Big business launch kit2/3/2024 ![]() Europe’s Arianespace is close to launching its new, upgraded Ariane 6 rocket from French Guiana in South America. United Launch Alliance expects its new Vulcan rocket to make its inaugural launch later this year, hoisting a private lunar lander to the moon at NASA’s behest. NASA will use New Glenn to send a pair of spacecraft to Mars in 2024. ![]() Named after the first American to orbit the world, John Glenn, the rocket towers over the company’s current New Shepard rocket, named for Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard’s 1961 suborbital hop. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is readying the New Glenn rocket for its orbital debut from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the next year or so. There are other new rockets on the horizon. Two private flights to the moon would follow - no landings, just flyarounds. A private crew will be the first to fly Starship, orbiting Earth. SpaceX envisions an orbiting depot with window-less Starships as tankers. To reach the moon and beyond, Starship will first need to refuel in low-Earth orbit. The moonwalkers will leave Earth via NASA’s Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, and then transfer to Starship in lunar orbit for the descent to the surface, and then back to Orion. It will be the first moon landing by astronauts in more than 50 years. With Starship, the California-based SpaceX is focusing on the moon for now, with a $3 billion NASA contract to land astronauts on the lunar surface as early as 2025, using the upper stage spacecraft. He expects it will take a couple years to achieve full and rapid reusability. But with a fleet of Starships under construction at Starbase, he estimates an 80% chance that one of them will attain orbit by year’s end. As usual, Musk is remarkably blunt about his chances, giving even odds, at best, that Starship will reach orbit on its first flight.
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