The space race heats up: all the news on the latest rocket launches

By The Verge | Created at 2025-03-31 22:43:01 | Updated at 2025-04-02 09:45:11 1 day ago

This attempt at a first orbital launch from Europe lasted about 30 seconds.
Andoya Spaceport general manager Ingun Berget told TV 2 the flight was aborted because the rocket wasn’t going where it was supposed to go.
NASA and Boeing investigate Starliner’s ‘anomalies’ before its next crewed flight
NASA via Getty Images
NASA and Boeing are preparing the Starliner for its next flight after technical issues left the spacecraft unable to ferry its astronauts back to Earth for months. On Thursday, NASA announced that it’s working with Boeing to “resolve Starliner’s in-flight anomalies” before a crewed flight that could take place later this year or in early 2026.
The Boeing Starliner took off successfully for the first time last June, bringing Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station for what was supposed to be about a week. However, issues with the Starliner’s thruster, valve, and helium systems led NASA to bring the Starliner back to Earth in September, while Williams and Wilmore returned aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 earlier this month.
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Katy Perry blasts off to space next month.
On April 14th, the pop star will join Jeff Bezos’ fiancé Lauren Sanchez and CBS host Gayle King aboard the New Shepard rocket as part of Blue Origin’s first all-female flight. The rocket will lift off from Launch Site One in West Texas, with a launch window opening at 9:30AM ET.
Image: Blue Origin
SpaceX Crew-9 and the Boeing Starliner astronauts have landed safely.
Right on schedule, the Dragon capsule deployed its parachutes and landed off the coast of Florida as recovery crews began the process of bringing the capsule onboard a recovery ship and extracting its crew.
Image: NASA (YouTube)
The Starliner astronauts are on their way back to Earth.
SpaceX’s latest Starship explosion lights up the sky over the Caribbean again
SpaceX’s 8th Starship flight test ends in another explosion.
SpaceX recently listed some explanations for how its seventh Starship flight test ended, and now another report is coming. Flight 8’s launch and Super Heavy booster rocket separation was successful, with the booster returning to the pad.
However, before reaching the engine cutoff point nearly nine minutes into the flight, the Starship began to tumble, then exploded (according to SpaceX, “...experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly and contact was lost”) without attempting its planned payload deploy demo.
Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket takes off on its first commercial mission.
Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël has said that Ariane 6 is key to “giving Europe an autonomous access to space,” despite delays that pushed its debut from 2020 all the way to 2024.
Now it’s made a second successful launch, with the VA 263 mission carrying CSO-3, an optical spy satellite for the French military.
SpaceX’s next Starship test flight has been delayed again.
SpaceX called off Starship’s eighth flight test yesterday after the countdown timer was put on hold at T-minus 40 seconds to resolve issues with the Super Heavy booster. The new launch will happen as soon as Wednesday, March 5th.
Jeff Bezos is sending Katy Perry to space
Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartRadio
Katy Perry will fly to space during Blue Origin’s next crewed mission, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company has announced. The pop star will join CBS host Gayle King and Bezos’s fiancé Lauren Sánchez aboard the New Shepard rocket this spring, marking its 11th human flight.
Along with Perry and Sánchez, who is known for her work as a news anchor and correspondent, the crew will include research scientist and activist Amanda Nguyen, film producer Kerianne Flynn, and former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe. Sánchez first revealed her plans to lead an all-female Blue Origin mission in 2023, but she didn’t mention who she would take on the flight at the time.
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SpaceX thinks it knows why Starship exploded on its last test flight
SpaceX believes it knows what caused the explosion during the seventh test flight of its Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster on January 16th, 2025. Fires in the aft section of Starship, located between the bottom of its liquid oxygen tank and rear heat shield, caused “all but one of Starship’s engines to execute controlled shut down sequences” leading to a loss of communication and eventually the spacecraft’s safety system triggering its own destruction.
The goal of the seventh test flight was to test several upgrades SpaceX made to its heavy-lift rocket system. After a successful launch and completing a full duration burn, the Super Heavy booster separated from Starship and triggered a boostback burn designed to return it to the launch site. Following a landing burn, the Super Heavy booster was successfully caught mid-air by the launch tower at Starbase for the second time.
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SpaceX’s fiery Starship explosion put on a fantastic show but delayed and diverted flights
Falling debris from the SpaceX Starship explosion yesterday created what looked like a meteor shower, or a colorful fireworks show based on videos shared by people in the area, but it also delayed flights.
Eight and a half minutes after launch yesterday, the upper stage of the SpaceX Starship “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,” following the separation from its booster and the start of its ascent to space.
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That’s not a meteor shower, that was a Starship.
We don’t know if that had anything to do with the vehicle experiencing “a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn,” but the aftermath of its destruction was visible to at least a few tourists in Turks and Caicos.
SpaceX catches Starship booster for a second time but loses the spacecraft
Screenshot: SpaceX
SpaceX successfully caught its Super Heavy booster for the second time. During Starship’s 7th test flight from Boca Chica, Texas, Super Heavy descended into the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms, allowing it to grab the booster.
Despite the successful catch, SpaceX lost communications with the Starship spacecraft mounted atop the booster. “It successfully separated from the Super Heavy booster, but during that ascent phase, a couple of the engines dropped out, and then shortly thereafter, we lost communication with the vehicle,” SpaceX’s Kate Tice said during the stream. “We are assuming that we have lost the ship.”
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Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launches SpaceX rival
The billionaire space race entered a new phase today when Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin successfully launched its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
At 2:03AM ET this morning, New Glenn’s seven reusable BE-4 engines ignited to propel the NG-1 rocket into space, with the second stage and payload reaching orbit to achieve Blue Origin’s primary mission goal. It also successfully activated its Blue Ring Pathfinder payload vehicle which is “receiving data and performing well.”
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Blue Origin prepares for a high-stakes New Glenn launch
Image: Blue Origin
Following a scrubbed launch attempt and weather-related delays, Blue Origin will once again try to send its New Glenn rocket into space for the first time. During the attempt, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company aims to reach orbit, helping to further its goals of shuttling Project Kuiper satellites, equipment, and eventually humans into space.
Launch is currently scheduled for 2:03AM ET, after a “wayward boat” created an unplanned hold event.
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Two private landers head to the moon to aid future NASA astronauts
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday morning carrying two private lunar landers into orbit in support of NASA’s future Artemis landing crews. The Blue Ghost and Resilience landers, built by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and Japan’s iSpace aerospace firms respectively, aim to provide data on the Moon’s environment and test technologies that will help to one day return astronauts to the lunar surface.
The SpaceX launch and private lander contracts are the latest to fall under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative — the first phase of the Artemis moon exploration program that’s set to launch its first crewed mission in April 2026. Following the Falcon 9’s first stage successfully separating and touching down back on Earth after launch, Blue Ghost was delivered to a lunar transfer orbit by the rocket’s second stage about 65 minutes after liftoff, with Resilience being deployed about 30 minutes later.
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Returning SpaceX rockets are disrupting airline flights.
Qantas airlines airline has delayed some flights to avoid the rockets’ splashdown in the Indian Ocean, reports The Guardian. Some at the last minute, says Ben Holland, head of Qantas’s operations center:
“While we try to make any changes to our schedule in advance, the timing of recent launches have moved around at late notice which has meant we’ve had to delay some flights just prior to departure.”
Blue Origin sets a new window for New Glenn launch.
New Glenn: Blue Origin’s big rocket launch is... scrubbed
Image: Blue Origin
Blue Origin is preparing for its biggest launch yet, but on Monday morning the attempt was scrubbed for technical reasons after several delays were made throughout the three-hour launch window. The window originally opened at 1AM ET.
It’s unclear when the Jeff Bezos-owned commercial space company will next attempt to send its 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket into space for the first time.
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Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch is delayed again.
Citing conditions at sea that “are still unfavorable for booster landing,” the company posted that it’s pushing the mission back 24 hours to a three-hour launch window starting Monday at 1AM ET.
It’s the second delay since its January 10th target. Blue Origin will likely livestream the launch on its website and YouTube channel. See our write-up below for more mission details.
Blue Ghost Lunar Lander scheduled to launch on January 15th
Image: Firefly Aerospace
A lander hasn’t successfully reached the surface of the Moon’s cratered Mare Crisium region since the Soviet Luna 24 probe landed there to collect samples in August 1976. But SpaceX is prepping a launch that’ll send not one, but two landers there on Wednesday January 15th, Firefly Aerospace has announced.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch at approximately 1:11 AM EST, and will not only have Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander on board, but also the Resilience lander from the Japanese robotic spacecraft firm iSpace. It will take 45 days for the craft to journey to the Moon before it spends another 14 days carrying out surface operations. There’s no word on whether we’ll be able to watch it take off.
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