Welcome to Edition 9.07 of the Rocket Report! China’s workhorse Long March rocket family appears to be rebounding quickly from a rare launch failure August 10. Chinese officials have not publicly released any information on what may have caused the Long March 7A rocket to break apart less than 90 seconds after liftoff, but the rocket’s use of YF-100 engines initially raised questions about the failure’s impact on other Chinese rockets that use the same type of engines. But no biggie. YF-100 engines returned to flight six days later with the successful flight of a Long March 12 rocket, and the heavy-lift Long March 5—also with YF-100 engines—is set to launch in a few days with one of China’s most important space missions of the decade: the Chang’e 7 lunar lander en route to the Moon’s south pole.

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.

Trouble in Taiwan. A prototype for a future satellite launch vehicle developed by Taiwan’s top weapons manufacturer veered off course shortly after liftoff Wednesday, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reports. The “trajectory anomaly” prompted the activation of the rocket’s self-destruct mechanism. The government agency responsible for the test flight, the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST), reported no injuries or property damage. Debris from rocket fell into a planned safety control zone near the southern tip of Taiwan.

Parallel paths… Details about Wednesday’s rocket test are scarce, but the flight likely involved a sub-scale suborbital version of NCSIST’s planned military satellite launcher. The launch was the first test flight for the military’s satellite launch program, which focuses on developing a solid-fueled rocket to place small payloads into low-Earth orbit. At the same time, the civilian Taiwan Space Agency is developing a liquid-fueled satellite launcher that could be ready for orbital missions in the early 2030s.

Second failure for South Korea’s Innospace. A small suborbital rocket owned by South Korean startup Innospace lost control Thursday seconds into a test flight from Brazil’s Alcântara Space Center, the company said in a statement. The Brazilian Air Force, which runs the spaceport, activated the Sebit rocket’s flight termination system after it deviated from the planned trajectory. Innospace said there were no injuries or property damage. “While we regret that the planned flight could not be fully completed, the test flight provided valuable flight data from key systems, including the launch pad, propulsion system, and guidance, navigation and control (GNC),” Innospace said.

Hard times… Sebit is a “multipurpose suborbital rocket” designed to carry payloads up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) altitude, the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space. This was the second consecutive failure for Innospace, which attempted its first orbital launch from the same Brazilian spaceport in December. In a similar outcome to this week’s launch, Innospace’s Hanbit-Nano orbital rocket spun out of control seconds after liftoff.

Satellite operators fear launch crisis. SpaceX’s success with the Falcon 9 rocket helped open new avenues to orbit for a host of satellite startups. But the Falcon 9 may soon go away. SpaceX is eager to retire it in favor of the much larger, still unproven Starship rocket. This has led to consternation in the commercial satellite industry, Ars reports. There are growing concerns that SpaceX will largely focus on its own payloads—Starlink V3 satellites and orbital data centers—because of their potential to drive far greater profits. The Starship rocket’s Pez satellite dispenser, optimized for Starlink, is an indication of the company’s priorities.

Coming soon… SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell has previously said the operational lifetime of the Falcon 9 may end in 2030 or 2032. However, more recently, commercial satellite customers have been running into difficulties when trying to purchase a launch after 2028. One source said SpaceX has told the US government that it intends to end commercial launches after 2028 but will continue flying the Falcon 9 rocket for a limited number of federally contracted missions after that. Whether or not these dates stick, it has become clear to commercial satellite operators that they can no longer reliably plan their future around the workhorse Falcon 9.

Ukraine strikes Russian rocket factory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Saturday that his country struck the Progress Rocket Space Center deep within Russia using ground-launched cruise missiles, Ars reports. “In Russia’s Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos—the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production–was hit,” Zelenskyy said on X. “Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement.”

Soyuz in the crosshairs… The largest city in the Samara Oblast, about 900 km from the Ukrainian border, Samara is home to Russia’s most important manufacturer of rockets. The Progress Center assembles the workhorse vehicle for Russia, the Soyuz-2 vehicle, as well as the newer Soyuz-5 rocket. The facility also builds military satellites. Russia uses the Soyuz-2 rocket, which has a lift capacity of about 8 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, for various civil and military purposes. Notably, it is the principal rocket used for Russia’s human spacecraft launches, raising questions about spillover effects for the International Space Station.

There’s now a second reusable Chinese rocket. It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time. A second launch operator accomplished a similar feat Tuesday in another sign of China’s growing launch capability, Ars reports. The Zhuque-3 rocket, developed by an 11-year-old company named LandSpace, lifted off from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Tuesday. The medium-lift rocket successfully placed a single satellite into low-Earth orbit, and its first stage booster returned to an on-target landing downrange in the Gobi Desert. This was the second flight of LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 rocket. The booster crash landed on the first Zhuque-3 flight last December.

Deep bench… LandSpace’s achievement this week follows the successful recovery of a Chinese Long March 10B booster in July. Several more Chinese companies seem poised to attempt booster landings in the next few months. None of China’s space companies—even the country’s colossal state-owned enterprises—can come close to matching SpaceX’s rapid-fire launch schedule. Collectively, they only launch about half as often as SpaceX. But that is with a fleet of entirely expendable rockets. China’s foray into the realm of reusable rockets could change that.

Charting America’s launch dominance. New research is beginning to quantify just how much the introduction of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the adoption of reuse, and the vehicle’s high cadence have upended the global launch market, Ars reports. One of the more striking findings by public policy researchers based in the United Kingdom and Italy, based on new research published in Economics Letters, comes in the cumulative payload to orbit by nation. Russia and the United States tracked fairly close to one another for decades. That began to change in the last 10 years, and amid the Falcon 9 ramp up in the early 2020s, the United States has pulled ahead dramatically.

Reuse or bust… SpaceX has also made significant gains in controlling costs compared to other nations, thanks to reusable rockets. A decade ago, the United States and Europe had similar launch costs. Today, according to publicly available data, launch costs in Europe are now three times higher than for comparable payloads in the United States. The researchers estimate that the average cost of sending a kilogram of payload to orbit in the United States is now $3,225, compared to higher costs elsewhere: Japan ($5,287), China ($5,809), Russia ($6,682), and Europe ($9,897). India is higher still at nearly $15,000 a kilogram.

Au revoir to Ariane 6 Block 3. The European Space Agency is no longer considering the Ariane 6 Block 3 evolution, an upgrade that would have introduced a new upper stage made of carbon-fiber reinforced plastic to replace heavier legacy metallic structures, European Spaceflight reports. An ESA spokesperson said development continues on technologies for Ariane 6 Block 2, some of which have already started flying (larger solid rocket boosters). An orbital transfer vehicle, or kick stage, named Astris will become available as an add-on for Ariane 6 missions around 2029. But ESA has halted work on the new lightweight Icarus upper stage after the project failed to win support from ESA member states.

Tightening the screws… The first public indication of the death of Ariane 6 Block 3 came from SpaceScout, which reported earlier this month on a presentation from ESA scientists on a proposed robotic mission to orbit and land on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The team developing the mission said they are reassessing their design, which previously assumed the availability of Ariane 6 Block 3 for launch in the 2030s.

SpaceX’s new scar on the Moon. New images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show the aftermath from the impact of a spent Falcon 9 rocket body on the Moon. NASA released the images this week, showing a fresh impact scar near Einstein Crater, located on the western limb of the Moon as seen from Earth. LRO’s narrow-angle camera captured a view of the Falcon 9 upper stage’s impact site at multiple angles, revealing a new crater approximately 60 feet in diameter and less than 10 feet deep. The rocket left flying in deep space after launching a commercial Moon lander in 2025.

A learning opportunity… The rare, but not unprecedented, collision between an abandoned rocket and the Moon offered a chance for some unexpected research. The impact excavated pristine materials from below the lunar surface that have escaped weathering from the solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and micrometeorites. It also provided an opportunity for asteroid trackers on Earth to refine their methods for impact predictions. It turns out their predictions of the Falcon 9’s impact site was accurate to about 0.6 miles, according to NASA.

Starship recovered from Indian Ocean. SpaceX’s most recent Starship test flight may have ended July 24, but its mission isn’t over yet. The spacecraft unexpectedly remained intact after splashdown in the Indian Ocean last month, prompting SpaceX officials to come up with an ad hoc plan to recover the vehicle. Over 24 days, a recovery ship towed the spacecraft engines-first several hundred miles to the Australian territory of Christmas Island. From there, SpaceX hopes to find a way to bring the spacecraft back to the company’s home base in South Texas.

Hardware rich… Engineers have reams of data from all 13 test flights of Starship and its giant booster rocket, known as the Super Heavy. But there’s no match for inspecting hardware after returning from space. SpaceX routinely recovers and reuses Falcon 9 booster stages with near-flawless performance. The handful of minor failures with the Falcon 9 have centered on the rocket’s single-use upper stage. So, getting Starship back in one piece is a boon. Engineers are particularly interesting in inspecting the ship’s heat shield as they hone in on a design for full and rapid reusability.

China will soon launch an ambitious Moon mission. As soon as this Sunday, a Long March 5 rocket will launch from a coastal seaport in China, carrying the Chang’e 7 lunar exploration mission, Ars reports. This is the latest and most sophisticated mission in China’s successful lunar exploration program, which dates back nearly two decades. The mission will pack a punch: It contains a lunar orbiter with high-resolution cameras and other sophisticated tools, a lunar lander, a lunar rover, and a mini-hopper of a probe. Although the lander’s mass has not been disclosed publicly, it is several times larger than the NASA-backed probes that have recently landed on the Moon, such as Firefly’s Blue Ghost.

Location, location, location… But what is most notable about Chang’e 7 is where the probe is going. It will land near one of the most compelling regions of the Moon, Shackleton Crater, very nearly at the south pole. Much of the lunar surface is pretty barren, but the south pole, and Shackleton Crater in particular, offers some of the most coveted real estate there. This is because the high rims of the crater create permanently shadowed regions known as “cold traps,” where it’s thought that water (in the form of ice, of course) and other useful materials may have accumulated over billions of years. In all of NASA’s and China’s plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the south pole of the Moon matter the most.