Missile Report: FAA Pays More Attention to Starbase Traffic Skyroot India Traps American Customer

Pioneer's reusable upper stage for Stockspace's Nova rocket is sent for testing.

Stockspace's Nova rocket upper stage at the company's test facility in Moses Lake, Washington.

Welcome to version 9.15 of Rocket Report! The launch I'm most looking forward to in the next few weeks is Japan's Mars Moon Exploration Mission (MMX). MMX is one of the space science missions to be launched this year and is scheduled to leave Earth as soon as Monday (US time) on a Japanese H3 rocket. The spacecraft will visit Phobos and Deimos, two moons of the Mars-like asteroid, deploy a rover and collect samples for a return to Earth in 2031. Exploration at its best.

Reflect Orbital is looking to India for launch capacity. California-based Reflect Orbital, a startup trying to deliver sunlight on demand with mirrors in space, announced on Wednesday the purchase of two launches from India's Skyroot Aerospace, PayloadSpace reported. One of the launches will use the Vikram-1 Skyroot rocket, the first privately developed Indian rocket to reach orbit in July. The other will fly an upgraded rocket called Vikram-1U.

Shining light… Reflect Orbital plans to launch its first satellite next year on a SpaceX Falcon 9 spacecraft. The company's business model involves flying a constellation of about 50,000 mirrors into orbit to shine sunlight down to Earth. To produce electricity and lighting, the FCC approved the first space-based mirror satellite, Reflect, earlier this year. The company's choice of India's Skyroot also suggests that satellite operators fear a lack of launch capacity in the US as SpaceX scraps its Falcon 9 rocket in favor of the much larger but relatively unproven Starship.

LEAP targets the small satellite launch market. A Colorado rocket startup called LEAP plans to enter the dedicated small satellite launch market in 2028 as growing demand for access to orbit creates new opportunities for smaller rockets, according to Space News. The Bighorn LEAP rocket is designed for an initial payload capacity of 320 pounds (145 kg) in low Earth orbit, and its first orbital launch is scheduled for 2028. The Bighorn is designed for dedicated launch service, with a single-engine booster stage and an in-orbit Cottontail impact stage.

Mass-produced rockets ... LEAP says its Bighorn rocket is engineered for mass production. The company's new plant, located in suburban Denver, will support initial production of six Bighorn vehicles per year, with capacity to increase to two per month. "We know how to build remarkable vehicles. The challenge is to build enough of them fast," LEAP CEO Chris Beckman said in a statement announcing the company's new headquarters last month. LEAP first launched a smaller suborbital rocket called the Bullfrog in May, with an altitude of approximately 130,000 feet (40 km).

Keep up with the latest space discoveries and rocket launches.

Neutron premiere postponed. Rocket Labs announced Wednesday that its Neutron Launcher will not fly until 2027, citing a problem discovered during the construction of the rocket's carbon composite structures, Ars reported. The announcement was public confirmation of what almost everyone at Rocket Lab and the broader space industry already knew. The latest official update from Rocket Labs in August indicated that the company still hopes to deliver the first Neutron rocket to its launch pad on Wallops Island, Virginia, before the end of this year, a schedule that would almost certainly push the first flight to 2027.

Altered carbon… Rocket Lab's statement on the Neutron program on Wednesday indicated that the company is still working on building the rocket's large booster stage. Neutron's reusable first stage is made of carbon composite structures that offer light weight, high strength and corrosion resistance. But carbon composites in aerospace are generally made harder than metal structures. The latest problem discovered at the Rocket Lab factory involves small air pockets, or voids, between the layers of carbon fiber that make up the front dome of the neutron first stage propellant tank. (Posted by zapman987)

Stock sends the second stage for testing. The reusable upper stage for StockSpace's Nova rocket has left the company's plant in Kent, Washington, Stock last wrote on X this week. Now at the Stock Test Facility in Moses Lake, the second stage will undergo antifreeze testing and a fire campaign with the Andromeda engine. This milestone follows the completion of Nova's first stage "pre-qualifying" testing earlier this year. The Nova booster is a fairly standard reusable first stage, but the upper stage is what sets the rocket apart. Stock designed the Nova for full reusability, with an upper stage protected by a regenerative cooling heat shield and powered by a ring of 24 thrusters, collectively called the Andromeda.

Next stop, Cape Canaveral... The upcoming tests at Moses Lake will be central to Stoke's ambitions to launch a Nova rocket next year. If all goes according to plan, Stock will send the reusable rocket stage to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will meet with other elements of the rocket for final launch preparations. The medium-altitude Nova is the only Western fully reusable rocket other than SpaceX's Starship, which is in an advanced stage of development.

Falcon 9 launched US military data transmission satellites. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched the fourth of the Space Development Agency's Tranche 1 transport layer satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., into low-Earth orbit on Saturday, Aviation and Space Technology Week reports. This launch continues to deploy the SDA network of data relay satellites to support counterterrorism and space missile tracking and tactical communications and targeting. SDA has contracts with several companies to build data relay and missile tracking satellites. This was the first launch of a batch of satellites from Northrop Grumman.

Overcoming an Abortion ... The mission was originally scheduled to launch on Oct. 5, but the Falcon 9's automated systems stopped the initial countdown just before liftoff. The launch was then halted twice more as SpaceX conducted additional safety checks on the vehicle and worked with the US Space Force to resolve conflicts with other missions.

SpaceX completed its 35th ISS cargo delivery. On Tuesday morning, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket roared from Pad 40 at the Space Force Station Cape Canaveral to begin its journey of cargo to the International Space Station, Spaceflight Now reports. The 35th Commercial Service mission (CRS-35) delivered 6,322 pounds (2,868 kg) of science and supplies to the orbital base, where it arrived Thursday with the Dragon capsule automatically docking with the laboratory's Harmony module.

Bringing in the goods... SpaceX's latest resupply mission delivered two new solar arrays to power the ISS power system. Other payloads support more than 40 on-orbit scientific investigations, including a materials science experiment testing a more flexible and durable type of glass in the space environment. Dragon also brought fresh food to the lab's crew of seven.

SpaceX Asks FAA, Let's Launch More The San Antonio Express-News reports that federal aviation regulators are considering a plan that could allow hundreds more Starship rockets to launch and land a year at SpaceX's Starbase in South Texas. The proposal calls for 456 launches and 912 landings per year at the complex outside Brownsville, roughly 18 times the 25 launches and 50 landings currently allowed.

Starship recovery coming soon... The giant rockets have an upper stage called the Starship and a lower stage booster called the Super Heavy. Both segments are expected to eventually land on the Starbase, so that's double the number of landings. SpaceX has successfully landed boosters at Starbase, but not with Starship. According to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, that could happen as soon as Starship's next test flight takes place later this year.

Ship 40 has returned to Starbase. In other Starbase news, SpaceX reports that SpaceX has returned the first Starship spacecraft to survive an ocean crash to its South Texas launch site for inspection. The rocket completed a trip around the world in July before landing in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. Amazingly, the rocket survived the crash without exploding or breaking apart, as SpaceX expects Starships to do after landing in the ocean. The company towed the rocket to calmer waters off Christmas Island, then loaded it onto a barge for the trip to Texas.

Vertical again… After unloading the Starship from its carrier, SpaceX teams lifted it vertically into the Starbase's megabay hangar alongside three replacement spacecraft awaiting their chance to fly into space. In a post on X, SpaceX wrote that the flight-proven starship inspections "provide first-of-its-kind information about a flying starship, Raptor engines, avionics and more."

October 19: Falcon 9 | Bandwagon-5 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 10:30 UTC

October 19: H3 | Mars moon exploration mission Tangashima Space Center, Japan 19:41 UTC

October 20: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-15 | Vandenberg Air Force Base, California 22:14 UTC

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering the world's private space companies and space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, politics and business on and off the planet.