Welcome to Edition 8.20 of the Rocket Report! For the second week in a row, Blue Origin dominated the headlines with news about its New Glenn rocket. After a stunning success November 13 with the launch and landing of the second New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos’ space company revealed a roadmap this week showing how engineers will supercharge the vehicle with more engines. Meanwhile, in South Texas, SpaceX took a step toward the first flight of the next-generation Starship rocket. There will be no Rocket Report next week due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. We look forward to resuming delivery of all the news in space lift the first week of December.

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.

Northrop’s Pegasus rocket wins a rare contract. A startup named Katalyst Space Technologies won a $30 million contract from NASA in August to build a robotic rescue mission for the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in low-Earth orbit. Swift, in space since 2004, is a unique instrument designed to study gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the Universe. The spacecraft lacks a propulsion system and its orbit is subject to atmospheric drag, and NASA says it is “racing against the clock” to boost Swift’s orbit and extend its lifetime before it falls back to Earth. On Wednesday, Katalyst announced it selected Northrop Grumman’s air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to send the rescue craft into orbit next year.

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© Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

One week after the successful second launch of its large New Glenn booster, Blue Origin revealed a roadmap on Thursday for upgrades to the rocket, including a new variant with more main engines and a super-heavy lift capability.

These upgrades to the rocket are “designed to increase payload performance and launch cadence, while enhancing reliability,” the company said in an update published on its website. The enhancements will be phased in over time, starting with the third launch of New Glenn, which is likely to occur during the first half of 2026.

A bigger beast

The most significant part of the update concerned an evolution of New Glenn that will transform the booster into a super-heavy lift launch vehicle. The first stage of this evolved vehicle will have nine BE-4 engines instead of seven, and the upper stage four BE-3U engines instead of two. In its update, Blue Origin refers to the new vehicle as 9×4 and the current variant as 7×2, a reference to the number of engines in each stage.

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© Blue Origin

Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft.

© Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

The ESCAPADE mission, which launched to space on a Blue Origin rocket on Thursday, breaks the mold of how planetary science missions typically come together.

© UC Berkeley/UCLA/NASA

The ESCAPADE mission, which launched to space on a Blue Origin rocket on Thursday, breaks the mold of how planetary science missions typically come together.

© UC Berkeley/UCLA/NASA

The lower half of the New Glenn rocket set down on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean after lifting a small NASA Mars mission to space.

© Blue Origin, via YouTube

At least one space launch has been put on hold, as satellite operators and rocket companies manage the effects of the current geomagnetic storm hitting Earth.

© Helioviewer Project/NASA/ESA

At least one space launch has been put on hold, as satellite operators and rocket companies manage the effects of the current geomagnetic storm hitting Earth.

© Helioviewer Project/NASA/ESA

The second flight of the orbital rocket from Jeff Bezos’s space company was halted by weather. The company may try again on Wednesday.

© Joe Skipper/Reuters

The second flight of the orbital rocket from Jeff Bezos’s space company was halted by weather. The company may try again on Wednesday.

© Joe Skipper/Reuters

Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, and Lockheed Martin are among the contractors that may compete with Elon Musk’s company in the race back to the lunar surface.