Enlarge / Landspace's reusable rocket test vehicle lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (credit: Landspace)

Welcome to Edition 7.11 of the Rocket Report! Outside of companies owned by American billionaires, the most imminent advancements in reusable rockets are coming from China's quasi-commercial launch industry. This industry is no longer nascent. After initially relying on solid-fueled rocket motors apparently derived from Chinese military missiles, China's privately funded launch firms are testing larger launchers, with varying degrees of success, and now performing hop tests reminiscent of SpaceX's Grasshopper and F9R Dev1 programs more than a decade ago.

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.

Landspace hops closer to a reusable rocket. Chinese private space startup Landspace has completed a 10-kilometer (33,000-foot) vertical takeoff and vertical landing test on its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) reusable rocket testbed, including a mid-flight engine reignition at near supersonic conditions, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. The 18.3-meter (60-foot) vehicle took off from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, ascended to 10,002 meters, and then made a vertical descent and achieved an on-target propulsive landing 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) from the launch pad. Notably, the rocket's methane-fueled variable-thrust engine intentionally shutdown in flight, then reignited for descent, as engines would operate on future full-scale booster flybacks. The test booster used grid fins and cold gas thrusters to control itself when its main engine was dormant, according to Landspace.

Enlarge / Nick Hague, left, and Zena Cardman train inside a Crew Dragon spacecraft mock-up in November 2023. (credit: NASA)

On Friday NASA publicly announced a decision that has roiled the top levels of the agency's human spaceflight program for several weeks. The space agency named the two crew members who will launch on a Crew Dragon mission set to lift off no earlier than September 24 to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague will serve as the mission's commander, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will serve as mission specialist. Instead of a usual complement of four astronauts, a two-person crew was necessitated by the need to use the Crew 9 spacecraft, Freedom, as a rescue vehicle for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. They flew to the station in June aboard Boeing's Starliner vehicle, which has been deemed unsafe for them to return in.

Wilmore and Williams will join the Crew-9 increment on board the space station and fly back to Earth with Hague and Gorbunov next February.

Enlarge / Crew Dragon approaches the International Space Station (credit: NASA TV)

Following weeks of speculation, NASA finally made it official on Saturday: Two astronauts who flew to the International Space Station on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in June will not return home on that vehicle. Instead, the agency has asked SpaceX to use its Crew Dragon spacecraft to fly astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth.

"NASA has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew-9 next February," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the outset of a news conference on Saturday afternoon at Johnson Space Center.

In a sign of the gravity surrounding the agency's decision, both Nelson and NASA's deputy administrator, Pam Melroy, attended a Flight Readiness Review meeting held Saturday in Houston. During that gathering of the agency's senior officials, an informal "go/no go" poll was taken. Those present voted unanimously for Wilmore and Williams to return to Earth on Crew Dragon. The official recommendation of the Commercial Crew Program was the same, and Nelson accepted it.

Enlarge / NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, seen in their Boeing flight suits. (credit: NASA/Francisco Martin)

After months of consideration, NASA said Thursday that it will finally decide the fate of two astronauts on board the International Space Station, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, by this weekend. As soon as Saturday, the two crew members will learn whether they'll return on a Starliner spacecraft in early September or a Crew Dragon vehicle next February.

On the eve of this fateful decision, the most consequential human spaceflight safety determination NASA has had to make in more than two decades, Ars has put together a summary of what we know, what we believe to be true, and what remains yet unknown.

Why has NASA taken so long?

Wilmore and Williams arrived at the International Space Station 11 weeks ago. Their mission was supposed to last eight days, but there was some expectation that they might stay a little longer. However, no one envisioned the crew remaining this long. That changed when, during Starliner's flight to the space station, five of the 28 small thrusters that guide Starliner failed. After some touch-and-go operations, the astronauts and flight controllers at Johnson Space Center coaxed the spacecraft to a safe docking at the station.

Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is lifted to be placed atop an Atlas V rocket for its first crewed launch. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

NASA is planning to significantly delay the launch of the Crew 9 mission to the International Space Station due to ongoing concerns about the Starliner spacecraft currently attached to the station.

While the space agency has not said anything publicly, sources say NASA should announce the decision this week. Officials are contemplating moving the Crew-9 mission from its current date of August 18 to September 24, a significant slip.

Nominally, this Crew Dragon mission will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, spacecraft commander; Nick Hague, pilot; and Stephanie Wilson, mission specialist; as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, for a six-month journey to the space station. However, NASA has been considering alternatives to the crew lineup—possibly launching with two astronauts instead of four—due to ongoing discussions about the viability of Starliner to safely return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth.

Enlarge / A Crew Dragon spacecraft is seen docked at the International Space Station in 2022. The section of the spacecraft on the left is the pressurized capsule, while the rear section, at right, is the trunk. (credit: NASA)

Sometime next year, SpaceX will begin returning its Dragon crew and cargo capsules to splashdowns in the Pacific Ocean and end recoveries of the spacecraft off the coast of Florida.

This will allow SpaceX to make changes to the way it brings Dragons back to Earth and eliminate the risk, however tiny, that a piece of debris from the ship's trunk section might fall on someone and cause damage, injury, or death.

"After five years of splashing down off the coast of Florida, we've decided to shift Dragon recovery operations back to the West Coast," said Sarah Walker, SpaceX's director of Dragon mission management.

Enlarge / A European ATV cargo freighter reenters the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean in 2013.

Since the beginning of the year, landowners have discovered several pieces of space junk traced to missions supporting the International Space Station. On all of these occasions, engineers expected none of the disposable hardware would survive the scorching heat of reentry and make it to Earth's surface.

These incidents highlight an urgency for more research into what happens when a spacecraft makes an uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere, according to engineers from the Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research center based in El Segundo, California. More stuff is getting launched into space than ever before, and the trend will continue as companies deploy more satellite constellations and field heavier rockets.

"The biggest immediate need now is just to do some more work to really understand this whole process and to be in a position to be ready to accommodate new materials, new operational approaches as they happen more quickly," said Marlon Sorge, executive director of Aerospace's Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies. "Clearly, that’s the direction that spaceflight is going.”