But observing objects in cislunar space from the Earth is not easy. First, the Moon is a quarter-million miles away, so spacecraft or debris will appear vanishingly faint to sensors near the Earth. The Moon and the Sun far outshine these objects. Second, using a satellite stationed near the Moon to obtain a fix and vector for an object requires precise navigation, a capability not readily available without reliable GPS signals.

If anyone knows exactly where a satellite is around the Moon today, it is due to the generosity of its operator. If they choose to, spacecraft owners can provide detailed ephemeris data, revealing their location and movement, but there’s no way to force any operator to publish this information. Some operators may not want to share their location for competitive or strategic advantage.

There is also the risk of a satellite breakup in lunar orbit that could create a field of space debris. There is currently no way to track such small fragments at lunar distances, raising the risk of damaging or destructive collisions. If a lunar satellite disintegrated, it could “compromise international science missions and destabilize emerging lunar economic activity,” according to a 2025 report from the Mitre Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that manages several federally funded research centers.

Some generals bring the subject of lunar military operations back to Earth. In 2024, Ars asked Space Force Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, then a one-star general, about the military’s view of the Moon. He identified a potential adversary’s use of the Moon or orbits around them as a launch point for an attack directed at US assets closer to the Earth.

“We’re not fighting over mineral deposits on an asteroid somewhere. We’re not, right now, shepherding convoys to Mars,” Mastalir said. “These are terrestrial conflicts that we hope we can deter. We also don’t want them to, although it’s more and more likely that they may, extend into space or even start in space.

“Someday in the future, that may change, but for now, I’d be more concerned just about what these new orbits present, what that does for potential attack vectors to our traditional operating [areas].”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/nasa-is-leading-the-way-to-the-moon-but-the-military-wont-be-far-behind/

“These events illustrate the need for rapid characterization of anomalous events to enable clarity of the operating environment,” it said.

Starlink provided a few details shortly after the December 2025 incident, saying on December 18 that an “anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.” Starlink added that the satellite was “largely intact” but “tumbling,” and would reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and “fully demise” within weeks.

In December, Starlink seemed confident that it could prevent future anomalies. “Our engineers are rapidly working to [identify the] root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event,” Starlink said in the December 18 post.

We asked SpaceX today whether it has determined the cause of the December anomaly or the one on Sunday, and will update this article if we get a response.

Starlink reported near-crash after Chinese launch

Starlink also had a near-crash in December, in a different incident about a week before the “tumbling” satellite. Starlink Senior VP Michael Nicolls wrote on December 12 that a Chinese company had launched nine satellites without coordinating with other space users. Lack of coordination increases the risk of collisions, he said.

“As far as we know, no coordination or deconfliction with existing satellites operating in space was performed, resulting in a 200 meter close approach between one of the deployed satellites and STARLINK-6079 (56120) at 560 km altitude,” Nicolls wrote at the time, referring to the Chinese launch. “Most of the risk of operating in space comes from the lack of coordination between satellite operators—this needs to change.”

Coordination can only become more important if SpaceX goes through with its stated plan of launching a million satellites to create an orbital data center.

Under normal circumstances, Starlink satellites reaching their end-of-life date follow “a targeted reentry approach to deorbit satellites over the open ocean, away from populated islands and heavily trafficked airline and maritime routes,” Starlink says in a document on “satellite demisability.” But satellites that fall to Earth unexpectedly should pose no risk to people on the ground because they are designed to “demise with extremely low impact energy,” according to Starlink.

“A critical aspect of sustainable satellite design is demisability, which ensures that satellites fully break up and burn up during atmospheric reentry,” Starlink says in the document. “Any fragments that do not completely demise should have negligible impact energy.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/starlink-satellite-breaks-apart-into-tens-of-objects-spacex-confirms-anomaly/

The mission will last more than nine days from liftoff to splashdown. After separation from the SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft will spend a little more than a day in an elliptical high-altitude orbit ranging more than 40,000 miles from Earth. The astronauts and mission controllers in Houston will spend this time activating and testing the spacecraft, with a particular focus on Orion’s environmental control and life support systems, which were not part of an unpiloted Orion test flight four years ago.

Glover and Wiseman will take manual control of the spacecraft to assess Orion’s handling characteristics, commanding thrusters to guide the capsule back toward the SLS rocket’s upper stage to practice for docking maneuvers on future Artemis missions. Assuming everything checks out, Orion will fire its main engine for a translunar injection, or TLI, burn about 25 hours into the mission. This is the event that will send the astronauts toward the Moon.

This mission will not land. That will come on a future Artemis mission—currently slated for Artemis IV—no earlier than 2028. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop commercial human-rated landers to ferry astronauts from the Orion spacecraft in lunar orbit down to the Moon’s surface and back. Those landers, along with new lunar spacesuits, won’t be ready for a landing mission next year, as NASA officials hoped.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a shakeup of the Artemis program last week, shifting focus from building a space station in orbit around the Moon to constructing a base on the lunar surface. The program changes also included replanning the next Artemis mission—Artemis III—from a landing mission to a flight to dock an Orion crew capsule with one or both commercial landers closer to Earth.

The change will increase the chances of launching Artemis III next year. Sending SpaceX or Blue Origin’s landers to the Moon will require a mastery of in-orbit refueling, and neither company has demonstrated the capability yet. Refueling is not required for a test mission in low-Earth orbit on Artemis III.

“Over the last 10 weeks, the agency has prepared a crewed lunar test vehicle and also restructured the program that it belongs to,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s associate administrator. “This was done deliberately. A crew that understands that campaign flies with greater purpose, a workforce that sees the road ahead holds a higher standard. This flight and the future reinforce each other. This is how Apollo worked, and this is how we will work.

“Behind this flight stands a campaign, landings, a lunar base, nuclear propulsion into deep space. That begins, not ends, with what happens on Wednesday evening,” Kshatriya said.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/after-more-than-53-years-humans-may-finally-return-to-the-moon-this-week/

After speaking with a number of officials both in industry and the government, here’s an overview of what I believe is happening.

How we got here

NASA has never been good at transitions, be it from the end of Apollo to the space shuttle or the painful period from 2011 to 2020 when the shuttle stopped flying and the US space agency had to turn, hat in hand, to Russia to get its astronauts to the International Space Station.

As far back as 2018, then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was sounding the alarm about the need to find a replacement for the space station if the United States wanted to maintain an ongoing human presence in low-Earth orbit. By December 2021, NASA had established support, generally at the level of a few hundred million dollars, for four different companies to work on developing private stations: Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Nanoracks (later became Voyager), and Northrop Grumman (which later withdrew).

Since then, each company has substantially modified its approach, and a new player, Vast Space, has entered the competition. All were waiting for clarity from NASA on what, exactly, it wanted. This would come as part of a “requirements” document that would kick off a second round of competition. It was generally expected that this second phase would winnow the competition to two private vendors. NASA intended to help the companies develop their stations with funding and expertise and then become one of several customers.

Since 2021, the companies have faced a series of difficulties, and from the outside, it was never clear that any were on track to have a viable, independent station by 2030, when NASA intended to deorbit the space station.

At the same time, the US space agency has dragged its feet on initiating the second phase of the competition. Then, last August, the acting director of NASA, Sean Duffy, issued a “directive” that brought significant revisions to the program. Almost immediately, though, it seemed like key elements of this directive might be walked back, leading to additional months of confusion.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/what-happens-next-with-nasas-plan-to-replace-the-iss-source-it-could-get-ugly/

More to come?… Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, the Space Force’s deputy chief of operations, told a House subcommittee Wednesday that the military was looking at moving more missions off of ULA’s Vulcan rocket to other providers. Currently, only ULA’s Vulcan and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are certified for national security launches. The Vulcan rocket is expected to be grounded until at least this summer as engineers investigate a recurring problem with the vehicle’s solid rocket boosters.

NASA is blowing things up. A team of NASA engineers is intentionally blowing up models of methane-fueled rockets in Florida to see just how big of a bang they make when they explode, Ars reports. Methane is the launch industry’s chic new rocket fuel because it is better suited for reusable engines. Heavy- and super-heavy-lift rockets like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, ULA’s Vulcan, and SpaceX’s Starship now use it. But rockets sometimes blow up. The US Space Force and NASA, the agencies responsible for range safety at America’s federally owned spaceports, want to better understand how the hazards from an exploding methane-fueled rocket might differ from those of other launchers. This is important as launches become more routine, with companies foreseeing multiple flights per day from launch pads that are, in some cases, just 1 or 2 miles apart.

For good reason… Federal safety officials require the evacuation of blast danger areas around each launch pad as rockets are fueled for flight, and some companies have raised concerns that SpaceX, which has the largest of the methane-burning rockets, could disrupt their operations on neighboring launch pads. The ongoing explosive yield tests at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, are meant to help officials fine-tune their hazard analyses to determine the proper size of the danger areas for methane-fueled rockets. Hopefully, the data will show the danger areas are too conservative, and the keep-out zones will shrink. The concept is simple. “We put fuel in a rocket, blow it up in a remote location, and measure how big the boom is,” said Jason Hopper, deputy manager for the methalox assessment project at NASA’s Stennis Space Center.

Next three launches

March 28: Electron | Daughter of the Stars | Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand | 09:14 UTC

March 28: Spectrum | Onward and Upward | Andøya Rocket Range, Norway | 20:00 UTC

March 29: Atlas V | Amazon Leo LA-05 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 07:53 UTC

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/rocket-report-russian-megaconstellation-takes-off-isar-preps-for-second-launch/

In addition to efficiency, a nuclear-electric propulsion system has the benefit of using conventional plasma thrusters. But instead of using solar power to energize the thrusters’ xenon fuel, SR-1 will use electricity generated from a nuclear reactor.

“Our nuclear program, SR-1, is not about going and lobbying for billions of dollars to undertake a brand-new mission,” Isaacman said. “Honestly, we haven’t won the right to be able to do that after $20 billion worth of failed programs over time. This is why we’re taking hardware that we already have, a reactor that’s mostly built, fuel that’s mostly paid for over time.”

Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element, seen here under construction last year, will form the centerpiece of the SR-1 Freedom mission.

Credit: Lanteris Space Systems

NASA officials did not disclose an estimated cost for the SR-1 mission.

After proving nuclear propulsion works, “then you can come back and maybe ask for more [funding] in the future when you show that it can be done,” Isaacman said.

“SR-1 Freedom primarily has that one new system, the reactor, on a spacecraft bus that already exists,” Sinacore said. “The timeline will match the need with the next Mars launch window in December 2028. Orbital mechanics does not negotiate, and the scope must bend around this deadline.”

There are still some hurdles that won’t be easy to jump. Readying any large space mission, especially one as novel as a nuclear propulsion demo, for launch in less than three years will require sharp focus, resistance to mission creep, and near-perfect execution. Sinacore laid out an ambitious timeline for SR-1, with mission design complete by June and large-scale assembly beginning at the start of 2028. If the mission misses a launch opportunity in late 2028, the next Earth-Mars alignment won’t happen until early 2031.

“We are not trying to do everything,” Sinacore said. “We are trying to do the hard thing, which is operate a coupled nuclear reactor, power conversion, and electric propulsion thruster system beyond Earth orbit for the first time ever.”

Although NASA will be the “prime integrator” for SR-1, actually launching radioactive fuel into space requires input from multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Energy. Any rocket selected to launch a nuclear-powered mission must undergo a special certification. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which NASA originally booked to launch the Gateway core module, is undergoing a nuclear certification to launch NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/here-is-nasas-plan-for-nuking-gateway-and-sending-it-to-mars/

At the end of a long day on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman looked down at a table littered with microphones and jokingly referred to the space agency’s new Moon base manager, Carlos Garcia-Galan, as the “Lunar Viceroy.” It was a bit of humor, but it also seemed to represent affection from Isaacman for a long-time NASA employee so willingly taking on a major new challenge.

Garcia-Galan was, in many ways, the emerging star at the daylong Ignition event in Washington, DC. Heretofore he has largely been an anonymous engineer at NASA who has now been thrust into a very public role of leading the agency’s ambitious Moon base initiative. (His official title, by the way, is program executive.)

Ars had a chance to speak with Garcia-Galan about NASA’s plans and, more importantly, how they might be implemented. Here is a lightly edited (for clarity) transcript of that conversation.

Ars: You were previously involved with the Lunar Gateway, which has effectively been canceled to build a Moon base, so I’d love to hear about whether this is a difficult transition for you.

Carlos Garcia-Galan: So change is always hard. But it was not hard from the perspective of having the focus on doing something that’s directly related to the objectives we have at hand, which are bringing humans back to the surface of the Moon and building an outpost. So while I do believe that an orbiting outpost has value in the overall exploration goals, it doesn’t mean that we can’t do it later. We need to be focused on the surface, and everybody wants to be on the surface. So I’m super excited, and I’m sure the rest of the Gateway team will be, once they pivot and start shifting their focus to that.

Ars: I could tell from your talk that you were really fired up about this.

Carlos Garcia-Galan: Absolutely. Who wouldn’t be? Yeah.

Ars: I mean, I would be. But I also recognize, as you said, that this is a huge challenge. What is the most pressing thing you want to do first to tackle this?

Carlos Garcia-Galan: So first of all, one of the things that we talked about today is bringing the entire NASA might and resources to bear on this. So I think, immediately, we’re going to be working with all the programs and projects that are doing something related to lunar exploration, including Gateway with the previous architecture, and trying to stitch it all together. Because there’s great work that has happened so far. We just need to basically focus on the things that are more relevant to the critical path.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/we-got-an-audience-with-the-lunar-viceroy-to-talk-how-nasa-will-build-a-moon-base/

But the Swift spacecraft will surely crash back to Earth, likely before the end of this year, without a reboost. That’s where Katalyst comes in. The company’s robotic servicing spacecraft, named Link, will attempt to rendezvous and dock with the Swift satellite, then raise its altitude to give the observatory a new lease on life.

That is, if everything goes according to plan.

Artist’s illustration of Katalyst’s Link spacecraft (top) approaching NASA’s Swift observatory (bottom).

Credit: Katalyst Space Technologies

Deadline looming

There are a few things you should know about this venture. First, Swift was never designed to be captured or reboosted in orbit. Second, this mission is the first time Katalyst will attempt to dock with another satellite in space. And third, NASA gave Katalyst a daunting timetable of just nine months to build, test, and launch the rescue mission before Swift’s altitude falls too low for a safe rendezvous.

“This is really technically ambitious,” said Ghonhee Lee, founder and CEO of Katalyst.

Launch is scheduled for June 1, and there’s little margin for error. By late summer or early fall, Swift will slip below 200 miles (320 kilometers), too low for Katalyst to have confidence in controlling its spacecraft. “It’s a lot of drag with two big spacecraft docking together, ” Lee said. “Originally, we thought we had more time.”

NASA’s goals are twofold: first, demonstrate an important capability for the future of space exploration, and second, save Swift from a fiery demise and continue its scientific observations.

“We realized that you can’t get 100 percent guaranteed success on this,” Lee said.

When Ars visited Katalyst in late February, technicians were heads-down at work stations, soldering parts, assembling solar panels, and preparing components for environmental testing. For a traditional government space mission, a project might be at this stage of manufacturing years before reaching the launch pad.

“This is not quite as mature as you would expect,” one company official said. “Keep in mind that we started this whole thing about five months ago, so we are making great progress by those standards.”

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/a-unique-nasa-satellite-is-falling-out-of-orbit-this-team-is-trying-to-rescue-it/

Those statements suggested the Space Force was likely to transfer the GPS slated to fly on the next Vulcan rocket to a different launch vehicle. That’s exactly what happened. On Friday, Space Systems Command confirmed that GPS III SV10 will now launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in late April. Read our earlier story on why the Space Force is so eager to launch GPS satellites.

Each GPS III satellite weighs more than four tons at launch. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and ULA’s Vulcan are the only launchers certified by the Space Force to launch these types of missions. With an inventory of reusable boosters flying several times per week, SpaceX can fit new missions in on relatively short notice.

“With this change, we are answering the call for rapid delivery of advanced GPS capability while the Vulcan anomaly investigation continues,” said Col. Ryan Hiserote, director of the National Security Space Launch program. “We are once again demonstrating our team’s flexibility and are fully committed to leverage all options available for responsive and reliable launch for the nation.”

The first Vulcan rocket fires off its launch pad in Florida in January 2024.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

Fall from grace

This is not a good look for United Launch Alliance, once the US military’s sole launch provider. SpaceX began launching US national security missions in 2018 after winning the right to compete for military launch contracts with its Falcon 9 rocket. The company entered the military launch market after filing a lawsuit against the Air Force in 2014 protesting the Pentagon’s decision to award ULA a multibillion-dollar sole-source contract.

The military opened a series of launch contracts to the competition, and in 2020, it selected ULA for 60 percent and SpaceX for 40 percent of its missions up for awards through the end of 2023. Last year, Space Systems Command announced the winners of a follow-on competition covering launches through the end of the decade. This time, SpaceX won the majority of the contracts, with ULA relegated to second position. The Space Force added Blue Origin as a third launch provider.

The Pentagon has maintained a policy of assured access to space since the 1990s, when the military lost several expensive, high-priority payloads in launch failures. ULA was the only provider for these launches for more than a decade, with Atlas V and Delta IV rockets providing overlap in capability to deliver most, but not all, national security payloads to orbit. The Delta IV is now out of service, and the Atlas V is nearing retirement.

Today, SpaceX alone comes closest to providing assured access to space, despite ULA’s backlog of more than $8 billion in military launch contracts.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/spacex-swipes-yet-another-military-contract-from-united-launch-alliance/

“My job now is to make sure that we can undertake such a transportation [of Discovery] within the budget dollars that we have available. And of course, most importantly, ensuring the safety of the vehicle,” said Isaacman in an interview with CNBC. “If we can’t do that, you know what? We’ve got spacecraft that are going around the moon with Artemis II, III, IV, and V.”

“Illustrative examples”

If NASA has a preference as to the two outcomes, the draft RFP does not say. Instead, it sets up both possibilities as “illustrative examples” and requests in-depth replies (no longer than 40 pages) on what it would take to accomplish each, including engineering analyses, transportation planning, preservation measures, specialized rigging systems, infrastructure coordination, regulatory compliance, and “coordinated multimodal transportation execution.”

“One example addresses the conceptual relocation of a large aerospace vehicle comparable in size and complexity to a space shuttle orbiter or solid rocket booster. The second example addresses the transportation of a smaller spacecraft capsule comparable to an Orion crew module or Mercury capsule,” reads the draft request. “These examples are intended to represent the range of transportation scenarios that NASA may need to support under this contract vehicle.”

NASA is also seeking cost estimates (though not binding price proposals) to plan and achieve each of the moves within a five-year period.

As noted by “multimodal” in the title, NASA expects the deliveries to use multiple types of transportation. It leaves those choices up to each respondent, but identifies possibilities to include “airlift, sealift, rail transport, overland heavy haul transport and barge transport,” among other specialized means of conveyance.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/03/nasa-issues-draft-request-for-moving-space-shuttle-discovery-or-orion-capsule/