Hello, 2025, for Rocket Factory Augsburg. Rocket Factory Augsburg no longer plans a maiden flight this year after losing part of its RFA One rocket during a static fire test, Space News reports. “We won’t be firing another first stage this year and the first test flight has also been postponed until next year,” RFA spokesperson Jonas Kellner told Space News via email. The German startup had aimed to fly RFA One for the first time in a matter of weeks, before its first stage was destroyed August 19 during tests at SaxaVord Spaceport, Scotland. The inaugural mission had looked set to be the first-ever vertical launch to orbit from British soil.

Post-mortem ... RFA has identified a fire in an oxygen pump on one of the rocket's nine engines as the cause for the test failure. The company released a video of raw footage from the fiery incident on X, showing several views of the fire igniting and growing until the RFA One rocket's first stage booster tipped over and fell off its test stand in Scotland. RFA's chief operating officer, Stefan Brieschenk, said in the video that the company is working on a second booster for the RFA One rocket with more than 100 improvements. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Falcon 9 booster lost on landing. For the first time in more than three years, SpaceX lost one of its reusable Falcon 9 boosters on landing following a liftoff Wednesday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with a batch of Starlink Internet satellites, Ars reports. The booster touched down on SpaceX's drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas in the Atlantic Ocean, but it was destroyed after it tipped over a moment later. Before Wednesday's landing failure, SpaceX had landed 267 boosters in a row. The company's last failure occurred in February 2021. The cause of the failure was not immediately clear, and SpaceX said "teams are assessing the booster's flight data and status." This booster was SpaceX's fleet leader, and was on its 23rd flight since debuting in November 2020. The Falcon 9's upper stage continued into orbit and successfully deployed its Starlink payloads.

FAA grounding ... The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket family while the company investigates what went wrong with the landing. But the grounding is likely to be short-lived, and the FAA will allow SpaceX to resume Falcon 9 launches once the company shows the cause of the failure does not impact public safety. A timetable for Falcon 9's return to flight was unclear at the time of this writing, however, SpaceX has not ruled out launching another Starlink mission on a Falcon 9 from California as soon as Thursday night (local time in California). Meanwhile, the all-private Polaris Dawn crew mission was supposed to launch this week from Florida, but it has been delayed primarily by a poor weather forecast in the Dragon spacecraft's offshore recovery zone. Jared Isaacman, commander of the mission, posted on X Thursday that the cause of the Falcon 9 booster landing failure was "is well understood."

Space Command chief laments China's space debris problem. The head of US Space Command said Wednesday he would like to see more transparency from the Chinese government on space debris, especially as one of China's newer rockets has shown a propensity for breaking apart and littering low-Earth orbit with hundreds of pieces of space junk, Ars reports. Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command, says he's observed some improvement in the dialogue between US and Chinese military officials this year. But the disintegration of the upper stage from a Long March 6A rocket earlier this month showed China could do more to prevent the creation of space debris and communicate openly about it when it happens.

China lags behind US and Russia ... US launch companies typically either reserve enough propellant on their upper stages to remove them from orbit after they deploy their payloads, or vent their tanks and drain their batteries to reduce any explosive hazards if the rockets will remain adrift in space. Russian rockets also do this. But China has a track record of leaving behind a lot of space junk. Space Command says two Long March 6A incidents in the last two years have created more than 800 pieces of debris in orbit. LeoLabs, a commercial company specializing in tracking orbiting objects, says there are nearly 1,000 abandoned rocket bodies in low-Earth orbit, with an average mass of 1.5 metric tons. "While Russia and the US have improved their 'rocket body abandonment behavior' over the last 20 years, the relative contribution by other countries has grown by a factor of five and China by 50x," LeoLabs says.

NASA's launch tower is more expensive than the world's tallest building. NASA's problems with the mobile launch tower that will support a larger version of its Space Launch System rocket are getting worse rather than better, Ars reports. According to a new report from NASA's inspector general, the estimated cost of the tower, which is a little bit taller than the length of a US football field with its end zones, is now $2.7 billion. Such a cost is nearly twice the funding it took to build the largest structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which is seven times taller. This is a remarkable explosion in costs as, only five years ago, NASA awarded a contract to the Bechtel engineering firm to build and deliver a second mobile launcher (ML-2) for $383 million, with a due date of March 2023. That deadline came and went with Bechtel barely beginning to cut metal.

Why does NASA need two launch platforms? … This second mobile launcher (ML-2) is required for an upgraded version of the SLS rocket that will begin flying with the Artemis IV mission, which is slated to be the second lunar landing mission for NASA's Artemis program. This version of the SLS, called the Block 1B, is taller than the SLS Block 1 rocket that flew in 2022 on the Artemis I mission, and will fly again on Artemis II and III. The SLS Block 1B has a more powerful Boeing-built upper stage with four engines, instead of the single engine on SLS Block 1, to haul heavier cargo out to the vicinity of the Moon. Artemis IV has a nominal launch date in 2028, but there's practically zero chance of this happening due to the issues with building ML-2, aside from any rocket or spacecraft problems that may crop up.

SpaceX is beefing up its own launch tower. Pretty much every day for the last couple of weeks, workers wielding welding guns and torches have climbed onto SpaceX's Starship launch pad in South Texas to make last-minute upgrades ahead of the next test flight of the world's largest rocket, Ars reports. Most of the work appears to be on two mechanical arms that will close around the Starship rocket's Super Heavy booster as it slows to a near-hover over the launch pad. SpaceX intends to use the arms to catch the booster in mid-air after it returns to Earth on the next Starship test flight, which will be the fifth full-scale launch of Starship overall. It will be the first time SpaceX tries to recover the Super Heavy booster intact.

More to do … While Starship, itself, appears to be ready to fly, SpaceX officials clearly believe there's more work to do on the launch pad. Closer views revealed welders are installing structural supports, or doublers, to certain parts of the catch arms. Elsewhere on the arms, workers were seen removing and adding other unknown pieces of hardware. SpaceX hasn't specified exactly what kind of work teams are doing on the Starship launch pad in Texas, but the focus is on beefing up hardware necessary for catching the Super Heavy booster. The FAA, meanwhile, says it is reviewing SpaceX's proposed flight plan for the next Starship flight, which presumably includes a description of the planned catch of the booster.

FAA review of Starship on hold. The Federal Aviation Administration has answered one question about why it suddenly postponed public meetings earlier this month related to SpaceX's proposal to increase the flight rate of the Starship rocket from Texas. The FAA said Thursday that it postponed the meetings after the FAA became aware of allegations that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act at its Starbase launch facility located at Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. "The FAA was unable to confirm the accuracy of certain representations in SpaceX's license application and the draft tiered environmental assessment prior to the public meetings," the agency said in a statement.

SpaceX has strongly denied these claims ... This all stems from a story published by CNBC on August 12 reporting that SpaceX violated environmental regulations by repeatedly releasing pollutants into or near bodies of water. In a series of posts on X, SpaceX strongly denied the accusations, saying that its water deluge system at Starbase uses only potable water, and that state and federal environmental regulators told the company it could continue launch operations.

Next three launches

TBD: Falcon 9 | Starlink 9-5 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | TBD

TBD: Falcon 9 | Starlink 8-10 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | TBD

TBD: Falcon 9 | Polaris Dawn | Kennedy Space Center, Florida | TBD

Listing image by Rocket Factory Augsburg