Everyone seems to be launching and landing rockets these days.

Last week, China joined the club of countries that have launched an orbital mission and brought its booster safely back to Earth, which is just the beginning of public and private ventures in that country aggressively pushing into rocket reuse. Also in Asia, Japan's space agency has been conducting hop tests, and Honda recently performed vertical reuse tests.

In the United States, of course, SpaceX launches and lands reusable rockets every few days. Blue Origin, although its New Glenn booster is temporarily grounded, has also demonstrated the ability to both land and re-launch a large orbital booster. Other US companies, including Stoke Space, Rocket Lab, and Relativity Space, are all making credible progress toward partially or fully reusable rockets.

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Welcome to Edition 9.03 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX counted down all the way to T-0 on Thursday evening in South Texas before a handful of Raptor engines decided not to light at ignition of the rocket. It is not clear whether the vehicle can be worked on at the pad, or whether Starship will need to be de-stacked before this can occur. In any case, a few days delay beats a significant issue in flight.

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.

Vikram-1 rocket gets a launch date. The debut launch attempt by Skyroot Aerospace of its Vikram-1 rocket is now set for July 18, at 11:30 am local time in India. This will be the first time a commercial rocket developed in India attempts to reach orbit. Designed to carry small satellites weighing up to 350 kg to low-Earth orbit, Vikram-1 is targeting a 450 km orbit at a 60-degree inclination.

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Anil Menon, a NASA flight surgeon, felt crushed nine years ago as his hopes and aspirations collapsed around him.

For the fourth time, he had diligently applied to become an astronaut at the US space agency, seeking to fulfill a lifelong dream. Although he made it to the final round, NASA had once again rejected his application at the end of the grueling process.

"I was so sad, and I admitted defeat," Menon said. "I just did not see a pathway forward. So I pretty much, at that point in time, gave up on being an astronaut. I thought there was a zero percent chance."

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SpaceX has pinned the bulk of its future value on orbital data centers. Not rockets. Not spacecraft.

Instead, it envisions launching and maintaining a constellation of 1 million satellites capable of generating 120 GW to power tens of millions—and potentially up to 100 million—frontier-class GPUs for data center services.

The company's founder, Elon Musk, revealed plans for this massive constellation months ago, but until recently, the scope of the individual satellites was largely unknown. That changed in June, when Musk and Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering for SpaceX, spoke in a promotional video about the company's plans to develop the first iteration of an orbital data center, called an AI1 satellite. The video finally provided the company's numbers about the satellite's size and power capabilities.

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NASA breathed a deep sigh of relief six years ago when SpaceX launched two astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, on a successful mission to the International Space Station. With the safe landing of Crew Dragon, the US space agency broke a nearly decade-long gap in its ability to put humans into orbit.

Through its Commercial Crew program and multibillion-dollar contracts awarded in 2014, NASA had hoped to foster two providers of low-Earth orbit transportation, SpaceX and Boeing. However Boeing has yet to complete a successful crewed test flight—a perilous 2024 test flight by Boeing's Starliner was later declared a Type A mishap—and probably won't fly another crewed mission before 2028.

With the International Space Station slated for retirement in the early 2030s, NASA is partnering with several US companies to develop private space stations. As part of that effort, the private companies will have to work with NASA to determine how they will transport astronauts to and from their space stations, some of which could launch as soon as 2030.

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NASA this week released a much-anticipated document, known as a "draft Request for Proposals," that provides some clarity about what it expects from US companies attempting to build privately operated space stations in low-Earth orbit.

The stakes are high with this document, known as a draft RFP. The space agency, publicly, has set an end date for the International Space Station of 2030. Although there is likely to be a two-year extension, time is still running short to build, test, and fly a vehicle as complex as a space station. NASA officials and the US Congress have both said they want to avoid a gap in having a human presence in orbit, and this has created considerable urgency about what comes next.

Nearly five years ago the space agency took a concrete step toward filling this gap, awarding funding to three companies to develop space station concepts. Previously, NASA had also provided $140 million to another space station company, Axiom Space. These Space Act Agreements were intended as a prelude to a second phase of the program, which would award substantially more funding to one or two more companies to proceed into the construction and launch of their space stations. But phase two of the program kept getting delayed, in part because Congress dithered on funding.

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Welcome to Edition 9.02 of the Rocket Report! Our attention in the coming days turns to Asia, where there are a couple of notable rocket debuts. Up first is the Long March 10B on Friday, a medium-lift rocket with a reusable first stage. After launch this stage will attempt a landing on a recovery ship. Then, as early as Sunday, the private Indian company Skyroot may attempt to launch its first rocket, Vikram-1.

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.

RFA sets launch date for August. Almost two years after an RFA One first stage burst into flames during a static fire test, German rocket-builder Rocket Factory Augsburg is preparing for a second attempt at the rocket’s inaugural flight from SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, European Spaceflight reports. The launch window will open on August 10, the Spaceport said in its announcement.

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This week the US Space Force brought two more companies into the pool of bidders eligible to compete for its launch contracts—Impulse Space and Relativity Space. For a rocket company, cracking into the lucrative US military launch market is both a sign of maturity, as well as an important source of revenue.

The inclusion of Relativity Space, which is making credible progress toward the launch of its heavy-lift Terran R rocket, is perhaps not a huge surprise. Under the leadership of former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, the company has continued to work toward bringing the partly reusable rocket to the launch pad.

The addition of Impulse Space, however, was something of a surprise. The company specializes in building spacecraft for in-space operations, rather than launching from Earth.

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The rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, is raising private capital, the DealBook newsletter reported early Wednesday.

According to the publication, the company is raising $10 billion, leading to a valuation of $130 billion. Coatue Management, a big asset manager, is expected to lead with a $4 billion commitment. Another $4 billion is expected to come from large institutional investors. And Bezos will contribute an additional $2 billion.

Founded in 2000, Blue Origin is seeking to become a global leader in spaceflight, developing a line of super heavy lift rockets, lunar landers, and plans for two megaconstellations. It is seeking to compete in the same areas—launch, telecommunications, data centers from space—as SpaceX.

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