Enlarge / Riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, spacecraft sets off to collide with an asteroid in the world’s first full-scale planetary defense test mission in November 2021. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

On a fall evening in 2022, scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory were busy with the final stages of a planetary defense mission. As Andy Rivkin, one of the team leaders, was getting ready to appear in NASA’s live broadcast of the experiment, a colleague posted a photo of a pair of asteroids: the half-mile-wide Didymos and, orbiting around it, a smaller one called Dimorphos, taken about 7 million miles from Earth.

“We were able to see Didymos and this little dot in the right spot where we expected Dimorphos to be,” Rivkin recalled.

After the interview, Rivkin joined a crowd of scientists and guests to watch the mission’s finale on several big screens: As part of an asteroid deflection mission called DART, a spacecraft was closing in on Dimorphos and photographing its rocky surface in increasing detail.

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 / Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane inside a NASA test chamber in Ohio. (credit: Sierra Space)

There is still some work to do to prepare Sierra Space's Dream Chaser spaceplane for its first mission, but the company says the winged resupply craft for the International Space Station will soon ship to its launch site in Florida.

The Dream Chaser will take off on top of a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket to head for the space station. A spokesperson for Sierra Space told Ars the spaceplane's launch is scheduled for the third or fourth quarter of this year.

But Sierra Space will transport the Dream Chaser to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a to-do list. There are two more significant tests the spacecraft must complete at the launch site. Technicians must also finish work on Dream Chaser's heat shield before it is ready to go on top of its Vulcan launcher. It's unclear how long these activities will take to complete.

Enlarge / The Orion spacecraft after splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the Artemis I mission. (credit: NASA)

NASA has asked a panel of outside experts to review the agency's investigation into the unexpected loss of material from the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft on a test flight in 2022.

Chunks of charred material cracked and chipped away from Orion's heat shield during reentry at the end of the 25-day unpiloted Artemis I mission in December 2022. Engineers inspecting the capsule after the flight found more than 100 locations where the stresses of reentry stripped away pieces of the heat shield as temperatures built up to 5,000° Fahrenheit.

This was the most significant discovery on the Artemis I, an unpiloted test flight that took the Orion capsule around the Moon for the first time. The next mission in NASA's Artemis program, Artemis II, is scheduled for launch late next year on a test flight to send four astronauts around the far side of the Moon.

Enlarge / The Atlas V rocket and Starliner spacecraft on their launch pad Monday. (credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams climbed into their seats inside Boeing's Starliner spacecraft Monday night in Florida, but trouble with the capsule's Atlas V rocket kept the commercial ship's long-delayed crew test flight on the ground.

Around two hours before launch time, shortly after 8:30 pm EDT (00:30 UTC), United Launch Alliance's launch team stopped the countdown. "The engineering team has evaluated, the vehicle is not in a configuration where we can proceed with flight today," said Doug Lebo, ULA's launch conductor.

The culprit was a misbehaving valve on the rocket's Centaur upper stage, which has two RL10 engines fed by super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.

Enlarge / Astronauts Suni Williams (left) and Butch Wilmore (right) inside a Starliner simulator at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. (credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz)

If you want to know what it's like to take a new spacecraft on its first test run in orbit, there are only three people in the Western world you can call.

That fact should drive home the rarity of debuting a new human-rated spaceship. When Boeing's Starliner capsule lifts off Monday night, this group of three will grow to five. Veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, both former US Navy test pilots, will be at the controls of Starliner for the ride into low-Earth orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

"The first crewed flight of a new spacecraft is an absolutely critical milestone," said Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator. "The lives of our crew members, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, are at stake. We don’t take that lightly at all."

Enlarge / This image captured by Astroscale's ADRAS-J satellite shows the discarded upper stage from a Japanese H-IIA rocket. (credit: Astroscale)

Welcome to Edition 6.42 of the Rocket Report! Several major missions are set for launch in the next few months. These include the first crew flight on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, set for liftoff on May 6, and the next test flight of SpaceX's Starship rocket, which could happen before the end of May. Perhaps as soon as early summer, SpaceX could launch the Polaris Dawn mission with four private astronauts, who will perform the first fully commercial spacewalk in orbit. In June or July, Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket is slated to launch for the first time. Rest assured, Ars will have it all covered.

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.

German rocket arrives at Scottish spaceport. Rocket Factory Augsburg has delivered a booster for its privately developed RFA One rocket to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, the company announced on X. The first stage for the RFA One rocket was installed on its launch pad at SaxaVord to undergo preparations for a static fire test. The booster arrived at the Scottish launch site with five of its kerosene-fueled Helix engines. The remaining four Helix engines, for a total of nine, will be fitted to the RFA One booster at SaxaVord, the company said.

Enlarge / Orion, the Moon, and Earth in one photo in December 2022. (credit: NASA)

NASA's acting inspector general, George A. Scott, released a report Wednesday that provided an assessment of NASA's readiness to launch the Artemis II mission next year. This is an important flight for the space agency because, while the crew of four will not land on the Moon, it will be the first time humans have flown into deep space in more than half a century.

The report did not contain any huge surprises. In recent months the biggest hurdle for the Artemis II mission has been the performance of the heat shield that protects the Orion spacecraft during its fiery reentry at more than 25,000 mph from the Moon.

Although NASA downplayed the heat shield issue in the immediate aftermath of the uncrewed Artemis I flight in late 2022, it is clear that the unexpected damage and charring during that uncrewed mission is a significant concern. As recently as last week, Amit Kshatriya, who oversees development for the Artemis missions in NASA's exploration division, said the agency is still looking for the root cause of the problem.