Rocket Report: Falcon Heavy is back; Russia’s Soyuz-5 is finally launched

Welcome to Edition 8.39 of Rocket Report! There’s a lot of news to share in the world of rocketry this week, and we’re excited to summarize it in this week’s issue. The biggest rocket of them all, Starship, had a quiet week as SpaceX looks to launch the vehicle’s next mission, likely sometime in May. The results of this flight and the results of Blue Origin’s first attempt to land on the Moon with its Blue Moon cargo carrier in the coming months should tell us more about NASA’s real chances of putting astronauts on the ground in 2028.

As always, we receiver reader receiver. If you don’t want to miss the news, please sign up using the box below (the form is not visible on pages with AMP). Each report will include information on small, medium, and cargo rockets, as well as a quick look at the next three topics on the calendar.

These 12 companies are forming SBIs. The US Space Force released a list on April 24 of a dozen companies working on Space-Based Interceptors for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome initiative, a multi-purpose defense to protect the US territory from drones and ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, Ars reports. List of Golden Dome Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) contractors, some previously reported, include Anduril Industries, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics Mission Systems, GITAI USA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Quindar, Raytheon, Sci-Tec, SpaceX, True Anomaly, and Turion Space. Companies will collaborate in different areas to develop and provide SBI prototypes for testing. The contracts have a total value of $3.2 billion. Full production contracts will come later with a higher price tag.