Space · Thursday, 3 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

NASA has no new Mars lander or rover planned, for the first time in 30 years. It just paid $700m for the radio link.

Space 1 min 25 sources

The US space agency picked Blue Origin on 1 September to build a Mars spacecraft that gathers no data of its own. Its whole job is to carry other missions' messages home — and the two rovers already driving there are relying on orbiters launched in 2001 and 2005.

$700m

paid to Blue Origin for a Mars craft that gathers no data of its own

the US Congress set the money aside in a July 2025 budget bill and NASA asked for bids in May [1]

2001 and 2005

the launch years of the two NASA orbiters carrying most rover data today

Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter both split their time between science and carrying data [1]

3 helicopters

the only NASA hardware currently booked for the Martian surface

SkyFall flies no earlier than late 2028 and has no arm, drill or life-detection instrument [2]

$11bn

one outside estimate for flying Mars rocks back to Earth

NASA cancelled that plan after about $3bn had already gone into collecting the rocks [2]

The lead story — what happened

NASA, the US space agency, picked Blue Origin on 1 September to build a $700 million spacecraft for Mars. [1]
The craft carries no science instruments. Its only job is to relay data and commands between spacecraft at Mars and controllers on Earth. [1]
For the first time in more than 30 years, NASA has no firm plan to send a new lander or rover to the Martian surface. [2]
Two rovers are already there. Perseverance landed in 2021 [2], and Curiosity is 14 years into its own mission [3].
Their data comes home through two NASA orbiters launched in 2001 and 2005, with two European orbiters helping. All four also do science of their own. [1]
The new craft is due to NASA by the end of December 2028 and is expected to be working at Mars by 2030. [1]
NASA cancelled its plan to fly Mars rocks back to Earth after one outside estimate put the cost at $11 billion. [2]
Perseverance has cost about $3 billion so far, and the rock samples it sealed in tubes are still sitting on Mars. [2]
What NASA is still sending is small: three helicopters called SkyFall, riding a nuclear-propulsion test craft in late 2028. [2]
Blue Origin will build the relay on Blue Ring, a spacecraft platform that has never flown a mission of its own. [1]
NASA's budget for planetary science has fallen for several years, and the Trump administration wants it cut further. [2]

Who is involved

Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos's rocket and spacecraft company; it won the $700m relay and will build it on a platform that has not yet flown [1]
NASA

the US space agency; it is buying the relay while planning no new Mars landing [1][2]
Jared Isaacman

NASA's administrator since December 2025; he has pushed nuclear propulsion and cheap wins achievable in a few years [2][4]
AeroVironment

a US drone maker; it is co-building the three SkyFall helicopters with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory [2]
Rocket Lab

a US-New Zealand launch and spacecraft firm; it competed hard for the relay contract and lost [1]

What is pushing on this

Cost of keeping the old fleet reachable High↑

the two NASA relay orbiters are 25 and 21 years old and carry most rover data [1]

Squeeze on planetary science money High↑

the budget has fallen for several years and the Trump administration asked for deeper cuts [2]

The Moon's pull on the agency High↑

NASA's stated priority is a base on the lunar surface, not Mars [2]

Buying from companies instead of building Building↑

the relay goes to Blue Origin, and a science orbiter deal went to Relativity Space in June [1][2]

How it unfolded

2001 and 2005 NASA launches the two orbiters that still carry most rover data [1]
July 2025 the US Congress sets aside $700m for a Mars telecommunications orbiter [1]
May 2026 NASA asks companies to bid [1]
1 Sept 2026 Blue Origin wins [1]
End of 2028 the spacecraft is due to be handed to NASA [1]
2030 the relay is expected to be working at Mars [1]

Where this points

Watch whether anything is booked for the Martian surface before the relay arrives, because three small helicopters in late 2028 are currently all NASA has headed there.

The rest of the day

21 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Moon suit rules cut to hit 2028

NASA told staff this week it will have Axiom Space build a lighter, simpler 'Sortie Suit' for the first Moon landings, aiming for a landing as early as 2028. The original rules asked for six spacewalks in 6.5 days and 210 days of dormant storage, which NASA's own inspector general later called over-burdensome. [4]

Why it matters — The date is being protected by asking the suit to do less, and Axiom has been the only supplier since Collins Aerospace quit in 2024. [4]
03
The Moon crew gets 32 hours

The astronauts on Artemis IV will have no more than 32 hours outside on the lunar surface in total, and a geology team led by Brett Denevi of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory is planning every minute of it. [5]

Why it matters — It is the budget the suit fight is really about: a day and a half of walking, for decades of questions.
04
China's Pallas-1 reaches orbit first time

Galactic Energy, a Beijing company, flew its Pallas-1 rocket for the first time on 31 August from the Jiuquan launch centre and reached the orbit it was aiming for. The 52-metre rocket can lift 7,000kg and its first stage is designed to be reused 25 times. There was no landing attempt; the company is aiming at the second half of 2027 for that. [6]

Why it matters — It is a third Chinese route to reusable rockets, after a state-built Long March landing in July and a private one in August. [6]
05
Europe weighs more rocket flights

Josef Aschbacher, head of the European Space Agency, said on 2 September that ESA is assessing whether to fly its Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets more often. Demand is expected to peak around 2030 and already exceeds planned capacity: Arianespace projects nine or ten Ariane 6 flights a year from 2027, and Amazon alone has commissioned 18 launches. [7]

Why it matters — He also signalled ESA would use its buying power, about 60% of Europe's public satellite spending, to keep competition alive through the Airbus-Thales-Leonardo satellite merger. [7]
06
Russia's Starlink rival stuck low

None of the 32 Rassvet satellites Russia launched in March and July has reached the 800km orbit it was designed for, and the highest any has climbed is a little over 500km. One re-entered the atmosphere in June and several others have stopped manoeuvring. [8]

Why it matters — Russia wants about 300 of them in orbit by the end of next year, so the first 10% is running years behind the plan. [8]
07
ESA picks a builder for its first Moon rover

The European Space Agency signed ispace-Europe to build MAGPIE, its first lunar rover, which will drill and scan for water ice at the Moon's south pole for about 10 Earth days. It is due to launch in 2029 aboard a lander from the Japanese company ispace. [9]

Why it matters — Europe has never operated anything on the lunar surface, and this is the first mission of an ESA programme deliberately built to be cheaper and faster. [9]
08
First big-junk grab books a rocket

Astroscale Japan picked the German company Isar Aerospace to launch ADRAS-J2, which aims to be the first spacecraft to capture and remove a large piece of orbital debris. The target is a 3-tonne, 11-metre Japanese rocket stage left in orbit since 2009. [10]

Why it matters — Isar's rocket has never reached orbit; its first test flight was lost 30 seconds after liftoff in March 2025. [10]
09
A ten-sided wave over Saturn

Hubble, the space telescope launched in 1990, has found a giant 10-sided wave circling Saturn's south pole, published on 2 September in Science Advances. Saturn's north pole has had a six-sided version for more than 40 years. [11]

Why it matters — A researcher and two amateur astronomers spotted the first hint in ground-based images in 2024, and it appears to be strengthening, so scientists can watch a planet-sized pattern form. [11]
10
Moon dust as a supernova record

A new computer model can separate the dust from exploding stars out of the churned-up lunar soil it is mixed into. The Moon has no wind, rain or moving plates, so it should hold a record going back 80 to 100 million years, against about 10 million on Earth. [12]

Why it matters — Earlier readings of deep-sea mud and Apollo soil pointed to two bursts of nearby supernovas, 2.3 and 7.3 million years ago. [12]
11
Seven stages of a falling rock

A team led by Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames traced 75 meteorite falls and split the journey into seven stages. A rock can lose up to 40% of its mass to melting before it starts breaking apart. [13][14]

Why it matters — The old assumption was that the heat vaporised the rock; the finding is that melting first, then splitting, does most of the work. [13]
12
Solar-storm losses forecast to double

The space-weather firm Mission Space puts the cost of solar storms at $20.65bn in 2026 and $44.27bn a year by 2035. Power grids are the biggest single exposure, at $12.88bn this year. [15]

Why it matters — The Sun is not getting more violent; there is simply far more in orbit and on the ground for a storm to damage. [15]
13
Four spacewalks in a month end

Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and Jessica Meir of NASA spent six hours and 49 minutes outside the International Space Station on 1 September, finishing four spacewalks in a month. They installed a navigation aid and swabbed the station's outside for microbes. [16]

Why it matters — The other three replaced a failed antenna and prepared the truss for a new roll-out solar array. [16]
14
Starlink lasers on the next Moon ship

NASA picked SpaceX to put two Starlink mini laser terminals on the Orion capsule for Artemis III, the mission due next year in which four astronauts practise docking with test versions of the commercial Moon landers. [17]

Why it matters — It adds bandwidth to Orion's own radio, and makes a commercial satellite network part of a government Moon mission. [17]
15
A satellite built to fly lower

York Space Systems unveiled the LX/V-Class, a satellite designed to hold an altitude as low as 200km for three years or more, carrying about 300kg. It uses a stronger electric engine built by York's own subsidiary Orbion. [18]

Why it matters — York is betting speed beats going lower still: its boss says a 300km floor is low enough for what government buyers need now. [18]
16
Dream Chaser signs its first customers

Sierra Space said it has signed national security and commercial customers to carry payloads on the first orbital flight of its Dream Chaser spaceplane, which is due to fly later this year after long delays. [19]

Why it matters — Dream Chaser has been in development for more than a decade and has still not flown. [19]
17
A dish factory gets a US military test

All.Space signed an agreement with the Defense Innovation Unit, the US Defense Department's commercial technology arm, to show that its satellite communication terminals can be built at high volume. [20]

Why it matters — For the US military the bottleneck is increasingly the ground equipment, not the satellites.
18
Roman may fly twice as long

NASA's new $4bn Roman Space Telescope was placed so accurately by its rocket that it will need fewer course corrections than planned, so its fuel could stretch a five-year mission to about ten. It is on a three-month trip to a parking spot 750,000 miles, or 1.2 million km, beyond the Moon. [24]

Why it matters — Fuel, not optics, is what usually ends a space telescope's life. [24]
19
Hubble confirms a galaxy that never formed

The European Space Agency announced on 2 September that Hubble has confirmed Cloud-9, a cloud of gas and dark matter 14 million light-years away with no stars in it at all. Astronomers had predicted such objects from theory and never confirmed one. [25]

Why it matters — Seeing nothing is the result: ground telescopes were not sensitive enough to rule out faint stars, and Hubble was. [25]
20
Satellites that chase satellites

A Reuters review of patents, procurement notices and tracking data found Chinese military researchers developing satellites designed to pursue and capture other spacecraft, and refuel while doing it. In June a Chinese uncrewed spaceplane released a small satellite that looped around another Chinese satellite and came back. [22]

Why it matters — The US flies a similar uncrewed spaceplane, the X-37B, and ran its first joint space operation with Britain near a suspected Chinese spy satellite. [22]
21
US space-traffic system still a trial

TraCSS, the US civil system meant to warn satellite operators about collisions, now has more than 70 operators and 10 national governments using it, but its acting manager says there is no timeline for leaving its trial phase. [23]

Why it matters — Two Trump administration budget requests proposed ending its funding, so users are told the warnings are for evaluation only. [23]
22
Venus at its brightest on 18 September

NASA's September sky guide points to Venus at peak brightness low in the west after sunset on 18 September, the Moon passing the red star Antares from 14 to 20 September, and the equinox on 22 September. [21]

Why it matters — The steam from the Teapot shape in Sagittarius points at the centre of our own galaxy. [21]

02 Lesson why it matters

What is already switched on gets paid before what has never started

A mission that has not launched can wait. Two rovers already driving on Mars cannot, so the money goes to the radio that carries their data home.

The twist

Cutting what has not started costs nothing today, so that is what gets cut, and a squeezed budget quietly turns into a bill for what you already own.

How it works

Something expensive is built and switched on
Keeping it working needs a second thing
That second thing cannot be delayed without killing the first
A mission that has not started can be delayed, and nothing dies today
So the shrinking budget pays the keep-alive bill first
The programme becomes upkeep of what it already sent

Where you've seen this

City transport

potholes get filled every year while the new line keeps slipping

Hospitals

the service contract on an ageing scanner is paid before a new scanner is bought

Software teams

keeping last decade's system alive uses the same people who would build the next one

A household

the boiler gets repaired, and the savings wait another year

The catch

It is not always decay. The relay will serve missions that come later too, and a year's delay on something unbuilt is sometimes genuinely the cheapest thing on the table.

And the whole of it

Everyone here is choosing sensibly from where they sit, and the programme still ends up with a new radio and nothing new to talk to. Most of us are inside the same arithmetic somewhere, and from any one seat it only ever looks like a reasonable year's delay.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

The biggest new item in NASA's Mars budget is a radio relay, because the two rovers already driving there cannot be reached much longer through orbiters launched in 2001 and 2005. [1][2]

Why it works on us — A $700 million contract reads as investment in Mars, and the number is real, but what it buys is the ability to keep hearing from things that landed years ago.

Who gains

Blue Origin — It gets $700 million and a first deep-space job for a spacecraft platform that has never flown, from a customer with an ageing relay fleet and no alternative. [1]
AeroVironment — The collapse of Mars landers is exactly what turned its helicopters from a passenger into the delivery method; it is now building three plus a spare. [2]
Axiom Space — It is the only Moon suit maker left, so NASA is loosening the requirements it was missing rather than looking elsewhere. [4]
ispace-Europe — It becomes prime contractor on ESA's first lunar rover, a job Europe has never had before. [9]
Isar Aerospace — It books a paying debris-removal customer for a rocket that has not yet reached orbit. [10]

Who pays

Mars surface science — Nothing NASA currently has scheduled will put an arm, a drill or a life-detection instrument on the ground. [2]
The Perseverance sample tubes — About $3 billion went into collecting rocks that are still sitting on Mars with no ride home after the return plan was cancelled. [2]
Rocket Lab — It pushed hard for the relay contract, published its own pitch for the mission, and lost. [1]
Astronauts on the first Moon landings — The suit is being simplified to protect a date, with the fuller capability promised later. [4]
Satellite operators everywhere — Solar-storm losses are forecast to rise to $44.27bn a year by 2035, mostly because there is more in orbit to damage. [15]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

What NASA will put on the Martian surface after 2028.

The agency has no firm plan for a new lander or rover, and the only hardware currently booked is three small helicopters with no arm, drill or life-detection instrument. [2]
02

What the SkyFall helicopter mission costs.

NASA has not disclosed a figure and declined to give Ars Technica the value of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's contract with AeroVironment. [2]
03

Whether Blue Ring can do this job.

The spacecraft platform Blue Origin will build the relay on has never flown a mission; only a prototype went up, on New Glenn's first launch in January 2025. [1]
04

What the slimmed-down Moon suit will actually be able to do.

NASA has not published the reduced requirements, and Axiom Space had not responded to Ars Technica when the story ran. [4]
05

How many of Russia's 32 Rassvet satellites are broken.

At least three appear to have failed and one re-entered in June, but the assessments come from outside trackers and the operator has published nothing. [8]
06

What China's Pallas-1 rocket carried on its first flight.

Galactic Energy said the rocket reached its intended orbit but would not say whether there was any payload aboard. [6]
07

Whether Europe will build the extra rockets it says it may need.

ESA's director general says a decision is needed soon and that none has been made. [7]
08

Whether the US civil space-traffic warning system survives.

Its acting manager says there is no timeline for leaving the trial phase, and two Trump administration budget requests proposed ending its funding. [23]

04 Hope carry this

The Moon has no wind, no rain and no moving plates, so the dust from stars that exploded near us is still lying where it fell, going back 80 to 100 million years. A new model can now pick that stardust out of the soil it was churned into.