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

Welcome to Edition 8.39 of the Rocket Report! There’s a lot of news to share in the universe of powerful rockets this week, and we’re delighted to sum it up in this week’s edition. The biggest rocket of them all, Starship, had a relatively quiet week as SpaceX aims to launch the vehicle’s next test flight, perhaps sometime in May. The results of that flight and the outcome of Blue Origin’s first attempt to land on the Moon with its Blue Moon cargo lander in the coming months should tell us a lot about NASA’s actual chances of putting astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

These 12 companies are developing 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 multilayer defense system to shield US territory from drones and ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile attacks, Ars reports. The roster of Golden Dome Space-Based Interceptor (SBI) contractors, some of which were previously reported, includes 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. The companies will contribute in different areas to develop and deliver SBI prototypes for testing. The agreements have a maximum combined value of $3.2 billion. Contracts for full-scale production will come later with a significantly higher price tag.