Rocket Report: SpaceX’s 500th Falcon launch; why did UK’s Reaction Engines fail?

SpaceX's rockets make a lot more noise, but the machinations of Texas' newest city are underway.

Welcome to Edition 7.47 of the Rocket Report! Let's hope not, but the quarrel between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk may be remembered as "Black Thursday" for the US space program. A simmering disagreement over Trump's signature "One Big Beautiful Bill" coursing its way through Congress erupted into public view, with two of the most powerful Americans trading insults and threats on social media. Trump suggested the government should terminate "Elon's governmental contracts and subsidies." Musk responded with a post saying SpaceX will begin decommissioning the Dragon spacecraft used to transport crew and cargo to the International Space Station. This could go a number of ways, but it's hard to think anything good will come of it.

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.

Blue Origin flies aces suborbital space shot. Blue Origin, the space company founded and owned by Jeff Bezos, launched six people to the edge of space Saturday, May 31, from Bezos' ranch in West Texas, CBS News reports. A hydrogen-fueled New Shepard booster propelled a crew capsule, equipped with the largest windows of any operational spaceship, to an altitude of nearly 65 miles (105 kilometers), just above the internationally recognized boundary between the discernible atmosphere and space, before beginning the descent to landing. The passengers included three Americans—Aymette Medina Jorge, Gretchen Green, and Paul Jeris—along with Canadian Jesse Williams, New Zealand's Mark Rocket, and Panamanian Jaime Alemán, who served as his country's ambassador to the United States.

If you missed it ... You wouldn't be alone. This was the 32nd flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, and the company's 12th human flight. From a technical perspective, these flights aren't breaking any new ground in human spaceflight or rocketry. However, each flight provides an opportunity for wealthy or well-connected passengers to view Earth from a perspective only about 700 people have seen before. That's really cool, but most of these launches are no longer newsworthy, and it takes a devoted fan of spaceflight to tune in to a New Shepard flight on a summertime Saturday morning. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Momentum for Amentum. The US Space Force awarded Jacobs Technology a contract worth up to $4 billion over 10 years to provide engineering and technical services at the nation’s primary space launch ranges, as the military seeks to modernize aging infrastructure and boost capacity amid a surge in commercial space activity, Space News reports. Jacobs Technology is now part of Amentum, a defense contractor based in Chantilly, Virginia. Amentum merged with Jacobs in September 2024. The so-called "Space Force Range Contract" covers maintenance, sustainment, systems engineering and integration services for the Eastern and Western ranges until 2035. The Eastern Range operates from Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, while the Western Range is based at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Picking from the menu ... The contract represents a significant shift in how space launch infrastructure is funded. Under the new arrangement, commercial launch service providers—which now account for the majority of launches at both ranges—can request services or upgrades and pay for them directly, rather than having the government bear the costs upfront. This arrangement would create a more market-driven approach to range operations and potentially accelerate modernization. "Historically, the government has fronted these costs," Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, Space Launch Delta 45 Commander and Eastern Range Director, said June 3 in a news release. "The ability of our commercial partners to directly fund their own task order will lessen the financial and administrative burden on the government and is in line with congressionally mandated financial improvement and audit readiness requirements."

Impulse Space rakes in more cash. This week, an in-space propulsion company, Impulse Space, announced that it had raised a significant amount of money, $300 million, Ars reports. This follows a fundraising round just last year in which the Southern California-based company raised $150 million. This is one of the largest capital raises in space in a while, especially for a non-launch company. Founded by Tom Mueller, a former propulsion guru at SpaceX, Impulse Space has test-flown an orbital maneuvering vehicle called Mira on two flights over the last couple of years. The company is developing a larger vehicle, named Helios, that could meaningfully improve the ability of SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy to transport large payloads to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations in the Solar System.

Reacting to the market ... The Mira vehicle was originally intended to provide "last-mile" services for spacecraft launched as part of rideshare missions. "The reality is the market for that is not very good," said Eric Romo, the company's CEO. Instead, Impulse Space found interest from the Space Force to use Mira as an agile platform for hosting electronic warfare payloads and other military instrumentation in orbit. "Mira wasn't necessarily designed out of the gate for that, but what we found out after we flew it successfully was, the Space Force said, 'Hey, we know what that thing's for," Romo said. Helios is a larger beast, with an engine capable of producing 15,000 pounds of thrust and the ability to move a multi-ton payload from low-Earth orbit to geostationary space in less than a day. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

Falcon rockets surpass 500 flights. SpaceX was back at the launch pad for a midweek flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. This particular flight, designated Starlink 11-22, marked the company's 500th orbital launch attempt with a Falcon rocket, including Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy, Spaceflight Now reports. This milestone coincided with the 15th anniversary of the first Falcon 9 launch on June 4, 2010. The day before, SpaceX launched the 500th Falcon rocket overall, counting a single suborbital flight in 2020 that tested the Dragon spacecraft's abort system. The launch on Wednesday from California was the 68th Falcon 9 launch of the year.

Chasing Atlas ... The soon-to-be-retired Atlas rocket holds the record for the most-flown family of space launchers in the United States, with 684 launches to date, beginning with Atlas ICBMs in the Cold War to the Atlas V rocket flying today. In reality, however, the Atlas V shares virtually nothing in common with the Atlas ICBM, other than its name. The Atlas V has new engines, more modern computers, and a redesigned booster stage that ended the line of pressure-stabilized "balloon tanks" that flew on Atlas rockets from 1957 until 2005. The Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy share more heritage, all using variants of SpaceX's Merlin engine. If you consider the Atlas rocket as the US record-holder for most space launches, SpaceX's Falcon family is on pace to reach 684 flights before the end of 2026.

SpaceX delivers again for GPS. The Space Force successfully sent its latest GPS III satellite to orbit Friday, May 30, demonstrating the ability to prepare and launch a military spacecraft on condensed timelines, Defense News reports. The satellite flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida. GPS III, built by Lockheed Martin, is the latest version of the navigation and timing system and is designed to provide improved anti-jamming capabilities. It will broadcast additional military and civilian signals.

More anti-jamming capability ... The launch was the second in a series of Rapid Response Trailblazer missions the Space Force is running to test whether it can quickly launch high-value satellites in response to national security needs. The goal is to condense a process that can take up to two years down to a handful of months. The first mission, which flew in December, reduced the time between launch notification and lift off to around five months—and the May 30 mission shortened it even further, to around 90 days. In addition to demonstrating the launch could be done on an accelerated timeline, Space Force officials were motivated to swap this satellite from United Launch Alliance's long-delayed Vulcan rocket to SpaceX's Falcon 9 in order to add more tech to the GPS constellation to counter jamming and spoofing. (submitted by EllPeaTea)

An autopsy on Reaction Engines. An article published by the BBC this week recounts some of the backstory behind the bankruptcy of Reaction Engines, a British company that labored for 35 years to develop a revolutionary air-breathing rocket engine. According to the vision of the company's leaders, the new engine, called SABRE, could have powered a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane or hypersonic vehicles within the atmosphere. If an engine like SABRE could ever be mastered, it could usher in a new era of spaceplanes that can take off and land horizontally on a runway, instead of launching vertically like a rocket.

A little too quixotic ... But Reaction Engines started in an era too soon for true commercial spaceflight and couldn't convince enough venture capital investors that the idea could compete with the likes of SpaceX. Instead, the company secured a handful of investments from large aerospace companies like Boeing, BAE Systems, and Rolls-Royce. This money allowed Reaction Engines to grow to a staff of approximately 200 employees and kept it afloat until last October, when the company went into administration and laid off its workforce. "A few people were in tears," Richard Varvill, the company's chief engineer, told the BBC. "A lot of them were shocked and upset because they'd hoped we could pull it off right up to the end." It was galling for Varvill "because we were turning it around with an improved engine. Just as we were getting close to succeeding, we failed. That's a uniquely British characteristic." (submitted by ShuggyCoUk)

Draconian implications for Trump's budget. New details of the Trump administration's plans for NASA, released Friday, May 30, revealed the White House's desire to end the development of an experimental nuclear thermal rocket engine that could have shown a new way of exploring the Solar System, Ars reports. The budget proposal's impacts on human spaceflight and space science have been widely reported, but Trump's plan would cut NASA's space technology budget in half. One of the victims would be DRACO, a partnership with DARPA to develop and test the first nuclear thermal rocket engine in space.

But wait, there's more ... The budget proposal not only cancels DRACO, but it also zeros out funding for all of NASA's nuclear propulsion projects. Proponents of nuclear propulsion say it offers several key advantages for sending heavy cargo and humans to deep space destinations, like Mars. "This budget provides no funding for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion and Nuclear Electric Propulsion projects," officials wrote in the NASA budget request. "These efforts are costly investments, would take many years to develop, and have not been identified as the propulsion mode for deep space missions. The nuclear propulsion projects are terminated to achieve cost savings and because there are other nearer-term propulsion alternatives for Mars transit." Trump's budget request isn't final. Both Republican-controlled houses of Congress will write their own versions of the NASA budget, which must be reconciled before going to the White House for President Trump's signature.

Blue Origin CEO says government should get out of the launch business. Eighteen months after leaving his job as a vice president at Amazon to take over as Blue Origin's chief executive, Dave Limp has some thoughts on how commercial companies and government agencies like NASA should explore the Solar System together. First, the government should leave launching things into space to private industry. "I think commercial folks can worry about the infrastructure," he said. "We can do the launch. We can build the satellite buses that can get you to Mars much more frequently, that don't cost billions of dollars. We can take a zero, and over time, maybe two zeros off of that. And if the governments around the world leave that to the commercial side, then there are a lot more resources that are freed up for the science side, for the national prestige side, and those types of things."

Do the exotic ... While commercial companies should drive the proverbial bus into the Solar System, NASA should get back to its roots in research and exploration, Limp said. "I would say, and it might be a little provocative, let's have those smart brains look on the forward-thinking types of things, the really edge of science, planning the really exotic missions, figuring out how to get to planetary bodies we haven't gotten to before, and staying there." But Limp highlighted one area where he thinks government investment is needed: the Moon. He said there's currently no commercial business case for sending people to the Moon, and the government should continue backing those efforts.

Hurdles ahead for Rocket Cargo. The Center for Biological Diversity is suing the military for details on a proposal to build a rocket test site in a remote wildlife refuge less than 900 miles from Hawaiʻi Island, Hawaiʻi Public Radio reports. The Air Force announced in March that it planned to prepare an environmental assessment for the construction and operation of two landing pads on Johnston Atoll to test the viability of using rockets to deliver military cargo loads. While the announcement didn't mention SpaceX, that company's Starship rocket is on contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to work on delivering cargo anywhere in the world within an hour. Now, several conservationists have spoken out against the proposal, pointing out that Johnston is an important habitat for birds and marine species.

Scarred territory ... For nearly a century, Johnston Atoll has served dual roles as a wildlife refuge and a base for US military operations, including as a nuclear test site between 1958 and 1963. In March, the Air Force said it anticipated an environmental assessment for its plans on Johnston Atoll would be available for public review in early April. So far, it has not been released. The Center for Biological Diversity filed a Freedom of Information Act request about the project. They say a determination on their request was due by May 19, but they have not received a response. The center filed a lawsuit last week to compel the military to rule on their request and release information about the project.

Getting down to business at Starbase. SpaceX's rockets make a lot of noise at Starbase, but the machinations of setting up Texas' newest city are in motion, too. After months of planning, SpaceX launched the city of Starbase on May 29 with its first public meeting chaired by Mayor Robert Peden and the City Commission at The Hub, a building owned by SpaceX, ValleyCentral.com reports. During the meeting, which lasted about 80 minutes, they hired a city administrator, approved standard regulations for new construction, and created a committee to guide the community’s long-term development. Voters approved the creation of Starbase on May 3, incorporating territory around SpaceX's remote rocket factory and launch site near the US-Mexico border. SpaceX owns most of the land in Starbase and employs nearly everyone in the tiny town, including the mayor.

Property rights and zoning ... The new city's leaders have told landowners they plan to introduce land use rules that could result in changes for some residents," KUT reports. In a letter, Starbase's first city administrator, Kent Myers, warned local landowners that they may lose the right to continue using their property for its current use under the city’s new zoning plan. "Our goal is to ensure that the zoning plan reflects the City’s vision for balanced growth, protecting critical economic drivers, ensuring public safety, and preserving green spaces," the letter, dated May 21, reads. This is a normal process when a city creates new zoning rules, and a new city is required by state law to notify landowners—most of which are SpaceX or its employees—of potential zoning changes so they can ask questions in a public setting. A public meeting to discuss the zoning ordinance at Starbase is scheduled for June 23.

Next three launches

June 7: Falcon 9 | SXM-10| Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 03:19 UTC

June 8: Falcon 9 | Starlink 15-8 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 13:34 UTC

June 10: Falcon 9 | Axiom Mission 4 | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | 12:22 UTC