Enlarge / NASA commander Butch Wilmore exits the Starliner spacecraft Saturday following the scrubbed launch attempt.

A computer controlling the Atlas V rocket's countdown triggered an automatic hold less than four minutes prior to liftoff of Boeing's commercial Starliner spacecraft Saturday, keeping the crew test flight on the ground at least a few more days.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were already aboard the spacecraft when the countdown stopped due to a problem with a ground computer. "Hold. Hold. Hold," a member of Atlas V launch team called out on an audio feed.

With the hold, the mission missed an instantaneous launch opportunity at 12:25 pm EDT (16:25 UTC), and later Saturday, NASA announced teams will forego a launch opportunity Sunday. The next chance to send Starliner into orbit will be 10:52 am EDT (14:52 UTC) Wednesday. The mission has one launch opportunity every one-to-two days, when the International Space Station's orbital track moves back into proper alignment with the Atlas V rocket's launch pad in Florida.

Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft sits on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

NASA and Boeing officials are ready for a second attempt to launch the first crew test flight on the Starliner spacecraft Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

Liftoff of Boeing's Starliner capsuled atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is set for 12:25 pm EDT (16:25 UTC). NASA commander Butch Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams, both veteran astronauts, will take the Starliner spacecraft on its first trip into low-Earth orbit with a crew on board.

You can watch NASA TV's live coverage of the countdown and launch below.

Enlarge / A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China's Shandong province. (credit: VCG via Getty Images)

Welcome to Edition 6.46 of the Rocket Report! It looks like we will be covering the crew test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX keeps up its cadence of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors helping make sure our stories don't use the wrong names.

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.

Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea's latest attempt to launch a rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure due to the midair explosion of the rocket during the first-stage flight this week, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports. Video captured by the Japanese news organization NHK appears to show the North Korean rocket disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country's northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite named Malligyong-1-1.

Enlarge / A rendering of the European cargo reentry vehicle proposed by Thales Alenia Space. (credit: Thales Alecia Space)

The European Space Agency has awarded initial contracts to a German-based startup and one of the continent's established aerospace companies to develop spacecraft to ferry cargo to and from space stations in low-Earth orbit.

ESA announced the two 25 million euro ($27 million) contracts May 22. The Exploration Company, co-located in France and Germany, and Thales Alenia Space of Italy beat out four other companies in the competition for ESA funding through the LEO Cargo Return Service program.

These contracts will run for two years, until June 2026. In this first phase of the program, The Exploration Company and Thales Alenia Space will refine their concepts, mature technologies, and focus on requirements for their cargo vehicles. ESA plans to award contracts for the second phase of the LEO Cargo Return Service program in 2026, eyeing a round-trip demonstration flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2028.

Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft atop its Atlas V rocket on the launch pad earlier this month. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Senior managers from NASA and Boeing told reporters on Friday that they plan to launch the first crew test flight of the Starliner spacecraft as soon as June 1, following several weeks of detailed analysis of a helium leak and a "design vulnerability" with the ship's propulsion system.

Extensive data reviews over the last two-and-a-half weeks settled on a likely cause of the leak, which officials described as small and stable. During these reviews, engineers also built confidence that even if the leak worsened, it would not add any unacceptable risk for the Starliner test flight to the International Space Station, officials said.

But engineers also found that an unlikely mix of technical failures in Starliner's propulsion system—representing 0.77 percent of all possible failure modes, according to Boeing's program manager—could prevent the spacecraft from conducting a deorbit burn at the end of the mission.

Enlarge / A Russian Soyuz rocket climbs away from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on May 16.

The launch of a classified Russian military satellite last week deployed a payload that US government officials say is likely a space weapon.

In a series of statements, US officials said the new military satellite, named Kosmos 2576, appears to be similar to two previous "inspector" spacecraft launched by Russia in 2019 and 2022.

"Just last week, on May 16, Russia launched a satellite into low-Earth orbit that the United States assesses is likely a counter-space weapon presumably capable of attacking other satellites in low-Earth orbit," said Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador to the United Nations. "Russia deployed this new counter-space weapon into the same orbit as a US government satellite."

Enlarge / Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on the eve of the first crew launch attempt earlier this month. (credit: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images)

The first crewed test flight of Boeing's long-delayed Starliner spacecraft won't take off as planned Saturday and could face a longer postponement as engineers evaluate a stubborn leak of helium from the capsule's propulsion system.

NASA announced the latest delay of the Starliner test flight late Tuesday. Officials will take more time to consider their options for how to proceed with the mission after discovering the small helium leak on the spacecraft's service module.

The space agency did not describe what options are on the table, but sources said they range from flying the spacecraft "as is" with a thorough understanding of the leak and confidence it won't become more significant in flight, to removing the capsule from its Atlas V rocket and taking it back to a hangar for repairs.

Enlarge / SpaceX's fourth full-scale Starship rocket undergoes a fueling test Monday. (credit: SpaceX)

After three test flights, SpaceX has shown that the world's most powerful rocket can reach space. Now, engineers must demonstrate the company's next-generation Starship vehicle can get back home.

This will be the central objective for the fourth Starship test flight, which could happen as soon as early June, according to Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO.

"Starship Flight 4 in about 2 weeks," Musk posted on X, his social media platform, following a Starship countdown rehearsal Monday at the Starship launch site in South Texas. "Primary goal is getting through max reentry heating."

Enlarge / Ed Dwight, 90, exits Blue Origin's crew capsule Sunday after a 10-minute flight to the edge of space. (credit: Blue Origin)

More than 60 years after he was denied an opportunity to become America's first Black astronaut, Ed Dwight finally traveled into space Sunday with five other passengers on a 10-minute flight inside a Blue Origin capsule.

Dwight, a retired Air Force captain and test pilot, had a chance to become the first African American astronaut. He was one of 26 pilots the Air Force recommended to NASA for the third class of astronauts in 1963, but the agency didn't select him. It took another 20 years for America's first Black astronaut, Guion Bluford, to fly in space in 1983.

“Everything they did, I did, and I did it well," Dwight said in a video released by Blue Origin. "If politics had changed, I would have gone to space in some kind of capacity.”

Enlarge / SpaceX's Starship tower (left) at Launch Complex 39A dwarfs the launch pad for the Falcon 9 rocket (right). (credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

There are a couple of ways to read the announcement from the Federal Aviation Administration that it's kicking off a new environmental review of SpaceX's plan to launch the most powerful rocket in the world from Florida.

The FAA said on May 10 that it plans to develop an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for SpaceX's proposal to launch Starships from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The FAA ordered this review after SpaceX updated the regulatory agency on the projected Starship launch rate and the design of the ground infrastructure needed at Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A), the historic launch pad once used for Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.

Dual environmental reviews

At the same time, the US Space Force is overseeing a similar EIS for SpaceX's proposal to take over a launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, a few miles south of LC-39A. This launch pad, designated Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37), is available for use after United Launch Alliance's last Delta rocket lifted off there in April.

Enlarge / On Wednesday, SpaceX fully stacked the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage for the mega-rocket's next test flight from South Texas. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 6.44 of the Rocket Report! Kathy Lueders, general manager of SpaceX's Starbase launch facility, says the company expects to receive an FAA launch license for the next Starship test flight shortly after Memorial Day. It looks like this rocket could fly in late May or early June, about two-and-a-half months after the previous Starship test flight. This is an improvement over the previous intervals of seven months and four months between Starship flights.

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.

Blue Origin launch on tap this weekend. Blue Origin plans to launch its first human spaceflight mission in nearly two years on Sunday. This flight will launch six passengers on a flight to suborbital space more than 60 miles (100 km) over West Texas. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos's space company, has not flown people to space since a New Shepard rocket failure on an uncrewed research flight in September 2022. The company successfully launched New Shepard on another uncrewed suborbital mission in December.

Enlarge / A view looking down at Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (credit: United Launch Alliance)

Boeing is taking a few extra days to resolve a small helium leak on the Starliner spacecraft slated to ferry two NASA astronauts on a test flight to the International Space Station, officials said Tuesday.

This means the first crew launch of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, running years behind schedule and more than $1.4 billion over budget, won't happen before next Tuesday, May 21, at 4:43 pm EDT (20:43 UTC). Meeting this schedule assumes engineers can get comfortable with the helium leak. Officials from Boeing and NASA, which manages Boeing's multibillion-dollar Starliner commercial crew contract, previously targeted Friday, May 17, for the spacecraft's first launch with astronauts onboard.

Boeing's ground team traced the leak to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster on the spacecraft's service module.

Enlarge / The Space Launch System rocket lifts off on the Artemis I mission. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

NASA is looking for ways to get rock samples back from Mars for less than the $11 billion the agency would need under its own plan, so last month, officials put out a call to industry to propose ideas.

Boeing is the first company to release details about how it would attempt a Mars Sample Return mission. Its study involves a single flight of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the super heavy-lift launcher designed to send astronauts to the Moon on NASA's Artemis missions.

Jim Green, NASA's former chief scientist and longtime head of the agency's planetary science division, presented Boeing's concept Wednesday at the Humans to Mars summit, an annual event sponsored primarily by traditional space companies. Boeing is the lead contractor for the SLS core stage and upper stage and has pitched the SLS, primarily a crew launch vehicle, as a rocket for military satellites and deep space probes.