NASA Picks Eric Schmidt’s Rocket Company For Mars Mission
NASA has selected Relativity Space to build and launch Aeolus, a 2028 Mars orbiter that would provide daily global measurements of dust, winds, and atmospheric temperatures to support future robotic and human missions. TechCrunch reports: The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Sta … ⌘ Read more

A Chinese Rocket Breaks Apart Dangerously Close To the Starlink Constellation
A Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket’s upper stage broke apart shortly after last week’s June 9 launch, likely creating 100 to 150 pieces of debris in a busy region of low-Earth orbit crossed by the ISS and lower-altitude Starlink satellites. Most fragments should reenter within months because of atmospheric drag, but experts s … ⌘ Read more

Jeff Bezos’ AI Startup Aims To Build an ‘Artificial General Engineer’
Jeff Bezos says his new AI startup, Prometheus, is working toward an “artificial general engineer” capable of helping design complex physical products such as robots, drugs, manufacturing systems, and rocket engines. The Verge reports: The NYT first reported on Prometheus last November, but now Bezos is sharing more information about the startu … ⌘ Read more

Elon Musk becomes world’s first trillionaire as SpaceX opens higher in Wall Street debut
SpaceX jumped 11 per cent as the rocket maker’s stock opened for trading, giving the company a market value of $US1.96 trillion ($2.78 trillion) ⌘ Read more

SpaceX IPO Puts Elon Musk’s ‘Extreme’ Ownership to the Test
The rocket maker debuts on Nasdaq today under a wave of criticism about Musk’s near-absolute control. It’s how the company has worked from the start. ⌘ Read more

‘One could not ask for a better friend’: Elon Musk’s mate eyes a $100 billion windfall
When SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, starts trading on the stock market, Antonio Gracias and his private equity firm will reap one of the largest-ever returns from a private investment. ⌘ Read more

Chinese rocket identified as source of mystery light in Australian skies
The unusual streak of light was visible for about 20 minutes over parts of Australia, including Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. ⌘ Read more

Sharesies opens SpaceX IPO to its NZ wholesale investors
Sharesies is offering participation in the SpaceX initial public offering only to New Zealand wholesale investors registered before the offer period closes at 7pm NZ time on June 10.

The rocket and satellite company led by US billionaire Elon Musk aims to raise about US$75 billion (NZ$127b) in the IPO, the company said in a regulatory filing, valuing the company at more than US$1.77 trillion. ⌘ Read more

2degrees pushes on with satellite-to-mobile plans despite rocket explosion
The boss of 2degrees says the company remains on track to enter the latest space race – using satellites to connect mobile customers in far-flung places – despite the setback facing its US partner after a spectacular rocket explosion in Florida.

2degrees hopes to begin testing a satellite-to-mobile service powered by Starlink rival AST SpaceMobile from the middle of this year. … ⌘ Read more

What the SpaceX IPO means for Rocket Lab
When Elon Musk finally pulls the trigger on a SpaceX initial public offering, which could happen as soon as June 12, it will likely be the biggest public listing in history.

Retail investors will pile in, institutions will scramble for allocation, and the Nasdaq will briefly look like a launchpad, with millions watching its ticker from around the world, just as they regularly tune in to watch Starship rockets blasting off. ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Rocket Exploded Thursday Night During Hot-Fire Test
Spaceflight Now shared their video of the explosion, which the Orlando Sentinel describes as showing Blue Origin’s rocket “become engulfed in flames. The fireball expands out and covers the entire launch pad as the fuselage of the rocket can be seen crumbling into the flames.”

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said on X.com “It’s too early to know … ⌘ Read more

Anthropic rockets to $1.6t valuation, topping OpenAI in AI showdown
By Bradley Olson and Josh Beckerman

AI startup Anthropic closed a funding round at a US$965 billion (NZ$1.6 trillion) valuation, rocketing past ChatGPT-maker OpenAI as the companies race ahead on expected public listings this year. ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Rocket Explodes in Fiery Setback
The detonation of the New Glenn rocket resulted in a huge fireball in Florida, and may have long-term implications for the company’s ambitions. ⌘ Read more

The most spectacular rocket explosion since N1 just happened in Florida
Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-just-exploded-during-a-static-fire-test/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48318678

Points: 11

# Comments: 2 ⌘ Read more

Investors beeline for Comvita, Amano owner Savor-ing the moment, Rural Land’s rocketing bill, and more
Stay ahead with BusinessDesk’s regular Small Cap Wrap – all the latest small cap opportunities, market trends and more.

Comvita has finally put its long-awaited capital raise behind it – and the … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Launches 29 Starlink Satellites on Memorial Day
“The expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink network of internet relay satellites continued Monday with a Memorial Day launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station,” reports Spaceflight Now.

The mission added another 29 Starlink satellites to more than 10,000 already in low Earth orbit:

This was SpaceX’s 60th orbital flight of the year, consisting of 59 Falcon 9 rocket … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX’s Upgraded Starship V3 Launches For First Time
SpaceX’s upgraded Starship V3 launched today from Starbase, Texas for the first time, successfully deploying 22 dummy Starlink satellites and completing a planned fiery splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Reuters reports: The towering vehicle, consisting of the upper-stage Starship astronaut vessel stacked atop a Super Heavy booster rocket, blasted off at about 5:30 p.m … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Listed Grok’s ‘Spicy’ Mode as a Risk in Its IPO Filing
The rocket company has set aside more than $500 million for potential litigation losses, in part to account for complaints alleging Grok created sexualized images. ⌘ Read more

Rocket Lab Reports Growing Demand for Commercial Space Products. Stock Surges 34%
For just the first three months of 2026, Rocket Lab’s launch business reports $63.7 million in revenue, reports CNBC — plus another $136.7 million from its space systems business. Besides beating Wall Street’s expectations, Rocket Lab also announced that its backlog has more than doubled from a year ago to $2.2 … ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Strikes Deal With Coding Startup Cursor For $60 Billion
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company, said on Tuesday that it had struck a deal with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor that could result in its acquiring the young company for $60 billion. SpaceX is making the deal just as it prepares to go public in what is likel … ⌘ Read more

Blue Origin Rocket Launches, Successfully Reuses Booster - But Loses Satellite
SpaceNews reports:

Blue Origin’s New Glenn suffered a malfunction of its second stage on the rocket’s third flight April 19, stranding its payload in an unrecoverable “off-nominal” orbit and dealing the company a setback as it seeks to increase its flight rate… AST SpaceMobile had planned to launch 45 to 60 satell … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de pretty cool, thanks for sharing! We saw the rocket go up yesterday, but it didn’t occur to me to pull out the camera and take a shot until it was gone. I mean, the visible window is also quite short! 😅

SpaceX Files To Go Public
Reuters reports that SpaceX has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, reportedly targeting a valuation above $1.75 trillion. Reuters reports: SpaceX puts more rockets in space than any other company and promises a chance to invest in humanity’s return to the moon and attempt to colonize Mars. The company aspires to put artificial intelligence data centers in space, while running a lucrative satellite communications system that o … ⌘ Read more

UK Startup Ignites Plasma Inside Nuclear Fusion Rocket
UK startup Pulsar Fusion says it has achieved the first plasma ignition inside a nuclear fusion rocket engine prototype – a huge step for space travel that could cut missions to Mars “from months-long journeys to just a few weeks,” reports Euronews. From the report: Pulsar Fusion revealed the milestone during a live stream at Amazon’s MARS Conference, hosted by … ⌘ Read more

William Shatner Celebrates 95th Birthday, Smokes Cigar, Revisits ‘Rocket Man’ and Tests X Money
It was 60 years ago when William Shatner — born in 1931 — portrayed Captain Kirk in the TV series Star Trek. Shatner turns 95 today — and celebrated by posting a picture of himself smoking a cigar.

“At 95, I’m still smokin’!” Shatner joked, adding that in life he’d learned two th … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de oh yeah, we have heard plenty. The re-entry boom of the shuttles (when they were in service) and, more recently, of the SpaceX rockets boosters. Depending on weather conditions we might hear a lot, or nothing at all.

I will try capturing a “regular” launch as I see it from home one of these days. It is a curved white, blueish line in the sky, with a big, incandescent tip (the actual rocket burners, and boosters). Pretty cool sight.

@bender@twtxt.net Must be crazy living this close to the rockets. 🤯 Have you ever heard anything (not just this one)? 🤔

Here is a different view.

@javivf@adn.org.es it was caused by the Falcon 9 rocket launch.

So, this happened this morning:

NASA Repairs Artemis 2 Rocket, Continues Eyeing April Moon Launch
NASA is eyeing an April launch window for the upcoming Artemis II mission after it repaired a helium-flow issue on the Space Launch System upper stage rocket. “Work on the rocket and spacecraft will continue in the coming weeks as NASA prepares for rolling the rocket out to the launch pad again later this month ahead of a potential launch in … ⌘ Read more

Hypersonic aircraft completes first test flight
The DART was launched by a booster rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net well, it isn’t rocket science, is it? 😅 Yet, without using the hashes and starting to follow people, it is very, very rudimentary. I know, I know, there were a couple of years during which people lived just fine without those. Yet, once you get used to certain things, there is no going back.

NASA Eyes March 6 To Launch 4 Astronauts To the Moon On Artemis II Mission
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: NASA could launch four astronauts on a mission to fly around the moon as soon as March 6th. That’s the launch date (PDF) that the space agency is now working towards following a successful test fueling of its big, 322-foot-tall moon rocket, which is standing on a launch pad at th … ⌘ Read more

China’s Hottest App of 2026 Just Asks If You’re Still Alive
A bare-bones Chinese app called “Are You Dead?” – whose entire premise is that solo-living users tap daily to confirm they’re still alive, triggering an alert to an emergency contact after two missed check-ins – has rocketed to the top of China’s app store charts and gone viral globally without spending a dime on advertising.

The app wasn’t built for the elder … ⌘ Read more

THIS ROCKET ENGINE WASN’T DESIGNED BY HUMANS ⌘ Read more

NASA Delays Artemis II To March
ClickOnThis writes: NASA has delayed the Artemis II launch to March of this year, after a wet dress-rehearsal uncovered a hydrogen leak. From the NASA article: During tanking, engineers spent several hours troubleshooting a liquid hydrogen leak in an interface used to route the cryogenic propellant into the rocket’s core stage, putting them behind in the countdown. Attempts to resolve the issue involved stop … ⌘ Read more

Startup Uses SpaceX Tech to Cool Data Centers With Less Power and No Water
California-based Karman Industries “says it has developed a cooling system that uses SpaceX rocket engine technology to rein in the environmental impact of data centers,” reports the Los Angeles Times, “chilling them with less space, less power and no water.”

Karman has developed a cooling system similar to the heat pumps … ⌘ Read more

The Fastest Human Spaceflight Mission In History Crawls Closer To Liftoff
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Preparations for the first human spaceflight to the Moon in more than 50 years took a big step forward this weekend with the rollout of the Artemis II rocket to its launch pad. The rocket reached a top speed of just 1 mph on the four-mile, 12-hour journey from the Vehicle … ⌘ Read more

Adam’s last rocket blew up. Taxpayers are betting $75m the next one will go better
Super funds and the federal government are backing Gilmour Space Technologies, six months on from the launch of the company’s first rocket, which crashed after 14 seconds. ⌘ Read more

SpaceX Launches New NASA Telescope to Help JWST Study Exoplanets
Last week a University of Arizona astronomy professor “watched anxiously…as an awe-inspiring SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried NASA’s new exoplanet telescope, Pandora, into orbit.”

In 2018 NASA had approached Daniel Apai to help build the telescope, which he says will “shatter a barrier — to understand and remove a source of noise in the data … ⌘ Read more

NASA Livestreams the Rocket That Will Carry Four Astronauts Around the Moon
“A mega rocket set to take astronauts around the Moon for the first time in decades is being taken to its launch pad,” the BBC reported this morning.

NASA is livestreaming their move of the 11-million-pound “stack” — which includes the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft secured to it, al … ⌘ Read more

New “Thames” Linux Accelerator Driver Posted Along With Companion Gallium3D Driver
Tomeu Vizoso as the open-source developer behind the “Rocket” driver for reverse-engineered Rockchip NPU support, Teflon as a Mesa framework for TensorFlow Lite and NPU uses, and various Etnaviv driver work, has announced his newest creation: Thames… ⌘ Read more

You Can Now Reserve a Hotel Room On the Moon For $250,000
A newly founded startup called GRU Space is taking deposits of up to $1 million to eventually build inflatable hotels on the Moon. The bet is that space needs destinations, not just rockets, even if the first customers are essentially early adopters of sci-fi optimism. Ars Technica reports: It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? After all, GRU Space had, as of late Dec … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Let’s hope they find the guys who fired that rocket onto the balcony and we actually get a fireworks ban.

The only good thing about this absolute craziness is that I can restock my rocket sticks. I picked up twelve along the way. Unfortunately, it looks like 99.999% of ammunition is bombs instead of rockets. Some sections of my street look exactly like an arbitrary Pakistanian town that I’ve seen online.

There was surprisingly much snow in the woods. Also, all ponds have frozen over. I didn’t expect that. Not at all. There were even illegal ice skating tracks in the natural reserve. We came across a large puddle and it was at least 10cm solid ice to the ground. Crazy!

https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2026-01-01/

Israel Deploys World’s First Drone Defense Laser
Israel has operationally deployed Iron Beam, a 100,000-watt laser air-defense system capable of shooting down drones, rockets, and mortars at negligible per-shot cost. According to Tom’s Hardware, it marks the first real-world deployment of a high-energy laser as part of a modern, multi-layered missile defense network. From the report: The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sigh … ⌘ Read more

Rocket Crashes in Brazil’s First Commercial Launch
The first-ever commercial rocket launched at Brazil’s Alcantara Space Center crashed soon after liftoff late earlier this week, dealing a blow to Brazilian aerospace ambitions and shares of South Korean satellite launch company Innospace. From a report: The rocket began its vertical trajectory as planned after liftoff [Monday] at 10:13 p.m. local time (0113 GMT) but fell … ⌘ Read more

James Webb Space Telescope Confirms 1st ‘Runaway’ Supermassive Black Hole
Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Space.com: Astronomers have made a truly mind-boggling discovery using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): a runaway black hole 10 million times larger than the sun, rocketing through space at a staggering 2.2 million miles per hour (1,000 kilometers per second). That not … ⌘ Read more

This ROCKET ENGINE WASN’T DESIGNED BY HUMANS ⌘ Read more