Rocket Report: Falcon Heavy is back; Russia’s Soyuz-5 finally debuts
Welcome to the 8.39 edition of the Rocket Report! There’s a lot of news to share in the world of powerful rockets this week, and we’re excited to summarize it in this week’s edition. The biggest rocket of all, Starship, has had a relatively quiet week as SpaceX aims to launch the vehicle’s next test flight, perhaps sometime in May. The results of this flight and those of Blue Origin’s first attempt to land on the Moon with its Blue Moon cargo lander in the coming months should tell us a lot about NASA’s real chances of sending astronauts to the lunar surface in 2028.
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-range rockets, as well as a quick look at the next three launches on the schedule.
These 12 companies are developing SBIs. The US Space Force on April 24 released a list of a dozen companies working on space interceptors for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome initiative, a multi-layered defense system intended to protect the US homeland from drones and ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile attacks, Ars reports. The list of Golden Dome Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) contractors, some of which have been previously reported, includes Anduril Industries, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Mission Systems, GITAI USA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quindar, Raytheon, Sci-Tec, SpaceX, True Anomaly and Turion Space. The companies will contribute in different areas to the development and delivery of SBI prototypes for testing purposes. The deals have a maximum combined value of $3.2 billion. Contracts for large-scale production will come later, with a significantly higher price.
