is a super hard problem.”

As Ars wrote in part 1 of this series, the physics of orbital data centers are indeed non-magical. But the economics are, to put it mildly, challenging.

This subject has sparked a broad debate about the near-term viability of this technology, both in terms of feasibility and whether it’s all hype now that SpaceX is a publicly traded company.

SpaceX’s design for its AI1 satellite.

Credit: SpaceX

Iridium Communications chief executive Matt Desch, a long-time, level-headed satellite industry executive, was asked during an earnings call earlier this year what he thought about the concept.

“It’s a hot, hot area right now of discussion, mainly because of Starlink’s announcement and some others,” Desch replied. “It looks like a problem that can be solved in space… (But) there’s massive technical challenges to overcome.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/how-hard-is-it-to-build-orbital-data-centers-actually/

But flat-packed, stackable satellites allow operators to deliver more capability to orbit faster. Starship will take this to the next level with its capacity to launch SpaceX’s more powerful Starlink V3s.

“On a Falcon 9, they can only launch 27 of these V2s,” Jones said. “The Starship can launch 60 of these larger V3s. What this means is bandwidth per launch amounts to 61,000 gigabits per second on Starship versus 2,600 gigabits per second for V2s on Falcon 9. In other words, almost 24 times as much bandwidth can be deployed per launch on Starship versus the Falcon 9 and the V2 satellites. That’s huge.”

Of course, costs are not the same as prices. SpaceX charges commercial customers $74 million for a dedicated Falcon 9 launch, about five times the internal launch cost. This still makes Falcon 9 the most affordable and reliable launch option in the Western world. It’s too early to know where or when SpaceX will set Starship launch prices. Part of the calculation will hinge on the progress of SpaceX’s competitors, such as Blue Origin.

“Certainly, that’s what the industry wants to see, is two equal players,” Jones said. “It absolutely contributes to the economics in terms of price per kilogram.”

“We’ve got these two rocket companies vying for positions,” Jones said in an interview. “I think it’s going to be important that we have competition here, and one company seems to be ahead right now, but whether you’re first to market or a fast follower, I think we would all benefit from seeing this competition between these two companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX. I think that’s critical.”

Some economists believe Starship is simply too big to fulfill all of SpaceX’s lofty goals, but Jones doesn’t buy it.

“Sometimes, when you increase the size of any type of transportation system, it creates something called diseconomies of scale, where the marginal costs start to increase,” Jones said. “Now, I think Starship is going to prove a new price point, but some think that when you get too big, kind of like the [Airbus] A380 airplane that tried to compete with the [Boeing] 747, it created all sorts of demands and types of maintenance.

“Could the Starship follow that path and become not relevant? I don’t really believe it,” she said. “I think that they’re going to have to prove it. They’re going to have to prove over time that they can fly the Starship and continue to see marginal costs decrease, and hopefully the space sector will discover a new sweet spot, but right now it’s the Falcon 9.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/rocket-developers-used-to-chase-satellite-trends-is-the-inverse-now-true/

The proliferation of nuclear power in space got a little more real Tuesday with the launch of a small satellite developed by a Florida-based company specializing in nuclear micro-power technology.

It’s a long way from launching a bona fide nuclear reactor, a breakthrough that could help power a permanent Moon base and efficiently drive rockets throughout the Solar System. But you have to start somewhere.

The satellite from Miami-based City Labs is named BOHR, short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability, and it launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission Tuesday alongside 80 other payloads. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket released the BOHR satellite into an orbit between 350 and 400 miles (nearly 600 km) in altitude.

Starting small

City Labs bills the BOHR mission as “the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and first nuclear CubeSat.” CubeSats are modest in scale, and images released by City Labs suggest BOHR is built on a “1U” CubeSat platform, a cubical design measuring about the same size as a softball. BOHR’s power source is a nuclear betavoltaic battery that generates electricity from the decay of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

“This is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space,” said Peter Cabauy, CEO of City Labs, in a statement. “BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables persistent, always-on payload operations that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life.”

City Labs will use its experimental NanoTritium power generator in demonstration mode to supply electricity to a payload onboard the BOHR CubeSat. The spacecraft itself uses conventional solar power for regular operations, the company said. Betavoltaic batteries are best suited for low-power applications that require a reliable, long-duration source of electricity. These use cases include remote terrestrial sensors—such as in undersea or polar locations—and instrumentation for secure communications. City Labs is also studying the use of its NanoTritium technology to power implantable medical devices.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/miami-based-city-labs-achieves-a-first-for-commercial-nuclear-power-in-space/

Written by Thomas Jefferson in 1801 while he was serving as vice president (and therefore the head of the Senate), the manual influenced both houses of Congress as to how to approach order and decorum.

Glenn also took with him a 13-star flag that was used to identify General George Washington on the battlefield. Believed to be inspired by the details on the general’s uniform in 1777, Washington’s Headquarters Flag (also known as the Commander-in-Chief standard) flew with Glenn in the lead-up to the bicentennial commemorations of Washington’s death in 1799.

John Glenn flew a replica of General George Washington’s 1777 Headquarters Flag aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, in the then-lead-up to the bicentennial commemorations of Washington’s death in 1799.

Credit: Museum of the American Revolution

Both the flag and the manual, though, were reproductions. The originals are in museums and deemed too fragile and irreplaceable to risk being launched into space. The copy that Glenn flew was a 1993 reprint, and the flag was made for Glenn to fly in 1998.

Another replica flag steeped in American history was aboard the International Space Station from November 2014 through June 2015. NASA astronaut Terry Virts was provided the 15-star flag by Fort McHenry in Maryland, after it was flown over the historic site for Flag Day during the bicentennial year of the Battle of Baltimore. The original of that flag was seen by Francis Scott Key to “yet wave,” leading him to write a poem that became the US anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, in 1814.

Nailing down the (possible) oldest

In May 1869, a 17.6-karat gold spike was used to ceremonially complete the First Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Summit in the then-Utah Territory. Today, the site is a National Historical Park located near where Northrop Grumman builds and tests solid rocket motors for space launch vehicles.

Ninety-six years later, a replica of the Golden Spike was launched on Atlantis with the STS-38 crew.

It was another spike, however, that is believed to be the oldest Americana artifact to have flown into space.

Is this the oldest piece of Americana to fly into space? This copper spike was an original component of the hull of the USS Constitution, dating back to 1787. It was flown aboard Atlantis on the first space shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir in 1995.

Credit: USS Constitution Museum

“In honor of the 200th anniversary of the commissioning of the USS Constitution, ‘Old Ironsides,’ this copper spike, an original component of the hull of the USS Constitution, [was] flown on the United States space shuttle,” a plaque presenting the nail reads.

The spike, which was removed from the ship in 1992 and dates back to 1797, was aboard Atlantis for the entirety of the STS-71 mission, from June 27 through July 7, 1995. The mission marked the first rendezvous and docking between a NASA shuttle and the former Russian space station, Mir.

Another Constitution piece, a fragment of wood of similar age, was launched into orbit with the Hubble Space Telescope on STS-31. The piece was on loan at the US Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/whats-the-oldest-americana-flown-in-space/