SpaceX
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy eyed by Europe/Japan as ULA nails spectacular Delta Heavy launch
According to RussianSpaceWeb, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is under serious consideration for launches of major European and Japanese payloads associated with the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (formerly the Deep Space Gateway).
Currently targeting launch readiness in the mid-2020s, those heavy scientific and exploratory government payloads are eyeing Falcon Heavy at the same time as the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Delta IV Heavy – the most powerful operational rocket prior to FH’s debut – is busy wrapping up a scientific launch for NASA and prepping for another launch in September for its singular anchor customer, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1028599075002896384
A breathtaking mission to the sun
United Launch Alliance (ULA) has just completed the ninth successful launch of its Delta IV Heavy rocket, originally developed by Boeing in the 1990s and debuted in 2004 before the company’s launch vehicle subsidiary joined forces with Lockheed Martin’s own rocket branch. Delta Heavy’s August 12th mission saw the rocket send a small NASA payload known as Parker Solar Probe (PSP) on a trajectory that will eventually place the craft closer to the Sun than any human-made object before it. In pursuit of a better understanding of how exactly our solar system’s namesake functions and behaves, PSP will also become the fastest object ever created by humans, traveling at an extraordinary 200 km/s (120 mi/s) at the zenith of its deepest periapses (the point at which PSP is closest to the sun).
In a fitting send-off for the small heat-shielded spacecraft, Delta IV Heavy’s launch was a spectacle to behold, with clear skies and the cover of darkness combining to magnify the best of the rocket’s telltale features. Upon ignition of its three massive RS-68 rocket engines, each producing over 700,000 lb-ft of thrust, the rocket is held down for several seconds in a process that famously culminates in what appears to be self-immolation just before liftoff, a consequence of the rocket burning off excess hydrogen fuel expelled during the ignition process. Unlike Falcon 9’s dirtier kerosene-oxygen combustion, Delta Heavy’s hydrogen and oxygen fuel produce a flame that is nearly transparent, aside from a bright orange tint created by materials in each engine’s ablative (read: designed to disintegrate) nozzle.
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- Delta IV Heavy opts for ‘medium-well’ just before launch. (Tom Cross)
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- The extraordinary might of Delta IV Heavy’s hydrolox-burning RS-68A engines, producing a combined 2.1 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. (Tom Cross)
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- Delta IV Heavy takes to the sky on its tenth launch, with Parker Solar Probe in tow. (Tom Cross)
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- Delta IV Heavy takes to the sky on its tenth launch, with Parker Solar Probe in tow. (Tom Cross)
While Delta IV Heavy has used one of its other nine successful launches for a NASA payload (a test flight of the Orion capsule), all seven remaining missions were conducted for the USAF (1) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO; 6), and all six remaining missions on the rocket’s manifest also happen to be for the NRO. Put simply, Delta IV Heavy would not exist today if the NRO did not have an explicit and unflappable need for the capabilities it offers. The primary downside is cost: DIVH costs at least $350 million and usually more than $400m per launch. Thankfully for ULA, the NRO has very few problems with money, and the agency’s estimated annual budget of $10 billion (2013) is more than half of NASA’s entire budget.
After Falcon Heavy’s successful debut, Delta IV Heavy’s monopoly over heavyweight NRO and USAF payloads is rapidly coming to an end, and both agencies are almost certainly attempting to equally quickly certify SpaceX’s newest rocket for critical national security space (NSS) launches. With that influx of the slightest hint of competition, Delta IV Heavy’s ~$400 million price tag starts to look rather painful in comparison to Falcon Heavy’s cost ceiling of around $150 million, potentially much less in the event that 1-3 of its boosters are recoverable. That competition likely won’t kill Delta IV Heavy, thanks entirely to the anchor support of the NRO, but it most certainly will guarantee that Delta Heavy is retired the moment ULA’s next-gen Vulcan rocket is ready to take over, likely no earlier than 2024.
Outside of the NRO, however, there is a surprising amount of interest in Falcon Heavy for interesting (and heavy) government payloads, particularly with respect to the NASA/ESA/JAXA/Roscosmos cooperative lunar space station, known as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway.
Falcon Heavy enters the mix
The first payload considering Falcon Heavy for launch services is the Japanese Space Agency’s (JAXA) HTV-X, and upgraded version of a spacecraft the country developed to assist in resupplying the International Space Station (ISS). HTV-X is primarily being designed with an ISS-resupply role still at the forefront, but Russianspaceweb recently reported that JAXA is seriously considering the development of a variant of the robotic spacecraft dedicated to resupplying the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOPG; and I truly wish I were joking about both the name and acronym).
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- JAXA’s first-generation HTV spacecraft on its fourth of nine planned launches, 2013. (NASA)
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- JAXA’s first-generation HTV spacecraft on its fourth of nine planned launches, 2013. (NASA)
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- The best available visualization of HTV-X, Japan’s upgraded and more affordable ISS resupply spacecraft. (JAXA)
As the name suggests, LOPG is fundamentally a shrunken, upgraded copy of the present-day International Space Station but with its low Earth orbit swapped for an orbit around the Moon. Why, you might ask? It happens that that question is far less sorted at this point than “how”, and there’s a fairly strong argument to be made that NASA is simply attempting to create a low-hanging-fruit destination for the chronically delayed SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft it routinely spends ~20% of its annual budget on. The alternatives to such a crewed orbital outpost are actually landing on the Moon and building a base or dramatically ramping development of foundations needed to enable the first human missions to Mars.
ARTICLE: Cislunar station gets thumbs up, new name in President's budget request – https://t.co/a1XhAPZ7ot
– By Philip Sloss.
(Numerous renders by Nathan Koga, including the epic one below) pic.twitter.com/j0cr2ze7qG
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) March 16, 2018
Regardless of the LOPG’s existential merits, a lot of energy (and money) is currently being funneled into planning and initial hardware development for the lunar station’s various modular segments. JAXA is currently analyzing ways to resupply LOPG and its crew complement with its HTV-X cargo spacecraft, currently targeting its first annual ISS resupply mission by the end of 2021. While JAXA will use its own domestic H-III rocket to launch HTV-X to the ISS, that rocket simply is not powerful enough to place a minimum of ~10,000 kg (22,000 lb) on a trans-lunar insertion (TLI) trajectory. As such, JAXA is examining SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy as a prime (and affordable) option: by recovering both side boosters on SpaceX’s drone ships and sacrificing the rocket’s center core, a 2/3rds-reusable Falcon Heavy should be able to send as much as 20,000 kg to TLI (lunar orbit), according to comments made by CEO Elon Musk.
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- Falcon Heavy booster ice peeling away and vaporizing in the fire of the engines. (Photo: Tom Cross)
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- Falcon Heavy’s launch debut from Pad 39A, February 2018. (SpaceX)
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- Falcon Heavy’s side boosters seconds away from near-simultaneous landings at Landing Zones 1 and 2. (SpaceX)
That impressive performance would also be needed for another LOPG payload, this time for ESA’s 5-6 ton European System Providing Refueling Infrastructure and Telecommunications (ESPRIT) lunar station module. That component is unlikely to reach launch readiness before 2024, but ESA is already considering Falcon Heavy (over its own Ariane 6 rocket) in order to save some of the module’s propellant. Weighing 6 metric tons at most, Falcon Heavy could most likely launch ESPRIT while still recovering all three of its booster stages.
Regardless of the outcomes of those rather far-off launch contracts, it’s clear that some sort of market exists for Falcon Heavy and even more clear that its injection of competition into the stagnant and cornered heavy-lift launch segment is being globally welcomed with open arms.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Elon Musk says SpaceX will finally retire Falcon 9 once Starship flies reliably every week.
Elon Musk gave the clearest timeline yet for retiring Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
The comment came in a reply on X, where Musk wrote that “once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon.” He was responding to physicist Casey Handmer, who noted that NASA is reportedly uneasy about SpaceX phasing out Falcon after building what Handmer called the most successful launcher ever, with the fleet nearing 1,000 total launches.
Now @SciGuySpace reports NASA is in a tizzy because after running the most successful launcher ever for more than a decade and nearing 1000 launches, @SpaceX is planning to retire Falcon in favor of Starship in a few years.
Sorry, NASA, you’ve had 15 years to burn down the… https://t.co/uCNoMwK0v9
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) August 22, 2026
Falcon 9 is still SpaceX’s busiest vehicle by far. The company is on pace for roughly 140 to 145 Falcon flights this year, following 165 in 2025, president Gwynne Shotwell told Time earlier in 2026. She has already said Falcon flights would “tail off” as Starship comes online, while reports indicate that SpaceX has stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches past 2028 and halted production of some expendable Falcon hardware, according to Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s post is a condition, and not a countdown on when Falcon will retire. Starship has not yet flown weekly, let alone daily. Its most recent flight in July ended with a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a milestone Musk pointed to earlier this month when he said the vehicle’s heat shield problem was effectively solved. SpaceX towed that ship to Christmas Island for inspection, and the next flight, Flight 14, is aimed at putting Starship into orbit for the first time. A tower catch attempt for the upper stage has been pushed back to what Musk has called “a few months” away.
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
The gap between Falcon’s role today and Starship’s promised role tomorrow matters most to NASA. Falcon and its Dragon capsule remain the only way the agency rotates astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and Starship is not certified to carry NASA crews. Musk’s post did not address how that handoff would work if Falcon winds down before a crew-rated Starship variant exists. The timing lines up with Musk’s other recent Starship comments. Two days before the Falcon post, he told a different X user that SpaceX is aiming for more than 30 Starship launches a day by 2030, or roughly 10,000 a year, a figure tied to the Trump administration’s new push for higher national launch cadence. Falcon, which took over a decade to reach its first 100 launches, was never built to approach that kind of volume.
For now, Falcon 9 keeps flying at a near-record pace while Starship works to prove it can do the job Musk has already picked out for it.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced today that the company will likely attempt to catch the Starship upper stage with its launch tower arms “in a few months.”
In a post on X, Musk wrote, “Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.” He added that the first reflight of a Starship vehicle is expected by the end of 2026 or early 2027, describing it as “a fork in the road of history for consciousness reaching the stars.”
Looks like we will probably catch the ship with the tower in a few months. If there had been a tower out to sea where we practiced landing the ship, it would have been caught.
First reflight of the ship will be either end of this year or early next. That will be a fork in the… https://t.co/O5g9pqrzyo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2026
Musk’s prediction comes amid ongoing progress toward full reusability of the Starship system, a two-stage rocket designed for rapid turnaround and dramatically lower launch costs. Catching the upper stage, known simply as “ship,” with the Mechazilla tower’s mechanical arms would mark a major milestone. It would allow both stages to return directly to the launch site for quick refurbishment and reuse, eliminating the need for ocean recovery.
Musk has previously signaled plans for a ship catch. In July, shortly after SpaceX’s wildly successful Starship 13 mission, he stated that the company would attempt to catch the ship with the tower on the next flight unless problems emerged in the mission data review. Earlier comments also outline conditions such as successful soft ocean landings before attempting a land recovery to minimize risk.
SpaceX has solved Starship’s biggest challenge, Elon Musk says
The latest update from Musk adjusts this timeline to a few months, reflecting the iterative nature of the test campaign.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower catch technique successfully with the Super Heavy booster on a couple of occasions. The first successful booster catch occurred during Flight 5 in October 2024, when the massive first stage returned to the Starbase pad in Texas and was plucked from the air by the tower arms.
Additional catches followed on later flights, including Flight 7, proving the concept for the booster and building confidence in the system as a whole.
Achieving a similar catch for the upper stage would represent a significant step forward. The ship returns from much higher speeds and greater heat loads after orbital or near-orbital flight. Success would advance SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability, potentially reducing the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 100 or more and supporting ambitions for frequent satellite deployments, lunar missions, and eventual Mars flights.
Musk has long emphasized that true reusability, refueling rather than discarding hardware, is essential for making humanity a multi-planetary species.
As SpaceX continues refining Starship through successive test flights, the coming months will test whether the ambitious catch timeline can be met. The combination of prior booster successes and improving ship landing precision suggests the company is steadily closing in on this historic capability.
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
