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Rocket Lab has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office challenging NASA's decision to award Blue Origin a contract worth roughly $700 million to build, launch and operate a Mars Telecommunications Network spacecraft. Rocket Lab argues NASA's selection violated eligibility criteria set by Congress in the funding legislation and that its own technical proposal was reviewed unfairly.
United Launch Alliance remains one of the few major US rocket companies still focused almost entirely on launch services rather than branching into satellites, spacecraft, or other space businesses. Competitors like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Firefly Aerospace have all expanded beyond launch to capture higher-margin revenue streams, leaving ULA increasingly isolated in a low-margin segment of the industry. This has renewed speculation about whether ULA's parent companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will eventually sell the venture.
German startup Isar Aerospace successfully launched its Spectrum rocket into low-Earth orbit on its second attempt, flying from a Norwegian spaceport in the Arctic Circle. Founded in 2018 by three university students, the company has raised roughly $1 billion and grown to nearly 500 employees over eight years to reach this milestone.
Defense tech startup Mach Industries raised $600 million in a Series C extension, pushing its valuation to $3.7 billion just three months after a $300 million round valued it at $1.8 billion. Backers in both rounds include Ribbit Capital, Infinite Capital, Bedrock Capital and Sequoia. The company makes unmanned military vehicles, including VTOL drones, long-range strike systems and counter-drone tech, from its Huntington Beach, California facility.
Stoke Space announced a $1 billion Series E funding round co-led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital, bringing its total funding to $2.3 billion. CEO Andy Lapsa said the money will accelerate development of a bigger 'Block 2' version of its Nova rocket capable of lifting 15 metric tons to low-Earth orbit while remaining fully reusable, even as the original Nova vehicle nears its debut launch next year.
German startup Isar Aerospace successfully sent its two-stage Spectrum rocket into low Earth orbit from a spaceport in Norway, marking the first entirely commercial orbital launch from continental Europe. The achievement follows a failed attempt last March, when the rocket crashed into the sea just 30 seconds after liftoff. CEO Daniel Metzler called it a new chapter for European spaceflight and sovereign access to space.
A tongue-in-cheek legal complaint, styled as Wile E. Coyote's lawsuit against Acme Corporation, catalogs a string of disastrous mishaps involving products like Rocket Skates and various explosives. The piece humorously recounts how Acme's mail-order gadgets repeatedly failed catastrophically, including a bomb that detonated prematurely during an elaborate birdseed trap scheme.
Isar Aerospace, a German startup founded in 2018 by three Technical University of Munich students, launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in Arctic Norway on Saturday. The two-stage, 92-foot rocket reached low-Earth orbit about seven minutes after liftoff, marking the first fully commercial European launch vehicle to do so. CEO Daniel Metzler called it a milestone giving Europe independent access to space.
German startup Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from the Andoya spaceport in Arctic Norway, marking the first orbital launch from Western European soil. The mission, carrying five small satellites and a technology experiment, served as both a vehicle qualification test and the company's first payload flight, following a failed attempt 18 months earlier.
German rocket startup Isar Aerospace successfully placed satellites into orbit during its second launch attempt, dubbed 'Onward and Upward,' lifting off from Andøya Space in Norway. The rocket cleared key milestones including max dynamic pressure, stage separation, second-stage ignition, and crossing the Kármán line before completing spacecraft separation. The payloads came from a German Space Agency competition offering educational institutions and startups affordable orbital access.
German company Isar Aerospace launched its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Space Center in Norway on Sept. 5, and about seven minutes later the vehicle reached an elliptical orbit. It was the rocket's second attempt, after a March 2025 debut flight failed less than a minute after liftoff due to a valve issue and loss of attitude control.
NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on 30 August aboard a SpaceX rocket, sending it roughly 1.5 million kilometres from Earth to begin observing the Universe. The telescope's 2.4-metre mirror, originally built for surveillance purposes and handed to NASA in 2012, was re-engineered for astronomy and paired with a 300-megapixel infrared camera capable of imaging patches of sky about 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope can capture in one shot.