Welcome to Edition 8.27 of the Rocket Report! If all goes well this weekend, NASA will complete a wet dress rehearsal test of the Space Launch System rocket in Florida. This is the final key test, in which the rocket is fueled and brought to within seconds of engine ignition, before the liftoff of the Artemis II mission. This is set to occur no earlier than February 6. Ars will have full coverage of the test this weekend.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and 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.
Why did the UK abandon Orbex? European Spaceflight explores the recent announcement that British launch company Orbex is preparing to sell the business to The Exploration Company in close cooperation with the UK government. This represents a reversal from early 2025, when the United Kingdom appeared prepared to back Orbex as a means of using British rockets to launch British satellites into space. Now the government is prepared to walk away. So what happened? “There are still too many unknowns to count, and the story is far from told,” the publication states.
Why would someone want to buy Orbex? … My sense is that there is not too much of a mystery here. UK space officials probably looked under the hood of what hardware Orbex had developed and its current financial status and likely decided that the company had a low probability of reaching orbit even with a significant infusion of cash. Also curious is a decision by The Exploration Company, which builds spaceships, to consider acquiring Orbex. The European Spaceflight article speculates that this could be to capture funding through the UK’s share of the European Launch Challenge, rather than any faith in Orbex’s ability to launch its vehicles. That sounds plausible.